Would anyone teach and expline to me what does the philosophical term "being" mean? Thank you.

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Ken Suen
Peace Evangelical Church(Hong Kong, China)

I'm not sure if I'm right or not, but I heard R.C. Sproul teach on this at one of the Ligonier conferences in Orlando ... (either last year or the year before.)

He said ... that many people refer to the human race as human beings, but we are not beings. Only God is a true Being, we as humans, are becomings, not beings.

Something to the effect that, a being is percfect, that would be God alone. We are all little becomings.

I think that is what he said. I cannot elaborate on the point any more than that because I'm not even sure what to say.

(I hope I was faithful to what R.C. said.)

By the way ... Welcome to the Puritan Board Ken S.!


[Edited on 3-8-2005 by ANT]

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Anthony Beadles
Christ The King Presbyterian
Clearwater, Florida

It is faithful to the history of philosphy to define a being as anything that exists in actuality, thus excluding those things that are existent in the mind as possibility. A rock or seashell would be a being b/c they exist in actuality, but a unicorn is possible, but not actual (to my knowledge atleast).

This is a basic definition. Some, as it seems Sproul may have, go on to use the term with deeper meaning. This can often cause stichomythia in discussions though if the deeper terms are not defined at the outset.

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"The good is what as sought as an end in itself for its own sake and not for the sake of something else!!"

Gregory Goodrich
Soon-to-be MA student PHI / Diesel Tech / Wanna-be ambitious Reader
Paedo-baptist
Westminster Fellowship ~ Phx, AZ

The word essence is derived from the latin "esse" which means simply "to be". Anything that has essence, or substance, is a being at the root definition. I hope this helps, but whenever you run inot people using terms like this, it is best that you make sure that they know what they mean before they use it, and that they are not causing confusion by adding their own terms without pointing that out ahead of time.

I agree with Gregory. "Being" is always an attribute of some thing, but is not a thing itself. I believe we truly do exist, and so that we truly are. God created us, and so we are. That means we truly exist, that we have being. But only God exists in Himself, in that "being' is not more basic than He is, as opposed to as it is for us as creatures.

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JohnV :detective:

John Vandervliet
Ontario, Canada
member of: Canadian Reformed Church
"In coming to understand anything we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favour of the facts as they are" C.S Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism

ditto.

You express yourself very well John.

[Edited on 3-18-2005 by knight4christ8]

Thanks, Gregory.

Here's a few thoughts from my notebook. Sorry for the cryptic-like way it is stated; that's how I have it in my notebook. I got it from an essay some time ago, and I wonder what you all think of it. This is not speaking of deity, as I recall, but strictly of creation and the world of thought.

Being is an attribute of:

1. something that can be, or is,
2. something that was,
3. something that will be, or
4. something only in thought. *

* If it is not yet thought of, then it cannot yet be, and if it is forgotten then is has ceased to be.

Those things which exist in thought are exceeded in excellence by those things which were,

Those things which were are exceeded in excellence by those things which will yet be,

Those things which will yet be are exceeded in excellence by those things which are. *

* Not referring to the future state of happiness that yet awaits those whose hope is in eternal bliss. For those things dwell in eternity and not time, and we await the passing away of all things that will pass away, so that what cannot pass away is all that remains of all that is. In this sense we await a time, not things. It already is, but we await our time to enjoy it.

In this order of things all that is evaluated for degree of being is also evaluated for the attributes under which it exists. And if these things exist in degrees as such, then it must be that these exist in original form in unity and perfection, else being could not be understood at all.

(e.g. for truth to be understood it must itself be perfect, i.e., non-contradictory, identifiable, and definitive. We couldn't say something is true if we did not have the idea that truth could have no error in it itself. The same with being: we could not understand being unless being ruled out all non-being for the thing being described as existing. )