Metaphysical Adventures and the Outlaw Universe

Everything is trivial if the universe is not engaged in a metaphysical adventure. --Dávila 

One definition of adventure is a wild and exciting undertaking (not necessarily lawful). However, as Rabbi Zimmerman reminds us, To live outside the law you must be honest. Which is what we shall call an orthodoxymoron, i.e., "conjoining contradictory terms (as in `deafening silence')," only as an expression of orthodoxy.

Every truth is a tension between contradictory evidences that claim our simultaneous allegiance.

And 

Two contradictory philosophical theses complete each other, but only God knows how.

Ortho-doxy is, of course "correct opinion," which is itself an orthodoxymoron, being that opinions are about the truth, not truth itself. Nevertheless, since "Whatever is comprehended by a finite being is itself finite," it seems we are unavoidably plunged into a postmodern Dudism such that

However, for the Christian Dudist,

Truths are not relative. What is relative are opinions about the truth.

In the final unalysis, 

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

Or, more simply.

Truth is a person.   

Thus -- in another seeming orthodoxymoron -- 

The truth is objective but not impersonal.

How to squeer this absurcularity?

The sixth chapter of Metaphysics for Everyone is about Bérard's own adventure in metaphysics. It's an adventure because, in the words of the interviewer, "when one undertakes this journey, one cannot know in advance what to expect." 

Remember, metaphysics must ultimately end in a place where metaphysics cannot go, just as the Big Bang ends in a place where science cannot go. Science requires time, but there is no time "prior" to the Big Bang. Or at any rate, a different kind of time, i.e., kairos vs. chronos:

To repeat something from a few posts back, intelligence "is obliged to surpass itself, to abandon its paltry conceptual light for a beyond," and metaphysics "leads to its own erasure because it takes us beyond the pure and simple conceptual."

But in this context faith isn't just anything -- it is not an irrational assent to a proposition; it is perception of a special order of realities. Thus,

There is some collusion between skepticism and faith: both undermine human presumptuousness.

It seems you humans are embarked an a temporal adventure in the atemporal.

I'll let Gemini handle that one:

That's a fascinating perspective. It's a poetic way to describe the human experience, where we are both temporal beings, bound by the constraints of time, and yet capable of transcending time through our thoughts, emotions, and creativity.

We live in the present moment, anchored to the linear progression of time. Yet, our minds often wander into the past, reminiscing on memories, or into the future, anticipating hopes and dreams. In a sense, we exist in a timeless realm of imagination and possibility, where the boundaries of time and space dissolve.

This duality of existence is a unique aspect of the human condition, and it's a profound mystery that has captivated philosophers and mystics for centuries. 

Back to Bérard, he writes of a "two-step cure," whereby the "first stage is left to man's freedom and the second left to the bounty of God" -- or let us say "nature and grace," respectively. Or even (↑) and (↓) if you like. For what even is freedom if it is not ordered to its telos?

Nothing?

Correct you are.

Freedom is not an end, but a means. Whoever sees it as an end in itself does not know what to do with it when he gets it.

A progressive leftist.

Correct again. And only persons are free, whether divine, angelic, or human, thus

The permanent possibility of initiating a causal series is what we call a person.

Recalling everything said above about persons and truth.

"For the highest paradoxes, the truth appears closest at hand" (Bérard). One might even say that paradox is the threshold of truth. 

Example?

"One God in three persons, true man and true God, immanence and transcendence. And there are many others" (ibid.). 

After publishing his first book, Bérard "had the feeling of having gone to the end of what we could know and of contemplating the eternal truths, dare I say." I know that feeling, hence the perfect nonsense bracketing my own book. 

Nowadays, "I live every day in the sublime atmosphere of the Christian mysteries, which I have approached once and for all." In other words, he took the plunge beyond physics and metaphysics into the heart of the martyr and crux of the master, so to speak. 

Which gave rise to a second little book, a "grande finale of metaphysics" into "the 'Beyond of being,'" which makes me wish I could read French, because it must be quite the adventure. "The best knowledge of Christian mysteries stops at insoluble paradoxes," at which point it is "necessary to 'jump into the void,'" and why not? For

it is not only the rational knowledge of God that stops at paradoxes; it is the same as far as knowing the world, man, and society....

"Everything that is to be known comes up against paradoxes," but "there is a possible knowledge, itself paradoxical," i.e., "knowledge by paradox," such that "the paradox obliges us to realize that reality is beyond it."

Where have I heard this before?

The man does not escape from his prison of paradoxes except by means of a vertical act of faith.

"Behind this paradox I see a reality of a relational order, and therefore the need to formulate a metaphysics of relationship."

Same.

On the one hand, "Ultimately, the only thing we know is that we know nothing." On the other, "the opposite of knowledge is not ignorance, but certainties."

Waitwut? I surely don't know what to make of this post. Was it a trainwreck? Or just the end of the tracks?