Cosmic Bridge Repair

FYI, the following cogitations -- pneumatations? -- were provoked by a chapter called The Analogy of Truth, in the book The Thomistic Response to the Nouvelle Théologie. 

I'm pneumatating on it because it provoked more thoughts than I could follow up on or digest at the time. I suppose I was struck by certain language that is reminiscent of Schuon, but from an unlikely source, Garrigou-Lagrange, a strict, no-nonsense Thomist.  

For example, "Only the Divine Truth is perfect, 'absolutely absolute.'" That sounds very much like Schuon, right down to the capitalized terms. "All other truths are complex and deficient," i.e., number two or lower. These latter 

imitate the simple truth, but in their multiplicity, they cannot equal it. They are, in a word, truths that are analogous to the First Truth (italics in original).

This means that we could add up all the lesser truths -- and there is a virtual infinitude of them -- but their sum would not equal this First Truth, i.e., the Absolutely Absolute. 

Hmm. Perhaps this has something to do with Infinitude, which must be the first entailment of the Absolute. 

just as the multiplicity of creatures imitates the simplicity of the Divine Infinite without any of these fragmentary images on its own... being able to claim that it is the perfect image, so too the multiplicity of truths imitates the Simple, Infinite, Eternal Truth, which infinitely surpasses each of these truths. 

In other words, none of the "fruits" of infinitude -- nor their sum -- add up to the transcendent Absolute; each is a kind of fractal image that may be situated somewhere along the vertical flowchart, which is to say, the more or less Perfect. But -- obviously -- all earthly perfections don't add up to Perfection as such, for they are at once mirrors and shadows of the Perfect. 

Unless you have a better -- which is to say, more perfect -- idea of how all this perfection exists down here.

So, -- and this is Bob speaking -- every truth is an imitation of the Simple, Infinite, Eternal Truth that infinitely surpasses it, with this difference: man alone has the (vertical) freedom to consciously participate in -- which is to say, move toward or away from -- this Eternally Perfect Truth. 

Unless you have a better -- which is to say, more veridical -- idea of how all this truth exists down here.

Just as creation is the nexus between time and eternity, man is the bridge. But at some point in mythic timelessness there was some sort of ontological bridge collapse. Nor does man have the know-how or be-who to repair the bridge, meaning that the reclamation project has to be undertaken from God's end.  

In a way, History is the history of man's various attempts to repair the bridge, but -- you will have gnosissed -- these are always bridges to nowhere, since no tower is tall enough to reach the Absolute, nor any amount of babbling equal to Infinitude. The best human system will never be the best possible system, and besides, Gödel.

Speaking of whom, Gödel did not take this to mean that we are thereby condemned to relativism; rather, to the contrary: that man has access to truths that he cannot prove. 

For example -- Bob speaking -- intelligence as such has access to the Absolute, whether explicitly or implicitly. Again, any truth is anchored in the Truth as such that is its principle.

I can explain that, but I'm going to let Bina and Ziarani handle it. They begin with the question, "how do we know if anything is true?" Notice that the question presupposes the existence of the very thing it wants to prove, truth. Is there any way around this "faith" in truth?

We could say, for example, that the truth is "logical," but who says logic is true? Certainly not Gödel, since logic is tautological, nor is our selection of premises dictated by any logical operation. And besides, how does logic get here, and how is it that man has unique access to it? 

Does sense experience give access to truth? No doubt, except to say that empiricism itself is not an empirically verifiable belief system, nor is any belief system.

There's no way around it:

before we can begin to look for the criterion of truth, we have to ascertain that there is such a thing as truth. 

And "unless one accepts that there is indeed such a thing, nothing holds: remove truth, and everything collapses."

Everything? Yes, vertically speaking there is a total collapse. Of that Bridge referenced above. Truly truly, nothing holds, and it holds nothing.

Not only does one have "to assume that there is such a thing as truth before one presents any reasoning," but one must also assume that it can be symbolically formulated and communicated to other minds, and this presumes a cosmos so peculiar that it would take some kind of soph-styled meta-poet to even attempt a description. Petey once took a stab at it, and only his absence of a body saves him from the Eternal blush and Absolute cringe:

Brahmasmi the Truth. The whole Truth. Nothing but the Truth. So ham, me God. We'll meet again. Up ahead, 'round the bend. The circle unbroken, by and by. A Divine child, a godsend, a bloomin' yes.

Hard to say, but I think what this big apophat-head is trying to say is that this divine child was sent here on a mission to repair the bridge, or something.