Preliminary Sketches of Eternity

We think of the Incarnation as the ultimate vertical ingression, the purpose being to facilitate the redemption and divinization of man, AKA theosis. 

However, it is simultaneously the hominization of God, and I don't know which notion is more shocking. Each is Peak Weird: theosis and... homosis?

In any event, if hominization may be symbolized (↓), then divination is (↑). The former is complete -- an actuality -- while the latter is ongoing -- a possibility, so perhaps a more adequate pneumaticon would be (⇡). 

Common sense tells us that if something happens, then it was possible for it to happen -- that there is a principle, a sufficient reason; or in other words, impossible things can't happen. In the case of our sanctification, it is possible because of the actuality of the Incarnation: it is accomplished, and then some.

Usually when I come up against an apparent duality, it turns out to be a complementarity. I haven't yet thought this through -- I'm doing so right now -- but it occurs to me that Incarnation and theosis,  (↓) and  (↑), must form a kind of eternal complementarity that may be depicted as (⇅), or better yet, (↺), since even the faith that gets the ball rolling uphill is a divine gift.

Now, they say that Christ's sacrificial redemption is something God cooked up before even the creation of the world. I don't know if that's true, but I don't find it particularly helpful. Among other things, it not only presupposes the fall, but "simultaneously" (since God is said to be timeless) provides the cure.

This seems like a lot of needless trouble. No offense, but it's like giving credit to a scientist for simultaneously inventing a disease and a drug to treat it. Like the Chinese. 

I'm no doubt too pinheaded -- i.e., too partial to abstraction -- but I'm always put off by religious formulations that sound ad hoc, or like a Rube Goldberg metaphysics. Nor do I like the idea of trying to escape from one absurdity by positing another, as so often happens in exoteric approaches. Rather, I like things to be consistent. Unified. Tidy. No loose ends. 

But it seems that Christianity is not, and cannot be, like this. Why? Because it's ultimate category is person(s) as opposed to, say, the abstractions of Vedanta.

Hey, here's an idea: is there some way to reconcile the two, the abstract and the personal? A voice in my head is saying Yes. Why, it's the voice of the Aphorist! Hello, Aphorist!

Hello, Bob. It sounds like you already know that Two contradictory philosophical theses complete each other, but only God knows how.

But did you know that The life of the intelligence is a dialogue between the personalism of spirit and the impersonalism of reason?

Well, maybe I didn't know it, but I certainly suspected it. Would you care to add anything else before I flesh out my suspicions?

Yes, here's a hint: In order for a multitude of diverse terms to coexist, it is necessary to place them on different levels. A hierarchical ordering is the only one that neither expels nor suppresses them.

Okay, but what if the top of the hierarchy isn't a static one, but a dynamic three? Better yet, what if there is a kind of complementarity between the one and the three? Wouldn't that make everybody happy? 

Then again, I don't like "one." It's misleading. Nor "three," since it implies quantity as opposed to Relation. How about something like this:

•  ⟷  ∞  ⟷      ⟷  (↺)