46 Chapter 4
THE EUCHARISTIC NATURE OF REALITY
4 The Eucharistic Nature of Reality
It may be that we can at this point draw a few conclusions from
what has been illustrated here, conclusions that are important to
understanding Covenantal Theology. (It again needs to be emphasized
that this book has the purpose of illustrating ideas, not proving them.)
First, (even if Aristotle's scheme fails) when we talk about giving a
reason for something, we commonly mean that we have a smaller
sentence, which we can show to be a necessary implication of a Bigger
sentence. That doesn't mean that we always begin with the Bigger
sentence -- induction rather than deduction is our most-used method --
but it does mean that we eventually find a Bigger sentence, and show
that the littler sentence is a necessary implication of it. To be
"reasonable" is in the end to be "logical," which means, to show that all
your little sentences are necessary implications of Bigger ones.
All men are mortal.
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Socrates is mortal.
Electrons exist.
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TVs can exist.
Second, this means that the human quest for meaning comes down
to the search for necessary reasons, for:
Truths that are true
because they can't NOT be true.
In other words, whether Aristotle is wrong or right -- whether
we've even heard of Aristotle -- our quest for meaning is trying to find
the Big sentences that our little sentences are logical implications of. If
a little sentence exists that is not a necessary implication of (some)
Bigger one, then the little sentence is arbitrary, it is meaning-less.
In our modern times, we may acknowledge the existence of
arbitrary little sentences, even count their number, and be comfortable
assigning their existence to Chance instead of Cause. We still have not
changed our definition of Cause. It's still defined in terms of Bigger
sentences that have littler ones as their inevitable implications:
Cause Chance
( Bigger sentence ) ( Bigger sentence )
|
little sentence little sentence
Third, our search for meaning is a search for Causes, for the Bigger
sentences that necessarily imply littler ones.
N.B. This is an html-ized copy of a page from the pdf file, The Knucklehead's Guide to Covenantal Theology.