I was struck by the following passage from Thomistic Psychology:
But now, with the advent of thinking processes, a completely new world is opened up to us: a universe of ideas and volitions, an immaterial expanse of creativeness, a region liberated from the probabilities of sense (Brennan).
So many extravagant bells and whistles go along with the human condition, but surely this is the most consequential, for this "new world" is the human world, precisely. If you're reading this, you're in this world, no matter how much you try to pretend otherwise.
Well, not exactly, for man is apparently free to choose to be in or out of the real world, AKA reality. As you've noticed, alternate universes not only abound, but are but a click away.
Indeed, one small click for man can be a giant leap into a parallel looniverse -- for example, from the prospect of an inconvenient cold to WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!, from a long forgotten spree of trespassing to THE DARKEST DAY IN OUR DEMOCRACY!!!, from minimal safeguards against election fraud to JIM CROW ON STEROIDS!!!
Man's freedom to inhabit fantasy worlds is one of the lessons of Genesis 3, the principle of which is still undefeated after 12,000 years or so. In short, if even your Creator has to ask Where are you? (3:9), you know you're lost in the cosmos.
Where are you?
A quick skim suggests that it takes until Genesis 22 for man to explicitly respond, Here I am, full stop, with no evasions, excuses, or rationalizations. Finally, man and God begin seeing I to I.
But it's only a beginning. Nevertheless, as the Poet says, In my beginning is my end, as the Aphorist says, Every beginning is an image of the Beginning; every end is an image of the End, and as the Novelist says in about a billion ways, gosh!, the end-and-beginning is at hand.
Let's get back to the demons, which make their -- or its -- first appearance rather early in the saga of man-in-the-cosmos, in the first line of Genesis 3.
Now, they say Genesis 3 was actually written several thousand years before Genesis 1, but it appears later in the Bible, and for good reason. For if it had come first, it would imply some rather serious Manichee business, as opposed to the radical monotheism and even more radical triunity before and after that.
Well, I got sidetracked, so that's it for now.
17 comments:
A quick skim suggests that it takes until Genesis 22 for man to explicitly respond, Here I am, full stop, with no evasions, excuses, or rationalizations. Finally, man and God begin seeing I to I.
It does begin, and yet how often is that here I am! still being called from a hidden corner in a dark room, with every attempt being made to throw the voice or cause a confusion of echoes. Er, yes, here I am, uh, over there, totally not doing anything I shouldn't be doing.
Which is truly a shame, because seeing I to I is...
I contend that this liberation from sense, whether probable or improbable, is more problematic than the quote writer so glibly states, unless said liberation is guided by the hand of The Creator.
Another one of those synchronicities: just got a book in the mail today called Visions of the Future: A Study of Christian Eschatology, and I read of how the Abraham narrative
"breaks out of the common religious conceptions of the ancient Middle East.... Here is opened the sense of religion as a personal relation to a personal deity. In brief, the Abraham-tradition opens a new dimension for the meaning of religious faith..."
"
John, yes, of course it's problematic. Much like democracy, perhaps it's the worst way of being mortal, except for all the others?
Way of life vs. way of death. Considering how awful the way of death is, it makes no sense why people choose it but clearly, they often do, and stick to it all the way down. And so, here we are...
"Individual though he was, Abraham's story is more than the history of an individual.... In the final analysis, that individual history becomes a model for understanding human existence universally."
To expand upon the quote, Brennan's point is that the senses only convey possibilities, while the intellect allows us to know certainties.
For example, the senses of the blind men do not disclose the elephant apprehended by the intellect.
But some people revolt against the intellect, e.g., the tenured.
Schuon has a good crack about how revelation is the intellect objectified while the intellect is revelation subjectified. In other words, the mere fact of the human intellect is about the most astonishing revelation there could be. I'l never get used to it.
I appreciate the clarifications you've put up re the senses, Gagdad, and note also, upon paying closer attention to the quotes immediately above, that they also address this in an offhand way, and causes me to more dearly appreciate the gift of intellect which we have been given, and blessed richly.
@Julie - I too cannot fully understand the reasons why individuals seem to choose the path of death, though being intimate with my own forays down the wide path of death, I can at least be sympathetic.
Clarification - the quotes above the comment input box.
Ha - I'm reminded of Prager's philosophy/principle on clarity. Of course, one of the difficulties of the subject here is that clarity is often extremely difficult to achieve when discussing things that transcend mere written words. Like for instance, the fact that existence is a Word, but it can't simply be spoken or transcribed, it must be lived.
Re. Abraham vs. other religions of the time, a commenter over at Instapundit is noticing the reverse process happening today:
"When you destroy the churches, the state becomes God.
Frankly, that's a regression. IMO political parties are just evolved forms of religion evolving out of a need to come together secularly and without dogma. With religion exorcised from society those dogmatic passions go back into the political ideology (unified in the person's mind) and become a singular line of thought that becomes subjective and tribal."
Abraham and I AM get booted out the door.
Why people choose the path of death, reason #11,146,387:
"Stupid people get snarky and mean when they're caught out of their depth, which is always, because they're stupid>."
Julie, what's most disturbing, to me at least, in regards to the state becoming god, which for many individuals it has, is that the state is practicing faux Christian charity, at the point of a gun, rather than truthful Christian charity as thank offerings to God for the blessings He has bestowed on us. While we must have a state, government, in many instances the state is actively destroying Christian morality, while pretending it is doing so for secular humanism reasons, rather than as a means to consolidate their power over the people.
With the generosity of his program does the liberal console himself for the magnitude of the catastrophes it produces.
With the generosity of his program does the liberal console himself for the magnitude of the catastrophes it produces.
I doubt that very much. I think the liberal, lacking any permanent standards with which to buttress their life, does not think beyond the secular humanistic "good" they feel they have supported, for reasons which have no meaning if they have rejected their intellect, and thus The Creator.
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