It's Literally a Metaphorical Cosmos

Picking up where we left off, "Receptivity as such should be looked on not as essentially a sign of imperfection," but rather, "as in itself a positive aspect or perfection of being" (Clarke). What does this have to do with persons? Everything and more:

receptivity, represented archetypically by the Second Person as Son and Word, must be a purely positive perfection connatural to being itself.

In the Trinity, the receptivity of the Son "is of absolutely equal worth and perfection as the self-giving mode of the Father," and this pretty much changes everything, from the top on down to the bottom on up.

Certainly it turns the typical way of thinking about God (i.e., as static monad) upside down and inside out. Which -- in my opinion -- is precisely why it had to be revealed, because few sub-Raccoons would spontaneously arrive at such a metaphysic. 

Monism is an attitude that violates half of the experience.

This deeper and more differentiated revelation hints at some other unexpected properties in God, for example, that all Being is Being-With, and that I AM and WE ARE co-abide, such that one is not reducible to the other: there is always a We, so truly truly, we're never allone. For it is written,

Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness. 

I've mentioned before that the universe is the way it is because the Godhead is the way they are. I won't rub it in, but Clarke is on the same page:

To be, it turns out, means to-be-together. Being and community are inseparable. The empirical evidence for the extraordinary interconnectedness of all things in our own material and personal universe keeps mounting each day, through the findings of physics, cosmology, biology, [etc.]... Even if I but wiggle my finger here on earth, physicists tell us, some minuscule influence will reach the furthest stars.

Nonlocality is herebelow because it is first up in Celestial Central. 

Likewise, we might say that metacosmic intersubjectivity is the Principle of the surprising "inter-objectivity" of things. Everything down here literally speaks to us, meaning that it is intelligible to intelligence. 

Indeed, if things weren't inter-objective we couldn't know them as things, and we would all be like Drax the Destroyer, who hales from a planet whose people -- similar to our own atheists and autistics -- are completely literal, and do not understand metaphor (https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/127293/did-the-original-drax-have-trouble-with-metaphors).

Recall that

Metaphor supposes a universe in which each object mysteriously contains the others.

Ironically, you can say literally metaphorically.

Now, earlier this year we spent at least a month discussing The Matter With Things, and how metaphor is a right cerebral hemisphere specialty. We also suggested -- or possibly insisted -- that religion doesn't exist because we have an RH, but rather, the other way around. 

In other words, the RH <--> LH complementarity itself reflects something important about the nature of the Godhead. Don't make me stop this post and go back down there to pull up a quote, because it will take all day! 

Suffice it to say that there are conceptions of God that are both excessively and insufficiently RH, and that ours is just right.

I heard that! Of course I can back that up, but in order to do so I'll need a little philosophical reinforcement, in this case another Koon Klassic, this one called Living the Truth by Josef Pieper. Like yesterday's selection, it is much like hearing my voice calling me from outside my head.  

Example.  

Our pleasure. "To be," writes Pieper, 

means the same as "to be oriented toward a knowing mind." The realm of "being as such," finally, does not extend beyond the realm of all that is oriented toward a knowing mind, so that no existing being is without such a relational orientation" (emphasis mine).

It's an irreducibly relational cosmos, and if it weren't, we'd all be as Drax as a box of Dawkins or samnolent as a sleepy herd of Harrisies, for

no real 'being' can be perceived without implying that it relates or 'conforms' to the knowing mind.... this relationship is actualized in the process of mental perception or intellection (emphasis mine).

So sure, there are, for example, "selfish genes." Metaphorically, and only in a metaphorical cosmos. Literally!

In fact, "'Knowing" constitutes and establishes the most intimate relationship conceivable between two things," and

All reality is actually or potentially mind-related, inasmuch as its intrinsic essence is actually or potentially incorporated into the knowing mind.

Now, movin' on up in the cosmos, "Reality is called true in relation to the divine and the human mind." Or, let us just unsay something like the following for short:

O

(↓↑)  

(  )

The middle term is an ever-evolving approach to (or departure from) O, AKA the Divine Attractor:

The truth of a thing consists in its correlation to a knowing mind; yet a thing is correlated to our human mind only because of its primary correlation to God's mind, a correlation that is actualized in the form of that thing.

"All created things are constituted in relation to two minds"; "The things of nature, from which our mind receives its knowledge, are the measure for our mind; they themselves, in turn, receive their measure from God's knowing mind."

God knows them in fact, while we do so in potential. And the potential is never exhausted, at least short of the beatific vision or something. 

Movin' further on up, "The reality of a thing, in a way, is itself its light." Yes, it's getting tougher to breathe up here, but this is compensated for by all this Light -- that is, 

by reason of the primordial light emanating from the Logos, by reason of God's creative knowledge. "Truth adds to being the notion of intelligibility."

Oof! Now it's starting to get too bright to see, but we can make out the following:

Consequently, all reality, as reality, will essentially be intelligible for the human mind; and this intelligibility will be so inherent in reality's very being that "to be" and "to be intelligible for the human mind" become equivalent expressions. 

Intelligence = Intelligibility. In a way, knowing this is to know it all, for

"There are many things that our mind actually does not know; and yet, there is nothing... that the human mind could not perceive, at least potentially."

We can no more exhaust this infinite potential than could the Creator (being that creation never stops), but that's some slightly different shirt that we'll tuck in tomorrow. 

Reality is a Person-to-Person Call

We've been working our way aphorism-by-aphorism from the bottom to the top of the cosmos, and yesterday rearrived at this zinger:

That which is not a person is not finally anything.

Nothing? Bold statement, but nevertheless we must insist. However, what is a person? There are a number of irreducible elements, but surely this one is central:

The permanent possibility of initiating a causal series is what we call a person. 

Persons are in the image and likeness of the Person(s) and Principle, which is to say, the uncaused cause. Therefore, we are a prolongation of this Principle within the constraints of time and finitude, so to say we have free will is not to say we are devoid of necessity at one end or contingency at the other. There are rules! For

Necessity and freedom are not symmetrical concepts: in fact, if I affirm necessity, I deny any freedom, but if I affirm freedom, I do not deny any necessity.

So, if we affirm freedom we certainly do not deny necessity -- even in the Godhead, come to think of it, wherein abides the very Principle of Necessity. For to affirm, for example, that "God is truth" is to say that he is not free to be a big liar. In short, he is "constrained" by his nature. So long as we don't pretend to comprehend that nature, for

An adequate theology would be unintelligible to us.  

Ho! The yoke's on us. Which is not to say it is totally unintelligible -- this is not 'Nam -- but perhaps more like this:

One philosophy surpasses others only when it defines more precisely the same insoluble mystery.

We're not talking here about an exact science, rather, a science of the inexact, which is to say, the Person, exactly. 

I wanted to say one more thing about the freedom to initiate a causal series, which is obviously a necessary condition of creativity. Nor, in the absence of this freedom, would we be free to know truth; rather, we would either be under compulsion to know it, or there would be no such thing. And speaking of creativity,

Creation is the nexus between eternity and history.

Or, let us say, the vertical link between time and timelessness, immanence and transcendence. To the extent that art is timeless -- and if it isn't, then it isn't art -- this is why.

At this point I want to downshift from aphorisms to prose, in particular, to a coondational text called Person and Being, by one of our top five theologians, W. Norris Clarke.

It's not so much that he's an influence as a... hallucination. In other words, it's a little like hearing my own voice from outside my head. There are only a handful of thinkers who remind me of me, and he's one of them. But it's a relief to know there's even one! 

I'm tempted to just highlight some passages and leave it at that. First, he cites Ratzinger:

[In the relational notion of person developed within the theology of the Trinity]... lies concealed a revolution in man's view of the world...

This following one is big, it's the theology that got smaller: "the doctrine of the Trinity means... that the very inner nature of the Supreme Being itself -- even before its overflow into creation -- is an ecstatic process" which

subsequently flows over freely in the finite self-communication that is creation. No wonder then that self-communication is written into the very heart of beings, as finite but positive images of their Source.

Yes, no wonder. Or only wonder. And of course, only persons can wonder. I wonder why?

Because truly truly, there is no other why:

Suppose a being that really exists, but does not act in any way, does not manifest itself in any way to other beings. There would be no way for anything else to know that it exists; it would make no difference at all to the rest of reality; practically speaking, it might just as well not be at all -- it would in fact be indistinguishable from non-being. 

It would be that same nothing? mentioned in the third paragraph above:

If many or all real beings were this way, each would be locked off in total isolation from every other. There would not be a connected universe.

Hell? Maybe, but the bottom-line is that

To be fully is to be substance-in-relation.

And

the very meaning of relation implies that it is between two terms that it is connecting, between two relateds.  

And THIS is THAT*:

If self-communication is a fundamental aspect of real being, so too must be receptivity, the complementary pole of self-communication. Without receptivity no communication can become actual and complete itself. It must therefore be a primordial dimension of reality as a whole...

Which opens up a whole nether can of wormholes that we'll wiggle into tomorrow. 

Okay, a preview of coming Attractor: "Receptivity as such should be looked on not as essentially a sign of imperfection," but rather, "as in itself a positive aspect or perfection of being." 

Did someone say something about be ye perfect, and the poor in spirit inhering in reality? Or is the call coming from inside my head?

(*religious history ascends to a point from which it descends.)

How Am I? and I AM! How

 Beginning where we ended, Change My Mind:

That which is not a person is not finally anything.

It is appropriate to begin at this end, in the sense that final causation means that first in intention is last in execution -- for example, before you build one, you must first have the idea of a cake. 

Yes, but this seems more than a little... woowoo. Are you suggesting that the whole cosmos is a kind of conspiracy in order for persons to exist?

Well, when you put it that way... Then again, con-spiracy means to "breathe together," and this image may well come back to haunt us should we proceed down this path.  

Besides, prove me wrong. You can't, because any attempt to do so will have to assume that which you're trying to disprove. 

And since you are in fact here, it is axiomatic that it must be possible for you to be here. Certainly it is not impossible for you to be here, and yet, it is quite possible that you adhere to a tacit metaphysic that does in fact render you -- which is to say, persons -- strictly impossible. 

Now, possible obviously doesn't mean necessary. We're still necessarily contingent, but once we exist we partake of necessity, so to speak. To be at all is to participate in the act of Being, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it.

This touches on the problem of scientific paradigms and anomalies. Every paradigm generates anomalies for which it cannot account, and which eventually strain the system beyond repair. Then it's time to make the leap to a higher, deeper, or more encompassing paradigm that is able to integrate the anomalies. But there is no manmode system capable of containing the whole existentialada. Gödel may be crazy, but he's not stupid. 

Now, in my opinion, the ultimate anomaly is the existence of human persons. If it weren't for them, our scientistic paradigm could explain everything!

D'oh! Then it couldn't explain anything, because there wouldn't be any explainers. 

So, the most important fact of the cosmos is generally ignored and taken for granted. 

You could say that the Bʘʘ!k is literally the most cosmically narcissistic endeavor conceivable, in that it was ultimately motivated by a single question: How is Bob possible? 

In order to answer it, we have to trace things all the way back to those mathematical constants that govern the big bang -- tweak just one of them the itsiest bitsy, and none of us are possible, let alone Bob. Sad! 

But even that's not enough, because once we reach the goround zero of Planck Time, it's time to switch paradigms to a more encompassing one. We don't have to jump to the conclusion that God did it!, although it's not surprising that many folks will equate this beginning with the one outlined in Genesis. 

But both of these are but mythological symbolisms in Light of what's really going on. In other words, to say "big bang" and leave it at that is far less adequate than the myth of Genesis, because at least myth is true, whereas any form of scientism is a priori false in the larger sense. Rather, it just means one has stopped asking questions at an arbitrary point selected by the questioner, and just who does he think he is, and how?

For which reason the Aphorist says,

Everything in history begins before we think it begins and ends after where we think it ends,

And 

Every beginning is an image of the Beginning; every end is an image of the End.

Both of which -- beginning and end -- are always here and now (i.e, in the vertical space of [↑↓]), certainly not in the "past" (←) or "future" (→). In other words, remember the teleological connotation of the end that is ontologically prior to the beginning.

 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.  

Wait, what? Who glows there! Who said that? 

Before Abraham was, I am.

Okay, but grammatically that's not quite--

In the beginning was the Word.

That's better, but-- 

Who is and who was and who is to come.

 I don't mean to be pedantic, but--

I AM in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.

You must be from out of town, because around here we have this thing called "grammar," and besides, Aristotle--

I in them, and You in Me, that they may also be one in Us.

Right, but logic--

I AM the Logos.

One question: can I buy some pot from you?

Footnotes on Metacosmic Stupidity and the Sweet, Sweet Revenge of Reality

The great imbecilic explanations of human behavior adequately explain the one who adopts them. --Dávila

Yesterday's footnotes in search of a post ended with a couple touching on the ontological roots and axiological flashes of Christianity. 

These roots are above, the leafy flashes (AKA pneumosynthesis) below, and let's try to figure out just what's going on down here. 

Our first hunch is that it all revolves around the inner and upper meaning of personhood per se. 

Analogously, I'm thinking of the following aphorism:

The transcendent God is not a projection of the one who is our father in the flesh. To the contrary, a reflection of God turns the animal progenitor into a father.

Just so, God is not a projection of our own concept of personhood, rather, that which is its very principle, and without which we are obviously just animals, fundamentally no different from any other, only worse, if you're familiar with the blood-spattered history of atheist ideologies, from communism to national socialism to "global boiling," et al.

Human beings embody a new cosmic category, this again being persons. Let us comb thorough this big pile o' aphorisms for any other clues about the goround of this mysterious personhood. 

At this point we'd like to keep things abstract and above board. No monkey isness!

In other words, we want to avoid delving into matters of explicit faith, and try rather to hone in on what every intellectually dishonest person agrees with, regardless of (implicit) faith. 

Faith (our kind) is more an explicit "fine-tuning" or differentiation of those principles we can reach via nature.

Which goes back to a couple of ground aphorisms that are worth repeating, 1)

Today we require a methodical introduction to that vision of the world outside of which religious vocabulary is meaningless. We do not talk of God with those who do not judge talk about the gods as plausible.

And 2)

Christianity does not construct a rational explanation of Christ, but constructs the universe as the sum of necessary postulates to the existence of Christ...

Put these together, and we're looking for -- or at -- a vision of the world in which Christ -- the Godman, the metacosmic person -- is possible. After all, in order for anything to exist, it must first be possible for it to exist, otherwise it's impossible in principle and therefore in fact.

Let's start with some necessary entailments of the anti-Bob contingent, AKA reductio ad trolliums, so we can rule out a whole lotta BS, before considering the alternative. Note that each of these addresses the same cosmic bullshidiocy from a slightly different angle: 

If man is the sole end of man, an inane reciprocity is born from that principle, like the mutual reflection of two empty mirrors.

Man is the animal that imagines itself to be Man.

Only man pretends to be the anti-God.

"To have faith in man" does not reach the level of blasphemy; it is just one more bit of nonsense.

To believe in the redemption of man by man is more than en error; it is an idiocy.

He avoids announcing to man his divinity, but proposes goals that only a god could reach, or rather proclaims that the essence of man has rights that assume he is divine.

Humanity is the only totally false god.

The human has the insignificance of a swarm of insects when it is merely human.

Even so, you are nevertheless free to be an inane and idiotic progressive insect and pest. Indeed, nothing is stopping you besides reality, even if it takes time for reality to exact its revenge. Progressivism is already -- I mean, just look at their faces! -- dead, but death takes time:

An expert stab in the nerve center of an error kills it in seconds. But it requires centuries for its corpse to decompose.

How cosmically appropriate that their leader is literally an undead and decomposing corpse! Truly truly, the author of progressivism is a humorist without a sense of humor, and who might this unintentionally amusing author be? 

Indeed, who could it be, if not a person, since dark angels are persons too. And there are plenty of persons we don't like, but we do not jump to the conclusion that they aren't persons. A little perspective, please. Rather, forgive them their trespasses yada yada.

BUT

The Lord’s Prayer does not say: “... Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against whomever they wish.”

Dig? Let us stupulate that

In every moment the majority lives from dead ideas.

And that 

Religious pathology is the key to history.

We'll leave off with this one, and tomorrow we'll get into the living and healthy alternatives: 

The leftism of the majority of leftists is perfectly explicable, but the intelligent man who has left-wing ideas must severely examine his conscience.

Well, maybe a little preview: 

That which is not a person is not finally anything.

Footnotes in Search of a Post

What can I say?

The divine light shimmers upon the sea of being.

And not a moment too soon, for 

The momentary beauty of the instant is the only thing in the universe that concurs with the eagerness of our souls.

D'oh! There's always a BUT: 

 The luminous intensity of certain truths makes them invisible.

Then again, not to everyone, AKA the living: 

Life is delightful in the moments in which one is left to think or dream. 

But there is Life (the abundant kind) and life, for which reason we can say that mere 

“Life” is the consolation of those who do not know how to think.

Gentlemen, you can't think in here, this is academia!

In every moment the majority lives from dead ideas.

Dead and rotting. Conversely,

By limiting our audience we limit our falterings. Solitude is the only incorruptible arbitrator.

What an excellent way of spinning the selectiveness of my audience!

The rest are just too busy and distracted with merely living their mere lives. Frankly, I don't know how they do it, but

Man needs a busy life. No one is more unfortunate than the idler who was not born predestined to be one. An idle life without boredom, stupidities, or cruelty is as admirable as it is rare.

Fortunate indeed is the idler born to abide, who is bored by the busyness of living and can tolerate the isness of being. 

The pleasure with which we walk down the trail that a system opens up for us into the woods makes us forget that on each side the forest remains intact.

Not for me, at least not anymore. Certainly it used to, but now I am always aware of the Mystery of (and in) the four quadrants (↑, ↓, ←, & →) for which reason

Any explanation soon seems naïve.

And 

Any explanation seems inadequate when we hear it repeatedly.

Aaaand

Any idea is always too simple.

Naïve, inadequate, and simplistic, thy name is tenure, and thy dickname is journalism!

Dunning-Kruger + confirmation bias is everywhere:

There are few intelligences that we do not hear fluttering blindly in their cage of unconscious convictions.

What good are wings if one is grounded and caged? But supposing you are, that door locks from the inside:

When a system provides automatic answers to all questions, let us change the system.

You're free, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it except default to auto-subjugation. Today's masters are every bit as oppressive as yesterday's, only they've been internalized: every man his own victim and master. But who does the master serve?

This will be controversial, but

Religions would be simple figments of the imagination if their ontological roots were not all in Christianity.

In what sense? Perhaps this?

Christianity is the paradigm of the gratuitous insertion of axiological flashes into time.

Of the perpetual incarnation of the vertical into the horizontal, whether by book, by aphorism, by experience, or ultimately by Person. 

Perhaps everything is a footnote on Personhood?

Feral Christianity in the Wild Godhead

We've been rummaging around the bottom of the cosmos in search of ground aphorisms to build if not Babel upon. How about we flip the crypt and look around for some top-floor aphorisms? 

For us, the great middle zone can take care of itself. It is metaphysical flyover country, which can be safely left to scientists, technicians, and other autopilots. The real action is located...

Well, it's ambiguous, because it is always located here and now, of course. But here and now only exist as such in the luminous tension between the top and bottom, between transcendence and immanence, respOʘktively. So,

Let us respect the two poles of man: concrete individual, human spirit. But not the middle zone of an animal with opinions. 

Unless the middle zone is in dialectical tension with those two poles. Otherwise one drifts into some ghastly ideology, materialism at one end, idealism at the other, AKA the two varieties of Gnosticism, which usually combine in some fatheaded animal form to lard it over us.

Speaking of the Tension, 

The two poles are the individual and God; the two antagonists are God and man.

The latter as in "mankind," that abstract thing progressives love because they so passionately hate concrete men. 

Two contradictory philosophical theses complete each other, but only God knows why.

Or how. But there are plenty of hints, clues, and allegations.

This one too touches on our immanence and transcendence:

God is infinitely close and infinitely distant; one should not speak of Him as if He were at some intermediate distance.

Noted.

So, Meditations on the Toppermost, or something. Now, God is the name folks typically give to the Principle of principles, but to name it can be to tame it, and what could be more wild and less domesticated than our Principle? 

Supposing it could be brought to heel, well, feel free to make up a predictable pun about the shoutheels who have never stop yelling about it.

Liberty intoxicates man as a symbol of independence from God.

And

Man calls "absurd" what escapes his secret pretensions to omnipotence.

Secret? If only! Nowadays we call it "tenure," and it won't shut up.

Freedom isn't free, or rather, only totally so when detached from the Principle of which it is a vertical prolongation:

God allows man to raise barricades against the invasion of grace.

We need a name for this, or rather, an un-name, i.e., an unsaturated pneumaticon; let us call this anti-grace (-↓ ), just as the pseudo-omnipotence referenced above would be (-↑).

At any rat,

God is the impediment of modern man.

And another name for postmodern man, who speaks the very word in which he is enclosed, or is deceived in the lexical web he weaves, like a drunken insect or sober Kafka.

Truly truly, what an omnescient path to omniscience! For  

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

Or a submission of the intellect to Intelligence as such. How hard is that? Or how easy, rather, if you get the yoke.

God is the term with which we notify the universe that it is not everything.

 "O" is the term I like to use, in light of which the universe is ( ). 

This latter symbol is apt or at least forgivable, because it implies the necessary incompleteness of any manmode system, which, if complete is inconsistent, and if consistent incomplete. Of course, Gödel didn't make up the rules, he only proved them.

Again, for our purposes I prefer Principle or O, so as to prevent us from imagining we can really know God from the inside out or top down, even though we can, in a manner of speaking. In fact, speaking as such is a prolongation of the one and only Word eternally spoken up there, but I think that's enough spicy nonsense for today, speaking of which, 

The transcendence that permeates things is the salt that seasons their blandness. 

Existence: What is it Good For?

Absolutely nothing? Or everything absolute?

Some additional ground aphorisms while we ponder our next (dance?) move:

Creation is the nexus between eternity and history.

Creation is a relation of dependence upon the Absolute principle; from the Creator's side it is an act, a verb, while from our side it is a link between terms. 

The free act is only conceivable in a created universe. In the universe that results from a free act.

Nor are we free to reject this necessary condition for the existence of freedom, for to reject it is to prove it once and for all. 

To please the determinist we say that there is no action without a cause. To annoy him we say that there is no cause without an action.

This one's important because it goes to the necessary relation between cause and effect, and the impossibility of beginning the series with the latter. For which reason the Aphorist says

The permanent possibility of initiating a causal series is what we call a person. 

Indeed,

What is not a person is not finally anything. 

 "Creation" (from Godsend) is but the first Person and his first act, only forever? Father and Son? Yes, but not in time, or perhaps thinkable as a divine analogue of what we experience as temporal flow, i.e., the timeless time "between" the first and second Persons. This must be where all the relation and relativity come from, since they're everywhere and in everything. We aren't isolated atoms or unrelated Adams. 

This distinction is at once the principle of time and space, and I suppose this is why our own spacetime is full of particles that appear distinct but share a wavy substance. Again, the woowoo starts at the top.

I suppose it also accounts for the eternal now where we all live and can't not live, because this beginningless and endless now is simultaneously the most timelike and atemporal thing we can imagine; it's not only as close as we can get to eternity, but, come to think if it, as far from it as we as can get. Even though each moment is infinitely close and infinitely distant from eternity.

Oh, and -- now that I'm thinking about it -- what we experience as freedom must also be grounded in this eternal moment, for where else could it be? Can't change the past, nor exercise a choice in the future. 

Unless, of course you're a progressive time traveler. They rewrite history so quickly that no one know's what's going to happen yesterday; likewise, only they know what happened tomorrow. Although we have a pretty good guess, since they're getting so predictable.  

Let's try to dumb this down a little a little further -- I'm not sure I understood it, or worse, did understand it. 

Surely there are aphorisms?

One must live for the moment and for eternity. Not for the disloyalty of time. 

I'm going to be so bold as to tweak this one a little, because time isn't necessarily disloyal. While I have reactionary tendencies, I don't think time as such can be all bad, because after all, it too is a creature, and we are told at the outset that everything God makes is good. If he is the cause of time, he must also be the time of causality, i.e., the time it takes for anything and everything to happen.   

Therefore, it must be the other way around -- that we are somehow disloyal to time? If so, what would loyalty to time look like? 

You're putting me on the spot, but something like Thy will be done? Obviously the expression of said will takes time, likewise our alignment with it. 

Finally, 

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

But it is appearance, obviously. Therefore it is important.

We'll bite: for what, exactly? 

You've put me on the spot again. 

For

What is difficult is not to believe in God, but to believe that we are important to Him.

At the other end,

The human has the insignificance of a swarm of insects when it is merely human.

Hmm. Proud insect or humble image? Kafka or Christ?

Faith?

There are arguments of increasing validity, but, in short, no argument in any field spares us the final leap.

From entomology to theology, and I can only hope I don't repeat myself. Then again,

Faith is not an irrational assent to a proposition, it is a perception of a special order of realities.  

Okay, but why?

Well, because for one thing, not only does the Creator create, but if he's the Creator, then he can't not create and still be the Creator he always is. 

And it is my strong suspicion and holy hunch that creation as such ascends to the point from which it descends, this being the very Principle irreducibly situated right there in the Perichoresis, the eternal dance of the Persons. A verb, mind you, and this must be the very verb that becomes flesh?

Best I can do at the moment. 

What's the Point? And Who?

 To repeat:

My brief sentences are touches of color in a pointillist composition.

But even if one were to examine a realistic paining -- or photograph -- one eventually arrives at the units of which it is composed. Evidently, the smallest dot is a Planck Unit, which

may be characterized by particle energies of around 10¹⁹ GeV or 10⁹  J, time intervals of around 10⁻⁴³ seconds, and lengths of around 10⁻³⁵ m.

In case you were wondering. Does this imply that time and space themselves are discontinuous, and that we simply superimpose the continuity?

Nah, not if you start at the top:

We understand more easily from the top down than from the bottom up -- the reverse of what they claim.

Remember,

We call “origins” the limits of our science.

So those dots & plancks at the bottom of being are just the limit of science's reach, i.e., a function (and intrinsic limitation) of the method. 

But what's really going on down there, up here, and beyond? 

Yesterday we spoke of "the simultaneous placement of the consciousness in the world and of the world in consciousness," but if this were literally true, we could never escape the ontological absurcularity. But there is always something that escapes definition, and we call this something someone.

Yes, someone named Gödel, but he speaks for everyone everywhere anytime, because there can be nothing more stupid than to say that logic "evolved" or has an expiration date. 

For what makes a man? Achievements, overcoming obstacles, competitors bested?

You're joking, but perhaps it is... Put it this way: there is a minimum of "components" that constitute man, and to exclude any one of them is to cut a man off at the knees if not beneath the belt.

Let's try to nail down these principles in such a way that they cannot be reduced any prior ones, and worry later about how they get here. The point is to arrive at metaphysical truths that 1) cannot not be true (i.e., in which error is strictly impossible), 2) which presuppose no prior truth or principle, and 3) denial of which results in absurdity and self-refutation.

Can we build such a cake? Yes we can!

For example, perhaps the most obvious principle is that man may know truth. If not, then truly truly we are done here, are we not? Or all done except for the endless scuffle for power, dominance, and tenure. 

But truth cannot exist unless we are free to accept it, so it seems that man is also condemned to freedom, so now we have two principles that define a man, truth and freedom. Any more?

You're joking again, but what would life be without beauty, that light of our lives? Nor can we leave out virtue -- of being prepared to do the right thing -- and of course we have to include sentiment, even if it means tolerating rank sentimentalists and hysterics. Strong men also cry.

Anyway, put all of these together into one package, and now you've really got problems. 

But these units of humanness are like the Planck Time referenced above. Just as time (let alone eternity) cannot be the sum of these units, nor can a person be just a bag full of truth + freedom + virtue + beauty + sentiment, because these are all posterior to the one principle that is prior to them, this being....

In a word, the Person.

So, Person is the only thing that is irreducible to anything less. Change our mind.

We'll try, but perhaps this is a good place to insert some brief, maybe the briefest, aphorisms. Why brief?

Because

To discover where the reasoning of the philosopher slips, just observe where he becomes more loquacious.

And 

A clear writer is one who does not catechize, but whose sole ambition is that his sentence be the immortal huntress of the instant.

That means now, so let's be clear and concise:

The deluded are prolix. 

So let's start right now with Bob, a name we give -- or rather, a name given by his lovin' parents -- to a mystery:

We presume to explain history, and we fail before the mystery of the one who we know best.

But guess what?

Let us call the individual the existent that is transparent only to God.

Moreover,

For God there are only individuals. 

 So, someone gets me. 

To feel oneself a creature is to feel oneself to be contingent but mysteriously sheltered.

And 

For one who feels himself to be a creature the existence of God is an analytic proposition.

Penultimate line:

The truth is objective but not impersonal.

Bottom line: 

Truth is a person.

So, Change My Mind, but you'll have to do so without a mind, nor can you be a proper person. In other words, a troll.

An irritating man is one who claims that the solution he adopts has been reached in an impersonal way, who does not want to take responsibility for what he adopts.

Sub-bottom line:

Only God and the central point of my consciousness are not adventitious to me. 

O and ʘ.

Dots in the Matrix and I-Popping Metaphors

So, we must begin our philosophy not only with a tangible means of communication, but with a defense and justification of the very possibility of communicating. Again, answers are one thing, but how are there questions -- especially fruitful ones?

Communication is certainly possible; if not, then philosophy itself is impossible, because reality couldn't communicate itself to us, nor we to others. The question is, is this communication necessary? In other words, is it just a contingent accident, or bound up with the very nature of being? 

Here again, if communication is only contingent, it is difficult to conceive of how it could know the Absolute, or any principle, really. For the Absolute is necessary being; indeed, to know of it even implies our own immortality, since only transcendence can know the transcendent.  

Let's rummage through our secret stockpile of illegal aphorisms for epistemic backup. Good morning, Nicolás. Whaddya got for us?  

This one from yesterday is worth repeating:

Metaphor supposes a universe in which each object mysteriously contains the others.

And which are in turn contained by the "Absolute container" (or better, Container <--> Contained, but that's getting ahead of ourselves). In any event, 

The real “double truth” is the simultaneous placement of the consciousness in the world and of the world in the consciousness. 

I want to say "triple truth," but that's again getting over our skis as we glide up the magic mountain. But that is a Verigolinian way of expressing it, i.e., that we are always conscious of a world out of which consciousness arises, so the miracle is that we are not thereby enclosed in a contingent absurcularity.  

Which is touched upon here: 

The world is explicable from man; but man is not explicable from the world. Man is a given reality; the world is a hypothesis we invent.

No, this does not imply any kind of mere subjectivism or Kantian deformation of being. Rather, it highlights the fact that man qua man is the existent who transcends his own existence, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. 

Conversely, "the world" is always a symbolic expression in the luminous space between immanence and transcendence.   

This one touches on the same principle from a different angle:

Subjectivity is a straight line between the knowing subject and the interiority of the known object.

Or, knowledge takes place in the subjective space between intelligence and intelligibility, which mirror each other herebelow, but are united in the Principle above. 

And even up there it is a dynamic unity, but once again we are getting ahead of ourselves. But since we're up there anyway, let's bring down a nugget:

Jesus Christ is the sole point in history where axiology and ontology are fused.

Or, we might say the very intersection of vertical and horizontal as such; not just in the vertical but of verticality, and the Incarnation thereof, i.e., as if to say "the vertical becomes horizontal that the horizontal might become vertical." 

'Nother aphorism, 'nother angle:

[Man the citizen] lives in the thickness of time, in the landscapes of ravines and barricades of contingencies and determinisms of history. Homo spiritualis [Man of the spirit] lives in this atemporal time of the values emerging in the course of millennia.

There aren't "two men" in us, except maybe literally, in that the one can be split off from the other, which is one way of looking at the Fall. Fallenness doesn't just depend upon verticality, it proves it. We might even say that 

To believe in God is not to believe in God; it is not possible not to believe in Him.

If that's a difficult pearl to swallow, just substitute "Absolute" for the G-word, for it is not possible to not partake of it and still be a knower, except in the cosmically onanistic sense. 

Orderly thinking is that which has a secret center, even when it does not have a secret articulation.

The "secret center" is none other than Celestial Central, and without it there would be no centers anywhere. Your own I AM -- obviously a kind of center -- is a reflection or re-verberation of the Center (or center at the periphery). 

Unless you have a better idea, which I can assure you you do not. Rather, if it's better it's worse, because 

He who is not resigned to the fundamental asymmetry of the world ends up falsifying his measurements.

And 

I merely desire to draw an ellipse that has for its foci the absolute contingency of being and the absolute gratuity of value. The consciousness of being a creature and the experience of grace.

From your ellipse to God's ear!

The Creator-creature dualism is at the same time a perfect dualism and a transcendent dualism.

Making it a trialism, but that's a future post. Put it this way:

Briefly, religious history ascends to a point from which it descends.

But 

We leave the synthesis to God.

About this synthesis. None of the above should be taken literally, but nor should it not be so taken; rather, a kind of 20/∞ vision should begin to emerge, in the sense that

My brief sentences are touches of color in a pointillist composition.

Like those magic eye paintings, which look random, but if you stare into them while relaxing your gaze, the 3D image pops out. 

Boo!

How Are There Questions?

Especially that one.

Slept late this morning, so just a brief cosmic update, because it just doesn't feel right to start the day without a dip into the radiant ocean of being. It's not just the refreshment, rather, the penance, like justifying my otherwise frivolous existence or something. 

I want to begin with an aphorism from the end of yesterday's post, that

Metaphor supposes a universe in which each object mysteriously contains the others.

Now, if we're going to try to pin down the Ground Aphorisms of a universe composed of them, this one comes close to being absolutely necessary, if not sufficient. It's a punchline that punches way above its weight, that's for sure.

You could equally say that the world is made of language or of stories or of myth or math, but the very existence of language presupposes certain ontological conditions that cannot be denied on pain of instantaneous soph-refutation and eternal banishment to the lowest ring of tenure.

One wishes, anyway.

What I mean is, to say anything at all about the universe is to have said a great deal indeed; but that's not the end of it, because then we have to enquire or even inquire into the meaning of this "great deal" of implicit meaning, which no one ever does except for poor unheralded Bob. 

Rather, people go on exchanging invisible information from head to head as if it's not the weirdest thing ever. At least ants touch heads to pass along information, but we do so through the ether. And from what to what? I mean, we're doing it right now, and what's going on? 

Well, first of all, what is language, anyway? We'll go with this: communication through a system of arbitrary signals. It's somewhat tautological, because what is communication, and how is it possible? 

Appropriately enough, the first chapter of Stanley Jaki's Means to Message: A Treatise on Truth goes into this question, because truly truly, it is the first question -- which is to say, how and why do we ask questions, and, weirder still, how and why are there answers?

Of course, there are never enough philosophers and always too many people who philosophize. And yet, from the wise to the tenured, they all share one thing in common, to such an extent that if they were true philosophers they would be in agreement instead of engaged in a 2,500 year food fight.

for all their differences, philosophers are at one in a crucial and fundamental respect, be they skeptics, dogmatists, realists, idealists, rationalists, empiricists, positivists, phenomenologists, deconstructionists, materialists, or what not.

We'll bite.

They all use tangible means for the delivery of their respective messages. The means may be the spoken word, a clay tablet, a scroll, a parchment, a codex, a broadsheet, a book, an email projected on the monitor..., but it has to be a means, that is, something tangible.

This is at once trivially true, since it is something we can't not know (and do) and still presume to communicate. And yet, it is so profoundly true as to evoke the ontic WTF?! as soon as we explicitly think about it.

"If philosophers are logical" -- admittedly a big if -- then

their strictly primary concern should be about the extent to which their particular philosophy justifies the use of any such means, indeed its very reality and all the consequences, both numerous and momentous, that follow from this (Jaki). 

Now, to say "numerous and momentous" is to say quantity and quality, which is a whole 'nother can of wormholes, but I think I've communicated the bare minimum to justify my existence for one more day. We'll continue tunneling tomorrow.