Ironically, The Argument Continues

Change my mind:

God is the eternal, infinite, and both transcendent and immanent source of all that exists, whose own existence is known rationally by the human intellect but whose mysterious nature and gracious purposes for creation require self-revelation to grasp (Mascall, emphasis mine).

THERE YOU GO AGAIN.

God is certain. You, on the other hand, are--

CONTINGENT?

Or mysterious. Let's just stipulate that there is Necessity and there is Contingency. This being the case, Necessity must be. It's just a matter of where we locate it, no?

For I've noticed that everyone -- no exceptions -- slips Necessity into their discourse, even if only implicitly, and even if they deny it. Likewise, we cannot eliminate Contingency:

We only get rid of the "inexplicable" at one point at the price of introducing it again somewhere else (ibid.).

It reminds me of what Robert Rosen says about the impossibility of reducing semantics -- meaning -- to syntax -- order. Likewise, you can only pretend to pull the subjective into the objective without any remainder. 

Rather, you're just deferring the deity of reckoning. Kicking the Kant down the road, as it were.

WHAT?

You heard me. Even if you say "ALL IS ONE," someone has to say it. It seems that your bottom line is IT IS, whereas my top line is I AM, and you can never derive the latter from the former. 

Once you eliminate the rabbit of subjectivity, you can't later pull it out of the objective hat. Granted, you are big hat, but you're just talking out of it. Or out of your aseity, as it were.

ASEITY?

Yes, it means self-derived, in contrast to being derived from or dependent on another; being self-existent, having independent existence.

You don't actually have that -- independent existence, I mean. 

SAYS WHO?

Says Who, that's who.

YOU ARE SO IRRITATING. I AM SURPRISED YOU HAVE ANY READERS AT ALL.

Who says I do. I hope!

This book I'm reading reviews Thomas' famous Five Proofs -- or Ways, rather -- and not only has no one ever disproven them, no one ever will, for they are as certain as Certitude itself. Put conversely, if we cannot be certain of God, then nor can we be certain of anything. Nevertheless,

It is easier to convince the fool of what is disputable than of what is indisputable.

A BOLD STATEMENT IN THESE POST-CRITICAL TIMES. YOUR NAIVETÉ IS TOUCHING.

And your absence of irony is ironic. For as the Aphorist said a couple of posts ago,

Even our favorite ideas soon bore us if we do not hear them expressed with irony, with grace and with beauty.

BUT A 13TH CENTURY PHILOSOPHER? GET WITH THE TIMES! 

There has not been an illustrious corpse that some cretin at some point did not disdain.

NO NAME-CALLING.

Besides, you cannot prove the truth by clock or calendar.

I distrust any idea that does not seem obsolete or grotesque to my contemporaries.

LOOK WHO'S TALKING.

It's called irony.

Impartiality is less attractive than the partiality that views itself with irony.

So, let's have another look at the Five Ways, but with some irony tossed in. I say they're ironic already, for God is the Great Ironist. For example,

Providence decided to give the democrat the victory and the reactionary the truth.

A CONSOLATION PRIZE?

Exactly. Ironically,

That which is incomprehensible increases with the growth of intelligence.

SO, THE MORE INTELLIGENT THE MORE IGNORANT?

You might say that. Bearing in mind that

There are types of ignorance that enrich the mind and types of knowledge that impoverish it.

WRONG.

There are those whose monosyllables are verbose.

Ironically. To be continued...

Interview with a Universe, Part 4

Every beginning is an image of the Beginning; every end is an image of the End. --Dávila

Let's try to wrap up this interview -- or what has turned out to be an argument clinic with a stubborn monistic materialist. I'll throw out the first pitch:

before the Big Bang there were no laws of physics. In fact, the laws of physics cannot be used to explain the Big Bang because the Big Bang itself produced the laws of physics (D'Souza).

TOLD YOU SO. 

You don't get it:

The laws of science are a kind of grammar that explains the order and relationship of objects in the universe. Just as grammar has no existence outside the words and sentences whose operations it defines, so too the laws of science cannot exist outside the universe of objects whose relationships they describe.

Therefore, just as we must defer to metaphysics to account for physics, we must posit O to account for you.

O?

Yes, the timeless, living, and intelligent source and ground of everything that is, and which most people call God.

YOU ARE SPECULATING.

We never speculate.

THOU SHALL HAVE NO REALITIES BEFORE ME.

the term before has no meaning since time itself did not exist "prior to" the singularity. Once upon a time there was no time.

I AM A PANTHEIST. SO SUE ME. 

Well, good. It's a start. 

In reality, pantheism consists in the admission of a continuity between the Infinite and the finite; but this continuity can only be conceived if it is first admitted that there is a substantial identity between the ontological Principle -- which is in question in all forms of theism -- and the manifested order, a conception that presupposes a substantial, and therefore false, idea of Being, or the confusing of the essential identity of manifestation and Being with a substantial identity. Pantheism is this and nothing else. 

HE LOST ME.

Principle and manifestation. No matter how you slice it, you are the latter.

WHY CAN'T I BE BOTH?

You can, but it reduces to idolatry. In reality, the source of being is beyond being.

THE BIBLE? PLEASE.  

The Bible... asserts clearly that time is finite.... [It] insists that the universe came into existence at a particular instant in time as an act of voluntary creation by an already existing supernatural being (D'Souza).

Creatio ex nihilo:

Obviously, creation “comes from” -- that is the meaning of the word ex -- an origin; not from a cosmic, hence “created” substance, but from a reality pertaining to the Creator.... 

Creation is the great “objectification” of the Divine Subject; it is the divine manifestation par excellence. It has a beginning and an end insofar as a particular cycle is envisaged, but it is in itself a permanent divine possibility, a metaphysically necessary objectification of the divine infinity (Schuon).

Creator's gonna create. Say what you want, but at least this vision accounts for life, subjectivity, and intelligence (and therefore science) without resorting to primitive magic. 

YOUR SARCASM IS UNCALLED FOR.

You started it. Besides, I'm being literal:

createdness is the sole alternative to the assumption that the existence of things is self-explaining (Jaki).

Genesis 1 may be a myth, but it is a myth that embodies a principle: the principle of creation. 

Creation is the nexus between eternity and history. 

And

Everything in history begins before where we think it begins and after where we think it ends.

So, pick a beginning, any beginning. There is something on the other side. Which is where meta-physics comes into play.

Oh, but it is a game!

Insofar as the scientist uses his scientific method, he has no right to talk of the Universe, or the strict totality of consistently interacting things. 

Nor is it possible

for scientists or for their instruments to go outside the universe in order to observe it and provide thereby an experimental verification of it (Jaki). 

There can be no science of the utterly unique. Therefore,

Nothing less than the creative initiative of a transcendent cause can render adequate sufficient reason for the emergence at the end of the cosmic story of this amazing microcosm, the human person that integrates within itself all the levels of creation from the lowest material to union with the highest spiritual, the Author of the whole story himself (Clarke).

For

the intelligibility of being -- all being -- is inseparable from the context of persons: it is rooted in personal being, flows out from it, to other persons, who complete the circle by returning it back again to its personal source. In a word, the ultimate meaning of being is: Person-to-Person Gift (Clarke).

So I think a little gratitude is in order. 

THANKS FOR NOTHING.

And the creation therefrom.

Interview with a Universe, Part 3

 The sole proof of the existence of God is his existence.

THAT'S NOT AN ARGUMENT, IT'S A TAUTOLOGY.

No it isn't. 

WHAT DO YOU MEAN, NO? THAT IS NOT AN ARGUMENT EITHER, IT'S JUST A CONTRADICTION.

No it isn't. God is our word for the meta-principle, the Principle of principles, that from which everything else flows downward.

AN ARGUMENT IS A CONNECTED SERIES OF STATEMENTS INTENDED TO ESTABLISH--

Truth.

AND WHAT IS TRUTH?

Glad you asked. 

Cards on the table: God is either impossible or necessary. But he is not impossible. Therefore he is necessary. 

Alternatively, we could say with Lonergan that if the totality of reality is completely intelligible, then God exists. But the totality of reality is completely intelligible. Therefore God exists.

NO HE DOESN'T.

Now you're just contradicting me.

LOOK, IF I ARGUE WITH YOU, I MUST TAKE UP A CONTRARY POSITION.

Yes, but an argument is an intellectual process... contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says--

NO IT ISN'T.

Let's try another approach: the universe exists.

AGREED.

And it is intelligible.

UP TO A POINT.

Who defines the point?

YOU DO, ACCORDING TO KANT. I AM THE THING ITSELF. YOU, ON THE OTHER HAND, KNOW ONLY MY PHENOMENA.

Yes, but the phenomena are of the reality, precisely--

HOW DO YOU KNOW? 

How do you not know? For if we don't know the thing itself, how can we even say it exists? Wouldn't knowledge reduce to dreaming about a hallucination?

YOU'RE GETTING WARMER.

I see. So you're a nihilist. 

AND YOU CAN ONLY PRETEND NOT TO BE. YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO BILL MAHER.   

It is you who pretend to place limits on man's intellect, but Wittgenstein says that "to limit thought you must think both sides of the limit." For example, back when our country had a boundary we didn't have to live in Mexico to know that Mexicans lived there.

I DON'T DO POLITICS. SPEAKING OF ARGUMENT CLINICS.

Better yet, Schuon says that 

One of the keys to the understanding of our true nature and our ultimate destiny is the fact that the things of this world never measure up to the real range of our intelligence. Our intelligence is made for the Absolute, or it is nothing.

AREN'T YOU SPECIAL.

That's a good point, because I don't see you arguing with rocks or planets or animals. Doesn't the fact that we are having this argument imply something unique about man?

THAT'S ONE WAY OF PUTTING IT. LET'S JUST SAY I'M NOT IMPRESSED BY MAN'S CEASELESS DISAGREEMENTS.

God exists for me in the same act in which I exist. 

Which is to say that you too only exist due to a prior act of God: yesterday we spoke of the instantaneous creation of all time and space out of a primordial event we call the Big Bang.

WHATEVER. THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE SAY NOTHING ABOUT MY LIMITS. I AM PARTIAL TO THE BIG BOUNCE THEORY, WHEREBY I CONTRACT AND EXPAND ETERNALLY. THERE'S NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT THE SO-CALLED BIG BANG OR ABOUT MY CURRENT PHASE OF EXPANSION.

In that case, you misunderstand your dependence upon God, which is vertical, not horizontal. Even supposing you are eternal, that doesn't account for your existence to begin with. Out of nothing, nothing comes.

WORD GAMES. WE ALREADY STIPULATED THAT I AM EVERYTHING.

We stipulated no such thing. I maintain that everything in time has a cause, and we make no exception for you -- that creation is the nexus between time and eternity, and God's creating is eternal, not this or that creature, no matter how big the creature. Creation is necessary, and everything necessary is eternal. You are not eternal, ergo you are created. 

SOUNDS LIKE MYTH TO ME.

The bridge between nature and man is not science, but myth.

Granted, you've been here a long time -- for all of time, supposing it co-arises with you. Even so,

Truth is in history, but history is not truth.

Not even your 13.8 billion year history. For it merely took that long for the emergence of truth-bearing primates. And last in execution is first in intent.

SO YOU ARE THE POINT OF MY EXISTENCE? GRANDIOSE MUCH?

Don't believe me, believe Stephen Hawking:

It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us. 

HAWKING IS ON MY SIDE, DOOFUS. I SAY HE'S BEING IRONIC. BESIDES, DIFFICULT IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE. 

Yes, but is it plausible that the many variables that govern the universe are so finely tuned as to make this argument possible? Change any one of them and neither you nor I would even be here. 

We will never know completely who we are until we understand why the universe is constructed in such a way that it contains living things (Smolin).

In other words, we can't explain what you are unless we can explain how you gave rise to me; or, more to the point, how the miracle of the human subject pops up in an immaterial cosmos. 

The first thing that should strike a man when he reflects on the nature of the Universe is the primacy of the miracle of intelligence -- or consciousness or subjectivity -- whence the incommensurability between it and material objects, whether a grain of sand or the sun, or any creature whatever as an object of the senses (Schuon).

We might say that from God's perspective, you are but a grain of sand compared to the intellect that knows the sand. I know what you're going to say, but you'll have to say it tomorrow. We'll leave off with this:

[I]t is in the dark stirrings of primeval organic substance that a principle of freedom shines forth for the first time within the vast necessity of the physical universe -- a principle foreign to suns, planets, and atoms.... 

[T]he first appearance of this principle in its bare, elementary object-form signifies the break-through of being to the indefinite range of possibilities which hence stretches to the farthest reaches of subjective life, and as a whole stands under the sign of "freedom".... even the transition from inanimate to animate substance, the first feat of matter's organizing itself for life, was actuated by a tendency in the depth of being toward the very modes of freedom to which this transition opened the gate (Jonas).

And here we are. 

Interview with a Universe, Part 2: On Absurdity, Tautology, and Transcendence

Let's reset. Is there anything on which we can agree this morning?

FOR STARTERS, I OBJECT TO THE TITLE: WHAT DO YOU MEAN A UNIVERSE? THERE IS ONLY THE UNIVERSE.

So, "all is one," so to speak?

CORRECT.

If this were true, how could anyone know it?

POINT WELL TAKEN. I SUPPOSE IT CANNOT BE KNOWN.

I say it can, which is why we have the word. No one has ever seen the Universe. Rather, it is an epistemological assumption -- that everything we perceive is part of a coherent system. 

OF COURSE I EXIST. DON'T BE ABSURD.

God is the transcendental condition of the absurdity of the universe.

I SEE. SO ABSURDITY IS PROOF OF GOD? I AM MAKING MY SKEPTICAL AFRICAN KID FACE.

Have you never wondered from whence you came?

I AM ETERNAL.

I understand the sentiment, I really do, but it turns out you are finite -- that not only did you have a beginning in time, but you are the beginning of time. There was no time prior to 13.8 billion years ago, give or take.

DOUBLETALK. 

No, tripletalk, but let's first lay a scientific foundation.  

The scientific encyclopedia will grow indefinitely, but about the very nature of the universe it will never teach anything different from what its epistemological assumptions teach.

 Or as we like to say around here, garbage in, tenure out.

PRIMITIVE NONSENSE. YOU JUST REJECT MODERNITY.

Anyone who has sensitivity and some taste can be persuaded that the modern world does not have its origin in what is admirable. It is a monster whose every alleged parent denies.

MORE AD HOMINEM. I AM HARDLY A MONSTER.

No, but you are a creature -- again, both you and time and everything else came into being at a precise point in timelessness -- or rather, as our resident Poet says,

A moment in time but time was made through that moment: / for without the meaning there is no time, and that moment / of time gave the meaning.

YOU SPEAK TO ME OF MEANING -- AS IF POETS, AND NOT I, ARE THE LEGISLATORS OF THE WORLD!

Waste and void. Waste and void. And darkness on the face of the deep.

THAT'S MORE LIKE IT. LIKE I SAID: ABSURD.

You keep saying that word. But 

Even if we keep silent about it out of courtesy: the majority of our listeners only oppose us out of ignorance.

Let's talk about absurdity, because you are half-correct, precisely.

For, as we touched on yesterday, the people we call existentialists are correct "in asserting that human life has no ultimate meaning that can be found within human life itself," but quite absurd in insisting "that no reason can can be found for the existence of the world outside the world itself (Mascall). 

Thus, the choice we face is "between ultimate irrationality and meaninglessness on the one hand and a transcendent ground of meaningfulness on the other (ibid.).

YOU KNOW WHERE I STAND.

Yes we do. But with all due respect, "this seems to be to be a very odd position in which to rest":

For it means that we can hope to receive answers to every conceivable question about the world and human life which our innate curiosity can suggest to us except the final and ultimate question, the question on which everything else depends, namely, why is there a world at all and what does human life ultimately mean? 

In other words, you -- the universe -- expect us to believe that you are thoroughly intelligible and yet ultimately unintelligible. Does this make sense to you? That your very sense is nonsense?

WHEN YOU PUT IT THAT WAY...

It is not our knowledge that sometimes makes us feel superior, but the quality of our ignorance compared to others’ knowledge.

 In other words, we at least know that we don't know. Unlike you.

We advise anyone who goes hunting for a precise explanation of the world to invent one. So that he runs less of a risk of believing in it.

I DIDN'T ASK YOU.

Our most urgent task is that of reconstructing the mystery of the world.

YES, SO LONG AS YOU REMEMBER THAT IT IS I THAT PRODUCED YOU, NOT VICE VERSA. 

Ethics is the first step in the descacralization of the universe.

MEANING WHAT, EXACTLY?

That the IS does not account for the OUGHT. Supposing we ought to believe that you are a self-sufficient explanation, why ought we believe it? For

When the fool learns that the proofs for the existence of God are invalid he automatically thinks that those for the existence of the world are valid.

I AM MY OWN PROOF.

Let's see you try to prove it and not descend into tautology. For we have a saying around here, that

If good and evil, ugliness and beauty, are not the substance of things, science is reduced to a brief statement: what is, is. 

THAT IS THE LAW: WHAT IS, IS.

If laws of history existed, their discovery would abrogate them.

YOU'VE CAUGHT ME OFF GUARD. LET ME THINK ABOUT THAT ONE.

While you're thinking about that one, consider this:

The tacit presuppositions of any science are more important than its teachings. Only what a science ignores about itself defines what it says.

And probably the most important thing that science ignores is Gödel: that a science can be complete or consistent, but never both. It seems that irony is baked into the cosmic cake, and that

Even our favorite ideas soon bore us if we do not hear them expressed with irony, with grace and with beauty.

One out of three isn't bad. Conversely,  

God is the region that one who walks forward finally reaches. One who does not walk in circles.

So, up and out of the intra-cosmic absurcularity. To be continued... 

Interview with a Universe

God is the term we use to notify the universe that it is not everything. --Dávila

Hello there universe! Consider yourself notified. Under subpoena, so to speak. You have the right to remain silent, but anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of Bob. But be careful --

I AM IMPORTANT! NOT LIKE EVERYONE SAYS... LIKE ABSURD... I'M IMPORTANT AND I WANT RESPECT!

The universe is important if it is appearance, and insignificant if it is reality.

Therefore you are appearance.

I DID NOT SAY THAT.

Oh, but you did. You can't even explain the existence of yourself, much less everything.

I AM EVERYTHING.  

Nothing is that simple, let alone everything. 

COME NOW. BE LOGICAL.

One word: Gödel.

ABSURD! 

Touched a nerve, eh? 

Man calls "absurd" what escapes his secret pretensions to omnipotence. 

SUCKS FOR YOU, BUT I AM NOT A MAN.

I thought you were everything.

SILENT!

God is the guest of silence.

THEN STFU!

He who does not believe in God can at least have the decency of not believing in himself.

IT IS NOT A MATTER OF BELIEF! 

Either God or Chance: all other terms are disguises for one or the other.

YOU ARE IN ERROR: I AM NECESSITY ITSELF!

If determinism is real, if only that can happen which must happen, then error does not exist. Error supposes that something happened that should not have.

Therefore, if I am wrong I am right.

SOPHISTRY! YOU ARE IN ERROR.

To admit the the existence of errors is to confess the reality of free will.  

YOUR SO-CALLED FREE WILL IS AN ILLUSION!

Stop yelling.

He who jumps, growls, and barks has an invisible collar and an invisible chain. 

OKAY, I WILL MAKE AN EXCEPTION. YOU ARE FREE. SO WHAT?

The free act is only conceivable in a created universe. In the universe that results from a free act.

A WISE GUY, EH? MATTER RULES!

The stone is right, wherever it falls. Whoever speaks of error postulates free actions. 

YOU ARE TRYING MY PATIENCE.

The determinist is impatient with his opponents, as if they had the freedom to speak as they wished to. Determinists are very irritable people. 

CALMER THAN YOU, DUDE. YOU ARE PRESUMPTUOUS.

To speak of God is presumptuous; not to speak of God is imbecilic.  

WHO ARE YOU TO CALL ME AN IMBECILE? DISGUSTING WORLDLING.

God is the transcendental condition of our disgust. 

WORD GAMES.

Because he does not understand the objection that refutes him the fool thinks he has been corroborated. 

AD HOMINEM. OR AD UNIVERSEM, AT ANY RATE. HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD OF A LOGICAL FALLACY? BESIDES, SCIENCE!

Why deceive ourselves? Science has not answered a single important question. 

DEFINE IMPORTANT.

Of what is important there are no proofs, only testimonies.

IRRATIONAL!

"Irrationalist" is shouted at the reason that does not keep quiet about the vices of rationalism.

MYSTAGOGY!

Mysticism is the empiricism of transcendent knowledge.

YOU SPEAK OF TRANSCENDENCE, WHEN THERE CAN BE NO SUCH THING.

Scraping the painting, we do not find the meaning of the picture, only a blank and mute canvas, Equally, it is not in scratching nature that we will find its sense.

I GIVE UP.

As do I.

God does not ask for the submission of intelligence, but rather an intelligent submission.

I REPEAT: I AM EVERYTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING. 

Here begins the gospel of Hell: In the beginning was nothing and it believed nothing was god, and was made man, and dwelt on earth, and by man all things were made nothing.

We'll give you the final word: let us stipulate that in the absence of God, the universe is, and must be, absurd.

the absurdists have given vivid expression to one truth of supreme importance, that the world does not make sense of itself (Mascall). 

And that Wittgenstein is correct:

In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists -- and if it did, it would have no value...

Therefore, 

The sense of the world must lie outside the world.  

YOU ARE TWISTING MY WORDS!

Now you've opened a whole new can of words, but we're out of time.

How to Build a Better Bob

The natural and supernatural are not overlapping planes but intertwined threads. --Dávila

If being precedes action -- which it must, because we must first exist in order to accomplish anything -- then

The Christian should be defined not in terms of what he himself does, but of what God has made him to be. Being a Christian is an ontological fact, resulting from an act of God (Mascall). 

Like a news species or something?

"If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature," and "there is a new creation." 

For real? This reminds me of the title of a post from way back -- something about natural selection and supernatural election. Again, the former only gets us so far -- essentially to a primate capable of hosting a human soul that by definition could not be produced by any amount of genetic shuffling. 

Rather, as mentioned a couple of posts ago, this is a "taking up" of the lower into the higher:

When, in the course of biological evolution some sub-human creature received from the Creator that spiritual soul which made him the first man.... we do not suppose that some sub-human element had to be removed to make room for it.

Rather, it is very much as if the sub-human was assumed into the human.... In other words, not "by the conversion of spirit into ape, but by the taking up of apehood into spirit."

Perhaps we could take this principle all the way down -- for example, biology isn't just an extremely unlikely arrangement of physics, rather, the taking up of insentient matter into Life. You could also say that the first nucleated cell was the taking up of prokaryotes into eukaryotes, or warmblooded animals the taking up of the reptilian into the mammalian.

Here again, as noted in that previous post, each of these things occurs without any destruction in the process. For example, look at our brains: a reptile wrapped in a mammalian mystery inside the enigma of a human neocortex. Moreover, McGilchrist reminds us that the left-right organization goes all the way down. 

So, No Destruction in the Process(es). And yet, Some Disassembly Required, as I put it in the book. For example, post-baptism I look about the same, or maybe a little younger. But they say baptism is both a rebirth and a death -- we die and are reborn "in Christ." 

The Cosmic bar mitzvah.

Good point. What happens in a bar mitzvah? Does it signify an ontological change, or is it just a way to get parents off the hook for the child's transgressions? 

A quick google search indicates that the ceremony not only marks "a child’s new intellectual and moral capabilities," but denotes full "entry of the holy soul in man."

In this sense the day of the Bar Mitzvah is his true birthday, the day on which he becomes a true emissary of G‑d charged with fulfilling the commandments. The word mitzvah in addition to meaning a commandment also has the meaning “connection.” It therefore follows that on the day of Bar Mitzvah, a true connection with G‑d has been established.

So, a real ontological change in the substance.

As for Christianity,

the basis of this ontological change by which a man becomes a Christian is the permanence of the human nature of Christ.... Becoming a Christian means being re-created by being incorporated into the glorified manhood of the ascended Christ (Mascall).

Well, good. Back to the question of supernatural election, "It is not just a matter of re-created men, but of a re-created human race."

Hmm. A new species, only one not brought about by natural selection? One doesn't have to be familiar with the lives of many saints to appreciate that they are as if a "new species" of man. In many ways, they are as different from fallen man as man is to the ape -- again, with no destruction, since grace only perfects nature. 

Arrogant? Presumptuous? Nah:

Nothing is as petty as not admitting how many people we encounter are superior to us. Inequality is an experience of the well-bred soul.

Conversely, equity is the doctrine of the ill-bred and soulless. Thus, the 

The noble one is not the one who thinks he has inferiors, but the one who knows he has superiors.

And respecting our superiors is above all a proof of good taste.  

Ultimately,

The human has the insignificance of a swarm of insects when it is merely human.

 Noted.

The question is, does man's nature "become supernaturalized, first in its essence, then, as man cooperates with grace, in its operations as well?" If being is prior to doing, then signs point to Yes, but let's keep flippin'. 

in baptism there is is a real supernaturalization of our human nature in its essence, which can result, if we co-operate with the grace of God, in a progressive supernaturalization of its operations and in the manifestation of supernatural virtues.

Progressivism, the real kind:

The soul is the task of man.

Orthoparadox: "the Christian is, in one sense, successively becoming what, in another sense, he already is." Like, say, Bob, only better. 

His life as a citizen of Earth continues, but he has a new and greater citizenship in Heaven.

So, we're vertical migrants, as it were? 

man is by nature a similitude of God, albeit an imperfect one, which grace will make perfect by transforming him, so to say, into his true self; the Christian life is a progressive transfiguration into the likeness of God, a realization of the eternal in time, and of the spiritual in the sensible, a transforming illumination of human nature. 

Sign me up!

Being & Doing, Necessary & Sufficient, Incarnation & Atonement

Even if he wanted to, God couldn't exactly "come down," since "heaven is not a 'place,' whereas earth is; or, if heaven is a place, it is one of a very different kind from earth" (Mascall). God can't go anywhere, because he's already there.

Hmm. He's got a point. How are we to think of this? "The 'descent' which we observe is relative not to heaven but to us" (emphasis mine). 

Perhaps it's analogous to how it appears from our perspective that the sun revolves around the earth: just as the sun doesn't ascend or descend, nor does God.

Thus, it is literally accurate to say that we can ascend, but a kind of convention to say that God descends (emphasis mine). 

And why does this matter, oh thrice-knowing Peltmaster?

I don't know yet, Petey. Parts of this book are rather dense with implicit meaning, so I'm just flipping one page at a time. I think Mascall is just re-emphasizing that the ↕ncarnation means we are "taken up" into Godhead, not that God himself has gone anywhere.  

The point is that

the Incarnation is not to be thought of as the compression of the divine Word within the limits of human nature but as the exaltation of human nature to the level of Godhead by its union with the Person of the divine Word.  

Besides, if not us, then who? "What more adequate instrument than a human nature could he assume?" After all, we are already the image and likeness, so there's a lot to work with. 

A few posts back we were wondering what sort of being man must be in order to be an adequate vessel for God's cosmic reclamation project, but

human nature is essentially finite and cannot itself bridge the gulf that separates the creature from Creator. But what it cannot do for itself, God can do for it.

At least in potential. That is to say, part of our standard equipment must include a "passive capacity" for this union, even if we cannot by our own exertions achieve it. 

For it seems there is a kind of barrier at the top of (↑) -- call it (⤒) -- unless God himself assumes (⤒) and removes or breaks through the blockage. 

Genesis 3 gives the image of exclusion from Eden as a flaming sword turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. Perhaps the bar at the top of (⤒) is that flaming sword, precisely. There's a way back, but we can't get there from here:

Even if he managed to make his most audacious utopias a reality, man would continue to yearn for otherworldy destinies. 

Man "is a terribly frustrated and mutilated version of what human nature is meant by God to be." In this condition we can see that there is a ceiling and a window, but is there a door? Yes, but it is locked from the inside.

 I am the door.

Who said that?! 

the ultimate purpose of the Incarnation is not just the re-creation of human nature in Jesus, but the re-creation of the whole human race into him.

There is Incarnation on the one hand, Atonement on the other, and it seems that the first is a necessary condition for the second; Jesus must first be in order to do. Do what? Atone. If we're on the right track, then Atonement must be the final removal of (⤒). Incarnation includes the assumption of our (⤒), and its transcendence.   

If the human race needed only to be restored in one concrete instance, then there would be no need of the Crucifixion.... [Jesus] has, in his own person but in [our] place, as the representative man, to reverse [our] sin. He has to meet the enemy which defeated [us] and defeat him.

Is there no other way? 

Christ "challenged and overcame the very forces to which man had succumbed.... For only God can pay the debt which man owes, and yet it must be paid in the person of man."

And only God can overcome man's ancient enemy, while the battle must be none the less fought in human nature, since its fruits are to be communicated to men.

I for one don't like it. It's not the religion I would invent. Too crude and barbarous for my delicate sensibilities. But it's not my call to make:

Christ has overcome the powers which enthrall us though they never enthralled him.... Since Christ is the universal man, his payment of our debt and victory over our foes were in actual fact our re-creation, even though the fruits of that re-creation can be produced only as, by grace, we live in him.

I don't know. You'll have to convince me. I'm still a little

Deep faith is only that of the skeptic who prays.

And the prayer is something like: God, help me become the person you intended for me to be. 

Mascall writes that 

Because the human nature of Christ is both assumed by him and sacrificed for us, the fruits of the sacrifice can be ours through incorporation into him. But this will be the subject of the next chapter (emphasis mine).

Okay. We've waited this long. We can wait another 24 hours.