Little Big Metaphysic

I was just now flipping through the Theo-Drama, trying to decide if I need to read the whole thing again, when I was arrested by the following passage on p. 50:

What is the relationship between divine and human freedom? Should we suppose that God accepted some limit on his freedom when he created man, by whom his world could be brought either to perfection or destruction? Is he powerless in the face of autonomous man's "No"?

Awkward questions without facile answers. Or rather, I can think of at least two very easy answers: 1) It's not even a meaningful question, just silly; and 2) God is by definition omnipotent, so our so-called freedom doesn't enter into it. 

Wait, there's more:

And how is this divine powerlessness related to the Godforsakenness of his Son on the Cross?

Again, two easy answers, 1) What Godforsakenness? It's just an executed criminal, and 2) What powerlessness? It was the plan all along!

Now, exactly no one up to the moment of the Resurrection -- and even for some time thereafter -- would have called this a great plan, ingenious, a Swiss freakin' watch, because, for one thing, no one understood the plan. 

Rather, the narrative is simply given to us raw and undigested, at least in the first three Gospels, where the facts are seemingly less conditioned by theological reflection than in John, where the relation is clearly reversed. Still, the synoptics do not pretend to be biography in the modern sense. Rather, they convey an understanding that only occurs later, and is retroactively poured back into them, so to speak. 

As a matter of fact, I was just reading about this in a personally helpful book called The Shape of Catholic Theology. It was helpful to me for reasons mentioned the other day -- that I am hardly a trained philosopher or theologian, rather, just a lapsed psychologist with too much time and too many tomes in his hands. 

No one would ever think of just diving into, say, physics, without a guide or textbook to narrow the search, define terms, differentiate the settled from unsettled, mark out fruitful from unfruitful paths, etc. 

Come to think of it, there's a paradox at work, in that I never stop learning, but know far less than when I began blogging 17 years ago. I know all the hard stuff. It's the basics I keep learning.

You could say I jumped into post-graduate work before mastering the fundamentals, or really, even graduating from elementary school, so there's been a lot of remedial work along the way: bonehead theology, so to speak. 

On the other hand, sometimes it takes an idiot. In other words, there are times that fresh and untrained eyes can see a problem from a perspective the expert can't. Aphorisms:

Philosophy gives up when one stops asking simple questions.

Or sometimes just one:

In philosophy a single naïve question is sometimes enough to make an entire system come tumbling down.

Thaaat's right, reader. The beauty is its simplicity. If your philosophy gets too complex, something always goes wrong. Therefore,

Common sense is the father’s house to which philosophy returns, every so often, feeble and emaciated.

Back for a moment to the "simple" narrative of the Gospels. Obviously, they embody both a letter and a spirit. If there is only the former, then the first question that arises is, Nice story, but what does any of it have to do with me? And if only the latter, the question is Why not just give it to me straight instead of clothing it in a fairy tale?  

But it turns out there are more than just two meanings, for there is the literal, the allegorical, the moral, the anagogical, the metaphysical, the mystical, etc., all at once. 

But enough about The Big Lebowski. Let's get back to those two tricky questions raised at the outset. Now, what I would say is that if a simple question is enough to blow up your metaphysic, then either metaphysics is impossible, or you need a bigger metaphysic. The modern belief is that grand philosophical narratives are strictly impossible, and are just the superstitious residue of a less enlightened age. 

Actually, these narratives are worse than that, for they are just an oppressive tool of some power-wielding minority. So long as this minority is white, male, and Christian. All others may control the Ring, e.g., women, blacks, homosexuals, etc. So long as they're leftists. In other words, just hand the Ring over to the progressive Orcs, or else!

This hypocrisy reminds me of an aphorism, that

Philosophers often start from their conclusions in order to invent their principles.

Now, no one would accuse the left of engaging in serious philosophy as opposed to spinning out fairy tale narratives for the most childish among us. 

As it applies to the question of whether God is powerless in the face of autonomous man's refusal, one approach begins with the conclusion that God does not exist, therefore it's a silly question. 

The other side begins with the conclusion that God is omnipotent, therefore, of course our No! doesn't enter into it, and is part of the plan.

But I say, get a bigger metaphysic, one that can reconcile divine and human freedom.