The First & Last Conspirality Theory

The analogy of being means that the world, or creation, is an analogy of the Creator, such that there is a "similarity-in-difference," even though the differences infinitely surpass the finite similarities. 

Nevertheless, for the forensic metaphysician, divine fingerprints are everywhere, in that all of being bears traces of its transcendent source.

God is infinitely close [immanent] and infinitely distant [transcendent]; one should not speak of Him as if He were at some intermediate distance.

What's the alternative? Well, there are two, and they are equally problematic, pantheism to one side (God is completely immanent in creation) and "theopanism" to the other (God is completely transcendent, with no relation to what he created). 

But there are plenty of hints in scripture that hints of God are to be deuscovered everywhere, beginning with the rumor -- which I didn't start -- that man is made in the image and likeness of the Creator, or later with Paul's crack that "From the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator," and why not?

Indeed, the very possibility of metaphysics and natural theology is grounded in the analogy of being. I go further, and say that the very possibility of truth itself is so grounded, and why not? If truth isn't even true, then to hell with it: we are all sealed in a dreary lifetime of tenure, with no way of gradualating up and out. 

For example, the Incarnation -- the union of divine and human natures -- would be impossible if these two "were totally alien and in principle incompatible with one another." But if they were identical, then no Incarnation would be necessary.

Much of this is familiar to us thanks to Voegelin's concept of the in-between, which is to say, the dynamic space we inhabit between immanence and transcendence, for God himself 

is at once immanent (which rules out every Gnostic dualism) and transcendent (which rules out every monism and pantheism).

And we all know what Voegelin says about the essence of modernity being a kind of Gnostic revolt that immanentizes the eshcaton. God is always both in and beyond, and that's just the way it is: the possibility of analogy occurs in the space in between these two existential poles.

Is the world real? Yes and no: reality is certainly not nothing, but nor is it everything, for even our little slice of reality is an analogy of the Real: 

mutable and finite things are grounded in their ultimate essence in something immutable and infinite, which is essentially distinct from them" (Przywara, in Betz).

Likewise, for Augustine, God is

in all things but at the same time beyond all things, a God who is comprehensible in creatures who are His image, yet incomprehensible in His inmost essence (ibid).

So, metaphysics is a kind of comprehensibility that partakes of an even greater incomprehensibility, which is why in the end apophatic (negative) always surpasses cataphatic (positive) theology: we can always say more -- this blog proves it -- but the last thing we can say cannot be said. God is infinitely intelligible until he isn't intelligible at all. 

Sounds paradoxical, but ten out of ten mystical theologians say it is thoroughly orthoparadoxical. What's the big deal, so long as we bear in mind that the the divine deal is always bigger then we can imagine? 

Now, this business of the fall. I can't help thinking that it is, among other nuisances, a fall into Voegelin's Gnosticism in one form or another: "fallen reason"

tends to miss the mark [which is the literal definition of sin]: either by absorbing transcendence into immanence (pantheism) or by absorbing immanence into transcendence (theopanism). 

But in reality, we are always situated within "a dynamic transcendence within every declared immanence." 

So near and yet so far! -- and for the same reason, for "the more inwardly and intimately one with God one becomes, the more one's reverence for the Divine Majesty grows." And "Even the greatest finding is but the beginning of a new searching." 

And again, the Gnostic world is either "essentially alien and independent of God" or else "the creature is willy-nilly absorbed into God," both paths redounding to modern secularism. And here we are.

Apologies for the repetition, but the book is a bit repetitive. I'm trying my best to boil it all down to the essential point, and save readers $60 in the process. I am presently flipping from page to page, and will try to avoid belaboring a dead horse. 

The author also spends a lot of time debunking various metaphysical bunkum artists, but we needn't detain ourselves critiquing the likes of Hegel or Heidegger. Let the dead bury the tenured. 

Likewise the Protestant bigwig Karl Barth, who claimed that the analogy of being was an invention of the Anti-Christ. Which seems a tad harsh, but Luther started it. 

It comes down to whether this is an open cosmos -- still open for isness despite the fall -- or whether it is fundamentally closed at the top unless and until God reopens it from his end via the gratuitous and totally unanticipated event of the Incarnation.

I believe I see a window at the top of that image, but is there a Door and a Way through it, or am I missing the yoke? 

The Incarnation could never have been predicted from our end, but once here, it is not a fundamental contradiction, i.e., opaque or repugnant to reason. Rather, it makes a lot of sense in the Grand Scheme of things. Maybe it's not the solution I would have come up with, but maybe I'm not God.  

Yeah, I get it: this gratuitous bridge of Light is a kind of inoculation against our own presumption, but c'mon, man: Jesus is still one of us, otherwise he too is incomprehensible.  

If there weren't some kind of analogy between man and God, how could God become one, and what could it possibly mean for us that he is one of us? Surely Jesus is withus and beyondus, or what's the point? Seems to me that the Incarnation is the first & last Word in the analogy of (human) being. 

Christ is the truth. What is said about him are mere approximations to the truth.

Since that is more or less the end of the chapter, I suppose it's a neat way to end this post. There is much more to go, so we'll beginagain tomorrow, as usual.