We're still in a metaphysical mood, having now moved on to The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being. However, we haven't made enough headway to relate anything new. The author is intensely methodical, so the going is slow.
Well, maybe a few highlights: it is
impossible for truths which have been revealed to us by God to be contrary to those instilled in us by nature.
In fact,
in the things we understand through natural reason we find certain likenesses of things which are revealed to us through faith.
The following passage goes to the up-and-down, or inductive and deductive, approaches to ultimate reality:
Because philosophy considers created things as they are in themselves, it begins by studying them and moves on to take up issues concerning God himself only at the end of its investigation.
one should follow the reverse order, beginning with a study of God, and only subsequently considering creatures insofar as they are ordered to and related to God.
Now, I suspect the two approaches are not only complementary but fractals of each other, and why not?
Does this mean that metaphysics and theology are one and the same science? No, only that they have one and the same object.
Except to say that theology must ultimately be meta- to metaphysics, accessing directly what metaphysics can only access indirectly. Metaphysics can never quite reach the interior of God per se, even while establishing his existence with certitude.
However, as per the above, once Thomas rises to the Principle, he too schusses down the mountainside, taking everything below into consideration, as illuminated by the Principle(s).
Here's how Garrigou-Lagrange describes Thomas's vertical circularity: he
marches steadily onward to that superior simplicity..., a simplicity pregnant with virtual multiplicity.... [T]he saint's progress is a slow, hard climb to the summit of the mountain, whence alone you can survey all these problems in a unified solution....
He exemplifies his own teaching on "circular" contemplation, which returns always to one central, pre-eminent thought, better to seize all the force of its irradiation. His principles, few in number but immense in reach, illumine from on high a great number of questions.
Again, the great cosmic circle of metaphysical contemplation begins from below, ascends upward, and then returns down, only now equipped with the principles that illuminate this downward path and everything encountered along the way.
Herebelow, things can either exist or not exist, irrespective of their essence. Only at the summit of metaphysics do essence and existence coincide, such that in God alone are they one: God's essence is to exist, and existence is his essence. This is the final truth arrived at by reason in its vertical ascent:
this supreme truth is the terminus, the goal, of the ascending road which rises from the sense world to God, and the point of departure on the descending road, which deduces the attributes of God and determines the relation between God and world.
Knowboarding back down the slope,
Many positions which we have already met on the ascending road now reappear, seen as we follow the road descending from on high.
So, be nice to those discarnate nonlocal intelligences on the way up, because you'll meet the same ones on the way down.
He would essentially say that there is Reality and that there are appearances, the latter being a consequence and prolongation of the former. Thus, appearances are at once distinct from the Principle, and yet "not not" the selfsame principle in the mode of appearances.
This realization is possible not just because of the ascent described by Thomas, but because we too are "not not" the Principle, since there are traces of the latter in everything (recalling the fractal nature of reality mentioned above).
Obviously we are not God, but the fact that we are in his image and likeness means we're not exactly not God either. Anything purely not-God would be nonexistent, precisely, and we're frankly better than that. In all humility, in a vertical cosmos we're potentially better than everything below us but not as better as everything above.
Gemini, just for fun, give us an image of "man is a fractal of God." And not just a picture of Christ, because that's too easy.
In all humility, in a vertical cosmos we're potentially better than everything below us but not as better as everything above.
ReplyDeletePrecisely!
The Good Dr's post is a dreamy and surreal treat, studded with intriguing illustrations. I had a surreal event today which I can add here:
ReplyDeleteWhile watering plants the hose, running too fast, uprooted a thirsty young plant. I had a reverie, in which I imagined myself with my squad running toward an exposed enemy group which had failed to post a sentry. We were just seconds away from hosing them all; the thought of the impending murders quickening each man's legs; double time, double time.
I catch a nondescript old civilian man from the corner of my eye, standing by the dirt track.
He takes his right hand out a shabby trouser pocket and holds it up like he is the Statue of Liberty and is hoisting the torch. The hand blazes with an intense neon blue light. There comes a deep rumbling from the vault of heaven, and the sky from horizon to horizon turns an intense and lurid blue.
My mind turns into a deep blue screen as reality is blotted out. There is a feeling like a full body orgasm blasting into my cranium; it is overweening, paralyzing. Myself and every man in my squad drops to their knees, weapons clattering to the ground, heads bowed, drooling.
I feel a warm hand on the back of my head, moving down to grip my neck, and every question I had ever had about anything was answered; I as completed. The mission was over. The war was over. I was free.
The stream of the blue washing over me and through me begins to wash my substance away; I began to fray and tatter around the edges. This force was too strong to bear and the tingling bliss mounted to frightening levels. I knew it was death to stay in it.
At the last possible instant it subsided and I lay on the dirt track slowly dissipating the energy like a red hot rock taken out of a fire.
The old man was gone. The enemy group lay sprawled upon the ground to our front. I knew after a time I would get up and I would go to them, and we would lay plans to build a church on this spot to commemorate this event.
The reverie ended and I said out loud "blue hand" like it meant something. I have no idea what it meant. The reverie was some kind of metaphysical thinking so I put it in the comments section here. I guess its my way of doing philosophy. The good Dr. I suppose, when he writes his posts, goes into reveries.
Love from Trench.,