A Christian Bewilderness Adventure

My favorite kind! 

Christ went on such an adventure when he journeyed into the desert to be tempted by the devil. Likewise Abraham before him, who was called to a great mythadventure, not to mention Moses' forty years of wandering. 

Aren't these all metaphors for our own lives? Aren't we all wondering in the bewilderness, hoping for a promised landing?

Not to change subjects -- this will all tie together -- I hope -- but supposing God exists, because he cannot not exist, would you rather have a revelation that is absolutely true but unbelievable, or substantially true but believable? For it seems to me that the second will be more efficacious than the first, getting the essential points across in a way we can assimilate.

In fact, if we want to be literal about it, God can in no way convey the absolute truth to humans, since we would be instantly vaporized. Not literally, but it would be like staring directly at the sun, which radiates more light than our eyes are equipped to handle. Therefore, if he wants to be known, God must condescend to our level. He must embark upon an adventure in humanness.

Which means that the revelation will necessarily be a divine-human admixture, since the divine is expressed in human terms. But the human is already an expression of the divine, so why not? In all of creation, human beings have the closest resemblance to God, even if the differences are infinite. 

But this does help to make sense of the Incarnation, since God incarnates in the form of his most accurate reflection. Which is to say, not as a mountain, star, ocean, etc. Not to say that these can't serve as analogies to God, only that the analogies are far more distant.

Shifting gears again, I do my best to color within the lines of orthodoxy, but it's a challenge. I'm just not a joiner, nor can I stifle my own intellect, let alone conscience. Or intuitions. All of us are mysteriously drawn to some things and repulsed by others, and one man's attraction is another man's repellant. Many things have no effect one way or another, but here again, one man's shrug of indifference can be another's obsession. 

Probably most readers do not share my preoccupation with the question of God's immutability. It doesn't seem to bother my wife. She doesn't care about the details so long as God is good.    

It takes all kinds to make a world.

Yes, only literally, as each man is a reflection of what interests and attracts him. Or rather, what attracts him is a function of his particular soul configuration. One man's answer can be another man's prison. Even if truth is universal, it is refracted through our unique particularity. Which does not imply that truth is relative, rather, that we are.

But wait: ultimate truth is relative, at least if we're talking about the Trinity, which is an irreducible relationship of persons. Likewise, there is always a relationship between us and the truth, otherwise we would be the truth. But perhaps relation to truth is the Truth? 

In the orthodox view, God is described as eternal, infinite, unchangeable, omniscient, and perfectly loving. But also incomprehensible, so it seems that the previous categories must be taken with a grain of apophaticism, i.e., No One Tames the Wild Godhead. No one can enclose God in human terms. But God can enclose himself in humanness (except to say that man is by nature open, as is God).

Moreover, some of these attributes seem frankly at odds with one another, especially lov-ing, which is a verb, and if God is unchangeable then verbs need not apply. 

Also "infinite." On the one hand this can be a negative definition, as in "not finite" or "indefinite." But for Schuon, infinitude is more of a verb, or at least it certainly implies movement; if the Absolute is static, its first entailment is Infinitude, which is the "radiation" of the Absolute into all-possibility, which is in turn the principle of freedom and creation -- creation being a possibility and not a necessity. 

I just don't see how one can square immutability and creativity, which strike me as opposites. And if creation is a possibility, how do we avoid situating possibility -- which is to say contingency -- in God? I'm well aware of the arguments. I just don't buy them.

The thought occurs to me that it takes a wild man to venture into, and back out of, the wild Godhead. Berdyaev is such a man. In reading him, I keep saying to myself, This guy is wild! But he's wild in a way that resonates with me. And if God is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose, then why not listen to this queer man?

Now a bewilderness adventure into the wild Godhead isn't for everyone. Rather, this is the calling of the mystic, for example, the equally wild and wooly Meister Eckhart. Mystics don't want the watered down version, but want to drink the whole ocean. Which no one can do, but it's fun to try. Or at least fun for the mystical type.

With this in mind, let's follow Berdyaev's tracks and see where they lead. Here's one:

The achievement of final unity which will solve all the contradictions and antinomies of human thought... is possible only apophatically, as apophatic knowledge of the Absolute, or communion with God and the Kingdom of God.

In other words, start with what we don't know, and take it from there. Conversely, with a conventional cataphatic approach, "dualism remains, the conflict between two elements, contradictions," etc. Such contradictions necessarily plague exoteric religion, but most people aren't bothered by them. Certainly the atheist is troubled by them, and they may even be why he is an atheist. 

But there's a better way to cope with the contradictions, which is to say, plunge into the bewilderness, where contraries are integrated because they were never dis-integrated to begin with. In the bewilderness one is free, and

freedom cannot be derived from being: freedom is rooted in nothingness, in bottomlessness, in non-being.... Freedom is without foundations, it is not determined, it is not born of being. 

Freedom is the no-thing prior to something or anything. And "The primacy of freedom over being is also the primacy of spirit over being." Thus, truly truly, spirit is the wild card in the wild Godhead. After all, no one knows where it comes from or where it's going. Rather, it goes where it wants to go, gosh!

Being is static: spirit is dynamic.... We cannot think of spirit intellectually, as of object: spirit is subject and subjectivity: it is freedom and creative act. Dynamism, activity, creativeness -- stand over and against the intellectual understanding of being...

In short, we are off the grid -- the grid of familiar left-brain cartography, into "the dark abyss preceding the very beginning of the knowledge of being." Conversely,

Objectivization is not true realization, but only symbolization; it produces signs of reality, not reality itself. 

The noumena is phenomenalized via symbolism. The mystic takes the reverse path, from phenomena to noumena:

The prophets, the men of creative genius, come into this world from the noumenal world -- they are ambassadors of Spirit. 

And "Spirit is the truth of being." 

Spirit is of God and to God. By the Spirit man receives everything from God, and by the spirit man gives everything to God, augments the talents given to him, creates what has never been.... Spirit emanates from God, is poured in, or breathed into, man. 

Thus, "Spirit is not only divine: it is divine-human... it is freedom in God and freedom from God." 

Reminds me of Meister Eckhart: "I pray God to rid me of God." Careful there -- such talk could get a man condemned! Nevertheless,

For the intellect to be free, it must become naked and empty and by letting go to return to its prime origin (Eckhart).

Into the desert bewilderness. Back to Berdyaev,

The spirit seeks eternity: the material knows only the temporal. True achievement is to achieve eternity.

Come to think of it,  

The mystic is the only one who is seriously ambitious. 

For Berdyaev, "God is the completeness toward which man cannot avoid striving." But "there are two movements, and not one: from God toward man, and from man toward God," and let's meet in the middle.

Conversely,

an objectivized God is God alienated from man and lording it over him, and at the same time a God created by man's limitedness, and reflecting man's limitations. Man becomes the slave of his own exteriorization and objectivization. 

And "Cataphatic theology is concerned with an objectivized God." But even man can never be objectivized, or can never be exhausted or contained. Which means that, in a way, we are as wild as the wild Godhead, or at least its irreducibly mysterious reflection herebelow.

Man is the meeting-point of two worlds.... With almost equal right we may speak of man's divine origin, and of his development from the lowest forms of nature.

We span the whole vertical existentialada, so

Man is not only of this world but of another world; not only of necessity, but of freedom; not only out of nature, but from God... 

Wild!

Man's highest consciousness of himself is not explicable by the world of nature and remains a mystery to that world....

In his essence, man is a break in the world of nature, he cannot be contained within it (italics in original). 

No wonder the wild God incarnates as one of us!

There is a deep and very significant analogy between Christ's consciousness of himself and man's consciousness of his own nature. Only the revelation of Christ gives a key to solving the problem of man's consciousness of himself. 

Oh? How so?

God reveals Himself as Human-ness. Human-ness is the chief quality of God, not at all omnipotence, omniscience, etc., but humanness, freedom, love, sacrifice. 

Now, that will require some cleaning up, but we'll save it for the next installment.