When we engage in discursive thought and declarative speech, we may attain various forms of success: intelligibility, precision, correctness, and so on. These felicities are best explained by contrast with the corresponding mishaps that threaten our beliefs, assertions, and especially our claims to know something. A person’s thinking may be inadequate because he is ignorant, and what he says may be deficient because it is incoherent, rough, or perhaps most important of all, downright false. A census of hallucinations show that something are not just a collection of coincidences. Have you ever, while believing yourself to be completely away, had a vivid impression of seeing or being touched by a living or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice; which impression, so far as you could discover, was not due to any external physical cause? Death-coincidences cases were the subject. A, recognized his hallucination at the time as an appearance of another person, B; where B died within a period of 12 hours before or after the hallucinatory experience; and where A has no reason to expect B’s death. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

A skeptic’s doubts about the honesty of the witness or the reliability of their memories cannot be laid to rest merely by the complications of more testimony. The truth is that God is indescribably more than our creaturely concepts can represent. Nature which creates and is not created is God in his eternal reality, the primary principle of all things. God is self-existent and unchanging, the uncaused Cause of the World. He alone truly is, and all other beings exists only as dependent upon or participating in him. Nature which is both created and creative consists of archetypes or exemplary causes of creatures existing in the divine mind. These archetypes came into being through the eternal generation of the Word (Logos) or Son, and can this be described as created only in an unusual sense of the term. Because the World is logically prior to them, they are not strictly coeternal with him; however, he has never existed without them. As exemplary causes, they may be said to perform a creative function. Nature which is created but does not create consists of the World of creatures existing outside the divine mind. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

In statements which cannot readily be reconciled, these creatures participating in God’s reality are created out of nothing (de omnino nihilo). They constitute the divine self-disclosure or theophany—in the manifestation of the hidden, for formless, and the body of the incorporeal is faster than thought or time. God’s World is not of time, but of the fulfillment of time, the kind of fulfillment traditionally symbolized by the perpetual spring of paradise. The nature which neither creates nor is created is God as the end goal of the creative process, God with his creatures perfectly reunited to him, God become all in all. In the end, the whole World of creatures—including fallen man, redeemed through the incarnation of the Word—is to achieve fulfillment in union with God. In that union creatures are not to be simply reabsorbed into God but will be transmuted and spiritualized. The soul will survive in an incorporeal state. The immortality of the soul is rationally demonstrable. The dogma of a bodily resurrection could be rationally justified on the ground that since soul and body constitute a single substance, the soul requires a body for its self- expression and beatitude.  #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

To account for the obvious fact that the flesh decays at death, although the resurrected body will have the same “form” as its Earthy counterpart, it will have a different “matter.” The soul, being immortal, would face judgement after death, that it would receive rewards and punishments according to the goodness or badness of its Earthly life, and that it would be given an opportunity to choose the condition of its next existence. The Bible states that history is nonrepeatable and that it is destine for a divine fulfillment in which good will triumph over evil. In the Bible the, the Old Testament contains only a few vague references to persona afterlife. However, it often refers to a future time when God will establish his everlasting reign of righteousness and peace (for example, Isaiah 11.1-9). The New Testament affirms that this divine end or goal has been reached by the exalted Christ, who defeated the powers of evil on the cross (see, for example, Acts 2.14—36, Colossians 2.8—15; Ephesians 2.11—22; Hebrews 2.5—18). Those who believe in Christ have eternal life here and now (John 3.36; 5.24).  While living in this age, this spatiotemporal order that is still subject to sin and death, they have a foretaste of the age to come, a renewed cosmos that will be wholly subject to the will of God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

Some maintain that all spiritual creatures—angels, men, women, and devils will be saved in a final restoration (apocatastasis). However, others believe the damned will suffer everlasting torment. My answer to this puzzle is that men have false beliefs, but through their own doing, not God’s. Men are endowed by God with such power of will that they can assent to propositions they do not know to be true—that is, to “ideas” that are not “clear and distinct.” Is God to blame for this disharmony between or limited capacity for knowledge and our unlimited power of assenting? No, will is just a single thing; it is incompatible with its nature that anything should be subtracted from it. Besides, although we are free to, we do not have to believe propositions for which lack conclusive proof. In order to avoid unsuspected error, we must restrain our desire for truth and withhold assent until we know for certain. Do we exercise any control over our convictions and opinions, as the concept of assenting requires? #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

Clearly, people may decide to make statements. Some criminals voluntarily confess their misdeeds, and others are forced, against their will, to admit guilt. How about belief? Can we choose to reject a proposition that seems most likely, according to available evidence, and believe another that seems less plausible? Perhaps not. However, we often make decision as we form our opinions, as we collect or neglect data and seek or ignore testimony. Men who undergo brainwashing are deprived of this control over the formation of their beliefs. The same holds, incidentally, for knowledge. It is absurd to say that investigator decided to know but not absurd to say he resolved to find out for certain who shot at the car and who is responsible for leaking confidential documents. Moreover, children are compelled to learn things. In acquiring knowledge and forming opinions, we pursue rather obvious goals; conclusive proof and correct information. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

Even so, is it intelligible to suppose that people act deliberately and knowingly when they settle upon false beliefs? One everyday case should dispel the appearance of contradictions: I study the racing form, mull over the evidence, and conclude that Wayfarer is bound to take the handicap. I willingly commit myself to this belief by wagering my paycheck. I realize, however, that even well-grounded expectations like mine can prove erroneous. Consequently, if my horse loses, it is true to say, “I formed my erroneous belief willingly, after deliberation, with the intention of predicting the handicap winner; furthermore, I was aware that I could be mistaken.” It was not my goal to be wrong, but it was within the scope of my intention. Anyone who aims at truth is prepared for falsity, just as a marksman is prepared to miss the bull’s eye. Can we say I erred “knowingly”? #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

The individualistic destiny that awaits each person, in the cosmic and social, after death the description of the goal in which history will be fulfilled is either a this-Worldly or an otherworldly kind. A man who punches another in the back of the head is hardly ever certain that his victim will be injured, but from a legal standpoint he knowingly inflicts hard if he has reason to think injury might result from his blow. There remains another type of errors, fortunately quite infrequent, where such awareness is impossible. This is the unusual situation where you are convinced you know something, banish doubt from your mind, and still turn out to be wrong. Perhaps you acted deliberately and followed your inclinations in pushing your investigation until you believed you could not be wrong. However, this degree of conviction, you cannot have the least awareness that you are mistaken. Your error, then, is not fully voluntary.  #RandolphHarris 8 of 8