Bob vs. a 15 Year Old

Another brief one, which seems to be the new norm. Lucky you!

I am a different person from the one who staggered into graduate school in 1981 and stumbled out in 1988. In one sense this is a banality, but I mean something different. 

That is, supposing one is the recipient of an extensive post-secondary education -- particularly in the humanities -- this should presumably help one actualize and perfect whatever nascent intellectual gifts, virtues, and potentials one possesses.  

I remember the Happy Acres Guy using the analogy of a sports camp: attending one isn't going to turn the non-athlete into an athlete; rather, it's purpose is to make the athlete better: it can perfect one's skills, not conjure them 

Same with college. There's a reason why it cranks out credentialed idiots by the thousands: because these idiots were never intellectual athletes to begin with. Or maybe you've never read Michelle Obama's master's thesis.

Now that any idiot can graduate college, one supposes that the purpose of graduate degree is to distinguish one from the common idiot with a BA. But one has only to have attended graduate school to know this isn't true. 

It reminds me of a recent column by Roger Kimball about the ludicrous Doctor Jill Biden. Her silly title "communicates less honor than affectation and social insecurity":

In the United States, anyway, it is generally understood, though seldom mentioned in polite society, that the less distinguished one’s academic institution, the more likely one will insist upon the honorific “Dr.” And that’s for Ph.D. degrees. The degree of Ed.D. -- officially a “doctor of education” -- is, let’s be candid, more a certificate than a degree. Yes, one is entitled to the title “Dr.” But it’s only a short step, or half step, up from those entertainers and purveyors of boutique soaps who style themselves “Dr.” or “Doc”: “Dr. Bronner,” for example, or “Doc Watson.” 

Now, Doc, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. We all know what an actual doctor is, which is why we respect them. An EdD or PhD would be arrested for attempting what real doctors can do, e.g., give you drugs, cut you open, or see you naked. 

But here again, this isn't my point. Let's put it this way: my son, who is 15 years old, watches Prager U videos as part of his homeschooling. As such, he knows more about political philosophy, or the Constitution, or the history of the Middle East, or the reality of sexual differences, or basic economics, or race, than I did in 1988, when I became a fully credentialed idiot.

Supposing we could beam my son back to 1988 and engage the old me in debate, he would easily trounce me. But would I have recognized my humiliation at the hands of a mere teen? 

No. Way. I would have presumed to correct him at every turn, no doubt adopting my best superior tone while gently mocking his naiveté -- or, more likely, arrogantly steamrolling it. Even imagining the exchange actually makes me a bit nauseous.

There but for the grace of God grew I.

Along these lines, I want to pick up where we left off in the previous post, because it touches on a fundamental principle of human psychology of which I was totally ignorant in 1988 -- after having been certified as a Doctor of the subject on the way to being a licensed Healer of Souls! The thought of which makes me a bit more nauseous.

A Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person reminds us that the term fall is "a conceptual metaphor" signifying "an ontological change in humanity." This change redounds to "the loss of an original state" of -- in our words -- freely chosen conformity to the divine principle and person.

Now, this seems like a pretty important piece of information to leave out. Sure, you could say this is just a crazy Christian theory, but believe me, we learned plenty of other crazy theories from behaviorism at one end to Freudianism at the other and existential psychology in between. 

What else do these boys (in the CC M-M of the P) have to say about the subject? 

Every worldview and value system has an account of the origin and extent of human weakness and disorder.  

Quite true, except it is often implicit. But everyone can see that there's something wrong with the humans. For the Marxist it is private property. For the critical race theorist it is whiteness. For the feminist it is men. For Democrats it is Trump.

When I completed graduate school, I would have no doubt pointed to the ins, outs, and what-have-yous of childhood attachment. I suppose I still do, but in a much wider and deeper psycho-spiritual context. 

For example, I wouldn't have recognized homeschooling as such a critical prolongation of this process. But this is precisely why my 15 year old son could trounce his 32 year old father in a debate.

Some more critical information from the book: the principle of fallenness accounts for a dis-ordering of four particular human capacities:

(a) reason remains wounded by ignorance and in need of the virtue of practical wisdom; (b) the will remains wounded by malice and in need of the virtue of justice; (c) the emotions related to the good that is difficult to reach or the evil that is difficult to avoid remain wounded by our weakness and in need of the virtue of fortitude; and (d) the emotions related to attraction to a good or repulsion of something that is evil remain wounded by disordered desire and in need of the virtue of temperance or moderation.  

So when we say that man is fallen, we can point to certain evident consequences, i.e., the relative absence of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance; man as we find him is more or less imprudent, unjust, weak-willed (or willful), and intemperate. And a real doctor of psychology would assist the patient in precisely these dimensions. 

Now, as alluded to in the second paragraph, a higher education in general should at least help to actualize a bit of our human potential in these same areas. I suppose it does, in that it renders its beneficiaries as temperate as a Paul Krugman, as prudent as a Cornell West, as just as a Karl Marx, and as brave your average college dean.  

Bob vs. a 15 Year Old

Another brief one, which seems to be the new norm. Lucky you!

I am a different person from the one who staggered into graduate school in 1981 and stumbled out in 1988. In one sense this is a banality, but I mean something different. 

That is, supposing one is the recipient of an extensive post-secondary education -- particularly in the humanities -- this should presumably help one actualize and perfect whatever nascent intellectual gifts, virtues, and potentials one possesses.  

I remember the Happy Acres Guy using the analogy of a sports camp: attending one isn't going to turn the non-athlete into an athlete; rather, it's purpose is to make the athlete better: it can perfect one's skills, not conjure them 

Same with college. There's a reason why it cranks out credentialed idiots by the thousands: because these idiots were never intellectual athletes to begin with. Or maybe you've never read Michelle Obama's master's thesis.

Now that any idiot can graduate college, one supposes that the purpose of graduate degree is to distinguish one from the common idiot with a BA. But one has only to have attended graduate school to know this isn't true. 

It reminds me of a recent column by Roger Kimball about the ludicrous Doctor Jill Biden. Her silly title "communicates less honor than affectation and social insecurity":

In the United States, anyway, it is generally understood, though seldom mentioned in polite society, that the less distinguished one’s academic institution, the more likely one will insist upon the honorific “Dr.” And that’s for Ph.D. degrees. The degree of Ed.D. -- officially a “doctor of education” -- is, let’s be candid, more a certificate than a degree. Yes, one is entitled to the title “Dr.” But it’s only a short step, or half step, up from those entertainers and purveyors of boutique soaps who style themselves “Dr.” or “Doc”: “Dr. Bronner,” for example, or “Doc Watson.” 

Now, Doc, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. We all know what an actual doctor is, which is why we respect them. An EdD or PhD would be arrested for attempting what real doctors can do, e.g., give you drugs, cut you open, or see you naked. 

But here again, this isn't my point. Let's put it this way: my son, who is 15 years old, watches Prager U videos as part of his homeschooling. As such, he knows more about political philosophy, or the Constitution, or the history of the Middle East, or the reality of sexual differences, or basic economics, or race, than I did in 1988, when I became a fully credentialed idiot.

Supposing we could beam my son back to 1988 and engage the old me in debate, he would easily trounce me. But would I have recognized my humiliation at the hands of a mere teen? 

No. Way. I would have presumed to correct him at every turn, no doubt adopting my best superior tone while gently mocking his naiveté -- or, more likely, arrogantly steamrolling it. Even imagining the exchange actually makes me a bit nauseous.

There but for the grace of God grew I.

Along these lines, I want to pick up where we left off in the previous post, because it touches on a fundamental principle of human psychology of which I was totally ignorant in 1988 -- after having been certified as a Doctor of the subject on the way to being a licensed Healer of Souls! The thought of which makes me a bit more nauseous.

A Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person reminds us that the term fall is "a conceptual metaphor" signifying "an ontological change in humanity." This change redounds to "the loss of an original state" of -- in our words -- freely chosen conformity to the divine principle and person.

Now, this seems like a pretty important piece of information to leave out. Sure, you could say this is just a crazy Christian theory, but believe me, we learned plenty of other crazy theories from behaviorism at one end to Freudianism at the other and existential psychology in between. 

What else do these boys (in the CC M-M of the P) have to say about the subject? 

Every worldview and value system has an account of the origin and extent of human weakness and disorder.  

Quite true, except it is often implicit. But everyone can see that there's something wrong with the humans. For the Marxist it is private property. For the critical race theorist it is whiteness. For the feminist it is men. For Democrats it is Trump.

When I completed graduate school, I would have no doubt pointed to the ins, outs, and what-have-yous of childhood attachment. I suppose I still do, but in a much wider and deeper psycho-spiritual context. 

For example, I wouldn't have recognized homeschooling as such a critical prolongation of this process. But this is precisely why my 15 year old son could trounce his 32 year old father in a debate.

Some more critical information from the book: the principle of fallenness accounts for a dis-ordering of four particular human capacities:

(a) reason remains wounded by ignorance and in need of the virtue of practical wisdom; (b) the will remains wounded by malice and in need of the virtue of justice; (c) the emotions related to the good that is difficult to reach or the evil that is difficult to avoid remain wounded by our weakness and in need of the virtue of fortitude; and (d) the emotions related to attraction to a good or repulsion of something that is evil remain wounded by disordered desire and in need of the virtue of temperance or moderation.  

So when we say that man is fallen, we can point to certain evident consequences, i.e., the relative absence of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance; man as we find him is more or less imprudent, unjust, weak-willed (or willful), and intemperate. And a real doctor of psychology would assist the patient in precisely these dimensions. 

Now, as alluded to in the second paragraph, a higher education in general should at least help to actualize a bit of our human potential in these same areas. I suppose it does, in that it renders its beneficiaries as temperate as a Paul Krugman, as prudent as a Cornell West, as just as a Karl Marx, and as brave your average college dean.  

Memo to Fallen Man: Stop the Steal!

We left off with a discussion of the ascending and descending cosmic winds, which are always present in some form or fashion however much we may wish it were otherwise.   

Indeed, even "wishing" is situated on this axis, for it is ultimately conformed to love, truth, beauty, goodness, and unity -- or their downward alternatives -- which are obviously not reducible to matter and sensation. 

If nature weren't already supernatural we could never even know the dame, for we would -- literally -- be  immersed in the senses and outside the loop (the spiraling loop of ascent and descent).

With this in mind, let's continue with Schuon's essay on Man in the Cosmogonic Projection, which helps to unigmatize a number of enigmas. We'll figure out later if we can square it with cosmic orthodoxy:

just as the boomerang by its very form is destined to return to him who has thrown it, so man is predestined by his form to return to his divine Prototype; whether he wills it or not, man is "condemned" to transcendence.

That last comment is what I mean by wishing it were otherwise: yes, you are a child of the living God, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

Except of course there is, since, by virtue of our divine birthright, we are also condemned to freedom. Now, man is always in rebellion against his own freedom, or there would be no left or any other forms of theocracy. 

Why else did it take 100,000 years for man to create a nation anchored in his own transcendent rights and duties? And why else has the devil accompanied its development and never stopped trying to undermine it?  Hmm? 

The devil simultaneously loves and hates freedom: to be precise, he loves it -- insofar as this verb applies -- so long as it isn't conformed to its vertical telos.  Remove the latter and freedom reduces to blind will and the tyranny of relativism. Which is why "the worst of perversions is that of man," since the corruption of the best is indeed the worst. 

This applies quintessentially to a perverse left which only exists to corrupt the best (the best constitution, nation, educational system, or any other institution it touches). The following passage offers a hint as to why:

The "dark" and "descending" tendency not only moves away from the Sovereign Good, but also rises up against It; whence the equation between the devil and pride (ibid.). 

Boom and bingo: the revolutionary impulse -- which is always with and in us -- is characterized by a prideful misuse of freedom. Now, where have I heard this idea before? 

I know! On page 473 of A Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person. In a chapter called Fallen, it reminds us that the term fall is "a conceptual metaphor" signifying "an ontological change in humanity." This change redounds to "the loss of an original state" of -- in our words -- freely chosen conformity to the divine principle and person.

An ontological change, eh? This doesn't just imply a change in knowledge, or relations, or feelings, or behavior; rather, a change in our very being. Ouch! That's gonna leave a mark. Right down to the marrow.

Is there anything we can do about it? Well, maybe, but first we must admit we have a problem, that we do not have the power to fix it, that it isn't someone else's fault, and that it isn't susceptible to a political solution that exteriorizes blame at the cost of freedom and responsibility. The best political system only facilities the possibility of choosing good over evil and reality over appearance. 

Nevertheless, as the Poet says, 

They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is will shadow
The man that pretends to be.

Is and Be, which go to the ontological change mentioned above: the man who Is is fallen man pretending not to be. The possibility of real being is predicated on the recognition of false being. Again, job one is to simply stop pretending. 

That's about it for today, except for a few aphorisms by our sphinx-like friend Nicolás:

In order to corrupt the individual it is enough to teach him to call his personal desires rights and the rights of others abuses.

In order to enslave the people the politician needs to convince them that all their problems are “social.”

Social salvation is near when each one admits that he can only save himself. Society is saved when its presumed saviors despair.

Unfortunately, since last November our presumed saviors have been jubilant.

Memo to Fallen Man: Stop the Steal!

We left off with a discussion of the ascending and descending cosmic winds, which are always present in some form or fashion however much we may wish it were otherwise.   

Indeed, even "wishing" is situated on this axis, for it is ultimately conformed to love, truth, beauty, goodness, and unity -- or their downward alternatives -- which are obviously not reducible to matter and sensation. 

If nature weren't already supernatural we could never even know the dame, for we would -- literally -- be  immersed in the senses and outside the loop (the spiraling loop of ascent and descent).

With this in mind, let's continue with Schuon's essay on Man in the Cosmogonic Projection, which helps to unigmatize a number of enigmas. We'll figure out later if we can square it with cosmic orthodoxy:

just as the boomerang by its very form is destined to return to him who has thrown it, so man is predestined by his form to return to his divine Prototype; whether he wills it or not, man is "condemned" to transcendence.

That last comment is what I mean by wishing it were otherwise: yes, you are a child of the living God, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

Except of course there is, since, by virtue of our divine birthright, we are also condemned to freedom. Now, man is always in rebellion against his own freedom, or there would be no left or any other forms of theocracy. 

Why else did it take 100,000 years for man to create a nation anchored in his own transcendent rights and duties? And why else has the devil accompanied its development and never stopped trying to undermine it?  Hmm? 

The devil simultaneously loves and hates freedom: to be precise, he loves it -- insofar as this verb applies -- so long as it isn't conformed to its vertical telos.  Remove the latter and freedom reduces to blind will and the tyranny of relativism. Which is why "the worst of perversions is that of man," since the corruption of the best is indeed the worst. 

This applies quintessentially to a perverse left which only exists to corrupt the best (the best constitution, nation, educational system, or any other institution it touches). The following passage offers a hint as to why:

The "dark" and "descending" tendency not only moves away from the Sovereign Good, but also rises up against It; whence the equation between the devil and pride (ibid.). 

Boom and bingo: the revolutionary impulse -- which is always with and in us -- is characterized by a prideful misuse of freedom. Now, where have I heard this idea before? 

I know! On page 473 of A Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person. In a chapter called Fallen, it reminds us that the term fall is "a conceptual metaphor" signifying "an ontological change in humanity." This change redounds to "the loss of an original state" of -- in our words -- freely chosen conformity to the divine principle and person.

An ontological change, eh? This doesn't just imply a change in knowledge, or relations, or feelings, or behavior; rather, a change in our very being. Ouch! That's gonna leave a mark. Right down to the marrow.

Is there anything we can do about it? Well, maybe, but first we must admit we have a problem, that we do not have the power to fix it, that it isn't someone else's fault, and that it isn't susceptible to a political solution that exteriorizes blame at the cost of freedom and responsibility. The best political system only facilities the possibility of choosing good over evil and reality over appearance. 

Nevertheless, as the Poet says, 

They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is will shadow
The man that pretends to be.

Is and Be, which go to the ontological change mentioned above: the man who Is is fallen man pretending not to be. The possibility of real being is predicated on the recognition of false being. Again, job one is to simply stop pretending. 

That's about it for today, except for a few aphorisms by our sphinx-like friend Nicolás:

In order to corrupt the individual it is enough to teach him to call his personal desires rights and the rights of others abuses.

In order to enslave the people the politician needs to convince them that all their problems are “social.”

Social salvation is near when each one admits that he can only save himself. Society is saved when its presumed saviors despair.

Unfortunately, since last November our presumed saviors have been jubilant.

Surrender Your Line to the Circle

Another short one. Unless I've lost track of time and it's longer than I think.

We're still pondering Schuon's Man in the Cosmogonic Projection. I am at that phase in life where the following speaks for itself:

the cosmogonic movement is not merely centrifugal, it becomes centripetal in the final analysis, which is to say that it is circular; the circle of Maya closes in the heart of the deified man.

Self-evident, no?

Wait, no? 

Are we looking at the same thing? I'm looking at the world, which is looking back at me. Or rather, is always speaking to me. It was here when I arrived, but if I'm (I AM) not here, then there is no circle, and we are sealed in permanent stupidity, futility, and illusion. 

But man completes the circle, not just via knowledge of being (AKA truth), but also the other transcendentals -- love, beauty, and unity.

Regarding the latter, to even say "cosmos" is to say unity, a unity that is anterior to the (merely) material cosmos. No one ever has, or ever will, perceive "the cosmos," for perception is always of particulars. You can only perceive a piece of the pie, but why assume there's a pie? Where did that idea come from?

From the Circle. For it is the Circle, only frozen and bifurcated instead of seen for the cosmogonic movement it actually is. Which is again what I see. It's obviously there in the circular structure of the bOOk, but back then it was only dimly perceived -- or clearly intuited -- whereas now it's the context of everything. A first principle.

Why us? Because in a full employment cosmos, someone has to do it:

To the question of knowing why man has been placed in the world when his fundamental vocation is to leave [i.e., transcend] it, we would reply: it is precisely in order that there be someone who returns to God (ibid).

Surprisingly enough, this is completely orthodox, albeit with certain important caveats. If you want to look at it from the widest possible angle, you could say that the Fall represents a rupture in the Circle, while the Incarnation is its repair and completion ("it is accomplished").

Thus, sanctification, deification, and theosis are a participation in the circular movement. Christ is obviously the necessary condition, but this does not excuse us from a voluntary participation in him, which means we -- in our vertical freedom -- are the sufficient condition. The latter can only get so far in the absence of the former -- close but no avatar. 

Nowadays practically every book I read alludes to the Circle. When I see one, I put a symbol in the margin that looks like circle with an arrow. For example, just yesterday I read a little book by Peter Kreeft called The Philosophy of Jesus. In it he writes of how the divine goodness "spills out beyond itself like sunlight." That's the descending movement.

But then, "that-which-was-from-the-beginning," the "unmanifest Source of all manifestations became manifested," and "the distance between Heaven and earth" is bridged. Say what you like about it, but one must admit that "this is the most radical solution to the fundamental problem of metaphysics: how to know Being."

Yes, it's an audacious gamble, but I guess Einstein was wrong: God does like to play dice with the universe. 

Ironic: note how the Incarnation divides "time in two, cutting the Gordian knot of history," only to heal the divide at a higher level. One might say that continuity becomes discontinuous so that the discontinuous (i.e., broken, splintered, fragmented, conflicted, unintegrated) might become continuous, or at least participate in the continuity. 

For this reason, "when man crucifies truth, truth crucifies man." D'oh! God devises a way to transform man's narcissistic and self-glorifying rejection of, and attack on, the Circle to complete the Circle: "God's search for man is a success, and the name of that success is Jesus." 

"Jesus is Jacob's ladder..., and we see this ladder is upside down: it really rests on Heaven, not on earth like the Tower of Babel," much less the babble of tenure.  "He makes it possible to escape earth's gravity." You could say that levity becomes gravity in order for gravity to become levity.  Guffah-HA! 

Another book I read over the weekend, A Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person, discusses the same Circle in different terms, noting that "Self-knowledge and knowledge of the world are supported by bottom-up and top-down influences." The former are obvious, while the latter include such things as "the spiritual inclination to know the truth," "intellectual intuitions about good and evil," and the "movements of grace." 

Elsewhere the authors write of the "personagenesis" whereby

In the spiritual realm, which is at the core of the personality, it is listening to the call and love of God. Once initiated, the process of becoming a person continues as a "vertical transcendence" in which the person gives "the self to another."

Participation the trinitarian Circle revolves around receptivity to the gift and an active self-gift in response. The "theological virtues originate from God" and "lead one to God." And their practice forms the basis of our vertical metabolism.

Surrender Your Line to the Circle

Another short one. Unless I've lost track of time and it's longer than I think.

We're still pondering Schuon's Man in the Cosmogonic Projection. I am at that phase in life where the following speaks for itself:

the cosmogonic movement is not merely centrifugal, it becomes centripetal in the final analysis, which is to say that it is circular; the circle of Maya closes in the heart of the deified man.

Self-evident, no?

Wait, no? 

Are we looking at the same thing? I'm looking at the world, which is looking back at me. Or rather, is always speaking to me. It was here when I arrived, but if I'm (I AM) not here, then there is no circle, and we are sealed in permanent stupidity, futility, and illusion. 

But man completes the circle, not just via knowledge of being (AKA truth), but also the other transcendentals -- love, beauty, and unity.

Regarding the latter, to even say "cosmos" is to say unity, a unity that is anterior to the (merely) material cosmos. No one ever has, or ever will, perceive "the cosmos," for perception is always of particulars. You can only perceive a piece of the pie, but why assume there's a pie? Where did that idea come from?

From the Circle. For it is the Circle, only frozen and bifurcated instead of seen for the cosmogonic movement it actually is. Which is again what I see. It's obviously there in the circular structure of the bOOk, but back then it was only dimly perceived -- or clearly intuited -- whereas now it's the context of everything. A first principle.

Why us? Because in a full employment cosmos, someone has to do it:

To the question of knowing why man has been placed in the world when his fundamental vocation is to leave [i.e., transcend] it, we would reply: it is precisely in order that there be someone who returns to God (ibid).

Surprisingly enough, this is completely orthodox, albeit with certain important caveats. If you want to look at it from the widest possible angle, you could say that the Fall represents a rupture in the Circle, while the Incarnation is its repair and completion ("it is accomplished").

Thus, sanctification, deification, and theosis are a participation in the circular movement. Christ is obviously the necessary condition, but this does not excuse us from a voluntary participation in him, which means we -- in our vertical freedom -- are the sufficient condition. The latter can only get so far in the absence of the former -- close but no avatar. 

Nowadays practically every book I read alludes to the Circle. When I see one, I put a symbol in the margin that looks like circle with an arrow. For example, just yesterday I read a little book by Peter Kreeft called The Philosophy of Jesus. In it he writes of how the divine goodness "spills out beyond itself like sunlight." That's the descending movement.

But then, "that-which-was-from-the-beginning," the "unmanifest Source of all manifestations became manifested," and "the distance between Heaven and earth" is bridged. Say what you like about it, but one must admit that "this is the most radical solution to the fundamental problem of metaphysics: how to know Being."

Yes, it's an audacious gamble, but I guess Einstein was wrong: God does like to play dice with the universe. 

Ironic: note how the Incarnation divides "time in two, cutting the Gordian knot of history," only to heal the divide at a higher level. One might say that continuity becomes discontinuous so that the discontinuous (i.e., broken, splintered, fragmented, conflicted, unintegrated) might become continuous, or at least participate in the continuity. 

For this reason, "when man crucifies truth, truth crucifies man." D'oh! God devises a way to transform man's narcissistic and self-glorifying rejection of, and attack on, the Circle to complete the Circle: "God's search for man is a success, and the name of that success is Jesus." 

"Jesus is Jacob's ladder..., and we see this ladder is upside down: it really rests on Heaven, not on earth like the Tower of Babel," much less the babble of tenure.  "He makes it possible to escape earth's gravity." You could say that levity becomes gravity in order for gravity to become levity.  Guffah-HA! 

Another book I read over the weekend, A Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person, discusses the same Circle in different terms, noting that "Self-knowledge and knowledge of the world are supported by bottom-up and top-down influences." The former are obvious, while the latter include such things as "the spiritual inclination to know the truth," "intellectual intuitions about good and evil," and the "movements of grace." 

Elsewhere the authors write of the "personagenesis" whereby

In the spiritual realm, which is at the core of the personality, it is listening to the call and love of God. Once initiated, the process of becoming a person continues as a "vertical transcendence" in which the person gives "the self to another."

Participation the trinitarian Circle revolves around receptivity to the gift and an active self-gift in response. The "theological virtues originate from God" and "lead one to God." And their practice forms the basis of our vertical metabolism.

A Flood of Meaning

Time only for a short one...

A commenter to the previous post alluded to the old question of how to reconcile an evil world (or evil in the world) with a good God. Schuon bats it away in a single sentence: 

Manifestation is not the Principle, and the effect is not the cause; that which is "other than God" could not possess the perfections of God, hence in the final analysis and within the general imperfection of the created, there results that privative and subversive phenomenon we call evil.  

Taken out of context and in isolation from his many other discussions of the subject, this may appear glib and simplistic. Nevertheless, it gets to the heart of nub of the gist of the essence of the problem in a purely demythologized way. In my view, Genesis 3 makes the same point, only clothed in mythopoetic garb. 

In a prescientific world, important transnatural and metaphysical truths and meanings are conveyed via narrative. As with great art, it is important not to get hung up on the what but to penetrate to the why of the story -- the theme and not just the plot, the former being the reason for the latter. 

Analogously, I've been using the pandemic as an excuse to introduce my son to great American films, for example, Casablanca. While I suppose it can be enjoyed as a "romance," that is obviously only the vehicle and not the destination -- the means and not the message. 

Many aphorisms come to mind, but I'll try to limit myself to five, arranged in ascending order:

Appearance is not the veil, but the vehicle, of reality.

The meanings are the reality; their material vehicles are the appearance.

The bridge between nature and man is not science, but myth.

The modern aberration consists in believing that the only thing that is real is what the vulgar soul can perceive.

Whoever does not believe in myths believes in fables. 

Speaking of fables and the vulgarians who swallow them, the commenter mentioned above adopts a literal and simplistic reading of the biblical flood in order to cleverly deduce from it that God must be evil. Gotcha!, exclaims the Village Atheist. We've been dunked upon.

In another aphorism, Dávila pointedly points out that The simplistic ideas in which the unbeliever ends up believing are his punishment. 

We all have our philosophical preoccupations, and moreover, we have time for only so many. I myself am not troubled by the fantastic stories of the Old Testament. If I'm truly curious about one, then the first thing I will do is consult the Rabbis and Church Fathers for guidance as to what it means. If I want to know about the flood, for example, it's not difficult to obtain any number of rich and provocative exegeses.  

Enough said about that. Back to the existence of evil. Indeed, there is so much evil in the world, one sometimes wonders why God doesn't just end it all with a giant flood or something. Better yet, maybe leave a single righteous man to start all over -- like a new Adam or whatever.

Even supposing God did allow us to be reborn and begin anew, something or someone inevitably tries to oppose and subvert the regenerating power of the baptismal waters. Schuon:

strictly speaking, evil or the devil cannot oppose the Divinity, who has no opposite; it opposes man who is the mirror of God and the movement towards the divine.

Mirror and movement. Now that is a pithy and pregnant formulation, for it goes to both our immanence and our transcendence; or to our atemporal essence and our temporal journey towards it, which in turn forms  the basis of "the meaning of life."  

This meaning stretches out before us (horizontally) because it first stretches out above us (vertically).  If not, then to hell with it. Bring on the flood. Or maybe it's always already here.

A Flood of Meaning

Time only for a short one...

A commenter to the previous post alluded to the old question of how to reconcile an evil world (or evil in the world) with a good God. Schuon bats it away in a single sentence: 

Manifestation is not the Principle, and the effect is not the cause; that which is "other than God" could not possess the perfections of God, hence in the final analysis and within the general imperfection of the created, there results that privative and subversive phenomenon we call evil.  

Taken out of context and in isolation from his many other discussions of the subject, this may appear glib and simplistic. Nevertheless, it gets to the heart of nub of the gist of the essence of the problem in a purely demythologized way. In my view, Genesis 3 makes the same point, only clothed in mythopoetic garb. 

In a prescientific world, important transnatural and metaphysical truths and meanings are conveyed via narrative. As with great art, it is important not to get hung up on the what but to penetrate to the why of the story -- the theme and not just the plot, the former being the reason for the latter. 

Analogously, I've been using the pandemic as an excuse to introduce my son to great American films, for example, Casablanca. While I suppose it can be enjoyed as a "romance," that is obviously only the vehicle and not the destination -- the means and not the message. 

Many aphorisms come to mind, but I'll try to limit myself to five, arranged in ascending order:

Appearance is not the veil, but the vehicle, of reality.

The meanings are the reality; their material vehicles are the appearance.

The bridge between nature and man is not science, but myth.

The modern aberration consists in believing that the only thing that is real is what the vulgar soul can perceive.

Whoever does not believe in myths believes in fables. 

Speaking of fables and the vulgarians who swallow them, the commenter mentioned above adopts a literal and simplistic reading of the biblical flood in order to cleverly deduce from it that God must be evil. Gotcha!, exclaims the Village Atheist. We've been dunked upon.

In another aphorism, Dávila pointedly points out that The simplistic ideas in which the unbeliever ends up believing are his punishment. 

We all have our philosophical preoccupations, and moreover, we have time for only so many. I myself am not troubled by the fantastic stories of the Old Testament. If I'm truly curious about one, then the first thing I will do is consult the Rabbis and Church Fathers for guidance as to what it means. If I want to know about the flood, for example, it's not difficult to obtain any number of rich and provocative exegeses.  

Enough said about that. Back to the existence of evil. Indeed, there is so much evil in the world, one sometimes wonders why God doesn't just end it all with a giant flood or something. Better yet, maybe leave a single righteous man to start all over -- like a new Adam or whatever.

Even supposing God did allow us to be reborn and begin anew, something or someone inevitably tries to oppose and subvert the regenerating power of the baptismal waters. Schuon:

strictly speaking, evil or the devil cannot oppose the Divinity, who has no opposite; it opposes man who is the mirror of God and the movement towards the divine.

Mirror and movement. Now that is a pithy and pregnant formulation, for it goes to both our immanence and our transcendence; or to our atemporal essence and our temporal journey towards it, which in turn forms  the basis of "the meaning of life."  

This meaning stretches out before us (horizontally) because it first stretches out above us (vertically).  If not, then to hell with it. Bring on the flood. Or maybe it's always already here.

Why? and Why.

Let's move on to the second paragraph of Schuon's essay on Man in the Cosmogonic Projection. 

I realize we've discussed this subject in the past, but it's always helpful to review important principles, especially when practically the whole world -- AKA the World -- believes otherwise and exerts a constant pressure to conform to its anti-principles. 

I'm not complaining about the latter, mind you. Rather,

Unless what we write seems obsolete to modern man, immature to the adult, and trivial to the serious man, we have to start over.

Here's the first sentence:

The question of the "why" of creation has given rise to many speculations.

I detest speculation, except in the strict classical sense of the term, which doesn't refer to impotent conjectures of the can-I-buy-some-pot-from-you style midwit intellectual adventurer. 

Rather, real speculation involves nailing down the ultimate reasons for things. It is simultaneously the most useless (because it isn't for the sake of something else) and useful knowledge there is (because it pertains to our origins and end, or to the whole reason for being here).

You could say that practical and utilitarian knowledge is material and efficient (like science), whereas speculative knowledge is formal and final, AKA vertical.  But for this very reason, it is actually more certain than merely scientific knowledge, which is by definition tentative and preluminary, always on-the-way-to.

To what?

From what?

Yes, and yes.  

the cosmogonic projection [what we call "cosmogenesis"] has as its ultimate cause the infinitude proper to the Absolute.

This sentence is ineluctably true even if you would prefer that it not be, for there is no truth in the absence of Truth itself; this latter principle is either explicit or implicit, but without its vertical/ontological sponsorship, our local epistemological franchise is rendered blankrupt, and no coherent or consistent statement about anything is possible. We will no doubt return to this subject latter.

Now, to say infinitude is to say All-Possibility and consequently the overflowing of the divine potentialities, in conformity with the principle that the Good wills to communicate itself.

In Christian metaphysics this would be analogous to kenosis, the following definition of which taken from Essential Theological Terms, by Justo Gonzalez. It is "A term derived from the Greek word for emptying," in reference to a passage in Philippians, which forms

the basis of a christological view that sought to explain the possibility of the incarnation by claiming that the eternal Word, or Logos, of God divested himself of the divine attributes that are incompatible with being human... 

By virtue of what other principle could God possibly make himself not-God? Here's a passage from Lossky's Mystical Theology that describes it more concretely (I could find better ones, but this is close to hand): 

As we have said may times, the perfection of the person consists in self-abandonment: the person expresses itself most truly in that it renounces to exist for itself. It is the self-emptying of the Person of the Son, the Divine kenosis.

Later he describes "His true humanity which voluntarily submitted to death as a final stripping, emptying, and culmination of the divine kenosis."

Which goes to a debate I often have with myself, going to the question of whether it is possible to root theology in a more universal metaphysics, but let's not get sidetracked; we'll no doubt return to this question too as we proceed.  

It is said that God "created" the world by a "free act of His will," but this is only to stress that God does not act under constraint; this last term somehow lends itself to confusion for it goes without saying that God is indeed "obliged" to be faithful to His Nature and for that reason cannot but manifest Himself by a quasi-eternal or co-eternal chain of creations... 

Analogously, since God's essence is love, we could say that  he "constrained" by it as well. This probably sounds a bit suspicious, but in my view this "constraint" is precisely what distinguishes the trinitarian Christian God from the less differentiated God of, say, Islam. 

The Muslim would insist that God has no constraints whatsoever, but this has certain baleful consequences for man and civilization, for it means that -- for example -- God doesn't do things because they are good; rather, things are good because he does them. 

It makes for a morally arbitrary, unintelligible, and impenetrable world from the human perspective, with no speculative basis for natural law or theology -- a God of pure will. It reduces any speculative Why? to Because I said so. Very much like the left that way.  It's why authoritarian leftism is so congenial to assouls such as Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Linda Sarsour, and Keith Ellison.  

Why? and Why.

Let's move on to the second paragraph of Schuon's essay on Man in the Cosmogonic Projection. 

I realize we've discussed this subject in the past, but it's always helpful to review important principles, especially when practically the whole world -- AKA the World -- believes otherwise and exerts a constant pressure to conform to its anti-principles. 

I'm not complaining about the latter, mind you. Rather,

Unless what we write seems obsolete to modern man, immature to the adult, and trivial to the serious man, we have to start over.

Here's the first sentence:

The question of the "why" of creation has given rise to many speculations.

I detest speculation, except in the strict classical sense of the term, which doesn't refer to impotent conjectures of the can-I-buy-some-pot-from-you style midwit intellectual adventurer. 

Rather, real speculation involves nailing down the ultimate reasons for things. It is simultaneously the most useless (because it isn't for the sake of something else) and useful knowledge there is (because it pertains to our origins and end, or to the whole reason for being here).

You could say that practical and utilitarian knowledge is material and efficient (like science), whereas speculative knowledge is formal and final, AKA vertical.  But for this very reason, it is actually more certain than merely scientific knowledge, which is by definition tentative and preluminary, always on-the-way-to.

To what?

From what?

Yes, and yes.  

the cosmogonic projection [what we call "cosmogenesis"] has as its ultimate cause the infinitude proper to the Absolute.

This sentence is ineluctably true even if you would prefer that it not be, for there is no truth in the absence of Truth itself; this latter principle is either explicit or implicit, but without its vertical/ontological sponsorship, our local epistemological franchise is rendered blankrupt, and no coherent or consistent statement about anything is possible. We will no doubt return to this subject latter.

Now, to say infinitude is to say All-Possibility and consequently the overflowing of the divine potentialities, in conformity with the principle that the Good wills to communicate itself.

In Christian metaphysics this would be analogous to kenosis, the following definition of which taken from Essential Theological Terms, by Justo Gonzalez. It is "A term derived from the Greek word for emptying," in reference to a passage in Philippians, which forms

the basis of a christological view that sought to explain the possibility of the incarnation by claiming that the eternal Word, or Logos, of God divested himself of the divine attributes that are incompatible with being human... 

By virtue of what other principle could God possibly make himself not-God? Here's a passage from Lossky's Mystical Theology that describes it more concretely (I could find better ones, but this is close to hand): 

As we have said may times, the perfection of the person consists in self-abandonment: the person expresses itself most truly in that it renounces to exist for itself. It is the self-emptying of the Person of the Son, the Divine kenosis.

Later he describes "His true humanity which voluntarily submitted to death as a final stripping, emptying, and culmination of the divine kenosis."

Which goes to a debate I often have with myself, going to the question of whether it is possible to root theology in a more universal metaphysics, but let's not get sidetracked; we'll no doubt return to this question too as we proceed.  

It is said that God "created" the world by a "free act of His will," but this is only to stress that God does not act under constraint; this last term somehow lends itself to confusion for it goes without saying that God is indeed "obliged" to be faithful to His Nature and for that reason cannot but manifest Himself by a quasi-eternal or co-eternal chain of creations... 

Analogously, since God's essence is love, we could say that  he "constrained" by it as well. This probably sounds a bit suspicious, but in my view this "constraint" is precisely what distinguishes the trinitarian Christian God from the less differentiated God of, say, Islam. 

The Muslim would insist that God has no constraints whatsoever, but this has certain baleful consequences for man and civilization, for it means that -- for example -- God doesn't do things because they are good; rather, things are good because he does them. 

It makes for a morally arbitrary, unintelligible, and impenetrable world from the human perspective, with no speculative basis for natural law or theology -- a God of pure will. It reduces any speculative Why? to Because I said so. Very much like the left that way.  It's why authoritarian leftism is so congenial to assouls such as Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Linda Sarsour, and Keith Ellison.  

Wrapping our Minds Around the Ontology of Trinity and Trinity of Ontology

We've analyzed the first two sentences of Schuon's essay on Man in the Cosmogonic Projection, but with the third sentence things get... interesting:

The divine Essence, "Beyond Being," reverberates in Relativity, giving rise to the Divine Person, to Creative "Being."

Obviously, any sort of fundamentalist or literalist or sola-scripturalist will object to the suggestion that there is something beyond the personal God, or that the personal God is relative to anything; rather, everything is relative to God, and that's the end of it.

I think it's a matter of what you can "wrap your mind around." The great majority of Christians presumably could (or would) never wrap their minds around Schuon's description, which is fine. Indeed, Schuon would say that this is the very purpose of exoteric religion: to provide man with a means to wrap his mind around an ultimate reality that is -- obviously, and by definition -- unwrappable.  Man cannot contain what is uncontainable -- at least outside the fact and principle of Incarnation. 

Incidentally, it's difficult to write about this subject without sounding elitist, or esoteric, or Gnostic, but this is not my intention. Rather, the purpose is fundamentally no different from the fundamentalist, as I'm just trying to conceptualize God in a manner I can wrap my little mind around -- or, more to the point, in a way that doesn't repel what I call my intelligence. Sr. D:

God does not ask for the submission of the intelligence, but rather an intelligent submission.

Nor, of course, would we ever presume to cut God down to the size of our own conceptions of him. Indeed, that is the whole problem of which Schuon is speaking: there is the God we can imagine and the unimaginable Godhead, and these two are distinct but related, in a way that just may be analogous to the reality <---> appearance complementarity discussed in the previous post.

This has been an issue from the earliest days of Christianity. "As the Greek Fathers insisted," writes Ware, "A God who is comprehensible is not God." Rather, such a God "turns out to be no more than an idol, fashioned in our own image."  

[W]e need to use negative as well as affirmative statements, saying what God is not rather than what he is. Without this use of the way of negation, of what is termed the apophatic approach, our talk about God becomes gravely misleading.

Or, "As Cardinal Newman puts it, we are continually 'saying and unsaying to a positive effect.'"  In this mythsemantical realm, negative x positive = a deeper positive.  Call it the metabolism or respiration of mystical theology.

Yes, that's all orthodox, as it places the relativity squarely on our side of the infinite <---> finite divide.  But Schuon is hinting at something more radical, at something that occurs -- if that's the right word -- on God's side of this divide.

Like anybody could know that!

Well, bear with me. In my opinion -- for what it's worth, since I'm just another amateur theographer -- Christian metaphysics tends not to explore and draw the vast metaphysical consequences flowing from a trinitarian Godhead as opposed to a purely monistic one.  If there are no such consequences, then what's the point? Why does God go to all the trouble of disclosing the intimate and indeed personal nature of reality, if it makes no difference to our conception of it (and of him)?

If I'm not mistaken, this is one of the points of the whole communio movement, which highlights the possibility "of created participation in uncreated being ":

Since the being of God is decisive for the being of whatever is not God, the being or nature of the Judaeo-Christian God must be elucidated. 

The first and decisive assertion is that this God is triune, three Persons in one God. Thus are avoided the inadequacies inherent in both polytheism and even certain traditional monotheisms. 

In Greek philosophy substance denotes a being that stands on its own, that does not inhere in nor form part of another being. It tends to connote independence and even separation, apartness, isolation. Baneful results for certain religious approaches to God are obvious, for the deity becomes not only the One, but the Alone, even the Alien. 

The Judaeo-Christian God, on the other hand, and precisely as triune, emphatically reveals that by virtue of his divine unicity God is not reduced to the isolated and phthisic status of a monad. In Greek philosophy substance and relation tend to be mutually hostile, so that the more one really is (substance), the less one is related (relation). 

The ontology implicit in the triune God simply undoes this. For this God, substantial being is being related; relation is substance. Thus, God's very being is the relationships of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for God is not first Father, and then only derivatively and subsequently Son and Holy Spirit. Rather, the very substance of God is originally communicated Being. Hence, all being, wherever it is in being, is inescapably "being with" (emphasis mine).

It seems that God is an eternal dancing in which dancer and dance can only be artificially or accidentally deustinguished:   

This is aptly expressed by perichoresis, which comes from Greek words meaning "to dance around with." If the anthropomorphism be permitted, perichoresis means that God is so full of being that his oneness is manyness, a manyness that in no way divides or separates, negates or isolates his oneness. 

Thus a term from "to dance" expresses God's being happy with himself, with his shared being—the being together of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is a kind of joyful unity in diversity....

With this in mind, I don't think Schuon's characterization is so wide of the mark -- or at least there is a way to reconcile it with a Christian metaphysic:

Within this view it is perfectly "natural" that God, whose very being is communicated plenitude, should also communicate being to that which of itself is not God and, hence, which otherwise is simply not at all. 

(That and previous quotes yoinked from https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/communio)

Wrapping our Minds Around the Ontology of Trinity and Trinity of Ontology

We've analyzed the first two sentences of Schuon's essay on Man in the Cosmogonic Projection, but with the third sentence things get... interesting:

The divine Essence, "Beyond Being," reverberates in Relativity, giving rise to the Divine Person, to Creative "Being."

Obviously, any sort of fundamentalist or literalist or sola-scripturalist will object to the suggestion that there is something beyond the personal God, or that the personal God is relative to anything; rather, everything is relative to God, and that's the end of it.

I think it's a matter of what you can "wrap your mind around." The great majority of Christians presumably could (or would) never wrap their minds around Schuon's description, which is fine. Indeed, Schuon would say that this is the very purpose of exoteric religion: to provide man with a means to wrap his mind around an ultimate reality that is -- obviously, and by definition -- unwrappable.  Man cannot contain what is uncontainable -- at least outside the fact and principle of Incarnation. 

Incidentally, it's difficult to write about this subject without sounding elitist, or esoteric, or Gnostic, but this is not my intention. Rather, the purpose is fundamentally no different from the fundamentalist, as I'm just trying to conceptualize God in a manner I can wrap my little mind around -- or, more to the point, in a way that doesn't repel what I call my intelligence. Sr. D:

God does not ask for the submission of the intelligence, but rather an intelligent submission.

Nor, of course, would we ever presume to cut God down to the size of our own conceptions of him. Indeed, that is the whole problem of which Schuon is speaking: there is the God we can imagine and the unimaginable Godhead, and these two are distinct but related, in a way that just may be analogous to the reality <---> appearance complementarity discussed in the previous post.

This has been an issue from the earliest days of Christianity. "As the Greek Fathers insisted," writes Ware, "A God who is comprehensible is not God." Rather, such a God "turns out to be no more than an idol, fashioned in our own image."  

[W]e need to use negative as well as affirmative statements, saying what God is not rather than what he is. Without this use of the way of negation, of what is termed the apophatic approach, our talk about God becomes gravely misleading.

Or, "As Cardinal Newman puts it, we are continually 'saying and unsaying to a positive effect.'"  In this mythsemantical realm, negative x positive = a deeper positive.  Call it the metabolism or respiration of mystical theology.

Yes, that's all orthodox, as it places the relativity squarely on our side of the infinite <---> finite divide.  But Schuon is hinting at something more radical, at something that occurs -- if that's the right word -- on God's side of this divide.

Like anybody could know that!

Well, bear with me. In my opinion -- for what it's worth, since I'm just another amateur theographer -- Christian metaphysics tends not to explore and draw the vast metaphysical consequences flowing from a trinitarian Godhead as opposed to a purely monistic one.  If there are no such consequences, then what's the point? Why does God go to all the trouble of disclosing the intimate and indeed personal nature of reality, if it makes no difference to our conception of it (and of him)?

If I'm not mistaken, this is one of the points of the whole communio movement, which highlights the possibility "of created participation in uncreated being ":

Since the being of God is decisive for the being of whatever is not God, the being or nature of the Judaeo-Christian God must be elucidated. 

The first and decisive assertion is that this God is triune, three Persons in one God. Thus are avoided the inadequacies inherent in both polytheism and even certain traditional monotheisms. 

In Greek philosophy substance denotes a being that stands on its own, that does not inhere in nor form part of another being. It tends to connote independence and even separation, apartness, isolation. Baneful results for certain religious approaches to God are obvious, for the deity becomes not only the One, but the Alone, even the Alien. 

The Judaeo-Christian God, on the other hand, and precisely as triune, emphatically reveals that by virtue of his divine unicity God is not reduced to the isolated and phthisic status of a monad. In Greek philosophy substance and relation tend to be mutually hostile, so that the more one really is (substance), the less one is related (relation). 

The ontology implicit in the triune God simply undoes this. For this God, substantial being is being related; relation is substance. Thus, God's very being is the relationships of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for God is not first Father, and then only derivatively and subsequently Son and Holy Spirit. Rather, the very substance of God is originally communicated Being. Hence, all being, wherever it is in being, is inescapably "being with" (emphasis mine).

It seems that God is an eternal dancing in which dancer and dance can only be artificially or accidentally deustinguished:   

This is aptly expressed by perichoresis, which comes from Greek words meaning "to dance around with." If the anthropomorphism be permitted, perichoresis means that God is so full of being that his oneness is manyness, a manyness that in no way divides or separates, negates or isolates his oneness. 

Thus a term from "to dance" expresses God's being happy with himself, with his shared being—the being together of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is a kind of joyful unity in diversity....

With this in mind, I don't think Schuon's characterization is so wide of the mark -- or at least there is a way to reconcile it with a Christian metaphysic:

Within this view it is perfectly "natural" that God, whose very being is communicated plenitude, should also communicate being to that which of itself is not God and, hence, which otherwise is simply not at all. 

(That and previous quotes yoinked from https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/communio)

In the Beginning is the With

In a remarkably concise but resonant essay called Man in the Cosmogonic Projection, Schuon sketches his -- he would say everyone's -- map of ultimate reality, or his ultimate map of reality. This isn't the first time I've read it, but on this occasion I found myself wondering exactly how it can be reconciled with Christian metaphysics.

Then, in an idle moment, a thought popped into my head: Christianity of itself obviously doesn't have an explicit metaphysic, only an implicit one. What it says about creation (limiting ourselves to the Bible) is rather brief and to the point: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 

From the Jewish perspective -- or so we have heard from the wise -- this is partly to cut us off at the pass before we waste our lives trying to understand things we can't possibly understand: the world is created. Now, get over it and do something to make yourself useful.   

In a way this makes practical sense: either the world is created or it isn't, and it's above our praygrade to know which. Not only does it cost us nothing to assume it is created, but the principle of creation opens up whole new dimensions of interesting entailments without which we could scarcely be human. 

Actually, we couldn't be human, period. Remove the Creator and you have eliminated transcendence from the cosmos. Man is just another animal. Some men pretend not to be animals, while the rest are leftists.

Aquinas himself readily conceded that there is no way to prove whether the cosmos is eternal or had a beginning. Nor -- obviously -- does Big Bang cosmology settle the issue, since it is only the beginning of our cosmos, not the beginning of existence, let alone being, much less beyond-being.

The prologue of John is intended to parallel Genesis 1, although with a new trinitarian twist. Bear in mind that, being Jewish, he would have fully assimilated the principle of creation, so he's not denying monotheism, only fine-tuning it.      

Well, now that's a coveniedence: I just got my morning email from The Catholic Thing linking to this morning's essay, called Recovering the Theology of Creation, perhaps just what we need to set the stage for where we think we're going with this post:

Hans Urs von Balthasar writes somewhere that “the Christian is called to be the guardian of metaphysics in our time.”

That's a bingo.   

This entails the defense of the person as destined for the knowledge of God..., but it also entails guarding a proper understanding of natural being, that is to say, of the intrinsic and deep meaning and mystery inherent in all created things.

That's another bingo. 

For some religions, this world is a place of illusion or distraction to be overcome so that our souls may be lost in unity with God. But this is not possible for the Christian. We understand that God has created all things and called them “very good.” The mystery of our faith thus entails coming to understand the ways in which created things stand in relation to the One who made them.

That's a trifacta. But the Christian doctrine of creation doesn't only distinguish itself from Buddhist or Hindu doctrines that would negate the significance of the human person, it also distances itself from the pure and simple monism of Judaism (or of Islam or even certain Protestant denominations that deny free will).

Limiting ourselves again to the Bible (as opposed to tradition more generally), John outlines a more differentiated doctrine of the One, and he does so with a single preposition: with. Yes, God still is; moreover, he is still I AM.  However, there is more to AM than meets the I -- specifically the We implied by with.

At risk of straining language beyond it's carrying capacity, the Christian ought to say: I AM, therefore WE ARE;  and WE ARE, therefore I AM.  These are true simultaneously and irreducibly: there is no I prior to We, just as there is no Father prior to the Son.

Here is where things get a little dicey as it pertains to Schuon's essay, and yet, I believe he's on to something. He begins with this account:

The entire world is Maya, but Maya is not entirely the world. The divine Essence, "Beyond Being," reverberates in Relativity, giving rise to the Divine Person, to Creative "Being."

Now, at first blush this might sound suspiciously un- or even anti-Christian, but there is a way to understand it as quite Christian indeed. Begin by replacing "Maya" with the less loaded "appearance," and its truth is self-evident -- so self-evident that there's a blunt and pointed aphorism for that:

The universe is important if it is appearance, and insignificant if it is reality.

The Christian believes the world is real, but not ultimate reality; for the same reason, he believes the world is Maya, but not only Maya. The following aphorism describes and prescribes the proper balance:

Christianity does not deny the splendor of the world but encourages us to seek its origin, to ascend to its pure snow.

In other words, it doesn't deny that the world is Maya, but Maya isn't just "appearance." Rather, it is an appearance of reality, precisely.  

And back to the little preposition alluded to above: with. If John is correct, then, thanks to the Incarnation, the appearance is now ultimately with the reality in an intimate and final way: there is an unbreakable bond between the two. A martial covenant even.

I think we'll end for now. We're just getting started -- we've only discussed a couple of sentences in a ten page essay.  We'll leave off with an aphorism which may have sounded a bit cryptic before you read this post:

Any shared experience ends in a simulacrum of religion. 

In the Beginning is the With

In a remarkably concise but resonant essay called Man in the Cosmogonic Projection, Schuon sketches his -- he would say everyone's -- map of ultimate reality, or his ultimate map of reality. This isn't the first time I've read it, but on this occasion I found myself wondering exactly how it can be reconciled with Christian metaphysics.

Then, in an idle moment, a thought popped into my head: Christianity of itself obviously doesn't have an explicit metaphysic, only an implicit one. What it says about creation (limiting ourselves to the Bible) is rather brief and to the point: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 

From the Jewish perspective -- or so we have heard from the wise -- this is partly to cut us off at the pass before we waste our lives trying to understand things we can't possibly understand: the world is created. Now, get over it and do something to make yourself useful.   

In a way this makes practical sense: either the world is created or it isn't, and it's above our praygrade to know which. Not only does it cost us nothing to assume it is created, but the principle of creation opens up whole new dimensions of interesting entailments without which we could scarcely be human. 

Actually, we couldn't be human, period. Remove the Creator and you have eliminated transcendence from the cosmos. Man is just another animal. Some men pretend not to be animals, while the rest are leftists.

Aquinas himself readily conceded that there is no way to prove whether the cosmos is eternal or had a beginning. Nor -- obviously -- does Big Bang cosmology settle the issue, since it is only the beginning of our cosmos, not the beginning of existence, let alone being, much less beyond-being.

The prologue of John is intended to parallel Genesis 1, although with a new trinitarian twist. Bear in mind that, being Jewish, he would have fully assimilated the principle of creation, so he's not denying monotheism, only fine-tuning it.      

Well, now that's a coveniedence: I just got my morning email from The Catholic Thing linking to this morning's essay, called Recovering the Theology of Creation, perhaps just what we need to set the stage for where we think we're going with this post:

Hans Urs von Balthasar writes somewhere that “the Christian is called to be the guardian of metaphysics in our time.”

That's a bingo.   

This entails the defense of the person as destined for the knowledge of God..., but it also entails guarding a proper understanding of natural being, that is to say, of the intrinsic and deep meaning and mystery inherent in all created things.

That's another bingo. 

For some religions, this world is a place of illusion or distraction to be overcome so that our souls may be lost in unity with God. But this is not possible for the Christian. We understand that God has created all things and called them “very good.” The mystery of our faith thus entails coming to understand the ways in which created things stand in relation to the One who made them.

That's a trifacta. But the Christian doctrine of creation doesn't only distinguish itself from Buddhist or Hindu doctrines that would negate the significance of the human person, it also distances itself from the pure and simple monism of Judaism (or of Islam or even certain Protestant denominations that deny free will).

Limiting ourselves again to the Bible (as opposed to tradition more generally), John outlines a more differentiated doctrine of the One, and he does so with a single preposition: with. Yes, God still is; moreover, he is still I AM.  However, there is more to AM than meets the I -- specifically the We implied by with.

At risk of straining language beyond it's carrying capacity, the Christian ought to say: I AM, therefore WE ARE;  and WE ARE, therefore I AM.  These are true simultaneously and irreducibly: there is no I prior to We, just as there is no Father prior to the Son.

Here is where things get a little dicey as it pertains to Schuon's essay, and yet, I believe he's on to something. He begins with this account:

The entire world is Maya, but Maya is not entirely the world. The divine Essence, "Beyond Being," reverberates in Relativity, giving rise to the Divine Person, to Creative "Being."

Now, at first blush this might sound suspiciously un- or even anti-Christian, but there is a way to understand it as quite Christian indeed. Begin by replacing "Maya" with the less loaded "appearance," and its truth is self-evident -- so self-evident that there's a blunt and pointed aphorism for that:

The universe is important if it is appearance, and insignificant if it is reality.

The Christian believes the world is real, but not ultimate reality; for the same reason, he believes the world is Maya, but not only Maya. The following aphorism describes and prescribes the proper balance:

Christianity does not deny the splendor of the world but encourages us to seek its origin, to ascend to its pure snow.

In other words, it doesn't deny that the world is Maya, but Maya isn't just "appearance." Rather, it is an appearance of reality, precisely.  

And back to the little preposition alluded to above: with. If John is correct, then, thanks to the Incarnation, the appearance is now ultimately with the reality in an intimate and final way: there is an unbreakable bond between the two. A martial covenant even.

I think we'll end for now. We're just getting started -- we've only discussed a couple of sentences in a ten page essay.  We'll leave off with an aphorism which may have sounded a bit cryptic before you read this post:

Any shared experience ends in a simulacrum of religion.