Lately I've been especially preoccupied with the subject with which I am always preoccupied, which is to say, oneness: is it, what is it, how is it, and especially who is it.
The previous post went into the who of it all, at least from our end of things.
But one of our principles is that the unity of the cosmos manifests in the mirror of Who-who; this Who-who structure cannot be accidental, rather, goes to the very essence of things. It's a big hint in itSelf, not just the means of tracking down additional hints and clues about the the how, the why, and the whether.
Put it this way: if there is no ultimate Who, then there is certainly no ultimate How or Why -- no reason, excuse, or alibi, for none is needed or even possible, really. Rather, there is no meaning at all. For as the Aphorist puts it,
The gods punish by depriving things of their meaning.
Therefore,
Only the theocentric vision does not end up reducing man to absolute insignificance.
It doesn't mean the theocentric vision is correct, but it does mean that
If God does not exist we should not conclude that everything is permissible, but that nothing matters. Permits become laughable when their significance is canceled.
I like to turn it around and challenge the infidel to have the courage of his casuistry and truly live as if nothing matters. Sophist, cancel thyself!
If one does not believe in God, the only honest alternative is vulgar utilitarianism. The rest is rhetoric.
Moreover,
If it is not of God that we are speaking, it is not sensible to speak of anything seriously.
Beginning with atheism.
Back to the Who-who structure of it all.
The existence of God is indemonstrable, because with a person the only thing we can do is bump into him.
only began to exist at a very late period about the eighth and especially sixth century B.C., and then found the right path to truth by a success which must be regarded as extraordinary when we consider the multitude of wrong roads taken by so many philosophers and philosophic schools (Maritain).
The old axial age promulgated by Karl Jaspers. But even then there are plenty of bad philosophies floating around, and indeed, the seeds and roots of the same sophistries that persist to this day, e.g., relativism, idealism, rationalism, empiricism, etc.
Nevertheless,
The most reliable inductions of history combine with the conclusions of theology to prove the existence of a primitive tradition, common to the different branches of the human race and going back to the origins of mankind (emphasis in original).
I find this idea immensely appealing, but where's the evidence?
even in default of any positive sources of information, it is a very reasonable conjecture that the first man received from God knowledge together with existence...
No spinning, Jack. How is this primitive tradition reasonable?
Well, we've said before that it makes no sense to create a being with moral responsibility but no means -- i.e., truth -- to effectuate it. Responsibility is prior to rights, but we must have the latter if we have the former, for God cannot be fundamentally unjust.
Let's enter the Wayback Machine. I recall the exact passage when I learned of this possibility of a Primordial Revelation. It was in a book by William Irwin Thompson called The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality & The Origins of Culture, which I suppose I read around 35 years ago. Perhaps there's a reason why I remember the passage:
The [merely] professional way to begin a study of the origins of human culture is to begin at the beginning with a discussion of hominization.
Anthropogenesis, so to speak: the objective emergence of man. But what about psychogenesis, the subjective analogue?
At "the edge of history is myth," such that "a line of events has a beginning and an end, but the matrix out of which events arise (sic) does not appear to be an event at all."
Analogously, the tree begins with the seed, but is it accurate to call a seed an "event?" Well, what if the humiverse, so to speak,
is an egg that shatters as it expands to begin its career of unfoldment in time. As an archetypal image of primordial unity, the cosmic egg suggests that there is unity and fragmentation, eternity and time. The Fall into time is not so much an event itself as the conditioning of time-space out of which all events arise.
Yes, this difficult but ridiculous yolk, this big Who-ha!, is what Finnegans Wake attempts to describe, again and again, ad gnosiam.
But this is all a bit vague, simultaneously too much and too little. We're not looking for a literary approach, rather, a logical and theological one. Man is one. Therefore, there must be one philosophy and one religion, and even one history between the fall of the former and recovery of the latter.
We've said enough for one post. I don't want to overtax your indulgence. Taxing it is enough.
11 comments:
One point that intrigues me -- impossible to prove or disprove? -- is that philosophy does indeed start out as one but breaks up in the course of prehistory and history, only to be recovered in Christ. Could this be what Genesis 3 adverts to? -- not just a fall into sin, but worse, into blunder.
I can't help thinking of the course of religious history as being very much akin to a tree, with the roots representing BC and the branches, leaves and fruit being AD. Or maybe a rope unraveling at both ends, or any structure really where there is multiplicity of results in each end and a tight gathering in the center.
Man being what he is, for instance, it's hard to imagine that Christianity wouldn't branch out in a multitude of directions over time, branching out in any number of directions, and with some branches being healthier than others. And still others cutting themselves completely off from their trunk.
Ha - of course, it would have helped to read to the end before commenting...
Bob must be eating his Wheaties lately. He is en fuego.
For some reason, the track of this post, and your wondering of the beginnings of philosophy and primordial revelation, brought to my mind the lyrics to Van Morrison's song "Take Me Back," and Alexander Hislop's musings on the rise of Nimrod. I wholeheartedly agree that it does not make sense that man realized that he had a moral responsibility way, way, back if man had no truth to relate to in order to bring moral responsibility to fruition.
In concert Van often repeats "take me way back" as a kind of mantra and jumping off point to go into one of those musical trances. They're never the same, but they involve going back down to the very ground of wherever it is that music comes from. So, yes. I like doing that too.
For example, here starting at about 49:00.
Bob: the audience is in a huge trance! Haven't seen that in a while.
That would be good to listen to as you're drifting close to sleep.
Good link, Gagdad. Van's music, whether early work, or current, most always takes me back.
"...is an egg that shatters as it expands to begin its career of unfoldment in time. As an archetypal image of primordial unity, the cosmic egg..."
Have you seen 'The Egg'? From Andy Weir's short story, less than 13 min. Could be worse.
No. Civilization is much older. Angels came first. The ignorant and fallen, christian and eastern, came later. The world was once perfect as the bible said. The egg burst, which was the previous son. Or SUN. Physics reflects metaphysics. As above so below. Jupiter and Saturn was the split of the old star, like cellular mitosis. Ever heard of cosmic level obeject relations? So much to be explored
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