In the Beginning is the With

In a remarkably concise but resonant essay called Man in the Cosmogonic Projection, Schuon sketches his -- he would say everyone's -- map of ultimate reality, or his ultimate map of reality. This isn't the first time I've read it, but on this occasion I found myself wondering exactly how it can be reconciled with Christian metaphysics.

Then, in an idle moment, a thought popped into my head: Christianity of itself obviously doesn't have an explicit metaphysic, only an implicit one. What it says about creation (limiting ourselves to the Bible) is rather brief and to the point: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 

From the Jewish perspective -- or so we have heard from the wise -- this is partly to cut us off at the pass before we waste our lives trying to understand things we can't possibly understand: the world is created. Now, get over it and do something to make yourself useful.   

In a way this makes practical sense: either the world is created or it isn't, and it's above our praygrade to know which. Not only does it cost us nothing to assume it is created, but the principle of creation opens up whole new dimensions of interesting entailments without which we could scarcely be human. 

Actually, we couldn't be human, period. Remove the Creator and you have eliminated transcendence from the cosmos. Man is just another animal. Some men pretend not to be animals, while the rest are leftists.

Aquinas himself readily conceded that there is no way to prove whether the cosmos is eternal or had a beginning. Nor -- obviously -- does Big Bang cosmology settle the issue, since it is only the beginning of our cosmos, not the beginning of existence, let alone being, much less beyond-being.

The prologue of John is intended to parallel Genesis 1, although with a new trinitarian twist. Bear in mind that, being Jewish, he would have fully assimilated the principle of creation, so he's not denying monotheism, only fine-tuning it.      

Well, now that's a coveniedence: I just got my morning email from The Catholic Thing linking to this morning's essay, called Recovering the Theology of Creation, perhaps just what we need to set the stage for where we think we're going with this post:

Hans Urs von Balthasar writes somewhere that “the Christian is called to be the guardian of metaphysics in our time.”

That's a bingo.   

This entails the defense of the person as destined for the knowledge of God..., but it also entails guarding a proper understanding of natural being, that is to say, of the intrinsic and deep meaning and mystery inherent in all created things.

That's another bingo. 

For some religions, this world is a place of illusion or distraction to be overcome so that our souls may be lost in unity with God. But this is not possible for the Christian. We understand that God has created all things and called them “very good.” The mystery of our faith thus entails coming to understand the ways in which created things stand in relation to the One who made them.

That's a trifacta. But the Christian doctrine of creation doesn't only distinguish itself from Buddhist or Hindu doctrines that would negate the significance of the human person, it also distances itself from the pure and simple monism of Judaism (or of Islam or even certain Protestant denominations that deny free will).

Limiting ourselves again to the Bible (as opposed to tradition more generally), John outlines a more differentiated doctrine of the One, and he does so with a single preposition: with. Yes, God still is; moreover, he is still I AM.  However, there is more to AM than meets the I -- specifically the We implied by with.

At risk of straining language beyond it's carrying capacity, the Christian ought to say: I AM, therefore WE ARE;  and WE ARE, therefore I AM.  These are true simultaneously and irreducibly: there is no I prior to We, just as there is no Father prior to the Son.

Here is where things get a little dicey as it pertains to Schuon's essay, and yet, I believe he's on to something. He begins with this account:

The entire world is Maya, but Maya is not entirely the world. The divine Essence, "Beyond Being," reverberates in Relativity, giving rise to the Divine Person, to Creative "Being."

Now, at first blush this might sound suspiciously un- or even anti-Christian, but there is a way to understand it as quite Christian indeed. Begin by replacing "Maya" with the less loaded "appearance," and its truth is self-evident -- so self-evident that there's a blunt and pointed aphorism for that:

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

The Christian believes the world is real, but not ultimate reality; for the same reason, he believes the world is Maya, but not only Maya. The following aphorism describes and prescribes the proper balance:

Christianity does not deny the splendor of the world but encourages us to seek its origin, to ascend to its pure snow.

In other words, it doesn't deny that the world is Maya, but Maya isn't just "appearance." Rather, it is an appearance of reality, precisely.  

And back to the little preposition alluded to above: with. If John is correct, then, thanks to the Incarnation, the appearance is now ultimately with the reality in an intimate and final way: there is an unbreakable bond between the two. A martial covenant even.

I think we'll end for now. We're just getting started -- we've only discussed a couple of sentences in a ten page essay.  We'll leave off with an aphorism which may have sounded a bit cryptic before you read this post:

Any shared experience ends in a simulacrum of religion.