Nothing is Written, Least of All this Post

Well, it's written now, which is to say, it has become a concrete member of the past, unchanging and unchangeable. 

But even then, not really, because I am not above making little tweaks after the post has been written. Readers probably don't notice this (obvious mistakes such as typos notwithstanding), because they presumably only read the post once, so they will encounter a particular version of it. But like God, I like to engage with my creations and make little adjustments in real time.

"Alt orthodoxy" is of course a takeoff on alt country, which some people think was invented by Gram Parsons in 1967, but Rick Nelson made a country album in 1966, and so too did Michael Nesmith of the Monkees begin writing and recording offbeat country tunes that year:

According to the All Music guide, alt country "refers to country bands that play traditional country but bend the rules slightly." Gemini adds that it often incorporates elements from other genres (check), tends to be less polished (check), is characterized by a "do-it-yourself" spirit (check), works outside the industry spotlight (check), and represents a more independent and often more experimental approach (check).

So, here at One Cosmos we bend the rules, borrow promiscuously from all and sundry, are spontaneous and unpolished, adopt a do-it-oursoph approach, toil outside the mainstream, and indulge in experimental contemplation. 

Is any of this compatible with existing forms of religion? 

Of course. It's parasitic on them.

Gram Parsons' pursuit of "cosmic American music" is also relevant, for it was "his vision of a musical blend that drew from a wide range of American musical traditions," breaking down barriers and synthesizing various genres while trying to "get back to a more pure and real form of American music."

Same, in the sense that I'm American, raised a WASP and still a culural WASP despite my efforts to be Catholic. The one doesn't preclude the other, but still. This is not a Catholic country. There's a reason why the Vatican swamp doesn't much care for American style frontier Catholicism, nor do we much care for a socialist pope.

These preliminary comments have been interrupted by a first challenge to Alt Orthodoxy (AO) by a perennialist commenter who believes God and time, perhaps like sex and honesty, just don't mix: 

It’s simple. In eternity there is no before, so no foreknowledge or predestination; such terms treat eternity as if it were temporal. Which is silly. All time is in eternity, all at once, without compromise to any moment thereof (as to its freedom, or anything else). So God does not know about things before they happen, as if he were a time bound soothsayer such as we. For him, there is no time before now. All moments are present to him now, all at once, as facts.

So, no need for open theism. The problem it would solve is not real, but the result of a category error.

Now, it seems to me that the commenter asserts what needs to be proved, which is to say, whether God is in or out of time. But supposing he creates, then he's in for the win. In other words, so long as he's a carefree radical monist God, then he hasn't a care in the world. But if his creation is in time, that makes him in time too, if only because of his immanence. 

Let's unpack the comment in more detail. In it the assertion is made that God's Eternity is radically atemporal, whereas in the AO view time and eternity are necessarily complementary; they coarise. There is actually no time in the absence of eternity, and vice versa (more on which below).

Second, the commenter essentially spatializes time in his assertion that all time is present to God. This is similar to Einstein's conception of the "block universe" which renders our perception of time illusory. But the whole point is that time is not space, rather, a much more queer entity. Besides, it takes time to deny time.

For an alt-perennialist (admittedly an oxymoron, but a fun one), we agree that God by definition transcends time, but we disagree with the assertion that this transcendence necessitates a static, simultaneous view of all events. Rather, God's relationship with time is more dynamic and interactive. Otherwise, why even bother creating at all if creation is literally identical to God?

From the perspective of AO, we believe that the future contains genuine freedom, possibility, creativity, and contingency, so God's knowledge of it is not exhaustive in the sense of knowing every detail as if it were already determined (like Einstein's block universe that spatializes time).

While God is not bound by time like we are, he interacts with it, responding to events as they unfold. This interaction implies that the future is not a fully formed, pre-existing reality for God. It reminds me of Lawrence of Arabia's critique of Islam's fatalism, i.e., that Nothing is written, not even this post!

Freedom is a problem, God's and ours. It is God's problem for the same reason my son is my problem. I brought him into this world, but, Bill Cosby's father to the contrary notwithstanding, I can't just take him out of it when he disappoints me. I mean theoretically I could, like a Roman father, but that would be wrong. It would violate the Covenant, in which God says Never again. No matter how irritating be these creatures, no more floods to destroy the earth and take out its inhabitants. 

In the AO view, genuine human freedom -- which is to say freedom -- is incompatible with exhaustive divine foreknowledge. If God already knows every future action with certainty, then those actions are no longer free. Rather, they are determined, undermining the very possibility of free will.

But God is free and so are we: Now, the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, boom, there is liberty (2 Cor 3:17). 

Put it this way: in God, freedom and love are prior to knowledge. God creates free beings in order that they may love, which they cannot do if this love be determined. For it is written, Can't buy me love, even if everybody tells me otherwise, for this would be a coerced love and no longer love.

Does the Father force the Son to love him? If so, what is the point of the Trinity? Analogously it reduces to a "block Trintity" in which all is determined and freedom and love are only illusions.

Our commenter maintains that it is a category error to attribute freedom, contingency, or time to God. I say the very principle of time is grounded in the timeless time it takes to engender the Son. This is none other than "eternal time," but it is still a kind of time, only preeminent, like "supra-time." Our time is, of course, only distant echo of this perfect time. 

AO does not spatialize time, but rather, treats it on its own terms, whereas divine foreknowledge entails a predestination that solves one problem while creating many others. These problems are not just mysterious or contradictory, rather, absurd. But God is not absurd, rather, the opposite. 

For if the future is fixed, then prayer, repentance, and human choices become meaningless. We are just appendages of a kind of relentless machine-God, not a creator God who is the very ground of human creativity. Indeed, if determinism is real, then there is no such thing as error or contingency: rather, everything that happens must happen. 

It is also to say that God is devoid of potential, which is just another way of saying that he cannot actually create, unless creation is defined out of existence. God is still omniscient, but this doesn't mean that God can know a square circle. In other words, even God cannot know logical absurdities, one of which is a man that is "free and determined," which makes as much sense as a square circle. 

God knows everything that could happen, which, when you think about it, is far more impressive than a God who only knows the one thing that will inevitably happen. Properly speaking the former isn't even knowledge, because knowledge requires a knower and a known. But God knows. Which is a verb, and verbs imply time. 

Again, to cleanse God of verbs is to turn him into a static block with no verbish attributes such as creating, loving, begetting (the Son), proceeding (the Spirit), revealing, redeeming, etc. But our God is a might-y God, for he allows for contingencies that might or might not happen, including this post. I might be wrong, but I'm free to be wrong. But if this post is determined from all eternity, then it is neither right nor wrong, rather, like everything else, it just is.

If possibility is reduced to inevitability, then the result is meaninglessness. If the future is fixed, then the present and future are already effectively in the past, which is to de-temporalize time. It doesn't solve the problem of time, it just defines it out of existence.   

Now, even -- or especially -- a perennialist should know that God is All Possibility, and possibility is not necessity. Rather, necessity pertains to God's absoluteness, but the first entailment of Absolute is Infinitude, the latter being the very principle of creativity. From the AO perspective, God cannot not create, because the Absolute cannot not be Infinite. Infinitude is also bound up with freedom, because it is unspecified. 

Now, even if all moments are present to God, this does not resolve the issue of free will, because what about the moments that are a consequence of truly free choices that haven't yet happened? Are these free choices actually fixed, or are they undetermined? Have they really already happened for God? This leads to our Instinctive Distaste for Calvinism and its variants, and you can't argue with an instinct.

Is God free to respond to our free choices? Or nah? We say that a God who responds to, and interacts with, the changing events of the world, is superior to the wire monkee deity of the block Godhead. God is not static and impersonal, but rather, a dynamic and eternal complementarity of stasis and creativity, or, as revealed in the sacred sidebar, The perfect, unchanging God must be a gyroscope of energy and activity and at the same time a stable rock. 

My Journey to Alt Orthodoxy

Which I arrived at just a moment ago when that term -- "alt orthodoxy" -- popped into my head.

Yesterday I mentioned an instinctive distaste for Calvinism, but then, I suppose I have an instinctive distaste for all forms of Christianity but my own (I exaggerate). But I once had an instinctive distaste for all forms of Christianity, period. 

As for Calvin, there is simply no part of me that could ever assent to the idea of a supreme being who creates people only to predestine them to eternal punishment. There are some things a decent -- not to mention commonsensical -- God just doesn't do. Supposing this ultimate sadist existed, I would spit in his eye, secure in the knowledge that I am a more moral being than he is, and besides, He's not my real daddy!

I am also a theological libertarian, and there's not a thing I can do about it. For me, freedom descends from, and returns to, God. In other words, God is its source and telos, but we are always free to deviate from, or cooperate with, it. 

We are of course fallen, but God is a necessary and not sufficient condition for our salvation. We still have to do our bit and cooperate with grace, no matter how comparatively modest our contribution.

But for Calvin, the will is bound by sin, so there's nothing we can do to please God except accidentally. Salvation comes 100% from his end, with no participation on our part, which renders our existence entirely superfluous and meaningless. In other words, there are two types of meaninglessness, all freedom (existentialism) and no freedom (double predestination). 

My instinctive distaste for Christianity began way back in Sunday school. My mother was a nominal Christian Scientist, which started back when my grandmother had some sort of mysterious healing after being hit by a bus, probably in the 1930s or 1940s. At the time she was living in Hollywood, where Christian Science had become something of a fad, like Scientology would later.

Gemini, what was that all about?

It's accurate to say that Christian Science had a notable presence among Hollywood celebrities, and this was particularly true in the early to mid-20th century. 

Celebrity Connection: 

Many prominent figures in Hollywood were either raised in Christian Science or became adherents. This included well-known names like Mary Pickford, Mickey Rooney, Ginger Rogers, Joan Crawford, Doris Day, Elizabeth Taylor, and Carol Channing. This created a certain level of visibility for the religion within the Hollywood community. 

Factors Contributing to its Popularity: 

Christian Science's emphasis on spiritual healing may have appealed to those in the demanding and often stressful environment of Hollywood. The religion's focus on positive thinking and mental discipline could also have resonated with individuals seeking control and well-being.

Wikipedia says that even Albert Einstein admired the founder, Mary Baker Eddy, and studied her main text, Science and Health, while his son became a full convert. 

Anyway, as a child I was forced to attend Christian Science Sunday school, which never made the least bit of sense to me, partly because my mother didn't hesitate to rush me to the doctor for so much as a sniffle. But it also created a division in my psyche between things that were true on Sunday and things that were true the rest of the week. 

By the age of eleven I gave up the struggle to reconcile them and declared myself an atheist. (To be perfectly accurate, I adopted the consistent position of knowing nothing on Sunday and on every other day of the week.)

After that I developed my instinctive distaste for Christianity, assuming that all versions were the same, except perhaps Catholicism which was even worse.  

Many years later, by the age of 13 or so, my attitude toward religion softened somewhat, based upon the Beatles' interest in Hinduism and other forms of Eastern spirituality. If it was good enough for them, then it was good enough for me. 

But I didn't take any formal plunge until... let's see, must have been when I was in my mid-twenties, after reading Ken Wilber's Spectrum of Consciousness. Afterwards I began studying and practicing yoga, not just the Hatha part but the Raja and Jnana parts too, i.e., the meditation and metaphysics of it all.

After much dabbling, I guess you could say things got pretty serious after the mid-1990s, when I would have called myself a full-on Vedantin. I suppose I didn't make that much progress in eliminating Bob and merging with Brahman, but it was while meditating that the idea for the book popped into my head unbidden.

It came in the form of a vision of the whole story of cosmic evolution, from the mind of the Creator prior to the Big Bang, through the realms of matter, life, and mind, culminating in the mystical union with God. 

And you know the rest of the story.

Do tell it again.

Really? I don't think the audience, such as it is, is interested. 

Tell it for your own benefit. Maybe you'll learn something.

Well, I suppose my instinctive distaste for Christianity continued into the third millennium, but in conducting the totally random and unsystematic research for my book, I began dabbling in Christian mysticism, beginning with a book called A Different Christianity: Early Christian Esotericism and Modern Thought. 

Now, here was a form of Christianity that made sense to me, because it could easily be reconciled with other forms of mysticism, i.e., Vedanta, Zen, Taoism, et al. It might even be ground zero for the whole Raccoon Sensibility. Just look at the book's description:

This book presents the esoteric original core of Christianity, with its concern for illuminating and healing the inner life of the individual. It is a bridge to the often difficult doctrines of the early church fathers, explaining their spiritual psychology.... 

Christianity possesses and always has possessed an inner tradition: not a system, but what might be called a discipline. To those with sufficient experience in investigating this field, I believe that this book will convey the same conviction. In addition, I would add to the idea that the inner tradition is one -- although with local variations....

It was through this book that I was alerted to way-out Christian authors such as Boris Mouravieff and Valentin Tomberg, which we discussed at length in the early days of the blog.

But then I started getting my own ideas. Recall what was said a couple of posts back about the three identifiable periods in the lives of creative folk, the first being when one is still assimilating influences and learning one's craft, so "the artist has usually not fully discovered his individual voice." So, I was still mostly playgiarizing with others rather than letting 'er rip with my own peculiar take on things.

But who should care about my own peculiar take on things, including me? Who died and left me in charge of the cosmos? Then along came Schuon, whom I had tried to read before, but didn't connect with. I didn't really get him, plus he sounded too authoritarian -- not nearly as fun and freewheeling as people like Mouravieff and Tomberg. 

Schuon is out there enough to satisfy my instinctive need for speculative woo woo metaphysics, but he also emphasized that metaphysics isn't enough. Rather, one must practice a single God-given path, whether it be Buddhism, Vedanta, Taoism, Judaism, Sufism, or Christianity. 

As in the old Zen saying, Chase two rabbits, catch none. In my case I was chasing every rabbit down every rabbit hole, so it was time grow up, pick one, and settle down. 

That's when the blog started to have a more Catholic sensibility, and I was only received into the Church a few years ago, in 2022. But over the past year or so, I find myself getting restless and unsatisfied again. For example, lately we've been blogging about open theology, which makes much more sense to me than the traditional view. Gemini, is there any way to square this with Catholic doctrine?

The Catholic Church has historically upheld the classical understanding of God's omniscience and foreknowledge. This creates tension with the core tenets of open theology. Concerns exist that open theology may diminish God's power and sovereignty, potentially leading to a less robust understanding of divine providence.

Points of Consideration: 

There are discussions within theological circles exploring ways to understand God's relationship with time and human freedom in a more nuanced manner. The emphasis in open theology on God's relationality and love can resonate with certain aspects of Catholic theology, but significant doctrinal differences exist between open theology and traditional Catholic theology, particularly regarding divine foreknowledge and omniscience.

Now, as far as I'm concerned, at the end of the deity, this absolute divine foreknowledge and omniscience doesn't differ all that much from Calvin. Rather, it simply asserts that both are true, i.e., predestination and human freedom, but I don't buy it. Rather, one has to go.

So, what is alt orthodoxy?

I can't tell you but I know it's mine. In other words, I'm working on it. The point is, I don't want to invent my own religion, like Luther or Calvin, even though, like them, I have my issues. Bottom line it for us, Gemini:

This text is a portrait of a restless and inquisitive mind engaged in a lifelong quest for spiritual truth. It's a testament to the fact that faith is often a complex and evolving journey, marked by doubt, discovery, and a persistent search for meaning.

What's Your Thing?

We're just flippin' through this compilation of essays on the trinity in search of blogfodder. I have no recollection of how I stumbled onto this particular author, nor even what is his thing. According to wiki, Gunton was an "English Reformed sytematic theologian," whatever that is. 

Hmm: Calvinism. Did not see that coming. He seems rather broadminded, when I think of Calvinists as grim, dour, pinched, controlling, and severe, the very antithesis of preformed coonology. Like this guy -->

My son once asked me if they had color in Olden Times. In Calvin's case, probably not. Gemini, what were John Calvin's thoughts on color?

Calvin emphasized a strict adherence to scripture and was generally wary of anything that might distract from a pure focus on God. Therefore, he was critical of decorations within church settings, including excessive use of colors, that might divert attention from the word of God.

What's the appeal? Above I tossed off the word "preformed," but Calvinism must indeed conform to a pre-existing sensibility or personality style, no? Supposing you are a grim, dour, pinched, controlling, and severe sort of fellow, then Calvinism is just the thing.

Am I being uncharitable? I know I wouldn't appreciate some tight-assed theocrat snooping around my house looking for playing cards, adult beverages, or negro rhythm & blues records.

I remember a comedy routine by Bill Cosby, in which he said everybody has a thing -- as in the classic negro rhythm & blues number by the Isley Brothers, It's Your Thing, so, do what you wanna do. Nor can anyone presume to tell you who to sock it to.

Which leads to an interesting irony, being that Calvinism and Puritanism were dominant forces in the early days of the land of the free. Lucky for us, 

The political thought of many founders reflected a Calvinist understanding of human nature, leading to a focus on checks and balances and the separation of powers in the Constitution.

In other words, since they had no illusions about man's rottenness, they established a system of government in which the rottenness was spread around and couldn't inhere in a single center of power. 

And ironically, rotten progressives such as Woodrow Wilson -- whose religious background was deeply rooted in Calvinism -- explicitly wished to eliminate these checks so as to vest more power in a rotten executive such as Woodrow Wilson, who wanted to run the U.S. like Calvin ran Geneva.

The question is, what is my thing? Here again, as touched on in yesterday's post, it's not so easy to define, because it has more to do with a peculiar sensibility -- or even frivolous nonsensibility -- than the content per se. 

I know I'm always looking for other thinkers who share this sensibility, although they are few & far between. People who write about religion tend to be s'durn serious, which I get, since religion, whatever else it is, has to do with what Paul Tillich called one's Ultimate Concern:

He argued that whatever a person holds as their ultimate concern, that is, what truly matters most to them, functions as their "god."

My only sacred cow is irreverence.

Someone once said that all human conflict is ultimately theological, and I believe this can be seen most transparently in the theological antics of the Woke. 

Why do they hate us so? Because we are irreverent toward what they revere -- in short, because we don't respect and bow down before their tribal gods. In the old days this could get you exiled, crucified, or burnt at the stake, whereas now it is liable to get your Tesla dealership torched.

Even my local rag, the Agoura Acorn, has letters from angry readers outraged by Trump's latest outrage, for example, from an uptight scold who writes that

As an elder, I've lived through many political crises in this country -- but I have never seen an attack on our democracy like this. In the past, there was bipartisan opposition to lawlessness. Our democracy, our way of life, the entire world order since the end of WWII is being flipped upside down.

One can hope, at any rate. But my hope is her nightmare. Or, my thing is not her thing. 

Back to Gunton. He quotes a passage by theologian named John Macmurray that very much reflects my own sensibility:

As persons we only are what we are in relation to other persons: the Self exists only in dynamic relation to the Other [and] has its being in relationship.

Gunton comments that "We must therefore center our attention first not on the identity of the individual, but on the matrix within which the individual takes shape" -- the Coon and the den.

Since mutuality is constitutive for the personal, it follows that "I" need "you" in order to be myself (Macmurray). 

Which for me goes to the intersubjectivity of the person, which is in turn grounded in the intersubjectivity of the Trinity. 

On the one hand, 

For there to be love, it must be directed towards another. But the love of the two for each other is inadequate, likely on its own simply to be swallowed up in itself... (Gunton).

This suggests that my thing must be our thing, alluding to a mysterious third which the two share, or something? Gunton certainly thinks so: "If it is truly to be love, the two will seek a third in order to be able to share their love," and "Shared love is properly said to exist when a third person is loved by two persons harmoniously and in community."

Here again, the Trinity is the model for human love. 

Two people in love can be "merged together," so to speak. But there is another kind of merger described by the psychoanalyst D.W. Winicott, in which takes place in the transitional space co-created by infant and mother, in which they are "alone together" with reference to a "third" transitional object. According to wiki,

the transitional object is not the mother substitute but represents the infant's transition from a state of being merged with the mother to a state of being in relation to the mother as something outside and separate.

Within this shared space

cultural experience, creativity, play, and the use of symbols all originate. Winnicott theorised that this potential space -- occurring between baby and mother, child and family, individual and society -- develops through experiences that build trust. He considered this space vital to the individual, as it forms the foundation where creative living and cultural experience take place. 

The point is, the two together create this trusting and loving space of "thirdness" where everything happens. Conversely, if there is a total merger at one end, or abandonment at the other, then this living and vibrantly imaginative space is foreclosed or never comes into being. 

Now, I say this magical and creative transitional space somehow reflects what goes on in the Trinity, but we've already exhausted the daily allotment. Let's just say that creative trinitarian love is God's thing, and follow up tomorrow.

Next Level One Cosmos: Anti-Blogging

Lately I haven't given much thought to the Sequel. Reader KC Steve suggests 

a book or essay setting out your Trinitarian theory of everything absent any of the aspects Gemini criticizes: the reliance on intuition, analogy and that otherwise lovable idiosyncratic style. Maybe also leave out the self-referential material and Joycean vocabulary. 

I'm guessing you have no interest in doing that and maybe you simply can't. But perhaps a great many, including your faithful followers, would like it. Even if they come to you daily precisely for the challenge of figuring out what the hell you're talking about.

I do have the interest: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is increasingly untethered from practicalities. An enduring and thus far insoluble problem has been how to structure it all. In other words, there's plenty of content, but how on earth is it to be organized? 

Could the idea of the Trinity as Idea of ideas serve as that organizing principle? Or would I get bored and distracted because I'm always trying to peer over the subjective horizon and engage with what I don't know? Knowing is boring. Unknowing is where it's at. La réponse est la maladie qui tue la curiosité. 

Don't be such a pompous ass. You don't know French. Just say The answer is the disease that kills curiosity.

I read somewhere that in the Gospel of John alone, Jesus poses some thirty-five questions, which reminds me something Rabbi Heschel said, that "We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers." Besides,

No answer can be more intelligent than the question that gave rise to it. 

Now, I am not bored, but I would be if I were some human jukebox cranking out my greatest hits. It reminds me of a scarce box set I recently acquired on ebay, Miles Davis at the Plugged Nickel. Turns out that his musicians were also easily bored, so they decided to mix it up without Miles' knowledge and play "anti-music":

It was the drummer Tony Williams who suggested, “whatever someone expects you to play, what if that’s the last thing you play?” 

The reason was that after an entire year playing together their music had become formulaic, “exactly the opposite of what we wanted to do,” according to Hancock. The idea was to contradict the clichés: suddenly go quiet when normally they would hit a dramatic peak; push the intensity at the point one would expect the music to fade. 

It’s one thing to plan to deconstruct, another thing entirely to do it in the moment -- and trust yourself and your bandmates to respond creatively and not drop the ball.

In a perceptive review by the Oriental Jazzman, he observes that 

The performance is really good, but the first piece has a loud noise called “buchibuchi.” This noise is not included in the other seven pieces at all, so it may be a malfunction of the board. I'm very sorry. 

The monochrome photo of the outer box is better on the rice board. The jacket is cool, it is a little morbid. As a Miles fan I can't let go of both. In a sense, it is “sad sex.”

By the way, one word for those who were interested in mileage. For the time being, please experience the horrible of this live. All of this Miles Quintet are Acme. The listening side is also Acme.

I can't really tell the difference, as this band always sounds to me like it is skirting along the musical sweet spot between order and chaos anyway, which is right where I like it.

So, if the posts seem more chaotic lately, perhaps it's a result of anti-blogging -- deconstructing myself in the moment while trusting myself to respond creatively and not drop the ball. Just ignore the buchibuchi noise and sad sex, and focus on the Acme.  

It very much reminds me of something Storr discusses in his Solitude, in a chapter touching on three identifiable periods in the lives of creative folk. In the first period, one is still assimilating influences and learning one's craft, so "the artist has usually not fully discovered his individual voice." 

But as he "becomes more confident he gains the courage to dispense with whatever aspects of the past are irrelevant to himself." "Mastery and individuality are more clearly manifest," and "the need to communicate whatever he has to say to as wide a public as possible is usually evident."

I might have skipped that stage, as I don't think widespread popularity was ever in the cards for me. At any rate, I've long since communicated whatever I have to say to my increasingly selective readership. 

The third period is "when communication with others tends to be replaced by works depending more upon solitary meditation." The creator "is looking into the depths of his own psyche and is not very much concerned as to whether anyone else will follow him or understand him." Of Beethoven's late quartets, for example, 

Nothing is conceded to the listener, no attempt is made to capture his attention or hold his interest. Instead the composer communes with himself or contemplates his vision of reality, thinking (as it were) aloud and concerned only with the pure essence of his own thoughts...

For a long time, these late works were "considered unintelligible," as if Beethoven were "working toward some new idea or order of coherence." But now, folks who understand classical music think these works stand at the peak of his achievement.

Eh, I don't know. Much as I hate to admit it, you still make sense to me. Besides, you're not an artist, let alone a Beethoven, just a blogger. Take a deep breath. A little perspective, please. 

Back to our Idea of ideas. I recently read another book called The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, but I don't know if it moves the metaphysical ball any further down the nonlocal field. For example, we agree that the Trinity provides a conception of God

whose reality as a communion of persons is the basis of a rational universe in which personal life may take shape.

In other words, the Godhead is persons-in-relation, and so are we. That's either the biggest coincidence ever or pretty much what we'd expect if we are created in God's image. But it also accounts for a relational cosmos in which everything is interconnected with everything else. In short, it solves the problem of the one and the many, because God is always both and so is the cosmos.

Nevertheless, many theologians persist in emphasizing God's unity, and in so doing exaggerate his immutability and impassivity at the expense of his openness and relationality. 

Which I don't buy. For again, God is both First Cause and First Effect, the latter being none other than the Second Person of the Trinity. At risk of belaboring the point, God can by no means be cleansed of verbs. 

Indeed, the Son is the re-veberation of the Father, and the Incarnation is a kind of vertical prolongation of this reverberation herebelow. We don't just "participate in the Son," but participate in the Father's generation of the Son and the Son's return to the Father. Eckhart knows what I'm talking about, so this isn't exactly new.

"But what is at stake in the matter?," asks Gunton. Well, Aquinas says something to the effect that a modest blunder at the beginning leads to epic buchibuchi at the end. 

The question is, "What kind of world is it? Is it one fitted for the development of persons and personal values?" Or is it a fundamentally impersonal world such that we are but a persistent fungus on the body of matter, a morbid and monochrome rice board with a lot of sad sex?

if something other than the Father is the ontological foundation of the being of God, the world and everything in it derives from what is fundamentally impersonal.

For practical purposes this reaches all the way into vulgar politics, because

modern individualism and modern collectivism are mirror images of one another. Both signal the loss of the person, the disappearance of the one into the many or the many into the one.

All because somebody forgot about the Acme of the Trinity, which harmonizes these two polarities and ensures the proper rights of each.

You Are What Intrigues You

What interests you when you're all alone?

I can't tell you but I know it's mine. 

According to Storr,

Hobbies and interests are often aspects of a human being which most clearly define his individuality, and make him the person he is. To discover what really interests a person is to be well on the way to understanding them.

More often than not these interests "reflect what the individual does when he is alone, or when communication and interaction are at a minimum." 

Writing is an ambiguous activity, because while it is a solitary pursuit, I can't imagine pursuing it in the absence of my imaginary audience, with whom I am "alone together." At least in my imagination -- which doesn't necessarily mean that my audience is imaginary, rather, that there is a "connection" that occurs in my febrile imagination with a nonlocal interlocutor. Who understands me. 

That is to say, even if I don't have an audience, there's some kind of imaginary but satisfying circular connection in my head between expression and comprehension. Apparently, the ah-ha comes from inside my own melon and is projected into you folks.

Now, I have a lot of interests, and pursuing them takes all my time, notwithstanding their nonexistent temporal utility. In other words, I spend all my time enraptured by activities with no practical purpose.   

I am embarrassed to admit that socializing generally distracts me from the pursuit of these useless passions. Now, I wish I knew someone who truly shared all of my avocations, from baseball to audio to metaphysics, but that's an eccentric combo. 

Bishop Barron is a big baseball fan. He also loves Dylan. 

Too bad, because there's a man who will never be pope. 

Anyway, I find it interesting that a man can be defined by what interests him, which means that his definition is "outside" him, as it were. Or, the soul is like a concavity in search of the convexity that will fill it, so to speak; or a lock in search of the key(s) that will open a man to himself. 

If man is a microcosm and the cosmos is a macroman, what is man? We've already stipulated that a man is what interests him, so it seems that the cosmos is as large or as small as one's field of interests. For which reason, I suppose, Thomas says that "Wonder is the desire for knowledge," and that

the final happiness of man consists in this -- that in his soul is reflected the order of the whole universe. 

So, wonder is ultimately conformed to the totality of what is. We might say that wonder proceeds outward in order to reveal what is within -- that "intellectual beings make the most complete return to their own essences."

In knowing something outside themselves, they step outside themselves in a certain sense; in so far as they know that they know, they already begin to return to themselves, for the act of knowing is midway between the knower and the thing known.

This implies a kind of circular triadic structure proceeding from wonder --> outward --> inward. 

Nobody perceives himself to know except from the fact that he knows some object, because knowledge of some object is prior to knowledge of oneself as knowing. Hence the soul expressly attains to the perception of itself only through that which it knows or perceives.... 

Our mind is unable to know itself in such a way that it immediately apprehends itself, but arrives at knowledge of itself by the fact that it perceives other things. 

So, we are that about which we wonder; we are what intrigues us. 

This whole analysis is rather subtle and tricksy, for "A twofold relation is found between the soul and reality." On the one hand, "the real thing is itself in the soul in the manner of the soul," which is to say, "in a spiritual way," which is "the idea of intelligibility in so far as it [the real thing] is knowable."

On the other hand, "a real thing is the object of the soul inasmuch as the soul is inclined to it and ordered to it according to the mode of real being existing in itself." 

In or out. Make up your mind.

It's always both:

Knowledge takes place in the degree in which the thing known is in the knower, but love takes place inasmuch as the lover is united with the real object of his love.... 

Hence knowledge of lower things is more valuable than love of them, but love of higher things... is more valuable than knowledge.

Waitwut? "Knowledge of corporeal things is better than love of them." Nevertheless, "love has more unitive power than knowledge," for "in love the soul is fused together with the thing loved."

Now do God.

Okay, challenge accepted. Is it better that the Father knows the Son or that he loves the Son? Or do they amount to the same thing? Well, knowledge implies separation, while love implies union. But mustn't there be separation -- otherness -- in order for there to be union?  

We'll have to complete this line of thought in the next installment. Meanwhile, this is a coincidence:

One way to tell whether one person knows another well, is whether he is familiar with what that other person likes and does not like. Aristotle said it was a mark of friendship to like and dislike the same things....

Therefore, if we are friends with Jesus, we should have an idea of what He likes and dislikes. I mean, in His human nature -- those likes and dislikes which have the character of tastes, or visceral reactions.  

So, the question is not What would Jesus Do?, rather, what did he like? What interested him? What bored him? 

The essay is rather banal, but hints at a Raccoon sensibility, in that he seems to have favored a simple life with a lot of unstructured time. He liked the slackitude and quiet of nature. He also enjoyed wandering around on foot, and "had a taste for fine wine." 

Of course, there weren't many books around, but "he loved to read." He didn't have much use for politics, but "liked logic, wrangling, defining terms, drawing distinctions, disputation, and argument." As for people, he didn't like hypocrisy, haughtiness, and hardheartedness. 

I suggest we waive the annual fee and let him in the club.

Alone Together

Gemini suggested that yesterday's post might have been overly reliant on "intuition and analogy," which, "combined with its idiosyncratic style, may make it challenging for some readers."

First of all, even Great scientists follow intuition and beauty, not rationality, so why not?

In the “TV model” of science, scientists are pinnacles of rationality -- socially inept, boringly nerdy, emotionless, and incapable of strong pre-evidence beliefs.

But "Scientists are not big spheres of rationality. They are spiky and make use of intuition and aesthetics":

there is “Science” in its formal buttoned-down form described in textbooks, and then there is the pre-theoretical fringe that drives science forward and gives it its momentum.

Therefore, "'great minds holding eccentric, even kooky, beliefs' is a pattern that crops up throughout history." 

As we've so often said, rationality itself is neither here nor there, because there is no strictly rational basis for determining exactly what to reason upon. Mr. Hoel agrees that 

rationality does not actually tell you, by itself, what makes for a good hypothesis, a good idea, or an elegant experiment. Those choices include some strange blend of aesthetics, intuition, passion, and other irreducible qualities.

Moreover, 

Attempts to define science as merely an abstract machine for falsification, like Karl Popper did, leads to the problem of exactly how one chooses which hypotheses -- of which there are infinite -- to try to falsify.

More generally, as we've been blah-blah-blogging about for two decades, the mind is an open system, both horizontally and vertically. Mr. Hoel agrees that "the abstract machine of science is an open system," the question being, how does it get that way? In other words, by virtue of what principle is reality itself an open system?

I suspect that this principle is none other than the Trinity, our leading candidate for Idea of ideas. It explains why horizontal science is an open system, because the openness starts at the top: God -- or the Ultimate Principle -- is not the "pinnacle of rationality," like some static and immutable system of predictable linear equations, rather, the punnacle of relationality. 

Nor is the goround of being "socially inept, boringly nerdy, and emotionless," rather, it is quite the social butterfly, even the very ground and possibility of sociality, for God is a vibrant society of interpersonal exchange, way before we ever arrived on the scene.

And Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, for what that's worth. Moreover, In the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. So, man's pronouns are simultaneously a complementarity of him (or her) and them. Just like God's pronouns.

None of this is a surprise to longtome readers, because we've been going on about man's irreducible intersubjectivity ever since the book was published, for subjectivity and interiority are weird enough, but even so, they do not, and cannot, make a man.

What makes a man, Gagdad?

The same thing that makes a God: a dyadic intersubjectivity focussed on, and linked by, a third.

You'll have to crank that existentialada down a couple of nachos.

Yes, we have heard it said that our reliance on intuition and analogy, combined with an idiosyncratic style, may make it challenging for some readers. And yet, it is obvious for those with a third eye to see. And once seen, it crops up everywhere. For example, in this book I'm rereading called Solitude: A Return to the Self, by psychiatrist Anthony Storr.

Why are you reading a book about solitude?

Because lately I've been wondering about how to square my love of solitude with a trinitarian metaphysic that is all about interpersonal relations. Long story short, it turns out that the capacity to be alone is paradoxically related to the experience of being alone together. 

For example, people with a history of poor attachment find it difficult to be alone. We all know people who must be "together" because they experience anxiety, depression, emptiness, etc., when separated from others. Being together becomes a defense against being alone. It reminds me of several aphorisms:

The most dispiriting solitude is not lacking neighbors, but being deserted by God. 

To be a Christian is not to be alone despite the solitude that surrounds us.

I would not live for even a fraction of a second if I stopped feeling the protection of God's existence.

God is that inscrutable sensation of security at our back.

The transcendent God is not a projection of the one who is our father in the flesh. To the contrary, a reflection of God turns our animal progenitor into a father.

Hell is any place from which God is absent. 

The point is, there is alone and there is alone; or alone and abandoned, in which case you're well and truly on your own; or "alone together," in which case a deep togetherness permits one to be alone in the presence of the other. In other words, we are given "space" to be ourselves. 

Translighting this to the Trinity, is the Son simply merged with the Father, like an unhealthy human relationship? Or are the Father and Son "alone together," so to speak? Well, I suppose they would be alone in the absence of the link mentioned yesterday, the Third that unifies them and without which they would be "alone apart" instead of "alone together." 

This post veered down an unanticipated triway. What are we trying to say?

This text is a complex and highly idiosyncratic argument that defends the author's writing style and philosophical approach against criticisms, primarily from a perceived "Gemini" suggesting it relies too heavily on intuition and analogy. 

Good catch!

The author explores the paradox of solitude, arguing that the capacity to be alone is rooted in the experience of "alone together." He connects this to the Trinity, suggesting that the Father and Son are "alone together" through the unifying presence of the Holy Spirit.

Close enough for AI.

The author uses strong language and makes bold claims, which may be seen as provocative or arrogant. 

 Well excuse me. 

The author frequently refers to his own previous writings and ideas, creating a sense of an insular intellectual world.

I'll cop to that. Hence the difficulty of writing for a more general audience consisting of readers who can be alone together with me in my insular world. Except I don't think it's a matter of my world being too closed and insular at all, rather, too open and broadminded. Or at least I'm going where my eccentric and spiky use of intuition leads -- to the fringe, and beyond! Like any good scientist.

Can I Buy Some Opium From You?

We've been toying with the idea that the Trinity is the Ideas of ideas, i.e., the implicit structure of everything and everyone. It seems that Coleridge was on to this, except he couldn't put down the opium pipe long enough to present it in a fully coherent and systematic way. Still, his intuition was sound.

"On a number of occasions," writes Gunton, Coleridge described the Trinity as "the idea of ideas," and  therefore central to understanding both the world without and the mind within, and the relation between them: he called it

that great truth, in which are contained all treasures of all possible knowledge..., the one substrative truth which is the form, manner and involvement of all truths.... The Trinity is indeed the primary Idea, out of which all other ideas are evolved.

But he was mainly a poet and junkie, not to mention crippled by anxiety and depression. Probably the opium was a form of self-medication. A glance at his wiki page documents a pretty chaotic existence. At one point he published a journal called The Friend, which was

an eclectic publication that drew upon every corner of Coleridge's remarkably diverse knowledge of law, philosophy, morals, politics, history, and literary criticism.

So, a One Cosmos sensibility. His style was "often turgid, rambling, and inaccessible to most readers," but we already said he had a One Cosmos sensibility. He also tried his hand at giving lectures, but

ill-health, opium-addiction problems, and somewhat unstable personality meant that all his lectures were plagued with problems of delays and a general irregularity of quality from one to the next.

As a result of these factors, Coleridge often failed to prepare anything but the loosest set of notes for his lectures and regularly entered into extremely long digressions which his audiences found difficult to follow.

But we already said he had a One Cosmos sensibility.

Except I don't really consider my loose, rambling, turgid, and digressive offerings to be particularly difficult to follow. Perhaps for a newbie, but to the extent that there is bobscurity, it is in the nature of the subject. That and my lack of qualifications. Certainly opium has nothing to do with it. Just caffeine and nicotine pouches.

The Trinity is an idea in the sense that it reveals "something of the kind of being that God is" and makes known "something of the character of the source of all being, truth, goodness and beauty" (Gunton). 

Again, there is the immanent Trinity, which is the interior Godhead itself, and the economic Trinity, which has to do with its outward activity herebelow, and while they aren't the same, perhaps we could say they are "not two." Therefore, 

if the triune God is the source of all being, meaning and truth we must suppose that all being will in some way reflect the being of the one who made it and holds it in being (ibid.).

Seems reasonable to me: if the Trinity is the Principle of principles and Idea of ideas, then everything else is an entailment of it, whether distant or near. Human beings, of course, would be the nearest reflection, but there can be nothing that doesn't reflect it in some form or fashion.

For example, we've often said that our paradigmatic science, quantum physics, is the way it is because God is the way he is, which is to say, very much like particles (Persons) and wave (shared substance). God is irreducibly both, just like our world, and perhaps that's not a coincidence. 

Another way of characterizing the Trinity is that it has an irreducible part/whole structure, whereby each part (Person) contains the whole. Compare this to any other living organism, in which each part not only participates in the whole, but in which each cell literally contains the blueprint for the whole. It is difficult to account for the emergence of such weird properties in a fundamentally unweird, externally related and linear cosmos.

No, the cosmos, like the godhead, is shot through with interior relations. This applies quintessentially to human beings, who are characterized by intersubjectivity, such that we are "members of one another," so to speak. It's how, at this very moment, my abstract and interior thoughts are being exported into your head. Here again, that would be a very unexpected thing to happen in an externally related cosmos. 

In fact, subjectivity is the last thing we'd expect to find in a wholly objective universe, but here we are. Interiority must somehow be woven into the cosmic area rug, but we don't go as far as panpsychists who claim that everything's alive and mental. Rather, it's enough to say that everything is internally related to everything else, especially intelligence to intelligibility.

Don't forget luv.

That's true: what is love but a link between two subjects? A trinitarian metaphysic illuminates how this is possible, in that the Spirit is often conceptualized as the link -- the love link -- between Father and Son. Ain't that right Gemini?

It is common to think of the Holy Spirit as a "link." Theological traditions, particularly those influenced by Augustine, have described the Holy Spirit as the "love" between the Father and the Son. This conveys the deep, relational nature of the Trinity.

Now, supposing I am loose, rambling, turgid, digressive, and all those other things, I'll bet Gemini can straighten it all out:

This text presents a fascinating, albeit idiosyncratic, exploration of the Trinity, drawing on Coleridge's insights and weaving them into a broader philosophical framework. It makes bold assertions about the nature of reality and the Trinity, often without extensive argumentation. There is a tendency to present intuitions and analogies as strong evidence.

You're just jealous because you don't have intuition. 

The central thesis is that the Trinity is not merely a theological doctrine but the fundamental structure of reality itself, the "Idea of ideas." This aligns with a "One Cosmos sensibility," suggesting a unified, interconnected universe rooted in the Trinity. 

The author posits that everything reflects the Trinity's structure, from quantum physics to human relationships. 

The text challenges a purely objective, materialistic worldview, arguing that subjectivity and interiority are fundamental aspects of reality. 

The author's voice is highly personal and subjective, with frequent digressions and asides. There is a self-aware acknowledgment of the text's "loose, rambling, turgid, and digressive" style. 

The text's strength lies in its bold and imaginative attempt to connect disparate fields of knowledge through the lens of Trinitarian theology. However, its reliance on intuition and analogy, combined with its idiosyncratic style, may make it challenging for some readers.

Excuse me, but the text can't be that idiosyncratic if even a machine gets it.

You raise a fair point. 

How about an image?

Okay, that's a little too cutsie. I think you're being passive-aggressive.

You're right, and I apologize. My attempt at humor clearly missed the mark and came across as dismissive and unprofessional.