Here's what I've been thinking about the last couple of days, if not decades: how has it come to pass that the most consequential thing in all of existence is also the most impossible thing?
What I mean is that each of us has firsthand experience of the human person, and yet, our official philosophy -- or theology rather -- whether we call it naturalism, secular humanism, or scientistic materialism, renders this evidence irrelevant and incomprehensible. It is never explained, only explained away, such that the most real reality is regarded as unreal, a position that is incoherent and can never be held with logical consistency (since the person holding it doesn't really exist).
Now, it's nice to have intellectual back-up, but in my opinion we don't need Gödel to tell us that any manmade system of thought can be complete or consistent, but not both. Rather, the only complete and consistent system can come from God. Except it's not a system, it's a person. God is the source and ground of any completeness or consistency we encounter down here, because he is Absolute and Infinite.
Even God himself is rendered incomplete and/or inconsistent upon contact with time. This may be ill-sounding, but if this weren't the case, revelation would be a syllogism or mathematical equation rather than a messy historical adventure. It wouldn't be an incarnation but an idea. And as the Aphorist says,
The history of Christianity would be suspiciously human if it were not the adventure of an incarnate God. Christianity assumes the misery of history, as Christ assumes that of man.
There's a good reason why Christ did not leave a book, rather, transformed persons, because personhood is the first and last principle of Christianity, and the person can again not be reduced to any formula.
Nor, for that matter does history have a direction per se, rather, a center. But once grafted to this center, it reveals a (vertical) direction, a telos. Absurd? Yes: in the sense that
Man calls “absurd” what escapes his secret pretensions to omnipotence.
Moreover,
If we could demonstrate the existence of God, everything would eventually be subjected to the sovereignty of man.
Let's dig a little deeper into this conundrum of personhood. Intrinsic to it is not just the desire to know what's going on, but to know it completely. Even animals look for patterns and predictability. But man has a kind of infinite epistemophilia, an inborn desire to know everything about everything, such that nothing less will satisfy. Our innate drive to know has an unrestricted scope and illimitable horizon, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it....
Wait: there is actually something we can do about it. Among other things, we can numb or even kill our curiosity. We all know people who have stopped asking Why?, and who instead swaddle themselves in the latest ideological twaddle. It is indeed difficult to attend college without this happening, since this is the whole point of attending college.
Put another way, if you somehow survive college un-indoctrinated, you are a threat to the whole system, AKA the progressive Matrix. It will never leave you alone until you submit -- until you admit 2+2=5 and love Big Sister unconditionally.
But we don't want to just live as rebels and fugitives from the Borg. That's fun for awhile, but we're getting too old for that. Rather, we really do want to understand what's going on.
In that spirit, here are some important clues and tips we've picked up from our pal Nicolás. Are they arguments from authority? No, they're soph-evident appeals to the common sense of the intellect. Here are two of the most important:
The truth is objective but not impersonal,
and
The life of the intelligence is a dialogue between the personalism of spirit and the impersonalism of reason.
The Truth is metaphysical and yet personal, therefore it must be... metapersonal.
The following two are almost equally important:
The world is filled with contradictions when we forget that things have ranks.
Therefore,
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.
Diverse terms like, say, person and matter. The only way to avoid the suppression and expulsion of man from the cosmos is with recourse to a vertical ordering. Thus, "let us be neither relativists nor absolutists, but hierarchists" (Dávila).
Magic? No, the opposite:
The doctrines that explain the higher by means of the lower are appendices of a magician’s rule book.
Or, if you want to play that game,
The relationship between volition and movement is magical.
I conceive the idea to make a fist and the hand closes. How are these realities -- interiority, I, idea, intention, free will, movement -- possible?
Wrong, Mr. Science:
The philosopher who adopts scientific notions has predetermined his conclusions.
The bottom line is that
Determinism is ideology; freedom is experience.
Okay, but what is experience and how is it possible?
We'll leave off with three aphorisms to ponder:
The free act is only conceivable in a created universe. In the universe that results from a free act.
The permanent possibility of initiating causal series is what we call a person.
That which is not a person is not finally anything.
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