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.
No comments:
Post a Comment