Theos: What Is It Not Like?

It is easy enough to prove the existence of God, especially to people who have no need of proof—

On the scale of pomposity—

For example, the countless mystics who have their own right-hemispheric or first-heart experiential confirmation.

But even failing mystical union, there are ways, believe me. For cosmotheandrism it comes down to the fact that the Cosmos is an intelligible whole, teeming with information, neither of which can be explained from within the Cosmos. Rather, this is Gödel’s Universe, meaning that it is a coherent but incomplete system that is open to a higher principle outside and beyond itself.

Which is exactly like everything within the Cosmos, where we see a stratified order in which the boundary conditions of one level are conditioned and controlled by a higher one — for example, biology in relation to chemistry and physics. Biology cannot be reduced to these, rather, enlists them in service to the higher level. Each level is open to its upstairs neighbor, nor does this openness stop with the Cosmos itself, which is contingent upon, and open to, O. Otherwise, there is simply no intra-cosmic explanation for the order, structure, and intelligibility of our multi-storied Cosmos. See Book I for details.

On the anthropic level, Torrance uses the example of aviation, wherein

a quantity of inert matter is artificially made to embody an aeronautical design which allows it to be harnessed and controlled by a set of engineering principles beyond its physico-chemical level, so that it can take flight as an aeroplane. The laws of physics and chemistry are not infringed but they are restricted and made to serve an end beyond what they can account for in terms of themselves alone.

The deeper point is that it is not as if human flight is a necessary entailment of physics, but only possible because the Cosmos is open and indeterminate at each level; nor does it violate the known laws of gravity or aluminum. Conversely, if the Cosmos itself were necessary as opposed to contingent upon, and open to, its own higher principle, then there would be no freedom, creativity, novelty, surprise, or multiple levels. Rather, we could deduce every truth from the necessary ones governing the Cosmos. Except there could be no freedom to discover truth in a wholly necessary and closed Cosmos.

Having said that, it is not possible to say exactly what it is we have proved, since this principle beyond the Cosmos and Anthropos cannot be reduced to, or enclosed in, any man-made definition.

So, what have we proved? God, like the Cosmos, is radically unique, and scientia est de universalibus: No Science of the Individual Allowed On These Premises. Science deals with the repeatable, the universal, and the general, but with sample sizes so tiny — one of each — there can be no control group for the Cosmos, nor a second God with whom to compare the first. Frankly we can’t even say God is “a” god since there is by definition only one, not a genus or species of them. God is not something one can simplify or classify, define or confine, dissect or inspect, analyze, categorize, finalize, or even advertise.

Look, all I really wanna do is understand cosmotheandrism.

We’re getting there, but even the most airtight proof will not be convincing to those who are intellectually ill-equipped to understand the demonstration or who are simply not inclined to believe it. The problem here is that agnosticism is actually an impossible position, for the Theos principle is not probable or improbable, rather either necessary or impossible. Therefore, if it is not impossible, then it is necessary, since one of God’s properties is necessary being — and you can’t be a little bit pregnant with necessity.

So really, we’re arguing whether there could be such a thing as a necessary being or an uncaused cause. You may think your issue is with the Theos, but it’s really just with causation and where it necessarily leads.

Granted, “One can most certainly prove every truth; but not every proof is accessible to every mind” (Schuon). Indeed, Schuon went so far as to suggest that if all men were capable of understanding metaphysics, there would be no atheists. Not everyone has the aptitude, interest, or slack to personally investigate these matters, and religion is a kind of shortcut to doing so — a right hemispheric poetry of metaphysics as it were.

In the Gödelian words of Schuon, “logic is perfectly consistent only when surpassing itself.” On the one hand “All expression is of necessity relative,” however “language is nonetheless capable of conveying the quality of absoluteness which has to be conveyed,” this thanks to the transcendent Aboutness woven into our Cosmic Area Rug. Whereas profane philosophy reasons from the bottom up, metaphysics “proceeds exclusively from the Intellect,” again, more in a right-hemispheric manner. In reality, the human intellect is more difficult to account for than God — in fact, impossible for materialistic science to explain without recourse to a higher principle, just as the principle of sight cannot be blindness.

Of note, this would not imply that we could know everything about what this necessary being is like, only that it is an abstract principle that cannot not be. In other words, we can posit an abstract What without knowing anything about what this What is concretely like. For all we know, it might be like an impersonal machine or computer program (although this would naturally lead to questions about an intellect necessary to program the computer). Analogously, I know with certainty that I have a new neighbor down the street, but I’ve never met him, so he could be anything from a Russian agent to a cyborg. Not likely, but I like to keep an open mind.

Likewise, although we have our suspicions, we should exercise caution in saying exactly what God is like, but it turns out we can say a great deal about what he cannot be like. Analogously, back to my known-unknown neighbor, I can be fairly certain that, whoever he turns out to be, he is not immortal, immaterial, necessary, omniscient, or devoid of imperfections.

We also know that reality itself cannot be enclosed in our knowledge of it, despite — or rather because of — its infinite knowability. In our cosmotheandric vision, none of our three terms can be strictly defined in isolation because each presupposes and indwells the others. As such, for example, the Anthropos cannot define the Theos of which he is an image. Analogously, the moon is not the source of its own light, even though its light is no less real than the sunlight it reflects. The Anthropos has access to both the reflected light of the Cosmos but also the direct light of the Theos. Nevertheless, the direct light of the Theos must be translighted into various symbols and linguistic forms.

Now, as per our Axiom of primordial complementarity, one thing we can say of God is that he is transcendent of everything, and therefore immanent in anything, including us. In other words, while God is Absolute, he is unbounded by anything, hence Infinite. In the words of brother Eckhart, “Outside of God there is nothing but nothing.”

However, note that infinitude can be understood in two very different senses, one negative, the other positive. In its negative sense it simply means “not finite,” but in its positive sense it implies an active overflowing from any boundedness.

Again, think of the sun: we can look at it and see a well defined disc in the sky. On the other hand, there can be no hard distinction between it and the rays that not only reach us herebelow but are transformed via the mystery of photosynthesis into chemical energy. If plants couldn’t pull off this one neat trick, we wouldn’t be here talking about sunlight. You may not be a vegetarian, but somewhere along the line you are dependent upon the vegetation that transforms the warmth of the sun into something even better, like Pet Sounds

Now, if there is a photosynthesis below, is there, so to speak, a pneumasynthesis above? In other words, is there a way to transform the rays of infinitude that radiate from O into useful — one might say living — concepts?

We cannot eat the sun, but then again, in eating the wheat we are not not eating the sun. Likewise, we don’t think O directly, but we think the symbols and concepts that the light of O makes possible via its infinitude. We are real persons, but only because we are reflections of personhood per se (Axiom 7, theomorphism). Our ability to perform pneumasynthesis — to transform the vertical rays of O into horizontal meaning — is exactly what defines the Anthropos. Frankly, we engage in pneumasynthesis all the time, whether it means transforming physical sensations into ideas, sounds into symphonies, or the vertical murmuranda of O into metaphysical and theological systems.