What's the Point?

What is the point of existing, or worse yet, knowing one exists?

First, we can all agree that existence either has or doesn't have a Point. However, this doesn't necessarily imply that we could ever know -- or not know -- it. Absent an outside perspective, both theism and atheism would be equally pointless.

In other words, existence might have a Point we can never know. Conversely, we could mistakenly believe it hasn't a Point when it actually has one. Or at least has a plausible alibi.

Most people have the intuition that existence has a Point, but can this intuition be trusted, much less verified?

Mere reason is powerless to determine whether or not there is a Point, first, because reason can only draw conclusions from premises provided from elsewhere (often from intuition), and second, because it cannot adopt a stance from outside the total cosmic system, and render judgment on the totality of which it is only a part. The moment you posit a "theory of everything," you've transcended the theory.

In short, if Gödel didn't exist, we'd have to invent him.

More generally, people will deploy reason to prove the truth of this or that intuition, the latter of which can emanate from spheres above or below the realm of reason per se.

The latter is called "rationalization" (i.e., reasoning from below), and is only a caricature of the real thing. The former is called various things, including intellection, infused contemplation, mystical contact, and floating upon the currents of the slackstream.

This just highlights the fact that we have various sources of information -- interior and exterior, subjective and objective, vertical and horizontal, empirical and suprasensible -- that we draw upon and toss into the cognitive hopper in order to come up with the Answer and thereby see the Point.

Here at One Cosmos we never restrict ourselves to just one or two or three sources, but give an honest hearing to all of them.

Revelation is one such source we may draw upon. In fact, it is the only source -- and only possible source -- that is presupposed to emanate from outside the total cosmic system, and therefore the only information that can truly bear upon our opening question about the Point of existence.

You could put it conversely, and affirm that if we can know the Point, then it can only be via revelation in some form or fashion. I would widen this out and say that, to the extent that we can know anything, it is because God knows. If God doesn't know, then neither do we. And if there is no God, then there is no real knowledge and therefore no point.

Or again, to put it conversely, knowledge is always of reality. If we can distinguish appearances from reality -- and we can -- it is only because we transcend appearances. I am reminded of an Aphorism:

The universe is important if it is appearance, and insignificant if it is reality (NGD).

Or, the universe has a point if it is appearance, but has no point if it is the reality. Which is why the very first sentence of Genesis makes the point that the universe is not the ultimate reality, but rather, has a source that utterly transcends it.

Now, the Point, if it be the real thing, won't just appear at the "end" of the cosmic process. By way of analogy, the point of a novel doesn't just abruptly appear on the last page, disconnected from everything that has preceded it.

Rather, in hindsight it will be seen that the end was there all along, shaping the narrative and infusing it with drive, coherence, meaning, and purpose. Again, there are hints along the way, but only at the end do we acquire the area rug that pulls the whole room together.

Think, for example, of the first generation of Christians who were shocked to discover the abundance of meaning in the Previous Testament which had eluded them before. In this way, the novel events of those three days in particular had the effect of utterly transforming the past, so to speak. Who says you can't change the past? It's what the future does. And the future always begins now.

Now, since the present is always changing, this changes the meaning of the events leading up to it. One can only understand the meaning of something by allowing its effects to play out.

Ratzinger notes that for Christianity, the convergence of person and cosmos -- of anthropology and cosmology -- is the end of "the world." The revelation of the unity of the two reveals that this unity has been the goal all along, precisely:

Cosmos and man, which already belong to each other even though they so often stand opposed to one another, become one through their "complexification" in the larger entity of the love that... goes beyond and encompasses bios....

Thus it becomes evident here once again how very much end-eschatology and the breakthrough represented by Jesus' Resurrection are in reality one and the same thing; it becomes clear once again that the New Testament rightly depicts the Resurrection as the eschatological happening.

In other words: the Resurrection is the unsurpassable end and meaning of existence. It certainly meets the criteria mentioned above, in that it isn't something we could ever know, much less accomplish, on our own, and is indeed an ingression from outside the total cosmic system, one that has the effect of transforming existence and revealing the point of what went before.

Or put it this way: there really is no point if we can't know -- and more to the point -- participate in and even become it.

Christ was in history like a point on a line. But his redemptive act is to history as the center is to the circumference (NGD).