I. Am. Adequate!

We begin with three aphorisms:

1. Reality cannot be represented in a philosophical model.

2. An adequate theology would be unintelligible to us.

3. Today we require a methodical introduction to that vision of the world outside of which religious vocabulary is meaningless. We do not talk of God with those who do not judge talk about the gods as plausible.

The first is a consequence of Gödel: as one fellow put it, all models are wrong, but some are even useful.

The second is a consequence of O, being that it is Infinite and we aren't. Again, we are conformed to it, but we can't be it without falling into the ontological beclownment described in Genesis 3.

But a vision is not exactly a model, and here we are: we need a cosmic vision in which to situate and make sense of revelation -- in particular, God's two big reveals, which is to say Incarnation and Trinity, the rest entailed in these.

Back to #2 for a moment, perhaps we should say fully adequate, because our lives come down to an unending, dynamic adequation between intellect and being. We're always on the way to the latter, AKA homo viator. There is a truth and a way, or to hell with it. 

Am I wrong?

The second aphorism also goes to apophatic theology, whereby, in the words of Thomas,

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

So, in the final unalysis, God is the known unknown or unknown known. Which is very different from the unknown unknown or the unknowable unknown, since we do at least know that we don't know, as per aphorisms 1 & 2.

I don't know, therefore I know. Which is better than knowing nothing at all. 

Before we venture any further, another key principle is the doctrine of creation, which accounts for both the hole in our soul and the whole in the soul. No, we're not just being cute, because the same principle -- creation -- accounts for both the intelligibility of being and its ultimate unintelligibility. 

As we've said before, we can know anything about everything, but we can never know everything about a single thing. Especially ourselves, for we are like unto a hole in the fabric of the whole. An undying fire -- like a burning bush that is never consumed or something. Speaking of visions.

And that is a key: yes, we are the image and likeness of God. But God is incomprehensible. Therefore we too are an unknown known or known unknown. Nevertheless, the mystery of man tells us a great deal about the mystery of being. 

I apologize for being so irritating this morning, but there is no end to the cosmic mischief that results from failure to remember this simple truth -- that we do not and cannot know ourselves.

Unless. 

Backing up a bit, we are currently reading a book called Theological Anthropology at the Beginning of the Third Millennium. We're only about a quarter of the way through, but it already has a number of good insights that go to the unless. Perhaps we can assemble these insights into a vision. 

If "humans are made in God's image, then our Christian task is to recognize this mystery, and to articulate it for our age of immediacy." I say there's no perhaps about it, and that we require a methodical introduction to that vision of the world outside of which religious vocabulary is meaningless.

Saint Augustine, are you thinking what I'm thinking? "His whole task" was

to know "God and the soul" and nothing more. Augustine thought that to know something of God was to appreciate more of the soul, and also that understanding the soul led to greater understanding of God.

Right on: same attractor. For "Augustine stressed a deep kinship in creation, and particularly between human persons," emphasis on the (great) In-Between. For example, 

it turns out that between friends who do not agree on things divine there cannot be a full and true agreement on things human either.

Which goes to the mysterious Third that draws two persons together:

Augustine thinks that the hearts of Christian friends can beat in accord, because they are in harmony with the love between the Persons of the Trinity. 

More generally, my friends, if someone loves the same things we do, this draws us closer together. Conversely, if someone hates those things we love... but enough about the left. For now, anyway. 

Let's brake for a vision: the vision of a Christological meta-anthropology revealing a relational ontology.  

The first essay of the book sketches out this imaginative vision, for "God did not accomplish the salvation of his people through dialectics." The author cites John Henry Newman, who

offered an "epistemology of the imagination" as a "key mediator between theology and spirituality."

He "always proposed the integration of rationality, heart and imagination, seeing the whole self as an instrument of truth." 

I would say not only the whole self as an instrument of truth, but the self as such -- which includes the faculty of visionary imagination, and the comm-unication of this vision to others.

In a way, this involves left and right cerebral hemispheres, so long as we bear in mind that neurology is a consequence of ontology, not vice versa: our brains are the way they are because reality is the way it is. We are conformed to being, not the other way around, or we are sealed in Kantian tenure.

Here's a comment by Ratzinger that goes to aphorism #1 above:

a philosophy that would insist on remaining a "pure philosophy" would be untrue to itself and would cease being philosophy.

The soul is not just rational, but because it is rational it is relational, which is to say, open. One author speaks of "the fundamentally relational character of the imago Dei," which "constitutes its ontological structure" and goes to "the roles of relationality and receptivity within the imago Dei." 

Openness and relationality, which is to (un)say O, (o) and (↑↓).  This is where we weave the cosmic area rug whose warp and weft are vision and intellect.

We'll keep weaving it in the next post.