Questions to Your Answers

Picking up right where we left off, "The answer will not help the man who has lost the question, and the predicament of the present age is characterized by the loss of the question rather than of the answer," and could you repeat the question?

We'll get there -- I hope -- but you're not wrong to ask, for "it will be necessary"

to recover the question to which... the philosopher could understand the gospel as the answer (emphasis mine).

Ancient Jeopardy? "I'll take Goddamn Right I'm Living in the Fucking Past for $600, Alex."

But it's not in the past:

Since the question concerns the humanity of man, it is the same today as it has ever been in the past, but today it is so badly distorted through the Western deculturation process that it must, first, be disentangled from the intellectually disordered language in which we indiscriminately speak of the meaning of life, or the meaning of existence, or the meaning which must be given to the fact of existence..., as if life were a given and meaning a property it has or does not have (emphasis mine).

Doesn't work that way -- never has and never will. I want to stay focussed on this chapter, but there is a passage from a later one that arrested my attention yesterday, that Life

is not a datum of experience insofar as it is not given in the manner of an object of the external world but is knowable only from the perspective of participation in it.

From the inside. And even then, we can only participate in a kind of game or play that was here when we arrived and will persist long after we're gone.  

Question: is it possible that something could occur in history after we exit the stage that completely alters the meaning of the play in which we acted and did our bit? Or does every human, by virtue of being one, have access to this transcendent meaning? Time out for a favorite aphorism:

In each moment, each person is capable of possessing the truths that matter.

Er, like now? 

Yes. What do you think a moment is? 

Hmm. So it is as if there is only the moment -- the human moment, as it were, and it is indeed a little difficult to appreciate that everyone in the past shared this same moment, which we might call the intersection of the vertical and horizontal -- or, as Voegelin puts it, "Man, while existing in time, experiences himself as participating in the timeless."

It's just that we have a *little*... blind spot, similar to where the optic nerve plugs into the retina. Coincidentally, this existential scotoma is called the "I" of the subjective storm. Or at the very least, this I has access to both appearances and reality, and to the extent that the former eclipse the latter, you're wasting away in Scotomaville.

But damn, sometimes it's hard to rise above the nonsense. It's downright disturbing:

The perspective of participation must be understood in the fullness of its disturbing quality.

Wait -- if you're not disturbed you're wrong, or something? 

Yes, but in all likelihood you're disturbed about the wrong things, or projecting your ontological Disturbance onto something less, e.g., politics, or gender, or race, or the weather, or whatever. Can't blame them, really. That's God's job. But

This situation of ignorance with regard to the decisive core of existence is more than disconcerting: It is profoundly disturbing, for from the depth of this ultimate ignorance wells up the anxiety of existence.

Hmm. Just spiritballin' here, but perhaps this Disconcerting and Profoundly Disturbing scotoma is the place where the Question (?!) arises and must arise and always arises? Maybe?

In which case we might propose an inverse aphorism, that In each moment, each person is capable of dwelling in the idiocies that don't matter -- or of denying those truths that do.

Just a little more of what Voegelin says about our disturbingly ambiguous and paradoxical situation, about which we must pull no punches (but which, we hope, will go to what we were saying about the Question to which the gospel furnishes the Answer):

man is not a self-contained spectator. He is an actor, playing a part in the drama of being and, through the brute fact of his existence, committed to play it without knowing what it is (emphasis mine).

It reminds me of when they film a movie to which no one has access to the whole script, which must be kept secret so spoilers won't leak to the public. For example, various alternate endings were produced for the Who Shot Mr. Burns? episode -- and to this day, there are conspiracy theorists and comic book guys who insist it wasn't really Maggie. Worst. Ending. Ever.

In any event, who among us hasn't found himself "in the situation of feeling not quite sure what the game is and how he should conduct himself"?  WHAT'S THE GAME and WHAT IS MY ROLE?

There is no vantage point outside existence from which its meaning can be viewed as a course of action charted according to a plan, nor is there a blessed island to which man can withdraw in order to recapture his self. The role of existence must be played in uncertainty of its meaning, as an adventure of decision on the edge of freedom and necessity (emphasis mine). 

Even for God? Or especially for God? Little help, Nicolás!

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.

What else ya' got?

For the Christian, history does not have a direction, but rather, a center.

The moment? Put it this way:

If history made sense, the Incarnation would be superfluous. 

In other words, it would not be the Answer to anything, or it would be the answer to an irrelevant question that no one is asking. 

But if we are honest, we have to begin by acknowledging that little blind spot:

At the center of his existence man is unknown to himself and must remain so, for the part of being that calls itself man could be known fully only if the community of being and its drama in time were known as a whole. 

Well... what if the end, the fulfillment, the cosmic punchline, the eschaton, the Omega, could be known? What if the end were made middle, so to speak, such that it were available in every moment? What if the drama were a Theodrama?

Best. Ending. Ever?

To be continued...