Hallow, New Man!

The Baader-Meinhof Word of the Day is transform. Once I started thinking about it, it began appearing everywhere.

Paul uses the word twice, advising us to not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Rom 12:2); ultimately we are being transformed into the [image of God] from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Co 3:18).

It shows up seventeen times in the book I read a couple days ago (Salvation); if we toss in related words like "growth" and "change," then there's something on nearly every page. 

Likewise the much more substantive Three Ages of the Spiritual Life by Garrigou-Lagrange. I'm reading that one much more slowly, like a chapter a day. Here are a few passages that touch on our subject, either directly or really directly:

We reach up to God and God reaches down to us, and in divine love we are made sharers of the Divinity.

What human nature can never do can be done in the supernatural power of divine grace.

Because our interior life descends to us from on high, it can reascend even to God... 

[T]he deification of the intellect and that of the will presuppose the deification of the soul itself (in its essence) from whence these faculties [intellect and will] spring.

[T]he inward man is renewed day by day. His spiritual youth is continually renewed... by the graces which he receives daily. 

[G]radually there disappears what St. Paul calls "the old man" and there takes shape "the new man."

Hello, new man! 

This new and inward man

is renewed unceasingly in the image of God, who does not grow old. The life of God is above the past, the present, and the future; it is measured by the single instant of immobile eternity.

Here is a sampling of similar passages from Salvation, which is 

an unmerited gift of righteousness that actually transforms us.

Humanly speaking, what God calls us to is completely beyond our reach. It is truly impossible.

D'oh! 

What is impossible with men is possible with God.

Woo hoo! 

[Grace] enables us to become something more than our human nature alone could ever achieve.

"Paul holds that believers are truly changed," for "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation." We are "truly remade."

We'll leave off with a few passages from Balthasar's Heart of the World, which I also recently reread slooooowly:

Here the old man is replaced by the new. Here the world dies and another world rises. Here the two eons intersect. Here every ending becomes a beginning.... Here springs forth out of the hardest rock the water of eternal life. Here the road of reason and faith sprouts wings.... Here is bridged the chasm between heaven and earth.

Patient as a seed, we are to let your Kingdom grow in us...

You transfigure enigma and replace it with mystery.... you take each being to yourself and, without destroying its reality, you confer upon it a new being. You change refuse into jewels...

Hallow, New Man!

The Baader-Meinhof Word of the Day is transform. Once I started thinking about it, it began appearing everywhere.

Paul uses the word twice, advising us to not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Rom 12:2); ultimately we are being transformed into the [image of God] from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Co 3:18).

It shows up seventeen times in the book I read a couple days ago (Salvation); if we toss in related words like "growth" and "change," then there's something on nearly every page. 

Likewise the much more substantive Three Ages of the Spiritual Life by Garrigou-Lagrange. I'm reading that one much more slowly, like a chapter a day. Here are a few passages that touch on our subject, either directly or really directly:

We reach up to God and God reaches down to us, and in divine love we are made sharers of the Divinity.

What human nature can never do can be done in the supernatural power of divine grace.

Because our interior life descends to us from on high, it can reascend even to God... 

[T]he deification of the intellect and that of the will presuppose the deification of the soul itself (in its essence) from whence these faculties [intellect and will] spring.

[T]he inward man is renewed day by day. His spiritual youth is continually renewed... by the graces which he receives daily. 

[G]radually there disappears what St. Paul calls "the old man" and there takes shape "the new man."

Hello, new man! 

This new and inward man

is renewed unceasingly in the image of God, who does not grow old. The life of God is above the past, the present, and the future; it is measured by the single instant of immobile eternity.

Here is a sampling of similar passages from Salvation, which is 

an unmerited gift of righteousness that actually transforms us.

Humanly speaking, what God calls us to is completely beyond our reach. It is truly impossible.

D'oh! 

What is impossible with men is possible with God.

Woo hoo! 

[Grace] enables us to become something more than our human nature alone could ever achieve.

"Paul holds that believers are truly changed," for "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation." We are "truly remade."

We'll leave off with a few passages from Balthasar's Heart of the World, which I also recently reread slooooowly:

Here the old man is replaced by the new. Here the world dies and another world rises. Here the two eons intersect. Here every ending becomes a beginning.... Here springs forth out of the hardest rock the water of eternal life. Here the road of reason and faith sprouts wings.... Here is bridged the chasm between heaven and earth.

Patient as a seed, we are to let your Kingdom grow in us...

You transfigure enigma and replace it with mystery.... you take each being to yourself and, without destroying its reality, you confer upon it a new being. You change refuse into jewels...

I Don't Believe in God, I Only Participate in Him

This is a two-part post, in that the first part was incompleted yesterday while the second part was left undone this morning. 

Transform: to change completely or essentially in composition or structure : metamorphose.

The question is, how is this even possible for human beings? You can "transform" yourself from fat to fit, but this isn't a literal transformation. That is, there has been no change to the substance, only to one of its accidents: irrespective of your size, you are nevertheless you, and you've been you since the moment of your conception.

It would seem that most of the things we call "transformation" aren't really so. Reducing a log to ashes in your fireplace is an actual transformation; likewise going from life to death, which represents the adiós of form (AKA soul), precisely. 

But no amount of learning, for example, is a transformation, rather, just an actualization of latent potential. It is change, but not transformation.

Is there a kind of transformational learning? Is there information that results in a literal change? We'll return to the question, but the quick answer is Yes and No. 

The whole premise of psychotherapy is that change is possible, but what kind of change? Analogously, a medical doctor helps us change, but only from unhealthy to healthy. Or vice versa in the case of Dr. Fauci.

A positive change in health presupposes a teleological or homeostatic state of health. The doctor can't change you from one essence to another, which of course goes to the criminal fraud of pretending a medical procedure can achieve sexual transformation, which is strictly impossible.

Back when I was in grad school one of my main influences was a fellow named Bion, who wrote a little book called Transformations, which I haven't looked at since then. 

I wonder what present Bob would think of the book? Let's have a quick peek.  

Ah, it's all coming back to me now. Bion, I think, had a little trick up his sleeve, which he never made explicit. That is, I think the title -- Transformations -- is a kind of meta-commentary on the cryptic nature of his writing, which I believe was intended to provoke a kind of transformation in the reader. In other words, his writing is intended not just to be "informational" but transformational.

Speaking of which, a little secret: this is always the aim of my writing, i.e., to provoke a little transformation in the head. I have never claimed to be a scholar, nor would I waste all this time and space -- we're up to 3,733 posts now -- simply conveying information that is not only readily available elsewhere, but presented in a much less annoying manner.

Here's something from the book: "Eckhart considers Godhead to contain all distinctions as yet undeveloped and to be Darkness and Formlessness. It cannot be the object of Knowledge until there flows out from it Trinity and the Trinity can be known."

So much for Part 1. On to Part 2, in which we hope to get to the point.

Let's begin with a strictly orthoparadoxical coonfession: I do not believe in God. Rather, I only participate in Him.

We all know Augustine's line about "faith seeking understanding." And if you're not familiar with the gag, here's the punchline, courtesy of Professor Wiki:

Fides quaerens intellectum means "faith seeking understanding" or "faith seeking intelligence." It is the theological method stressed by Augustine and Anselm of Canterbury in which one begins with faith in God and on the basis of that faith moves on to further understanding of Christian truth.

Chronologically, faith precedes understanding, like when small children first trust their parents and believe what they state, and it is only later on, when they grow up, that they want to examine and understand the reality by themselves. In the words of Anselm of Canterbury, "I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but rather, I believe in order that I may understand."

But for me and possibly other members of the Vertical Community, it's more the other way around: understanding (or intelligence) seeking faith. In other words, we already know plenty. The head is good to go. Rather, it's the heart that might be a little undernourished, and it is fed from a different source, or at least it requires a more balanced diet.

Along these lines, yesterday I read a book called Salvation: What Every Catholic Should Know. I don't recommend it, because it's pretty basic, but it does at least touch on the vast differences between knowledge, faith, justification, salvation, redemption, and transformation.  

So, when were you saved? For most of my life I never heard that irritating question, since I made it a point to avoid contact with Christians. It was first posed to me around five years ago, but I didn't know quite how to respond, since it's a loaded question and I reject its implicit premise and assumptions.

A more sensible question would be Have you been transformed?, or better yet, How's the transformation going? Any progress today? Only if the transformation attains a certain minimum standard can we start talking about the possibility of "salvation." 

Yes, the transformation isn't possible without Christ, but nor is it possible without our cooperation; he is the necessary condition -- the "without whom" -- but this in no way robs us of our dignity to be sufficient conditions -- the "with whom."  

We might even say that the With Whom is left free to participate in the Without Whom, and in between is the transformation of the former into the latter: as the early fathers said, God becomes man in order for man to become God. But walking on water wasn't built in a day, and while It is accomplished, we aren't unless we are accomplices in the transformation.

I Don't Believe in God, I Only Participate in Him

This is a two-part post, in that the first part was incompleted yesterday while the second part was left undone this morning. 

Transform: to change completely or essentially in composition or structure : metamorphose.

The question is, how is this even possible for human beings? You can "transform" yourself from fat to fit, but this isn't a literal transformation. That is, there has been no change to the substance, only to one of its accidents: irrespective of your size, you are nevertheless you, and you've been you since the moment of your conception.

It would seem that most of the things we call "transformation" aren't really so. Reducing a log to ashes in your fireplace is an actual transformation; likewise going from life to death, which represents the adiós of form (AKA soul), precisely. 

But no amount of learning, for example, is a transformation, rather, just an actualization of latent potential. It is change, but not transformation.

Is there a kind of transformational learning? Is there information that results in a literal change? We'll return to the question, but the quick answer is Yes and No. 

The whole premise of psychotherapy is that change is possible, but what kind of change? Analogously, a medical doctor helps us change, but only from unhealthy to healthy. Or vice versa in the case of Dr. Fauci.

A positive change in health presupposes a teleological or homeostatic state of health. The doctor can't change you from one essence to another, which of course goes to the criminal fraud of pretending a medical procedure can achieve sexual transformation, which is strictly impossible.

Back when I was in grad school one of my main influences was a fellow named Bion, who wrote a little book called Transformations, which I haven't looked at since then. 

I wonder what present Bob would think of the book? Let's have a quick peek.  

Ah, it's all coming back to me now. Bion, I think, had a little trick up his sleeve, which he never made explicit. That is, I think the title -- Transformations -- is a kind of meta-commentary on the cryptic nature of his writing, which I believe was intended to provoke a kind of transformation in the reader. In other words, his writing is intended not just to be "informational" but transformational.

Speaking of which, a little secret: this is always the aim of my writing, i.e., to provoke a little transformation in the head. I have never claimed to be a scholar, nor would I waste all this time and space -- we're up to 3,733 posts now -- simply conveying information that is not only readily available elsewhere, but presented in a much less annoying manner.

Here's something from the book: "Eckhart considers Godhead to contain all distinctions as yet undeveloped and to be Darkness and Formlessness. It cannot be the object of Knowledge until there flows out from it Trinity and the Trinity can be known."

So much for Part 1. On to Part 2, in which we hope to get to the point.

Let's begin with a strictly orthoparadoxical coonfession: I do not believe in God. Rather, I only participate in Him.

We all know Augustine's line about "faith seeking understanding." And if you're not familiar with the gag, here's the punchline, courtesy of Professor Wiki:

Fides quaerens intellectum means "faith seeking understanding" or "faith seeking intelligence." It is the theological method stressed by Augustine and Anselm of Canterbury in which one begins with faith in God and on the basis of that faith moves on to further understanding of Christian truth.

Chronologically, faith precedes understanding, like when small children first trust their parents and believe what they state, and it is only later on, when they grow up, that they want to examine and understand the reality by themselves. In the words of Anselm of Canterbury, "I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but rather, I believe in order that I may understand."

But for me and possibly other members of the Vertical Community, it's more the other way around: understanding (or intelligence) seeking faith. In other words, we already know plenty. The head is good to go. Rather, it's the heart that might be a little undernourished, and it is fed from a different source, or at least it requires a more balanced diet.

Along these lines, yesterday I read a book called Salvation: What Every Catholic Should Know. I don't recommend it, because it's pretty basic, but it does at least touch on the vast differences between knowledge, faith, justification, salvation, redemption, and transformation.  

So, when were you saved? For most of my life I never heard that irritating question, since I made it a point to avoid contact with Christians. It was first posed to me around five years ago, but I didn't know quite how to respond, since it's a loaded question and I reject its implicit premise and assumptions.

A more sensible question would be Have you been transformed?, or better yet, How's the transformation going? Any progress today? Only if the transformation attains a certain minimum standard can we start talking about the possibility of "salvation." 

Yes, the transformation isn't possible without Christ, but nor is it possible without our cooperation; he is the necessary condition -- the "without whom" -- but this in no way robs us of our dignity to be sufficient conditions -- the "with whom."  

We might even say that the With Whom is left free to participate in the Without Whom, and in between is the transformation of the former into the latter: as the early fathers said, God becomes man in order for man to become God. But walking on water wasn't built in a day, and while It is accomplished, we aren't unless we are accomplices in the transformation.

My Kind of Cosmos

Over the weekend a phrase kept popping into my head: Principles of Christian Transformation. 

It sounds a little pretentious, and besides, the subject is too vast to be tackled by a lazy blogger. So I pushed it aside and waited for a new idea, but here it is again. Perhaps Petey will stop pestering me if I embarrass him with a post: if it goes badly, blame him.

Let me begin by saying that prior to 2003 or so I didn't know that such a thing -- "Christian transformation" -- existed. I was happily practicing a kind of Vedanta Yoga while putting the upanishing touches on the bʘʘk. I won't bore you with all the details, but around that time a book fell into my hands called A Different Christianity: Early Christian Esotericism and Modern Thought, by Robin Amis.

That's precisely when, to my surprise, I discovered the connection between Christianity and the "spiritual technologies" of the East. What attracted me (and really, my whole dreaded boomer generation) to these  was the promise of 1) secret knowledge, 3) superiority (cosmic narcissism) and 2) spiritual transformation, up to and including nirvana, AKA immortality while you wait.

So I explored and even seriously dabbled in all those things, from Advaita to Zen, Aurobindo to Zohar, Abhishiktananda to Zoroaster. 

I still like Abhishiktananda. My kind of guy. 

Anyway, up until then I had never heard the word theosis -- AKA divinization -- no doubt because this is a Protestant country and in Protestantism there's no such thing. Therefore, a whole generation of annoying boomers went searching for spiritual transformation in non-Christian traditions, when it was actually here all the time. 

In fact, I rejected Christianity by the age of 10 or 11, because the way it was presented to me seemed just too stupid to believe. It was an entirely top-down affair, as in "just believe this and you're good to go." 

But you can't force yourself to believe what is repugnant to the intellect, any more than you can will yourself to desire what you don't really want, or pretend that ugliness is beauty.

Nor, as of 2003, would I have been attracted to anything that smacked of the mainstream or of normality. To the extent that I was attracted to Truth, it had to be presented in an esoteric or gnostic manner that let me in on the Secret and thereby placed me above the grazing multitide. Therefore, Big Box Christianity was a non-starter. Not my kind of guys.

But wait!

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 the spiritual psychology of the fathers that underlies the current renewal of spirituality in the Greek church. 

Sounds like my kind of guys! 

Now let's fast forward to the present. I shouldn't really be surprised that Principles of Christian Transformation keeps popping into my head, because all around me are books that touch on this very idea of Christian Transformation.

Example.

From Man and the Cosmos: The Vision of St. Maximus the Confessor: For Max, soteriology (salvation) isn't just

man's liberation from sinfulness. It is the doctrine (and mystery) of man's perfection in deification, and through man the doctrine of the fulfillment of the destiny of the whole cosmos.

The whole cosmos?! Now, that ought to be weird enough for anyone.

But how? Please tell me there's more to it than "believe this and you're good to go." No, the human being  

is called to mature and to develop his likeness to God to the point of perfection of his nature as image of God. Likeness is thus the realization of all that is given as possibility because of man's nature as image of God (emphases mine).

Understood. But how?

Well, first of all, it's impossible. For man. That's the bad news. We can "ascend," but only so far, because to what or whom are we ascending? Suffice it to say, we can't lift ourselves by our own buddhastraps.

I have good news: what if there is a "reciprocity between God and man"? How would that work? Turns out there is 

a double movement: God's movement toward man in the Incarnation and man's movement toward God in the imitative process of deification.

In short, the latter (deification) is possible because of the former (Incarnation). So, the ultimate Principle of Christian Transformation is obviously the Incarnation, not as something to only "believe in" but to participate in:

There is in man no natural power that can deify him, but there exists on the other hand a reciprocal relationship between God and man that permits him to become deified to the degree to which the effects of the Incarnation are conferred on him....

The goal of the Incarnation is precisely to make possible a communion between the energies which alone can bring into being the divinization that is the final goal of human life. But not only this, for divination is in fact also the goal of God Himself, having created in man a model corresponding to Himself.  

Wait -- are you telling me that God becomes our kind of guy so that we may become His kind of guy?   

Well, I hope Petey is sufficiently chastened. If not, we'll have to continue this line of thought tomorrow.

My Kind of Cosmos

Over the weekend a phrase kept popping into my head: Principles of Christian Transformation. 

It sounds a little pretentious, and besides, the subject is too vast to be tackled by a lazy blogger. So I pushed it aside and waited for a new idea, but here it is again. Perhaps Petey will stop pestering me if I embarrass him with a post: if it goes badly, blame him.

Let me begin by saying that prior to 2003 or so I didn't know that such a thing -- "Christian transformation" -- existed. I was happily practicing a kind of Vedanta Yoga while putting the upanishing touches on the bʘʘk. I won't bore you with all the details, but around that time a book fell into my hands called A Different Christianity: Early Christian Esotericism and Modern Thought, by Robin Amis.

That's precisely when, to my surprise, I discovered the connection between Christianity and the "spiritual technologies" of the East. What attracted me (and really, my whole dreaded boomer generation) to these  was the promise of 1) secret knowledge, 3) superiority (cosmic narcissism) and 2) spiritual transformation, up to and including nirvana, AKA immortality while you wait.

So I explored and even seriously dabbled in all those things, from Advaita to Zen, Aurobindo to Zohar, Abhishiktananda to Zoroaster. 

I still like Abhishiktananda. My kind of guy. 

Anyway, up until then I had never heard the word theosis -- AKA divinization -- no doubt because this is a Protestant country and in Protestantism there's no such thing. Therefore, a whole generation of annoying boomers went searching for spiritual transformation in non-Christian traditions, when it was actually here all the time. 

In fact, I rejected Christianity by the age of 10 or 11, because the way it was presented to me seemed just too stupid to believe. It was an entirely top-down affair, as in "just believe this and you're good to go." 

But you can't force yourself to believe what is repugnant to the intellect, any more than you can will yourself to desire what you don't really want, or pretend that ugliness is beauty.

Nor, as of 2003, would I have been attracted to anything that smacked of the mainstream or of normality. To the extent that I was attracted to Truth, it had to be presented in an esoteric or gnostic manner that let me in on the Secret and thereby placed me above the grazing multitide. Therefore, Big Box Christianity was a non-starter. Not my kind of guys.

But wait!

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 the spiritual psychology of the fathers that underlies the current renewal of spirituality in the Greek church. 

Sounds like my kind of guys! 

Now let's fast forward to the present. I shouldn't really be surprised that Principles of Christian Transformation keeps popping into my head, because all around me are books that touch on this very idea of Christian Transformation.

Example.

From Man and the Cosmos: The Vision of St. Maximus the Confessor: For Max, soteriology (salvation) isn't just

man's liberation from sinfulness. It is the doctrine (and mystery) of man's perfection in deification, and through man the doctrine of the fulfillment of the destiny of the whole cosmos.

The whole cosmos?! Now, that ought to be weird enough for anyone.

But how? Please tell me there's more to it than "believe this and you're good to go." No, the human being  

is called to mature and to develop his likeness to God to the point of perfection of his nature as image of God. Likeness is thus the realization of all that is given as possibility because of man's nature as image of God (emphases mine).

Understood. But how?

Well, first of all, it's impossible. For man. That's the bad news. We can "ascend," but only so far, because to what or whom are we ascending? Suffice it to say, we can't lift ourselves by our own buddhastraps.

I have good news: what if there is a "reciprocity between God and man"? How would that work? Turns out there is 

a double movement: God's movement toward man in the Incarnation and man's movement toward God in the imitative process of deification.

In short, the latter (deification) is possible because of the former (Incarnation). So, the ultimate Principle of Christian Transformation is obviously the Incarnation, not as something to only "believe in" but to participate in:

There is in man no natural power that can deify him, but there exists on the other hand a reciprocal relationship between God and man that permits him to become deified to the degree to which the effects of the Incarnation are conferred on him....

The goal of the Incarnation is precisely to make possible a communion between the energies which alone can bring into being the divinization that is the final goal of human life. But not only this, for divination is in fact also the goal of God Himself, having created in man a model corresponding to Himself.  

Wait -- are you telling me that God becomes our kind of guy so that we may become His kind of guy?   

Well, I hope Petey is sufficiently chastened. If not, we'll have to continue this line of thought tomorrow.

Fried Day and the Big Spiral

I often seem to be in a more mystical mood on Fridays. Oh well. That's your problem. Unless you stop reading.  

Those cryptic symbols at the end of yesterday's post are intended to evoke several fundamental limits of thought -- or perhaps "limitless limits" -- including Beyond-Being, Absolute, Infinite (or All-Possibility), Trinity, and Incarnation (which may also be seen as the Last Word in the creative Godhead's Exitus-Reditus, or eternal respiralation).

Among these, the only one that is totally beyond our natural capacity to know is Trinity. It seems that no amount of thinking could ineluctably arrive at this, and yet, once known, it is perfectly compatible with the rest. In my opinion.

This is not to say that there are two, or three, or four ultimates. Obviously, that would constitute something that Cannot Be. However, who's to say things up there can't be a bit more complicated than we assume? In fact, the Trinity itself implies as much. 

For example, for St.Maximus,

the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is never an isolated theme within the context of his theology. It is precisely a dimension in it with repercussions and consequences all over the field (Thunberg).

A dimension with repercussions and consequences in a larger context. Exactly. 

One of the obstacles to envisioning this is the Greek idea of God's absolute immobility. Thank you, Greeks, but no thanks, for while immobility is important, it must be complemented by a kind of mobility (AKA change, gasp!), not as privation but perfection. 

This is just my opinion again, but I think the revelation of the Trinity is partly intended to help us wrap our minds around the idea that there is indeed a kind of "perfect change" within the Godhead; moreover, a kind of relativity, or indeed, what's the point? If a dynamic and relational Trinity is identical to an immobile monad, then big whoop.

I know we've been down this path before, but this time it will be different. It has to be, because this isn't some kind of axiomatic or deductive walk down from O, rather, an inductive and improvisational walk up from this side of manifestation -- not Can I learn metaphysics from you?, more like Can I buy some pot from you? Big difference. The fried day difference.

In any event, "God is not immobile in the sense that He cannot move." Rather, it is "possible to conceive of divine motion in terms of a free and creative activity," including "an expression of His condescension toward humankind, as already manifested in His creation and His subsequent acts of salvation" (ibid.).

Maximus maintains the general presupposition that God is essentially immobile, but he does not agree that this implies that motion in God is only a concession to a fall that has taken place in revolt against him.

In short, Maximus -- and eastern Christianity more generally -- emphasizes the Incarnation as pure gift as opposed to merely a response to our naughtiness. In fact, it takes place irrespective of the latter, in order to graciously include us in the Trinitarian party. 

This is a most (lower case o) orthodox notion. I'm rereading Garrigou-Lagrange's Three Ages of the Spiritual Life, and it doesn't get more orthodox. Yes, mankind is a rat bastard, and we mustn't kid ourselves about that. Nevertheless,

our interior life descends to us from on high, [and] can reascend even to God and lead us to a very close union with Him. 

Again, pure gratuitous gift, not just cure or response to sinfulness.

The result is a "growth of our supernatural organism." Sure, we inevitably fail to measure up, but God always builds back better: "Few men suspect what God would make of them if they placed no obstacle to His work" (St. Ignatius). So get out of His Way! 

"Just because there are stunted oaks, it does not follow that the oak is not a tall tree" (Garrigou-Lagrange). Likewise, just because so many men are closed and stunted jokes, it doesn't mean that man cannot embark upin an open relation with the Divine Life. If creation is a kind of  ex-spiralation, then the indwelling of the Holy Spirit facilitates the up- and inspiraling return: it is

not a repetition but a way of drawing near to circular contemplation..., which, like the flight of a bird, describes several times the same circle around the same point. This center, like the apex of a pyramid, is in its way a symbol of the single instant of immobile eternity...

Back to Maximus, there is 

a movement, divine in nature, which is not a decline or fall, but represents, on the contrary, a kind of perfection. God himself is mobile. He moves toward "multiplicity," thereby perfecting, or fulfilling, His nature....He expresses through that movement His own mode of perfection (Thunberg).

The "inner Trinitarian movement... marks the perfection of a living circle, the dynamics of a divine Being who makes Himself personal" (ibid.).

We are personally invited to participate in the mystery of Big Spiral, of "man's perfection in deification" and through man "the fulfillment of the destiny of the whole cosmos."

If there's something better than that, then God is keeping it to himselves.

Fried Day and the Big Spiral

I often seem to be in a more mystical mood on Fridays. Oh well. That's your problem. Unless you stop reading.  

Those cryptic symbols at the end of yesterday's post are intended to evoke several fundamental limits of thought -- or perhaps "limitless limits" -- including Beyond-Being, Absolute, Infinite (or All-Possibility), Trinity, and Incarnation (which may also be seen as the Last Word in the creative Godhead's Exitus-Reditus, or eternal respiralation).

Among these, the only one that is totally beyond our natural capacity to know is Trinity. It seems that no amount of thinking could ineluctably arrive at this, and yet, once known, it is perfectly compatible with the rest. In my opinion.

This is not to say that there are two, or three, or four ultimates. Obviously, that would constitute something that Cannot Be. However, who's to say things up there can't be a bit more complicated than we assume? In fact, the Trinity itself implies as much. 

For example, for St.Maximus,

the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is never an isolated theme within the context of his theology. It is precisely a dimension in it with repercussions and consequences all over the field (Thunberg).

A dimension with repercussions and consequences in a larger context. Exactly. 

One of the obstacles to envisioning this is the Greek idea of God's absolute immobility. Thank you, Greeks, but no thanks, for while immobility is important, it must be complemented by a kind of mobility (AKA change, gasp!), not as privation but perfection. 

This is just my opinion again, but I think the revelation of the Trinity is partly intended to help us wrap our minds around the idea that there is indeed a kind of "perfect change" within the Godhead; moreover, a kind of relativity, or indeed, what's the point? If a dynamic and relational Trinity is identical to an immobile monad, then big whoop.

I know we've been down this path before, but this time it will be different. It has to be, because this isn't some kind of axiomatic or deductive walk down from O, rather, an inductive and improvisational walk up from this side of manifestation -- not Can I learn metaphysics from you?, more like Can I buy some pot from you? Big difference. The fried day difference.

In any event, "God is not immobile in the sense that He cannot move." Rather, it is "possible to conceive of divine motion in terms of a free and creative activity," including "an expression of His condescension toward humankind, as already manifested in His creation and His subsequent acts of salvation" (ibid.).

Maximus maintains the general presupposition that God is essentially immobile, but he does not agree that this implies that motion in God is only a concession to a fall that has taken place in revolt against him.

In short, Maximus -- and eastern Christianity more generally -- emphasizes the Incarnation as pure gift as opposed to merely a response to our naughtiness. In fact, it takes place irrespective of the latter, in order to graciously include us in the Trinitarian party. 

This is a most (lower case o) orthodox notion. I'm rereading Garrigou-Lagrange's Three Ages of the Spiritual Life, and it doesn't get more orthodox. Yes, mankind is a rat bastard, and we mustn't kid ourselves about that. Nevertheless,

our interior life descends to us from on high, [and] can reascend even to God and lead us to a very close union with Him. 

Again, pure gratuitous gift, not just cure or response to sinfulness.

The result is a "growth of our supernatural organism." Sure, we inevitably fail to measure up, but God always builds back better: "Few men suspect what God would make of them if they placed no obstacle to His work" (St. Ignatius). So get out of His Way! 

"Just because there are stunted oaks, it does not follow that the oak is not a tall tree" (Garrigou-Lagrange). Likewise, just because so many men are closed and stunted jokes, it doesn't mean that man cannot embark upin an open relation with the Divine Life. If creation is a kind of  ex-spiralation, then the indwelling of the Holy Spirit facilitates the up- and inspiraling return: it is

not a repetition but a way of drawing near to circular contemplation..., which, like the flight of a bird, describes several times the same circle around the same point. This center, like the apex of a pyramid, is in its way a symbol of the single instant of immobile eternity...

Back to Maximus, there is 

a movement, divine in nature, which is not a decline or fall, but represents, on the contrary, a kind of perfection. God himself is mobile. He moves toward "multiplicity," thereby perfecting, or fulfilling, His nature....He expresses through that movement His own mode of perfection (Thunberg).

The "inner Trinitarian movement... marks the perfection of a living circle, the dynamics of a divine Being who makes Himself personal" (ibid.).

We are personally invited to participate in the mystery of Big Spiral, of "man's perfection in deification" and through man "the fulfillment of the destiny of the whole cosmos."

If there's something better than that, then God is keeping it to himselves.

Preliminary Sketches of Eternity

We think of the Incarnation as the ultimate vertical ingression, the purpose being to facilitate the redemption and divinization of man, AKA theosis. 

However, it is simultaneously the hominization of God, and I don't know which notion is more shocking. Each is Peak Weird: theosis and... homosis?

In any event, if hominization may be symbolized (↓), then divination is (↑). The former is complete -- an actuality -- while the latter is ongoing -- a possibility, so perhaps a more adequate pneumaticon would be (⇡). 

Common sense tells us that if something happens, then it was possible for it to happen -- that there is a principle, a sufficient reason; or in other words, impossible things can't happen. In the case of our sanctification, it is possible because of the actuality of the Incarnation: it is accomplished, and then some.

Usually when I come up against an apparent duality, it turns out to be a complementarity. I haven't yet thought this through -- I'm doing so right now -- but it occurs to me that Incarnation and theosis,  (↓) and  (↑), must form a kind of eternal complementarity that may be depicted as (⇅), or better yet, (↺), since even the faith that gets the ball rolling uphill is a divine gift.

Now, they say that Christ's sacrificial redemption is something God cooked up before even the creation of the world. I don't know if that's true, but I don't find it particularly helpful. Among other things, it not only presupposes the fall, but "simultaneously" (since God is said to be timeless) provides the cure.

This seems like a lot of needless trouble. No offense, but it's like giving credit to a scientist for simultaneously inventing a disease and a drug to treat it. Like the Chinese. 

I'm no doubt too pinheaded -- i.e., too partial to abstraction -- but I'm always put off by religious formulations that sound ad hoc, or like a Rube Goldberg metaphysics. Nor do I like the idea of trying to escape from one absurdity by positing another, as so often happens in exoteric approaches. Rather, I like things to be consistent. Unified. Tidy. No loose ends. 

But it seems that Christianity is not, and cannot be, like this. Why? Because it's ultimate category is person(s) as opposed to, say, the abstractions of Vedanta.

Hey, here's an idea: is there some way to reconcile the two, the abstract and the personal? A voice in my head is saying Yes. Why, it's the voice of the Aphorist! Hello, Aphorist!

Hello, Bob. It sounds like you already know that Two contradictory philosophical theses complete each other, but only God knows how.

But did you know that The life of the intelligence is a dialogue between the personalism of spirit and the impersonalism of reason?

Well, maybe I didn't know it, but I certainly suspected it. Would you care to add anything else before I flesh out my suspicions?

Yes, here's a hint: In order for a multitude of diverse terms to coexist, it is necessary to place them on different levels. A hierarchical ordering is the only one that neither expels nor suppresses them.

Okay, but what if the top of the hierarchy isn't a static one, but a dynamic three? Better yet, what if there is a kind of complementarity between the one and the three? Wouldn't that make everybody happy? 

Then again, I don't like "one." It's misleading. Nor "three," since it implies quantity as opposed to Relation. How about something like this:

•  ⟷  ∞  ⟷      ⟷  (↺)

Preliminary Sketches of Eternity

We think of the Incarnation as the ultimate vertical ingression, the purpose being to facilitate the redemption and divinization of man, AKA theosis. 

However, it is simultaneously the hominization of God, and I don't know which notion is more shocking. Each is Peak Weird: theosis and... homosis?

In any event, if hominization may be symbolized (↓), then divination is (↑). The former is complete -- an actuality -- while the latter is ongoing -- a possibility, so perhaps a more adequate pneumaticon would be (⇡). 

Common sense tells us that if something happens, then it was possible for it to happen -- that there is a principle, a sufficient reason; or in other words, impossible things can't happen. In the case of our sanctification, it is possible because of the actuality of the Incarnation: it is accomplished, and then some.

Usually when I come up against an apparent duality, it turns out to be a complementarity. I haven't yet thought this through -- I'm doing so right now -- but it occurs to me that Incarnation and theosis,  (↓) and  (↑), must form a kind of eternal complementarity that may be depicted as (⇅), or better yet, (↺), since even the faith that gets the ball rolling uphill is a divine gift.

Now, they say that Christ's sacrificial redemption is something God cooked up before even the creation of the world. I don't know if that's true, but I don't find it particularly helpful. Among other things, it not only presupposes the fall, but "simultaneously" (since God is said to be timeless) provides the cure.

This seems like a lot of needless trouble. No offense, but it's like giving credit to a scientist for simultaneously inventing a disease and a drug to treat it. Like the Chinese. 

I'm no doubt too pinheaded -- i.e., too partial to abstraction -- but I'm always put off by religious formulations that sound ad hoc, or like a Rube Goldberg metaphysics. Nor do I like the idea of trying to escape from one absurdity by positing another, as so often happens in exoteric approaches. Rather, I like things to be consistent. Unified. Tidy. No loose ends. 

But it seems that Christianity is not, and cannot be, like this. Why? Because it's ultimate category is person(s) as opposed to, say, the abstractions of Vedanta.

Hey, here's an idea: is there some way to reconcile the two, the abstract and the personal? A voice in my head is saying Yes. Why, it's the voice of the Aphorist! Hello, Aphorist!

Hello, Bob. It sounds like you already know that Two contradictory philosophical theses complete each other, but only God knows how.

But did you know that The life of the intelligence is a dialogue between the personalism of spirit and the impersonalism of reason?

Well, maybe I didn't know it, but I certainly suspected it. Would you care to add anything else before I flesh out my suspicions?

Yes, here's a hint: In order for a multitude of diverse terms to coexist, it is necessary to place them on different levels. A hierarchical ordering is the only one that neither expels nor suppresses them.

Okay, but what if the top of the hierarchy isn't a static one, but a dynamic three? Better yet, what if there is a kind of complementarity between the one and the three? Wouldn't that make everybody happy? 

Then again, I don't like "one." It's misleading. Nor "three," since it implies quantity as opposed to Relation. How about something like this:

•  ⟷  ∞  ⟷      ⟷  (↺)

Insults to Unintelligence

As mentioned yesterday, Schopenhauer sought the sufficient reason for things, i.e., a reasons proportionate to the phenomena. Of course he failed miserably, and was famously miserable besides, but this isn't to say that he achieved nothing.

Rather, Schopenhauer's greatest achievement was the fine insultainment he spewed at philosophers whose reasons he considered insufficient, for example, Hegel, whom he described as an "impudent and cocky gasbag,"  

a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. 

Harsh but fair. Moreover, Hegel's misgeisted followers   

mistake the hollowest verbiage for philosophical ideas, the most miserable sophisms for sagacity, childish absurdities for dialectic, and their heads have been muddled by absorbing crazed word-combinations which torture and exhaust the mind that tries in vain to extract some meaning from them.

What would he have said about Foucault or Derrida? Kant also got the needle: he is like 

a man who at a masked ball flirts the whole evening with a masked beauty under the illusion of making a conquest, until at the end she unmasks and reveals herself -- as his wife.

Remind me, what is our subject? 

Oh yes: reasons, in particular, sufficient ones. Put conversely, I suppose the great majority of reasons we are given for things -- both visible and especially invisible -- are ridiculously insufficient. They are ultimately as rooted in authority, custom, and tradition as any religious dogma.   

I well remember the drudgery of school five days a week, broken up by the drudgery of Sunday School once as week. Not only could the reasons given in the former not be reconciled with the latter, nor were they even sufficient on their own terms. 

First of all, it is illogical in the extreme to posit two "ultimate explanations," but in both cases a simple Why? was sufficient to render the grown-ups either silent or irritated.     

The Aphorist has a number of sharp objects that go to just this point, so there's no need for me to reinvent the needle:

In philosophy a single naïve question is sometimes enough to make an entire system come tumbling down.

In the end there is only one Because that is impervious to every Why: necessary being, AKA the Absolute, or what most folks just call God.

Ultimately, 

Natural laws are irreducible to explanation, like any mystery.

Bearing in mind that "mystery" is not synonymous with absurdity, ignorance, or unknowability, but rather, is a palpable and fruitful presence. I'm touching it right now!

A fool is he who thinks that what he knows is without mystery.

You know the type: intelligent enough to obtain an advanced college degree but not smart enough to be ashamed of it.  

Being only falsifiable, a scientific thesis is never certain but is merely current.

To not know this is to practice a primitive religion called Scientism.

The definitive scientific sum will never be anything more than the prejudice existing at the moment when humanity becomes extinct.

In other words, science necessarily and literally goes on forever, while never in principle being capable of arriving at its object. This is so because the universe is created. If it weren't created, then this asymptotic convergence would be strictly impossible. Besides, Gödel. 

Philosophy gives up when one stops asking simple questions.

Simple questions such as, If consciousness is just a meaningless epiphenomenon, why do you believe that, or anything else?

Four or five invulnerable philosophical propositions allow us to make fun of the rest.

Such as? Oh, the principles of identity (AKA non-contradiction), of causation, of the correspondence of intelligence and intelligibility. Come to think of it, 

All truths converge upon one truth, but the routes have been barricaded.

What's on the other side of the barricade? I don't know about you, but my trinoculars see intelligible being enshrouded by Beyond-Being. After that, Nothing. Or All-Possibility.

Nearly every idea is an overdrawn check that circulates until it is presented for payment.

For example, try demanding a Real World from the equations of physics. It's like the old joke about the atheist who bets God he can explain the world without him. The atheist starts by picking up a handful of dirt, and God says, "not so fast -- get your own dirt!" Likewise, get your own math!

The philosopher who adopts scientific notions has predetermined his conclusions.

This metaphysical scientism constitutes Begging the Question on steroids. It is hardly worthy of a serious insult.

Philosophy ultimately fails because one has to speak of the whole in the terms of its parts.

True, but it succeeds when it gives equal timelessness to the Whole, AKA, the ground of being. This ground is not God, rather, his first fruit, i.e., the Logosphere. It's a little mysterious, but to be perfectly honest,

The honest philosophy does not pretend to explain but to circumscribe the mystery.

That's our excuse and we're sticking to it. At least we're not like those deadbrained abracadavers, for

The doctrines that explain the higher by means of the lower are appendices of a magician’s rule book.

Aren't we leaving something out? Yes, we can't end this post without some gratuitous political insultainment:

The theses of the left are rationalizations that are carefully suspended before reaching the argument that dissolves them.

Insufficient persons necessarily have insufficient reasons, the most sufficient reason of all being the category Person, all three of them. 

Insults to Unintelligence

As mentioned yesterday, Schopenhauer sought the sufficient reason for things, i.e., a reasons proportionate to the phenomena. Of course he failed miserably, and was famously miserable besides, but this isn't to say that he achieved nothing.

Rather, Schopenhauer's greatest achievement was the fine insultainment he spewed at philosophers whose reasons he considered insufficient, for example, Hegel, whom he described as an "impudent and cocky gasbag,"  

a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. 

Harsh but fair. Moreover, Hegel's misgeisted followers   

mistake the hollowest verbiage for philosophical ideas, the most miserable sophisms for sagacity, childish absurdities for dialectic, and their heads have been muddled by absorbing crazed word-combinations which torture and exhaust the mind that tries in vain to extract some meaning from them.

What would he have said about Foucault or Derrida? Kant also got the needle: he is like 

a man who at a masked ball flirts the whole evening with a masked beauty under the illusion of making a conquest, until at the end she unmasks and reveals herself -- as his wife.

Remind me, what is our subject? 

Oh yes: reasons, in particular, sufficient ones. Put conversely, I suppose the great majority of reasons we are given for things -- both visible and especially invisible -- are ridiculously insufficient. They are ultimately as rooted in authority, custom, and tradition as any religious dogma.   

I well remember the drudgery of school five days a week, broken up by the drudgery of Sunday School once as week. Not only could the reasons given in the former not be reconciled with the latter, nor were they even sufficient on their own terms. 

First of all, it is illogical in the extreme to posit two "ultimate explanations," but in both cases a simple Why? was sufficient to render the grown-ups either silent or irritated.     

The Aphorist has a number of sharp objects that go to just this point, so there's no need for me to reinvent the needle:

In philosophy a single naïve question is sometimes enough to make an entire system come tumbling down.

In the end there is only one Because that is impervious to every Why: necessary being, AKA the Absolute, or what most folks just call God.

Ultimately, 

Natural laws are irreducible to explanation, like any mystery.

Bearing in mind that "mystery" is not synonymous with absurdity, ignorance, or unknowability, but rather, is a palpable and fruitful presence. I'm touching it right now!

A fool is he who thinks that what he knows is without mystery.

You know the type: intelligent enough to obtain an advanced college degree but not smart enough to be ashamed of it.  

Being only falsifiable, a scientific thesis is never certain but is merely current.

To not know this is to practice a primitive religion called Scientism.

The definitive scientific sum will never be anything more than the prejudice existing at the moment when humanity becomes extinct.

In other words, science necessarily and literally goes on forever, while never in principle being capable of arriving at its object. This is so because the universe is created. If it weren't created, then this asymptotic convergence would be strictly impossible. Besides, Gödel. 

Philosophy gives up when one stops asking simple questions.

Simple questions such as, If consciousness is just a meaningless epiphenomenon, why do you believe that, or anything else?

Four or five invulnerable philosophical propositions allow us to make fun of the rest.

Such as? Oh, the principles of identity (AKA non-contradiction), of causation, of the correspondence of intelligence and intelligibility. Come to think of it, 

All truths converge upon one truth, but the routes have been barricaded.

What's on the other side of the barricade? I don't know about you, but my trinoculars see intelligible being enshrouded by Beyond-Being. After that, Nothing. Or All-Possibility.

Nearly every idea is an overdrawn check that circulates until it is presented for payment.

For example, try demanding a Real World from the equations of physics. It's like the old joke about the atheist who bets God he can explain the world without him. The atheist starts by picking up a handful of dirt, and God says, "not so fast -- get your own dirt!" Likewise, get your own math!

The philosopher who adopts scientific notions has predetermined his conclusions.

This metaphysical scientism constitutes Begging the Question on steroids. It is hardly worthy of a serious insult.

Philosophy ultimately fails because one has to speak of the whole in the terms of its parts.

True, but it succeeds when it gives equal timelessness to the Whole, AKA, the ground of being. This ground is not God, rather, his first fruit, i.e., the Logosphere. It's a little mysterious, but to be perfectly honest,

The honest philosophy does not pretend to explain but to circumscribe the mystery.

That's our excuse and we're sticking to it. At least we're not like those deadbrained abracadavers, for

The doctrines that explain the higher by means of the lower are appendices of a magician’s rule book.

Aren't we leaving something out? Yes, we can't end this post without some gratuitous political insultainment:

The theses of the left are rationalizations that are carefully suspended before reaching the argument that dissolves them.

Insufficient persons necessarily have insufficient reasons, the most sufficient reason of all being the category Person, all three of them. 

Please Go All the Why!

Continuing with the theme of metaphysical happiness, there is something definitively irritating about any theory or vision -- whether secular or religious -- that fails to "go all the way," or that arbitrarily stops before tracing out all its entailments and implications. 

I suppose I first ran into this notion in reading Schopenhauer, who made a big deal out of it, and with good reason:

What, indeed, is an explanation, any explanation? An attempt to answer that question is the natural starting-point of [Schopenhauer's] enquiry, and as such the subject of his first book (Magee).

So, before you proffer an explanation, you need to explain how you know your explanation is sufficient. 

Some readers will say, "ah, now I remember why I hate philosophy." But this isn't just some pedantic question like how many pinheads can dance on the heart of an angel, but rather, goes to the question of how we can know anything about anything.  

It is possible to for us to pose some sort of Why? question with regard to anything.

Yes, but Why?

Stop reminding me why I hate philosophy! Can't be helped. For

we simply cannot imagine anything objectively of which no "why" could be further demanded (Schopenhauer).

To put it logically, anything that can be formulated can be questioned. To put it psychologically, the status of anything that can be perceived, or thought, or understood, can be queried (Magee).

Except, of course, the 2020 election.

Besides that, is it possible to have an explanation to which we don't respond with another annoying b-b-but Why? 

Such an explanation must simply be. Or, it simply Is. It must be the Being of being, such that our response to it must essentially be Oh. Okay. That settles that. Let's eat! 

I'm going to jump ahead of myself and just blurt out what I think must be the Sufficient Reason of Everything and Anything: Beyond-Being. This would constitute not even the first principle, rather, the ultimate reality that engenders principles. 

I don't yet know if this is correct, but then again I do, because thought itself can go no further than this, the question now being whether the limits of our epistemology actually correspond to ontology per se, and I'm gonna say Shit yeah!, because to say No would ultimately mean that we can't really know anything about anything.  

What I mean is that if we can know anything -- which we can -- then there is a principial reason for this, and it is the metacosmic descent from Beyond-Being --> Intelligible Being --> Intellect. Beyond-Being is not an un- or anti-Christian principle, and indeed, I was just reading about it yesterday in a couple of books about Maximus Confessor (born 580) and Eckhart (born 1260).

The latter, for example, "insists that God is above being," and that there is a corresponding "uncreated something in the soul," a "little spark" where "the Godhead becomes God in the flowing out of creation."

These are somewhat dangerous waters for those who do not know how to swim or to ask annoying questions, so proceed with caution, for this is an "endless ocean" and "bottomless abyss" about which Eckhart -- like someone else we know -- fools around with "word games that are meant to be both playful and serious," including "paradoxes, contradictions, oxymora, and other forms of wordplay in speaking of the ground."

As for Maximus, he characterizes the "Trinitarian movement" as "the perfection of a living circle, the dynamics of a divine Being who makes himself personal."

I prefer to think of the Three and the One as the ultimate complementarity as opposed to one reducing to the other. Maximus seems to agree, in that "God is Monad according to the principle of His essence" and "Triad according to his mode of existence." 

But as we all know, God's essence and existence are not-two, and there is no questioning beyond a being who's essence is to exist. Or, in the words of the Aphorist -- and this is most definitely not a childish tautology, much less a full-groan tauntology -- 

The sole proof of the existence of God is His existence.

"Ah, now I remember why I hate this blog." 

 

Please Go All the Why!

Continuing with the theme of metaphysical happiness, there is something definitively irritating about any theory or vision -- whether secular or religious -- that fails to "go all the way," or that arbitrarily stops before tracing out all its entailments and implications. 

I suppose I first ran into this notion in reading Schopenhauer, who made a big deal out of it, and with good reason:

What, indeed, is an explanation, any explanation? An attempt to answer that question is the natural starting-point of [Schopenhauer's] enquiry, and as such the subject of his first book (Magee).

So, before you proffer an explanation, you need to explain how you know your explanation is sufficient. 

Some readers will say, "ah, now I remember why I hate philosophy." But this isn't just some pedantic question like how many pinheads can dance on the heart of an angel, but rather, goes to the question of how we can know anything about anything.  

It is possible to for us to pose some sort of Why? question with regard to anything.

Yes, but Why?

Stop reminding me why I hate philosophy! Can't be helped. For

we simply cannot imagine anything objectively of which no "why" could be further demanded (Schopenhauer).

To put it logically, anything that can be formulated can be questioned. To put it psychologically, the status of anything that can be perceived, or thought, or understood, can be queried (Magee).

Except, of course, the 2020 election.

Besides that, is it possible to have an explanation to which we don't respond with another annoying b-b-but Why? 

Such an explanation must simply be. Or, it simply Is. It must be the Being of being, such that our response to it must essentially be Oh. Okay. That settles that. Let's eat! 

I'm going to jump ahead of myself and just blurt out what I think must be the Sufficient Reason of Everything and Anything: Beyond-Being. This would constitute not even the first principle, rather, the ultimate reality that engenders principles. 

I don't yet know if this is correct, but then again I do, because thought itself can go no further than this, the question now being whether the limits of our epistemology actually correspond to ontology per se, and I'm gonna say Shit yeah!, because to say No would ultimately mean that we can't really know anything about anything.  

What I mean is that if we can know anything -- which we can -- then there is a principial reason for this, and it is the metacosmic descent from Beyond-Being --> Intelligible Being --> Intellect. Beyond-Being is not an un- or anti-Christian principle, and indeed, I was just reading about it yesterday in a couple of books about Maximus Confessor (born 580) and Eckhart (born 1260).

The latter, for example, "insists that God is above being," and that there is a corresponding "uncreated something in the soul," a "little spark" where "the Godhead becomes God in the flowing out of creation."

These are somewhat dangerous waters for those who do not know how to swim or to ask annoying questions, so proceed with caution, for this is an "endless ocean" and "bottomless abyss" about which Eckhart -- like someone else we know -- fools around with "word games that are meant to be both playful and serious," including "paradoxes, contradictions, oxymora, and other forms of wordplay in speaking of the ground."

As for Maximus, he characterizes the "Trinitarian movement" as "the perfection of a living circle, the dynamics of a divine Being who makes himself personal."

I prefer to think of the Three and the One as the ultimate complementarity as opposed to one reducing to the other. Maximus seems to agree, in that "God is Monad according to the principle of His essence" and "Triad according to his mode of existence." 

But as we all know, God's essence and existence are not-two, and there is no questioning beyond a being who's essence is to exist. Or, in the words of the Aphorist -- and this is most definitely not a childish tautology, much less a full-groan tauntology -- 

The sole proof of the existence of God is His existence.

"Ah, now I remember why I hate this blog."