Grammar ∞

Yesterday's post didn't do justice to the idea that atheism is but bad grammar, mainly because I myself don't know what the statement means, but it sounds intriguing enough to make me want to find out. 

Let's begin with Grammar 101 -- i.e., bonehead grammar -- before moving on to Grammar ∞, which is to say, our grammar vs. God's. Grammar is 

the system of rules that govern how a language works. It encompasses how words are combined, structured, and used to create meaningful communication. It provides the framework for constructing sentences, phrases, and clauses, and involves understanding how words relate to each other and how their forms can change.

What comes first, the language or its grammar? Oddly enough, according to Chomsky, the latter: he posits a universal grammar that serves as the deep structure of any particular language. It is said to be "hardwired" into the human brain, and although Chomsky assumes it to be biological, he concedes that no one really knows: rather, he limits himself to describing the what, but there is no explanation as to the how it presumably evolved.

Whatever the case, human beings have an implicit grammar that other animals lack, which is why even the most intelligent chimp can't really learn language. What a child accomplishes effortlessly, the chimp cannot accomplish with any amount of effort. 

The Bible has a kind of theory of language, in that God speaks creation into existence, crowning this with the creation of a being made in the image and likeness of the Creator-Speaker, for which reason man is assigned the task of naming all the other creatures. That's not something you could ask a chimp or dog to do. Indeed, you could point to this or that animal and ask the dog what it is, but they'll only stare at your finger.

Now, a name is a universal, so naming the animals presupposes knowledge of universals. Here again, this is precisely what a chimp that is taught sign language cannot do. While they can can use signs to refer to objects and actions, they soon hit a wall that excludes them from abstract and conceptual thinking. They cannot truly get "inside" language, but at best can only enact a facsimile of this. 

It seems that we cannot even speak of human language without a concept of interiority: we can only be "inside" language because there is an inside to begin with. But how is it even possible for an inside to exist in an externally related universe? 

In other words, scientism assumes a universe of externally related parts with no inside, so how did interiority ever arise in such a setting? How do we get from objects to the subjects that know, understand, and communicate about them? This strikes me as the most inconceivable leap conceivable. Hence Schuon's remark that 

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.

As far as I can recall, it was Stanley Jaki's Means to Message: A Treatise on Truth that first alerted me to what all philosophers and philosophies naively presuppose. I've discussed the book on numerous occasions, for example, in a post called How to Exist:

All philosophers, intellectuals, thinkers, pundits, and professors, despite different conclusions, must agree on one thing: that "They all use tangible means for the delivery of their respective messages" (Jaki). In order to effectively communicate meaning, there must be a means of effective communication. 

Therefore, if philosophers are logical, their primary concern should be about the extent to which their particular philosophy justifies the use of any such means, indeed its very reality and all the consequences, both numerous and momentous, that follow from this.

Take Darwinism, for example. Is there anything in this philosophy that permits the entities explained by it to explain themselves? 

No there is not. "Yet only in the measure in which that justification is done, implicitly or, what is far better, explicitly, may the philosopher's message become truly about truth" (Jaki). Which means that 99% of philosophers imagine they are finished, when they haven't actually even begun. In other words, they haven't begun to explain how the communication of truth between humans is possible

In a subsequent post called The Message of the Cosmos, I wrote that

In order for existence to ex-ist, there must be this primordial distinction between means and message. Typically we think of the foundation of things as consisting of matter, or energy, or law, but these are all somewhat beside the point if there is no Message and no Means to encode and transmit it.

Bob goes on to say that 

There are diverse methods for encoding and unpacking these messages, from poetry to science, philosophy to theology, math to music. 

More generally, you might say there are qualitative ways and quantitative ways. In our Age of Stupidity, there is a widespread belief that only the quantitative ways are valid, but guess what? As soon as you say that, you've made a qualitative argument, one that obviously cannot be reduced to numbers....

Science not only deals with material reality, but conflates it with existence itself. But as Schuon writes, matter is only "the sensible manifestation of existence," so existence is obviously more than what science can say about it. Or, put conversely, if you were to consider all the things science says about matter, they wouldn't add up to existence itself, for existence is infinitely greater than the sum of its parts.

But the deeper point is that science simply assumes not only that "matter talks," but -- more bizarrely -- that scientists can hear and understand what it is saying.

To which the only sensible response is ?!, because this communication of intelligibility to the intellect is the first thing we assume but the last thing we'd expect. (Literally, as in Einstein's remark that "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.")

This is getting way out ahead of our skis, but in another post I wrote that

If the totality of reality is completely intelligible, then God exists.

But the totality of reality is completely intelligible.

Therefore God exists.

Now, everyone I know assumes that reality is intelligible. Indeed, that's what reality is. There are people for whom reality is unintelligible -- or who live "outside reality" -- but we call them crazy.

The point is, knowledge of, and conformity to, reality, is not only our standard of sanity, but the whole basis of education, not to mention justice. But the question is, in what kind of cosmos are reality, truth, and justice even possible? 

A grammatical cosmos?

Well, let's go back to our initial definition of grammar, which is the system of rules that govern how a language works. It encompasses how words are combined, structured, and used to create meaningful communication. 

It seems to me that the cosmos must be grammatical before we are, which is why it can meaningfully communicate to us, so this grammar cannot be biological, rather, biology is one of the consequences of the grammatical structure of reality. As are biologists and linguists. 

I suspect we need to further consider the grammar of the Trinity -- which is to say, Grammar ∞ -- in order to get to the bottom of this.

Calvinism, Calvinball, and the Grammar of God

Calvinism is not a game, and actually makes games impossible, because games are predicated on an unknown outcome. If the outcome is known, why would you bother playing the game? Even the Dodgers, as loaded with talent as they are, will not go undefeated this season. 

Conversely, in Calvinball there are no rules, so nothing is predetermined:

Its defining characteristic is that it has virtually no set rules. Instead, the rules are made up and changed by the players as the game progresses. The rules are fluid and constantly evolving, and players create new rules on the fly. No two games of Calvinball are alike, and the game's direction can shift dramatically at any moment.  

It has also entered into general use, to describe situations where rules are arbitrary and constantly changing.

In point of fact, both Calvinism and Calvinball make a real game impossible, the first because it is too rigid and deterministic, the second because it is too elastic and lawless. Too much order and too much chaos are both fatal to any game. 

That right there is the sort of banality this blog tries to avoid. But is existence itself some kind of game?  Or are we just putting in time in a meaningless dead-end job? 

Of course, this is not 'Nam, and there are rules! But what are the rules? For example, if predeterminism is the case, then how could there be any human rules? What happens is bound to happen -- it has been decreed from all eternity -- so man is powerless to deviate from God's plan:

if the reality of God remains unchanged whatever we do, there is really very little point in performing one act rather than another..., [and] it would appear to follow that no act can, in its consequences, be better than any other, for the same unchanging reality remains in either case (Gunton).

From the standpoint of God's eternity, "no act of finite being can make the slightest difference to the over-all state of affairs (ibid.). Since worship can have no effect on God, "it can only be self-regarding," or not even self-regarding, just meaningless noise. God's plan is God's plan, and we're just along for the ride, which Hartshorne calls "the greatest intellectual error mankind has ever made."

I mean, there are a lot of bad ideas in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human error, but if predestination is true, these ideas can't even be errors because they were foreordained. 

When we examine the cosmos, we find rules at every level, i.e., laws of nature. We also find a natural law inscribed in the human heart, which is a curious thing to exist if reality reduces to God's atemporal Is. 

If this is the case, then our own intuition of an Ought is just another vain illusion, since we are powerless to do what we ought. Rather, what is, is, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. Recall the words of yesterday's commenter, that "All moments are present to God now, all at once, as facts." Again, it is as if the present and future have already happened, and are as concretely settled as the past.

Why does this bug you so much?

Well, partly because it is so implausible that people reject it in favor of a postmodern metaphysical Calvinball predicated on an absolute relativism and subjectivism. Your rules are as arbitrary as mine, so instead of God's truth people default to my truth. It seems to me that postmodernism is just the shadow of determinism, and that both are fatal to any possible understanding of the actual rules of the game.   

Speaking of rules, I've also been thinking about the "grammar of God," which at first glance might seem eccentric, but the Christian revelation says that God is not only Logos -- which implies that he is "linguistic," so to speak -- but also that he also has pronouns, for example, the I, Thou, and We implied by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There can be no substance "beneath" these grammatical relations, since the relations are the substance. 

I'm also thinking of Wittgenstein's cryptic remark that "theology is grammar," and a comment by Hartshorne to the effect that "atheism is bad grammar."  

First of all, what did Wittgenstein mean? Gemini? 

It's not about traditional sentence structure; rather, it refers to rules of language use. Wittgenstein shifted from viewing language as a mirror of reality to seeing it as a set of "language games" governed by rules. These rules dictate how words are used within specific contexts.... Grammar in this sense, describes the ways in which words acquire meaning through their use within these social contexts. 

He emphasized that meaning isn't inherent in words themselves but arises from their application within specific contexts. Therefore, to understand theological language, we must examine how it is used within the "language game" of religious practice. 

Applying this to theology, Wittgenstein suggests that theological statements should be understood by analyzing their grammatical role within religious practices. Essentially he is saying that the way that words like "God" or "soul" are used, give those words their meaning, within the context of the religious language game.

We disagree, because God himself is a language game with a grammatical structure in a social context, this context being the Trinity, and its grammar involving the eternal Word spoken by the Father. Therefore, grammar isn't just a human game but a divine one. It also means that our theological language can indeed be a reflection of reality, not just a postmodern self-enclosed linguistic house of mirrors.

This being the case, we can see how atheism could be just a case of bad grammar. I don't have time to track down the context of Hartshorne's remark, so let's once again consult with our artificial friend:

When Hartshorne said "atheism is bad grammar," he meant that it violates the fundamental grammar of reality as he understood it. In his view, reality is inherently relational and interactive. To deny the existence of a being (God) that is essentially involved in this relational process is to misuse the very language that describes reality.

I'll buy that: God is the grammar of reality, so denying God is inherently un- or even anti-grammatical. 

He felt that the very structure of reality required a God, and therefore, to deny God was to deny that structure, which resulted in a grammatical error.

In summary, Hartshorne's statement is not about linguistic grammar in the traditional sense, but about the "grammar" of existence itself.

The grammar of existence is a consequence of the grammar of God? This works for me. For which reason it is written that Your seenill grammar and gravidad may not be malapropriate for my laughty revelation. 

Waitwut?

Well, let's break it down: it seems that a certain outmoded use of grammar may result in seeing nil, and that describing God may require a more playful approach to language. Certainly Eckhart thought so, what with his puns, wordplay, paranomasia, paradox, antinomy, negation, oxymoron, hyperbole, chiasmus, and all the rest. For McGinn, Eckhart's word games "are meant to be both playful and serious," or "to confuse in order to enlighten."

Yesterday we spoke of God's infinitude, which is to say All-Possibility. Again, in the traditional view God is pure Act, and therefore No Possibility.

Supposing there is a proper theological grammar, what might this look like? Well, for Eckhart, "The Father's speaking is his giving birth; the Son's hearing is his being born." And that's a conversation -- and a birth -- that never ends.

Is there something more primordial than this conversation? If so, what might it be?

Experience?

Hmm. That's a good candidate, but what is it? It seems that it cannot be defined, because any definition presupposes the experience of it. There can be no definitions without definers. But is this a fruitful avenue? Or just an ensuing train wreck? 

Well, we may not be able to define experience, but perhaps we can say what must be true of all any and all experience? There can be no truths prior to experience, but what is the truth of experience? 

Perhaps we can rule out some metaphysical nonstarters, such as the immutable "block godhead" mentioned in yesterday's post. In that case, there is nothing to experience, because there is no distinction between experience and experiencer. In other words, if God were to have an experience of something, the something would have to be distinct from God. For the same reason, God cannot literally know anything, because there is nothing outside God to be known.

But the Trinity is not like this at all. Analogously, consider what distinguishes animal from human experience. Animals have experiences, but they do not experience experience, as do humans. But how did we acquire this ability?

In a word, via the Other. Infants are full of experiences, but only via an intimate relationship with caregivers is this experience converted to meaning and eventually speech and self-reflection. For example, it is common to see patients who have a problem "mentalizing" their experiences. The experiences just happen to them in a passive way, below the level of mentalizing speech. 

Ever had a panic attack? They are quite the experience, and yet quite difficult to put into words.  

So, perhaps the experience of experience is grounded in what Eckhart says above about the eternal conversation between Father and Son? For again, in a monist God there is nothing to experience and no one to converse with.

Well, I don't know if this post is a train wreck or just a flameout, but I'm out of gas. Any thoughts, Gemini?

In essence, the author is searching for a way to understand existence that avoids the pitfalls of both rigid determinism and chaotic relativism, finding potential answers in a relational theology that emphasizes the dynamic and linguistic nature of God.

Nothing is Written, Least of All this Post

Well, it's written now, which is to say, it has become a concrete member of the past, unchanging and unchangeable. 

But even then, not really, because I am not above making little tweaks after the post has been written. Readers probably don't notice this (obvious mistakes such as typos notwithstanding), because they presumably only read the post once, so they will encounter a particular version of it. But like God, I like to engage with my creations and make little adjustments in real time.

"Alt orthodoxy" is of course a takeoff on alt country, which some people think was invented by Gram Parsons in 1967, but Rick Nelson made a country album in 1966, and so too did Michael Nesmith of the Monkees begin writing and recording offbeat country tunes that year:

According to the All Music guide, alt country "refers to country bands that play traditional country but bend the rules slightly." Gemini adds that it often incorporates elements from other genres (check), tends to be less polished (check), is characterized by a "do-it-yourself" spirit (check), works outside the industry spotlight (check), and represents a more independent and often more experimental approach (check).

So, here at One Cosmos we bend the rules, borrow promiscuously from all and sundry, are spontaneous and unpolished, adopt a do-it-oursoph approach, toil outside the mainstream, and indulge in experimental contemplation. 

Is any of this compatible with existing forms of religion? 

Of course. It's parasitic on them.

Gram Parsons' pursuit of "cosmic American music" is also relevant, for it was "his vision of a musical blend that drew from a wide range of American musical traditions," breaking down barriers and synthesizing various genres while trying to "get back to a more pure and real form of American music."

Same, in the sense that I'm American, raised a WASP and still a culural WASP despite my efforts to be Catholic. The one doesn't preclude the other, but still. This is not a Catholic country. There's a reason why the Vatican swamp doesn't much care for American style frontier Catholicism, nor do we much care for a socialist pope.

These preliminary comments have been interrupted by a first challenge to Alt Orthodoxy (AO) by a perennialist commenter who believes God and time, perhaps like sex and honesty, just don't mix: 

It’s simple. In eternity there is no before, so no foreknowledge or predestination; such terms treat eternity as if it were temporal. Which is silly. All time is in eternity, all at once, without compromise to any moment thereof (as to its freedom, or anything else). So God does not know about things before they happen, as if he were a time bound soothsayer such as we. For him, there is no time before now. All moments are present to him now, all at once, as facts.

So, no need for open theism. The problem it would solve is not real, but the result of a category error.

Now, it seems to me that the commenter asserts what needs to be proved, which is to say, whether God is in or out of time. But supposing he creates, then he's in for the win. In other words, so long as he's a carefree radical monist God, then he hasn't a care in the world. But if his creation is in time, that makes him in time too, if only because of his immanence. 

Let's unpack the comment in more detail. In it the assertion is made that God's Eternity is radically atemporal, whereas in the AO view time and eternity are necessarily complementary; they coarise. There is actually no time in the absence of eternity, and vice versa (more on which below).

Second, the commenter essentially spatializes time in his assertion that all time is present to God. This is similar to Einstein's conception of the "block universe" which renders our perception of time illusory. But the whole point is that time is not space, rather, a much more queer entity. Besides, it takes time to deny time.

For an alt-perennialist (admittedly an oxymoron, but a fun one), we agree that God by definition transcends time, but we disagree with the assertion that this transcendence necessitates a static, simultaneous view of all events. Rather, God's relationship with time is more dynamic and interactive. Otherwise, why even bother creating at all if creation is literally identical to God?

From the perspective of AO, we believe that the future contains genuine freedom, possibility, creativity, and contingency, so God's knowledge of it is not exhaustive in the sense of knowing every detail as if it were already determined (like Einstein's block universe that spatializes time).

While God is not bound by time like we are, he interacts with it, responding to events as they unfold. This interaction implies that the future is not a fully formed, pre-existing reality for God. It reminds me of Lawrence of Arabia's critique of Islam's fatalism, i.e., that Nothing is written, not even this post!

Freedom is a problem, God's and ours. It is God's problem for the same reason my son is my problem. I brought him into this world, but, Bill Cosby's father to the contrary notwithstanding, I can't just take him out of it when he disappoints me. I mean theoretically I could, like a Roman father, but that would be wrong. It would violate the Covenant, in which God says Never again. No matter how irritating be these creatures, no more floods to destroy the earth and take out its inhabitants. 

In the AO view, genuine human freedom -- which is to say freedom -- is incompatible with exhaustive divine foreknowledge. If God already knows every future action with certainty, then those actions are no longer free. Rather, they are determined, undermining the very possibility of free will.

But God is free and so are we: Now, the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, boom, there is liberty (2 Cor 3:17). 

Put it this way: in God, freedom and love are prior to knowledge. God creates free beings in order that they may love, which they cannot do if this love be determined. For it is written, Can't buy me love, even if everybody tells me otherwise, for this would be a coerced love and no longer love.

Does the Father force the Son to love him? If so, what is the point of the Trinity? Analogously it reduces to a "block Trintity" in which all is determined and freedom and love are only illusions.

Our commenter maintains that it is a category error to attribute freedom, contingency, or time to God. I say the very principle of time is grounded in the timeless time it takes to engender the Son. This is none other than "eternal time," but it is still a kind of time, only preeminent, like "supra-time." Our time is, of course, only distant echo of this perfect time. 

AO does not spatialize time, but rather, treats it on its own terms, whereas divine foreknowledge entails a predestination that solves one problem while creating many others. These problems are not just mysterious or contradictory, rather, absurd. But God is not absurd, rather, the opposite. 

For if the future is fixed, then prayer, repentance, and human choices become meaningless. We are just appendages of a kind of relentless machine-God, not a creator God who is the very ground of human creativity. Indeed, if determinism is real, then there is no such thing as error or contingency: rather, everything that happens must happen. 

It is also to say that God is devoid of potential, which is just another way of saying that he cannot actually create, unless creation is defined out of existence. God is still omniscient, but this doesn't mean that God can know a square circle. In other words, even God cannot know logical absurdities, one of which is a man that is "free and determined," which makes as much sense as a square circle. 

God knows everything that could happen, which, when you think about it, is far more impressive than a God who only knows the one thing that will inevitably happen. Properly speaking the former isn't even knowledge, because knowledge requires a knower and a known. But God knows. Which is a verb, and verbs imply time. 

Again, to cleanse God of verbs is to turn him into a static block with no verbish attributes such as creating, loving, begetting (the Son), proceeding (the Spirit), revealing, redeeming, etc. But our God is a might-y God, for he allows for contingencies that might or might not happen, including this post. I might be wrong, but I'm free to be wrong. But if this post is determined from all eternity, then it is neither right nor wrong, rather, like everything else, it just is.

If possibility is reduced to inevitability, then the result is meaninglessness. If the future is fixed, then the present and future are already effectively in the past, which is to de-temporalize time. It doesn't solve the problem of time, it just defines it out of existence.   

Now, even -- or especially -- a perennialist should know that God is All Possibility, and possibility is not necessity. Rather, necessity pertains to God's absoluteness, but the first entailment of Absolute is Infinitude, the latter being the very principle of creativity. From the AO perspective, God cannot not create, because the Absolute cannot not be Infinite. Infinitude is also bound up with freedom, because it is unspecified. 

Now, even if all moments are present to God, this does not resolve the issue of free will, because what about the moments that are a consequence of truly free choices that haven't yet happened? Are these free choices actually fixed, or are they undetermined? Have they really already happened for God? This leads to our Instinctive Distaste for Calvinism and its variants, and you can't argue with an instinct.

Is God free to respond to our free choices? Or nah? We say that a God who responds to, and interacts with, the changing events of the world, is superior to the wire monkee deity of the block Godhead. God is not static and impersonal, but rather, a dynamic and eternal complementarity of stasis and creativity, or, as revealed in the sacred sidebar, The perfect, unchanging God must be a gyroscope of energy and activity and at the same time a stable rock. 

My Journey to Alt Orthodoxy

Which I arrived at just a moment ago when that term -- "alt orthodoxy" -- popped into my head.

Yesterday I mentioned an instinctive distaste for Calvinism, but then, I suppose I have an instinctive distaste for all forms of Christianity but my own (I exaggerate). But I once had an instinctive distaste for all forms of Christianity, period. 

As for Calvin, there is simply no part of me that could ever assent to the idea of a supreme being who creates people only to predestine them to eternal punishment. There are some things a decent -- not to mention commonsensical -- God just doesn't do. Supposing this ultimate sadist existed, I would spit in his eye, secure in the knowledge that I am a more moral being than he is, and besides, He's not my real daddy!

I am also a theological libertarian, and there's not a thing I can do about it. For me, freedom descends from, and returns to, God. In other words, God is its source and telos, but we are always free to deviate from, or cooperate with, it. 

We are of course fallen, but God is a necessary and not sufficient condition for our salvation. We still have to do our bit and cooperate with grace, no matter how comparatively modest our contribution.

But for Calvin, the will is bound by sin, so there's nothing we can do to please God except accidentally. Salvation comes 100% from his end, with no participation on our part, which renders our existence entirely superfluous and meaningless. In other words, there are two types of meaninglessness, all freedom (existentialism) and no freedom (double predestination). 

My instinctive distaste for Christianity began way back in Sunday school. My mother was a nominal Christian Scientist, which started back when my grandmother had some sort of mysterious healing after being hit by a bus, probably in the 1930s or 1940s. At the time she was living in Hollywood, where Christian Science had become something of a fad, like Scientology would later.

Gemini, what was that all about?

It's accurate to say that Christian Science had a notable presence among Hollywood celebrities, and this was particularly true in the early to mid-20th century. 

Celebrity Connection: 

Many prominent figures in Hollywood were either raised in Christian Science or became adherents. This included well-known names like Mary Pickford, Mickey Rooney, Ginger Rogers, Joan Crawford, Doris Day, Elizabeth Taylor, and Carol Channing. This created a certain level of visibility for the religion within the Hollywood community. 

Factors Contributing to its Popularity: 

Christian Science's emphasis on spiritual healing may have appealed to those in the demanding and often stressful environment of Hollywood. The religion's focus on positive thinking and mental discipline could also have resonated with individuals seeking control and well-being.

Wikipedia says that even Albert Einstein admired the founder, Mary Baker Eddy, and studied her main text, Science and Health, while his son became a full convert. 

Anyway, as a child I was forced to attend Christian Science Sunday school, which never made the least bit of sense to me, partly because my mother didn't hesitate to rush me to the doctor for so much as a sniffle. But it also created a division in my psyche between things that were true on Sunday and things that were true the rest of the week. 

By the age of eleven I gave up the struggle to reconcile them and declared myself an atheist. (To be perfectly accurate, I adopted the consistent position of knowing nothing on Sunday and on every other day of the week.)

After that I developed my instinctive distaste for Christianity, assuming that all versions were the same, except perhaps Catholicism which was even worse.  

Many years later, by the age of 13 or so, my attitude toward religion softened somewhat, based upon the Beatles' interest in Hinduism and other forms of Eastern spirituality. If it was good enough for them, then it was good enough for me. 

But I didn't take any formal plunge until... let's see, must have been when I was in my mid-twenties, after reading Ken Wilber's Spectrum of Consciousness. Afterwards I began studying and practicing yoga, not just the Hatha part but the Raja and Jnana parts too, i.e., the meditation and metaphysics of it all.

After much dabbling, I guess you could say things got pretty serious after the mid-1990s, when I would have called myself a full-on Vedantin. I suppose I didn't make that much progress in eliminating Bob and merging with Brahman, but it was while meditating that the idea for the book popped into my head unbidden.

It came in the form of a vision of the whole story of cosmic evolution, from the mind of the Creator prior to the Big Bang, through the realms of matter, life, and mind, culminating in the mystical union with God. 

And you know the rest of the story.

Do tell it again.

Really? I don't think the audience, such as it is, is interested. 

Tell it for your own benefit. Maybe you'll learn something.

Well, I suppose my instinctive distaste for Christianity continued into the third millennium, but in conducting the totally random and unsystematic research for my book, I began dabbling in Christian mysticism, beginning with a book called A Different Christianity: Early Christian Esotericism and Modern Thought. 

Now, here was a form of Christianity that made sense to me, because it could easily be reconciled with other forms of mysticism, i.e., Vedanta, Zen, Taoism, et al. It might even be ground zero for the whole Raccoon Sensibility. Just look at the book's description:

This book presents the esoteric original core of Christianity, with its concern for illuminating and healing the inner life of the individual. It is a bridge to the often difficult doctrines of the early church fathers, explaining their spiritual psychology.... 

Christianity possesses and always has possessed an inner tradition: not a system, but what might be called a discipline. To those with sufficient experience in investigating this field, I believe that this book will convey the same conviction. In addition, I would add to the idea that the inner tradition is one -- although with local variations....

It was through this book that I was alerted to way-out Christian authors such as Boris Mouravieff and Valentin Tomberg, which we discussed at length in the early days of the blog.

But then I started getting my own ideas. Recall what was said a couple of posts back about the three identifiable periods in the lives of creative folk, the first being when one is still assimilating influences and learning one's craft, so "the artist has usually not fully discovered his individual voice." So, I was still mostly playgiarizing with others rather than letting 'er rip with my own peculiar take on things.

But who should care about my own peculiar take on things, including me? Who died and left me in charge of the cosmos? Then along came Schuon, whom I had tried to read before, but didn't connect with. I didn't really get him, plus he sounded too authoritarian -- not nearly as fun and freewheeling as people like Mouravieff and Tomberg. 

Schuon is out there enough to satisfy my instinctive need for speculative woo woo metaphysics, but he also emphasized that metaphysics isn't enough. Rather, one must practice a single God-given path, whether it be Buddhism, Vedanta, Taoism, Judaism, Sufism, or Christianity. 

As in the old Zen saying, Chase two rabbits, catch none. In my case I was chasing every rabbit down every rabbit hole, so it was time grow up, pick one, and settle down. 

That's when the blog started to have a more Catholic sensibility, and I was only received into the Church a few years ago, in 2022. But over the past year or so, I find myself getting restless and unsatisfied again. For example, lately we've been blogging about open theology, which makes much more sense to me than the traditional view. Gemini, is there any way to square this with Catholic doctrine?

The Catholic Church has historically upheld the classical understanding of God's omniscience and foreknowledge. This creates tension with the core tenets of open theology. Concerns exist that open theology may diminish God's power and sovereignty, potentially leading to a less robust understanding of divine providence.

Points of Consideration: 

There are discussions within theological circles exploring ways to understand God's relationship with time and human freedom in a more nuanced manner. The emphasis in open theology on God's relationality and love can resonate with certain aspects of Catholic theology, but significant doctrinal differences exist between open theology and traditional Catholic theology, particularly regarding divine foreknowledge and omniscience.

Now, as far as I'm concerned, at the end of the deity, this absolute divine foreknowledge and omniscience doesn't differ all that much from Calvin. Rather, it simply asserts that both are true, i.e., predestination and human freedom, but I don't buy it. Rather, one has to go.

So, what is alt orthodoxy?

I can't tell you but I know it's mine. In other words, I'm working on it. The point is, I don't want to invent my own religion, like Luther or Calvin, even though, like them, I have my issues. Bottom line it for us, Gemini:

This text is a portrait of a restless and inquisitive mind engaged in a lifelong quest for spiritual truth. It's a testament to the fact that faith is often a complex and evolving journey, marked by doubt, discovery, and a persistent search for meaning.