We know that things happen. The question is, why they happen. As we've said before, this ability to ask Why -- or WTF?! -- so characterizes man, that we might well call him homo curious if that term didn't have certain distasteful connotations.
Now, this blog never stops asking questions, i.e., interrogating reality at every level and in diverse modes. Still, it's One Cosmos; every thing requires a cause, and this ultimate cause is what folks call God, i.e., the intelligent cause of intelligible being. If, in your philosophical wandering, you haven't yet bumped into the Uncaused Cause, just keep wondering and blundering. You'll get there: (?) and you shall (!).
The Uncaused Cause is Necessary Being; being necessary, it is eternal. Put conversely, anything contingent is strictly unnecessary and timebound; being bound by time, it has a beginning and an end.
Still, we want details. When things happen down here -- especially bad things -- it doesn't appease the intellect to dismiss them with an empty cliche such as "it's God's will." If this is the case, then God has an awful lot of explaining to do.
More basically, why posit a God who is less moral than we are, and who is responsible for things we would never dream of doing? Some things shock the conscience, and what is the conscience but our divine radar for distinguishing good from evil? If something offends our sense of decency, then God must be beside himself. Constantly.
Have you ever noticed that even the best theologians can start to get slippery at certain inflection points, just when you want the details? As mentioned above, anyone with a triple digit IQ can work his way up to the Uncaused Cause. We get it. How then do things get so fouled up between there and here?
Sometimes, when you get close to one of these soft spots, the theologian will get all Wizard of Oz on you: pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! They start blowing smoke or squirting ink like an octopus, enveloping you in a cloud of mystagogy. Others get impatient or irritable, but the worst ones start issuing threats -- as if our God-given curiosity is somehow blasphemous or sacrilegious. (That's a good thing about Judaism: it positively encourages arguing and even wrestling with God.)
I guess the question is, just what are the rights of our intelligence? It is not uncommon to hear that God owes us absolutely nothing, and that, on the contrary, we owe everything to God. Okay, I get it. God is the cause, we are the effect, and the effect owes its existence to the cause.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that if you're gonna go to all the trouble of creating a being with intelligence and freedom, then certain obligations and rights go along with these. With regard to the intellect, we are obliged to seek truth because we have the right to seek it. If we don't have the right, then we have no obligation.
Bottom line: if God gives us an intellect, then he is obliged -- in a manner of speaking, and with all deus respect -- to furnish the means to satisfy it, on pain of his own arbitrary incoherence.
No, we're not tempting God. Rather, honoring him, for it dishonors God to characterize him as illogical, unreasonable, and inconsistent. Besides, Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
So, we're just askin'.
What is this all about, Bob? You sound vexed.
Well, I did become a little miffed this weekend, in the course of plowing through volume II of God, His Existence and His Nature. I won't bore you with details, but let's just say that with any purely exoteric approach to religion, you're going to be left with certain loose ends and sometimes downright absurdities that you are forced to accept because of Mystery, or veiled threat, or just shut-up. I don't like that. That's the sort of response one expects from climate science drama queens, not the Queen of Sciences.
I don't like to characterize myself as an "esoterist," because it sounds pretentious, and people get the wrong idea. Nevertheless, there is an inevitable layer of esoterism between God and revelation, and if you ignore it, then you will be forced to accept a degree of contradiction and absurdity. The Infinite necessarily veils itself in finitude, but a nearsighted focus on the veil will obscure what it's veiling in the distance. I suppose we could say that it will appear "solid" to the many but transparent to the few, i.e. those blessed with 20/∞ vision.
Fr. Reginald -- or Thomas more generally -- occupies a space of what I would call "mid-level esoterism"; or, it's as if it sometimes penetrates all the way through to the core, but then draws back from its own implications, because those implications will contradict scripture exoterically understood, or violate some a priori deduction of what God must be like.
For example, they say God must be utterly immobile and immutable, and can derive absolutely nothing from our existence, since he lacks nothing and therefore can receive nothing.
Okay, I get that too, but still: some father. And speaking of which, as alluded to in the previous post, doesn't the idea of a trinitarian godhead evoke something analogous to, I don't know, giving and receiving, loving and being loved, knowing and being known?
This is way too large a subject to fit into a post. But to help reorient myself, I reread some Schuon, who says this:
partial or indirect truth can save, and in this respect can suffice for us; on the other hand, if God has judged it good to give us an understanding which transcends the necessary minimum, we can do nothing about this and we would be highly ungracious to complain about it. Man certainly is free to close his eyes to particular data -- and he may do so from ignorance or as a matter of convenience -- but at least nothing forces him to do so.
Not everyone wants or even needs the whole existentialada. Strokes & folks. Exoterism is apparently fine for most, but there are always certain aspects that make me wince -- and I think cause the typical midwit to turn away from religion, because it sounds stupid to these indoctrinated and credentialed yahoos.
"Exoterism is a precarious thing by reason of its limits or its exclusions," such that we are eventually faced with a choice: "escape from these limitations by the upward path, in esoterism, or by the downward path, in a worldly and suicidal liberalism."
Isn't this precisely what has happened? It seems to me that the present culture war has its roots in an inherently unstable religious exoterism at one end, and an intellectually and civilizationally suicidal liberalism at the other. Only one path can save us: the in- and upward one.
8 comments:
For example, they say God must be utterly immobile and immutable, and can derive absolutely nothing from our existence, since he lacks nothing and therefore can receive nothing.
Came up against that last week in my otherwise excellent Bible study group, in a discussion of a passage where God is described as feeling remorseful after sending a plague. The consensus was that since God is unchanging and therefore not prone to human emotion, it's simply a device used to try to make events more accessible to human minds. Which I agree with, but only sort of. I don't think they're wrong about that particular passage, but the idea that God is wholly inaccessible to His creation can't be quite right, either. Else why would - how could - Christ feel pity at the state of the people he encountered?
You state, "...escape from these limitations by the upward path, in esoterism, or by the downward path, in a worldly and suicidal liberalism." Very intriguing point, Bob! I read, some years ago, that after Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" was published, people would read that book and then jump out the window, and more people perished on account of Kant then even jumped to their death during the stock market crash of 1929.
But, perhaps socialism can, indeed, be regarded as spiritual suicide, or at least as a kind of self-lobotomy, in the way that liquor and drugs can be. In that case, the fatality rate for those engaging in that downward ideological drift runs well into the millions.
I believe that Aristotle recognized the spiritual degradation of socialism. He was against socialism because he saw charity as essential for spiritual development, and he saw socialism as an insidious way to avoid the self-transcendence required for charity.
Very poignant post today, and it truly resonates. Yes, it's like the Bill Maher's or the four horsemen who love to pick on exoteric religious people and yet fall into the exoteric false religion of leftism. Bob, there is another slippery slope of esotericism (that combines suicidal liberalism) and that is the deepakin the Chopra gang! It's like Joel Kotkin said in his recent book: "A world without traditional religion might still have people with spiritual awareness, but it would be short on the blessings of institutions that have promoted community, sacrifice, and faith for millennia."
Ted, indeed. During the Dark Ages, it was the monasteries that kept the lights on, so to speak. They were not only places of spiritual learning, but also of technological innovation and community support.
Thank you, Bob, for your outstanding and courageous comments in this post. Difficult truths to acknowledge but very necessary in our current climate of spiritual darkness and confusion. Hope you get to explore this theme further in posts to come as it is of paramount importance.
This is one of your finest posts, fleshing out a strong case for esotericism. Once the limitations of exotericism are understood, the road opens up; the path is no less bumpy than before, however, the chances of wandering off the best route to the goal are lessened.
A mixed practice of judicious exotericism to form a sturdy basis, and unrestricted esotericism plunging into the unexplored inner country on top of that, is a sound one-two spiritual methodology.
I agree with Ted and Julie that the institutions of religion, our churches, monasteries, synagogues, and temples, are an important civilizing factor and have done great service to humanity and should continue and be strengthened.
That being said, people retiring to caves in the Himalayas for heavy contemplation are also a thing which over time yielded solid results.
The model of the monastery, I believe, sums up an ideal synthesis. Within the walls of a sturdy exoteric building, esoteric practitioners chant and meditate, scaling the inner walls to greater heights.
To which God, looking on, says "This does my heart good. But please don't forget that feasting, fighting and f*cking are also things which need to be attended to."
Did that sound profane? Sorry. But you get the idea. If spiritual striving was all there was supposed to happen here, then there would be no need for Earth at all.
The best monasteries and the most skilled meditators can be found in Heaven and they are plentiful.
Anonymous @ 2/24/2021 09:20:00 AM,
"When socialism and Christianity coexist, one will eventually extinguish the other." Yet modern Russia is 2/3 Christian today, even after generations of all that USSR stuff.
Far more true: "When capitalism and Judaism coexist, one will distinguish the other." 35% of all economics Nobel laureates were Jews, as was Milton Friedman, and most of the rest are greedy as hell.
As for Islam: "Islam sucks and wants you dead." works for me.
Which brings us to Buddhism. Could there be catchy truthiness aphorism for them? I tried combining Buddhism, their love of orange, and Trump, but all my attempts fell flat. Are you aware of one? I'm asking for a friend.
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