Grammar ∞

Yesterday's post didn't do justice to the idea that atheism is but bad grammar, mainly because I myself don't know what the statement means, but it sounds intriguing enough to make me want to find out. 

Let's begin with Grammar 101 -- i.e., bonehead grammar -- before moving on to Grammar ∞, which is to say, our grammar vs. God's. Grammar is 

the system of rules that govern how a language works. It encompasses how words are combined, structured, and used to create meaningful communication. It provides the framework for constructing sentences, phrases, and clauses, and involves understanding how words relate to each other and how their forms can change.

What comes first, the language or its grammar? Oddly enough, according to Chomsky, the latter: he posits a universal grammar that serves as the deep structure of any particular language. It is said to be "hardwired" into the human brain, and although Chomsky assumes it to be biological, he concedes that no one really knows: rather, he limits himself to describing the what, but there is no explanation as to the how it presumably evolved.

Whatever the case, human beings have an implicit grammar that other animals lack, which is why even the most intelligent chimp can't really learn language. What a child accomplishes effortlessly, the chimp cannot accomplish with any amount of effort. 

The Bible has a kind of theory of language, in that God speaks creation into existence, crowning this with the creation of a being made in the image and likeness of the Creator-Speaker, for which reason man is assigned the task of naming all the other creatures. That's not something you could ask a chimp or dog to do. Indeed, you could point to this or that animal and ask the dog what it is, but they'll only stare at your finger.

Now, a name is a universal, so naming the animals presupposes knowledge of universals. Here again, this is precisely what a chimp that is taught sign language cannot do. While they can can use signs to refer to objects and actions, they soon hit a wall that excludes them from abstract and conceptual thinking. They cannot truly get "inside" language, but at best can only enact a facsimile of this. 

It seems that we cannot even speak of human language without a concept of interiority: we can only be "inside" language because there is an inside to begin with. But how is it even possible for an inside to exist in an externally related universe? 

In other words, scientism assumes a universe of externally related parts with no inside, so how did interiority ever arise in such a setting? How do we get from objects to the subjects that know, understand, and communicate about them? This strikes me as the most inconceivable leap conceivable. Hence Schuon's remark that 

The first thing that should strike a man when he reflects on the nature of the Universe is the primacy of the miracle of intelligence -- or consciousness or subjectivity -- whence the incommensurability between it and material objects, whether a grain of sand or the sun, or any creature whatever as an object of the senses.

As far as I can recall, it was Stanley Jaki's Means to Message: A Treatise on Truth that first alerted me to what all philosophers and philosophies naively presuppose. I've discussed the book on numerous occasions, for example, in a post called How to Exist:

All philosophers, intellectuals, thinkers, pundits, and professors, despite different conclusions, must agree on one thing: that "They all use tangible means for the delivery of their respective messages" (Jaki). In order to effectively communicate meaning, there must be a means of effective communication. 

Therefore, if philosophers are logical, their primary concern should be about the extent to which their particular philosophy justifies the use of any such means, indeed its very reality and all the consequences, both numerous and momentous, that follow from this.

Take Darwinism, for example. Is there anything in this philosophy that permits the entities explained by it to explain themselves? 

No there is not. "Yet only in the measure in which that justification is done, implicitly or, what is far better, explicitly, may the philosopher's message become truly about truth" (Jaki). Which means that 99% of philosophers imagine they are finished, when they haven't actually even begun. In other words, they haven't begun to explain how the communication of truth between humans is possible

In a subsequent post called The Message of the Cosmos, I wrote that

In order for existence to ex-ist, there must be this primordial distinction between means and message. Typically we think of the foundation of things as consisting of matter, or energy, or law, but these are all somewhat beside the point if there is no Message and no Means to encode and transmit it.

Bob goes on to say that 

There are diverse methods for encoding and unpacking these messages, from poetry to science, philosophy to theology, math to music. 

More generally, you might say there are qualitative ways and quantitative ways. In our Age of Stupidity, there is a widespread belief that only the quantitative ways are valid, but guess what? As soon as you say that, you've made a qualitative argument, one that obviously cannot be reduced to numbers....

Science not only deals with material reality, but conflates it with existence itself. But as Schuon writes, matter is only "the sensible manifestation of existence," so existence is obviously more than what science can say about it. Or, put conversely, if you were to consider all the things science says about matter, they wouldn't add up to existence itself, for existence is infinitely greater than the sum of its parts.

But the deeper point is that science simply assumes not only that "matter talks," but -- more bizarrely -- that scientists can hear and understand what it is saying.

To which the only sensible response is ?!, because this communication of intelligibility to the intellect is the first thing we assume but the last thing we'd expect. (Literally, as in Einstein's remark that "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.")

This is getting way out ahead of our skis, but in another post I wrote that

If the totality of reality is completely intelligible, then God exists.

But the totality of reality is completely intelligible.

Therefore God exists.

Now, everyone I know assumes that reality is intelligible. Indeed, that's what reality is. There are people for whom reality is unintelligible -- or who live "outside reality" -- but we call them crazy.

The point is, knowledge of, and conformity to, reality, is not only our standard of sanity, but the whole basis of education, not to mention justice. But the question is, in what kind of cosmos are reality, truth, and justice even possible? 

A grammatical cosmos?

Well, let's go back to our initial definition of grammar, which is the system of rules that govern how a language works. It encompasses how words are combined, structured, and used to create meaningful communication. 

It seems to me that the cosmos must be grammatical before we are, which is why it can meaningfully communicate to us, so this grammar cannot be biological, rather, biology is one of the consequences of the grammatical structure of reality. As are biologists and linguists. 

I suspect we need to further consider the grammar of the Trinity -- which is to say, Grammar ∞ -- in order to get to the bottom of this.

Calvinism, Calvinball, and the Grammar of God

Calvinism is not a game, and actually makes games impossible, because games are predicated on an unknown outcome. If the outcome is known, why would you bother playing the game? Even the Dodgers, as loaded with talent as they are, will not go undefeated this season. 

Conversely, in Calvinball there are no rules, so nothing is predetermined:

Its defining characteristic is that it has virtually no set rules. Instead, the rules are made up and changed by the players as the game progresses. The rules are fluid and constantly evolving, and players create new rules on the fly. No two games of Calvinball are alike, and the game's direction can shift dramatically at any moment.  

It has also entered into general use, to describe situations where rules are arbitrary and constantly changing.

In point of fact, both Calvinism and Calvinball make a real game impossible, the first because it is too rigid and deterministic, the second because it is too elastic and lawless. Too much order and too much chaos are both fatal to any game. 

That right there is the sort of banality this blog tries to avoid. But is existence itself some kind of game?  Or are we just putting in time in a meaningless dead-end job? 

Of course, this is not 'Nam, and there are rules! But what are the rules? For example, if predeterminism is the case, then how could there be any human rules? What happens is bound to happen -- it has been decreed from all eternity -- so man is powerless to deviate from God's plan:

if the reality of God remains unchanged whatever we do, there is really very little point in performing one act rather than another..., [and] it would appear to follow that no act can, in its consequences, be better than any other, for the same unchanging reality remains in either case (Gunton).

From the standpoint of God's eternity, "no act of finite being can make the slightest difference to the over-all state of affairs (ibid.). Since worship can have no effect on God, "it can only be self-regarding," or not even self-regarding, just meaningless noise. God's plan is God's plan, and we're just along for the ride, which Hartshorne calls "the greatest intellectual error mankind has ever made."

I mean, there are a lot of bad ideas in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human error, but if predestination is true, these ideas can't even be errors because they were foreordained. 

When we examine the cosmos, we find rules at every level, i.e., laws of nature. We also find a natural law inscribed in the human heart, which is a curious thing to exist if reality reduces to God's atemporal Is. 

If this is the case, then our own intuition of an Ought is just another vain illusion, since we are powerless to do what we ought. Rather, what is, is, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. Recall the words of yesterday's commenter, that "All moments are present to God now, all at once, as facts." Again, it is as if the present and future have already happened, and are as concretely settled as the past.

Why does this bug you so much?

Well, partly because it is so implausible that people reject it in favor of a postmodern metaphysical Calvinball predicated on an absolute relativism and subjectivism. Your rules are as arbitrary as mine, so instead of God's truth people default to my truth. It seems to me that postmodernism is just the shadow of determinism, and that both are fatal to any possible understanding of the actual rules of the game.   

Speaking of rules, I've also been thinking about the "grammar of God," which at first glance might seem eccentric, but the Christian revelation says that God is not only Logos -- which implies that he is "linguistic," so to speak -- but also that he also has pronouns, for example, the I, Thou, and We implied by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There can be no substance "beneath" these grammatical relations, since the relations are the substance. 

I'm also thinking of Wittgenstein's cryptic remark that "theology is grammar," and a comment by Hartshorne to the effect that "atheism is bad grammar."  

First of all, what did Wittgenstein mean? Gemini? 

It's not about traditional sentence structure; rather, it refers to rules of language use. Wittgenstein shifted from viewing language as a mirror of reality to seeing it as a set of "language games" governed by rules. These rules dictate how words are used within specific contexts.... Grammar in this sense, describes the ways in which words acquire meaning through their use within these social contexts. 

He emphasized that meaning isn't inherent in words themselves but arises from their application within specific contexts. Therefore, to understand theological language, we must examine how it is used within the "language game" of religious practice. 

Applying this to theology, Wittgenstein suggests that theological statements should be understood by analyzing their grammatical role within religious practices. Essentially he is saying that the way that words like "God" or "soul" are used, give those words their meaning, within the context of the religious language game.

We disagree, because God himself is a language game with a grammatical structure in a social context, this context being the Trinity, and its grammar involving the eternal Word spoken by the Father. Therefore, grammar isn't just a human game but a divine one. It also means that our theological language can indeed be a reflection of reality, not just a postmodern self-enclosed linguistic house of mirrors.

This being the case, we can see how atheism could be just a case of bad grammar. I don't have time to track down the context of Hartshorne's remark, so let's once again consult with our artificial friend:

When Hartshorne said "atheism is bad grammar," he meant that it violates the fundamental grammar of reality as he understood it. In his view, reality is inherently relational and interactive. To deny the existence of a being (God) that is essentially involved in this relational process is to misuse the very language that describes reality.

I'll buy that: God is the grammar of reality, so denying God is inherently un- or even anti-grammatical. 

He felt that the very structure of reality required a God, and therefore, to deny God was to deny that structure, which resulted in a grammatical error.

In summary, Hartshorne's statement is not about linguistic grammar in the traditional sense, but about the "grammar" of existence itself.

The grammar of existence is a consequence of the grammar of God? This works for me. For which reason it is written that Your seenill grammar and gravidad may not be malapropriate for my laughty revelation. 

Waitwut?

Well, let's break it down: it seems that a certain outmoded use of grammar may result in seeing nil, and that describing God may require a more playful approach to language. Certainly Eckhart thought so, what with his puns, wordplay, paranomasia, paradox, antinomy, negation, oxymoron, hyperbole, chiasmus, and all the rest. For McGinn, Eckhart's word games "are meant to be both playful and serious," or "to confuse in order to enlighten."

Yesterday we spoke of God's infinitude, which is to say All-Possibility. Again, in the traditional view God is pure Act, and therefore No Possibility.

Supposing there is a proper theological grammar, what might this look like? Well, for Eckhart, "The Father's speaking is his giving birth; the Son's hearing is his being born." And that's a conversation -- and a birth -- that never ends.

Is there something more primordial than this conversation? If so, what might it be?

Experience?

Hmm. That's a good candidate, but what is it? It seems that it cannot be defined, because any definition presupposes the experience of it. There can be no definitions without definers. But is this a fruitful avenue? Or just an ensuing train wreck? 

Well, we may not be able to define experience, but perhaps we can say what must be true of all any and all experience? There can be no truths prior to experience, but what is the truth of experience? 

Perhaps we can rule out some metaphysical nonstarters, such as the immutable "block godhead" mentioned in yesterday's post. In that case, there is nothing to experience, because there is no distinction between experience and experiencer. In other words, if God were to have an experience of something, the something would have to be distinct from God. For the same reason, God cannot literally know anything, because there is nothing outside God to be known.

But the Trinity is not like this at all. Analogously, consider what distinguishes animal from human experience. Animals have experiences, but they do not experience experience, as do humans. But how did we acquire this ability?

In a word, via the Other. Infants are full of experiences, but only via an intimate relationship with caregivers is this experience converted to meaning and eventually speech and self-reflection. For example, it is common to see patients who have a problem "mentalizing" their experiences. The experiences just happen to them in a passive way, below the level of mentalizing speech. 

Ever had a panic attack? They are quite the experience, and yet quite difficult to put into words.  

So, perhaps the experience of experience is grounded in what Eckhart says above about the eternal conversation between Father and Son? For again, in a monist God there is nothing to experience and no one to converse with.

Well, I don't know if this post is a train wreck or just a flameout, but I'm out of gas. Any thoughts, Gemini?

In essence, the author is searching for a way to understand existence that avoids the pitfalls of both rigid determinism and chaotic relativism, finding potential answers in a relational theology that emphasizes the dynamic and linguistic nature of God.

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.