When, however, we learn in Christ the nature of our first estate, and the divine destiny to which we are called, we begin to see – more clearly the more we are able to look at the world with the eye of charity – that there is in all the things of earth a hidden glory waiting to be revealed, more radiant than a million suns, more beautiful than the most generous imagination or ardent desire can now conceive. Or rather, it is a glory not entirely hidden: veiled, rather, but shining in and through and upon all things. The imperishable goodness of all being does in fact show itself in all that it is. It shows itself in the vast waters of the Indian Ocean, and it is not hard to see when those waters are silver and azure under the midday sky, or gold and indigo in the light of the setting sun, or jet and pearl in the light of the moon, and when their smoothly surging tides break upon the shore and harmlessly recede. But it is still there even when – the doors of the sea having broken their seals – those waters become suddenly dull and opaque with grey or sallow silt and rise up to destroy and kill without will or thought or purpose or mercy. At such times, to see the goodness indwelling all creation requires a labor of vision that only faith in Easter can sustain; but it is there, effulgent, unfading, innocent, but languishing in bondage to corruption, groaning in anticipation of a glory yet to be revealed, both as a promise of the Kingdom yet to come and a portent of its beauty.

Until that final glory, however, the world remains divided between two kingdoms, where light and darkness, life and death grow up together and await the harvest. In such a world, our portion is charity, and our sustenance is faith, and so it will be until the end of days. As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God but the face of His enemy. Such a faith might never seem credible to someone like Ivan Karamazov, or still the disquiet of his conscience, or give him peace in place of rebellion, but neither is it a faith that his arguments can defeat; for it is a faith that set us free from optimism long ago and taught us hope instead. Now we are able to rejoice that we are not saved through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but judge much of history false and damnable; that He will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetter in which creation languishes; and, that rather showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in darkness were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, He will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes – and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and He that sits upon the throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new.”

- David Bently Hart (‘The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?” pp101-104.)

There’s a few different answers to this question. Some would say that we can be certain of  nothing - this is the more radical position. It pertains to everything – moral judgement, ethical judgement, the whole shebang. You can’t really be certain of anything. This seems to me to be somewhat self-refuting – can you be certain that there is nothing you can be certain about? If that’s the case, then it seems like it cuts its own feet out from under it.

But let’s take the more radical line: we can’t even be certain that there’s nothing we can’t be certain about.  Radical skepticism like this seems to lead to simply absurd and incoherent conclusions – we can’t be certain that we can’t be certain, on for infinity. So this seems to me to be a somewhat incoherent picture.

So much for radical skepticism, then. How else can we know of what we can be certain?

Well, we can be certain in mathematics – indeed, mathematics is home to a very special certainty: the certainty of 2+2=4. This is as rock-bottom certain as one can be – mathematical certainty. But we can’t be that certain about other things – because other things aren’t mathematics.

It seems to me, however, that we can be  reasonably certain of certain things – I’m certain that I love my fiance, and that she loves me. I’m certain that I love a good dark German ale, but don’t like bitter IPA’s. I’m certain that there are other people, that gas is expensive, and lots of other things – and I’m reasonably certain other people are certain about these kinds of things as well. It would seem in that case that what I’ll call ‘common sense certainty’ is the best position – radical skepticism seems to be unwarranted. It is unreasonable to suppose that people aren’t really there, or that any of the things I just listed aren’t certain enough for me to be justified in believing them – they seem perfectly warranted beliefs. In fact, to  not believe any of these things would be the irrational position to take. This is related somewhat to the idea of ‘properly basic beliefs’  - and it seems to me that such beliefs provide a good grounding for a common-sense certainty.

There is a sense in which, as stated above, one cannot be certain in the mathematical sense of any of those things – perhaps I’m mentally ill, having a hallucination, or any other possible circumstance that would impede my cognitive faculties. Again, however, common-sense certainty seems to me to be adequate grounds for not assuming any of those things. On this view, to posit skepticism beyond necessity is superfluous. Of course I could be under a cognitive-faculty hindering influence, but unless it was something that effected my entire being, I find it easy to imagine that there would be some sign that I was in fact suffering from such a condition.

Without reverting to foundationalism, it seems that common-sense certainty coupled with properly basic beliefs provides adequate grounds to refute radical skepticism in light of the fact that mathematical certainty is not availible for any and all beliefs.

Apart from God’s energies (workings) in creation, the most decisive and important way in which God can be known is through His revelation in Jesus Christ in history. Jesus Christ is the concrete presence of God in history – Jesus is fully human. Jesus is also fully God. For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, this God-man distinction was crucial:

‘Because Jesus is Christ is man, he is present in time and space; because Jesus Christ is God, he is eternally present. The presence of Jesus Christ in the Church, at a particular time and place, is because of the fact that there is one whole person of the God-Man. It is therefore an impossible question to ask how the man Jesus, limited by space and time, can be contemporary with us. This Jesus does not exist in isolation. Equally impossible is the other, how can God be in time. This isolated God does not exist. The only possible and  meaningful question is, ‘Who is there, present in time and place?’ The answer is, ‘The one person of the God-Man, Jesus Christ.’ I do not know who the man Jesus Christ is, unless I can at the same time say, ‘Jesus Christ is God’; I do not know who the God Jesus Christ is, unless I can at the same time say, ‘Jesus Christ is man.’ The two factors cannot be isolated, because they are not seperable. God in timeless eternity is not God; Jesus limited by time is not Jesus. Rather we may say that in the Man Jesus, God is God. In this Jesus Christ, God is present. This one God-Man is the starting point of Christology.’ (‘Christ the Center,’ p. 45)

The humanity of Jesus Christ was central for Bonhoeffer – Karl Barth had similar thoughts as well. The basic idea is summed up in the final sentences bolded above. Only if Christ was completely human would the Incarnation have had any meaning for humanity. This forms the foundations of one of the distinctive mark of Bonhoeffers (as well as Barth’s) theology: that God is ‘for us’ in Christ – in the real and complete humanity of Christ, and in the real and complete divinity of Christ, God reconciled the world to Himself.

How do we know God? There are two basic answers that will be considered.

‘…since everything is knowable according as it is actual, God, Who is pure act without any admixture of potentiality, is in Himself supremely knowable….Hence, it must be absolutely granted that the blessed see the essence of God” (St. Thomas Aquinas,ST I, Q12A1)

‘God cannot be seen in His essence by a mere human being, except he be separated from this mortal life’ (Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 12, 10)

Here Aquinas connects the shedding of the mortal coil with the ability to see the essence of God, in marked contrast to the Eastern Orthodox tradition:

‘The true purpose of creation is, therefore, not contemplation of divine essence (which is inaccessible), but communion in divine energy, transfiguration, and transparency to divine action in the world” (John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, p. 133)

‘The energies are various, and the essence simple, but we say that we know our God from His energies, but do not undertake to approach near to His essence. His energies come down to us, but His essence remains beyond our reach. ‘(St. Basil of Caesarea)

The term energies refers, roughly speaking, to God’s workings in creation:

‘An answer to these questions is implied in the writings of St. Paul. I do not wish to suggest that Paul explicitly addressed the divine energeia as a theological topic, but only that he uses the term often enough, and in a sufficient variety of contexts, that we can determine what his answer to these questions would have been. For example, Paul refers to himself as “striving according to Christ’s working (or energy, energeia), which is being made effective (or actualized, energoumen?n) in me” (Col. 1:29). (Taken from http://preachersinstitute.com/2010/12/16/the-concept-of-divine-energies/, which is an excellent discussion on divine energies/essence).

We know of God, then, through His energies, or workings, in creation, while God’s essence remains utterly beyond us. However, God’s energies are not the only way we know of Him; we know of Him also through the revelation of Jesus Christ in history, but for right now I will concentrate on how we know God through His energies. These energies include God’s providence, foreknowledge, love, power, wisdom and the other classical attributes of God – these are some of the ways in which we can know God without knowing His actual essence.

The unknowability of the essence of God goes back to Old Testament themes – God tells Moses in Exodus that no one can see His face and live, and in Elijah’s theophany, God does not speak in the wind, fire or earthquake, but in the stillness that follows. This is a theme that is carried to the New Testament as well – Jesus tells us that ‘no one has seen the Lord (John 1:18), and St. Paul tells us that God is He ‘who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.’ (1 Timothy 6:16) It seems then that the idea of God’s utter unknowability in His essence is indeed a firmly Biblical one.

Anything capable of cognition (mental processes) is a conscious (capable of awareness, feeling, subjectivity) thing.  It would appear then that consciousness is restricted to livening things. Is this, however, necessarily true? Can something like say, a tree, which is a living thing, perform mental processes?  Trees are no doubt growing and living things – but it would certainly appear that they don’t perform any mental processes nor does it appear that they have a mind. One does not observe trees making conscious mental decisions to grow a certain height, or to grow a certain number of leaves .

Can it therefore be extrapolated that a non-living thing is capable of consciousness? If something that is alive is not conscious, can something that is not alive can be conscious, for example a chair?

Analytic philosopher Peter van Inwagen argues that non-living things don’t exist in any meaningful way – non-living things are simply composed of elementary particles that appear to be there.  On his view not only is a non-living thing not conscious, it doesn’t exist. This seems to me to be a radical and unwarranted position. Common sense and empirical data tell us that non-living things do in fact exist – it seems to me that one does not need an argument to justify such a position, and if it is needed, then the problem of non-living things existing seems to be a relatively minor one for whomever needs the argument.

This returns us to the question at hand: can non-living things (which do exist) have consciousness? Empirical data seem to tell us no – however, if living things don’t necessarily have to be conscious, it seems that it’s not out of the question for non-living things to be conscious.

It would also appear that, upon close inspection of definitions, some chairs do in fact have consciousness. A chair is that which is sat on by human beings – this can obviously include living things (for example, a dog or a person). So some chairs can indeed have consciousness (dogs are aware of their surroundings, make decisions, albeit to a more limited extent compared to humans).

It would appear then that the problem of living/nonliving consciousness is a problem of definitions more than anything – on some definitions, a chair can indeed be conscious (if I decided to sit on a person) and on some definitions it is not (if I decide to sit on the chair in my office made of metal).

Bertrand Russel, in trying to delve more deeply into logic, found that he was only becoming more and more enmeshed in paradoxes – not because had misunderstood logic, but because he had misunderstood the limits of language. It may be that consciousness is a similar kind of animal – perhaps further attempts to push deeper into consciousness will only result in mystery and paradox.

‘What cannot be shown cannot be said.’

‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’

- Ludwig Wittgenstein

Bonhoeffer characteristically gives an answer grounded in the concrete, and not in the abstract – pain is real, loss is real, and the void left by a loved one who has passed on is real, and it doesn’t go away. This also shows some of his other theological presuppositions - namely the relational factor that makes his theology (in addition to Barth’s) so powerful and his ethical thought so brilliant – both the authentic and the relationship  are foundational in his thought.

‘Earendil was a mariner
that tarried in Arvernien;
he built a boat of timber felled
in Nimbrethil to journey in;
her sails he wove of silver fair,
of silver were her lanterns made,
her prow was fashioned like a swan
and light upon her banners laid.

In panolpy of ancient kings,
in chained rings he armoured him;
his shining shield was scored with runes
to ward all wounds and harm from him;
his bow was made of dragon-horn,
his arrows shorn of ebony;
of silver was his habergeon,
his scabbard of chalcedony;
his sword of steel was valient,
of adamant his helmet tall,
an eagle-plume upon his crest,
upon his breast an emerald.

Beneath the Moon and under star
he wandered far from northern strands,
bewildered on enchanted ways
beyond the days of mortal lands.

From gnashing of the Narrow Ice
where shadow lies on frozen hills,
from nether heats and burning waste
he turned in haste, and roving still
on starless waters far astray
at last he came to Night of Naught,
and passed, and never sight he saw
of shining shore nor light he sought.

The winds of wrath came driving him,
and blindly in the foam he fled
from west to east and errandless,
unheralded he homeward sped.

There flying Elwing came to him,
and flame was in the darkness lit;
more bright than light of diamond
the fire on her carcanet.

The Silmaril she bound on him
and crowned him with the living light,
and dauntless then with burning brow
he turned his prow; and in the night
from otherworld beyond the Sea
there strong and free a storm arose,
a wind of power in Tarmenel;
by paths that seldom mortal goes
his boat it bore with biting breath
as might of death across the grey
and long forsaken seas distressed;
from east to west he passed away.

Thought Evernight he back was borne
on black and roaring waves that ran
o’er leagues unlit and foundered shores
that drowned before the Days began,
until he hears on strands of pearl
where end the world the music long,
where ever-foaming billows roll
the yellow gold and jewels wan.

He saw the Mountain silent rise
where twilight lies upon the knees
of Valinor, and Eldamar
beheld afar beyond the seas.

A wanderer escaped from night
to haven white he came at last,
to Elvenhome the green and fair
where keen the air, where pale as glass
beneath the Hill of Ilmarin
a-glimmer in a valley sheer
the lamplit towers of Tirion
are mirrored on the Shadowmere.

He tarried there from errantry,
and melodies they taught to him,
and sages old him marvels told,
and harps of gold they brought to him.

They clothed him then in elven-white,
and seven lights before him sent,
as through the Calacirian
to hidden land forlorn he went.

He came unto the timeless halls
where shining fall the countless years,
and endless reigns the Elder King
in Ilmarin on Mountain sheer;
and words unheard were spoken then
of folk and Men and Elven-kin,
beyond the world were visions showed
forbid to those that dwell therein.

A ship then new they built for him
of mithril and of elven glass
with shining prow; no shaven oar
nor sail she bore on silver mast:
the Silmaril as lantern light
and banner bright with living flame
to gleam thereon by Elbereth
herself was set, who thither came
and wings immortal made for him,
and laid on him undying doom,
to sail the shoreless skies and come
behind the Sun and light of Moon.

From Evergreen’s lofty hills
where softly silver fountains fall
his wings him bore, a wandering light,
beyond the mighty Mountain Wall.

From a World’s End there he turned away,
and yearned again to find afar
his home through shadows journeying,
and burning as an island star
on high above the mists he came,
a distant flame before the Sun,
a wonder ere the waking dawn
where grey the Norland waters run.

And over Middle-Earth he passed
and heard at last the weeping sore
of women and of elven-maids
in Elder Days, in years of yore.

But on him mighty doom was laid,
till Moon should fade, an orbed star
to pass, and tarry never more
on Hither Shores where Mortals are;
or ever still a herald on
an errand that should never rest
to bear his shining lamp afar,
to Flammifer of Westernesse. ‘

- J.R.R. Tolkien

“Love is a mighty power, a great and complete good; Love alone lightens every burden, and makes the rough places smooth. It bears every hardship as though it were nothing, and renders all bitterness sweet and acceptable. The love of Jesus is noble, and inspires us to great deeds; it moves us always to desire perfection. Love aspires to high things, and is held back by nothing base. Love longs to be free, a stranger to every worldly desire, lest its inner vision become dimmed, and lest worldly self-interest hinder it or ill-fortune cast it down. Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing wider, nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller or better in heaven or earth; for love is born of God, and can rest only in God above all created things.

Love flies, runs, leaps for joy; it is free and unrestrained. Love gives all for all, resting in One who is highest above all things, from whom every good flows and proceeds. Love does not regard the gifts, but turns to the Giver of all good gifts. Love knows no limits, but ardently transcends all bounds. Love feels no burden, takes no account of toil, attempts things beyond its strength; love sees nothing as impossible, for it feels able to achieve all things. Love therefore does great things; it is strange and effective; while he who lacks love faints and fails.”
― Thomas a Kempis (The Inner Life)