Be attentive, orient, describe, truth, eschatological, protological, transjective necessity or Ens Necessarium – analog of paterological uniqueness
Be intelligent, empower, interpret, unity, ecclesiological, interpretive, intersubjective intimacy – analog of hypostatic unity
Be reasonable, sanctify & consecrate, evaluate, beauty, soteriological, evaluative, charismatic, harmonic, unified self as intrasubjective integrity – analog of mystical, creaturely-divine, sophianic union
Be responsible, sustain, nurture & heal, norm, goodness, sacramental, ethical, normative, interobjective indeterminacy – analog of essential unicity
Be in love, save, contemplate, freedom, synergy, sophiological, liberational, theotic, intraobjective Logos-logoi identity – analog of unitary energeia
Both Duns Scotus & Maximus the Confessor sufficiently nuance their notions of the will in ways that sufficiently navigate past both voluntarist & intellectualist flaws.
The following strategies are influenced by but not developed solely from Scotistic & Maximian approaches.
relocate primary causation (as an immediate, continuously conserving cause) to the act of existence, which is in limited potency to an essential cause
recognize that secondary causality includes realities that vary in degrees of indeterminacy
relocate the will from a formal to an efficient causal act, which is in limited potency to a material cause
relocate the operation of grace from an efficient to a formal cause, which is in limited potency to a final cause
distinguish will (self-determination) from nature (hetero-determination)
distinguish an “assent to,” a “refusal of” & an “absence of refusal of” grace (as one can cease to refuse grace without assenting to it)
distinguish three logoi of being, well-being, and eternal being, God the sole cause of the first & third, while well-being’s intermediately caused by our sponaneous movement & gnomic willing (epistemic & axiological distancing), hence, intellect’s necessarily operative but not wholly determinative in volition
attribute gnomic will to evolution not a “fall”
distinguish freedoms to assent, refuse or permit (absence of refusal)
distinguish:
freedom from – an indeterminate willing w/o ratio (choosing among goods, including one’s choosing whether to will at all) from
freedom to – a determinate willing w/ratio (fallibly choosing between goods, per one’s constitutive desires & needs, and privations, iow, refusing grace) and
freedom for – a self-determined or self-limited willing (as in kenosis)
Chapter 4, Duns Scotus on Freedom as a Pure Perfection – Necessity & Contingency by Gonzalez-Ayesta in Margaret Cameron ed., Philosophy of Mind in the Early and High Middle Ages: The History of the Philosophy of Mind, Volume 2, Routledge, Jul 6, 2018
Brandon Gallaher shows that the classical Christian understanding of God having a non-necessary relationship to the world and divine freedom being a sheer assertion of God’s will must be completely rethought.
One can find further resources regarding Scotistic & Maximian libertarian conceptions of the will within these notes, above, especially by searching for Mary Beth Ingham, Marilyn McCord Adams & Eleonore Stump.
The public polling seems to show that a significant minority thinks our pandemic-control measures have gone too far, even as a significant majority supports continued efforts at social distancing. ~ Michael Brendan Dougherty
Let these debates flourish as we pursue the truth together!
Let’s be humble enough to admit that the truths regarding pandemics can be incredibly elusive, even for the experts that model such realities, epidemiologically & economically.
There are some, however, who have suggested (with the most arrogant, ad hominem faux-erudition) that these truths are out there in plain sight, that the world’s governmental, epidemiological & economic experts are parading around naked and blind to such truths, all the while unwittingly foisting untold evils on the world, enabled by a complicit unthinking public.
Now, it’s one thing to make such sweeping charges in so facile a manner, but, per the time-honored wisdom practiced by most historians & sociologists, once one has analogically (not to mention with a callous insensitivity) invoked the spectre of various types of Nazi complicities to make one’s case, the audience can rest assured that the cards about to be played will reveal a losing hand.
After facilely psychoanalyzing the world in one fell, dismissive swoop, suggesting that the vast supermajorities of experts & their trusting followers, alike, have unthinkingly bought into their precautionary Covid19 strategies, Jack inventories the costs they somehow failed to consider:
“It can, and already has, led to incalculable pain and suffering. It is no stretch to call these evils. Consider all that has occurred over the last six or seven weeks or so, since the dawn of The Great UnReason.”
Regarding items 1-9, all I can ask of Jack is:
“Really? You believe that the world’s governments, public health experts, epidemiologists, economists, medical & hospital associations have been blind to these costs? And, thanks to the blog of a part-time philosophy teacher, they’re now going to gasp a collective ‘Oops!’?”
Seriously?
Even regarding item 10, the Third World consequences of food supply disruptions, those projections, themselves, come from Arif Husain, the chief economist at the World Food Program, a United Nations agency.
Regarding the Third World, as well as here in the states, for that matter, as better info emerges, strategies will get tailored to account for country to country & intra-country regional variations. We won’t be deploying such blunt instruments as we’re able to augment our tool chests. Consider this early April Foreign Policy article: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/10/poor-countries-social-distancing-coronavirus/
Kerwick goes on:
“The masses of Americans who have bought hook, line, and sinker, without a moment’s hesitation, the Zombie tale of an Apocalyptic Virus are as well responsible for the immense suffering that their endorsement has left in its wake.”
Of course, Jack’s not just talking about the average John & Mary Doe, but the American Hospital Association, American Medical Association, American Nurses Association, Liz Cheney, Lamar Alexander, Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney & Bill Cassidy, not to mention those who extend William F. Buckley’s legacy at the National Review.
If you judged by social media, you’d think that America in the coronavirus crisis had a pro-lockdown faction led by Dr. Anthony Fauci and a “let it rip” faction led by a handful of red-state governors and professional conservative saber-rattlers. This may be a useful narrative for people whose jobs thrive on controversy, myself included. It may even be helpful for organizing our thoughts on the virus. But mostly, it just isn’t true.
MBD continues:
There is a good reason to hesitate to judge, namely our ignorance. Plagues are a time for scapegoats and blame-shifting precisely because they deal out suffering such a seemingly unjust and random fashion. Our leaders say they will follow the science, but they can’t, really. With a heretofore-unseen virus such as this one, the science is more like inherited wisdom and intuition from previous, similar maladies, at least at the start. What follows is a confused rush to catch up through trial and error. The results are not always pretty, or immediately useful. And although those who stay with their own carefully constructed echo chambers might think otherwise, where COVID-19 is concerned the evidence has not come down decisively on one side or the other of the false lockdown/let-’er-rip dichotomy.
The point I’m arguing has nothing to do with who’ll ultimately be right in the curve-flattening cost-benefit calculations. I’m solely here to make the point that, whichever side turns out to be wrong, it won’t be because they weren’t thinking or unaware of the tragic tradeoffs articulated in “Jack’s” questions.
As it is, the more successful the interventions, the more likely they’re going to be later misinterpreted as overreactions.
Because there are both epidemiological & economic trade-offs & risks, medical scientists & economists should collaborate to approximate a range of data-driven strategic sweet-spots. And they have.
This Goldilocks calculus should get reapplied as new information becomes available & uncertainties recede. And it has.
So, the curve theories that policy-makers rely on, when devising strategies to confront the threats of epidemics, should involve the flattening of both epidemic & recession curves, and economic, social, political & medical scientists should all provide input. Such is the case.
The disease & economic models employed for policy responses can vary widely in their approaches and assumptions, giving widely divergent results. And, the modelers should be transparent about the variables and assumptions used. And they have been.
I seriously doubt, though, that those of us who grasp the norms, above, should be credited with articulating some original, novel, brilliant observation, when we suggest that policy-makers should strive to avoid costly precautionary overshoots?
And, as we observe that such costs should not be too narrowly conceived?
Soon enough, scientists & policymakers, over a period of years, through rigorous research & vigorous investigations, will be asking:
Did the precautionary mitigation strategies work?
Were they never needed in the first place?
For now, I really don’t know.
And, for sure, Jack Kerwick doesn’t!
We manifestly do not and cannot know enough, yet, to say whether the world’s experts, collectively & pervasively, miscalculated their epidemic-recession curves for this pandemic.
In this recent pandemic, did the world’s best epidemiologists, economists & governing machineries, as well as most of those who’ve placed their faith in these authorities, sadly but truly, display a “curious, but quite authentic, inability to think“?
Did they really ignore the above-stated, time-honored norms?
Did they really ignore the the kinds & depths of pain & suffering that have ensued in the wake of their mitigation strategies?
My guess is that, ultimately, a majority report will vindicate the world’s policy makers, finding that they took adequate measures based on sufficient information as available at the time. And that they indeed asked all the right questions. It will likely indicate, from the benefit of hindsight, that more optimal measures could’ve been taken based on better information, which didn’t surface for various reasons, some benign but unavoidable, some due to bad faith and indefensible.
There will always be minority reports, too. It’s important that their voices of dissent not be suppressed, scientifically or politically.
But let us not confuse the sane voices of legitimate dissent with the shrill ad hominems of echo chamber ideologues.
Sophia has been a challenge to map as revealed in historical treatments. Setting those descriptive accounts to the side, at least in part, below is my own normative formulation.
I like to conceive Sophia as an
attribute of the divine essence, belonging to the Trinity,
exemplified hypostatically by the Son as wisdom & Spirit as glory, &
manifested as uncreated Sophia thru such as divine energies (Palamite) & logoi (Maximian).
These uncreated logoi are manifested theophanically, as they terminate in effects on determinate being (as created logoi) in manifold & multiform participable ways, e.g. teloi, laws, nomicities, gifts, grace, signs & wonders.
Every creaturely cooperation with, hence participation in, the logoi constitutes a theotic, sophianic eternalization that incorporates us into created Sophia, Christ’s Bride or Mystical Body.
Thus we imitate the Bridal Fiat of the Theotokos & thereby participate in her incarnational synergism as it’s both eschatologically consummated in the divine nuptial union & protologically anticipated by (contained in) the pre-existent logoi of Christ.
Creativity would be the nature of God, pattern of existence & activity proper to God that God shares in varying degrees w/finite entities in an expression of divine empowering love. ~ Bracken
Thus I re-situate Bulgakov’s sophiology, Maximus’ Logos-logoi & Palamas’ energies.
re: use of Whitehead’s cosmology for Christian understanding of the God- world relationship risks misinterpretation of ANW: In my judgment, Aquinas made basically the same “mistake” in employing Aristotelian metaphysics to set forth his understanding in the ST. ~ Joe Bracken
Bulgakov claims Aquinas’s account is insufficiently Trinitarian, too influenced by pagan philosophy, & separates the divine will & intellect in such a way as to introduce arbitrariness into the relationship between the divine ideas & creation. ~ John Hughes
Here I am not endorsing the controversial thesis of creatio ex nihilo advocated by Irenaeus and others over the centuries, but instead proposing the notion of creatio ex deo. ~ Joseph Bracken
Bulgakov understood the doctrine of creation to be negatively defined as creatio ex nihilo and positively defined as creatio ex Deo. ~ Pavel L. Gavriljuk
Christian systematic theologians until quite recently grossly overemphasized the role of divine power and thereby significantly underestimated the role of divine love in their understanding of how God deals with the creatures of this world. ~ Joseph Bracken
For God to be the transcendent source of creativity within the cosmic process, God must be ontologically both the primordial source and ultimate goal of the cosmic process. ~ Joseph Bracken
The Problem of Pantheism in the Sophiology of Sergii Bulgakov: A Panentheistic Solution in the Process Trinitarianism of Joseph Bracken? by Brandon Gallaher
This essay explores Bulgakov’s thought as an alternative form of panentheism to Bracken’s
In Whom We Live & Move & Have Our Being, Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004 Below, I will list several chapters of this book, above, as are relevant to energies, logoi & sophia in a panentheism.
a) God immanent yet transcendent : the divine energies according to Saint Gregory Palamas, Kallistos Ware
b) The universe as hypostatic inherence in the logos of God : panentheism in the eastern orthodox perspective, Alexei V. Nesteruk
c) The cosmic vision of Saint Maximos the Confessor, Andrew Louth
d) Panentheism : a field-oriented approach, Joseph A. Bracken
e) The logos as wisdom : a starting point for a Sophianc theology of creation, Celia E. Deane-Drummond
Bulgakov’s Account of Creation: Neglected Aspects, Critics and Contemporary Relevance, Pavel L. Gavriljuk, International journal of systematic theology, 2015, Volume: 17, Issue: 4, Pages: 450-463
Creatio ex nihilo and the Divine Ideas in Aquinas: How fair is Bulgakov’s critique?, John Hughes, Modern Theology, Volume 29, Issue 2, 2013
“Words and phrases must be stretched towards a generality foreign to their ordinary usage; and, however such elements of language be stabilized as technicalities, they remain metaphors mutely appealing for an imaginative leap” ~ Whitehead, Process and Reality
Implicit here is my long- standing conviction that every metaphysical system is inevitably provisional and thus in principle open to reform and revision. ~ Joseph Bracken
Notes regarding Divine-Human Interaction & Grace per Libertarian Free Will
My account, below, will not exhaust every manner of divine-human interaction & of grace, but will address one aspect that I find deeply consoling — that God infuses grace universally, superabundantly & even without our assent, ever respecting our libertarian free will.
In reconciling divine-human interactions via grace & libertarian freedom of the will, might we draw on diverse conceptions from Scotism, Neoplatonism & Thomism (analytical not Banezian)?
We could conceive of both Scotus & Maximus as libertarians for whom the intellect’s necessarily operative but not wholly determinative in volition, where self-determinative volitional acts remain limited in potency to the logoi of being, well-being & eternal being.
The divine & human wills are thus not connected by one’s choosing between “this or that” but in “why the will wills at all,” as it does remain free not to act (via a type of quiescence). Such a volition would entail a moderately libertarian & moderately voluntarist free will.
Scotus locates the will in efficient causation. For many, this represents a conceptual relocation from the formal.
Interestingly, this can be squared with Eleonore Stump’s relocation of the operation of grace from efficient to formal causality over against Banezian premotion.
Stump distinguishes between an “assent to,” a “refusal of” & an “absence of refusal of” grace, as, per Aquinas, one can cease to refuse grace without assenting to it.
God thus infuses grace in us all, even when we don’t assent, as long as we’re not refusing it, i.e. as long as our wills are “quiescent.”
Thereby He infuses the good will of our justifying faith.
Thereby we can abandon ourselves to Divine Providence through quiescence.
Thus, let us pray –
w/Ignatius: “Take, Lord, receive all my liberty.”
w/the Psalmist: “Be still & know that I am God.”
with Merton: “I know you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.”
May we both cooperate with the graces of today & be alert to divine infusions.
Divine Freedom & Necessity in a Cosmotheandrism
For Bulgakov: “I”s are constituted by “Thou”s
In the semiotic approach to emergence, Terry Deacon has coined two terms:
1) an “ententional” phenomenon is characterized by
2) a specific reality that it lacks, i.e. an “absential“
Those terms, for me, bring to mind what I would call “embodied antinomies” or dynamical ententional-absential aboutnesses.
If epistemology models ontology, then, not every mediation need dialectically express some accommodative middle, whether epistemologically &/or ontologically.
Rather, because some of reality’s deepest value-realizations are precisely generated by the antinomial embodiments of ententional phenomena in ontologically creative tensions with their absentials (i.e. via epistemic & axiological distancing), our languages can semiotically express such dynamics only through such non-accommodative mediations, as would nurture a healthy aporetic sense.
We might say, for example, that ententional “I”s are constituted by absential “Thou”s.
And we might even observe that certain forms of “freedom” are constituted by “necessity.”
We could even say that, we, as creatures, exist as absential “thou”s for the necessarily freely willing loving God, the supremely ententional “I am.”
Such a divine ententionality depends essentially on a supremely personal divine intentionality per a divine volition that’s, at once, in some sense groundless as well as grounded by a self-constituting love, beyond all of our meager voluntarist or libertarian conceptions.
What might the Trinity’s economic generation of our own antinomial embodiments, our own radically social natures, our own human ententional phenomena (logoi) & absentials (tropoi), reveal “about” the ad intra Trinitarian generations & taxis?
The economic can, in principle, reveal nothing ontologically quidditative about the immanent Trinity (ad intra aporia).
Semiotically, however, because the divine energies do, at once, connotatively signify the essence & denotatively indicate the hypostases, from the unitary nature of the divine energies, while epistemically constrained by sophianic aporia (e.g. un/created, in/determinate, non/necessitating, causal logoi & teloi?), we can nevertheless connotatively infer the ultimate unicity of the divine ousia, even though constrained by essential aporia (e.g. indivisible yet communicable?), and denotatively infer the unitive relations of the divine hypostases, i.e. Monarchy of the Father & divine taxis, although constrained by hypostatic aporia (e.g. how & which metaphysical idiomata are modeled by our epistemic gnorismata?).
Because human symbolic inference is irreducibly triadic, interpretively, it’s also inherently performative, which means such connotative & denotative inferences, above, flow from our efficacious participations in the divine logoi, i.e. concretely & experientially, hence, sacramentally. Only then can our participatory imaginations, next, lend themselves to the post-experiential abstractions & discursive formulations of our Eucharistic anamnesis.
So, this creation’s not born of any necessity as would in any measure negate the eternal freedoms (both with & without ratio, i.e. both groundless & of a self-constituted ground, e.g. love) of nondeterminate divine being. Rather, it would ensue from the radically free, kenotic self-limitation of the self-determined divine being.
The Logos thus freely & donatively gifts participable logoi. And not just per those bilateral theandric logoi as are proportionally (asymmetrically) participated in via incarnational humanization & theotic divinization, such as when we live as we pray – Biblically, creedally & liturgically. The entire creation participates, cosmically, proportional to other ententional aboutnesses or teloi – all as existentially oriented in an emergent hierarchy of nested absentials: • veldo-poietic (field-like) entities present as teleopotent or end-unbounded; • cosmopoietic – teleomatic or end-stated; • biopoietic – teleonomic or end-directed or end-coded; • sentiopoietic – teleoqualic or end-purposed; and • sapiopoietic – teleologic or end-intended.
As such, this account approaches being, apophatically, as radically discontinuous ontologically, with an aporetic approach to nondeterminate, self-determinate, indeterminate & determinate entities, which exhibit characteristic aboutnesses via manifold & multiform antinomial embodiments.
Kataphatically, reality’s cosmotheandric hierarchy of ententional-absential participations via the Maximian Logos-logoi identity affords us a profound degree of existential actionability as we proportionally imitate the Christ, analogically & ontologically – each per her unique embodied tropoi, and literally & teleologically – all via participation in identical logoi.
Antinomial embodiments thus constitutively relates all being, whether nondeterminate, self -determinate & in/determinate, in dynamical terms of essential unicity, hypostatic unity & unitary energeia.
The protological (paterology, christology & pneumatological) thus constitutes – not only the eschatological, but – the ecclesiological, soteriological, sacramental & sophiological.
Liturgically, then, after our meditation on the Word, the Logos, through our Offertory, our own ecstasis & proodos of self-transcendence, we’ll enjoy Communion, our enstasis & mone in union, to then go forth empowered to love & serve via our Post Communion epecstasis & epistrophe or self-reception.
Notes regarding different forms of volition:
indetermined w/o ratio or with freedom from necessity, including one’s choosing whether to will at all, moderately voluntarist
in/determined w/ratio (desires or needs) or freedom to – assent, refuse or permit (absence of refusal), moderately libertarian
self-determined or self-limited or freedom for, as in kenosis, authentically sacrificial
These are imagoes Dei of the Divine Volition which is nondeterminate (both w/ & w/o ratio) & self-determinate via ad intra ur-kenosis & ad extra kenosis.
Neo-Chalcedonianism is Uncommonly Commonsensical
Cyril & Maximus ambitioned nothing robustly explanatory. Instead, they much more modestly established Christological grounds, which remain fertile for cultivating new meanings of the Incarnation, today. In our Trinitology & Christology, we can take a commonsensical approach to understanding the divine persons. We can fruitfully employ vague & general exploratory heuristics, using grammatical semantic references, in our ongoing probes of the meaning of our encounters of these persons in scripture & liturgy.
We similarly probe the meanings of methexis & theosis. Terms referring to essential propria, hypostatic idiomata & relational energeia & logoi, in principle, can’t be considered constitutive ontological definitions suitable for use in analytical, explanatory metaphysics.
The question of meaning put to us was – not WHAT, but – WHO do you say I am?
As we recognize & affirm the protological in the eschatological & vice versa, this needn’t entail a thoroughgoing theological determinism, not even for a universalist stance, at least, not if we properly distinguish & nuance determination, causation, necessitation & freedom.
Proportional participations in Maximian logoi, beyond being theandric realities, express universal cosmic realities?
This evokes for me Bulgakov’s seeing divine beauty in nature, God as indifferentia oppositorum & his embrace of Nicholas of Cusa’s coincidentia oppositorum.
Not thru an ontological “middling” but via a teleological “muddling” of antinomial realities do sophia, energeia & logoi reveal the unitary nature of the divine energies, ultimate unicity of the divine ousia & unitive relations of the divine hypostases.
Peirce’s semiotic realism well navigates past the existentially perilous shoals of an empty nominalism, vulgar pragmatism, idealist anti-realism, arbitrary voluntarism & corrosive relativism.
Insofar as life’s inescapably liturgical, we might more parsimoniously refer to that creedal collection of negations as the Litany of Nihilism.
To the extent that our creeds are inherently orthopraxic, we must all be on our guard to not celebrate this Litany of Nihilism, i.e. unawares & in the very manners that we move and live and have our being.
This is to observe that we all need to be more vigilant, as we will all on occasion entertain angels, unawares, and they best not be Screwtape or Wormwood.
While Peirce’s abduction of the reality of God does barely sneak by a naive fideism, any refusal to journey beyond his Ens Necessarium would implicitly entail a radically apophatic deism.
So, in the same way that Peirce went beyond both Scotism & German Idealism, influenced by & appropriating their best intuitions, setting aside any inadequacies, I’ve found a most profitable way to go beyond (not contrary to) Peirce is by turning to Булга́ков & Флоре́нский.
Of the Actus Purus, we may semantically predicate though not ontologically define essential, personal & energetic distinctions like being, willing & doing. If we attentively, concretely & experientially behold the Trinity’s universalized & particularized presences among & donative presents for us, we’ll be overwhelmed by the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. In our post-experiential processing, as our participatory imaginations yield to a cognitive map-making of discursive reasoning, an ineluctable antinomial residue will inevitably remain.
Our numinous experiences do not dialectically resolve the dynamical tensions that resist our fallible reasoning. We don’t know what to make of essences, persons & energies, which present, at once, groundless, grounded & self-grounded vis a vis our meager conceptions of necessity, freedom & kenosis. And this involves no mere Gödelian trade-off of consistent axioms for systematic incompleteness, such as we employ for determinate being. Rather, we’re confronted by an horizon where our logic’s unavoidably paraconsistent, at best, our systematics remain semi-formal, at best, the nature of our language, itself, antinomial, at best, our notions of identity alternately absolute, relative or nonstrict, at best.
But, wait!
For philosophers, who’ve paid any attention at all to the intractable aporia confronting our accounts regarding the origins of the quantum, of the cosmos, of life, of consciousness & of language, the above-listed epistemic constraints & antinomial residues yet pertain no less to the essences, persons & energies of determinate beings than they do to their divine analogates?
Just as with our failed theodicies, what will finally rescue our rationalistic theologies, will not be sylly syllogisms. What will finally satisfy our insatiable appetite for Goodness beyond all goodness, our admirable quest for Beauty beyond all beauty, our insatiable longing for Unity beyond all unity, our transformative realization of a Freedom beyond all freedom, need not require the elimination of reality’s antinomial residues but, instead, may be divinely provisioned by a ceremonial rescue of being by Being, itself, Who loves us with the same ur-kenotic Love of Our Father, Who eternally generates our Saviour & Advocate, the Son & Spirit. Having thus tasted & seen the Goodness of the Lord, we might even lose interest in His antinomies, or, at least, be no more concerned with them than we are with the axioms that ground 2+2=4, for which one would have to proceed halfway through the Principia to grasp their proof? It’ll finally be the participatory encounter with Love that calms our restless hearts.
Any idle curiosity regarding the biographical knowledge ABOUT our Divine Spouse will thus get eclipsed by the experiential knowledge OF Her via Mystical Union in a vision, most beatific.
The concept of ens is everywhere engulfed in antinomies. In fact ens seems to be subject to the most contrary dialectical passions: it is one but also many, necessary but also contingent, infinite & finite, immutable yet mutable … Rosmini
The Litany of Nihilism employs a vulgar pragmatism as a theory of knowledge, but, regarding a theory of truth, is eliminativist. Few journey that way, theoretically, b/c it’s just not sustainably actionable, existentially.
All of us do fall prey to lapsing into a practical nihilism, as we un/consciously opt, in any given moment, at this or that existential disjunction, to live as if there “really” is no truth, beauty, goodness, unity or freedom.
Our belief in Truth is a disposition & decision we make anew, in every moment, b/c, as God sustains our essential natures via creatio continua, as imagoes Dei, we volitionally sustain our virtuous (or vicious) secondary natures per our own co-creative creatio continua.
Whether historically justifiable or not, Bulgakov charitably interpreted Apollinaris as consistent w/Chalcedon. We might return the favor & tweak Bulgakov’s sophiology in doctrinally consistent ways?
Sophia may not be the only idiom but, for me, seems a felicitous one to collectively approach:
a) paterologically, the monarchia as principium of the hypostatic unity;
b) christologically, the eternal hypostatic union, Logos-logoi indentity, created & uncreated logoi;
c) pneumatologically, the eternal universal cosmic-indwelling presence;
d) trinitologically, the ad extra economic dynamics in relation to ad intra immanence;
j-1) sacramentally, creaturely imitation & participation, and
j-2) sophiologically, theurgy & theosis – via the divine unitary energeia & logoi (at once humanizing & divinizing);
k) ecclesiologically, the Mystical Bride;
l) mystagogically, cosmotheandric intimacization;
m) theodicially, intertwined ontic & personal evils, as privative realities finally overcome by sacrificial love per
m-1) a primordially liminal, supra-temporal fall or
m-2) sophiology placed in non-nominalistic process theology.
n/ systematically, its anticipation of an open theist approach. In my view, it best be re-situated in a view more sympathetic to classical theist commitments, e.g. Norris Clarke’s personalist Thomism or Joe Bracken’s neo-Whiteheadian divine matrix.
Also see: Paul L. Gavrilyuk (2005). The kenotic theology of Sergius Bulgakov. Scottish Journal of Theology, 58, pp 25
Bulgakov’s Sophiological Panentheism’, keynote address at the Fourth Annual Symposium in honor or Fr. Georges Florovsky, ‘Creation and Creaturehood: The Doctrine of Creation in the Patristic Tradition’, Princeton Theological Seminary, 14-15 February 2014
‘Graced Creatureliness: Ontological Tension in the Uncreated/Created Distinction in the Sophiologies of Solov’ev, Bulgakov and Milbank’, Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, 47.1-2 (2006), 163-190.
Theology serves as Queen of the Sciences in an axiologically integral relationship to them but doesn’t deny their methodological autonomy. While it’s implicit metaphysica generalis rejects nonoverlapping magisteria, still, its role contributes – not explanatory, but – only heuristic value. And it can thus impart same even for those who receive its metaphysical presuppositions as mere methodological stipulations. As such, it should emulate the epistemic humility of a servant leader, eschewing any triumphalistic hubris. There’s no reason to believe that a robustly fecund theological heuristic can’t fruitfully proceed from a radically inclusivistic pneumatology (rather than imagining its success need require some militantly Christocentric account).
Bulgakov: Science is sophic: this is the answer we can give to skeptical pragmaticism & dogmatic positivism. It is removed from Truth, for it is a child of this world … but it’s also a child of Sophia, the organizing force that leads this world to Truth.
Moderately Libertarian Approaches to the Will – with Scotistic & Maximian influences
Both Duns Scotus & Maximus the Confessor sufficiently nuance their notions of the will in ways that sufficiently navigate past both voluntarist & intellectualist flaws.
The following strategies are influenced by but not developed solely from Scotistic & Maximian approaches.
relocate primary causation (as an immediate, continuously conserving cause) to the act of existence, which is in limited potency to an essential cause
recognize that secondary causality includes realities that vary in degrees of indeterminacy
relocate the will from a formal to an efficient causal act, which is in limited potency to a material cause
relocate the operation of grace from an efficient to a formal cause, which is in limited potency to a final cause
distinguish will (self-determination) from nature (hetero-determination)
distinguish an “assent to,” a “refusal of” & an “absence of refusal of” grace (as one can cease to refuse grace without assenting to it)
distinguish three logoi of being, well-being, and eternal being, God the sole cause of the first & third, while well-being’s intermediately caused by our sponaneous movement & gnomic willing (epistemic & axiological distancing), hence, intellect’s necessarily operative but not wholly determinative in volition
attribute gnomic will to evolution not a “fall”
distinguish freedoms to assent, refuse or permit (absence of refusal)
distinguish:
freedom from – an indeterminate willing w/o ratio (choosing among goods, including one’s choosing whether to will at all) from
freedom to – a determinate willing w/ratio (fallibly choosing between goods, per one’s constitutive desires & needs, and privations, iow, refusing grace) and
freedom for – a self-determined or self-limited willing (as in kenosis)
Chapter 4, Duns Scotus on Freedom as a Pure Perfection – Necessity & Contingency by Gonzalez-Ayesta in Margaret Cameron ed., Philosophy of Mind in the Early and High Middle Ages: The History of the Philosophy of Mind, Volume 2, Routledge, Jul 6, 2018
Brandon Gallaher shows that the classical Christian understanding of God having a non-necessary relationship to the world and divine freedom being a sheer assertion of God’s will must be completely rethought.
One can find further resources regarding Scotistic & Maximian libertarian conceptions of the will within these notes, above, especially by searching for Mary Beth Ingham, Marilyn McCord Adams & Eleonore Stump.
Nature & Grace, Natural & Supernatural, Primary & Secondary Causality, Volitional Aspects With & Without “Ratio“
Ordinarily & universally, primary causality operates via existential & formal acts of secondary causation per their essential & final potencies, i.e. in the gratuity of creation or naturally.
Extraordinarily & particularly, primary causality operates – not only via those existential & formal secondary causes, but – via efficient causes, i.e. gratuities of grace & miracles or supernaturally.
Only, per the divine kenotic condescension, grace does not act via the efficient cause of human volition (teleological intention, which includes the proto-rationality* normally designated as w/o ratio). This does not preclude divine activity via other human efficient causes per hierarchically nested (embedded) emergent, ententional (& absential) phenomena (teleoqualic, teleonomic, teleomatic & teleopotent).
*The proto-rationality of connaturality, abductive inference, illative sense, tacit dimensionality, etc apprehends the beauty of universal harmonic orders, both implicate & explicate.
When talking about the divine being or essence, aseity means “not made.” When talking about divine persons or hypostases, aseity has a different meaning – “not from.” All of the persons are “not made,” but only the Father is “not from” God.
To what might such an eternal (not temporal) cause, origin or principle (aitia, arche or principium) refer? Communication. The Father freely & willingly communicates Love, eternally loving (begetting) the Son, loving (spirating) the Holy Spirit & loving (exnihilating) creation.
All persons then participate in the Logoi proportionate to the nature of their being, e. g. God “from” God, “made” by God, hypostatic union, etc #
While neither Maximus nor Scotus viewed the Incarnation as a result of some felix culpa, that conclusion was a response to different questions posed by each. There’s little doubt that they would’ve very much agreed with each other. Oversimplifying, but – Maximus inquired after the purpose of creation, concluding it was the means toward the end of the Incarnation. Scotus inquired after the purpose of the Incarnation, concluding it was to communicate divine love & Ad majórem Dei glóriam. When we conceive of divine freedom (e.g. creative) in terms of w/& w/o ratio, as variously ungrounded, constitutively-grounded &/or self-grounded, what’s “constitutively grounded” would refer to – not an essential necessity, but – a volitional inevitability. All is distant from God, and is remote from Him not by place but by nature— ou tôpo alla physei— as St. John Damascene explains. And this distance is never removed, but is only, as it were, overlapped by immeasurable Divine love. ~ Archpriest Georges Florovsky
Foreordained from All Eternity: The Mystery of the Incarnation According to Some Early Christian…
academia.edu #
While recognizing that “dance” clearly lacks philological warrant, LaCugna valued dance because of its metaphorical effectiveness. Still, what justifies a metaphor that portrays such a human participation in divine operations?
Well, even if not ad intra trinitarian taxis, certainly the hypostatic union. The perichoretic concept was used in late Patristic Trinitology to convey – not circle dance, but – mutual interpenetration or permeation without merging or mixing (Maximus & the Damascene). But, such a concept was first employed in early Patristic Christology by the Cappadocians (Nyssen & Nazianzen). While the Trinitarian perichoresis refers to homogenous, consubstantial realities, the Christological refers heterogenously & heterosubstantially.
The practical upshot? There’s no reason it can’t refer cosmotheandrically!
Beyond Christological perichoresis, the Logos-logoi identity of Maximus further emphasizes how we as creatures participate, albeit proportional to our being, in divinity, for the very same logoi that humanize the divine also divinize the human.
Dance thus remains a great metaphor, even if much of Western theology stumbled upon it accidentally!
cf. Stamatović, Slobodan. (2016). The Meaning of Perichoresis. Open Theology. 2. 10.1515/opth-2016-0026. # As w/equivocal uses of God (eg predicate, name), so too re Oneness (eg essential unicity, unitary energeia, hypostatic unity, monarchical uniqueness). Behr’s concern seems to be that MOF most straightforwardly reconciles w/monotheism? Which oneness does monotheism most implicate? The Capps reconcile with Augustine, Cyril, Aquinas, Scotus, Maximus, Palamas, RC, EO & much of Protestantism on MOF & ousia. Even if for Scotus it’s a primary substance & immanent universal, like TA, it remains communicable but indivisible. Scotus is more felicitous w/Capps is all.
More Notes re Theological Anthropology of this project
Evokes for me the aesthetic teleology of those who employ metaphors fr complexity theory & nonequilibrium thermodynamics, except they say (of dissipative structures): the more complex, the more fragile (due to number of permutations that can be threatened), the more beautiful.
Since the Beautiful beyond all beauty acts eternally as a Simplicity beyond all simplicity with no residues like fragility, those metaphors seem to express an antinomy that’s not mediated ontologically but teleologically, e.g. via the Maximian Logos-logoi # The paterological uniqueness of the MOF is not in the least over against the essential unicity, unitary energeia or hypostatic unity. Still, we best get this historical account correct because the proper reconciliation of monotheism & trinitarianism hangs in the balance. Furthermore, especially for those of us who affirm both the soteriological & theotic significance of the Incarnation, unitarianism, for example, undermines – not just our trinitological & Christological dogma, but – the practical, hope-filled, dynamical approaches of our participatory anthropology & transfigurative cosmology. So, it’s not sufficient to learn true statements, creedally, or even speculative grammars, heuristically. # Scotus is definitely in the “felix culpa or not” camp. It took Maximus to properly extend the implications of the 3C’s further. Going beyond the Cappadocians, Cyril (mia-physite) & Chalcedon, in identifying the Logos’ divine will with the divine logoi, Maximus advanced our understanding of deification, when he recognized it as the corollary of Christ’s humanization. That’s to say that creation was the means toward the end of the Incarnation, which, itself, provides the means toward the end of our deification (& salvation). # Another нет (nyet) to Aquinas’ irreversibility thesis & да to Maximian irrevocability! “Scotus is particularly dismissive of the view (held by others besides Thomas) that angels, once they choose, choose irrevocably (ibid. d.7 esp. nn.9–26). The possibility is expressly left open by Scotus that some angels sinned but repented (ibid. d.6 q.2 n.78).” So, not all medieval speculative angelology supports Feser’s post-mortem anthropology & related infernalistic premises. I’d continue to insist that “habitus,” whether as one’s virtuous &/or vicious secondary nature, remains always situated between formal acts & final potencies, facilitating or crippling but never “killing” those potentialities, which remain eternally immersed in Divine Logoi. # Yes. Scotus holds the keys to any coherent angelology: All finite causes must be together, spatially, to produce an effect. I’d made up a little heuristic to navigate such distinctions but, instead, relied on the term “embodied.” Scotus departs from TA in many regards. 1) in/communicable essence? all essences, divine & creaturely are communicable 2) dis/embodied? all creaturely entities are naturally embodied (communicatability & spatial extendability) 3) in/animate? some entities are animate & some animate entities are agential 4) in/corporeal agents? angels & contingently dis/carnate souls are incorporeal 5) im/material? agential formal causes are immaterial 6) presence spatially located operationally (Aquinas) or per se (Scotus)? #
When talking about the divine being or essence, aseity means “not made.” When talking about divine persons or hypostases, aseity has a different meaning – “not from.” All of the persons are “not made,” but only the Father is “not from” God.
To what might such an eternal (not temporal) cause, origin or principle (aitia, arche or principium) refer? Communication. The Father freely & willingly communicates Love, eternally loving (begetting) the Son, loving (spirating) the Holy Spirit & loving (exnihilating) creation.
All persons then participate in the Logoi proportionate to the nature of their being, e. g. God “from” God, “made” by God, hypostatic union, etc #
While neither Maximus nor Scotus viewed the Incarnation as a result of some felix culpa, that conclusion was a response to different questions posed by each. There’s little doubt that they would’ve very much agreed with each other. Oversimplifying, but – Maximus inquired after the purpose of creation, concluding it was the means toward the end of the Incarnation. Scotus inquired after the purpose of the Incarnation, concluding it was to communicate divine love & Ad majórem Dei glóriam. When we conceive of divine freedom (e.g. creative) in terms of w/& w/o ratio, as variously ungrounded, constitutively-grounded &/or self-grounded, what’s “constitutively grounded” would refer to – not an essential necessity, but – a volitional inevitability. All is distant from God, and is remote from Him not by place but by nature— ou tôpo alla physei— as St. John Damascene explains. And this distance is never removed, but is only, as it were, overlapped by immeasurable Divine love. ~ Archpriest Georges Florovsky
Foreordained from All Eternity: The Mystery of the Incarnation According to Some Early Christian…
academia.edu #
While recognizing that “dance” clearly lacks philological warrant, LaCugna valued dance because of its metaphorical effectiveness. Still, what justifies a metaphor that portrays such a human participation in divine operations? Well, even if not ad intra trinitarian taxis, certainly the hypostatic union. The perichoretic concept was used in late Patristic Trinitology to convey – not circle dance, but – mutual interpenetration or permeation without merging or mixing (Maximus & the Damascene). But, such a concept was first employed in early Patristic Christology by the Cappadocians (Nyssen & Nazianzen). While the Trinitarian perichoresis refers to homogenous, consubstantial realities, the Christological refers heterogenously & heterosubstantially. The practical upshot? There’s no reason it can’t refer cosmotheandrically! Beyond Christological perichoresis, the Logos-logoi identity of Maximus further emphasizes how we as creatures participate, albeit proportional to our being, in divinity, for the very same logoi that humanize the divine also divinize the human. Dance thus remains a great metaphor, even if much of Western theology stumbled upon it accidentally! cf. Stamatović, Slobodan. (2016). The Meaning of Perichoresis. Open Theology. 2. 10.1515/opth-2016-0026. # As w/equivocal uses of God (eg predicate, name), so too re Oneness (eg essential unicity, unitary energeia, hypostatic unity, monarchical uniqueness). Behr’s concern seems to be that MOF most straightforwardly reconciles w/monotheism? Which oneness does monotheism most implicate? The Capps reconcile with Augustine, Cyril, Aquinas, Scotus, Maximus, Palamas, RC, EO & much of Protestantism on MOF & ousia. Even if for Scotus it’s a primary substance & immanent universal, like TA, it remains communicable but indivisible. Scotus is more felicitous w/Capps is all. # Evokes for me the aesthetic teleology of those who employ metaphors fr complexity theory & nonequilibrium thermodynamics, except they say (of dissipative structures): the more complex, the more fragile (due to number of permutations that can be threatened), the more beautiful.
Since the Beautiful beyond all beauty acts eternally as a Simplicity beyond all simplicity with no residues like fragility, those metaphors seem to express an antinomy that’s not mediated ontologically but teleologically, e.g. via the Maximian Logos-logoi # The paterological uniqueness of the MOF is not in the least over against the essential unicity, unitary energeia or hypostatic unity. Still, we best get this historical account correct because the proper reconciliation of monotheism & trinitarianism hangs in the balance. Furthermore, especially for those of us who affirm both the soteriological & theotic significance of the Incarnation, unitarianism, for example, undermines – not just our trinitological & Christological dogma, but – the practical, hope-filled, dynamical approaches of our participatory anthropology & transfigurative cosmology. So, it’s not sufficient to learn true statements, creedally, or even speculative grammars, heuristically. # Scotus is definitely in the “felix culpa or not” camp. It took Maximus to properly extend the implications of the 3C’s further. Going beyond the Cappadocians, Cyril (mia-physite) & Chalcedon, in identifying the Logos’ divine will with the divine logoi, Maximus advanced our understanding of deification, when he recognized it as the corollary of Christ’s humanization. That’s to say that creation was the means toward the end of the Incarnation, which, itself, provides the means toward the end of our deification (& salvation). # Another нет (nyet) to Aquinas’ irreversibility thesis & да to Maximian irrevocability! “Scotus is particularly dismissive of the view (held by others besides Thomas) that angels, once they choose, choose irrevocably (ibid. d.7 esp. nn.9–26). The possibility is expressly left open by Scotus that some angels sinned but repented (ibid. d.6 q.2 n.78).” So, not all medieval speculative angelology supports Feser’s post-mortem anthropology & related infernalistic premises. I’d continue to insist that “habitus,” whether as one’s virtuous &/or vicious secondary nature, remains always situated between formal acts & final potencies, facilitating or crippling but never “killing” those potentialities, which remain eternally immersed in Divine Logoi. # Yes. Scotus holds the keys to any coherent angelology: All finite causes must be together, spatially, to produce an effect. I’d made up a little heuristic to navigate such distinctions but, instead, relied on the term “embodied.” Scotus departs from TA in many regards. 1) in/communicable essence? all essences, divine & creaturely are communicable 2) dis/embodied? all creaturely entities are naturally embodied (communicatability & spatial extendability) 3) in/animate? some entities are animate & some animate entities are agential 4) in/corporeal agents? angels & contingently dis/carnate souls are incorporeal 5) im/material? agential formal causes are immaterial 6) presence spatially located operationally (Aquinas) or per se (Scotus)? #
How might our experience of God serve as an authoritative source of theology? Peter Neumann employs the Wesleyan Quadrilateral to engage the projects of 3 contemporary Pentecostal theologians: D. Macchia, Simon K.H. Chan & Amos Yong … placing them in dialogue w/Catholic, Orthodox & Protestant streams: Congar, E Johnson & D Gelpi; Lossky & Bulgakov; & Moltmann, J Cone & Jenson. Pentecostal Experience: An Ecumenical Encounter, Pickwick Publications 2012 I resonate most w/ Yong, Gelpi, Bulgakov & Moltmann. Yong echoes the “warning of Robert Jenson that the tension in pneumatology between the particularity of the Spirit in Jesus & in the Church & the universality of the Spirit as a cosmic reality ‘strains Western intellectual tradition to breaking . . .
To identify in other religious traditions elements of grace capable of sustaining the positive response of their members to God’s invitation is much more difficult. It requires a discernment for which criteria have to be established. ~ Giovanni Cereti http://vatican.va/jubilee_2000/magazine/documents/ju_mag_01091997_p-56_en.html
cf Discerning the Spirit in World Religions: The Search for Criteria by Benno van den Toren in The Spirit Is Moving: New Pathways in Pneumatology, Studies in Reformed Theology, V 38 pp 215–231, Ed: Gijsbert van den Brink, Eveline van Staalduine-Sulman & Maarten Wisse
cf KirsteenKim, The Holy Spirit in the world: a global conversation
The Holy Spirit in the world: a global conversation
Because experiential discernment criteria (Kirsteen Kim) will have ecclesial (confess Jesus is Lord), ethical (fruits), charismatic (gifts) & liberational aspects , we have to go beyond a mere hierarchical episcopal magisterium (vis a vis Scripture & tradition)
to include other magisteria. Theologians, laity, the poor & marginalized & believers of non-Christian religions must also be considered to achieve authoritative teaching (Peter Phan). I would add criteria related to a growth in intimacy, i.e. devotional, theotic, etc
As we go forward to better establish pneumatological discernment criteria in a global context – not just theistic, but – Christic criteria remain essential, because Christ remains – not just our norm, but – our Goal. # If not for a healthy aporetic sense, paraconsistent logic, dialethism, antinomism, semiformal systems, gödelian axiomatic constraints, our speculative approaches to quantum, cosmic, life, sentience & language origins would explode. The Trinity? Got a sylly syllogism for that! #
The Capps reconcile with Augustine, Cyril, Aquinas, Scotus, Maximus, Palamas, RC, EO & much of Protestantism on MOF & ousia. Even if for Scotus it’s a primary substance & immanent universal, like TA, it remains communicable but indivisible. Scotus more felicitous w/Capps is all. As w/equivocal uses of God (eg predicate, name), so too re Oneness (eg essential unicity, unitary energeia, hypostatic unity, monarchical uniqueness). Behr’s concern seems to be that MOF most straightforwardly reconciles w/monotheism? Which oneness does monotheism most implicate? # Evokes for me the aesthetic teleology of those who employ metaphors fr complexity theory & nonequilibrium thermodynamics, except they say (of dissipative structures): the more complex, the more fragile (due to number of permutations that can be threatened), the more beautifulSince the Beautiful beyond all beauty acts eternally as a Simplicity beyond all simplicity with no residues like fragility, those metaphors seem to express an antinomy that’s not mediated ontologically but teleologically, e.g. via the Maximian Logos-logoi identity?
# The paterological uniqueness of the MOF is not in the least over against the essential unicity, unitary energeia or hypostatic unity. Still, we best get this historical account correct because the proper reconciliation of monotheism & trinitarianism hangs in the balance. Furthermore, especially for those of us who affirm both the soteriological & theotic significance of the Incarnation, unitarianism, for example, undermines – not just our trinitological
& Christological dogma, but – the practical, hope-filled, dynamical approaches of our participatory anthropology & transfigurative cosmology. So, it’s not sufficient to learn true statements, creedally, or even speculative grammars, heuristically. It’s necessary to inhabit the proper historical thought patterns, as they emerged from post-experiential encounters (exegetical & liturgical) of Christ. Such a successful inhabitation (existential) presupposes our own holistic encounters of Christ in Scripture, worship & theosis — encounters that must be adequately ortho-communal, ortho-pathic, ortho-praxic & ortho-theotic if our thought patterns are ever to be sufficiently ortho-doxic. Translated, right belonging, right desiring, right behaving & right becoming will best foster right believing. Only then can we optimally engage, historically, the proper thought patterns (patristic &/or scholastic) & go beyond mere recitations of true statements & mere rehearsals of proper grammars to authentically encounter Christ & will best foster right believing. Only then can we optimally engage, historically, the proper thought patterns (patristic &/or scholastic) & go beyond mere recitations of true statements & mere rehearsals of proper grammars to authentically encounter Christ & to truthfully bear witness to Him in our thoughts, words & deeds. Otherwise, we’ll talk the talk, creedally, but may inadvertently find ourselves in material heresies, not just christological or trinitological (as in the example above), but walking the walks of gnosticism, historicism, manichaeism, antinomianism, donatism, iconoclasm, pelagianism, jansenism, or worst of all, a practical nihilism. #
Scotus is definitely in the “felix culpa or not” camp. It took Maximus to properly extend the implications of the 3C’s further. Going beyond the Cappadocians, Cyril (mia-physite) & Chalcedon, in identifying the Logos’ divine will with the logoi.
Maximus advanced our understanding of deification, when he recognized it as the corollary of Christ’s humanization. That’s to say that creation was the means toward the end of the Incarnation, which, itself, provides the means toward the end of our deification (& salvation).
When talking about the divine being or essence, aseity means “not made.” When talking about divine persons or hypostases, aseity has a different meaning – “not from.” All of the persons are “not made,” but only the Father is “not from” God.
To what might such an eternal (not temporal) cause, origin or principle (aitia, arche or principium) refer? Communication. The Father freely & willingly communicates Love, eternally loving (begetting) the Son, loving (spirating) the Holy Spirit & loving (exnihilating) creation.
All persons then participate in the Logoi proportionate to the nature of their being, e. g. God “from” God, “made” by God, hypostatic union, etc #
While neither Maximus nor Scotus viewed the Incarnation as a result of some felix culpa, that conclusion was a response to different questions posed by each. There’s little doubt that they would’ve very much agreed with each other. Oversimplifying, but – Maximus inquired after the purpose of creation, concluding it was the means toward the end of the Incarnation. Scotus inquired after the purpose of the Incarnation, concluding it was to communicate divine love & Ad majórem Dei glóriam. When we conceive of divine freedom (e.g. creative) in terms of w/& w/o ratio, as variously ungrounded, constitutively-grounded &/or self-grounded, what’s “constitutively grounded” would refer to – not an essential necessity, but – a volitional inevitability. All is distant from God, and is remote from Him not by place but by nature— ou tôpo alla physei— as St. John Damascene explains. And this distance is never removed, but is only, as it were, overlapped by immeasurable Divine love. ~ Archpriest Georges Florovsky
Foreordained from All Eternity: The Mystery of the Incarnation According to Some Early Christian…
academia.edu #
While recognizing that “dance” clearly lacks philological warrant, LaCugna valued dance because of its metaphorical effectiveness. Still, what justifies a metaphor that portrays such a human participation in divine operations? Well, even if not ad intra trinitarian taxis, certainly the hypostatic union. The perichoretic concept was used in late Patristic Trinitology to convey – not circle dance, but – mutual interpenetration or permeation without merging or mixing (Maximus & the Damascene). But, such a concept was first employed in early Patristic Christology by the Cappadocians (Nyssen & Nazianzen). While the Trinitarian perichoresis refers to homogenous, consubstantial realities, the Christological refers heterogenously & heterosubstantially. The practical upshot? There’s no reason it can’t refer cosmotheandrically! Beyond Christological perichoresis, the Logos-logoi identity of Maximus further emphasizes how we as creatures participate, albeit proportional to our being, in divinity, for the very same logoi that humanize the divine also divinize the human. Dance thus remains a great metaphor, even if much of Western theology stumbled upon it accidentally! cf. Stamatović, Slobodan. (2016). The Meaning of Perichoresis. Open Theology. 2. 10.1515/opth-2016-0026. # As w/equivocal uses of God (eg predicate, name), so too re Oneness (eg essential unicity, unitary energeia, hypostatic unity, monarchical uniqueness). Behr’s concern seems to be that MOF most straightforwardly reconciles w/monotheism? Which oneness does monotheism most implicate? The Capps reconcile with Augustine, Cyril, Aquinas, Scotus, Maximus, Palamas, RC, EO & much of Protestantism on MOF & ousia. Even if for Scotus it’s a primary substance & immanent universal, like TA, it remains communicable but indivisible. Scotus is more felicitous w/Capps is all. # Evokes for me the aesthetic teleology of those who employ metaphors fr complexity theory & nonequilibrium thermodynamics, except they say (of dissipative structures): the more complex, the more fragile (due to number of permutations that can be threatened), the more beautiful.
Since the Beautiful beyond all beauty acts eternally as a Simplicity beyond all simplicity with no residues like fragility, those metaphors seem to express an antinomy that’s not mediated ontologically but teleologically, e.g. via the Maximian Logos-logoi # The paterological uniqueness of the MOF is not in the least over against the essential unicity, unitary energeia or hypostatic unity. Still, we best get this historical account correct because the proper reconciliation of monotheism & trinitarianism hangs in the balance. Furthermore, especially for those of us who affirm both the soteriological & theotic significance of the Incarnation, unitarianism, for example, undermines – not just our trinitological & Christological dogma, but – the practical, hope-filled, dynamical approaches of our participatory anthropology & transfigurative cosmology. So, it’s not sufficient to learn true statements, creedally, or even speculative grammars, heuristically. # Scotus is definitely in the “felix culpa or not” camp. It took Maximus to properly extend the implications of the 3C’s further. Going beyond the Cappadocians, Cyril (mia-physite) & Chalcedon, in identifying the Logos’ divine will with the divine logoi, Maximus advanced our understanding of deification, when he recognized it as the corollary of Christ’s humanization. That’s to say that creation was the means toward the end of the Incarnation, which, itself, provides the means toward the end of our deification (& salvation). # Another нет (nyet) to Aquinas’ irreversibility thesis & да to Maximian irrevocability! “Scotus is particularly dismissive of the view (held by others besides Thomas) that angels, once they choose, choose irrevocably (ibid. d.7 esp. nn.9–26). The possibility is expressly left open by Scotus that some angels sinned but repented (ibid. d.6 q.2 n.78).” So, not all medieval speculative angelology supports Feser’s post-mortem anthropology & related infernalistic premises. I’d continue to insist that “habitus,” whether as one’s virtuous &/or vicious secondary nature, remains always situated between formal acts & final potencies, facilitating or crippling but never “killing” those potentialities, which remain eternally immersed in Divine Logoi. # Yes. Scotus holds the keys to any coherent angelology: All finite causes must be together, spatially, to produce an effect. I’d made up a little heuristic to navigate such distinctions but, instead, relied on the term “embodied.” Scotus departs from TA in many regards. 1) in/communicable essence? all essences, divine & creaturely are communicable 2) dis/embodied? all creaturely entities are naturally embodied (communicatability & spatial extendability) 3) in/animate? some entities are animate & some animate entities are agential 4) in/corporeal agents? angels & contingently dis/carnate souls are incorporeal 5) im/material? agential formal causes are immaterial 6) presence spatially located operationally (Aquinas) or per se (Scotus)? #
How might our experience of God serve as an authoritative source of theology? Peter Neumann employs the Wesleyan Quadrilateral to engage the projects of 3 contemporary Pentecostal theologians: D. Macchia, Simon K.H. Chan & Amos Yong … placing them in dialogue w/Catholic, Orthodox & Protestant streams: Congar, E Johnson & D Gelpi; Lossky & Bulgakov; & Moltmann, J Cone & Jenson. Pentecostal Experience: An Ecumenical Encounter, Pickwick Publications 2012 I resonate most w/ Yong, Gelpi, Bulgakov & Moltmann. Yong echoes the “warning of Robert Jenson that the tension in pneumatology between the particularity of the Spirit in Jesus & in the Church & the universality of the Spirit as a cosmic reality ‘strains Western intellectual tradition to breaking . . .
To identify in other religious traditions elements of grace capable of sustaining the positive response of their members to God’s invitation is much more difficult. It requires a discernment for which criteria have to be established. ~ Giovanni Cereti http://vatican.va/jubilee_2000/magazine/documents/ju_mag_01091997_p-56_en.html
cf Discerning the Spirit in World Religions: The Search for Criteria by Benno van den Toren in The Spirit Is Moving: New Pathways in Pneumatology, Studies in Reformed Theology, V 38 pp 215–231, Ed: Gijsbert van den Brink, Eveline van Staalduine-Sulman & Maarten Wisse
cf KirsteenKim, The Holy Spirit in the world: a global conversation
The Holy Spirit in the world: a global conversation
Because experiential discernment criteria (Kirsteen Kim) will have ecclesial (confess Jesus is Lord), ethical (fruits), charismatic (gifts) & liberational aspects , we have to go beyond a mere hierarchical episcopal magisterium (vis a vis Scripture & tradition)
to include other magisteria. Theologians, laity, the poor & marginalized & believers of non-Christian religions must also be considered to achieve authoritative teaching (Peter Phan). I would add criteria related to a growth in intimacy, i.e. devotional, theotic, etc
As we go forward to better establish pneumatological discernment criteria in a global context – not just theistic, but – Christic criteria remain essential, because Christ remains – not just our norm, but – our Goal. # If not for a healthy aporetic sense, paraconsistent logic, dialethism, antinomism, semiformal systems, gödelian axiomatic constraints, our speculative approaches to quantum, cosmic, life, sentience & language origins would explode. The Trinity? Got a sylly syllogism for that! #
The Capps reconcile with Augustine, Cyril, Aquinas, Scotus, Maximus, Palamas, RC, EO & much of Protestantism on MOF & ousia. Even if for Scotus it’s a primary substance & immanent universal, like TA, it remains communicable but indivisible. Scotus more felicitous w/Capps is all. As w/equivocal uses of God (eg predicate, name), so too re Oneness (eg essential unicity, unitary energeia, hypostatic unity, monarchical uniqueness). Behr’s concern seems to be that MOF most straightforwardly reconciles w/monotheism? Which oneness does monotheism most implicate? # Evokes for me the aesthetic teleology of those who employ metaphors fr complexity theory & nonequilibrium thermodynamics, except they say (of dissipative structures): the more complex, the more fragile (due to number of permutations that can be threatened), the more beautifulSince the Beautiful beyond all beauty acts eternally as a Simplicity beyond all simplicity with no residues like fragility, those metaphors seem to express an antinomy that’s not mediated ontologically but teleologically, e.g. via the Maximian Logos-logoi identity?
# The paterological uniqueness of the MOF is not in the least over against the essential unicity, unitary energeia or hypostatic unity. Still, we best get this historical account correct because the proper reconciliation of monotheism & trinitarianism hangs in the balance. Furthermore, especially for those of us who affirm both the soteriological & theotic significance of the Incarnation, unitarianism, for example, undermines – not just our trinitological
& Christological dogma, but – the practical, hope-filled, dynamical approaches of our participatory anthropology & transfigurative cosmology. So, it’s not sufficient to learn true statements, creedally, or even speculative grammars, heuristically. It’s necessary to inhabit the proper historical thought patterns, as they emerged from post-experiential encounters (exegetical & liturgical) of Christ. Such a successful inhabitation (existential) presupposes our own holistic encounters of Christ in Scripture, worship & theosis — encounters that must be adequately ortho-communal, ortho-pathic, ortho-praxic & ortho-theotic if our thought patterns are ever to be sufficiently ortho-doxic. Translated, right belonging, right desiring, right behaving & right becoming will best foster right believing. Only then can we optimally engage, historically, the proper thought patterns (patristic &/or scholastic) & go beyond mere recitations of true statements & mere rehearsals of proper grammars to authentically encounter Christ & will best foster right believing. Only then can we optimally engage, historically, the proper thought patterns (patristic &/or scholastic) & go beyond mere recitations of true statements & mere rehearsals of proper grammars to authentically encounter Christ & to truthfully bear witness to Him in our thoughts, words & deeds. Otherwise, we’ll talk the talk, creedally, but may inadvertently find ourselves in material heresies, not just christological or trinitological (as in the example above), but walking the walks of gnosticism, historicism, manichaeism, antinomianism, donatism, iconoclasm, pelagianism, jansenism, or worst of all, a practical nihilism. #
Scotus is definitely in the “felix culpa or not” camp. It took Maximus to properly extend the implications of the 3C’s further. Going beyond the Cappadocians, Cyril (mia-physite) & Chalcedon, in identifying the Logos’ divine will with the logoi.
Maximus advanced our understanding of deification, when he recognized it as the corollary of Christ’s humanization. That’s to say that creation was the means toward the end of the Incarnation, which, itself, provides the means toward the end of our deification (& salvation).
1) The paths of love and suffering both transform us. On both paths we journey both in authenticity and toward authenticity, humbly increasing our humility, authentically growing our authenticity. We recognize our radical finitude and get radically in touch with our need for outside assists or grace.
2) In touch, somehow and in some way, with this reality of grace, with the fact that manifold and multiform outside assists brought us into existence, itself, have nurtured and sustained us thus far and, reportedly …
per credible witnesses … can
reorient,
rededicate,
renew,
reempower and
release us …
3) We thus surrender to Outside Assists and yield to their gifts of
truth, via Right Believing,
beauty, via Right Desiring,
goodness via Right Behaving,
unity, via Right Belonging and
freedom, via Right BeinginLove, as one Beloved.
4) Working honestly and diligently to raise our awareness of how we’ve been wholly and miserably …
dispossessed, acting willfully and not willingly;
disempowered, playing on the wrong playgrounds and with the wrong playmates, selfishly at work on our own agenda rather than at play in the fields of the Lord, where we cooperate with genuine outside assists or Grace;
disintegrated, literally losing our freedom (always inner but, too often, also our outer liberty, too) and diminishing our capacity to receive and return genuine love (as distinguished from our enslavement to persons, processes and substances, which masquerade as counterfeit love objects rather than authentic love subjects).
The disengagement of playgrounds and playmates does not represent an abandonment of other souls or disregard of their intrinsic value as beloved persons but involves, rather, the establishment of healthy relationship boundaries, lovingly entrusting others to providence, while walking the path to freedom in a way that, one prays, others may choose to follow of their own accord, some day.
5) Reconnecting and reconciling ourselves to community ensues in the wake of sharing our stories of disorientation, disaffection, dispossession, disempowerment and disintegration not only with our own conscious awareness and our God, but
with another person who positively affirms us, who
repossesses us from our possessed existence,
reempowers us by reintegrating us into a wholesome, loving community, which, through
right belonging, can
reinstill right desiring, which will naturally encourage
right behaving, thereby reorienting us through right believing.
6) The contemplative stance goes beyond any problem-solving or propositional concerns.
Far more than propositions for solving our problems in reality, the contemplative stance engages dispositions for evolving our probes of reality.
Beyond a mere nonreflective awareness, which doesn’t judge reality from our willful self-perspective, propositionally, the contemplative stance does also adopt, dispositionally, a willing trustful surrender to a friendly ultimate reality, trading a specific set of anxious expectations for a more general and vague but peaceful hope in providence.
To the extent the contemplative stance pauses between reality’s stimuli and our responses, withholding judgments regarding precisely how we might think, feel, norm or interpret this or that reality, that pause, then, very much has a valence as a pregnant pause, as we dispose ourselves in a manner that reflects a surrender, to wit:
7) Take, Lord, receive, my …
memory,
understanding,
my entire will …
Gift me, new …
beliefs, a vibrant faith beyond my weak grasp of truth; to think again!
desires, a fervent hope beyond my feeble sense of beauty; to feel again!
behaviors, a willing love beyond my willful approach of goodness; to norm anew!
belonging, an authentic fellowship beyond my impoverished notion of community; to re-interpret it all together with others of goodwill!
beatitudes, a beatific vision that grows my experience of freedom beyond the mere license to do as I want to the clear liberty to do as I must; to liberate one to live & love again!
8) As a major hallmark of the contemplative stance, we recognize our radical solidarity and connectedness to others, the cosmos, God and even our selves.
Out of this solidarity, compassion necessarily ensues, beginning with those to whom we, ourselves, have brought suffering.
The contemplative stance, then, pursues Enlightenment, much less so as any selfimprovement or personal growth project.
Indeed, such spiritual masters as Gerald May, Abraham Maslow, Viktor Frankl and Bernard Lonergan instruct us that self-actualization properly ensues as a byproduct of self-transcendence, that, pursued for its own sake, selfactualization even frustrates true transformation.
Hence, the Angelus and fiat: Be it done unto me according to Thy Word. And the Magnificat: For He looked on His servant’s lowliness …
Hence the realization that one seeks Enlightenment more so out of compassion for all those who have suffered our unenlightened selves!
Thus moved to sorrow, repentance and compassion via our contemplation attaining to love:
9) We move beyond any abstract, self assessment and willingly surrender to the concrete, practical response of reconstructing our broken relationships with others, seeking forgiveness, offering reparations, making amends from the standpoint of what’s truly helpful to them and not what’s needed by us.
10) The contemplative stance becomes not a new way of thinking about reality, but a new way of seeing reality.
We cultivate a practice of daily examen and daily sitting, a habit of pausing awhile, a commitment to timely and heartfelt reconciliations, knowing we’ll fall, again and again, from our inescapable finitude and fail, again and again, from our willful refusals to cooperate with outside assists or surrender to grace.
11) On the road of transformation, the quest , itself, becomes our grail; the journey , itself, becomes our destination.
Our growth in truth will commit us to accurate historical accounts and successful scientific ventures, beyond which we develop an eschatological vision, which means an enduring commitment to a better future. We seek and provide outside assists to orient us to truth.
Our growth in beauty will commit us to wholesome cultural engagements, beyond which we embrace an essential soteriological trajectory, which means we cultivate through time-honored practices and rituals, our growth in authenticity and humility and recognition of solidarity with all other sojourners. We seek and provide outside assists to sanctify and dedicate us to beauty.
Our growth in goodness will commit us to enlightened philosophical and economic approaches, which inform all of our moral and practical norms, beyond which we engage a truly sacramental economy, which receives all as pure gift and which inventories both daily and lifetime moments of gratitude, voicing this gratitude to self, God and others. We seek and provide outside assists to nurture, sustain and heal us in goodness.
Our growth in unity will commit us to wholesome social realities, beyond which we participate in an ecclesiological reality, which fellowships in community. We seek and provide outside assists toward unity.
Our growth in freedom will commit us to political action and apolitical contemplation, beyond which we embrace diverse sophiological trajectories, which means we sustain our authenticity by different ways of being-in-love with others, God, cosmos and even self. There are many ministries but one mission.
Beyond a universal and essential soteriological trajectory, which gifts our authenticity, there are polydoxic (manygloried) ways of sustaining authenticity through loving and being loved. We seek and provide outside assists toward that freedom and relationality which foster reality’s deepest loves.
All spiritualities, whether the great traditions or indigenous religions, whether contemplative practices or 12 Step Programs, have elements of
eschatology vis a vis truth and right believing, historically and scientifically;
soteriology vis a vis beauty and right desiring, culturally;
sacramentology vis a vis goodness and right behaving, philosophically and economically;
ecclesiology vis a vis unity and right belonging, socially; and
sophiology vis a vis relationality and freedom, right beatitude, politically and contemplatively.
12) What return shall we make? That’s the urgent but peaceful imperative of all who’ve come into awareness of reality’s radically giving (donative) nature as we minister every consolation we’ve received to others. When we awaken to our solidarity, whether through the path of suffering or of love, which intertwine inextricably, compassion will inevitably and naturally ensue.
How can we keep from singing?
“For every poet it is always morning in the world; history a forgotten, insomniac night. The fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world in spite of history.” ~ Derek Wallcott
A 12 Step Contemplative Spirituality is not a life event but a lifestyle. It’s a lifestyle of gathering frequently with others to remember, to not forget!
Anamnesis (from the Greek word meaning “reminiscence”) is a liturgical statement in which the Church refers to the memorial character of the Eucharist (thanks-giving). It has its origin in Jesus’ words at the Last Supper, “Do this in memory of me.”
In a wider sense, Anamnesis is a key concept in the liturgical theology: in worship the faithful recall God’s saving deeds. This memorial aspect is not simply a passive process but one by which the Christian can actually enter into the Paschal mystery.
So, if amnesia means “to forget,” then an-amnesis means “not to forget.”
We recall, then, why we simply must be thankful. And we do so prayerfully.
As they say, a family that prays together, stays together.
So, too, psychologically, modern medicine has discovered that “neurons that fire together, wire together.”
Religion means to re-ligate or “tie back together.”
All of this taken together suggests that our spiritual survival requires a vigorous hygiene and rigorous practice of “not forgetting to give thanks.”
Phillipians 4:8 reminds us: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is fair, whatever is pure, whatever is acceptable, whatever is commendable, if there is anything of excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy—keep thinking about
these things.”
From a properly holistic perspective, this spiritual hygiene of anamnesis thus plays an indispensable role in maintaining one’s emotional equilibrium.
The more seriously compromised one’s emotional homeostasis has been, especially over protracted periods of time, the more vigilant one must be to stand guard over one’s thoughts, the more rigorous must be the practice of anamnesis and the more integral must be one’s assault against any and all threats posed to one’s psychological defenses.
Anamnesis – a suggestion
Inventory:
1) 5 most stimulating intellectual curiosities that once captured your imagination
2) 5 most wholesome and emotionally satisfying moments that you can still recall with great relish
3) 5 most morally courageous commitments you undertook together with others
4) 5 most satisying practical accomplishments from your academic, athletic or work life
5) 5 most wholesome and rewarding social engagements you’ve enjoyed
6) 10 most wholesome and grace-filled familial memories, persons, events
7) 5 most spiritually rewarding divine encounters and the persons who shared or mediated them, whether personally, through books or media, etc and 5 holy places where such encounters were gifted
Commit the above inventory to memory and recite it daily. Recite it once. Or recite it 70 times. Recite it in the place of other tapes that have been playing in your head, perhaps for decades.
Go to this place of gratitude.
It will become your sacred, safe place. It not only represents but constitutes your reality.
It WILL rewire your brain.
Neurons that fire together will wire together. Others that cease firing will eventually lose their wiring.
I did this over 30 years ago and it rescued me.
Later, I listened to a Melody Beattie audiobook and she prescribed a similar daily inventory of gratitude and I better understood how and why my old spiritual hygiene had worked. Finally, my spouse came into this type of practice from yet another spiritual resource group and I witnessed its transformative influence on her, too.
In January 2003, I published the following: “How Wide Is Your Moat? – our holistic moat”
The mutual fund industry has popularized the moat metaphor, a moat being that deep and wide trench around the rampart of a castle, that is usually filled with water. There are even pinball games, like Medieval Madness , in which players use different strategies to breach the castle’s defenses, such as the moat, the drawbridge, the gate, the wall. Sometimes the madness is not so medieval but very much contemporary, within our own psychological castle walls.
I have often thought of the analogy of the moat in other than economic terms. It might also be a useful image in considering a person’s general well being.
Like a castle with its multiple layers of defenses, one’s general well being is also bolstered by its own moats and walls and gatekeepers and can be breached by many different types of attacks.
There are times in our lives when we know our well being will have to do battle, when we need to both widen and deepen our psychological moats and pull up the drawbridges of our physical ramparts. The size of such bulwarks must be determined by many factors.
Let’s consider some examples of the types of battles we must all fight and of the kinds of defenses we might need to put in place to fortify our general well being.
When we are healthy, physically, emotionally and mentally, and under no significant stress, in other words are not under attack physically or psychologically, the size of our holistic moat doesn’t matter much, seemingly. I’m going to call this moat the holistic moat because its depth and width is determined by many factors which, I will argue, all need to be considered as a whole. Ignore any given factor and our defenses will be breached , which is to suggest that sometimes we don’t have a very wide margin of error to work with because our moat is both shallow and narrow.
What are some of the things that fill up our moat and seriously jeopardize our castle of well being?
Well, certainly anything which can affect us emotionally, such as trauma due to grief, terror or physical injury, such as chronic or acute illness, addictions, broken relationships, financial difficulty, employment and career setbacks, academic and professional failure, damage to one’s reputation whether unjust or from a personal failure, and so forth. The effects of aging or of a chronic debilitating illness, the propensity toward chemical imbalances of neurotransmitters, and other insults to our general well being, all of these things and more, can lower our defenses and increase our vulnerabilities to where we spiral down into near or total dysfunction and immobilization.
The return to any normalcy and full functionality can be difficult, near impossible. In such desperation, we can approach the point where we even lose the will to go on, despite our loved ones, and, assuredly, when the blessings of those relationships no longer weigh heavily enough in the balance against the pain of a truly tormented existence, the castle has been most seriously breached; our physical well being drawbridge is down; our emotional gate has been battered; our mental gatekeeper defeated. Our spirit has thus retreated to the most inner recesses of our being and, though still sharing immanently with its Beloved in these innermost chambers, there is no felt sense of communion, neither with God nor with the castle cohort, that indwelling and abiding relating to family and friends, and most definitely not with the outer world of strangers.
What are some of the kinds of defenses we might need to put in place to fortify our general well being?
When our moat is narrowed and shallowed by any of the insults to our well being we have considered, we have no room to maneuver and have little margin of error. We cannot afford any mistakes and must move aggressively on all fronts. If one’s castle is especially vulnerable, either chronically or acutely, one cannot take a casual approach to defending the castle. One must proactively work to widen the moat! Like the Corps of Engineers on the Mississippi River, one must continuously dredge because the silt is being deposited 24/365 when we suffer from chemical imbalances or are otherwise in the midst of trauma, grief, anxiety or depression.
Physically, we cannot afford to miss out on proper diet, sufficient rest and good exercise.
Our diet must be substantial and routine and not made up of the four mainstays of the 4 Cajun Foodgroups , which are sugar, salt, fat and alcohol .
Rest and exercise are essential, too, for manifold reasons documented elsewhere.
Medically , we must seek out pharmaceutical aids to help us through the acute phase of any substantial psychological crises with antidepressants or antianxiety prescriptions and maybe even sleep-aids or other therapeutic regimens.
Emotionally , we must force ourselves to interact with family and friends, with outdoors and nature, acting ourselves into a new way of thinking , unable to think ourseleves into a new way of acting.
Mentally , we may need ongoing psychological counseling and, perhaps, even that in combination with specialized trauma counseling or social welfare assistance and counseling.
Specialized support groups can be most efficacious in assisting and advising on all of the fronts under consideration here and can be an emotional lifeline. They can also make us feel a little less alone by being in the empathetic company of others who don’t know and will never know your tears but who have cried tears for similar reasons.
We should seek to stimulate and enrich our minds with good reading materials, uplifting movies and music, and engaging hobbies.
Spiritually , we may need spiritual direction, either formally or informally, with a director-directee relationship, or in a spiritual companioning mode with a fellow pilgrim with whom we may share a special spiritual kinship.
The life of prayer, no matter how arid or desolate, must be maintained with perseverance and discipline, privately and communally, perhaps augmented by small group participation but most definitely sharing as well in at-large community worship services.
Ideally, one can likely not implement the entire holistic regimen because the very exigencies and contingencies of life, which press in on us and lower our defenses, such as employment and parenting responsibilities, such as financial and physical constraints, also get in our way during the rebuilding efforts. However, one must aggressively and vigilantly attend to all of the factors within one’s means and to the fullest extent possible, notwithstanding constraints on one’s time and resources, and make these efforts a priority, because spiralling down to the lowest ebb of life will most assuredly defeat everything else one is trying to accomplish and deprive one of the vibrancy in one’s relationships, with God and others, that makes anything else worthwhile.
Our road to healing must be holistic and I emphasize this multifaceted approach because I have seen healing stratgeies sabotaged by approaches that don’t take the whole castle into account.
What good is it to deepen or widen a moat if one leaves the drawbridge down?
The attempt to make it through significant crises only pharmaceutically can backfire and bring on even more substance abuse. The temptation to self-medicate with over the counter stimulants or sedatives can simiarly cause problems. To take pills but not eat and rest properly is self-defeating.
Confusing psychological counseling and spiritual direction can be a problem; they are distinctly different enterprises, however related.
If one’s castle is especially vulnerable, either chronically or acutely, one cannot take a casual approach to defending the castle. One must proactively widen the moat!
Neglect of one’s spiritual life, in my opinion, represents the first shallowing of the holistic moat because the spiritual life, a life of prayer, is the climbing into the watchtower of our castle, lifting our hearts and minds to God, aligning our wills with His, and, whereby through ongoing self-examen and discernment, we can vigilantly gaze out over all of our defenses and remain on guard for those attacks that no castle avoids. All of this we do as we await that Kingdom which is to come while living as safely as we can within that one which is already within us but constantly under siege.
It may be, that what I have outlined above can be viewed not merely as a defensive maneuver against life, but rather as one’s offensive strategy for looking to make one’s mark on the world. These are the very same things I’d suggest as New Year’s Resolutions, to anyone serious about deepening their relationship with God or their relationships with loved ones, to anyone interested in advancing on one’s academic or career path, etc There is a great unity of purpose in the spiritual life, to a holistically informed lifestyle.
When God is first in our lives, everything else falls into place and we will be about the same tasks in life whether our castle is under siege or not. Mark my words, however, it is best not to wait.
So, while you see a chance — take it.
While You See a Chance (for Asceticism) Take It! – forsaking all for the sake of Love
Viktor Frankl taught that a person with a WHY to live can bear almost any HOW.
He should know; he learned that in a Nazi concentration camp.
That’s why renunciation, self-denial & ascetical exercises – not for their own sake, but – for the sake of a Loved One can also liberate us, ourselves.
We thus all should aspire to be strong-willed persons, but, as Gerald May distinguished, not willful but willing.
How might we strengthen our will to grown in love, willingness & freedom?
How might we weaken our willfulness & break those bondages which separate us from those whom we love?
How can we transform our “bondage to” into – not only a “freedom from,” but – a “freedom for” the sake of whom we love?
Where might we find a “technology of liberation” that frees us to aspire to a higher love, to life’s finer things, to get us back in the high life again, where all the doors we’ve closed at times might open up again?
Growing one’s freedom to love requires dwelling in – neither the past nor the future, but – the now.
No need to get preoccupied with either the past (as “Jesus paid it all”) or the future (as the Spirit eternalizes all traces of human goodness, every beginning of a smile, all wholesome trivialities).
Nothing to fill in the blank with regarding “I’ll be okay when _______.”
Seriously, to grow my own freedom to love, I constantly sing in my head or even mouth the lyrics: “While you see a chance, take it!”
In each now moment, while I see a chance to strengthen my willingness to love, I have better learned to take it, with increasingly few exceptions …
because my WHY to live has become way more important to me than any HOW.
Here, I am less focused on loving, personal interactions, although that remains the end. I refer, instead, to gratuitous self-denials, ordered to what Cynthia Bourgeault describes in terms of exercising & strengthening our “letting go muscle.” She’s talking within the context of distractions in Centering Prayer, but the same dynamic operates here.
While I see a chance for denial, whether regarding something as simple as –
Googling or not to satisfy some seemingly pressing but genuinely idle curiosity,
consuming or not some morsel (digital or vittles),
replacing or not otherwise intrusive worries with psalms,
foregoing or not an indulgence of drama (news-cycles or soapy series), or, more proactively,
climbing out of a chair or not to go walk or
dedicating my time or not to spiritual writing —
while I see a chance for denial, I take it.
And I’m talking about gratuitous self-denials regarding anything & everything, including wholly innocent self-indulgences, which, in and of themselves would be rather insignificant & morally neutral.
Because this exercising & strengthening of my “letting go muscle” has formed an increasingly strong habit in me of turning my attention to and caring ever more deeply about life’s higher loves & finer things, I’ve slowly found myself back in the truly high life, again.
Beginners on the spiritual path get scandalized at first regarding John of the Cross’ severe asceticism or Francis of Assisi’s betrothal to poverty.
Later, they learn to quit beating their heads against life’s walls just because it feels so good when they stop. They better realize that our saints & mystics didn’t forsake all just for kicks, but, instead, for the sake of One, Whom they loved above all. Romance fueled desires inspired their renunciations, released them from bondages to _______ & freed them for the Most High.
The spiritual practices & ascetic disciplines of every great tradition will eventually come to the fore in every life, as each finds the mystical path out of either great love or great suffering, usually some of both.
There may be some biochemistry in the admonition given to addicts – not to smoke as it makes relapses more likely. Beyond that, whether a substance or process addict (and we all have some degree of both, just varying by degrees of dys/functionality), I see the clear psychological & spiritual benefits that would accrue in strengthening one’s “letting go muscle.”
So, in addition to the psalms & hymns of old time religion, I commend Disney’s “Let It Go” and Steve Winwood’s “Finer Things,” “Higher Love,” “Back In the High Life” and, most of all, “While You See a Chance.”
From “Finer Things”
And come morning
There’s a good wind to blow me home
So time be a river rolling into nowhere
I will live while I can
I will have my ever after
The finer things keep shining through
The way my soul gets lost in you
The finer things I feel in me
The golden dance life could be
From “Higher Love”
Think about it, there must be higher love
Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above
Bring me a higher love
Where’s that higher love I keep thinking of?
I will wait for it
I’m not too late for it
Until then, I’ll sing my song
To cheer the night along
I could light the night up with my soul on fire
I could make the sun shine from pure desire
Let me feel that love come over me
Let me feel how strong it could be
Bring me a higher love
From “Back in the High Life”
We’ll have ourselves a time
And we’ll dance ’til the morning sun
And we’ll let the good times come in
And we won’t stop ’til we’re done
We’ll be back in the high life again
All the doors I closed one time will open up again
We’ll be back in the high life again
All the eyes that watched us once will smile and take us in
From “While You See a Chance”
Stand up in a clear blue morning
Until you see what can be
Alone in a cold day dawning
Are you still free? Can you be?
When some cold tomorrow finds you
When some sad old dream reminds you
How the endless road unwinds you
While you see a chance take it
Find romance, fake it
Because its all on you
Regarding the realities of Sacrifice as well as Detachment
Sacrifice requires the surrender of something good for the sake of something better. It’s an indispensable part of our human condition because we are radically finite. Values will inevitably compete, forcing often difficult choices.
When we do sacrifice one value or good for the sake of another, we do best to distinguish the higher from the lesser goods, the eternal from the merely temporal.
Sacrificial choices won’t always involve such a revaluing, devaluing or disvaluing. They can involve a Sophie’s Choice dilemma, which allows us to only suboptimally realize one of several otherwise vitally significant & deep values.
Often, sacrifices will take the forms of detachment (enjoyment in moderation) or dispossession (all or nothing abandonment). Neither is necessarily more effective or virtuous. That will depend on unique individuals and particular circumstances.
This is all to recognize, for example, that some persons might remain largely functional as social drinkers or recreational weed smokers (where that’s legal!) while others might be rather exceptionally susceptible to a downward spiraling into an inordinately dysfunctional tailspin. In such cases, an all or nothing dispossession or abandonment of such substances would be essential. Any notion that mere detachment or simple moderation would suffice is a dangerous rationalization, often unconsciously motivated by intractably ingrained habits.
So, too, for example, while loyalty is indeed a genuine good and high virtue, still, without disvaluing friends or loyalty, we might nevertheless need to reorder relationships & set boundaries by, as they say, changing our playgrounds and playmates. The changing of playgrounds & playmates must often be more than literal. Metaphorically, it can include the playgrounds & playmates in our minds & imagination, for example, the memories & recalls triggered by certain musical playlists & artists or by mere daydreaming & fantasizing. New approaches to leisure & entertainment can be life-saving.
Indeed, there is no measure of vice even in abandoning certain friends and absolutely no virtue in losing irreplaceable family time, employment, much less one’s very life.
This is a more extreme example but it applies to most sacrifices related to physical, emotional, mental, moral & spiritual hygienes.
As I wrote in my tribute to James Taylor, Ode to Stringbean, it’s place in time not a place in space, where a person’s home is found. That place in time is the eternal now. The entire journey is taken in each next good step. It’s about going home.
Ode to Stringbean
the true handy man doesn’t work on a house
with a pencil and a rule
what he’s handy with are his people you see
love is jt’s tool
most songs that are sung are about going home
according to his school
when life’s skies grow dark and full of clouds
and the world turns down right cruel
when ole stringbean sang about carolina
he sang about a woman not a state
about a holy host of others
loved ones his truest fate
he had no need for sad salvation army sisters
singing nearer my god to thee
or moonlight ladies in the canyon
up on the roof went ole jt
he was going home you see
what a fool I was to leave the only happiness i’ve ever know
where the seeds of faith were planted
and the fruits of love were grown
where seldom was heard a discouraging word
only rockabye sweet grady james
where I always thought I could see you again
e’r my flying machine went up in flames
when ole stringbean sang about carolina
he sang about a woman not a state
about a holy host of others
loved ones his truest fate
he had no need for sad salvation army sisters
singing nearer my god to thee
or moonlight ladies in the canyon
shower the people sang jt
walking man walks like ole jt
in every life there are sacred places
where sweet memories abound
but it’s a place in time not a place in space
where a person’s home is found
when life’s cold winds blow and your back’s to the sun
what’ll turn your head around
are those precious sacred faces
whose voices make such precious sacred sounds
when ole stringbean sang about carolina
he sang about a woman not a state
about a holy host of others
loved ones his truest fate
he had no need for sad salvation army sisters
singing nearer my god to thee
or moonlight ladies in the canyon
b s u r like ole jt
he was going home you see
Dealing with Intractable Emotional Turmoil
Anyone, Lord, whom I (or we) may have ever harmed and anyone, Lord, who may ever have harmed me (or us), whether by a thought, word or deed, or the absence of a thought, word or deed, whether through a sin or an error of omission or commission, whether intentionally or unintentionally, aware or unawares, whether justly or unjustly, politely or impolitely, charitably or uncharitably, Lord, I pray that You reach out and touch and heal us. I pray that you enable us to forgive one another and to accept one another’s forgiveness in order that we might receive your perfect healing. Amen.
I composed this prayer decades ago, but don’t recall why. Likely, it was a source of consolation to me in the face of a series of injustices I’d endured, aware that I’d offended, too, in my own way and to varying degrees. It supplemented any Act of Contrition.
Once, when visiting a family friend in hospice (a doctor whose end was to be a few days away), he asked me to pray aloud. That, above, is what I prayed, even as our parish priest stood by.
Closely tied to the Gospel imperative to forgive is the injunction not to judge. We are just never in a position to know when another’s failure to cooperate with grace is due to a sinful refusal or to an exculpating inability. We can’t even know this when another confesses to a crime or a sin.
So many failures to cooperate with grace are indeed due to various exculpating degrees of emotional duress, mental illness, deformative influences or lack of proper formation. God, alone, therefore, has such full knowledge.
In my experience, presuming another’s innocence rather than their guilt (often our own projection!), beyond merely obeying a Gospel command, can serve to tame our own wrathful imaginations (which too often can continuously replay the painful injury) and can thereby ameliorate our own suffering (as we reimagine ourselves merely unfortunate rather than as clearly & soberly attacked). This comprises a good first step in the cultivation of compassion for – not only others, but – ourselves.
How terribly wounded another must have been to carry on like that toward me, we imagine — instead of attributing to them straightforward malice or outright hatred. How often we rationalize and excuse our own dysfunctional behaviors and interpersonal offenses (and I’m not suggesting necessarily wrongfully so). We might best afford others the same benefit of the doubt.
Thus we can see how it’s very true that those who are the hardest & the harshest on others are also very likely similarly disposed toward themselves and their own failures to cooperate with grace. Thus the wisdom of the Desiderata — beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. Then, copiously extend that compassion!
All of this transcends other questions regarding how to deal with our emotional pain & spiritual suffering, as well as how to interdict failures to cooperate with grace in order to advance peace among peoples and maintain a modicum of public order.
Practicing forgiveness, not judging and liberally extending compassion toward oneself and others, makes for an indispensable start toward – not only healing, but – preventing much emotional turmoil. It’s really an implicit cognitive-affective behavioral approach as most spiritual disciplines are. While necessary, it’s not always sufficient, however. Our emotions are a gift of information regarding our internal milieu and external environs. While it’s true that bad cognitive and behavioral habits can make us guilty for certain degrees of emotional turmoil, generally, we should avoid judging ourselves and others for how we or they feel. At bottom, those feelings are a gift, part of our humanity.
For the most part, then, we are susceptible to judgment – not for how we feel, but – for how we behave. And this includes behaviors we engage to relieve our pain as well as those we undertake to interdict and remedy perceived and/or real injustices. Society sanctions such interdictions, from parenting to policing to military interventions, prescribing & proscribing various approaches to keep them proportional and to foster their efficacies.
In our radical finitude, even in our various authoritative capacities, our interdictions, themselves, can become sources of injustice — failures to cooperate with grace, though, again – not necessarily refusals, but – representing various inabilities in varying degrees. All sorts of rubrics are prescribed to define un/just interdictions and acceptable remedies for what ails a person, family or society. I’ve addressed those elsewhere in depth but, the preeminent rule is to always employ the least coercive means practicable as that’s most consistent with our unalienable human dignity. It’s consonant, too, with the time-honored wisdom of defaulting to a nonviolent resistance of evil, all other things being equal (not to suggest that they thus are!). That wisdom’s been demonstrated as true both through its manifold efficacies as well as the inefficacies ensuing from violence (physical, verbal, passive-aggressive, etc) both in the lives of victims and perpetrators of same throughout the ages. Alas, most know this intuitively and, thankfully, most do practice it in sufficient degrees.
What is equally maddening and befuddling, then, is how to handle the residual emotional distress — those feelings left over even after we’ve cognitively & behaviorally exhibited compassion, understanding & forgiveness of ourselves and others, even though we’ve prudently practiced or instigated the most efficacious interdictive remedies toward offending individuals or even institutions (for much dysfunction is institutionalized & intergenerationally intractable).
Any such residual emotional disturbances require holistic healing approaches such as outlined in my 12 Step Contemplative Spirituality, above.
As a pastor, counselor or significant other, as a suffering individual’s spiritual kin, we instinctively know that a compassionate, listening presence is paramount. A mere affirmation of the sufferer’s humanity and recognition of their pain combined with an unconditional acceptance of their very personhood is our first, best response. This passive response is a metaphorical, if not also a physical, HUG!
Responding with spiritual platitudes, psychological theorizing or superficial situational analyses is unkind because it risks trivializing what are often complex intra-personal dynamics, which have unfolded over long periods of time in a hypercomplex inter-personal milieu. Worse, we end up virtually dismissing the enormity of all human suffering, the immensity of all human pain, for, in our suffering, we simply are in solidarity. When we awaken to our human solidarity, compassion just naturally ensues.
Sometimes, that initial experience of acceptance and understanding and recognition can be so validating that a healing is experienced right then and there as a suffering person overcomes loneliness, alienation and misunderstanding. God becoming man is the paramount example of that simple efficacy. Our Mother Mary, as a Lady of Sorrows, similarly consoles us as we prayerfully reflect with loving intentionality on everything in her life that was joyful, luminous, sorrowful & glorious, in so many ways like our own lives.
Because not all of us are similarly situated in a precise manner (only generally so), it’s best to recognize that, while we all know tears, still, we can’t ever exactly understand another individual’s tears. We can only sit with them and try to variously dry a few at a time.
Beyond, then, seeking out those compassionate fellow sojourners, personal, pastoral & professional, there can remain lingering emotional disturbances, which, often, can indicate spiritual emergence opportunities. We can approach them, then, as spiritual emergencies.
Spiritual emergencies require, again, a holistic birthing process as the labor pains associated with our arrival as a truly new person in Christ will involve every aspect of our human giftedness – physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. In my experience, some lingering emotional pain requires spiritual discernment regarding why God may have chosen to cry this or that particular set of tears through you, why God has placed His voice of prophetic protest in you, perhaps anointed you with a particular calling to remedy this or that injustice, heal this or that situation, minister in this or that way in this or that place to this or that person or persons.
What form your ministry of healing may take on should be guided by an honest inventory of your own internal strengths & weaknesses coupled with a clear, sober assessment of any external opportunities & threats. Perhaps you are rhetorically gifted and can minister spoken and/or written words to small and/or large audiences. Perhaps you are inclined to minister less so such spiritual works of mercy and more so in corporal works of mercy. Perhaps you are called to a new vocation or, more likely, an avocation. Whatever the case, your own healing may be further fostered by your ministry to others. Your lingering pain may be a calling to some spiritual emergence of a new part of you, even a relinquishment of an old part.
They say that any pain, which we don’t allow to somehow transform us, will otherwise become a suffering we continue to transmit to – not only others, but – ourselves.
Being validated in one’s suffering does not mean that everyone similarly situated in a given affliction will have experienced it in the same way or to the same degree. It only means they know tears and trust the authenticity of your own.
There are far too many forms and occasions of injustice in our world for us to imagine that our discerned response should, of a sudden, become some general norm for all others to follow in their prescribed responses. This is true with respect to both our particular feelings and to our chosen method of remedy. The norms that do generally apply, though, are employing the least coercive (most nonviolent) means practicable, discerning the most constructive response conceivable and engaging in a most compassionate & forgiving manner — all toward the end of that response being the most efficacious, spiritually, physically, emotionally and otherwise.
Importantly, though, when we are at play in the fields of the Lord rather than at work on our own selfish agenda, we are to gain our consolation & rest content with the process, with the sowing of the seed, and to absolutely refrain from getting preoccupied or emotionally overinvested with the product, the harvesting of the fruits of our labors. We are to — Let It Go.
As one discerns one’s calling as to whether or not to intervene or interdict in cases of injustice, consider:
Not every battle is mine to fight
Not every wrong is mine to right
Only with Godly counsel will I make my war
Not every issue requires my view
Not every task is mine to do
But in prayer I can abide
To be
engaged but not obsessed
inspired but not driven
spontaneous but not compulsive
at play in the fields of the Lord
not at work on my own agenda
This is much too brief a treatment of a very complex set of human realities. In that regard it could come across as superficial, even naïve or Pollyannaish. I promise you, though, it’s deeper than many ever go in either diagnosing what ails them and our world or in prescribing remedies therefor.
Consider reality’s “aboutness”es this way. A given aboutnesss refers to emergent degrees of novelty, each new level representing increasing degrees of freedom. Those various degrees are marked by manifold and multiform characteristics, like responsivity, adaptability, perdurance, behavioral plasticity and such.
At the level of fields (veld), quantum & maybe even more primitive fields, veldo-poietic conditions (initial, boundary & limit) exert teleo-potent influences (perhaps reality’s incipient teloi) and we might observe such as vacuum fluctuations, for example.
At the next level observed, cosmo-poietic conditions exert teleo-matic influences and we witness thermodynamic realities.
Bio-poietic conditions exert teleo-nomic influence on an emergent level of aboutnesses that we call life, where such as responsivity, adaptability & perdurance and more such novelties come on display.
Sentio-poietic conditions next exert teleo-qualic influence over a variety of sentient beings, at a level where we encounter the hard problem of consciousness and animal sentience.
Collectively, in creation, these above levels of interwoven initial, boundary & limit conditions comprise the vestigial Dei, the very fingerprints of God. We embrace them as reality’s lesser goods.
Made in the very image of God, the human person or imago Dei represents robustly teleo-logical influences in reality as sapio-poietic conditions influence a novel range of behaviors. The behaviors of this essential human natureexhibit an expansive aesthetic scope & intensity and warrant increasing practical responsibilities, as the young human person encounters reality’s lesser goods. This essential nature of the imago Dei can volitionally choose among various goods with a degree of abductive facility unknown to other animals, which rely on hard-wired abductive instincts, alone. By abductive, we refer to rudimentary hypothetical thinking or if-then computations.
What gifts the human person this truly novel abductive faculty is the unmooring of mere animal instinct by the arbitrary symbol systems of human communication. While these semiotic realities are beyond the scope of this presentation, the important take-away is that the human person as imago Dei already transcends all other semiotic realities even prior to the age of reason. This essential human nature, which chooses among life’s goods, volitionally enjoys an immensely rich aesthetic scope and intensity as a created co-creator. As such, it’s bestowed an absolute value and unalienable dignity of eternal import, which God wills to preserve in immortality. A person can therefore do nothing to forfeit the dignity or mar the value of his/her essential nature, nothing to lose the love of God. Parents well know this truth.
Beyond this aesthetic scope dimension of the human person’s essential nature as imago Dei, the human person’s radical finitude places reality’s goods in competition, often requiring practical choices or sacrifices, that is, not only a choosing among but between certain of life’s lesser goods. This epistemic and axiological distancing actually bootstraps a novel emergent freedom, opening the person to reality’s higher goods, thereby gifting increasing relational response-ability and warranting moral responsibility. This is to recognize that the volition of the essential nature of the human person no longer chooses only “among” reality’s lesser goods, as an imago Dei, but can choose to consider or not consider reality’s higher goods, effectively choosing “between” the lesser and higher goods.
The emergent relational & moral dimensions, whereby one grows ever more considerate or inconsiderate of reality’s higher goods in each act of willing, open the dimensions of one’s essential nature (including as vestigial & imago Dei) to the co-creative reality of an authentic secondary human nature, that “habitus” we refer to as a similitudino Dei or virtuous nature. Of course, one’s secondary nature may grow ever more inauthentic, too, with a vicious nature not at all in “likeness” to God even though irrevocably, at an essential level, always an image of God.
Due to our radical finitude, each class of human acts, whether as vestigia, imagines or similitudinae Dei (vestiges, images or likenesses of God) remain in limited not absolute potencies. Those acts might be considered, for example, as existing in potency to the vestigial Dei, efficiently willing in potency to a material imago Dei, formally acting in potency to a relational similitudino Dei.
In the context, then, of apokatastasis, minimalistically, each imago Dei enjoys immortality. In my view, every trace of human goodness enjoys immediate eternalization, including every beginning of a smile & all wholesome trivialities. Thus, so too every virtuous habitus would by the same logic enjoy eternalization, while any vicious secondary nature would warrant eternal annihilation, every crimson stain washed as white as snow.
What of punishment & purgation in eternity? As long as they’re proportional that violates no logic, for finite creatures enjoying only relative degrees of freedom & axiological beatitudes would warrant nothing absolute in the way of punishment.
What about God’s respect for the freedom of persons to cooperate or not with the graces gifted similitudinae Dei as they grow into ever more virtuous or vicious natures? In my view, the eternalization of every cooperation with grace precisely honors such freedom. The annihilation of every refusal to grow in intimacy similarly is in accord with same — not really constituting an actual occurrence or incident of existential negation, but — by virtue of one’s not co-cteatively willing that which would otherwise be subject to eternalization (i.e. the true, beautiful, good, liberative or unitive). All non-virtuous temporal acts passively retain their essentially ephemeral character & contribute to only an ephemeral aspect of one’s secondary nature.
What about the vestigia & imagines Dei, which act in limited potencies? Can’t those human dimensions so choose to forfeit their existential & material relationships to God? No, for those limited potencies do not include that type of volition. The question is thus nonsensical, anthropologically.
Perhaps rather than an essential universalism, as over against a practical one, I would better describe my own as a virtual universalism.
Either the essentialist or virtualist approach would deny predestinarianism & affirm the universal salvific will.
An essentialist might claim that apocatastasis should be dogmatically proclaimed since other positions are incoherent.
Contrastingly, a virtual universalism might suggest, with a suitable epistemic humility, that it should be accepted as a valid theological opinion, since its coherence, along with others’, can reasonably be argued.
What would distinguish the practical from the virtual stance, though, would be the belief that universal salvation might not only be hoped for but also professed by those who find it the most coherent position. That is they should neither be silenced nor labeled heretics, for the virtue of hope’s never a mere intellectualistic reality but a clear, vital existential disjunction. As such, hope as a virtue integral to faith & love, always invites one to holistically act as if thus & such (here, apocatastasis) is indeed the case!
As it is, while any determinism in DBH’s stance might be sufficiently soft, my own is much softer.
Universalism, itself, isn’t a monolithic position, so, room must be made for diverse opinions, anthropologically & theologically.
Metaphysically, we must resist proving too much. We shouldn’t pretend that we can somehow a priori and rationally unscramble reality’s epistemic-ontic omelet of in/determinacies. This is to recognize that we can’t always specify which of reality’s levels of aboutness and/or layers of aporia represent entities and processes that are variously in/determinable and/or in/determined and to what extent. Neither can we specify which of these are primitive and which emergent, as well as which are atomic and which aggregate.
A vague phenomenological survey does reveal different types of aboutness or teloi: teleopotent or veldopoietic, teleomatic or cosmopoietic, teleonomic or biopoietic, teleoqualic or sentiopoietic and teleologic or sapiopoietic.
Theologically, we must resist telling untellable stories, philosophically. We shouldn’t pretend that we can somehow a priori and rationally unscramble reality’s theological-metaphysical casserole of teloi. This is to recognize that we don’t know enough about reality’s initial, boundary and limit conditions to determine which of the prevailing equiplausible accounts is more probable (e.g. mereologically, which explanatory account necessarily commits or avoids a fallacy of composition).
From a high theoretical altitude, ignoring the cultivars (or weeds) of metaphysical nuance, those philosophical theological accounts essentially reduce to nihilism, pantheism, deism, panen-theism, pan-entheism and classical theism.
A nihilism can derive from either a thoroughgoing determined reality of primitives, forces & laws or a thoroughgoing indetermined reality of dynamical, energetic contingencies or even some blend of such necessity & contingency, pattern & paradox, order & chaos. In any case, such outlooks will unavoidably reduce to epistemic nominalism, evaluative voluntarism, normative relativism, interpretive skepticism and existential nihilism, at least, in terms of eternal & ultimate concerns. (Arguably, temporally & proximately, there most certainly can be evaluative & normative, including moral, realisms, as well as weak, epistemic foundationalisms.) Such outlooks remain inescapably brute vis a vis any PSR (principle of sufficient reason) in that they a priori suggest that reality as a whole might, some day, be sufficiently explained, i.e. by an exhaustive account of its parts, as well as ontologically in/determined.
The prevailing theistic accounts approach reality as – not brute, but – the fruit of an eminently personal deity, Who sufficiently explains as well as ontologically causes the whole of determinate reality.
Some are motivated to embrace one worldview versus another based on various indispensable methodological presuppositions like, for example, naturalism or a PSR (weak or strong versions). HOWEVER –
Just because naturalism is an indispensable methodological presupposition doesn’t mean it necessarily holds, metaphysically, it only means that we will be unfortunate if it does.
Just because some (weak) Principle of Sufficient Reason is an indispensable methodological presupposition doesn’t mean it necessarily holds, metaphysically, it only means that we will be unfortunate if it does not.
One opts for an ultimate nihilism or naturalism, deism or theism, then, with other than apodictic certainty and on other than a priori rational presuppositions or metaphysical foundations. Does that necessarily implicate an unavoidable fideism? No.
All human epistemology boils down, in my view, to a pragmatic, semiotic realism, which is essentially fallibilistic and consistent with a number of reasonable, even though contradictory, metaphysical accounts, including eminently defensible minority positions alongside more common-sensical majority positions and folk psychological approaches.
In my view, since a pragmatic semiotic realism accounts for most human value-realizations, no mere fideism need account for one’s leap of faith past an ultimate nihilism. Faced with otherwise equiplausible approaches to reality writ large that are both a/theologically consistent and metaphysically coherent, why not opt, existentially, for that approach to human value-realizations which is, ultimately & eternally, the most meaningful & least absurd, anthropologically?
And, especially, why not thus opt if there are reliable, credible, authoritative and trustworthy voices across millennia, who’ve given witness to such approaches, wherein & whereby certain human value-realizations have presented and which, moreover, have appeared to be effects otherwise proper to no known determinate causes? That’s not fideism but fides et ratio par excellence!
Anthropologically, then, I commend the stance of David Bentley Hart, which, from one perspective, might be portrayed in terms of a theological suite of apophatic eschewals, which negate
1) instrumental accounts of evil, suffering & pain
2) evidential theodicies
3) libertarianisms
4) compatibilisms
5) intellectualisms
6) voluntarisms
7) consequential (& instrumental) disproportionalities and
8) frozen human potentialities (limited potencies) post-mortem.
Systematically, while there are coherent accounts under classical theism, which can be sustained consistent with certain logical defenses regarding the problem of evil, in my view, unless one employs a nuanced incarnational divine omnipathy in that defense (as I’ve elaborated elsewhere), merely relying on such distinctions as divine antecedent & consequent wills and on such as privation theories to account for all evil just doesn’t render accounts that are sufficiently persuasive, rhetorically, or satisfying, existentially, to many minds & hearts because, however consistent they may be logically, they don’t square with our common sense & sensibilities vis a vis our quotidian personal interrelational dynamics. Others have well inventoried such shortcomings.
On the whole, though, a suitably nuanced version of a doctrine of divine simplicity will have much to commend it, especially if it properly distinguishes between the divine nature and will, between divine esse naturale and intentionale, allowing for a thin passibility and recognizing a wide Pareto front of equipoised optimalities (rather than any singular best world scenario). For their part, determinate realities would variously reflect vestigia, imagines & similitudines Dei, all with varying degrees of incipient teloi, intentionalities and freedom.
There could be a multiversal plurality of different tehomic, formless voids, each a prevenient & uncreated chaos, representing all manner of eternal and/or ephemeral teloi of varying degrees of in/determinedness, constituting structured (some more so & some less so) fields of activity, each inherently (although variously) receptive to all manner of divine invitations (creatio ex profundis) to participate in novel teloi (creatio ex nihilo).
Each new Imago Dei would be soteriologically eternalized (thus divinely & radically determined) and sophiologically poised for growth in intimacy as a Similitudino Dei (per one’s radically free response in every participatory space opened by divine kenotic indeterminacies).
Such an approach would remain phenomenologically vague, hence metaphysically agnostic. One couldn’t specify the precise nature of any tehomic chaos vis a vis, for example, its degrees of incipient telos, intentionality or freedom versus what novelty was introduced by the creative divine esse intentionale, beyond insisting that the latter, in terms of being, only ever introduces what’s ameliorative, therapeutic, invitatory & eternalizing, where truth, beauty, goodness, unity and freedom are concerned, all over against what would otherwise be metaphysically (inherently) unavoidable in the way of tehomic pain, suffering, natural evil and moral evil. The divine will would thereby always reveal that truth, beauty, goodness, unity and freedom greater than which could not otherwise be conceived without introducing metaphysical incoherence, theological contradiction or anthropological absurdity.
Such a dynamical, divine matrix (as that of Joe Bracken) in dialogue with classical theism and a personalist Thomism (as that of Norris Clarke) would escape the flirtations with nominalism & determinism that inhere in many process theisms.
Because my account remains metaphysically agnostic (e.g. vis a vis a given root metaphor), poised between process & classical approaches but inspired by Peirce’s pragmatic semiotic realism, I call it a Tehomic Pan-semio-entheism: creatio ex nihilo ex profundis.
It ambitions no metaphysic and no evidential theodicy, but offers a logical defense to the problems of pain, suffering and natural & moral evils. This would all be consistent with a radically, divinely determined, soteriological apokatastasis, where each Imago Dei enjoys an aesthetic freedom gifted by an emergent abductive inference, anthropologically, as well as with radically indetermined relational & moral freedoms, whereby each Similitudino Dei can grow in divine intimacy, sophiologically.
This is all more fully explicated in Retreblement.
Litanies of ad hominems betray the shrill rationalistic tenor Of the quod erat demonstranda some would serve for theo-dinner Where rogue Orthodox berate baroque Thomists and the Rad-O’s scold broke Scotists They’re all a burger short of a happy meal, just take the time to notice That they’re not strange bedfellows, at all, good ole Scotus and Palamas So, rather than Feser and Hart, when you put on your pajamas Take Bonaventure, Balthasar and Bulgakov to bed To nurture mind and heart and soul, more peaceably, instead!
I offer the above with tongue firmly planted in cheek, for, truth be known, I am deeply sympathetic to that chorus of DBH apologists, who, most every time he gifts us new reflections, commend the tenor of his ruminations, while begging our indulgence of the tone of his fulminations.
By temperament, I typically recoil from coercive rhetoric in an initial visceral reaction. But, I’ve slowly learned to be more discerning so as not to mute what may indeed be Spirit-inspired voices of prophetic protest, especially those coming from the ecclesial margins.
After all, I’ve bought-in to a Tradition that inherently nurtures a healthy self-criticality, even if, from a secular perspective, its corrective advances may seem way too glacial. But that’s always reflected a pace that’s more so been governed by an astute pastoral sensitivity, of practice, which remains appropriately attuned to the complex, dynamical & developmental nature of humankind’s manifold and multiform advances. This is to suggest that such a pace has in no way ever reflected a wholesale capitulation, of theory, to history’s otherwise vulgar zeitgeists.
Rather, to those with eyes to see and ears to hear, the seeds of truth, beauty, goodness, unity and freedom have long grown in this Tradition, even if certain shoots and fruits have, at times, sprung more visibly from the roots of our orchard’s margins. So as not to miss such a bountiful harvest, the Tradition has always nurtured a preferential option for the marginalized and has purposefully cultivated minority opinions, for example, whether of Franciscans, Scotists or Palamites, or the words of its Prophets, even those written on subway walls and tenement halls.
While our subsidiarity principles reflect a proper bias for the least coercive influences, they also precisely include any necessary escalations from softer to harder powers, when discerned, communally, with prudential reason. Such escalations can certainly include those of harsh rhetoric, which can take many forms, even if some seem more ostensible, e.g. scathing and/or acerbic criticisms, others more subtle, e.g. clamors for political correctness.
I’ve indulged my own highly coercive, rhetorical strategies over the years, no less impolitic, really, than those that might seem mean-spirited, by habitually resorting to an intemperate volubility, likely all the more off-putting due to my idiosyncratic, impenetrable prose. I don’t bring this up to invoke anyone’s indulgence on the off-chance I’m some prophet. But neither do I bring it up in mere passing, but rather by way of owning my shadow and publically apologizing to any and all ever affected by such an offense of charity. Introspectively, I know this has grown from some neurotic desire to make a difference and neurotic fear that I have not, what Merton described as a crisis of creativity. The other major crisis we all must resolve, per Merton, is that of continuity, i.e. death in all its forms and guises. So, point is, I am sorry and ask for everyone’s forgiveness.
Back to the main focus, so as to avoid any pretentiousness, it’s on entirely different grounds that I commend any indulgence of David Bentley Hart. He may not be perfect, only One Prophet ever was, but I do believe he’s one of the most important prophets of our times. And I encourage all those baptized as priests, prophets and kings, as well as all baptized by desire, to contribute to the conversation, which is about to escalate in the coming weeks. And don’t fail to contribute on any silly pretense that your contribution won’t be perfect, as if it ever could be. The conversation is too important and needs your voice — if not that of your head, then, perhaps even more importantly, that of your heart.
I know that much of the underlying tenor of DBH’s harsh rhetoric seems to betray a type of rationalistic preoccupation, as if one could merely logically and syllogistically get this all correct by merely thinking straight. But that analysis would be way off because, while good thinking remains indispensable per his appeal, he precisely adverts that such remains necessary but insufficient. Much of the tenor of the book, instead, he’s very deliberately aimed at our hearts regarding love and at our souls regarding beauty and at our instincts regarding goodness. Hart, in way better words than I could contrive, acknowledges that, finally, in my words, it will be on the wings of beauty and goodness, lifted by the Spirit’s winds of love, that truth will coming flying in. Those were my words but they came from Merton’s thoughts.
In conclusion, an abbreviated Litany of Humility:
Jesus, from the desire to be esteemed, exalted, consulted or celebrated, deliver me, Lord.
Jesus, from the fear of being ridiculed, insulted, corrected or humiliated, deliver me, Lord.
Jesus, that others may grow holier than me, grant me the grace to desire it, Lord, provided I may grow as holy as I should.
A Roundup of Relevant URLs regarding the upcoming release of That All Shall Be Saved by David Bentley Hart
Below, I’ve encountered no novel, serious objections to universal salvation that cannot be overcome or that could, in my view, disestablish it as a valid theological opinion. At the same time, DBH does prove too much in some of his categorical dismissals of other opinions.
Below is an unindexed, unannotated compilation of stuff that I think is worth pondering, even thought I don’t agree with it all:
From early reviews and liberal previews of David Bentley Hart’s That All Shall Be Saved it does not appear that DBH will be offering a sylly syllogism grounded in some neatly interwoven exegetical, philosophical argumentation, which pretends to prove too much. Rather, he will offer an informal, rhetorical appeal to our common sense & sensibilities, grounded in our messy shared experiences, respecting the analogical interval between anthropological & divine realities while paying dutiful heed to certain participatory efficacies. Those would include the joyous, luminous & glorious effects of which are proper to no known determinate causes, as they transcend the mysteries of all suffering & the realities of all sin. Protologically & proleptically those efficacies constitute all manner of incarnational guarantees, seals, earnests, down payments & first fruits. Yes, we realize them now, in part, hence, we confidently believe & mandatorily proclaim their utter fulfillment, eschatologically.
Below are interwoven threads of – not formal premises with coerced conclusions, but – shared human experiences and intuitions, which might weave a story, a tellable story, that would best resonate with the Greatest Story Ever Told. Below are my words, my interpretations, of what I imagine DBH to be saying. His rhetoric entices me, more like getting caught in a web of meaning, a tad tangled but happily so, less like getting caught in a trap of logic, where the axioms are supposedly self-evident (although anything but).
• God doesn’t need evil, suffering or pain. While those can be redeemed in His economy, any essential epistemic distancing can otherwise be closed via theosis. Hence we reject morally repugnant evidential theodicies, while satisfied with unavoidably vague logical defenses & sustained by robustly pastoral existential consolations.
• Those theotic processes don’t absolutely determine reality since they require the synergetic cooperation of freely acting human persons. Hence we reject compatibilisms.
• Human acts aren’t absolutely free; however, since all (trans-)formative processes, whether theotic or redemptive, are necessarily ordered toward truth, beauty, goodness & unity, our participations in same will grow that freedom, our practicing of same will grow virtuosity. Hence we reject libertarianisms.
• The will and intellect, respectively, as efficient acts in potency to material causes & formal acts in potency to final causes, are integrally related, in human volition. Hence we reject voluntarisms & intellectualisms.
• Our secondary natures, both virtuous and vicious, are situated between such acts (efficient & formal) and limited potentialities (material & final), reinforcing or impeding their telic realizations but never extinguishing those human potentials. Hence any notion of frozen potentialities, post mortem, is anthropologically incoherent.
• Human persons are often guilty of willful blindness or vincible ignorance. But as finite, fallible persons, we will never attain such an absolute knowledge of either temporal or divine realities, such that we could be absolutely culpable for any, much less all, remnants of our ignorance. Hence even a vincible ignorance could never warrant an absolute punishment, as that would be disproportionate to our inescapably finite offenses.
• It’s inconceivable that, given sufficient time, divine telic processes (theotic and/or redemptive) would not close enough epistemic distancing to situate every last person, beatifically, in proper relationship to God, others, cosmos & self as ordered toward truth, beauty, goodness & unity with an authentic freedom. Hence we can not only hope for but can be confidently assured that all may be saved.
If that last point sounds more like a tepid, practical, hopeful universalism, rather than a clarion, theoretic, dogmatic proclamation, I mean it more so as a virtual universalism.
Over against DBH’s complaint regarding some hopeful universalisms, let me suggest that not all taken to be paradox is necessarily intended to be exploited for its creative tensions. Some paradox we can resolve dialectically. Some eventually dissolves from paradigm shifts. And some paradox we simply evade, for all practical purposes, perhaps due to an intuitive reductio ad absurdum.
Conclusion – I’m drawn to this theological anthropology of DBH. Curiously, while it works well enough in a classical framework, especially when tweaked by a more personalist Thomism (e.g N. Clarke), I can also square it with a process approach (e.g. D. Griffin, Joe Bracken), particularly one that eschews nominalism. Likely this is due to the inherent adaptability of an informal narrative vs a strict argument.
In the final analysis, though, while I consider certain classical and process approaches to be legitimate opinions within the theological contours of the first seven or so ecumenical councils, I find a creatio ex nihilo ex chaos process approach to be more pastorally consoling, existentially satisfying and rhetorically persuasive than even Hart’s classical articulation.
Human persons are determined-enough to enjoy value-realizations and free-enough for those to be deeply meaningful.
So, to Einstein and the compatibilists, I reply: “Yes, God does play dice.”
And to the nihilists and libertarians we retort: “But they’re loaded.” Or, if not, still, at the very least, you must admit, they have only six sides.
To all, I’d observe: “One may, quietistically, refrain from playing and remain, essentially, an imago Dei. Or one may continue playing and, continuously crapping out, increasingly become an imago Similitudino.”
Divine Communications – musings regarding the participatable logoi
Note: Below, please do not be put off by my seeming reification of the divine essence. I should have written what’s below more artfully & rigorously, but please charitably interpret it within the context of my entire oeuvre until I take the time to rewrite it (as well as rewrite most everything else I’ve ever written, as this has never been my primary vocation, nor a discerned charism). What I am talking about, below, are personal acts, whether regarding the Monarchy of the Father (ur-kenotic) or the temporal Missions of the Spirit & Son (kenotic), and am observing which divine communications ensue pursuant to the divine nature and/or will.
Divine ur-kenosis of divine esse naturale gifts divine persons (nondeterminate being) participation in a mutual reciprocity of triune relationship (essence).
Analogously, divine kenosis of divine esse intentionale freely communicates Christ (self-determinate being) via both a theandric humanization and a theandric deification and also gifts determinate being (variously recognizable as vestigia, imagines and/or similitudines Dei) participation in divine realities (energies) via both universal and particular incarnational presences.
Some activities of the divine essence have been revealed via general and special revelation. Furthermore, certain divine attributes have even been divinely decreed as participatable (logoi).
I distinguish the ur-kenotic generativity from the kenotic creativity as analogous —not only because the former’s ad intra, the latter – ad extra, but — in order to emphasize that, while the logoi or energies are participatable by determinate being, the essence is not.
Further, while one might interpret special revelation as proclaiming that acts of divine communication (e.g. expression, disclosure, revelation, kenosis, etc all vaguely understood) are essential to the divine nature, their precise forms are not. That is to suggest that even if there’s no question regarding WHETHER & WHY divine communications are necessary per the divine nature, the to whom, what, where, when and how elements of same are freely determined per the divine will.
As divine communications go, then, it’s been revealed that ad intra generative communications are essential, while ad extra creative communications are freely willed.
There’s an ontological plurality of ad extra divine creative communications regarding both their precise natures and the various degrees of indeterminacy attendant to those ontological categories (per divine kenotic decrees). This is to recognize, then, that the actualizations or realizations of participatable divine logoi will be fulfilled differently by the vestigia Dei, imagines Dei & similitudines Dei of determinate being and also by the theandric humanization & deification of self-determinate divine being.
Is this to suggest that those divine logoi will not only be fulfilled differently but perhaps even to different degrees or extents? Which is also to ask whether they might be variously frustrated, whether temporally and/or eschatologically?
In my view, each Imago Dei necessarily realizes (and cannot frustrate) its divine logoi, whether temporally or eschatologically, while the perfect divine will allows each person to actualize whatever degree of Similitudino Dei to which s/he individually aspires, all of this consonant with God’s perfect nature & will and reflective of the perfect efficacies of all ad extra divine communications. In this last case, both the manner and degree of actualization that each Similitudino Dei realizes, beyond constituting a mere Cambridge property of the divine esse intentionale, will affect God’s will via a thin passibility, whereby a divine responsivity freely determines such actualizations & realizations per an infinite Pareto front (novel equipoised optimalities) of communicable Divine Eros, which varies in its aesthetic teleological scope, while remaining otherwise immutable in its eternally perfect aesthetic intensity. Analogous to this divine freedom, we might say that the human person’s essential nature, as an Imago Dei, enjoys a pre-moral erotic aesthetic scope, while any degree of a virtuous secondary nature, as a Similitudino Dei, enjoys an trans-moral agapic aesthetic scope, along with a commensurate degree of beatific aesthetic intensity.
Whether we so happen to magnify the Lord as Mary in our own fiats or otherwise give God AMDG, doesn’t variously affect but only variously reflects His perfect nature. The theandric humanization & deification, of course, fully realized the efficacies of every divine communication & communing.
Closing:
I began my life’s work in philosophical theology herein:
Note: Below, please do not be put off by my seeming reification of the divine essence. I should have written what’s below more artfully & rigorously, but please charitably interpret it within the context of my entire oeuvre until I take the time to rewrite it (as well as rewrite most everything else I’ve ever written, as this has never been my primary vocation, nor a discerned charism). What I am talking about, below, are personal acts, whether regarding the Monarchy of the Father (ur-kenotic) or the temporal Missions of the Spirit & Son (kenotic), and am observing which divine communications ensue pursuant to the divine nature and/or will.
Divine ur-kenosis of divine esse naturale gifts divine persons (nondeterminate being) participation in a mutual reciprocity of triune relationship (essence).
Analogously, divine kenosis of divine esse intentionale freely communicates Christ (self-determinate being) via both a theandric humanization and a theandric deification and also gifts determinate being (variously recognizable as vestigia, imagines and/or similitudines Dei) participation in divine realities (energies) via both universal and particular incarnational presences.
Some activities of the divine essence have been revealed via general and special revelation. Furthermore, certain divine attributes have even been divinely decreed as participatable (logoi).
I distinguish the ur-kenotic generativity from the kenotic creativity as analogous —not only because the former’s ad intra, the latter – ad extra, but — in order to emphasize that, while the logoi or energies are participatable by determinate being, the essence is not.
Further, while one might interpret special revelation as proclaiming that acts of divine communication (e.g. expression, disclosure, revelation, kenosis, etc all vaguely understood) are essential to the divine nature, their precise forms are not. That is to suggest that even if there’s no question regarding WHETHER & WHY divine communications are necessary per the divine nature, the to whom, what, where, when and how elements of same are freely determined per the divine will.
As divine communications go, then, it’s been revealed that ad intra generative communications are essential, while ad extra creative communications are freely willed.
There’s an ontological plurality of ad extra divine creative communications regarding both their precise natures and the various degrees of indeterminacy attendant to those ontological categories (per divine kenotic decrees). This is to recognize, then, that the actualizations or realizations of participatable divine logoi will be fulfilled differently by the vestigia Dei, imagines Dei & similitudines Dei of determinate being and also by the theandric humanization & deification of self-determinate divine being. Is this to suggest that those divine logoi will not only be fulfilled differently but perhaps even to different degrees or extents? Which is also to ask whether they might be variously frustrated, whether temporally and/or eschatologically?
In my view, each Imago Dei necessarily realizes (and cannot frustrate) its divine logoi, whether temporally or eschatologically, while the perfect divine will allows each person to actualize whatever degree of Similitudino Dei to which s/he individually aspires, all of this consonant with God’s perfect nature & will and reflective of the perfect efficacies of all ad extra divine communications. In this last case, both the manner and degree of actualization that each Similitudino Dei realizes, beyond constituting a mere Cambridge property of the divine esse intentionale, will affect God’s will via a thin passibility, whereby a divine responsivity freely determines such actualizations & realizations per an infinite Pareto front (novel equipoised optimalities) of communicable Divine Eros, which varies in its aesthetic teleological scope, while remaining otherwise immutable in its eternally perfect aesthetic intensity. Analogous to this divine freedom, we might say that the human person’s essential nature, as an Imago Dei, enjoys a pre-moral erotic aesthetic scope, while any degree of a virtuous secondary nature, as a Similitudino Dei, enjoys an trans-moral agapic aesthetic scope, along with a commensurate degree of beatific aesthetic intensity.
Whether we so happen to magnify the Lord as Mary in our own fiats or otherwise give God AMDG, doesn’t variously affect but only variously reflects His perfect nature.
The theandric humanization & deification, of course, fully realized the efficacies of every divine communication & communing.
A Roundup of Relevant URLs
I’ve encountered no novel, serious objections to universal salvation that cannot be overcome or that could, in my view, disestablish it as a valid theological opinion. At the same time, DBH proves too much in some of his categorical dismissals of other opinions.
Below is an unindexed, unannotated compilation of stuff that I think is worth pondering, even thought I don’t agree with it all:
About that Recent Seismic Activity in the Vicinities of Athos & Athens
Litanies of ad hominems betray the shrill rationalistic tenor Of the quod erat demonstranda some would serve for theo-dinner Where rogue Orthodox berate baroque Thomists and the Rad-O’s scold broke Scotists They’re all a burger short of a happy meal, just take the time to notice That they’re not strange bedfellows, at all, good ole Scotus and Palamas So, rather than Feser and Hart, when you put on your pajamas Take Bonaventure, Balthasar and Bulgakov to bed To nurture mind and heart and soul, more peacably, instead!
I offer the above with tongue firmly planted in cheek, for, truth be known, I am deeply sympathetic to that chorus of DBH apologists, who, most every time he gifts us new reflections, commend the tenor of his ruminations, while begging our indulgence of the tone of his fulminations.
By temperament, I typically recoil from coercive rhetoric in an initial visceral reaction. But, I’ve slowly learned to be more discerning so as not to mute what may indeed be Spirit-inspired voices of prophetic protest, especially those coming from the ecclesial margins.
After all, I’ve bought-in to a Tradition that inherently nurtures a healthy self-criticality, even if, from a secular perspective, its corrective advances may seem way too glacial. But that’s always reflected a pace that’s more so been governed by an astute pastoral sensitivity, of practice, which remains appropriately attuned to the complex, dynamical & developmental nature of humankind’s manifold and multiform advances. This is to suggest that such a pace has in no way ever reflected a wholesale capitulation, of theory, to history’s otherwise vulgar zeitgeists.
Rather, to those with eyes to see and ears to hear, the seeds of truth, beauty, goodness, unity and freedom have long grown in this Tradition, even if certain shoots and fruits have, at times, sprung more visibly from the roots of our orchard’s margins. So as not to miss such a bountiful harvest, the Tradition has always nurtured a preferential option for the marginalized and has purposefully cultivated minority opinions, for example, whether of Franciscans, Scotists or Palamites, or the words of its Prophets, even those written on subway walls and tenement halls.
While our subsidiarity principles reflect a proper bias for the least coercive influences, they also precisely include any necessary escalations from softer to harder powers, when discerned, communally, with prudential reason. Such escalations can certainly include those of harsh rhetoric, which can take many forms, even if some seem more ostensible, e.g. scathing and/or acerbic criticisms, others more subtle, e.g. clamors for political correctness.
I’ve indulged my own highly coercive, rhetorical strategies over the years, no less impolitic, really, than those that might seem mean-spirited, by habitually resorting to an intemperate volubility, likely all the more off-putting due to my idiosyncratic, impenetrable prose. I don’t bring this up to invoke anyone’s indulgence on the off-chance I’m some prophet. But neither do I bring it up in mere passing, but rather by way of owning my shadow and publically apologizing to any and all ever affected by such an offense of charity.
Introspectively, I know this has grown from some neurotic desire to make a difference and neurotic fear that I have not, what Merton described as a crisis of creativity. The other major crisis we all must resolve, per Merton, is that of continuity, i.e. death in all its forms and guises. So, point is, I am sorry and ask for everyone’s forgiveness.
Back to the main focus, so as to avoid any pretentiousness, it’s on entirely different grounds that I commend any indulgence of David Bentley Hart. He may not be perfect, only One Prophet ever was, but I do believe he’s one of the most important prophets of our times. And I encourage all those baptized as priests, prophets and kings, as well as all baptized by desire, to contribute to the conversation, which is about to escalate in the coming weeks. And don’t fail to contribute on any silly pretense that your contribution won’t be perfect, as if it ever could be. The conversation is too important and needs your voice — if not that of your head, then, perhaps even more importantly, that of your heart.
I know that much of the underlying tenor of DBH’s harsh rhetoric seems to betray a type of rationalistic preoccupation, as if one could merely logically and syllogistically get this all correct by merely thinking straight. But that analysis would be way off because, while good thinking remains indispensable per his appeal, he precisely adverts that such remains necessary but insufficient. Much of the tenor of the book, instead, he’s very deliberately aimed at our hearts regarding love and at our souls regarding beauty and at our instincts regarding goodness. Hart, in way better words than I could contrive, acknowledges that, finally, in my words, it will be on the wings of beauty and goodness, lifted by the Spirit’s winds of love, that truth will coming flying in. Those were my words but they came from Merton’s thoughts.
In conclusion, an abbreviated Litany of Humility:
Jesus, from the desire to be esteemed, exalted, consulted or celebrated, deliver me, Lord.
Jesus, from the fear of being ridiculed, insulted, corrected or humiliated, deliver me, Lord.
Jesus, that others may grow holier than me, grant me the grace to desire it, Lord, provided I may grow as holy as I should.
it does not appear that DBH will be offering a sylly syllogism grounded in some neatly interwoven exegetical, philosophical argumentation, which pretends to prove too much.
Rather, he will offer an informal, rhetorical appeal to our common sense & sensibilities, grounded in our messy shared experiences, respecting the analogical interval between anthropological & divine realities while paying dutiful heed to certain participatory efficacies. Those would include the joyous, luminous & glorious effects of which are proper to no known determinate causes, as they transcend the mysteries of all suffering & the realities of all sin. Protologically & proleptically those efficacies constitute all manner of incarnational guarantees, seals, earnests, down payments & first fruits. Yes, we realize them now, in part, hence, we confidently believe & mandatorily proclaim their utter fulfillment eschatologically.
Below are interwoven threads of – not formal premises with coerced conclusions, but – shared human experiences and intuitions, which might weave a story, a tellable story, that would best resonate with the Greatest Story Ever Told.
Below are my words, my interpretations, of what I imagine DBH to be saying. His rhetoric entices me, more like getting caught in a web of meaning, a tad tangled but happily so, less like getting caught in a trap of logic, where the axioms are supposedly self-evident, although anything but.
God doesn’t need evil, suffering or pain. While those can be redeemed in His economy, any essential epistemic distancing can otherwise be closed via theosis. [Hence we reject morally repugnant evidential theodicies, while satisfied with unavoidably vague logical defenses & sustained by robustly pastoral existential consolations.]
Those theotic processes don’t absolutely determine reality since they require the synergetic cooperation of freely acting human persons. [Hence we reject compatibilisms.]
Human acts aren’t absolutely free; however, since all (trans-)formative processes, whether theotic or redemptive, are necessarily ordered toward truth, beauty, goodness & unity, our participations in same will grow that freedom, our practicing of same will grow virtuosity. [Hence we reject libertarianisms.]
The will and intellect, respectively, as efficient acts in potency to material causes & formal acts in potency to final causes, are integrally related, in human volition. [Hence we reject voluntarisms & intellectualisms.]
Our secondary natures, both virtuous and vicious, are situated between such acts (efficient & formal) and limited potentialities (material & final), reinforcing or impeding their telic realizations but never extinguishing those human potentials. [Hence any notion of frozen potentialities, post mortem, is anthropologically incoherent.]
Human persons are often guilty of willful blindness or vincible ignorance. But as finite, fallible persons, we will never attain such an absolute knowledge of either temporal or divine realities, such that we could be absolutely culpable for any, much less all, remnants of our ignorance. [Hence even a vincible ignorance could never warrant an absolute punishment, as that would be disproportionate to our inescapably finite offenses.]
It’s inconceivable that, given sufficient time, divine telic processes (theotic and/or redemptive) would not close enough epistemic distancing to situate every last person, beatifically, in proper relationship to God, others, cosmos & self as ordered toward truth, beauty, goodness & unity with an authentic freedom. [Hence we can not only hope for but can be confidently assured that all may be saved.]
Conclusion – I’m drawn to this theological anthropology of DBH. Curiously, while it works well enough in a classical framework, especially when tweaked by a more personalist Thomism (e.g N. Clarke), I can also square it with a process approach (e.g. D. Griffin, Joe Bracken), particularly one that eschews nominalism. Likely this is due to the inherent adaptability of an informal narrative vs a strict argument.
In the final analysis, though, while I consider certain classical and process approaches to be legitimate opinions within the theological contours of the first seven or so ecumenical councils, I find a creatio ex nihilo ex chaos process approach to be more pastorally consoling, existentially satisfying and rhetorically persuasive than even Hart’s classical articulation.
Human persons are determined-enough to enjoy value-realizations and free-enough for those to be deeply meaningful.
So, to Einstein and the compatibilists, I reply: “Yes, God does play dice.”
And to the nihilists and libertarians we retort: “But they’re loaded.”
To all, I’d observe: “One may, quietistically, refrain from playing and remain, essentially, an imago Dei. Or one may continue playing and, crapping out, increasingly become an imago Similitudino.”
February 2020
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