Concrete Principle and Abstract Entailments

Lonergan characterizes metaphysics as 

the department of human knowledge that underlies, penetrates, transforms and unifies all other departments.

In short, it involves the integration of “the totality of the objects of knowing” with “the totality of knowing”; ultimately, the diversity of objects is reconciled in the one Subject, irrespective of whether or not we are consciously aware of it, for every act of knowing is a participation in this Principle. Change my mind. On second thought, don't bother:

The foundation of metaphysical certitude is the coincidence between truth and our being; a coincidence that no ratiocination could invalidate (Schuon). 

We’ve written before of this primordial distinction of Subject <--> Object, and of how it must be the first meta-cosmic bifurcation. Different religions handle this bifurcation in different ways, but we may have to put them all together in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding. 

This is because Big Box religion tends to operate on a “need to know” basis, with this need being different, or at least a different aspect of the One Thing Needful being emphasized. 

For example, in Christianity it is salvation, but this hardly excludes growth in charity or all-around saintliness. Judaism emphasizes holiness, freedom (AKA exodus), and moral actions, while Vedanta hammers home the distinction between reality and appearances.

Those are simplifications, and one could go on, but this question of the One Thing Needful is rather large. Come to think of it, it’s got to be the largest thing conceivable, since, you might say, it is the very actualization of God in man, and nothing is bigger than God.

Think about the Incarnation, both as concrete fact and in terms of its many entailments. Of note, these entailments proceed both “up” and “down,” so to speak. For example, let’s say the Absolute Principle assumes human nature. So what? What's it to me?

Obviously a lot, only it’s not necessarily self-evident, hence the role of a teaching institution to draw out the implications, which are more or less endless. 

At the same time, proceeding upward, what does the bare fact of the Incarnation say about God? In other words, supposing the Incarnation occurs, it must be possible for it to occur, and by virtue of what principle?  

Long post short, I want to say Trinity. As we know, this word is nowhere found in scripture, and yet, it is the simplest way of talking about the up & down entailments of the Incarnation, if you’re following me. For what else can it imply when Christ says something like, for example, I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you? Moreover, he frames this not in terms of belief but knowledge.

What kind of strange knowledge is this, and how is it possible, because it doesn’t seem to follow Aristotelian logic or the usual scientific categories. Anything is a thing precisely insofar is it is this thing and not that thing. But here Jesus implies a world in which it is possible for one thing to be in another while not losing itself. Indeed, this is the ultimate context in which one finds oneself.

Slept late. To be continued...