What’s Wrong with the World

Lydia,

Do you think it is possible to distinguish a feeling/passion from a preference/desire? I can make sense of Satan turning against God if Satan lacked the 'what-it-is-like' aspect of an emotion, but for Satan to turn against God without so much as a desire seems to make his volition unintelligible.

That needn't imply that angels have tension between their desires, however. It could be that at their creation, the angels had such tension - say, between love of God and pride - but that over time, their choices eliminated some of their desires, so that at present angels solely love.

Here's a brief Thomistic response: Angels do not have passions because passions belong to beings that have bodies. If angels were to have bodies then they'd be no different than humans. The caveat here is that Aquinas differentiates between passions as we are thinking of them and passions as the capacity to receive something from something else - in which case angels would have passions (see I-II.22.1 ad 1). For Aquinas on angelic natures, see Summa I QQ. 50-64 and QQ.106-114, all of which can be found here: http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/TOC.htm
And to head off an objection, love is not a passion, but an act of the intellect, especially of the will, as anyone who hasn't killed their teenager knows.

John H., I'd be inclined to distinguish passions from desires. The latter is a movement of the will.

That relates to what Baconboy says (I like the teenager analogy): The entire Lewisian "thing" in the passage I discuss in Perelandra (and I think he gets into this in the Four Loves as well) is that it is incorrect to think of love as _by definition_ a passion or an emotion, though in humans the two almost always come together. I get something of the same "feel" about angels from Dante as from Lewis, by the way, and I have no doubt that Dante influenced Lewis.

I was using 'feelings' in an ordinary sense, as when we are overcome with love for someone we 'feel' it quite deeply and thus call love a feeling, a "movement of the will". I can't imagine that angels are exempt from this. And now over at her own blog Lydia's denying that angels have a sense of humor. Huh. A rational creature without a sense of humor is not rational but an automaton.

No, no, you misunderstood me. Check out my answer. :-)

Btw, you probably hate Vulcans, don't you, Bill? Or did you never watch Star Trek as a kid?

I watched Star Trek as a teen and college kid. I liked Spock only because it was amusing to watch him try to suppress his human half. I don't believe there's any such thing as a purely intellectual creature.

I checked out your answer. Good answer. I have hope for you. I was also interested in this:

"Interestingly, I've just been arguing the _other_ side of this--namely, that we should be quite free to speak of God as a person, that we should not make God so abstract and philosophical a being as to place a gulf between the God of philosophy and the God of Scripture."

I remember when I approached a priest for instruction he sat me down and the first question he asked was "What is God to you?" I said, "A person." He liked the answer.

Jesus says there'll be no marriage in heaven, that rather we'll be like the angels. So we must already have something in common with them. But since they never had material bodies, it makes me wonder if they're sexless creatures. I hope not. When I look at someone I like to know what I'm looking at. At least if there are women in heaven I'll be able to stand the place (premised upon the vain assumption I'll ever see it). I'm also holding out hope for some divine effluence that's equivalent, but superior to, Czech lager.

But since they never had material bodies, it makes me wonder if they're sexless creatures. I hope not. When I look at someone I like to know what I'm looking at.

Bill, what about when you "look at" God the Father, or the Holy Spirit? How will you "know what you're looking at?" Well, with the eyes of the spirit, not carnal eyes at all, of course, since God is spirit.

I sometimes think that it is worthwhile to try (even though it is not fully possible) to remember the eagle's eye view of being. If an independent observer were to observe God before and after creation, he would understand BEING by seeing God, and after God creates angels he would be struck in surprised awe by the fact that it is even possible that there be beingS (plural) that are not He Who Is, that are essentially dependent being, that are limited, so utterly less being than THE BEING that it is even imperfect to call these things "being" in the same sense as God. After God creates men, the observer would be struck again in surprise that it is even possible that there be a kind of being even less real than the angels, whose being depends on something so delimited as "matter" (i.e. stuff that is so far removed from BEING that it is hardly said to exist at all), beings that are not simply spiritual. The limitations of a material being might strike the observer as shocking: is such a thing even properly speaking "real"?

The degree to which material being FALLS SHORT of the level of reality that is enjoyed by a purely spiritual reality should remind us that not having emotions need not be not some kind of defect. It is a sort of defect in Vulcans, because Vulcans are in fact bodily intelligences and therefore changeable in ways that spiritual beings are not. But that level of being changeable is not itself a perfection, it is a kind of lesser being.

God's sense of humor: It is my belief that humor rests on perception of the real, and a perception of a kind of dis-jointedness, a kind of mis-match in what is, or what ought to be, or what we expect to be. (Often, the humor depends quite definitely on a temporal displacement: at FIRST we expect A, then we are surprised by B instead.) God sees reality whole and entire, including how all of the temporary and apparent mis-matches either get resolved in time or are only apparent when you see a limited portion of the picture. Without these limitations, God can never be surprised, and can never allow mis-matches to remain unresolved in the fullness of time. (The only mis-matches that remain eschatalogically are those of sin, and those are never funny.) I would suggest that God has, in a far more eminent way than we do, the perfection that in us exists under the mode of humor.

Angels have faculties proper to spiritual beings with intellect and will. Like us, they have intellectual yearnings, desires, and appetite, and these are perceived by them. So far, then, they have "feelings." But these desires are not emotions - they cannot come and go (like in us) with the passing of chemical changes in the blood, or sleepiness, or being bored - angels cannot be bored (thank God for that: imagine how bored the guardian angel of a person in a coma would get).

According to some thinkers, angels do not (unlike us) think discursively. In a long deductive proof, for example, we pass from thought to thought to thought over time. Angels perceive the entirety of the proof all as one intellectual act. They would do the entirety of Euclid's "Elements" in one swift blow, instead of thinking about the geometry as having some 500 separate stopping points where you momentarily rest (with the potential for becoming distracted or forgetting something). Surely we don't think that our "ability" to forget the earlier part of the proof is a perfection.

By the way, I should add that C.S.L. says that there were two views of the embodied or otherwise nature of angels. St. Thomas held that they are completely disembodied whereas some other medieval thinker (whose name I cannot now remember) held that they have bodies of ether. C.S.L., while holding them to be passionless, gives them bodies of ether for literary reasons. He discusses this in a letter; I believe it's in his _Letters to Children_.

I'll get to Tony's comments briefly later.

Masked Chicken, being a humor specialist, should tell us whether he thinks either angels or God have a sense of humor.

Bill, what about when you "look at" God the Father, or the Holy Spirit? How will you "know what you're looking at?" Well, with the eyes of the spirit, not carnal eyes at all, of course, since God is spirit.

How about when I look at the risen Christ?

I knew I'd get in trouble for being a material heretic. Just to dig the hole deeper, God is pure being; angels are not. Being created, they cannot exist without some kind of body defining them as separate from God. And, being so much less than He, they will, like us, sometimes look in the mirror and have a good laugh.

Lydia, I have thought out a book that uses, as a literary device, "angels" that have a kind of body. Lewis's notion doesn't bother me at all. For all we know, maybe there is some kind of bodily being whose body is ethereal in some fashion.

But that doesn't solve the issue: there is still in principle a gradation of being in between God and physical beings, that of a dependent being who is purely spiritual. We know that angels are intelligent spiritual beings, the only question is whether they also have bodies. But there is nothing in Scripture or philosophy that requires bodies to explain them and their attributes.

How about when I look at the risen Christ?

Bill, so what did the angels do before Christ became man? The saints are very clear about this: in the life of grace, God's gifts enable us to rise above and surpass the ordinary physical powers of the carnal man, and enlightens the intellect in modes beyond the modes of knowing that are natural. This is why contemplation is so important. In the light of glory, when we "see" God as He is in the beatific vision, we are seeing Him by reason of a faculty that is more powerful than the eyes, raised up to its highest level. I think that to presume that we need eyes to really see Him is to shortchange what the intellect is.

Being created, they cannot exist without some kind of body defining them as separate from God.

The fact that they have natures, and are not one and the same with their existence, is sufficient to distinguish them from God. In addition to that, each separate angel is a different species, so that separates them from all the other angels and from God.

Being created, they cannot exist without some kind of body defining them as separate from God.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, _that_ doesn't follow. Why can't there be finite spirits that are distinct from God without bodies? I can imagine a whole _hierarchy_ of purely spiritual created beings. I don't know that angels constitute such a hierarchy, but it isn't necessary that there be bodies to distinguish creatures from the creator or different types of creatures from each other.

Tony:

God's sense of humor: It is my belief that humor rests on perception of the real, and a perception of a kind of dis-jointedness, a kind of mis-match in what is, or what ought to be, or what we expect to be. (Often, the humor depends quite definitely on a temporal displacement: at FIRST we expect A, then we are surprised by B instead.) God sees reality whole and entire, including how all of the temporary and apparent mis-matches either get resolved in time or are only apparent when you see a limited portion of the picture. Without these limitations, God can never be surprised, and can never allow mis-matches to remain unresolved in the fullness of time. (The only mis-matches that remain eschatalogically are those of sin, and those are never funny.) I would suggest that God has, in a far more eminent way than we do, the perfection that in us exists under the mode of humor.

Lydia:

Masked Chicken, being a humor specialist, should tell us whether he thinks either angels or God have a sense of humor.

Be careful what you ask for...[parts of the following have appeared, previously]

I actually wrote a long letter to the philosopher and (now) colleague, John Morreall, after reading his book, Taking Laughter Seriously back in the late 1980's because he asked the same question as Tony: if God cannot be surprised, how can he have a sense of humor.

This is a complicated issue (and I seem to be one of only two people doing any research on the theology of at the present time), because God is not merely a Divine entity, but he is also man, in Jesus Christ. Let us first look at Christ's sense of humor. The words, "sense of humor," are not really clearly defined, but most people use the words in two sense: being able to laugh at something or being able to sense when someone else is trying to be funny.

Now, in the second sense: the ability to sense when someone else is trying to be funny, Jesus had the perfect sense of humor as he had perfect knowledge. It is the first sense that is more interesting.

Let me condense a bit. I don't want to wind up teaching a course in humor theory and processing, but a brief overview might be interesting. [Warning: technical talk ahead]

Humor, in humans, is caused when two equivocal, mutually incompatible responses, call them A and ~A, are presented as solutions or interpretations to a problem or a situation, nevertheless, using the same designator, X (the "punch line"). It seems, on the surface, that X implies A and X implies ~A. Literally, one cannot go on in processing the situation because there seems to be a paradox (although, for technical reasons having to do with the density of meanings within a semantic field, A and ~A as related through X in the joke are not real antinomies, although they seem like one on the surface).

The statement of the punchline causes a "crisis in belief" in that two, apparently contradictory truth claims must be believed. Obviously, the rational mind cannot handle this and would, ordinarily, reject one of the claims or deny the communicative structure of the story (i.e., it is non sequitur).

The mind/brain (let's not get into that mess, for now) desperately wants to get on with things, so it does something that only a species with foresight (read: humans and higher) can do: it resolves the impasse (humor theorists call this model, incongruity-resolution) by projecting out one of the two solutions into another possible world, just similar enough to ours to contain the values of X and ~A or X and A (call the two worlds W1+ and W1-, where one possible world is slightly closer to the real world and the other is slightly farther away, more imaginary). X functions as what is known as a counterfactual access point - it is a point at which the two solutions split off allowing access to two different counterfactual states. X is the passageway to the two different possible worlds. Thus, both solutions can co-exist without having an actual paradox (which would occur if the A and ~A resided in the same possible world). Unfortunately, because both are referenced by X, every time X is activated in one or the other world, it sends one back to the other world, round and around (how that works is interesting, but way beyond the comment box). The set of such dual belief activators (punchlines) in which it is possible to "project out" one of the beliefs into an alternate possible universe (a counterfactual universe) is very large, but the exact size is not known (as this is related to a very important, but unresolved question in modern mathematics).

At the moment the incongruity is "resolved" by projecting it out into two different possible worlds (technically, the moment that humor is realized to occur), a type of flip-flop begins to occur between the two possible worlds in the region of the pre-frontal cortex (ventrolateral PFC) which processes scripts (stored situational responses in possible worlds) because A and ~A are initially contained in the same script, both being accessible through X, but A and ~A , when resolved, are split into two different voltage states which represent the two different possible worlds (the math is complicated involving Catastrophe Theory and Field theoretic calculations of large neural circuits). An oscillation between the two states begins (the two voltages regions emerge suddenly through what is known as a Cusp catastrophe) which, being coupled to the respiratory mechanism and a whole host of other brain regions, such the regions involving pleasure, rewards, hierarchical recognition, etc., leads to the sensations we associate with humor: laughter, pleasure, a feeling of well-being, success, superiority, etc.

Note: I am not talking about the metaphysics of humor, here, merely the nuts-and-bolts of how humor is processed.

That humor has been associated with surprise is because of the sudden emergence of the oscillations when a bifurcation point is passed (i.e., the two possible worlds suddenly emerge).

Back in the early 1990's I suggested that surprise did not have anything to do with humor - this was a perceptual artifact of the sudden new type of activity in processing when the two voltage states emerge, and Willi Ruch, the best humor physiologist in the world, was later able to do electromylographic measurements of the muscles in the face to show that there was, in fact, no surprise response in humor.

[End tech talk]

Let's look at two prototypical jokes (more general jokes can be described in the same way):

1) Did you hear the one about the guy who worried that his broken guitar neck wouldn't be fixed in time for the concert? It turns out he fretted over nothing.

2) Did you hear about they guy who fell into a vat of gum at work? The boss chewed him out.

If you look at your mental responses, very carefully, you might be able to catch yourself jumping between the two different worlds where fret = to worry and fret = to play the guitar in the first case and chew out = to yell at and chew out = to masticate in the second case. Eventually, the oscillations damp down to a stable state (in the first case, fret = to play the guitar and in the second case, chew out = to yell) and the other alternate states gets stored at a meta-level involving the joke, but not later processing, so they can be remembered within the context of the joke, but do not inhibit further on-going processing.

Having said all of this, let us look at how Jesus, himself might have processed humor.

Did Jesus ever cause anyone else to laugh? Almost assuredly, but his humor was of a very focused kind.

For instance, why did Jesus not gently mock his accusers? The probable reason was the context. Jesus had the perfection of virtues and, as such, would not have mocked his accusers because it would have been imprudent in the context. It would have made the crowds laugh, but it would have infuriated the people he was trying to correct. Thus, on the matter of Jesus making jokes, he could have made them, but his range would have been more restricted than ours because his vision was unlimited (at least in his divinity).

There are different classes of possible worlds: physically possible worlds, logically possible worlds, morally possible worlds, semantically possible worlds, etc. Because of Jesus's divinity, he is able to access certain worlds which to us are only possible. For instance, we can imagine a possible world where we can walk on water, but Jesus can realize such a world.

Thus, the class of jokes where walking on water is the imaginary world would be non-accessible for Jesus, because to him, it would be an realizable world.

In fact, because Jesus can do anything which does not violate his divine attributes, he has access to a restricted number of possible worlds, and thus, his joke set is much smaller than mere mortals. He can, however, access some.

Which? Well, possible worlds depend on the imagination and imagination lends itself to the formation of metaphors and Jesus did use metaphors in the form of parables. This gives us a clues as to his set of possible worlds and how closely they match our range of possible worlds. Thus, a possible world where men's souls are like wheat (as in weeds among the wheat) could be an imaginary world which Jesus could use to form a joke. He could also make jokes from possible worlds which, to us, would be imaginary, but not to him. In that case, what we would perceive as a joke, he would see as a truth revealed by a subsidiary truth.

Jesus, unlike us, would be restricted from accessing possible worlds where the moral virtues are not as they are in this universe. He could consider such universes, but he could not hold them as possible with this universe, because then he would have to imagine the case where he, as a unitary and simple God, would contradict himself in his divinity and *this* application of the Law of Non-contradiction, cannot be projected out. In other words, Jesus could not make jokes about God being both just and unjust. He could not make jokes involving pornography (imprudence prevents this). Mere mortals can make sinful jokes which access immoral possible worlds (although we should not). Jesus cannot do this because he cannot sin. Thus, although we are restricted to certain morally "clean" possible worlds in polite company, but can violate this restriction, Jesus cannot and thus, he is more restricted than we are in terms of morally accessible worlds.

As for logic or semantics, Jesus has full access to all logically/ semantically possible worlds where they do not violate the restrictions from the physical or moral possible worlds. We see, in fact, a prime candidate for a joke in the saying: "Come with me and I will make you fishers of men". This would be classified as a mild semantic joke.

Does Jesus respect jokes? The non-sinful ones would, I suspect, be appreciated where the possible worlds could be accessed. Walking on water jokes would be truth statements, not incongruities for Jesus, but the statement of the Syrophoenician woman about, "Even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the Master's table," impressed Jesus so much as a type of desperate play on words (if I may use the term, although the woman was not in a playful mood), that he said: "For making that response, go home, the demon has left your daughter." Why did it impress Jesus, beyond being a play on words? It is because the woman was willing to accept the impossible world where she could be reduced to a dog and still ask for a dog's rights. She treated Jesus as if she were the dog and he were her master. It was a profound statement of faith. Humor depends on the switching between a real world and an imaginary possible world which isn't right in the original context, but cannot be dismissed.

What does it mean to "get the joke" or to "make a funny"? Humor researchers call this a matter of "joke competence," and it depends on several factors, such as the knowledge that the listener has of the matter under discussion, the interaction (and cueing) from the audience as to what is funny, etc. For example, I once reviewed a book of mathematical humor (yes, there is one, called, Comic Sections, by the Irish mathematician, Desmond Machale) where the punchline to one joke in the book was, "Okay, assume a Borel space..." Now, unless you happen to know some topology or advanced statistics, you might not find this joke funny (except as an example of absurdity). You would have no joke competence for this joke. In order to "get a joke" one has to be able to access the knowledge necessary and actually imagine (at least as an observer) that one is in the possible worlds of the joke.

Now, there are some knowledge areas (such as sin) that Christ is not able to access in a direct fashion (although he does know evil by its lack) and there are some knowledge areas which the pre-resurrection apostles did not appreciate (such as walking on water). Jesus can see sin in front of him (such as the woman caught in adultery or the hypocrisy of the Pharisees), but he cannot participate in sin, nor cause another person to sin.

Those desires that we have that lead to sin (and form the possible worlds of dirty jokes), Christ cannot have.

This limitation on the humor of Christ does not really limited Christ's humanity but that it proves its perfection. Christ is fully God and fully man, but Christ is not just fully man, he is The Man (Ecce Homo), the perfect moral man -- he has no moral flaws or imperfections. This must be the case, otherwise, he could not be the "new Adam." He is a man like us, except for sin (as Adam was, originally). Jesus could not tell dirty jokes; I can. My range of possible worlds includes sinful worlds.

Christ cannot have access to those without degrading his human perfection. Christ is excluded from telling dirty jokes. Period. Is this a limitation on his humanity or does our ability to tell dirt jokes reveal a degradation of ours? The problem is not one of his limitations, but of his perfections.

Perfection is itself a limiting process. We hone and strip away all that is not perfect. Jesus is the best of moral men, not the most average. That is the meaning of the sentence, "A MAN like us in all things, but sin". He is the best of us in all things that pertain to the moral life (it is an open question whether or not Christ would be the world's best speed skater if he tried). Jesus is not limited in his ability to tell jokes; rather, his ability to tell jokes is in the nature of that perfection which should belong to all men. That perfection seems like it imposes limitations to a fallen man, who can also sin, but it is the sinful man who has too much room, not Jesus who has too little room to maneuver.

The inability to tell dirty jokes or misjudge people is not just a choice on Christ's part as a man, but it is a necessity of his two natures because of a theological doctrine which comes from the Eastern churches called, perichorisis (or circumincision or co-inherence). Perichorisis is a doctrine which is used to explain the inner life of the Trinity. It says that there is such a loving bond between each member of the Trinity that they share all knowledge and all will. The only thing they do not share is that particular aspect which we would call relationship. Thus, there can never be a disagreement within the Trinity. The term is also used to explain the relationship within the inner life of Christ. He is one person, but two natures, but just as in the Trinity the will of three persons is united, in the hypostatic union the will of Christ's two natures (and to the extent possible in the distinction between finite and infinite beings, the knowledge) are so united in love as to form a perichorisis between Christ's human and divine natures. Thus, whatever will Christ's divine will has, his human reasonable will exactly conforms to it. There are two wills in Christ (to say otherwise is a form of the monothelitism heresy), a divine and a human will, but we may also say that there are sub-categories to that human will and it is only the rational part which necessarily shares a perichoretic nature with divine part.

St. Thomas says in the Summa:

I answer that, As was said (Articles [2],3), in Christ according to His human nature there is a twofold will, viz. the will of sensuality, which is called will by participation, and the rational will, whether considered after the manner of nature, or after the manner of reason. Now it was said above (Question [13], Article [3], ad 1; Question [14], Article [1], ad 2) that by a certain dispensation the Son of God before His Passion "allowed His flesh to do and suffer what belonged to it." And in like manner He allowed all the powers of His soul to do what belonged to them. Now it is clear that the will of sensuality naturally shrinks from sensible pains and bodily hurt. In like manner, the will as nature turns from what is against nature and what is evil in itself, as death and the like; yet the will as reason may at time choose these things in relation to an end, as in a mere man the sensuality and the will absolutely considered shrink from burning, which, nevertheless, the will as reason may choose for the sake of health. Now it was the will of God that Christ should undergo pain, suffering, and death, not that these of themselves were willed by God, but for the sake of man's salvation. Hence it is plain that in His will of sensuality and in His rational will considered as nature, Christ could will what God did not; but in His will as reason He always willed the same as God, which appears from what He says (Mt. 26:39): "Not as I will, but as Thou wilt." For He willed in His reason that the Divine will should be fulfilled although He said that He willed something else by another will.

The distinction between the sensual will and the rational will answers another question beyond humor. Although Christ is a man like us in all things, but sin, this does not mean that he is a man like me in all particulars. This is one of the flaws in using the Evangelical formulation of, "What would Jesus do," to solve problems in life. The question only applies in the moral (reasoning) sphere, not the sensual sphere. Whatever kind of car Jesus would buy would be the perfectly prudent car for him, but not necessarily for me (I might be too short to reach the gas petal or I might not like the color he choses). I might (say) be allergic to wheat; Jesus was not. Jesus could eat the Passover bread; me, it might kill. A woman might be pregnant; Jesus could not be. Christ can will to let suffering touch him, but that will is contingent on his humanity. Unless Jesus were willing to be all manner (i.e., have all possible attributes) of men simultaneously (which would then make him something other than simply man), then we have to say that Christ's suffering in his humanity was his own suffering and not mine, in a unique sense. Christ's sensitivity to sunlight when he walked the earth was probably not what mine is. My (say) easy ability to get a sunburn did not exist in the set of things that Christ suffered in his humanity qua humanity (i.e., in his sensual appetites). Christ does will to understand and share all human pain, including those he had no sensual experience of, such as the pain of pregnancy, but he understands and participates in those suffering that are not uniquely his because he has all knowledge as a direct apprehension in his state of perfection. In fact, due to the way in which he obtains this knowledge, his knowledge of the pain of pregnancy is more direct and clear than that of even the pregnant woman, herself. I don't know if I have stated this clearly enough. In other words, Christ can have particular preferences, even in humor, where the rational will can allow the sensual will some latitude. It cannot in the case of dirty jokes. It can in other forms of wordplay. Thus, Christ's humor is limited more than ours because it runs into the barrier of a perfect rational will which must conform with the divine will.

Thus, Christ's sense of humor was the perfect sense of humor in both senses of the words: performance and perception. He could see other people attempting humor, although he could not directly access sinful humor in a positive sense. Likewise, he could delight in the humor of a situation to the extent that it was a shared humor of a good and moral nature - the woman, above, who pleaded for scraps when Jesus compared her to a dog comes to mind and when he called James and John, Sons-of-Thunder.

The morality of humor, in fallen man is more complicated and I am pushing book-length, already.

In understanding the range of Christ's humor, however, we have a tool for probing what it means to be holy.

Faith is an assent to truths in possible worlds which we cannot see, which do not seem possible to the naked eye, but cannot be dismissed because of the authority of the one making the claim (God). Thus, an atheist can make jokes about death in which death is all there is, but for the Christian, there is a real heaven, even though we cannot see it. Thus, we too, as Christians, even fallen but redeemed Christians, have restrictions on what we should see to be funny.

If you remember that the purpose of a joke is to resolve an apparent contradiction by projecting the answer into another possible world, then the possible worlds which Christians have access to, but non-Christians do not, forms the deposit of Faith. These other realizable possible worlds are given access to us at Baptism. Thus, Christians have access to "ways out" which non-Christians do not.

Who gives us these accesses, these permissions to enter: Jesus, by his death and Resurrection. When he said, "In the world you will have troubles, but BE OF GOOD CHEER, I have overcome the world," Jesus was letting us in on the joke. More than that, he was telling us that he was the head writer. The situation may be unbearable, but the way out has already been provided for and so, a Christian can always look forward to Heaven and see the resolution to his problems which only Jesus can provide.

This is why Jesus gives his followers permission to laugh at hopeless situations. Jesus is the Way and has given us that hope that the apparent contradiction is, after all, not so real as the world would have us believe because this is not the real world, after all. That "imaginary" heaven of the pagans or atheists is the real one.

So, just as humor involves moving between a real and an imaginary world, just so, the Christian moves also between a real and an imaginary world, except, "this" vale of tears, the atheist's real world is, in fact, the imaginary, transient one. And Jesus says to every Christian at Baptism, "Surprise". This is why Christians should be of good cheer.

The first words he said to the disciples on Easter was, "Shalom." Peace is the tranquility that flows from God's right order (to paraphrase Augustine). Jesus said, "Peace," meaning, "Don't worry any longer, it is finished -- the right order has been re-established." The apparent reality of Adam's post-sin world has been relegated to the imaginary nightmare it was always meant to be. The joke is on the Devil.

Thus, in a sense, Jesus is the Divine Comedian and we Christians are his Court Jesters!

Having said all of this, theologically speaking, humor is a subcategory of the virtue of hope. We arrive at a situation (the punchline) through which there seems no passage and, suddenly, a passage is made when the humor (splitting of the incongruity into two possible worlds) is realized. It is such at the moment of death for the Christian: there seems no way out, but suddenly, a passage is made that was always there, but never realized.

That having been said, Jesus, himself, while being able to recommend and commend humor in others (he appreciated children who a tendency to giggle), has no need of hope, himself. He has no need of humor, himself, but he is able to appreciate humor and be the CAUSE for humor in others as a form of giving them hope. Thus, Jesus's sense of humor, whether as perception or participation, is not a personal one. It is always pointed to the other.

You know, according to a Coptic legend, when Adam was driven from the Garden, God gave him two consolations: the Sabbath - a day of rest from his frustrated toil - and tears. Laughter is just the sun shining through the tears; crying is the moonlight shining through the tears. Both, if humble and right, bring the comfort of those who mourn promised in the second Beatitude, for humble crying is the mourning before and humble humor is the mourning after we realize that there is always something more than our eyes see. Tears are a lens through to see the lights of heaven.

Did humor exist before the fall? No.

Now, as for the angels, angels, as with Christ, do not have a sensual will, but only a rational will. As such, their humor corresponds to Christ's humor - not personal, but helpful.

God knows humor because Christ knows humor and Christ knows humor because of the limitations he suffered in the flesh (humor must draw from a storehouse of limitations for its props). Thus, it is fair to say that God knows humor and he can see that we find things funny and sustains our hope, so that he is the sustainer of our humor, but there were no one else in the universe except God, would there be humor? No. Does God laugh? Perhaps that is one reason why God made us: something in the perfection of his love demands that he be allowed to laugh.

The Chicken

Chicken, I find it interesting that your analysis doesn't seem (to me, but of course I'm an amateur) to cover _dry_ humor. I think Jesus had quite a bit of this and displayed it in his interactions with people. For example, when he sees the man with dropsy, he says to the men standing around, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?" I take this to be a dryly humorous play on natural and supernatural healing. No doubt the rabbinic folks listening to him had discussed whether doctors could or couldn't heal the sick on the Sabbath. It's _exactly_ the sort of thing they would have discussed and have a standard view on. But of course, it's a _joke_ to ask the rabbinic schools of thought if it's lawful for _God_ to heal on the Sabbath, because God _created_ the Sabbath and makes the rules; God isn't subject to the rules of the Sabbath. The picture invoked is of some Pharisee lecturing God on how He was supposed to rest on the Sabbath, not go healing people. That's funny, in a really formidable way. Jesus is hinting at his own deity.

Or elsewhere, there's the time when they lower a man through the roof, and Jesus looks at him and says, "Your sins are forgiven." Now, that's simultaneously funny and serious. It's deadly serious, because the man needed his sins forgiven, and Jesus knew that. It's funny, because Jesus knew perfectly well that the man and his friends and all the people around didn't _think_ he was being brought to Jesus to have his sins forgiven but to be healed of his lameness. Jesus deliberately gives the unexpected answer, knowing among other things that this will disconcert the people around. _Then_, after they murmur about how he can say that he can forgive sins, he says, "But that you may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins [turns to the palsied man], rise up and walk." The whole story is, in my opinion, _very_ funny, in a dry, Jewish sort of way.

Sometimes what Jesus says is funny because he so perfectly skewers his opponents, as in the case of his answer to the question of whether it is lawful to give taxes. It's the kind of thing that, on a blog, would get delighted laughter and a "high five" from his followers, as one sometimes laughs watching a great move in debating, chess, or even football.

Oh, I also think it's funny when Jesus cites Isaiah to the disciples of John the Baptist. He says, "Go tell John what you have seen: The deaf hear, the dumb speak, and the poor have the gospel preached unto them." Now, those _are_ all in Isaiah, but you can picture the way he says it being dryly humorous, as if for good news to be preached to the poor, of all people, is a miracle as much as for the deaf to be given hearing.

Anyway, I'm just wondering if my interpretation of these passages would contradict your idea of the kinds of humor available to Jesus.

Hi,

I'm pleasantly surprised at how my comment about Balam's donkey at Dr. McGrew's other blog (http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2010/09/hey-its-michaelmas.html) has started (or help start) such a deep discussion about God and humour.

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to ask, but since we're somewhat on this topic, I'd like to know your thoughts on this question.

Let S be a proposition that many would regard as subjectively true e.g. "Steve Martin is funnier than Bill Cosby" or "coffee tastes better than tea". Does God hold beliefs like S?

So here's a 'trilemma' of sorts -

(a) God holds beliefs like S, and they're objectively true.
- But these types of propositions seem subjectively true only.

(b) God holds beliefs like S, but they're only subjectively true.
- But it seems that if God has such beliefs, they must be objectively true as they are held by God.

(c) God has no beliefs like S, because he only believes objective propositions.
- But it seems a bit strange to think that God shouldn't also have such beliefs, since we do. Especially if you think God has a sense of humour.

I think I have answers to this, but would you be so kind as to share your thoughts?

P.S. if anyone knows where I might find a discussion like this in some philosophy/theology book or journal, could you kindly point it out to me?

Why can't there be finite spirits that are distinct from God without bodies?

Well I didn't mean physical bodies, but that whatever form they have would be considered a body, a thing distinct from God's being. If, as you say, God is a person, and we are persons, then so are angels persons of some kind.

I can imagine a whole _hierarchy_ of purely spiritual created beings.

Yeah, me too, and to do that you must imagine a form, which is impossible with God, to whom I cannot attach one. That's why I brought up the risen Christ, since that glorified body is now a part of the Godhead (without delimiting it) and in no way alien to it. What the angels saw before God became man I have no idea, since I haven't seen it. But now the angels see something new. As an aid to faith it is a very great help, as compared to the abstractness of infinite Being, and is the very thing that enables me to see God as a person. I'd also advise no one to lose his sense of humor about this, lest he one day not be counted among the angels.

Chicken, I find it interesting that your analysis doesn't seem (to me, but of course I'm an amateur) to cover _dry_ humor. I think Jesus had quite a bit of this and displayed it in his interactions with people.

I mentioned in my post, above, that Jesus displayed dry humor of the sort that was for the benefit of the other (either to give them hope or to point them beyond their limitations). He, himself, did not generate humor to delight himself.

Also, to clarify, angels do not have a sensual will, per se, merely a rational. In that sense, they take no pleasure in humor, but they use it, when necessary, at the service of others, as well.

The Chicken

Joseph, I suspect that the examples you've given are of things God would have beliefs about only as they relate to others--e.g., "Coffee tastes better than tea _to Lydia_, except when she has a bad head cold." But when we get to bigger aesthetic statements, like, "The _Mona Lisa_ is more beautiful than a Charlie Brown cartoon," then I think they are objective, and God has beliefs about them. In that case they are related to the aesthetic experiences that a properly functioning and uncorrupted human or other finite spirit should have when in contact with the objects.

Chicken, thanks, I understand better what you're getting at.

Bill, I see--I took "body" too literally as "physical body."

"The _Mona Lisa_ is more beautiful than a Charlie Brown cartoon,"

Not to a five year old. One can only be reminded of the quote from the composer Charles Ives: "My God, what does sound have to do with music?" There is a difference between sophistication in expression and beauty in expression. Both the Mona Lisa and the Charlie Brown cartoon have beauty. The Mona Lisa is simply more sophisticated in the expression of it. People usually grow in their recognition of sophistication of the expression of beauty, not the beauty therein. A mother may appreciate the sophistication of a waterfall more than her son, but it is often the son who says, "Wow". God is not necessarily more beautiful to an adult than to a child, but the adult might have the more complete relationship.

In either case, as you point out, however, it takes a rational intellect to appreciate beauty. Given the modern creations of some artists, however, I'm not so sure that it takes a rational intellect to make something sophisticated, but ugly.

The Chicken

Okay, Chicken, you can plug something else in instead: "The _Mona Lisa_ is more beautiful than a pile of horse manure, even if someone calls the pile of horse manure a work of art."

God knows humor because Christ knows humor and Christ knows humor because of the limitations he suffered in the flesh (humor must draw from a storehouse of limitations for its props). Thus, it is fair to say that God knows humor and he can see that we find things funny and sustains our hope, so that he is the sustainer of our humor, but there were no one else in the universe except God, would there be humor? No. Does God laugh? Perhaps that is one reason why God made us: something in the perfection of his love demands that he be allowed to laugh.

But God's perfections pre-existed Jesus's Incarnation. And the perfection that exist in Jesus with respect to His human nature are created perfections. Created by God, in His Divine nature, of course. So anything that is good in Jesus as man that God sees, He sees first because He saw it as good and willed it to be. Garrigou-Lagrange makes this point most emphatically: in man, we love what is good because our will is designed to be drawn to good. In God, it is precisely because He wills a good to exist that it comes to be: He loves a good, and His love leads to its existence.

I would say that God's sense of humor is proven perfectly in this: He chose to fashion man so that man finds great good in humor. He could have designed man differently - so that our response to opposed possibles doesn't reward us with delight. But He did make us with humor that way, so the good that He made in us means that He, first, loved that good, and then willed to make it. By definition, then, if He loves humor enough to design us to enjoy it, He has a strong sense of humor. (As the exemplar cause, He must contain perfectly all orders of good in Himself that He creates in others.)

But I agree with Chicken that this humor resides, in God, in a manner that does not imply God Himself laughing.

Lydia, God pulled another big joke on the Jews, a dyed-in-the-wool pun. Through the foreshadowing of Samson, and the prophesying of Isaiah, it was understood that the Messiah would be a Nazarene. But the only way Christ fulfilled this was by being from Nazareth. Switcheroo!

Well I didn't mean physical bodies, but that whatever form they have would be considered a body, a thing distinct from God's being.

Bill, if you were to mean "body" in an equivocal sense, then this might work: say, "body" meaning a nature dependent on another Cause.

Yeah, me too, and to do that you must imagine a form, which is impossible with God, to whom I cannot attach one. That's why I brought up the risen Christ, since that glorified body is now a part of the Godhead (without delimiting it) and in no way alien to it. What the angels saw before God became man I have no idea, since I haven't seen it. But now the angels see something new. As an aid to faith it is a very great help, as compared to the abstractness of infinite Being, and is the very thing that enables me to see God as a person.

What the angels see is of course not known to us perfectly, but they did see the beatific vision before the Incarnation, and having the Incarnation does not make the beatific vision more intelligible: in the beatific vision God Himself inhabits the intellect in place of the intelligible form that normally functions at the immediate perceptive of the intellect. This does not become more intelligible with the Incarnation, except in ways that are passable and contingent: seeing the unfolding of God's plan. Therefore, I doubt your premise works.

"Body" is a word than can be taken in many ways, so I don't want to get too focused on one meaning. But in general, if "body" refers to a principle of individuation that makes it possible to distinguish one member of a species from another, then we are talking about the kinds of bodies that have matter as such. The possibility that there is another kind of body I don't discount altogether. But if there is another kind of body, would it be the kind of body that we can prove exists, or only a sort of body that we guess may exist? If the latter, then supposing it for angels does not advance the state of the question, seems to me. If the former, where is the proof?

Tony, I've often wondered about that Nazareth/Nazarene thing. The ancient Jews loved puns and plays on words, I believe. Sometimes they crop up in the Jewish Scriptures in odd places: Consider the fact that the name Samuel means "God hears"--obviously, Hannah's allusion to God's hearing her prayer for a son. When God calls the child Samuel and Samuel wakes Eli, eventually Eli realizes what is happening. Eli tells him that the next time he hears the voice calling "Samuel," he should say, "Speak, Lord, for your servant hears." So his name means "God hears," and one of his most famous services was to tell God that he was hearing God. Eli must have thought of this even at the time.

I would say that God's sense of humor is proven perfectly in this: He chose to fashion man so that man finds great good in humor.

I would not phrase it like that. God created man, pre-Fall, without a sense of humor because he did not need one. There was no frustration in the Garden and no need for hope (humor is a subcategory of hope), since he was in God's presence and his relationship with God was fully realized. It was only after the Fall that man needed hope and humor was born. It is an easy proof if one remembers that tragedy and humor are exact opposites, just as laughing and sobbing are (close enough, anyway). There was no tragedy in the Garden (ignoring Original Sin) and no tears, so, likewise, there was no laughter, since tragedy and humor share the same deep structure in how they are formed (with, literally, a change of sign in the math).

Now, in the same fashion that God foresaw that man would sin and need a savior, so he foresaw the Incarnation and, likewise, God foresaw the need for humor. Humor is a sign or a manifestation of hope.

Garrigou-Lagrange makes this point most emphatically: in man, we love what is good because our will is designed to be drawn to good. In God, it is precisely because He wills a good to exist that it comes to be: He loves a good, and His love leads to its existence.

Humor, in itself, is a good in the same sense that hope is a good. Just as love can be misdirected as to its object, so hope and, hence, humor can be also misdirected. One can hope for the downfall or demise of an opponent and this can give rise to mocking, denigrating humor. One can hope for the best for a person and this gives rise to supportive humor. Humor is a good, make no mistake, but it is subject to the same corrupting influences as any of the virtues.

But I agree with Chicken that this humor resides, in God, in a manner that does not imply God Himself laughing.

Jesus can certainly laugh just as he certainly can cry, but note that Jesus's tears are not borne of hope, since he is the Resurrection and he has no need of hope. His tears, as his laughter would always be at the service of others. His tears showed the crowd how much he loved Lazarus, not how much he, himself, had missed him, since, given the Beatific vision, he beheld him, always. Likewise, his laughter would show the crowd how much they had to hope for, not how much he has to hope for.

So, God can most certainly laugh in his humanity, but not in his Divinity, since he has no need of it. Even the laughter in his humanity is not personal.

The Chicken

I will have to go back and re-think a few things. Since Jesus is a man like us in all things except sin, is it possible to make a direct connection to the "except sin" part (including Original Sin) and Jesus not generating humor merely to delight himself? It somehow seems wrong to me to say that Jesus took no delight in such humor, but if humor is related to hope, as it seems to be, I do not see how one can conclude otherwise. Jesus would not have joked on the Cross as, say, St. Lawrence did on the griddle or St. Thomas More did before the axe.

The Chicken

There was no frustration in the Garden and no need for hope (humor is a subcategory of hope), since he was in God's presence and his relationship with God was fully realized.

No, that's not quite true. Adam had a perfect life of nature in the Garden, and he had union with God in sanctifying grace. But he did not yet have the fullness of perfection and the fullness of happiness that constitutes the proper end of man as such: he still lacked perfect union with and knowledge of The One, which can only be had in the beatific vision. Hence, he must still have had hope that this end could, and would, be brought to fruition.

Although I would pose this only hesitantly, I would submit that the Fall did not change how the brain works fundamentally, only how it works without superadded grace - the grace of original justice. Seems a bit of a stretch to think that the complex manner in which Chicken described the brain functioning in laughter is a completely new construct resulting from the Fall. Without such construct being, itself, a defect - like manic depression is - it would imply God stepping in to re-create man in part.

Adam had a perfect life of nature in the Garden, and he had union with God in sanctifying grace. But he did not yet have the fullness of perfection and the fullness of happiness that constitutes the proper end of man as such: he still lacked perfect union with and knowledge of The One, which can only be had in the beatific vision. Hence, he must still have had hope that this end could, and would, be brought to fruition.

Humor is a subcategory of hope, but it is not the totality of hope. One can have hope without humor, but one cannot have humor without hope.

Adam had instant apprehension. Humor begins with a bottleneck in assessing truth (there are two possible interpretations, both satisfying the context). This would not happen in a being with instant apprehension. In fact, since post-Fall man did not have instant apprehension, the processing of knowledge did change. Whether or not that meant the brain actually changed is not clear, since instant apprehension is a preternatural gift, the nature of which we do not understand.

That being said, Adam, in the Garden, had a different relationship with God than post-Fall man in that Adam was different than post-Fall man by virtue of his preternature. Adam needed no hope in the physical world since everything he would have done would have been fruitful (had he not sinned) and he had a relationship with God, the nature of which we do not fully understand. It may have been short of the Beatific Vision, but it seems it was as close as possible, since God spoke to Adam face-to-face. Since there was only one thing that could have possibly prevented Adam from the Beatific Vision (eating the fruit from the tree), there was only one possible source of a lack of hope or frustration in the Garden. If one has certainty of obtaining a goal, there is no need for hope and no need for humor. The more possible ways one might not obtain the goal, the more the need for hope that it is possible. Thus, if there were humor in the Garden, it would amount to only one topic and only one joke, but it is difficult to see what the nature of that joke might be, since Adam could not point to any personal limitation that might force him to consider that he might eat from the tree. Now, I can see that the Devil might have had cause to joke to himself, but not Adam, since, when he sinned, he did not sin from a limitation of knowledge, so his sin was fully culpable and not really capable of being mitigated by humor. In other words, he had no basis on which to believe there was hope beyond his sin (until God gave him that hope, post-Fall).

Thus, although there was a single hope of Adam in the Garden, this hope, in itself, does not give rise to a dense enough number of possible fail points to give anything other than a very small joke set, so small in fact, that the set might be null. It is hard, otherwise, to see what Adam might have made jokes about.

The Chicken

Adam had instant apprehension.

Where do you get that? I have never heard of this being part of the grace of original justice or of preternatural grace. Are you just positing this? To my eyes, it seems highly unlikely: it would kind of imply, for example, that Adam had the fullness of all of the sciences all at once. His brain still operated in time, with synapses firing, etc. It would seem, in the absence of more definitive proof, that he did NOT have instant apprehension. His mental operations were still those of a human being.

It may have been short of the Beatific Vision, but it seems it was as close as possible, since God spoke to Adam face-to-face.

The Bible is funny about that concept: it applies it also to Enoch and to Moses. After the Fall. We don't quite know what it means, but it doesn't mean the beatific vision, because you cannot sin from that condition.

If one has certainty of obtaining a goal, there is no need for hope and no need for humor. The more possible ways one might not obtain the goal, the more the need for hope that it is possible. Thus, if there were humor in the Garden, it would amount to only one topic and only one joke, but it is difficult to see what the nature of that joke might be, since Adam could not point to any personal limitation that might force him to consider that he might eat from the tree.

Well, I don't buy wholesale into your theory of humor being tied so strictly to hope - it's a nice theory, but it has quite a bit of work still to do. It doesn't explain the laughing of an infant being tickled, which is the same physiological laugh as that of humor, for example. But that aside, you're still stretching here: Adam HAD to know that he still had yet to achieve the beatific vision, and he HAD to know that he was being tested, and therefore had the possibility of failing. That's sufficient for hope. Once you admit hope, the door is wide open for humor, even on your theory.

He still didn't know everything, and therefore there could easily be apparent incongruity to him, while he was waiting for more complete data to resolve the issue. And on many, many matters - any matter in which he was still partly ignorant. We don't have humor only about the future facts of which we hope one possibility will turn out to be real. We have humor about all sorts of things for which we could not care less whether it turns out A or B. If there is a tie in between hope and humor, it is that the activity of hope is rooted in the capacity for projecting forward, and that projecting forward implies a capacity of apprehending an implied incongruity. It's not the concrete reality that is incongruous (it just IS), it is the implications, or apparent implications that are incongruous. But the connection is in the capacity to see forward to that which is not yet real, and it is NOT with respect to those specific matters that one hopes turns out a specific way.