If There's No Self, Who Says So?

Yesterday I watched an interview of someone named Annika Harris on Alex O'Connnor's podcast. She is the wife of the stubborn atheist Sam Harris, and like him is a materialist, even though, at the same time, she argues that the ground of reality is consciousness. She also argues that there's no such thing as a self. 

If the ground of reality is consciousness, this consciousness is either personal or impersonal, and which is more plausible? The following post from last summer may provide some clues, for, according to Bob,

It seems that man is the clue he is looking for. 

In other words, we must turn the homoscope around and examine the examiner, for we at once see and know "through" the human state, but we are also uniquely capable of looking at this state from a transcendent position that is partially "outside" or "above" this very state. 

Am I wrong? Or is man incapable of introspection and self-awareness?

Now for Schuon, "Man -- insofar as he is distinct from other creatures on earth -- is intelligence." And "if nothing proves that our intelligence is capable of adequation," then "there is likewise nothing to prove that the intelligence expressing this doubt is competent to doubt."

What this means is that logic is perfectly consistent only when surpassing itself.

And we're back to Gödel -- to the direct perception of trans-logical truth.

That's a bold claim, but it is implied in the name: Homo sapiens sapiens, the double-wise homo. 

We've spoken in the past of the proper ensoulment of man some 60 to 75,000 years ago, coinciding with the emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens. (Or at least the emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens was a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for ensoulment.)

Prior to this is mere Homo sapiens: intelligent but not the double intelligence that both turns upon itself -- hence objectivity -- and knows the Absolute -- hence transcendence.

What distinguishes man from animals is not knowledge of a tree, but the concept -- whether explicit or implicit -- of the Absolute (ibid.).

Resetting the stage, we left off with the question of whether human intelligence is essentially no different from the intelligence of animals, or whether there is something absolute, unlimited, and transcendent about it. 

First, is this a false binary? Could there be a third kind of intelligence that doesn't fall into these two categories?

You can't be a little bit unlimited.

Not so sure about that, because it seems the human spirit is a tapestry of limit + unlimited. Only God -- supposing he exists -- would be Unlimited as such, without qualification:

the same intelligence that makes us aware of a superiority, also makes us aware of the relativity of this superiority and, more than this, it makes us aware of all our limitations (ibid.). 

And "Man, like the Universe, is a fabric of determination and indetermination; the latter stemming from the Infinite, and the former from the Absolute" (ibid.). 

Nevertheless, 

What is most profoundly and authentically human rejoins the Divine by definition. 

Argument from authority.  

Maybe, but let's consider a few additional authoritative claims: the Intellect is

At once mirror of the supra-sensible and itself a supernatural ray of light. 

And

Man is first of all characterized by a central or total intelligence, and not one that is merely peripheral or partial; secondly he is characterized by a free and not merely instinctive will; and thirdly by a character capable of compassion and generosity, and not merely of egoistic reflexes.

On the other hand, animals "cannot know what is beyond the senses" and cannot transcend themselves:

The animal cannot leave his state, whereas man can; strictly speaking, only he who is fully man can leave the closed system of the individuality.... There lies the mystery of the human vocation...

 Put another way, it may also be said of man 

that he is essentially capable of knowing the True, whether it be absolute or relative; he is capable of willing the Good, whether it be essential or secondary, and of loving the Beautiful, whether it be interior or exterior. In other words: the human being is substantially capable of knowing, willing and loving the Sovereign Good. 

Now, where does this leave us vis-a-vis man being the very clue he seeks? 

Well, to say man is to say intellect ordered to truth or to the Real (as opposed to appearances); a disinterested will ordered to the good; and sentiment ordered to objective beauty. 

Or let us say intelligence-freedom-creativity, ordered to the true, good, and beautiful, which are at once "transcendent" but the very substance of which we are made. In other words, going back to what Schuon says above,  

What is most profoundly and authentically human rejoins the Divine by definition.

*****

To pick up where yesterday's post began: It seems that man is the clue he is looking for. This is such an important point that it's worth even a second post. 

How, you (or I) may ask, did I end up a psychologist? Partly because one morning, more or less, I woke up and found myself interested in everything, and how everything relates to everything else. 

Well?

Now clearly this Question of questions involves a lotta in, lotta outs, lotta what-have-you's, and a whole lotta strands to keep together and synthesize in the old Bobber's head. 

Problem is, the old Bobber's head -- among other issues -- is only so big. New writ is always coming to light, which then has to be integrated with the old writ. Hence the 5,000+ posts. Will it ever end? Are we getting anywhere? Or are we always beginning Where We Left Off, like old Sisyphus? 

And how is this essentially different from what a dung beetle does? "One morning, after troubled dreams, Bob woke up and found himself transformed into an insect rolling another pile of BS into a post."

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

Still, I dream of rolling those 5,000 into one compact ball. Could there be some secret formula to boil them all down? This has been my summer project, but truly truly, it's an endless summer. 

Back to our story, at the same time, I noticed that all of This -- everything -- runs through man. Take man out of the equation, and there's just nothing and nobody to know it. About this Kant is correct, as far as he goes, which is simultaneously too far and not far enough:

If I take away the thinking subject, the whole material world must vanish, as this world is nothing but the phenomenal appearance in the sensibility of our own subject...

The Aphorist says something similar but deeper, that

The world is explicable from man; but man is not explicable from the world; Man is a given reality; the world is a hypothesis we invent. 

We might go so far as to say

That which is not a person is not finally anything. 

Stalin was right about one thing: no man, no problem. 

So the nature of this subject -- man, the human subject -- is pretty, pretty important, so important that everything else hinges on it. To study anything requires a human being, but what is that? Answer: psychology. Or rather, surely psychology would provide me with some answers? If not, what is it good for? 

So I became a psychologist in order to get some answers about the nature of this entity through whom everything runs and without whom there isn't anything at all. Truly truly, it all goes back to the perennial question,

In the course of this frantic search I went through various phases, from existentialism to psychoanalysis to evolutionary psychology to Vedanta, but -- to advert to a title of one of Schuon's books -- it's like one big Play of Masks. But who is this masked man, beneath the masks? Or is it masks all the way down?

That would be absurd. Which doesn't rule out absurdity being the Answer. But we still have the problem of the man who dons the mask of absurdity. Who is this man? And is absurdity just another mask he may choose to wear?

Choose? How did that get here? Supposing we can choose absurdity, then man must first be free to choose it, but how? What is the sufficient reason of freedom?

Time out for aphorisms:

If man is the sole end of man, an inane reciprocity is born from that principle, like the mutual reflection of two empty mirrors.

Man is the animal that imagines itself to be Man.

When it finishes its "ascent," humanity will find tedium waiting for it, sitting at the highest peak.

In a word, existentialism: "let us take note of that suicide of reason -- or 'esoterism of stupidity' -- which is existentialism in all its forms; it is the incapacity to think erected into a philosophy" (Schuon).

Noted. Also noted:

Modern man treats the universe like a lunatic treats an idiot.

At the same time, the modern universe of scientism treats man like an idiot treats an absurdity. 

In reality, remove the mask, and 

the object of his existence is to be in the middle: it is to transcend matter while being situated there, and to realize the light, the Sky, starting from this intermediary level. 

It is true that the other creatures also participate in life, but man synthesizes them: he carries all life within himself and thus becomes the spokesman for all life, the vertical axis where life opens onto the spirit and where it becomes spirit.

A bold claim, which reminds me of another aphorism:

We cannot escape the triviality of existence through the doors, but only through the roofs. 

Man has a skylight? Through which the light of truth, beauty, and freedom streams? 

Hold that question.

*****

Once things in my head began to settle down a bit, I became fixated on the subject of subjects, which are literally the last thing you'd expect to pop up in a universe with nothing but objects for 10 billion years. Suffice it to say, it is an enduring mystery how to squeeze a subject out of an object.  

Which is one of the themes of the book we will soon be discussing, supposing it draws me in, which it may or may not do. I can't say I care for his -- what's the word?

Hoity toity? Highfalutin?  

Whatever you call it, his pompous prose doesn't meet the down-to-earth standards of the Raccoon Style Guide, but who does? Some have the style but not the substance, while some have the substance but not the style.  

Ian McGilchrist -- whose latest book we spent a month reviewing last year -- likes the book, even calling Hart "one of the greatest living writers on theology and the cosmos," but we'll be the judge of that. 

He goes on to call it "a telling counter-argument  to reductionist materialism" that is "subtle, imaginative, beautifully written -- and highly original."

But we'll be the judge of that.

Who are we to judge? By what authority? Who died and left us in charge of cosmic theology?

No one did. It's just that so few writers were engaging in it to our satisfaction, we just claimed the mantle for ourselves. Doing a job earthlings don't want.  

Alfred North Whitehead was one of the last serious thinkers to elucidate a grand cosmic metaphysical scheme of everything. Credit for trying -- and we don't hesitate to plunder him for all he's worth -- but we have some serious issues with process theology, full stop. It doesn't work for me to say that God exists, only not yet. 

For me this paradox of Being and Becoming is ultimately resolved via the triune Godhead, but that's a different post.

Back to this question of Authority. We know from our Gödel that any formal system cannot be both consistent and complete, but will contain truths which the system cannot justify. 

So right away we are faced with a choice: either we can, or cannot, know Truth itself. There is no system that can get us there. Rather, we either see it or we don't (or see it via "faith").

Which goes to one of the purposes of revelation, which is to convey truths that are otherwise inaccessible to us. Such truths can never be proved from our side of the veil, but must be accepted on faith. Faith in an authority.

Now, at the same time, I'm re-re-reading one of Schuon's last works, in which he -- as is his custom -- makes many authoritative statements seemingly backed up by nothing more than his own authority.  

But his type of authority strikes me as fundamentally different from Hart's kind, which is thoroughly conventional. He wants to be taken seriously by all the right people, whereas Schuon just dismisses the right people as hopelessly wrong and hardly worth refuting. Let the dead bury the tenured. 

From the foreword: "metaphysics aims in the first place at the comprehension of the whole Universe, which extends from the Divine Order to terrestrial contingencies." 

Boom. No apologies, no reservations, and no attempt to justify this view before the tribunal of Right People. The latter are not to be taken seriously except as a serious distraction, for "we live in a world wherein the abuse of intelligence replaces wisdom," and you can say that again.

We won't start our formal review of The Play of Masks this morning, but just highlight the first (authoritative) sentence of the book: 

Total intelligence, free will, sentiment capable of disinterestedness: these are the prerogatives that place man at the summit of terrestrial creatures. 

Take it or leave it. Supposing you take it, read on:

Being total, the intelligence takes cognizance of all that is, in the world of principles as well as that of phenomena; being free, the will may choose even that which is contrary to immediate interest or to what is agreeable; being disinterested, sentiment is capable of looking at itself from without, just as it can put itself in another's place.

"Every man can do so in principle, whereas animals cannot."

So, there is a fundamental and ineradicable difference between man and animal, and that's all there is to it. And man in principle "possesses a subjectivity not closed in on itself, but open to others and unto Heaven." Similar to what we wrote in yesterday's post,

Total intelligence, free will, disinterested sentiment; and consequently to know the True, to will the Good, to love the Beautiful.

Horizontal and Vertical: the former "concerns the cosmic, hence phenomenal, order," the latter "the metaphysical, hence principial, order." 

Now, Schuon may be an authority, but supposing one understands what he just said, it is thanks to a kind of "inner authority" that assents to self-evident truth. We just need a little reminder. 

And not to get ahead of ourselves, but revelation functions as just such a vertical reminder -- again, emanating from "outside" the cosmic system but by no means contrary to it or to reason. Indeed, "Human intelligence is, virtually and vocationally, the certitude of the Absolute." 

At least when you think about what thinking is. Remove the Absolute and it is nothing, reducing to that shrunken world mentioned above, "wherein the abuse of intelligence replaces wisdom." 

Fasting forward to the last sentence of this essay,

Without objectivity and transcendence there cannot be man, there is only the human animal; to find man, one must aspire to God.

Again, authoritative, but with the purpose of awakening or resonating with the inner authority that is Intelligence itself.

The Cosmotheandric Experience of One Cosmos

My apologies for the length. One thing leading to another, it just happened.

I'm reexamining some old posts in light of our current exploration of models of reality and models of ultimacy. Gödel certainly has some important contributions to the latter, in that the theorems tell us that no formal system can adequately model reality, since it will be either incomplete or inconsistent.

Now, Gödel was legitimately mentally ill, subject to paranoid delusions, hypochondria, depression, and obsessive-compulsive behavior. Of course, this doesn't affect the validity of the theorems, but it may impact his opinions about them -- about the kind of world they imply. 

When depressed he dwelled on the fact that "all of his contributions" to philosophy "were of a negative kind -- proving that something cannot be done, not what can be done." 

About this he is correct: the theorems tell us only what definitely cannot be the case, not necessarily what is the case. 

They tell us, for example, that "it is impossible to define the concept of truth within a formal system itself," but they do not tell us what truth is. Likewise, they tell us that a formal system cannot be both consistent and complete. 

Gödel's leap to a Platonic conception of truth is in no way entailed by his own theorems. For example, postmodernists go to the other extreme and say the theorems bar us from knowing any truth at all, enclosing us in language about a reality we can never reach.

Thus, before he was a logician, mathematician, or anything else, Gödel was a seeker of truth, which already implies a worldview -- one in which truth exists and is accessible to man. He would have rejected the (postmodern) alternative a priori. 

Again, he regarded mathematics as not only a search for truth, but for "pre-existing truths that inhabited a reality separate from the human mind." He was likewise "committed to accessing the immaterial world of higher philosophical truths through the power of sheer abstract logical reasoning."

But his forays into *mere* philosophy 

dismayed more than a few of his mathematical colleagues, who did not hide from him their disappointment that he seemed to be squandering his genius on trivialities.

Now, the mind is designed to --

Assumes facts not in evidence.

That's true. Let's just say what the mind does before speculating about its origins. Whatever its provenance, it detects connections between things, but for this reason man can be prone to the over-detection of agency -- thus the sometimes fine line between genius and madness. 

Gödel found "hidden meanings, or mystical significance in things large and small," for example, in "the incorrect listings of movies shown on television." ("One has the impression it is sabotage.")

Ironically, this means that, although he considered himself a seeker after extra-mental truth, he was often very much confined to his own intra-mental projections. Even more ironically, such delusional ideation could crystallize into a kind of rigidly consistent and pseudo-complete system the theorems forbid.

Nevertheless, he argued that the human mind "could not have come about through any mechanistic process," and disagreed "with the entire worldview that 'regards the world as an unordered and therefore meaningless heap of atoms.'" But it seems his paranoia made him vulnerable to finding too much meaning, and in all the wrong places.

On the one hand, a possible interpretation of the theorems is that mathematics -- and by extension, language -- is "a mere game played with symbols according to certain rules." Again, this would be the postmodern view. But this is not how Gödel saw it; rather, he believed

that the human mind can literally see mathematical realities through a kind of perception, no different from the direct sensory perceptions that the empiricists decreed to be the only valid basis of physical laws.

Here again, this latter interpretation is in no way a necessary consequence of the theorems. Moreover, it begins to converge upon someone like Schuon, for whom the necessary truths of existence are indeed directly "perceived" via intellection:

Intellectual intuition comprises essentially a contemplativity which in no way enters into the rational capacity, the latter being logical rather than contemplative.... 

[Rationality] perceives the general and proceeds by logical operations, whilst Intellect perceives the principial -- the metaphysical -- and proceeds by intuition (Schuon). 

Gödel saw no reason "why we should have less confidence in this kind of perception" than in the lower kind, and he's not wrong. Nor was he wrong to wonder

what kind of sense would there be in bringing forth a creature (man), who has such a broad field of possibilities of his own development and of relationships, and then not allow him to achieve 1/1000 of it.

In other words, what kind of irrational -- not to say perverse -- Creator gives infinite potential to a finite being? Gödel thought this was sufficient proof of an afterlife: 

it follows directly that our earthly existence, since it in and of itself has at most a very dubious meaning, can only be a means to an end for another existence.

Again, he had little use for religions but was very much open to Religion, perhaps one that hadn't yet been discovered. He thought that the great majority of philosophers were as guilty as "bad churches" in turning people away from these deeper questions.

"Gödel's public renown continued to grow after his death" in 1978, partly because "The general idea that there are truths that cannot be proved has an irresistible appeal." 

But in his own way he has been misappropriated for as many dubious agendas as quantum physics: "probably more wrong things have been said about his proof than any other mathematical theorem in history."

Interestingly, his ideas seem to inspire two kinds of skeptics, those who recognize "that their knowledge is limited," which "troubles them deeply." The other kind acknowledge "the same thing but find it liberating." Gödel was in the latter camp, believing that

Humans will always be able to recognize some truths through intuition..., that can never be established even by the most advanced computing machine....

In place of limits on human knowledge and certainty, he saw only the irreplaceable uniqueness of the human spirit. 

So, having said all this, where does it leave us?

*****

To review where we left off, Gödel believed man could see mathematical realities directly through a kind of perception, no different in principle from the perception of empirical reality.

He further believed that human beings "will always be able to recognize some truths through intuition" which "can never be established even by the most advanced computing machine." 

But again, the theorems only reveal what the mind cannot be; to know our mind is not a computer is not to know what it is. 

In fact, depending on the premises we plug in, we can conclude anything we like. But no rational operation can furnish its own premises.

For Schuon, "The effectiveness of reason essentially depends upon two conditions," neither of which can be reduced to reason. There is first "the value and extent of the available information" with which to reason upon, and garbage in, tenure out.

But secondly, there is "the acuity and profundity of the intelligence" in question, which bears a kind of vertical relation to reason itself, going "beyond the indirect processes of reason in calling upon pure intellection."

Again, as discussed in the previous post, Schuon's pure intellection seems to share something in common with Gödel's direct perception of mathematical realities.

If mathematical realities can be directly perceived in this way, why not other realities? God is a mathematician, but surely not only a mathematician. Come to think of it, I'll bet God cannot be limited to a formal system for the same reason we cannot be: as we have suggested in the past, our infinitude is the inverse image of his.

That's just a hunch, but perhaps it can in turn help account for the bad religion bemoaned by Gödel, because people are forever absolutizing their religion instead of understanding it to be about the Absolute. 

Here again, I wonder if this is an ultimate entailment of the theorems, since reality can never be contained by any formal system. 

It's a tricksy business, because we have a word -- reality -- that can lull us into thinking we have domesticated that to which the word refers. But the map is never the territory, nor the model the modeled. 

In any event, the rationalist -- which is to say, someone who irrationally encloses himself within the constraints of logic -- can never reason adequately "in light of the total and supralogical intelligence" that must be prior to logic itself. 

Such a person "thinks he can solve every problem by means of logic alone," but this is to put the cart of rationalism before the horse of intelligence. By way of analogy, "A line of reasoning that is square in shape" will "reject a spherical reality and replace it with a square error." 

Or worse, a line of reasoning with a circular shape won't even see the higher dimensional sphere; at best, it will reduce the three dimensional sphere to a two-dimensional circle. 

Reason divorced from intellect be like... like left cerebral hemisphere divorced from right, or letter from spirit, words from music, prose from poetry, abstract concept from concrete experience, particle from field, empirical from rational, etc.

In a footnote to this essay, Schuon makes the rather important claim that

Revelation is a kind of cosmic intellection whereas personal intellection is comparable to a Revelation on the scale of the microcosm. 

Now, I happen to believe this, especially the idea that the human subject is probably the first and most important revelation of them all. After all, without it, there could be no other revelation, because there would be no one to whom to reveal it. 

Intelligence is the First Miracle? Why not?

The first thing that should strike 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.

 Is he wrong? 

Nothing is more absurd than to have intelligence derive from matter, hence the greater from the lesser; the evolutionary leap from matter to intelligence, is from every point of view the most inconceivable thing that could be.

Now, at the other end, is Revelation "a kind of cosmic intellection"? 

Surely not just any revelation, otherwise we might be tempted to believe that the revelation of mistakes in the TV Guide is a result of sabotage.

This will take us Far Afield -- too far for a single post, but but could there be some extra-Revelational standard by which to judge Revelation? Or perhaps some way to harmonize all the good ones? The ones deemed Good Enough by Intelligence itself?

For example, I think the Tao Te Ching does a pretty, pretty good job of describing the ultimate Principle. Now, is this Principle the same one described in Genesis and then in John? And are these the same as the one described in the Upanishads?

I say, why not? Which was kind of the implicit point of the opening and closing sections of the book, but I could probably do a better job of it today. 

It's today. Let's see you try.

Today I also know better than to try such an outlandish and impudent exercise. Rather, let this guy have a crack at it -- to present the Tao Te Ching in light of the Christian revelation, and vice versa -- "a Gospel according to Lao Tzu."

Before light was made

There was the Primal Light that was not made:

The Primal Essence,

Dwelling in the Darkness of incomprehensibility.

Yada yada, "There is no name whereby the Primal Essence can be named," which is to say, no model,

For He is a sea of Essence,

Indeterminate and without bounds...

He is wholly Essence, and solely Essence,

Yet He is above essence,

Because He is not the essence of anything that is. 

If this is an attempt to describe the metacosmic intellect, our own intellect must again be its reflection, 

for how could the intelligence limit itself, seeing that by its very nature it is in principle unlimited or it is nothing? 

In other words, who or what places this so-called limit if not intelligence itself? "For an intellectual limit is a wall," 

hence one of two things: either the intelligence by definition includes a principle of illimitability or liberty.

Either this, or 

on the contrary the intelligence includes -- again by definition -- a principle of limitation or constraint, in which case it no longer includes any certainty and can function no differently from the intelligence of animals, with the result that all pretension to "critical philosophy" is vain. 

Recall yesterday's bottom line:

In place of limits on human knowledge and certainty, he [Gödel] saw only the irreplaceable uniqueness of the human spirit. 

 Compare this to what shall have to be today's bottom line: 

Man is intelligence, and intelligence is the transcending of forms and the realization of the invisible Essence; to say human intelligence is to say absoluteness and transcendence (Schuon).

This being the case, neither the Essence nor the Intellect can be modeled, but there is an endlessly fruitful dialectic between them, which seems to be the bestwecando.

I just ordered a book that seems to express what I am trying to say, called The Cosmotheandric Experience. No preview is available, but the description says the term cosmotheandric 

denotes an intertwining of the "cosmic," the "human," and the "divine" -- all interpenetrating one another as different dimensions of the Whole.

Gemini, what does Panikkar mean by this?

Panikkar coined the term "cosmotheandric experience" to describe a fundamental intuition or consciousness of reality as a seamless, interconnected whole. It signifies the intrinsic and inseparable unity of the cosmos, theos (the divine), and anthropos (the human).

Here's a breakdown of what he means:

• Interdependence: Panikkar argues that reality is not composed of three separate entities (God, humanity, and the world) but rather these are three dimensions that are intrinsically related and interpenetrate one another. None can be fully understood in isolation.
• Mutual Constitution: The divine, the human, and the cosmic are not just externally linked; they actively constitute each other. Reality emerges from their dynamic interplay and collaboration.
• Experience over Concept: The cosmotheandric is primarily an experience, an intuition of this deep interconnectedness, rather than just a philosophical concept. It's about a way of being in and perceiving the world.
• Breaking Down Dualisms: This concept aims to overcome the dualistic ways of thinking that often separate the sacred from the secular, the human from nature, and God from the world.

In essence, the "cosmotheandric experience" points to a holistic vision where the divine is present within the cosmos and humanity, humanity is a part of both the divine and the cosmos, and the cosmos is imbued with both the divine and the human presence. It's an awareness that we are all participants in the same fundamental reality.

Panikkar believed that this intuition is crucial for our time, helping us to overcome fragmented views of reality and fostering a deeper understanding and harmony between different religious traditions and with the natural world. 

Hey, that sounds like the blogger Gagdad Bob at One Cosmos!

That's an interesting observation! It's quite possible that Robert Godwin's work at "One Cosmos" resonates with Panikkar's idea of the "cosmotheandric experience."

From the descriptions of Robert Godwin's book, "One Cosmos Under God: The Unification of Matter, Life, Mind and Spirit," there seem to be significant overlaps in themes:

• Unification of Reality: Godwin's emphasis on the "unification of matter, life, mind and spirit" echoes Panikkar's focus on the interconnectedness of cosmos, humanity, and the divine.
• Holistic Vision: Both thinkers seem to advocate for a more integrated and less fragmented understanding of reality.
• Spirituality and Science: Godwin's attempt to synthesize cosmology, physics, biology, psychology, and theology could be seen as a way of exploring the cosmotheandric dimensions from different perspectives.

While I'm not deeply familiar with all of Robert Godwin's writings, based on what I've found, it does appear that his "One Cosmos" project shares a similar impulse to Panikkar's "cosmotheandric experience" in seeking a holistic and interconnected view of existence that encompasses the material, the human, and the spiritual.

A Meta-Metaphysical Model of Reality?

My apologies for the length. It just happened.

Now that I'm explicitly thinking about models of reality, I'm seeing them everywhere. Indeed, what is history but a clash of models? Certainly this applies to intellectual history, which is one long argument, but politics as well, not to mention religion. And I myself have spent the last two decades elaborating and fine-tuning my own model of reality.

For example, last summer we reviewed a volume of Eric Voegelin's Late Meditations and Essays, one of which being about the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. Now, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it's a model. But what prior conditions made this diabolical model seem plausible?

This has immediate relevance, because what prior conditions made last night's anti-Semitic horror possible? A left-wing Islamist terrorist murdered two people because of a morally depraved model of reality that turns evil into good and vice versa:

This didn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s the inevitable result of more than a year of anti-Israel and antisemitic hatred that has been tolerated and even encouraged in our institutions. From college campuses to the halls of Congress, this hatred has been allowed to fester unchecked.

The question is, how does an ideology hijack human consciousness and plunge it into a second reality? For the terrorist surely acted on an internalized model that makes it acceptable to murder innocent people who are actually living in the real reality.  

Unreality hates reality. Especially ultimate reality.

This comes back to the question of models of ultimate reality vs. models of ultimacy. Voegelin gives us a model of ultimacy, in that man is ultimately situated between immanence and transcendence, which is essentially an evolving space between appearances and reality. 

Modernity is a failed model, and postmodernity is but a response to this failure, but somehow it is even more dysfunctional than the model it displaced. This is discussed in another book I'm reading, called Enchanted by Eternity: Recapturing the Wonder of the Catholic Worldview. 

A worldview is but a model by a different name: it is

the eyes through which we see all of reality -- the deeply embedded patterns of thinking that we apply not now and then but constantly in daily living. A worldview is the stable, all-encompassing way a society or an individual not only looks at reality but feels reality (Slattery). 

The reason why our politics is so contentious is that, truly truly, it involves a clash of models and a war of worldviews. It is essentially a religious war because models of ultimate reality are essentially religious, even if they pretend to be secular. 

It was Polanyi who first alerted me to the fact that secular ideologies have all the defects of religion with none of the benefits, for they are full of moral passion unhinged from moral judgment, like last night's terrorist. 

A worldview or a model "is the set of givens, assumptions, and presuppositions through which you view the world. It colors what you mean by God, universe, and human. It answers all the basic questions," including who we are, where we came from, and where we're going: "Thus it is the ground of thought and behavior and therefore lifestyle." It

separates true and false, right and wrong, the beautiful and the ugly, the important and the banal, in order to make decisions. Accordingly, worldview [model] functions like a software that has been silently downloaded into the brain (ibid.).

It's not difficult to imagine model in which Luigi Mangioni, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and now Elias Rodriguez, are heroes. Or perhaps you didn't attend college. But even if you didn't, you know all about the elites who attended our finest universities and interpret everything in light of the dysfunctional postmodern / neo-Marxist / progressive / relativistic model they internalized there.

This model absolutely prevents one from seeing what is there for all to see, for example, Biden's dementia, or that a man cannot be a woman. It also causes one to see things that aren't there, for example, Russia Collusion, the Climate Apocalypse, Systemic Racism, the Patriarchy, et al.

So, models are pretty, pretty powerful. And it seems we are "between models," having left the premodern religious model for the model of modern rationalism, materialism, and scientism, which has been running on fumes since the beginning of the 20th century. To the extent that it's still here, it's like a train that hit the brakes years ago, but is still moving along the tracks from sheer momentum. 

So, we need a new model, paradigm, and worldview. Slattery is pretty optimistic in arguing that what he calls an ultramodern Catholicism could furnish this worldview, but let's hear him out. For example, he is in full agreement with Raccoon orthodoxy that one "must begin with a correct understanding of the universe and of man." Get these two wrong, and your model is doomed.

Only "After tackling why the universe exists and who man is," can one "lay out strategies for what to do and how to do it." In other words, "Reality before action," and who could disagree?

Well, Marx, for example, who famously wrote that "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." 

Now, changing the world without understanding the world is the credo of the left. It's an interesting question: why would a child imagine he was born into the wrong body? Never mind, just cut off his Johnson! Or, why are all models of global warning wrong? Never mind, just cut off your fossil fuels!

Back to models, Slattery argues that "we need to stop being modern and start becoming ultramodern," by which he doesn't mean more intensely or extremely so (e.g., "hypermodern"), rather, in the sense of "beyond," or "outside the limits of," or "exceeding the range of." 

Frankly, it's kind of a pataphysical approach (I believe Van der Leun once accused -- or complemented -- me along these lines, of practicing 'pataphysics without a license).

'Pataphysics is the science of that which is superinduced upon metaphysics, whether within or beyond the latter's limitations, extending as far beyond metaphysics as the latter extends beyond physics. 

'Pataphysics is, of course, a serious joke, like the Church of the Subgenius. Nevertheless, the idea of a meta-metaphysical model appeals to me.  

Any Model of Reality Requires a Leap of Faith

Yesterday's post touched on the criteria we use to judge models of reality, whether these models be scientific, metaphysical, or theological, and decided that these criteria should include fruitfulness, logic, coherence, applicability to human experience, and comprehensiveness or scope. 

Now, revelation is a model which, at the very least, presupposes a kind of meta-model in which the Ultimate Reality is able to communicate its nature to human beings. 

More generally, we can all agree that reality speaks, otherwise the world would be unintelligible. But here we have the very source of the world's intelligibility speaking directly to us. Which I suppose must be possible, even if has never actually occurred.

Before judging the content of this so-called revelation, we must consider the source: is this really from the author of being, or from some pretender? Is some pneumopath just furiously deepaking the chopra, like L. Ron Hubbard or Joseph Smith? 

And if it is from God, how can we presume to judge the supreme judge of human affairs? But does God really want us to accept the message on blind faith? Or does he wish to engage the intellect, which, after all, is that in man which most resembles the divine principle?  

Whatever the case may be, some kind of judgment must be made, but on what basis? 

Again, perhaps in the same way we judge a scientific theory, which will explain a great deal -- i.e., unify the phenomena -- in such a way that it doesn't unexplain what had previously been understood. 

Looked at this way, the revelation in question needs to make more sense of our lives than anything else on offer. It must transcend science while not in any way negating it, because science (obviously) explains a great deal, even if it has necessary limits. But of course science can never explain itself, let alone the scientist.

Let's think this through. First of all, we either need revelation or we don't. In other words, either we can form an accurate and complete model of the cosmos via wholly natural resources, or we can't. If we can't, then there is either no remedy to our ignorance, or we are in need of a vertical murmurandom to complete the model.

We ourselves can never arrive at a complete and consistent model of reality. Stanley Jaki, in his Brain, Mind and Computers, correctly notes that Gödel's theorems prove

that even in the elementary parts of arithmetic there are propositions which cannot be proved or disproved in that system (emphasis mine).

And if that isn't enough to put a crimp your day, his analysis implies that no formal system of any kind "is immune to the bearing of Gödel's conclusion."

So, the mind is not, and cannot be, a logic machine. If it were, it could never know it, because it would be confined to the closed circle of logical entailment. Which I suspect also goes to our freedom, since it too escapes necessity. 

A machine

can have only a finite number of components and it can operate only on a finite number of initial assumptions....  

Gödel's theorem, therefore, cuts the ground under the efforts that view machines... as adequate models of the mind.

A machine "can never produce at least one truth, which the mind can without relying on other minds.... No matter how perfect the machine, it can never do everything that the human mind can." 

So, it seems that our most perfect manmade system of thought will necessarily have to put its faith in at least one thought or principle or axiom or assumption or intuition or speculation or delusion or hallucination that the system cannot justify, and which comes from outside (transcends) the system.

Therefore, if I am following my argument correctly, whatever your model, there is no escaping faith. 

All can agree that either we need revelation or we don't. Looks like we do, but just because we need it, that doesn't mean it exists. What we call revelation could be -- and for the materialist must be -- just self-deception. It is as if we are unconsciously trying to get around the theorems by pretending to a completeness that is forever inaccessible to us.

However, I recently found out that Gödel not only believed in a personal God, but thought he could prove the existence of an afterlife:

I am convinced of this, independently of any theology. It is possible today to perceive, by pure reasoning that it is entirely consistent with the known facts. If the world is rationally constructed and has a meaning, then there must be such a thing [as an afterlife] (quoted in Wang).

It is indeed ironic -- or inevitable? -- "that the greatest logician since Aristotle" thought "God's existence could be proved a priori" (Goldstein).  

Nevertheless, which God? What is he like?  

Andrew Klavan asks, "if the human condition is the puzzle, which of the oldest solutions endure and what has Christianity added to them?"  

Good questions which we will bear in mind in our quest for the mother of all models. Meanwhile,

In summary, this text argues for the potential necessity of revelation due to the inherent limitations of human reason, as illustrated by Gödel's theorems. It proposes criteria for evaluating claims of revelation and ends by posing fundamental questions about the nature and source of such revelation.

No post is complete without an image:

And an explanation: 

The image is an abstract artwork, rendered in a high-quality, professional style. It interweaves intricate geometric patterns, reminiscent of scientific diagrams, with swirling, ethereal forms suggestive of spiritual energy. Minimalist human figures are subtly integrated, symbolizing the intellect's quest for knowledge. 

The color palette blends deep blues and violets, representing the vastness of the cosmos and the depths of human thought, with vibrant orange and gold accents, suggesting enlightenment and the pursuit of truth. The composition creates a sense of dynamism and tension, evoking profound questions about existence and our place in the universe, highlighting the limits of human perception and understanding.

A Reality with a Future

This is gonna take awhile.

What is?

Making my way through all these Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities. It's like going to the Reality Store and checking out each and every aisle. In fact, Charles Hartshorne once tried to quantify the possibilities based upon various criteria such as eternal, temporal, conscious, knowing the world, and including the world, resulting in 32 "doctrinal possibilities." That's a lot of models to check out!

Nor does that even include all the possible variables. One author (Viney) added a couple more variables and came up with 256 alternatives. Another author comes up with eight more general possibilities, including atheism, agnosticism, deism, pantheism, polytheism and henotheism, monotheism, panentheism, and his favorite, "eschatological panentheism."

But even atheism is never just atheism, because exactly which god are you denying? After all, I too am an atheist, since I reject all gods minus one. But based on what criteria? 

Perhaps the same criteria we use to judge scientific models. Philosopher Ian Barbour (quoted herein) writes that a

theoretical model is an imagined mechanism or process, postulated by analogy with familiar mechanisms or processes and used to construct a theory or to correlate a set of observations.

In science, one criteria is "fertility," which involves three main features: first, it must explain what we observe, second, it must be able to predict future observations, and third, it must be falsifiable. To which I would add coherence and consistency. 

So, are some models of ultimate reality more fruitful than others? Clearly. For example, a model that assigns absolute omnipotence to God thereby denies free will in man and renders our commonsense experience of freedom inexplicable and absurd. No explanation is needed for our free will, since it is simply denied up front. 

But this is like a metaphysic that regards biological life as nothing more than statistically rare physics. You can say that an organism is nothing but a soft machine, but who then is saying it? A machine? That doesn't work for me. Likewise a model that reduces consciousness to biology.

As it pertains to our ultimate models -- or models of ultimacy -- Peters suggests four criteria, including comprehensiveness or scope, logic, coherence, and applicability to human experience. 

Let's fast forward to Peters' preferred model, which is again what he calls "eschatological panentheism." I only mention it because it is pretty close to my model, in emphasizing the teleological structure of creation. For again, God isn't just the efficient cause of things, but the final cause. And last in execution is first in conception, so finality is baked into the cosmic cake from the beginning. 

For Peters, "God creates from the future, not the past," starting "with redemption and then draw[ing] all of creation toward it." 

Whether you call it Genesis or Big Bang, both involve a futurity whereby "To have a future is to have being. To lack a future is to lack being. The very definition of creation includes a future." This also implies that things aren't merely entropic, rather, aimed at an end which requires time in order to attain. 

But it also implies an open future, for if it were closed, this would be an implicit denial of the time it takes to get there. This would be like Einstein's block universe whereby past and future are just perspectival illusions:

The gift of the future builds into physical reality its dynamism, openness, contingency, self-organization, and freedom.

Why even is there creativity within creation? Because "God unlocks the present from the grip of past causation. And this frees the present for newness in the future." Ultimately, "Creation is not done yet. God is still creating the world." With a little help from his friends, which is to say, us.

With that, I'm going to repost something from last summer that touches on some of the themes discussed above:

Setting the stage for what we are about to discuss, it goes back to yesterday's post, in particular, to the idea that what is needed is proof of a certain vision of the world before proofs of God can be efficacious or operative and religion can make sense more generally.

Exactly what the world is is a rather big question, but it is among the first terms we must define. To repeat an aphorism from yesterday:

Today we require a methodical introduction to that vision of the world outside of which religious vocabulary is meaningless. We do not talk of God with those who do not judge talk about the gods as plausible. 

We ended the post with Voegelin's key idea that "the order of the world is not of 'this world' alone but also of the 'world beyond.'" These "two worlds" always and everywhere constitute the one real world: any definition of our (immanent) world must include the world beyond that is its transcendent ground and telos.

This humanly irreducible complementarity of immanence and transcendence reminds me of other such irreducible complementarities, and let us count them: being and becoming, absolute and infinite, object and subject, time and eternity, interior and exterior, matter and spirit, wave and particle, brain and mind, left brain and right brain, individual and collective, part and whole, Creator and creation...

You could no doubt think of more, but these are not vicious dualisms, rather, dynamic and fruitful complementarities. 

It seems that Christianity alone -- at least today -- does not provide a vision of the world in which Christianity makes sense. Such a vision obviously existed at its origins, which is why it spread so rapidly. There was no friction, so to speak, between the world -- or the vision thereof -- and Christianity.

We no longer have that premodern vision of the world, nor is it ever coming back. And our new vision seems to render a religious vocabulary meaningless and talk of God to be implausible.

Seems to. In reality nothing has changed, in that our world is still situated between immanence and transcendence, except that modernity has collapsed this space into immanence, thus, as a side effect, negated all of the other complementarities referenced above. 

Which is why we are now confined to a flattened, one-sided, left-brained world. No dynamic complementarity for you!

What universe are we actually living in? 

Now, in one sense the universe doesn't change, since it is what it is.

And yet, like the climate, it never stops changing, and has been undergoing relentless evolution since it sprang into being 13.8 billion years ago. If the universe is evolving, as is consciousness along with it, where does this leave us? In a world of pure becoming with no being?

It's a tempting offer, but we must again insist on the dynamic complementarity between being and becoming, and also between consciousness and world. Again, for Voegelin this is the real cosmos -- the evolving order -- between immanence and transcendence. 

COSMOS: In Voegelin's usage, the whole of ordered reality including animate and inanimate nature and the gods. (Not to be confused with the modern conception of "cosmos" as the astrophysical universe.) Encompasses all of reality, including the full range of the tension of existence toward the transcendental (Webb). 

Religion makes a heckuva lot of sense in this cosmos, because just as science maps immanence without ever containing or exhausting it, so too does religion map transcendence without ever containing or exhausting it (certain literalists and fundamentalists notwithstanding). 

In short, we can never really eliminate the Tension. Unless maybe Shankara and Buddha are correct, but that's another wormhole. On the other hand Christ spans the tension, but that too is a wormhole we won't dig into just yet.

With this prologue out of the way, I've been reading several books by a Catholic process theologian named Joseph Bracken, who actually tries to strike a balance between the being and becoming -- and immanence and transcendence -- of things.

Examples.

These are from a book called The World in the Trinity: Open-Ended Systems in Science and Religion. In keeping with the need for a vision in which Christianity makes sense, 

Bracken utilizes the language and conceptual structures of systems theory as a philosophical and scientific grammar to show traditional Christian beliefs in a new light that is accessible and rationally plausible to a contemporary, scientifically influenced society. 

Consider the following, which echoes what was said above about the complementarity of immanence and transcendence:

the natural order and the alleged supernatural order are in fact dynamically interconnected processes or systems that together constitute a richer reality than what either the natural order or the supernatural order, taken alone, can provide.  

In keeping with the theme of complementarity, "both change and permanence characterize our human experience of ourselves, others, and the world."

Another key complementarity: "coextensive with their Without, there is a Within of things." There is always and everywhere a Within, no matter how inchoate. In its absence, the thing would be unintelligible (in other words, devoid of form). 

Where does all the creative novelty come from? What is its principle? For me, a big hint is contained in the first sentence of the Bible, "In the beginning God created..." For Whitehead, creativity is indeed the ultimate principle, but he goes too far, placing it even above (or prior to) God.

As discussed in a recent post, there is both top-down and bottom-up causality, and "God provides a directionality to the cosmic process," i.e., a teleological attraction (cf. the eschatological panentheism discussed in the first half of this post). 

To be continued....  

"In essence, the text is a journey through various philosophical and theological models of ultimate reality, advocating for a view that embraces complementarity, teleology, and the ongoing creative action of God within an evolving cosmos. The author seems to be gravitating towards a form of panentheism that emphasizes the future and the dynamic interplay between the immanent and the transcendent."

I'll bite. What is it?

Here's how different elements of the image relate to the themes:

• The Central Brightness: This could symbolize ultimate reality, God, or the source of creation. Its intensity suggests a fundamental and powerful origin.
• The Nebulous Background: The swirling colors and cosmic dust evoke the vastness and evolving nature of the universe, referencing the discussion of the Big Bang and the ongoing evolution of the cosmos.
• The Interconnected Network of Lines and Orbs: This intricate web might represent the "Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities" being explored in the text. The various orbs could symbolize different concepts or aspects within these models, and the lines connecting them suggest the relationships and interdependencies between these ideas.
• The Circular Structure: The overall circular or spherical arrangement could allude to wholeness, the cosmos, or the interconnectedness of all things, reflecting the idea of a unified reality that includes both immanence and transcendence.
• The Sense of Depth and Layers: The way the elements overlap and recede suggests the multiple layers of understanding and the complexity involved in grappling with these philosophical and theological concepts.

Essentially, the image attempts to visually synthesize the text's exploration of diverse models of reality, the evolving universe, and the interconnectedness between the material and the transcendent. It's meant to be evocative and thought-provoking rather than a literal depiction.

Ultimate Models and Models of Ultimacy

We are still contemplating the preliminaries of any talk of "models of ultimate reality," e.g., what is a model, what is ultimate reality, and how something determinate could ever map the indeterminate. 

Yesterday we suggested that man may or may not be able to model ultimate reality, but he can model "ultimacy": in other words, he can make valid statements about the ultimate terms of our existence, for example, that man is uniquely situated between the poles of immanence and transcendence, even if we could never exhaustively model the latter.

In another sense, if creation is the "book of God," then it is already a kind of model. And if man is the image and likeness, then he's an even better model. 

Don't forget the Incarnation.

Yes, in that case, Christ isn't just the model but the thing itself, at least in his divine nature. 

But by definition, everything real speaks to -- or of rather -- reality. Thus,

In order to speak of the eternal, it is sufficient to speak with talent of the things of the day.

But the relationship between time and eternity is asymmetrical, and

He who is not resigned to the fundamental asymmetry of the world ends up falsifying his measurements.

This being the case, we mustn't pretend our model can do more than it can do, as is the case with models of climate change, literally none of which accurately model the climate.

This is because the climate is a complex and nonlinear system in which we neither know all the variables nor how they interact.

But God is simple.

Or so we have heard from the wise. Ironically, God should be easier to model than the climate, since he supposedly has no parts, moving or otherwise.

And yet, a trinitarian model is quite different from an utterly static monist model of God. In the former there is indeed something analogous to "parts" and "movement," even to time, e.g., the timeless time it takes for the Father to beget the Son and for the Spirit to proceed from them.

I suggest that we don't start with the Creator or with creation -- or Principle and manifestation -- but rather, with their complementary relationship. In other words, Creator entails creation and creation implies Creator. This would be an example of "ultimacy," i.e., of the most we can say about our situation absent some direct revelation from God.

Now supposing God is the pure act of To Be, then anything that is partakes of God insofar as it is. In our world, any determinate being is a function of indeterminate being, hence the asymmetrical relation between them.

But I'm thinking that this indeterminate/determinate complementarity is present even in God, for who is the Son -- and what is the Logos -- but the eternal self-determination of the Father? 

While I think some more about this subject, here's an old post that is not irrelevant to our discussion: 

Supposing we argue, any argument presupposes the truth, otherwise why argue? Argument is a means to truth.

No it isn't.

That's not an argument, it's just a contradiction.

Not at all.

Enough of this. 

"The classical proofs of God," writes Schuon, are situated between "direct intellection" at one end and "materialistic rationalism" at the other. No form of rationalism can ever reach -- i.e., model -- its object, while intellection bypasses reason altogether and proceeds straight to the transphysical object. 

I suppose the problem with direct intellection is that it only works on a retail basis. The experience of God is limited to the person having the experience. Which is ineffable, i.e., not transferable via speech.

Schuon notes that "in the spiritual order a proof is of assistance only to the man who wishes to understand, and who, by virtue of this wish, has already in some measure understood; it is of no practical use to one who, deep in his heart, does not want to change his position, and whose philosophy merely expresses this desire."

Schuon's point of departure is that metaphysical ideas are innate to the intellect. Denying this principle "is equivalent to the destruction of the very notion of intelligence," for "our intelligence could never prove anything at all."

Way back in the early days of the blog I wrote a post entitled Proof of Proof is Proof of God. I just looked it up to see if I was serious, and its bottom line is as follows:

In a certain sense, proof itself is proof of the supernatural, being that it obviously exists in a realm above matter. The metaphysical transparency of the world is all the proof the Raccoon requires, but all men are not Raccoons, and I do not write for the wider non-Raccoon world....

There is a translogical component to the acceptance of any truth. We are not merely "logic machines." In other words, we must make a free act of assent to truth, and this cannot be reduced to the principles of logic. For example, there is no logical proof that one should abide by logic. What if I want to live a life a life guided by absolute spontaneity and transgression of logic, like people who live in San Francisco? 

Our point, I suppose, is that if the intellect knows the truth -- any truth -- then this has vast implications. For example, Schuon takes the view that

The Intellect "is divine," first because it is a knower -- or because it is not a non-knower – and secondly because it reduces all phenomena to their Principle; because it sees the Cause in every effect, and thus surmounts, at a certain level, the vertiginous and devouring multiplicity of the phenomenal world.

Call it the Argument from Intellect.

Intellectual intuition comprises essentially a contemplativity which in no way enters into the rational capacity, the latter being logical rather than contemplative; it is contemplative power, receptivity in respect of the Uncreated Light, the opening of the Eye of the Heart, which distinguishes transcendent intelligence from reason.

I think I see the problem here, for the average secular man is not just in need of evidence of God, but rather, evidence of a whole outlook or paradigm [or model] by which they could be moved by the evidence, otherwise all the evidence in the world proves nothing. The Aphorist essentially says the same thing with his customary pithiness:

Today we require a methodical introduction to that vision [read: model] of the world outside of which religious vocabulary is meaningless. We do not talk of God with those who do not judge talk about the gods as plausible.

This being the case, what is needed is proof of a certain vision [model] of the world before proof itself can be efficacious or operative. Now, what world could this be, and how do we prove its existence?

That's a big question to spring on a fellow in the middle of a post. What in the world is the world? That phrase sounds familiar, and sure enough it was the title of a post last year. Let's see if it provides any answers. 

It has a good point made by Voegelin about "the meaning of the term world. It presents extraordinary difficulties to philosophical analysis," hence the title of the post.

Before we answer this difficult question -- what is the world? -- a few cautionary aphorisms:

As long as we can respond without hesitating we do not know the subject.

Whoever is curious to measure his stupidity should count the number of things that seem obvious to him. 

Only the fool knows clearly why he believes or why he doubts. 

Yada yada, for Voegelin, "the order of the world is not of 'this world' alone but also of the 'world beyond.'" Or in other words, immanence and transcendence respectively, such that any definition of this (immanent) world must include the world beyond that is its transcendent ground.

And we're back to our Model of Ultimacy alluded to above.

Is there a more cutandry way to express this, and to tie it in with the title of this post? Hmm. Proof of the world is proof of God? 

No it isn't.

Is!

We'll think on it some more and get back to you tomorrow. Meanwhile,

In summary, the text explores the challenges and possibilities of understanding ultimate reality through models. It navigates concepts like creation, incarnation, the relationship between time and eternity, the limitations of human reason, and the necessity of a foundational worldview for religious understanding. It doesn't offer definitive answers but rather engages in a thoughtful and layered inquiry into these profound questions.

Really? 

Yes, really. The image attempts to visually represent some of the abstract concepts discussed in the text you provided. Here's a possible interpretation:

• The Central Figure: The elegant, somewhat ethereal figure could symbolize a "model" -- something distinct and formed that tries to represent something larger. Its white color might suggest purity or an attempt to capture truth.
• The Abstract, Flowing Background: The dynamic and colorful swirls behind the figure could represent "ultimate reality" or the "indeterminate." Their fluid and less defined nature contrasts with the more structured figure in the foreground.
• The Interplay: The way the figure emerges from or is intertwined with the abstract background suggests the relationship between a model and what it tries to represent. The model is part of, yet distinct from, the underlying reality.
• The Contrast: The sharp lines of the figure against the more organic shapes of the background highlight the tension between the determinate (the model) and the indeterminate (ultimate reality), a key point in your text.

Essentially, the image tries to capture the idea of something finite (the figure/model) attempting to relate to or emerge from something infinite and less defined (the abstract background/ultimate reality).