Per Walker Percy, the 1) analytical and 2) empirical, if necessary, are not sufcient for

Gospel value-realizations.
These distinctions bring to mind Percys essay: Message in a Bottle. Percy was not
satised with only analytical (including propositional, predicate and modal logics) and
empirical approaches to information, so he insisted also on 3) an existential or
performative category, which drew on the distinction between knowledge and NEWS.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Message_in_the_Bottle
I am reminded, here, of Eugene Petersons pastoral reections on the human
participatory imagination:
"We have Jesus as the centerpiece of what were doing, but he almost never talked in
terms of explaining. He was always using enigmatic stories and difcult metaphors. He
was always pulling people into some kind of participation.
Its essential for us to develop an imagination that is participatory. Art is the primary way
in which this happens. Its the primary way in which we become what we see or hear.
I think a pastor is in a unique position to cultivate this participatory imagination. We
shouldnt just be giving information, because so much of what were dealing with is
entangled with the invisible, the inaudible, the unsayable."
http://spu.edu/depts/uc/response/new/2011-autumn/features/cultivating-the-imaginati
on.asp
end of Petersen quote
In my own take on axiological epistemology, most human value-realizations indeed
derive performatively via our participatory imaginations, grounded in our shared
belonging, shared desiring and shared behaving and further cultivated by our
story-telling, whereby we share our experiences or our knowledge OF.
Most cognitive map-making derives informatively, grounded in our hypothetico-deductive
reasoning and inductive empirical testing, whereby we share our (provisional)
conclusions or our knowledge ABOUT.
Our deepest value-realizations are interpersonal and robustly relational. Still, while they
take us beyond our cognitive map-making, analytically, empirically and informatively,
engaging our participatory imagination (hometown knowledge) existentially and
performatively, they best not proceed without it. After all, our interpersonal value
realizations do require some knowledge about other people and certainly rely on
successful descriptions. While our knowledge about God will not render successful
descriptions, still, it certainly will rely on successful references.
For example, our conceptual map-making and successful description may, not
unimportantly, be essential in the value-realizations enjoyed via physical intimacies with
ones wife, if only by ensuring that one has not otherwise been seduced by her scheming,
evil twin sister. Similarly, theo-logically, successful references can help us avoid

adulterous relationships with idols.

Philosophy plays another important role vis a vis story-telling, serving as a lingua franca
between cultures and religions whenever we aspire to inculturate the Gospel in places
where we lack shared hometown knowledge, for example, interreligiously, even
ecumenically.
My axiological epistemology denes a hermeneutical spiral: the normative mediates
between the descriptive and interpretive to effect the evaluative as augmented by the
transcendent. Put differently, using Lonergans imperatives: Being responsible mediates
between being aware and being intelligent to effect being reasonable as augmented by
being in love. The evaluative or being reasonable corresponds to an aesthetic primacy or
telos, which culminates in love.
The existential, of course, is really a subcategory of the empirical. In that essay, Percy
was playing Kierkegaard off of Aquinas, siding with Aquinas in afrming two types of
empirical knowledge: 1) scientic knowledge where assent is achieved by reason,
experiment, reection or insight, alone, and 2) faith, vis a vis news, where scientic
knowledge and assent are undertaken simultaneously.
Both are empirical but the latter entails an existential disjunction or a living as if by an
observer whos not disinterested but, instead, in a predicament, where the news hearers
performative stance considers vital and forced options. Percy offers some criteria for
when such existential responses might be considered truly live options but doesnt really
develop them much beyond the notion of a sufcient degree of intersubjective trust
between the news bearer and hearer.
Knowledge conforms empirically for and/or may be deducible by detached observers,
i.e. sub specie aeternitatis, while news calls forth a response from vitally involved
observers.
In my view, Percys distinctions pertain to what I would simply call rubrics for practical
reasoning under uncertainty, especially in those circumstances where speculative
reasoning has been confronted by its limits, methodologically, or by ontological
boundaries, metaphysically.
Im reminded of the hermeneutical needle threading between an overemphasis on the 1)
speculative & apophatic, encratism, 2) speculative & kataphatic, rationalism 3) affective
& apophatic, quietism and 4) affective & kataphatic, pietism / deism. But the apophatic
or via negativa in those distinctions is still too logocentric, especially as approached in
the West.
Some Orthodox theologians precisely point out that both the via positiva and via
negativa are RATIONAL approaches, both sharing the same trajectory of increasing
descriptive accuracy, whether through afrmation of what something is, univocally and
ontologically, or is like, analogically, or through negation of what something is not,
literally, or is not like, analogically.
For example, when Lossky employed an apophatic, perichoretic strategy, he referenced a
trans-rational mystical experience and moreso in terms of ineffability. He aspired merely

to a successful relational reference but did not ambition a successful metaphysical

description.
Dumitru Staniloae, according to some, was more rigorous and nuanced than Lossky. He
would refer to our ineffable experiences as trans-rational and trans-apophatic, which are
robustly relational, participatory, practical, existential.
At any rate, I take Peirce, Lonergan, Percy, Lossky and Staniloae all to be speaking
directly to our ultimate concerns, all afrming an epistemic primacy of practical,
existential & participatory experience and axiological primacy of the relational,
interpersonal and communal, going WAY beyond but not without the scientic or
metaphysical.
This is all to say that Im deeply sympathetic to a critique of any metaphysic or
speculative theology that seems to prove too much and that doesnt authenticate its
orthodoxy in terms of how well it fosters the orthocommunal, orthopathic and
orthopraxic trajectories of theosis or fosters Lonergans conversions, which culminate in
being-in-love.
Theres not much natural theology COULD accomplish, metaphysically, other than
demonstrating the reasonableness of faith. Theres not much a theology of nature
SHOULD accomplish, metaphysically, beyond an inculturation of the Gospel, which is
a type of Good News, the performative signicance of which doesnt rise and fall with
each novel, putative resolution of this or that metaphysical antinomy, paradox or enigma
but, instead, cashes out its value in terms of lives 1) oriented to truth, 2) dedicated to and
sanctied by beauty, 3) nurtured & healed by goodness, 4) empowered by community &
solidarity and 5) saved by love, forgiveness and compassion (the 5-fold missiology,
Christology & pneumatology).