To review: before it is anything else, creation is fundamentally a kind of relation. This relation is at once in and out of time, or better, horizontal and vertical, respectively, for if creation is continuous — which it is — then there was never a time when it was not.
The very existence of the world is a function of its relationship to something above, below, before, beyond, or all of the above. Creator and creation are not two separate things — dualism — nor are they one — monism. Rather, they are always three, or “not-two.”
For cosmotheandrism the not-two of Vedanta is another way of talking about the threeness of things that both transcends and subtends the bifurcation between various primordial complementarities. As we have said, monopolar theologies emphasize and elevate half of God while demoting and denigrating the other half, whereas cosmotheandrism synthesizes each into a higher third. Which is why we can say, for example, that the Godhead is both the uncaused cause and eternally caused effect, because it is always in dynamic relation both within and without.
Is this why God is always up to something?
Correct: when we say that creation is continuous we are not referring only to our Cosmos — or to ourselves — rather, to the eternal event of the Godhead. As above so below, thus the endless creativity of this world is but a reflection of the inexhaustible creativity of Celestial Central. We have also suggested that this creativity may be compared to the Hindu idea of lila, i.e., divine play, which does not connote frivolousness, rather… more like what I am doing in this moment.
Playing God?
No, playing with God, or better, with O.
Workin’ on a mystery?
Yes, and goin’ wherever it leads: since the outcome of the mystery play is indeterminate, we have no way of knowing where it is headed. How boring it would be if we did know! In reality, I don’t know anything, but am always in the process of finding out. Obviously, whatever I find out is not the end of anything, rather, only a new beginning.
To travel well is better than to arrive?
Exactly: to find out is better than to know. It is certainly more fun. Imagine getting to the end of it. Then what?
Game over.
This goes to the practice, as opposed to theory, of cosmotheandrism. One might say that cosmotheandrism is always what is already going on anyway, so we might as well participate. In other words, we are always here between the poles of immanence and transcendence, actively engaged with an inexhaustibly intelligible Cosmos at one end and a dynamically related ground at the other, so why not do something interesting with it?
We are distinct from God, but only because we are related to God. Which exactly mirrors the distinction-within-relation of the Godhead itself, not to mention the quantum realm below, where we see a fractal repetition of the same pattern of substance-in-relation or particle-in-field.
God plays dice with the universe?
Always, except the game is an open-ended one that converges upon the celestial tossman or roller. One might compare this to the traditional scheme of exitus-reditus, i.e., the return of creation to Creator. This is the ultimate circle, or spiral rather, of creation.
God is necessary in the abstract but contingent in the concrete: thus he is the archetypal case of a complementarity of essence and existence, or necessity and freedom, absolute and infinite, being and becoming: eternally contingent but not contingently eternal. Rather, God is what cannot not be, but this does not mean he can be any old which-way. Rather, cosmotheandrism presumes to say which way he can be, but not without a great deal of input from God. In other words, supposing the existence of revelation, then God has indeed revealed to us what he is like.
But what if the revelations contradict each other?
That is on us. Supposing they do contradict, then we have four options: arbitrarily pick one and ignore the rest; ignore them all; find some way to harmonize them; or subordinate them to a higher principle of which they are more or less adequate expressions. This last is the cosmotheandric option, which allows us to actually rank religions — to create a religious tier list, from “S” (superlative) to A (excellent) to B, C, and on down to the worst of the worst.
No doubt it is easier to identify the awful or stupid ones.
Yes, but in what way(s) are they terrible failures? Only relative to the superior, otherwise we would have no frame of reference. This is the error of typical western atheists who naively assume the revolutionary cultural changes brought about by Judeo-Christianity. In other words, they are essentially critiquing Christianity from within Christianity, or by operating within Christian assumptions, a prime example being the historian Tom Holland. We won’t dwell on this, because one example is more than sufficient, but he was honest enough to realize that his own deeply held moral convictions were not universal human intuitions, rather had an actual source in Judeo-Christian ethics. Although he admired the Greeks, he did not assimilate their might-makes-right mentality, nor their lack of empathy and pity for the weak and powerless.
This notion of you ranking religions. This might be where I get off the bus.
Supposing you pick a religion, doesn’t this imply that all others are number two or lower? And the atheist is just like you, except that he includes yours in the bad ones. As they say, atheism is just a monotheism minus one.
Cards on the table: we are now approximately 900 pages into the Trilogy, so obviously I believe cosmotheandrism to be The Case. This being the case, then it is the standard by which we measure this or that religion (or philosophy or ideology, for that matter). In other words, we may judge a religion in terms of how adequately it expresses the principles of cosmotheandrism such as primordial complementarity, openness, interior relations, theomorphism, ultimacy, un-word, and personhood.
So basically, you want to offend everyone?
No, just please myself.
There’s a name for that.
It’s my domain, and I’ll do with it what I want.
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