SOM #9 The Rolling Apodictic of Human Consciousness

This paper investigates further the relationship between God, language, consciousness, reason, creativity, morality and the historical development of human understanding. Its central proposition is that language is considerably more than a mechanism of communication. It represents an accumulated record of humanity's attempts to understand existence, life, thought, identity, morality and the relationship between observable and non-observable dimensions of human experience. Beginning with the ancient Hebrew and Greek vocabularies of breath, life, spirit, soul, heart and mind, the paper examines the conceptual relationships between ruach, nephesh, neshamah, pneuma, psyche, kardia and nous. It considers how early human beings interpreted the observable manifestations of life and how these experiences contributed to the development of philosophical, medical and theological understandings of the human person. The investigation subsequently examines the theological significance of Logos, particularly in John's Gospel, alongside the Greek concept of archē and the language of principalities and powers in Ephesians 6:12. It considers the contrasting biblical vocabulary of truth, accusation, slander and deception, exploring whether these expressions provide a framework for examining the relationship between divine order and human moral behaviour. A substantial part of the investigation concerns the relationship between language and the formation of consciousness. Drawing upon Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Austin, Grice, Quine, Saussure, Heidegger, Gadamer, Davidson, Humboldt and Cassirer, the paper examines how language participates in the organisation and transmission of human understanding. Particular attention is given to poetry, creativity and metaphor. The work of Paul Ricoeur is considered in relation to metaphor's capacity to produce new meaning and redescribe reality. Jacques Derrida's White Mythology is examined for its challenge to the assumption that philosophical language can operate independently of its metaphorical history. Harold Stahmer's Speak That I May See Thee! provides a further perspective on the religious and interpersonal significance of language. A central development concerns John 14:2 and 14:23, particularly the Greek expressions monai (μοναί), monē (μονή) and menō (μένω). The paper examines the Father's house as an image of dwelling, divine indwelling and the ordering of human understanding. It develops the author's original theological hypothesis that heaven can be understood as a state of mind: a condition in which the truth of God's Word is received, understood, internalised and expressed through human thought and conduct. This is proposed as an additional theological interpretation, not as the literal lexical definition of monai, nor as the necessary exclusion of a future-oriented understanding of heaven. The investigation then moves into moral and political philosophy through John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism, John Rawls's theory of justice and the distinction between legal validity and moral legitimacy. It considers whether institutional authority can establish justice independently of the moral principles by which that authority should itself be judged. The Christian understanding of Christ as mediator is subsequently examined in relation to human limitation, reconciliation and the possibility of a moral framework extending beyond institutional self-interest. The paper also challenges the assumption that warfare is an inevitable and defining characteristic of human nature. It considers biological impulses, competition, fear and self-preservation alongside the ordinary human capacities for cooperation, restraint and peaceful conflict resolution. Finally, the investigation develops the concepts of doxa, paradoxa and apodeixis into an original philosophical proposition: the Rolling Apodictic of Human Consciousness. This describes the continuing movement through which humanity observes, names, interprets, creates, questions, demonstrates and reconstructs its understanding of existence. The central proposition is that language, creativity and reason provide humanity with considerable resources through which to examine inherited assumptions and develop alternative intellectual, moral and social arrangements. Within the Christian theological framework, these capacities are considered in relation to divine creation, the Logos, human freedom and the possibility of reconciliation through Christ.