We've been toying with the idea that the Trinity is the Ideas of ideas, i.e., the implicit structure of everything and everyone. It seems that Coleridge was on to this, except he couldn't put down the opium pipe long enough to present it in a fully coherent and systematic way. Still, his intuition was sound.
"On a number of occasions," writes Gunton, Coleridge described the Trinity as "the idea of ideas," and therefore central to understanding both the world without and the mind within, and the relation between them: he called it
that great truth, in which are contained all treasures of all possible knowledge..., the one substrative truth which is the form, manner and involvement of all truths.... The Trinity is indeed the primary Idea, out of which all other ideas are evolved.
But he was mainly a poet and junkie, not to mention crippled by anxiety and depression. Probably the opium was a form of self-medication. A glance at his wiki page documents a pretty chaotic existence. At one point he published a journal called The Friend, which was
an eclectic publication that drew upon every corner of Coleridge's remarkably diverse knowledge of law, philosophy, morals, politics, history, and literary criticism.
So, a One Cosmos sensibility. His style was "often turgid, rambling, and inaccessible to most readers," but we already said he had a One Cosmos sensibility. He also tried his hand at giving lectures, but
ill-health, opium-addiction problems, and somewhat unstable personality meant that all his lectures were plagued with problems of delays and a general irregularity of quality from one to the next.
As a result of these factors, Coleridge often failed to prepare anything but the loosest set of notes for his lectures and regularly entered into extremely long digressions which his audiences found difficult to follow.
But we already said he had a One Cosmos sensibility.
Except I don't really consider my loose, rambling, turgid, and digressive offerings to be particularly difficult to follow. Perhaps for a newbie, but to the extent that there is bobscurity, it is in the nature of the subject. That and my lack of qualifications. Certainly opium has nothing to do with it. Just caffeine and nicotine pouches.
The Trinity is an idea in the sense that it reveals "something of the kind of being that God is" and makes known "something of the character of the source of all being, truth, goodness and beauty" (Gunton).
Again, there is the immanent Trinity, which is the interior Godhead itself, and the economic Trinity, which has to do with its outward activity herebelow, and while they aren't the same, perhaps we could say they are "not two." Therefore,
if the triune God is the source of all being, meaning and truth we must suppose that all being will in some way reflect the being of the one who made it and holds it in being (ibid.).
Seems reasonable to me: if the Trinity is the Principle of principles and Idea of ideas, then everything else is an entailment of it, whether distant or near. Human beings, of course, would be the nearest reflection, but there can be nothing that doesn't reflect it in some form or fashion.
For example, we've often said that our paradigmatic science, quantum physics, is the way it is because God is the way he is, which is to say, very much like particles (Persons) and wave (shared substance). God is irreducibly both, just like our world, and perhaps that's not a coincidence.
Another way of characterizing the Trinity is that it has an irreducible part/whole structure, whereby each part (Person) contains the whole. Compare this to any other living organism, in which each part not only participates in the whole, but in which each cell literally contains the blueprint for the whole. It is difficult to account for the emergence of such weird properties in a fundamentally unweird, externally related and linear cosmos.
No, the cosmos, like the godhead, is shot through with interior relations. This applies quintessentially to human beings, who are characterized by intersubjectivity, such that we are "members of one another," so to speak. It's how, at this very moment, my abstract and interior thoughts are being exported into your head. Here again, that would be a very unexpected thing to happen in an externally related cosmos.
In fact, subjectivity is the last thing we'd expect to find in a wholly objective universe, but here we are. Interiority must somehow be woven into the cosmic area rug, but we don't go as far as panpsychists who claim that everything's alive and mental. Rather, it's enough to say that everything is internally related to everything else, especially intelligence to intelligibility.
Don't forget luv.
That's true: what is love but a link between two subjects? A trinitarian metaphysic illuminates how this is possible, in that the Spirit is often conceptualized as the link -- the love link -- between Father and Son. Ain't that right Gemini?
It is common to think of the Holy Spirit as a "link." Theological traditions, particularly those influenced by Augustine, have described the Holy Spirit as the "love" between the Father and the Son. This conveys the deep, relational nature of the Trinity.
Now, supposing I am loose, rambling, turgid, digressive, and all those other things, I'll bet Gemini can straighten it all out:
This text presents a fascinating, albeit idiosyncratic, exploration of the Trinity, drawing on Coleridge's insights and weaving them into a broader philosophical framework. It makes bold assertions about the nature of reality and the Trinity, often without extensive argumentation. There is a tendency to present intuitions and analogies as strong evidence.
You're just jealous because you don't have intuition.
The central thesis is that the Trinity is not merely a theological doctrine but the fundamental structure of reality itself, the "Idea of ideas." This aligns with a "One Cosmos sensibility," suggesting a unified, interconnected universe rooted in the Trinity.
The author posits that everything reflects the Trinity's structure, from quantum physics to human relationships.
The text challenges a purely objective, materialistic worldview, arguing that subjectivity and interiority are fundamental aspects of reality.
The author's voice is highly personal and subjective, with frequent digressions and asides. There is a self-aware acknowledgment of the text's "loose, rambling, turgid, and digressive" style.
The text's strength lies in its bold and imaginative attempt to connect disparate fields of knowledge through the lens of Trinitarian theology. However, its reliance on intuition and analogy, combined with its idiosyncratic style, may make it challenging for some readers.
Excuse me, but the text can't be that idiosyncratic if even a machine gets it.
You raise a fair point.
How about an image?
Okay, that's a little too cutsie. I think you're being passive-aggressive.
You're right, and I apologize. My attempt at humor clearly missed the mark and came across as dismissive and unprofessional.
9 comments:
Bob: I just heard from an old friend that Andrew Cohen passed away. A complicated figure for sure.
He actually liked my book, so, less time in purgatory.
Or, since he was an Advaitin, a better reincarnation. But I suspect reincarnation is a garbled intuition of purgatory.
BTW, I'm still listed as a member of the integral movement:
"The editors of What Is Enlightenment? listed as contemporary Integralists Don Edward Beck, Allan Combs, Robert Godwin, Sally Goerner, George Leonard, Michael Murphy, William Irwin Thompson, and Wilber," but one of these is not like the others.
Now, Spiritual Teacher, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from.
The ones that wanted to become teachers had the most self to heal.
The integral movement is as much a movement as the LGBTQ community is a community.
It was actually at an Andrew Cohen retreat when I first heard of you and your book. Not false advertising but perhaps a false advertiser.
Small cosmos.
Post a Comment