As far as “nothingness” goes, most would probably expect a chunk from the Mystical Theology, but I prefer to pull from The Divine Names for the more systematic questions. In ch 1, Denys lays out the theurgical nature of his project: all of this, he says, ultimately comes down to the incarnational call of the Trinity to us, that we “rise up to it.” So, all the ontology, the hermeneutics, the trinitarian theory, etc… is for the greater end of theosis. Sometimes I wonder if Denys thinks that the best thing to do is become a monk. Anyway, the theurgic end of all theology is important to keep in mind when trying to understand what Denys does next with the Trinity.

The short term goal of the Divine Names is to lay out the way in which our names for God actually do or do not refer (or cohere – whichever anachronistic hermeneutic you want to sock him with) to God. The problem is, we’re not actually referring to “some-thing”. There is no X that marks God’s spot, at least, not in any way that could be grasped by finite beings. And here is the great similarity to the discussion about Aron’s post. I’ll end with these quotes.

We leave behind us all notions of the divine. We call a halt to the activities of our minds and, to the extent that is proper, we approach the ray which transcends being. Here, in a manner no words can describe, preexisted all the goals of all knowledge and it is of a kind that neither intelligence nor speech can lay hold of it nor can it at all be contemplated since it surpasses everything and is wholly beyond our capacity to know it… And if all knowledge is of that which is and is limited to the realm of the existent, then whatever transcendsbeing must also transcend knowledge.

How then can we speak of the divine names? How can we do this is the Transcendent surpasses all discourse and all knowledge, if it abides beyond the read of mind and of being…? How can we enter upon this undertaking if the Godhead is superior to being and is unspeakable and unnameable?….

…Since the union of divinized minds with the Light beyond all deity occurs in the cessation of all intelligent activity, [then] the godlike unified minds who imitate these angels as far as possible praise it most appropriately through the denial of all beings.¹

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1. from The Divine Names, Ch 1, PG 592D-593C, trans. Colm Luibheid (Paulist Press, 1987)

This poem came out of studying The Cappadocians, three men and one woman who were 4th centery Eastern, Greek speaking xtians who had a huge part in the formation of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. They were affirming the goodness of Creation in the midst of all the muck and dung that we seem to endlessly make out of our lives and world. This has often been a great struggle for me. So there are Hebrew and Greek words referring to various human, social realities. Nietzsche has breathed in my ear in times of agnostic, nihilistic struggle in the past so he shows up dueling with Macrina. I wrote it during a rain storm outside the GF Java Cafe in my hometown of Jamestown, TN.

Like Mercy

“Sweet Rain…like God’s own Mercy…”

What exactly is the connection, the connection between a world of harmonic order and a world of suffering, decay…death?

The rain pours upon the earth, invading but belonging in every pore, awakening parched roots. Dry and dead now leap for joy, springing to the sky

Water pours upon the earth, dancing and splattering…splattering/dancing…dattering splancing upon the streets, rolling over pavement, falling over steps in the ever-moving niagra of spinning cosmos

Water…one of those fundamental elements…rolls over and into the pores of earth and…and thunder rolls, lightening strikes

Harmony or discord?

Walls fall, lifeless bodies collapse down the collapsing hills of collapsing houses of collapsing earth. Lifeless bodies of deer and cattle and dogs and cats and Adam and…and it would’ve been a damn good time to be a fish

Soul rolls over and into the pores of Adam, ish and isha, man and woman, mother and son, son and sister and father and neighbor and polis and oikos and agora and oikonomia and…creation…and out of the Alpha Rhythms of participatory love bodies are enraptured, so babies are born in the midst of heroic words like “till death do us part.” Homes are built, gardens are planted. Games are played while laughter is shared. Songs are sung and enraptured bodies move to the rhythms of the dance

Pointing and jumping, laughing I scream “look! Look! LOOK! Harmonic order!”

Soul rolls over and into the pores of Adam and all the ways and webs of the knitting together of Adam and…and reputations fail, economies collapse as bodies collapse as families collapse as marriages crumble as children collapse as cities collapse and as lies are told lust takes over, giving forth torture and greed, hunger and rape, famine and coldness

All of a sudden that madman runing through the streets that night with the silly mustache shouting” God is dead and we have killed him” seems not so far from of right. Adam seems to care much more about power games than love games…and people are torn and lives collapse and…and it still would’ve been a damn good time to be a fish!

Harmony or discord? What is the connection?

This fish feels the jaws surround and the darkness elbow out the light

And in the darkness I hear Macrina sing, pointing, shouting, jumping up and down, “look! Look! LOOK! Harmonic order envelopes chaos. There is not beginning, no arche, without an end, a telos.” And her voice echoes

“Get up Lazarus”

“Shall these bones live?”

“Where oh death is thy sting?”

“The heavens are telling”

“He is not here, he is risen”

“Sweet rain…like God’s own Mercy..Mercy that upholds it because it is good. It is fallen but it is good…

Discord or Harmony?

Macrina I hope like hell you are right because…because the deaf want to hear, the lame want to leap, the dead want to live and…and I am just so fucking tired of wanting to be a fish…Amen

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By Joshua Delpech-Ramey (The Land of Unlikeness)

The question Janet raises about whether Renaissance humanism, as found in Pico and Bruno, is really human enough, is very important to think through in terms of what we could call the application of sophiology in contemporary culture.

Pico’s emphasis on the polyvalent or indeterminate status of the human essence is not so much opposed to the Augustinian duality of divinity/humanity as the defining feature of human life as it is a setting of that duality in an epistemological situation that has complexified.  Augustine was adroitly skeptical about tying theology to the current dogmas of natural inquiry, whether it be inquiry about the difference between animals and humans or about the number of fixed stars or about any other subject of natural knowledge, including Biblical interpretation, where he advised much more caution about fixing the meaning of Biblical sense than future commentators would. Augustine’s is a profound hedge against the scholastic tendency to attempt to correlate too closely the realms of natural and supernatural reality (or to endlessly speculate on the border between philosophy and the sciences on the one hand, and theology on the other, ad nauseum).  What emerges from Nicholas of Cusa to Bruno is Augustinianism (and Neo-Platonism) in a more speculative approach to natural knowledge, one that blurs the distinction between natural and supernatural modes of apprehension, from within natural philosophy.  In other words, we in some sense –give up- the quest to know the border between divinity and humanity, in general, in order to explore its potential presence, in particular, beyond pre-conceived construals of its limits (even without taking the dynamics of self-consciousness as paradigmatic, as Augustine did in On the Trinity).  So it is not Augustinian skepticism about the limits of human reason that maintains our openness to knowing that we are known by God, but rather it is an experimental use of reason itself that breaks onto the terrain of the transcendent (the very same territory of transcendence Augustine preserved against the positivisms of his day).

This move has enormous practical consequences for spirituality and for science—consequences I think that Bulgakov desires us to discover from sophiology.  Magic was an important spiritual practice for the Renaissance, and perhaps was the paradigmatic spiritual discipline (as opposed to contemplative prayer, for instance), because it more fully situates cosmological dynamics within the mystery of the incarnation and the sacraments.  In Neo-Platonic terms, we discover the One in the All rather than in contmplative Nous.  What appears as an overly heroic, even stoic kind of humanity in Pico and Bruno is in a way just the desire to discover not only the self but the world in God, and this requires a certain foregoing of the psychological, interpersonal emphasis of traditional Augustinianism.  But what is interesting is that the emotional registers of Augustine are not so much rejected or abandoned, but rather pro-jected into a vision of an “impersonal” dynamic of becoming that, as Absolute, finally reveals genuine Personality but in the ultimate form of that Adam Kadmon or Cosmic Humanity that truly unites us across the divisions of ego, isolate consciousness, personal history, linguistic difference.

This is why I believe that the great visions of a post-human subjectivity, an impersonal or pre-personal form of trans-human being in Nietzsche, Bataille, Foucault, and Deleuze, among others, is no simple nihilism or quest to “outrun” the melancholy self. In an uncanny way the anti-humanism of post-Nietzschean philosophy has profound resonances with Renaissance humanism, accurately understood.  These more recent thinkers proclaim the death of God only to emphasize the death of any pre-conceived limit to the human, in order to emphasize the radically transpersonal and trans-finite (to that which is not locked within the strictures of consiousness).  Their subversive systems undermine the Victorian, bourgeoise, and Enlightenment liberal strictures put upon human life, and thus they link up once again with pre-modern archaic trust in a profound affinity of the self with the cosmos, one that embraces more of its dangers, risks, and seemingly chaotic elements than modern paradigms have been willing to do.  Or one might say that modernity incessantly allows for a minimal degree of chaos in order to survey and control it to the maximum degree.

A wilder science, a more natural religion . . . a kind of magic.  A more primitive or “basic” relationship with the elements. All driven by faith, hope, and love, where these terms lose their “all too human” resonances and begin to echo within the unknown of nature itself, in our affinity with that which we are “not” only because we participate in the All.  In the end, still an Augustinianism, but one that has become less of an autobiography and more of a tale of science fiction:  less TS Eliot and more Philip K Dick.  That is where, I would say, modern magic seeks out Sophia, and reconnects with Renaissance ambitions.  Our Sophia plays at the border between madness and desire, between delirium and hope, between despair and longing for that divine flesh so redolent and yet so elusive everywhere around us.

If according to Bulgakov this humanism is still pagan, this may be precisely because Christianity has yet to fully claim its status as -the- vindicator of pagan instincts—a project Bulgakov’s own Sophiology could finally help begin to complete.

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So, here’s my presentation from this year’s AAR MidAtlantic Regional conference. This is pretty much the same paper that Cynthia posted on Per Caritatem a couple months ago – Thanks again, Cynthia! I had a great response in the Q&A time, but failed to record it. Anyway, let us know what you think about all this podcasting stuff. I’m thinking about getting a better mic than the one that comes with the macbook, but would like to know if this stuff is relevant or even helpful to the lot of you before I invest in it.

Cheers,

Dan

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The whole thing goes back further than Aquinas, even to Augustine in passages like his Letters XCII and CXLVII (De Videndo Deo). The following is from Letter XCII.

And we shall become the more like unto Him, the more we advance in knowledge of Him and in love; because “though our outward man perish, our inward man is renewed day by day,”³ yet so as that, however far one may have become advanced in this life, he is far short of that perfection of likeness which is fitted for seeing God, as the apostle says, “face to face.”⁴

In Aquinas – I’m most familiar with his Summa Contra Gentiles right now – we get the clear statement that the final, or ultimate, end of humans is not natural but supernatural; of course, this is a highly contested point. Whereas Aristotle had defined the end of a nature as that which is proportionate to the nature – for there can be no frustrated nature⁵ – Aquinas now tells us that the destiny of human nature lies in God.

IF then human happiness does not consist in the knowledge of God whereby He is commonly known by all or most men according to some vague estimate, nor again in the knowledge of God whereby He is known demonstratively in speculative science, nor in the knowledge of God whereby He is known by faith, as has been shown above (Chapp. XXXVIII-XL); if again it is impossible in this life to arrive at a higher knowledge of God so as to know Him in His essence, or to understand other pure spirits, and thereby attain to a nearer knowledge of God (Chapp. XLI-XLVI); and still final happiness must be placed in some knowledge of God (Ch. XXXVII); it follows that it is impossible for the final happiness of man to be in this life.⁶

Rahner’s entrance to this debate comes through his exposition of the transcendence of being. Whereas Aquinas was preoccupied with explaining the beatific vision by way of Aristotle’s work on the soul and nature, for Rahner the problem had taken on new dimensions in the aftermath of Pius XII’s encyclical supposedly issued in reaction to de Lubac’s Surnaturel. Humani Generis declared that not only could “the intellect … in some way perceive higher goods of the moral order…”⁷ but fie to them that

hold that the function of these two sciences [theodicy and ethics] is not to prove with certitude anything about God or any other transcendental being, but rather to show that the truths which faith teaches about a personal God and about His precepts, are perfectly consistent with the necessities of life and are therefore to be accepted by all, in order to avoid despair and to attain eternal salvation.⁸

So, Rahner needed to find a way to connect what was largely perceived to be a gross separation between theology and philosophy, describe the relevant relationship between nature and grace, and do all that without compromising the teaching of the church, the autonomy of nature, and the gratuitousness of grace.

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1. no, not you scott. You’re “scotian” or “scotusian”
2. Gaudium et Spes 22
3. II Cor. 4:6
4. I Cor. 8:12
5. Although, Aquinas points out that Aristotle left an opening for what he was now undertaking: “But it may be replied that whereas happiness is the good of an intelligent nature, true and perfect happiness belongs to those in whom intelligent nature is found in its perfection, that is, in pure spirits;but in man it is found imperfectly by way of a limited participation. And this seems to have been the mind of Aristotle: hence, enquiring whether misfortunes take away happiness, after showing that happiness lies in virtuous activities, which are the most permanent things in this life, he concludes that they who enjoy such perfection in this life are ‘happy for men,’ meaning that they do not absolutely attain happiness, but only in a human way.” (Summa Contra Gentiles, III. 48. 8 paragraph 2)
6. Summa Contra Gentiles, III. 48. 1
7. Humani Generis, 33
8. Humani Generis, 34

The problem is how to conceive of the relationship between the Christian faith and philosophy. Lubac early on dismissed grounding the language of faith in Philosophy. He was also uncomfortable with the idea that philosophy can retain autonomy, yet all the while receiving contributions from the Faith. Rather, it is in the very essence of thought and reason to be open, not closed, constantly drawn forward and refreshed by faith. Philosophy can not help but be indelibly altered by its interaction with faith. Indeed, as Lubac affirms at the end of the article, within the deep structure of reason is the tectonic movement of the supernatural. But, Christian philosophy as it was then conceived was so constituted by an image of a reason hermetically sealed that there was no place for the mystery of the supernatural. The mystery could not be allowed to “fertilize” the soil of reason. Philosophers maintained the sphere of pure nature as the ground of philosophy.

The last third of Lubac’s article deals with re-conceiving the model of philosophy, a “philosophy of insufficiency”, as a fecund environment for Supernatural, one which fosters a “sense of the sacred.” Before laying out his own solution, Lubac first offers a kind of typology of the then current alternatives to what Balthasar called the dry and dusty Scholasticism of the seminaries, which some have characterized as rehashed Suarezianism¹. In the middle, the thomistic scholar, Jacques Maritain, rejects the idea of a “Christian” philosophy, insisting instead that consanguinities between Christianity and philosophy are merely felicitous, but not necessary. Philosophy’s purview is the natural order, as it appears to the philosopher “before” Revelation proper. To Maritain’s side is Gilson’s model: “Revelation is the generator of reason”, and therefore philosophy is by nature post-Christian. On the other side, Blondel thinks philosophy is pre-Christian, holding on to pure-rationality, not yet acknowledging the supernatural, not yet opening itself to Christianity. But all three, Lubac points out, would wish just as well to be done with the question of Christian philosophy as there’s not unified whole for one to point to and call THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY, “if one means by this… a system of though, born of the roots and of the essence of the fundamental Christian experience…”²

Philosophy is:
Blondel: pre-Christian: philosophy will in the end open itself to the supernatural
Maritain: not Christian at all: similarities are not indications of identity
Gilson: post-Christian: philosophy proceeds from what it receives by Revelation

Lubac asks, “Isn’t there nevertheless some other way of defining Christian philosophy, some way which does not reflect the ways we have just described, but which would instead establish itself in their wake, thus coming closer to the unity we seek?”³ One approach, the traditional one, says Lubac, presents itself: Christian philosophy as “the synthesis of all knowledge, operating in the light of faith”. However, the difficulty here is in both articulating philosophy as a primal wonder at being and/or returning philosophy to some pre-Thomistic state, in which Christian philosophers would reject the modern tenet of reason’s necessary independence from faith. Sertillanges objects that this can not and should not be done, for it would result in philosophy removing itself from the world.

Lubac goes further than Sertillages and questions whether or not understanding the essence of philosophy requires an autonomous reason at all. As Blondel has demonstrated, there is within the structure of reason a telos, a necessity to indict itself as insufficient to complete the task and adopt the monastic habit, devote itself to prayer and reflection on the supernatural. Yet, Lubac pushes further and declares that the monastery is not enough. Reason, in turning to the supernatural gains an ally and is “reborn” into a “heteronomy…[which] gives it more than it ever had alone.”⁴

Reason, thus newly equipped by faith, begins a “renaissance.” In the words of Rousselott, reason now re-approaches the world with the Yeux de la foi to “interpret” not only the “truths of the superatural order”, but also “the visible world and natural being.”⁴ Lubac perceives that some will ask here if Rousselot is not describing philosophy but theology. Indeed, theology as some would ideally conceive of it would carry on such a task. But theology as it is,

and especially since the sixteenth century, [has] evoked a more specialized knowledge, having its own life, object, and proper methodology often on the fringes of philosophical currents. It is no longer exactly the understanding of faith (an expression whose sense has itself evolved), and it is still much less an understanding by faith, an intellectual synthesis operating under faith’s light… Today, in fact, ‘theology’ is the science of revealed truths; it is not (or only very little, and then by external intervention) the science of all things in their final reasons under the light of faith. If we do not have a special word to designate this final science, is it not because it no longer corresponds to much of our thought? In drawing our attention, the debate on Christian philosophy does us an extraordinary service.

Lubac concludes by demonstrating his proposal for philosophy and includes an examination of Gabriel Marcel’s own philosophical project. As philosophy examines that which is given, it surely examines experience. One way in which Revelation contributes to reason is by deepening the very category of experience. “And through this, at once, nova sunt onmia [sic]… It is no longer only a question of a certain number of revealed truths that reason will bit by bit rationalize… it is now a question of mystery… which above all plunges into the human spirit to illuminate certain unperceived depths.”⁵ Lubac delves further into the character of the supernatural’s illumination of the spirit. The first aspect or end of the supernatural in the human spirit is the development of dogma. The second aspect is the development “of human thought” in history. “In the image of God himself, truth is instead a spring which makes other springs gush forth…”⁶

Here Lubac finds felicity with Marcel’s project. Marcel defines a Christian philosophy as one that begins with the givenness of the Incarnation and draws from, meditates on, and “embraces” it “with a boundless gratitude and without restraint.”⁷ Marcel rejects the idea, popular with some, that philosophy must begin with that, and only with that, which is universally given directly to human experience. This is an “illusion” and a “castration” of experience. There is no “philosophy without presupposition.”⁷ Lubac is quick to point out that Marcel is not here denying the category of the universal, or worse embracing a relativism. Rather, it is an acknowledgment of the historical character of thought not as a barrier to truth but as a “creative force”.⁸ Indeed, precisely because thought is characterized by “duration” and “obligation” one cannot ignore the 2 millennia behind Christian thought. Neither can one ignore “that within his reason itself the philosopher is no longer the same as he was before.” And here, Lubac poses a very interesting question from Marcel: “…the most important problem… will be ‘to seek how this fertilization by dogma [in the thought of the philosopher] is possible.’”⁸

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1. bear in mind that by this point Thomism and generally all of Catholic philosophy and theology has been evacuated from the university
2. Lubac, 497
3. Ibid.
4. 498
5. 500
6. 501
7. 502
8. 503

Hall begins by elucidating the “natural order” or the phenomenal world, in which certain observable “laws” or regulating forces maintain a uniformity of experience. However, this uniformity must not mislead one to believe that this is an eternal or everlasting cosmos, as neither science can prove nor revelation attests to such. Rather, revelation states that “this order will, in due time, give place to a new one.” Moreover, the phenomenal world has seen the breaking in of miracles and the supernatural, as testified to by the ancients’ preoccupation with the uniformity of the supernatural long before interest in natural laws grew. “Theological science is more ancient than physical science—in fact, the mother of it.” As such, Hall posits the following division of disciplines:

So long as natural science confines itself to the investigation of nature as such, and theological science to the theistic and spiritual interpretation of facts undeniably established, there can be no conflict. But when natural scientists undertake to advance theological interpretations of their results, a collision is apt to occur between their crude speculations and more mature Theology. And when theologians continue to rely upon exploded views of nature, basing theological speculations upon them, a conflict occurs between out-of-date and up-to-date natural science. As Dr. Pusey says, unscience, not science, is adverse to Faith.

Reason and faith, then, are both important in the theological project. Reason according to Hall is “an intellectual process making for the acquisition of truth… invariably conditioned in its exercise by the will and affections.” Faith, while having several different modes, is here “a department of reason, although dependant upon supernatural grace… the spiritual faculty by which we discern spiritual things.” Thus, being an exercise of reason, “the laws of human reason hold good.” Grace becomes important to Hall here, in that grace is vital to one’s very ability to grasp supernatural knowledge. Consequently, he grants a special place to the sacraments inasmuch as they expose one to grace. Access to grace through faith is most evident in the common statements of faith embraced by the “Greek, Latin, and Anglican (churches)… with but slight verbal variations and with the same meaning… significant, in view of the diversity of races and usages which exists, and the age-long mutual hostility which has prevailed. Such consent is not to be found elsewhere.” Rationalism, then, is not some pure form of access to reason, but is a crippled endeavor simply by virtue of its prima facie rejection of ecclesial authority.

While it seems that Hall’s definition of natural and supernatural probably got a lot of mileage, particularly among more technologically or scientifically minded Christians (Janet comments on this is a previous posting’s comment section), and maybe I’m even detecting a hint of CS Lewis’ Miracles, his language is ultimately uncompelling and rather flat to me. I’m especially uneasy about his division of territory between science and theology. This is possibly due to Hall attempting to hedge the claims of science, and my nostalgia for cosmologies like Maximus’, in which a theological understanding of the world not only precedes but informs a natural one, in which there is no comprehensive understanding of the natural world that does not flow from an initial engagement with that world’s creator. Furthermore, while he tries to ward off the notion of an universal scientific reason, his separation of powers between science and theology seem to grant that there is a space apart from theology in which a kind of positivist and exhaustive scientific knowledge is possible. Of course, it now is commonplace to reject such notions almost entirely on their naivete toward the place of interpretation in all things, scientific or theological. Similarly, one could ask exactly what Hall means by a natural order, and whether investigation of such includes ontology. He certainly isn’t clear as to how broad or narrow he expects the study of the natural order to be, but philosophers might make a convincing case for their autonomy under Hall’s system. Conversely, if anthropology and ontology are theological topics, or at least not wholly secular disciplines, then Hall’s secular science will be surely lacking in its exercise. My thomist friends can probably spell out for me how Thomas answers many of these questions, and I probably should point you all to this book as it helped me flesh a little bit of this out for myself as I was typing this post.

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