Let's review: if the ultimate real is substance-in-relation, then it is a kind of literal communion, not reducible to anything less.
There is no viable substitute for communion; this is the law of being itself (Clarke).
This applies quintessentially to the Godhead, which is the sufficient reason or Principle of the self-communication of everything down here, AKA their intelligibility-to-intelligence.
If there is to be effective self-communication of any being, there must be a corresponding receptivity for it somewhere in being, otherwise the process would be aborted from the start. In a word there can be no giving without receiving.
If communication and receptivity are both situated in divinas, then each is a positive perfection: yes, God listens to us, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it.
We discussed this not too long ago, but there's no harm in re-belaboring such an important point, especially since no one else on the entire internet, as far as I can tell, is saying it.
Besides, we discussed it with reference to Hartshorne, who is more than a little nutty heteroclite in his theology, whereas Clarke is cosmically orthodox.
Even the metaphysicians out there -- wherever you are -- tend to equate "receptivity with the deficiency side of being, i.e., with poverty, potentiality, a prior lack to be filled up."
So, we need to rejigger our notion of receptivity, freeing it of any such privative implications and insinuendos. Is this possible? Don't ask me. I'm in the middle of writing this post.
What could be the ontological value of receptivity?
I know: it is the condition without which love is impossible, and rumor has it that love is the perfection of perfections.
Very good: it reminds me of the ontological category of mystery, which is not a void, absence, or mere ignorance, but rather, a positive presence. Likewise, God's receptivity cannot be understood as a mere absence or lack; rather, it must be an active-receptivity or receptive-activity, so to speak.
We certainly see this trend in the rest of creation; we have only to follow it all the way up and see where it leads:
the higher up the scale of created reality one goes the more this passivity (in the sense of an active receptivity) increases, and the more it may be seen, in the case of human interpersonal encounter, as a perfection.
So, if God is perfect, then he must be the most receptive of all.
Which suddenly reminds me of the virtue of gratitude, which is the key to happiness. Its contradiction is envy, which is the cause and consequence of the misery of the progressive left. It is also noteworthy that the animating emotion of the left is a related cosmic privation, hatred.
Let's say you're Satan, and you want to teach people how to be miserable. How would you go about it? Easy: inculcate envy-ingratitude and hatred-resentment, and gravity takes care of the rest.
Truly, envy is the Satanic communion, a twisted caricature of the real thing. It's a big reason the left can only destroy, never build. And it always needs fresh bodies -- or souls rather -- to feed its vampiric appetite.
Metastatic groomers. 'Nuff said. For now.
Back to Clarke:
to be gifted and to be grateful are in themselves not a sign of inferiority or deficiency at all, but a part of the splendor and wonder of being itself at its highest actualization, that is, being as communion.
I haven't decided whether the official Trinity is a mythopoetic way of talking about this Ultimate Principle or if it is the Ultimate Principle, full stop. But that's my problem. Either way, it is "revealed to us by the Source itself," whereby
being as receptivity is present in the Son and the Spirit at its most intense, as a pure perfection of existence at its highest, and hence of absolutely equal ontological worth and value with being as self-communicative.
Therefore,
within the unity of the Supreme Being the Father is subsistent Self-Communication, while the Son is subsistent Receptivity....
Except that each Person is a fractal of the whole, so the Son gives back to the Father as much as he receives, and the Father receives in love-gratitude as much as he gives. It's a non-stop communion up there!
I guess that's enough for one post. I can never tell if I've gone too far or not far enough.
18 comments:
This interesting looking book seems to relate to today's post. From a reviewer:
Considering the fact that the ecstatic love that carries lovers out of themselves is reciprocal so that we must speak of a mutual extasis of self-transcendence, a thorny issue is raised by Dionysius; the claim that God’s love for creation is itself ecstatic.
This claim that God goes out of Himself would seem to contradict the doctrine of God’s changeless perfection....
This means that it is by the creaturely participation of contingent beings in God’s immutable perfections that “God Himself is said to be ‘poured out’ and ‘given’ to others like a chalice to those who drink from it.” Thus, to say that God is ecstatically displaced from Himself in order to dwell in the recipient is not to imply any ontological lessening of His being, rather it is to proclaim that “He betakes Himself into inferiors on account of their participation of His goodness.”
Which leads right back to Eucharistic Communion in the most literal sense.
The envy thing is funny. We sin yet we should not sin.
Increasing numbers of scientists are claiming that arctic methane releases could create runaway climate changes far beyond what the other scientists are saying. If true, then I think we’ll be seeing tens of millions of refugees overtopping America’s southern wall instead of just tens of thousands.
I’d suggest we get this “envy” thing under control, but Bob keeps saying that “Genesis 3” is intrinsic to all of us and there’s nothing anybody can do except pray.
Maybe Trump will get that wall built and then paint large signs outside telling the refugees to quit being so envious and just go home and pray already?
Science easily degrades into fools’ mythology.
God himself tells us, through His Son, that His receptivity is infinite and always on, thus, as He tells us, even when we pray, He hears our inmost groanings though we may not even realize we are articulating them to His care. How can one not take encouragement from that?!
Indeed John. I think of the many Youtubers who used to pray, but today only put out atheist videos full of envy.
Bob speaks of envy as being the scourge of the left, the opposite of gratitude. Why can’t these little problem solver wannabes just be grateful for what little they’ve got and just stick to solving their own little problems?
Indeed. And why can’t they just ignore all the other seven deadly sins? …especially that great grandaddy of them all, greed, which is actually a virtue?
Greed as we know, is good. It’s the cornerstone of conservative thought, able to easily shove envy right back into that poor little closet from whence it came, thanks to all the power which greed can acquire. And greed always leads to the seven heavenly virtues. Why can’t these leftists just learn greed?
The left claims that the guilty party in a conflict is not the one who covets another’s goods but the one who defends his own.
Anonymous, you present yourself as a wretched individual, and I pity you in your wretchedness.
The left claims that the guilty party in a conflict is not the one who covets another’s goods but the one who defends his own.
Not really. The concept of home ownership could be considered “another’s goods”. A cornerstone of the American Dream. Yet the greedily powerful are currently conquering as many homes as their own capital investment portfolios can handle, affordability for the masses be damned. I await the positive outcomes which could possibly come from this situation which the citizenry will happily accept, without violent revolution.
FYI and BTW, it is possible to want to maintain freedom and capitalism without going full Marxist.
But my current concern is all the many articulate, intelligent, rational minded former Christians who’ve gone full atheist. Blaming it all on “demonic possession” will only work for the preached choir. At the rate things are going, we’ll be in the minority quite soon. So then what?
Anonymous, you present yourself as a wretched individual, and I pity you in your wretchedness.
That's just namecalling. I left that style of debate at age 6. Got anything reasonable to say?
How does it feel to be 7?
Dupree, I had a conservative challenge me to a duel once.
I told him I’d happily oblige but being a poor military man deployed at Bagram, he’d have to pay for his flight to Afghanistan.
Sometime later he angrily declared that he’d found some resources and after doing some research couldn’t find anybody based at Bagram named “Commander Clopfelter”. I angrily retorted that my office was literally overlooking the front gate and I could see everybody coming and going and that there were no other 6’5” tall, powerlifter-built, genius IQ, angry black men at the base named Clopfelter looking for lame white asses to kick. And that he was just trying to get out of a duel which he himself had challenged.
Obviously, this is the internet where anybody is anything they want to be and unfortunately, has to be anything anybody else wants them to be.
And so ideas become the focus, since it’s really all we’ve got to work with. Anybody else here seeing dark times ahead for America and Christianity?
The failure of Christianity is a Christian doctrine.
That America is a failure is a progressive axiom.
And whenever they are in charge, they prove themselves correct.
The progressive treadmill: more progressive solutions for the problems caused by progressive solutions.
Julie, I see millions of not-to-be aborted babies having to be born unwanted, to live horrible lives, to then die lost and alone and winding up burning in hell forever.
Of course, I only offer up such ideas here in this place, making sure to never blurt them out publicly in places like crowded supermarkets. Out in meatspace you see me as the polite white-collar conservative sitting in the front of the metro bus with a newspaper who always gives up his seat to little old ladies. But I've been watching that old movie Falling Down a lot lately.
What you people don’t realize is that there are literally millions of us out there. And we’ve been plotting. Imagine your horror when millions of us emerge and the place is crawling with well-armed well-dressed trannies.
One can advocate without reservation only for lost causes.
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