Man in Search of God in Search of Man

I'm reading a book called Principles of Catholic Theology by Thomas Joseph White, the first of a projected four volumes that will seek 

to underscore the harmony of divine revelation and natural human reason, and acknowledge faith's deep unity with reason...

So, right up our alley. I was especially arrested by the following passages, since they go to one of our enduring preoccupations. White speaks of the two-way, "descending and ascendent wisdom" that must inform theology. Beginning at the top,

Theological wisdom by its very nature depends upon divine revelation and is therefore a descending form of wisdom, originating from above and outside the sphere of human intellectual accomplishment... 

So, (↓). Starting at the other end, "Philosophical wisdom is 'ascendent' in relation to divine revelation,"

insofar as it is the natural intellectual medium by virtue of which human beings may arrive rationally at posing ultimate questions regarding the origins and purpose of existence, the physical cosmos, living things, and human rational animals in particular.

Which sounds like (↑):

It is this ascendent sphere of inquiry that allows human beings to ask, and even answer in natural forms of reasoning, questions pertaining to the existence of God, the nature of the human person, the dignity of the spiritual soul, and the question of our human destiny in the face of death. 

Now, these two movements can never be separated, but nor should they be conflated, for 

The two forms of wisdom are distinct but complementary and potentially interactive.

Also, although they are complementary, as in all primordial complementarities one must be ontologically prior, and in this case it must obviously be (↓), for no amount of unalloyed (↑) can result in (↓). For it is written: No man can pull himself up by his own buddhastraps. 

Having said that, if we pull back for a wider perspective... Well, first of all, everything originates at the top, which we symbolize O. Therefore, (↓) is a kind of emanation from O, as (↑) is ordered to O. In short, (↑) is not just random, but rather, has its telos in O, which is why we call it the "divine attractor." 

Looked at this way, we might say that (↑) is already a form of (↓), and at the very least must be considered a Big Hint, since there is no drive or instinct without its proper object. Eyes are for seeing, wings are for flying, hunger is for food, minds are for knowing, and (↑) is for unknowing O.

That's as far as I've gotten in the book, but it implies somewhat of a simplification of the five-storey cosmos we were discussing in the previous post: there is the natural and the supernatural, linked by (↑↓). But what if there are more storeys to the story? 

Oldmeadow has a handy chart I wish I could reproduce, but you'll have to visualize it. At the top is Beyond-Being (i.e., the Godhead or O), followed by Being (the Creator or personal God), and that right there is going to be controversial from within an orthodox exoteric Christian perspective. For if this is an ontological and not just nominal distinction (i.e., between God and Godhead), then... we've got to do something about it!

Certainly I don't anticipate White going into this distinction, unless it's in the merely nominal sense of apophatic vs. cataphatic theologies. In other words, even -- or especially -- the most orthodox among us respect this human distinction and limitation, for example, Thomas:

This is the final human knowledge of God: to know that we do not know God.

On the one hand, "we can know him in as many ways as created things represent him," but if God can be known in his essence, only he could do so, for "Created things are not sufficient to represent the creator," and "Whatever is comprehended by a finite being is itself finite."

Hmm. Where does this leave us? Is there a loophole, or a way to penetrate this mystery a little more deeply?

Let's go back to Schuon's distinction in divinas between Being and Beyond-Being. If we are the terrestrial image and likeness, then perhaps this goes to the distinction in us between higher and lower modalities, i.e., between spirit/intellect and soul/psychic, which I symbolize (¶) and (•), respectively.  

This being the case, then (¶) would be ordered more directly to the unknowable and unspecifiable O. 

Schuon writes that 

In metaphysics, it is necessary to start from the idea that the Supreme Reality is absolute [O], and that being absolute it is infinite.... And that is infinite which is not determined by any limiting factor and therefore does not end at any boundary; it is in the first place Potentiality or Possibility as such... Without All-Possibility, there would be neither Creator nor creation...

Here we run into a problem, and a big one, even though for us it resolves an even bigger problem. But in the traditional Thomistic view, God is pure act, and therefore, absolutely devoid of potential. You could even say that if God has potential then he can't be God, because potency implies a lack of something, a privation which is yet to be actualized.

Last week I read something by Garrigou-Lagrange that may leave us a little wiggle room: that God is

immobile, not with the immobility of inertia, but with the immobility of supreme activity.

And what is that supposed to mean, i.e., the immobility of supreme activity? For it almost seems like an oxymoronic way to sneak potential in through the side door. It almost seems a way to speak implicitly of what Schuon characterizes more explicitly, again, that "God is the Absolute, and being the Absolute, He is equally the Infinite" (infinitude being All-Possibility, the very principle of creativity).

Oldmeadow goes on to explain that 

the theological language of exoteric monotheism tends to stop short at the fourth degree, which is to say that the two highest degrees [Being and Beyond-Being] are often assimilated in the notion of the Personal Creator God.

BUT

within esoteric Christianity -- in Eckhart, for instance -- the distinction between God and Godhead remains intact.

Except that Eckhart would never characterize himself as "esoteric," rather, fully orthodox, only more so, i.e., as following the implications all the way up. 

That's all I got this morning.