Before continuing further, a brief reset: Cosmos and Anthropos are related and open to one another in such a way that the rational structures of the former mirror the rationality of the latter, which in turn requires the courtesy of an explanation, i.e., a sufficient reason.
This reason cannot something from within either term, rather, beyond them. It is man the questioner who, “with his inquiring rationality,” is “the boundary point where it [the Cosmos] is open beyond itself, and where the mystery of its meaning becomes disclosed, insofar as he allows his mind to fall under the power of revelation from beyond” (Torrance). Translated into cosmotheandric terms, this means that beyond the subjective horizon of the Anthropos is the ground of being itself, symbolized as O.
The Cosmos is not, nor can it be, imprisoned within its own absurcularity, rather, it is “an essentially open system with an ontological and intelligible reference beyond its own limits…” As per Gödel, it is consistent but not complete, featuring a hierarchy of levels “which are open upward but not reducible downward, for no one level provides the sufficient reason for its own contingent order,” rather, “only through reference to another level or to other levels beyond it.” Our Cosmos “is thus to be regarded as an essentially open system for precisely as an intelligible whole it requires a sufficient reason beyond itself” (ibid.), and that’s all there is to it.
One might even say that the two trees we’ve been discussing go precisely to this description, since the Tree of Life must be open, relational (or substance-in-relation), and ultimately personal, with a vertical axis — or trunk — running perpendicular to its Theo-logical roots above and Cosmo-logical leaves below. Between these two terms is our own Anthropo-logic. But these are unified in the one Logos present in each.
∞
Now, “The full meaning of ‘to be’ is not just ‘to be present,’ but ‘to be actively present’“ (Clarke). The relationality of this active presence “is a primordial dimension of every real being, inseparable from its substantiality.” Being is an act, and the act of being is relational: “it is turned towards others by its self-communicating action. To be fully is to be substance-in-relation” (ibid.).
But why? Because every being — every existent that partakes of being — is an image of the very Principle that too is irreducibly substance-in-relation. That every lower being has both an in-itself and towards-others dimension finds its ground in the triple primacy of our ultimate Principle.
Josef Pieper (cited by Clarke) agrees that to exist
means “to be able to relate” and “to be the sustaining subject at the center of a field of reference.” Only in reference to an inside can there be an outside. Without a self-contained “subject” there can be no “object.”
We might say that subject is to interiority as object is to exteriority, and the two are always related or linked. Moreover “The higher the form of intrinsic existence, the more developed becomes the relatedness to reality, also the more profound and comprehensive becomes the sphere of this relatedness…” (Pieper). And the Anthropos is the highest and most related center of relatedness in the Cosmos, in that we are internally related to immanent matter, to other persons, and to the intersubjective Principle of both these possibilities.
With this in mind, we now have a conceptual basis for understanding the receptivity and relationality in and of the Theos. Is the Theos related to us? How could it not be, if the Theos is the very principle of substance-in-relation? Moreover, this divine receptivity “should be looked on not as essentially a sign of imperfection [or] poverty,” but rather, as a “positive aspect or perfection of being” (Clarke). In the absence of the perfections of relation and receptivity, the Theos would be enclosed within itself, and therefore as absurcular as a closed Cosmos or Anthropos. In other words, the very ground and possibility of openness and relationally is situated in O.
∞
The Anthropos cannot be surpassed from within the Cosmic order, for its sufficient reason is to know and express the Absolute.
He fits right in there, in the Cosmos.
Thus, in the words of Thomas,
it is possible for the perfection of the whole universe to have its existence in one single being.... the ultimate perfection to which the soul can attain is that in it is reflected the whole order of the universe and its causes.
And “Since the person is not something added onto being from the outside, but is the highest perfection and most intense expression of existential being itself, the person takes on more intensely the whole dynamism of existence as expansive, self-communicating act...” (Clarke).
“Self-transcendence” writes Clarke,
is thus of the very essence of all personal development at its highest.... Only by reaching beyond the human can we succeed in becoming fully human. To refuse to do so condemns us to fall short of the human itself. To be a human person fully means to self-transcend toward the Infinite.
Therefore, “The fullness of personal development turns out to be a losing or letting go of oneself that is simultaneously and by that very fact a new finding of oneself at a deeper level.”
I wonder if the Theos does something similar, i.e., discover itself by letting go of itself?
That will be a question for Book III, but in Christianity there is the concept of God’s kenosis, which is the archetypal or quintessential “self-emptying” or “self-giving” of Father to Son, returning via the Holy Spirit. By emptying into the Son, the Theos does not “lose” its divinity, rather eternally actualizes it as Fatherhood.
In so doing, the Theos doesn’t diminish itself, rather engenders the partner for an eternal dia-logos, from which proceeds a lively tria-logos. This would imply that the expansive giving (or creation) of the Cosmos is situated in this ontologically prior giving and receiving within the Godhead — as if creation is a reflection of this more primordial spiral, thus accounting for the openness of both Cosmos and Anthropos.
The bottom line is that the very nature of the Theos is “intrinsically ordered toward self-communication.” Thus, we might say that the microanthropos (us) reflects the macroanthropos (Theos), such that in both there is the in-itself substance of being, and the towards-others relationality, neither reducible to the other. “No wonder then,” writes Clarke, “that self-communication is written into the very heart of all beings, as finite but positive images of their Source.”
That really says it all — although one can always say more, since we’re dealing here with the Infinite. For anthropic being expands onward, upward, outward, and inward, such that “the life of every human person unfolds as a journey of the spirit through an ever-developing spiral circulation between self-presence and active self-expressive presence,” or “between inward-facing self-possession and outward-facing openness to the other” — toward both horizontal others and the vertical Other. This Other, colloquially known as God, is the term with which we notify the universe that it is not everything (Dávila). Computer scientist Christoph Benzmüller, working with Gödel’s ideas, concluded that “God, by the most widely used metaphysical definition, necessarily exists. You cannot conceive of a world in which he does not exist.”
I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life!
It is now time to look into this transcendent ground and try to figure out what else goes on up there, so maybe we can die with a smile on our face without feelin’ like the good lord gypped us. So Goodnight, sweet Anthropos. See you on the other side, in Book III.
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