The gap of the Gods. I thought that was a pretty good line to describe the Spirit. It deserves more than an ignominious burial under the next shovel of pneumabobble.
Exactly what couples a couple? What is the nexus between two whos -- the we between the I am and the you are?
Who is the third who walks always beside you? / When I count, there are only you and I together / But when I look ahead up the white road / There is always another one walking beside you
He doesn't exactly say. But speaking of the coupler, yesterday I was perusing a book called Conversations with Walker Percy, he being the Catholic novelist who also wrote a mock self-help book called Lost in the Cosmos. In general he preferred to incarnate his novel ideas via character, but in one of these conversations he delves into metaphysics and his theory of language, suggesting that
it is more or less obvious that there is such a thing as a "coupler," an agent which couples, just as in Descartes' Cogito, there is an "I'" which thinks. If subject and predicate or name and thing are coupled, there is a coupler.
For example, to say I think, therefore I am presupposes an implicit link -- a mysterious coupler -- between the two affirmations, and it turns out that this coupler is -- in my opinion -- everything.
If subject and predicate or name and thing are coupled, there is a coupler. I do not presume to say what it is.
He cites the famous example of Helen Keller, who "couples the liquid water" -- or the experience of wetness -- "with the word 'water.'"
He refrains from speculating on the ontological status of the coupler, only that there is one.
Where does this leave us? We'll put it in the vertical hopper for now, and hopefully return to it as the post proceeds.
Back to the book Pneumatology. Kärkkäinen adverts to "the communion of the Holy Spirit" which ultimately encompasses
the whole "community of creation," from the most elementary particles to atoms to molecules to cells to living organisms to animals to human beings to communities of humanity.
Different comm-unities, same coupler that unites them? For it seems there is a "fellowship as process" which lives "from the exchange of energy with them," such that "Any kind of community of creation is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit."
Lots of peaches to unpack from that fruitcase. What is the ontological glue that binds these diverse manifestations of community-in-process? Why, it's none other than the gap of the Gods: the Spirit is "guiding, luring, wooing, influencing, drawing all humanity, not just the church."
Wooing? Is that too woo-woo? Or not enough?
Back to Helen Keller's water, only transposed to a higher key: conversion "can be described as... an event of the life-giving Spirit. It is living water within, springing up to eternal life."
Let's bring in a coonsultant, Stanley Jaki, whose book Means to Message says it all in the title:
philosophy and science depend on a means, an object, some physical reality, which even spoken words are, as the carrier of their message.
The coupler? Kärkkäinen writes that
Father and Son are not two, but they are not one either; it is the Spirit who unites and distinguishes them.... To use an ancient metaphor, the Father is the source of the river, the Son is the river that flows from the source, and the Spirit is the ocean in which the river ends.
A blissful wave of the immortal now, rising forth from the effulgent sea of existence. inhere in here... A drop embraced by the sea held within the drop.
Consciousness tends, like a spider, the lexical web, in order to capture the ideas that fly into the interior spaces like drunken insects.
Everything is a drunken insect caught in the conscious web of the One, the Two, and the Coupler.
3 comments:
For example, to say I think, therefore I am presupposes an implicit link -- a mysterious coupler -- between the two affirmations, and it turns out that this coupler is -- in my opinion -- everything.
...
"Any kind of community of creation is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit."
Heavily implying that the space between the notes, so to speak, isn't empty, but to the contrary it is, in a sense, pregnant with potential.
Everything is a drunken insect caught in the conscious web of the One, the Two, and the Coupler.
Ha - indeed.
I will offer military metaphors to illustrate the Coupler of which Bob writes.
-When the drill officer barks out "All right you pukes fall in, we're going for a little twenty mile hike," the coupler between the officer and the plebes is the gruff sound of his voice.
-When the TOW missile bursts from its container and speeds towards the armored troop carrier trailing two copper wires, guidance is transmitted over those wires to home the missile on to the target. The wires are the coupler.
-When the line officer gets on the radio to request artillery support, the officer shouts out the coordinates of the target to the battery CO, and the singing of the shells is soon heard overhead. The radio waves are the coupler there.
-When the 12cm howitzer shell smashes into the enemy dugout and scatters lethal shrapnel into the unfortunate occupiers, the coupler was the powder charge that propelled the shell.
Those metaphors are probably not that easy to link to daily spiritual practice, however, it is good to remember that God is your Commander in Chief, Jesus is his Chief of Staff, and Divine orders come via the Holy Spirit. Be it though an angel, be it through intuition, be it through some kind of physical sign, or be it through a gut feeling, you had better obey that order or you could face disciplinary action.
Be vigilant. You are a soldier. Not every little whisper in the wind is the Holy Spirit speaking to you. You got to get real good at discerning the true signal from the constant enemy radio agitprop or the adversary playing ding-dong ditch. Make getting sharp at telling the difference your top training goal.
And keep your rifle clean and your formal uniform pressed. Or whatever tool and garb you use for your specialty. Don't be lazy. Expect to repel an attack, or launch a rescue mission, or go to a formal dance ball for officers, at a moment's notice. It's all in the life of the soldier.
Ok that's all, fall out, dis-missed. Be in the rack by 2100.
"...to say I think, therefore I am presupposes an implicit link -- a mysterious coupler..."
I kant give Descartes any grace on that, as the coupler 'therefore' is a feature of logic which his entire notion violates and corrupts.
I can however imagine a Maker who makes a box, we'll call it a cosmos, and in that box he makes a smaller box. It's there any part of that box that you can imagine is not in that box? When you look inside, there's only the box, but you can't think of that interior box without also thinking of the box which contains it.
Now amp that up by a dimension or three, and the coupler might as well.
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