Einsoferable Nonsense?

Maybe that was a bridge too far, i.e., the personal God being the face, as it were -- the marketing department -- of the beyond-personal. But at least it reconciles the anomalies that inevitably result from trying to apply impersonal attributes such as immutability and impassivity to the personal. 

This is not the first time we've discussed this solution, but it is the first time we've discussed it in the context of the challenge of open theology. If open theology relates only to the personal God, then, problem solved. Except traditional theologians believe they are describing the personal God, and both can't be right. Neither camp talks about anything like Eckhart's Godhead, hence the need for an esoteric approach to reconcile the two. 

In the past we've wondered whether this Godhead is ontological or merely epistemological. In other words, even traditional theologians will concede that God is totally beyond our conception, but this is more a function of our own limitations (e.g., finitude) than an actual distinction in God. But for Eckhart the distinction seems to be ontological. As discussed yesterday, "It is the source from which the personal God and all of creation emanate."

Actually, I believe Gemini is not quite correct there -- it is true that the personal God emanates, or is projected, from the Godhead, but it is the personal God who otherwise creates. Back to the Godhead, it

is beyond being and non-being, beyond good and evil, beyond all distinctions that our intellect can grasp. It is a "nothingness" in the sense of being empty of all created characteristics and limitations, not in the sense of absolute non-existence. 

It is utterly ineffable; no words or concepts can adequately describe it. It is passive and unmoving. It does not act or create in the way that "God" does. It is the silent, still source from which all activity flows.

One probably heretical workaround would be to identify the Father with the Ground or Godhead and the Son with the personal God. Except Father sounds pretty personal. Then again, he is said to be the source of the Trinity, only obviously not located in time, for there was never the Father without the Son.

Well, perhaps then the Godhead-God distinction isn't an emanation but a complementarity, the one always present with the other? Here we have to get beyond the necessarily limited and linear picture arising from language, and try to envision a more "complex" (so to speak) God. I mean, if God can be three persons in one substance, why not one substance with two sides? Like a dark side of the sun?

This vision is outlined very clearly in chapter 3 of Frithjof Schuon and the Perennial Philosophy, called The Five Divine Presences. Let's drive it around the block a couple of times and see how she handles. It starts off with a quote by Schuon going to the linguistic problem referenced above:

God is ineffable, nothing can describe Him or enclose Him in words; but, on the other hand, truth exists, that is to say that there are conceptual points of reference which sufficiently convey the nature of God.

Interestingly, from a Christian perspective, God can in a sense be enclosed -- or at least enclothed -- in the Word, which must be the ultimate "intelligibility" or Truth of the Father.

Oldmeadow points out that the metaphysic we are about to describe is actually found in various guises in numerous traditions, but perhaps not as much in Christianity or Buddhism, since their focus is more on "spiritual therapy," which is to say, the how and not the why. Again, when we begin nosing around traditional Christian theology for a consistent Why, that's when the anomalies begin cropping up.

"The Five Divine Presences" goes to a Sufi conception that draws a distinction in the divine reality between a realm coinciding with "the Uncreated Intellect, the Logos," and one step higher, "the Supreme Principle, the Divine Essence."

Translated into Judeo-Christianese, the two top floors are 

1) Beyond Being, the Godhead, the Divine Essence, the Divine Principle, the Absolute Unqualified (the Divine Principle Itself).

One suspects that this is the neighborhood Aquinas found himself in when he said that, compared to it, all of his writing was so much straw. Whereas all of the writing was about 

2) Being, the Personal God, the Creator, the Uncreated Logos, (the prefiguration of the Manifestation in the Principle).

The Manifestation in the Principle: that there is key, because it situates a principle of creation in the Divine, so our temporal creation is the mirror of a more primordial creativity that takes place outside time. But again, #2 shares a certain resemblance to the Trinity, what with the emanation of the Uncreated Logos.

Clearly, these top two tiers -- precisely because they are two -- are bound to give pause to the traditional Christian, but now that I'm thinking about it, there's certainly something resembling #1 in Kabbalah, the Ein Sof, which is -- help us out here, Gemini --

understood as God before any self-manifestation in the creation of the spiritual or physical realms. The term literally translates from Hebrew as "(there is) no end," signifying the infinite, boundless, and incomprehensible nature of the Divine essence.

Boom. 

Ein Sof represents the aspect of God that is beyond human intellect, description, or limitation. It is the hidden, primordial source from which all of existence emanates. 

Any name or attribute we ascribe to God in the Bible or through human understanding refers to God's manifestations within creation, not to the Ein Sof itself. Names imply limitations, which cannot apply to the truly infinite. Thus, Ein Sof is considered "nameless." 

Hmm. It appears that Ein Sof is actually #2, as it follows

Ayin: Literally "nothingness." This represents the state before Ein Sof, an absolute nothingness from which even infinity emerges. It is a state beyond our comprehension.

Then comes Ein Sof, which is "Limitlessness, the infinite potential and being of God before manifestation." 

To summarize, the divine or metacosmic dimension has two levels, the Divine Essence which is Beyond-Being, and the Creator and Personal God who is already situated in Being, and is therefore "relative" not just to us, but to Beyond-Being.  

How is any of this helpful?

Well, we don't know yet. We have to get back to the book we've been reviewing, The Future of Open Theology, but we're out of time.