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    Our participatory imaginations gift us, integrally & relationally, unity, beauty, goodness, freedom & truth, forming our dispositions (senses & sensibilities) toward various ways of belonging, desiring, behaving, transcending & believing, as expressed in our attitudes regarding & personal commitments to others, the cosmos, God & even our own selves, as told & retold in our stories. One, who’s thus properly disposed & committed, can then imaginatively engage others thru inspired storytelling, thereby, in turn, fostering others’ healthy participations, dispositions & commitments. Such storytelling may, more or less, lend itself to a more rigorous cognitive map-making, foundationally, which is to say, historically, exegetically, scientifically, philosophically & metaphysically. Theologically, such foundations can then systematically underwrite our ecclesiologies, soteriologies, sacramentologies, sophiologies & eschatologies. There are countless pastors, homilists & spiritual directors from diverse faith traditions, who’ve articulated robustly pneumatological ecclesiologies, radically inclusive soteriologies, profusely incarnational sacramentologies, remarkably polydoxic sophiologies & universally efficacious eschatologies - as awakened & enlivened by human solidarity & compassion & retold in personal stories, thus implicitly grounded in their collective participatory imaginations. Some are better than others, when it comes to explicitly mapping such dispositions, systematically & foundationally. Make no mistake, though, it can be done, especially, it seems to me, by those who recognize certain resonances between Franciscan, Scotist sensibilities & Eastern Orthodox sophiological approaches. For example, however harshly one might wish to critique certain of Fr Richard Rohr’s explicit foundational apologetics, far more importantly & deserving of way more emphasis, implicit in the collective oeuvre of his lifetime’s ministry, is precisely such an ecclesiology, soteriology, sacramentology, sophiology & eschatology that I would to defend in my Retreblement: A Systematic Apocatastasis & Pneumatological Missiology. This is to suggest that one shouldn't ever miss the concrete, dispositional, participatory theophanic, theopoetic, theopoietic & theotic forests for the abstract, propositional, cognitive theological, metaphysical trees. As it is, robustly metaphysical descriptions & rigorous theological formulations necessarily elude us, in principle, while vaguely semantical references & broad heuristical contours guide us, in practice. Following Ignatius, we must charitably presuppose the most orthodox interpretations of our theological interlocutors, not reflexively & habitually construing ambiguities & inadequate or inartful expressions against them. Integrally, Fr. Rohr’s robustly pneumatological ecclesiology, radically inclusive soteriology, profusely incarnational sacramentology, remarkably polydoxic sophiology & universally efficacious eschatology are grounded in his Franciscan (common) sensibilities, Scotistic meta-heuristic (common) sensicalities & Eastern sympathies, both Orthodoxy’s sophiological tradition as well as the Orient’s nondual traditions. All of these presuppose, then, certain outlooks, theologically (i.e. paterological, Christological, pneumatological & Trinitological approaches) and anthropologically (as, continuous with all vestigia Dei & uniquely as imagines Dei, theotic intimacization invites each person to progress via similitudo Dei). To wit: an implicatory trinitarian theology (of divine esse naturale): • 1) interpersonal propria • 2) intimate idiomata • 3) invitatory (ad intra ur-kenosis) relata implicates a theological anthropology (of divine esse intentionale): • 1) indwelling vestigia • 2) imaginal uniqueness (essential nature of imago Dei) • 3) intentional & incremental theosis (dynamical & progressive intimaci-zation of secondary nature of kenotic similitudo Dei)

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    Our participatory imaginations gift us, integrally & relationally, unity, beauty, goodness, freedom & truth, forming our dispositions (senses & sensibilities) toward various ways of belonging, desiring, behaving, transcending & believing, as expressed in our attitudes regarding & personal commitments to others, the cosmos, God & even our own selves, as told & retold in our stories. One, who’s thus properly disposed & committed, can then imaginatively engage others thru inspired storytelling, thereby, in turn, fostering others’ healthy participations, dispositions & commitments. Such storytelling may, more or less, lend itself to a more rigorous cognitive map-making, foundationally, which is to say, historically, exegetically, scientifically, philosophically & metaphysically. Theologically, such foundations can then systematically underwrite our ecclesiologies, soteriologies, sacramentologies, sophiologies & eschatologies. There are countless pastors, homilists & spiritual directors from diverse faith traditions, who’ve articulated robustly pneumatological ecclesiologies, radically inclusive soteriologies, profusely incarnational sacramentologies, remarkably polydoxic sophiologies & universally efficacious eschatologies - as awakened & enlivened by human solidarity & compassion & retold in personal stories, thus implicitly grounded in their collective participatory imaginations. Some are better than others, when it comes to explicitly mapping such dispositions, systematically & foundationally. Make no mistake, though, it can be done, especially, it seems to me, by those who recognize certain resonances between Franciscan, Scotist sensibilities & Eastern Orthodox sophiological approaches. For example, however harshly one might wish to critique certain of Fr Richard Rohr’s explicit foundational apologetics, far more importantly & deserving of way more emphasis, implicit in the collective oeuvre of his lifetime’s ministry, is precisely such an ecclesiology, soteriology, sacramentology, sophiology & eschatology that I would to defend in my Retreblement: A Systematic Apocatastasis & Pneumatological Missiology. This is to suggest that one shouldn't ever miss the concrete, dispositional, participatory theophanic, theopoetic, theopoietic & theotic forests for the abstract, propositional, cognitive theological, metaphysical trees. As it is, robustly metaphysical descriptions & rigorous theological formulations necessarily elude us, in principle, while vaguely semantical references & broad heuristical contours guide us, in practice. Following Ignatius, we must charitably presuppose the most orthodox interpretations of our theological interlocutors, not reflexively & habitually construing ambiguities & inadequate or inartful expressions against them. Integrally, Fr. Rohr’s robustly pneumatological ecclesiology, radically inclusive soteriology, profusely incarnational sacramentology, remarkably polydoxic sophiology & universally efficacious eschatology are grounded in his Franciscan (common) sensibilities, Scotistic meta-heuristic (common) sensicalities & Eastern sympathies, both Orthodoxy’s sophiological tradition as well as the Orient’s nondual traditions. All of these presuppose, then, certain outlooks, theologically (i.e. paterological, Christological, pneumatological & Trinitological approaches) and anthropologically (as, continuous with all vestigia Dei & uniquely as imagines Dei, theotic intimacization invites each person to progress via similitudo Dei). To wit: an implicatory trinitarian theology (of divine esse naturale): • 1) interpersonal propria • 2) intimate idiomata • 3) invitatory (ad intra ur-kenosis) relata implicates a theological anthropology (of divine esse intentionale): • 1) indwelling vestigia • 2) imaginal uniqueness (essential nature of imago Dei) • 3) intentional & incremental theosis (dynamical & progressive intimaci-zation of secondary nature of kenotic similitudo Dei)

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    PanSEMIOentheism - A Neo-Chalcedonian, Francican, Cosmotheandric Universalism

    Uploaded by

    John Sobert Sylvest
    Our participatory imaginations gift us, integrally & relationally, unity, beauty, goodness, freedom & truth, forming our dispositions (senses & sensibilities) toward various ways of belonging, desiring, behaving, transcending & believing, as expressed in our attitudes regarding & personal commitments to others, the cosmos, God & even our own selves, as told & retold in our stories. One, who’s thus properly disposed & committed, can then imaginatively engage others thru inspired storytelling, thereby, in turn, fostering others’ healthy participations, dispositions & commitments. Such storytelling may, more or less, lend itself to a more rigorous cognitive map-making, foundationally, which is to say, historically, exegetically, scientifically, philosophically & metaphysically. Theologically, such foundations can then systematically underwrite our ecclesiologies, soteriologies, sacramentologies, sophiologies & eschatologies. There are countless pastors, homilists & spiritual directors from diverse faith traditions, who’ve articulated robustly pneumatological ecclesiologies, radically inclusive soteriologies, profusely incarnational sacramentologies, remarkably polydoxic sophiologies & universally efficacious eschatologies - as awakened & enlivened by human solidarity & compassion & retold in personal stories, thus implicitly grounded in their collective participatory imaginations. Some are better than others, when it comes to explicitly mapping such dispositions, systematically & foundationally. Make no mistake, though, it can be done, especially, it seems to me, by those who recognize certain resonances between Franciscan, Scotist sensibilities & Eastern Orthodox sophiological approaches. For example, however harshly one might wish to critique certain of Fr Richard Rohr’s explicit foundational apologetics, far more importantly & deserving of way more emphasis, implicit in the collective oeuvre of his lifetime’s ministry, is precisely such an ecclesiology, soteriology, sacramentology, sophiology & eschatology that I would to defend in my Retreblement: A Systematic Apocatastasis & Pneumatological Missiology. This is to suggest that one shouldn't ever miss the concrete, dispositional, participatory theophanic, theopoetic, theopoietic & theotic forests for the abstract, propositional, cognitive theological, metaphysical trees. As it is, robustly metaphysical descriptions & rigorous theological formulations necessarily elude us, in principle, while vaguely semantical references & broad heuristical contours guide us, in practice. Following Ignatius, we must charitably presuppose the most orthodox interpretations of our theological interlocutors, not reflexively & habitually construing ambiguities & inadequate or inartful expressions against them. Integrally, Fr. Rohr’s robustly pneumatological ecclesiology, radically inclusive soteriology, profusely incarnational sacramentology, remarkably polydoxic sophiology & universally efficacious eschatology are grounded in his Franciscan (common) sensibilities, Scotistic meta-heuristic (common) sensicalities & Eastern sympathies, both Orthodoxy’s sophiological tradition as well as the Orient’s nondual traditions. All of these presuppose, then, certain outlooks, theologically (i.e. paterological, Christological, pneumatological & Trinitological approaches) and anthropologically (as, continuous with all vestigia Dei & uniquely as imagines Dei, theotic intimacization invites each person to progress via similitudo Dei). To wit: an implicatory trinitarian theology (of divine esse naturale): • 1) interpersonal propria • 2) intimate idiomata • 3) invitatory (ad intra ur-kenosis) relata implicates a theological anthropology (of divine esse intentionale): • 1) indwelling vestigia • 2) imaginal uniqueness (essential nature of imago Dei) • 3) intentional & incremental theosis (dynamical & progressive intimaci-zation of secondary nature of kenotic similitudo Dei)

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    PanSEMIOentheism – A Cosmotheandric Universalism

    Because the Incarnation eternally proceeds from – not the divine nature as an essential necessity,
    but – the divine will as a volitional inevitability, therefore 
    occasioned – not by some felix culpa, but – from the cosmotheandric get-go,
    apocatastasis less so seems intended as some “restitutio in pristinum statum” and moreso seems
    to me
    an indefeasible proto-logical entailment, hence eschato-logical inevitability.
    Finite persons are constituted via acts in potency, divine persons by pure act. As such, Jesus
    eternally humanizes the Logos and deifies human nature via the cosmotheandric incarnation,
    thereby implicating several types of participation per distinct but analogous forms of dynamical
    perichoreses:
    1) trinitological between the divine persons;
    2) Christological in the hypostatic union;
    3) cosmological in vestigia Dei;
    4) anthropological in imagoes Dei; &
    5) theotic in similitudines Dei.
    Through those Trinitological & Christological perichoreses, divine persons “exemplify” the
    divine nature.
    Through those cosmological, anthropological and theotic perichoreses, human persons “signify”
    the divine nature.
    These eternal cosmotheandric realities thus constitute the proto-logical contours of all
    paterology, Christology, pneumatology, Trinitology, anthropology, ecclesiology, soteriology,
    sacramentology, sophiology, missiology and eschatology.
    These proto-logical contours logically advert to no such reality as “evil.”
    While, temporally & ephemerally, privations of goodness can obtain ontologically via a
    “parasitic existence,”  eternally, no coherent accounts of oikonomic condescension or kenotic
    tzimtzum could abide same and remain logically consistent and existentially congruent with the
    integrally related  & inherently consonant divine logics as are revealed in our Scriptures,
    celebrated in our Liturgies & Devotions and realized in our Theoses.
    Eternally perduring parasitic existences would render unintelligible every divine logic: proto-,
    Christo-, anthropo-, soterio-, ecclesio-, sophio- and eschato-
    This is all developed systematically in:
    Retreblement – a Systematic Apocatastasis & Pneumatological Missiology per a Neo-
    Chalcedonian Cosmotheandrism
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    Posted in philosophical theology, systematic theology, systematic theophany, UncategorizedTagged
    apocatastasis, apokatastasis, cosmotheandric, cosmotheandrism, ecclesiological, Sophiological,
    soteriological, theological anthropology, universal salvation, universalism

    Preliminary Notes:

    If identity-talk begins with persons, not natures, and both Paterological ur-kenosis & Christolological
    kenosis are hypostatic self-determinations, then Cosmotheandric reality proceeds from - not an
    essential necessity grounded in divine ousia, but - inevitably & eternally from a hypostatically willed
    embodiment, a Logos-logoi identity.

    There remains a divine-creaturely analogia entis, naturally, including even an analogy of haecceities
    between divine & human persons.

    But a singularly salient similarity in this analogia haecceitas, shared by both divine & human persons,
    is that the successful indexical referentiality of neither divine exemplifications nor human individuals
    constitutes a ground of intelligibility for their that-ness-es in their indescribable, unqualitative,
    indefinite presences, whether a hereness or nowness or even an eternal simultaneity.

    If, empirically, the analogia haecceitas does successfully refer to existentially quantified propositions,
    i.e. that, and also to universally quantified propositions, still, interpretively, haecceities have a
    bruteness that will nevertheless elude both our modal propositions & the propositional subject terms
    of object in/determinacy.

    What will lend coherence to our Trinity-talk may be a Logic of Co-in-herence (including at least a weak
    relative identity) - not unlike Abelard's formalization of the Athanasian Creed into a logic for modes of
    identity, from which Aristotelian syllogistics can be derived into a logic for modes of being. Thus
    conceived, divine syllogistics could not be facilely critiqued as some ad hoc mysterian tweak of
    Aristotelianism.
    Modes of identity, per a logic of names, apply to a nested plurality of constitutively related functional,
    coinhering, relationships, not unlike Peirce's irreducibly triadic signs, semiotically.

    Modes of being, a modal ontology, apply to determinate realities, including self-determinate divine
    realities, not unlike Peirce's "generals," which successfully refer to formal identities, including, for
    example, both divine energeia & logoi as well as the final created potencies that can be reduced by
    formal creaturely acts.

    Because a logic of names, e.g. successfully referencing functional relationships, i.e. thats & hows,
    combined with a modal ontology, e.g. successfully referencing formal identities (constitutive
    associations), has quidditative content for determinate but not nondeterminate realities, it requires
    analogical & metaphorical divine references. So, our God-talk heuristic thus remains ineluctably semi-
    formal (analytics, take note).

    But, so does our world-talk heuristic, as it encounters all of determinate being's nested co-inhere-ing
    realities, which require their own analogical & metaphorical references due to the emergentist
    dynamics that produce their own manifold & multiform layers of aporia.

    Differences constitute the ground of similarities (even those undefined, essentially) but not the
    identities of persons (as particular entities), who are constituted relationally (formal associations).

    We thus name (identify) divine hypostases essentially per natures, entitatively as particular
    exemplifications or instantiations and energetically per formal, functional coinherent associations,
    both ur-kenotic taxis & kenotic oikonomia.

    If epistemology truly models ontology, these heuristics suggest to me that being, whether
    nondeterminate, self-determinate or determinate, involves cosmotheandric perichoretic turtles - all
    the way down.

    While this co-inherence evokes analogia of both being & haecceities, of both essences & entities, of
    both natures & persons, of creator & creatures vis a vis creatio ex nihilo, might there be a univocity of
    logoi & energeia vis a vis a creatio ex deo that eternally embodies divinity and divinizes humanity?

    That's my panSEMIOentheistic wager.

    In Trinitarian discourse, in various schools, we encounter different approaches

    to:

    1) theories of idiomata

    2) substance idioms (essence as primary or secondary substance)

    3) categorical distinctions (hypostatic, essential & energetic; naturale & intentionale; formal & real)

    4) senses of the terms God & oneness

    5) realisms (extreme & moderate)

    6) accounts of numerical unity 7) logics of identity (absolute & relative)


    8) types of universals (immanent & instantiated)

    9) first order logics (predicate calculus)

    10) applications of substance-sortals

    11) claims (metaphysical & semantic).

    While we don't a priori place such approaches over against each other, any given school (e.g. Thomist,
    Scotist, Palamite) must choose among them in logically consistent & internally coherent ways that will
    also be externally congruent with doctrine (e g. DDS), so blocking various objections, inferences &
    arguments (e.g. modalism, tritheism, subordinationism).

    When the term God refers to the essence, Cross, per his interpretation of Scotus, considers it a
    substance-sortal. While I find the Scotist account most felicitous with, e.g., Cappadocian & Palamite
    insights, when referring to the divine nature, I prefer, instead, to consider the term, God, a predicate
    among predicates (necessary but non-defining attributes or propria).

    This seems a less arbitrary semantic rule in that it wouldn't require an ad hoc exception for Christ's
    human nature and substance-sortals could be used consistently for incommunicable (not indivisible)
    particulars.

    Besides, the claims that the divine nature, as a universal, is infinite, indivisible & immanent already
    suffices to differentiate divine & human persons.

    This better comports with my own Neo-Chalcedonian approach which, while still affirming Christ as
    the concrete analogia entis vis a vis being (beyond being), recognizing the analogy of divine &
    creaturely tropoi, otherwise very much affirms the Logos-logoi identity, recognizing the univocity of
    participable energeia vis a vis divine humanization & human deification (hence theotic not aptheotic).

    This all fits, too, the Peircean formula

    Being > Reality > Existence

    επίνοια ιδιώματα έργα

    A denominative reference (mark) can sufficiently distinguish (make peculiarly known) hypostases
    even when, in principle, no quidditative determinative definitions can be had for each hypostasis or
    for the indivisible nature they all exemplify.

    Even if, per some bundle of properties, we could add non-relational properties, whether qualitative
    and/or non-qualitative, to the relational idiomata, those peculiar notes would still afford us only
    denominative references – not definitions - for each hypostasis (particularity) and, of course, still
    nothing quidditative for the exemplified nature.

    Ep 38 But the communion and the distinction apprehended in Them are, in a certain sense, ineffable
    and inconceivable, the continuity of nature being never rent asunder by the distinction of the
    hypostases, nor the notes of proper distinction confounded in the community of essence.
    The concepts - person (definite noun or who) & nature (indefinite noun or what) - are distinct.

    The persons are distinct (really, not nominally).

    Idiomata & propria, our references to (denominations of) these distinct realities, are successful, even
    though we can't, in principle, define (make qualitative determinations of) them.

    Because the divine hypostases (real, distinct persons) are – not "individualizations," but - "mutually
    constituted" particulars, then, unlike human persons, any reference to one divine person will
    necessarily refer to them all.

    This all brings to mind the pantheistic-theopanic riddles of Divine Nous & nous and of the Divine -
    creaturely I - Thou, as well as your intuition of

    nous as something - not that a human person possesses, but - in which one participates?

    We’d recognized that, if there’s a Christological solution to such riddles, it won’t be found in the
    concrete analogia entis, alone, with its analogous immaterial particularities & universalities?

    Not inconsistent w/the Capps & following Scotus, for Peirce, haecceity accounts for the indexical
    referentiality of individuals in their indescribable, unqualitative, indefinite hereness & nowness. In
    such singulars, per CSP, must be certain ‘natures’ themselves neither universal nor particular, which
    constitute the ground of intelligibility. [1]

    1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotistic_realism

    If, as per Swinburne, matter - not haecceities - accounts for material particularities (e.g. vestigia Dei?)
    & haecceities for the (asymmetric, imagoes Dei) immaterial, still, we need another category to
    account for - not only "real" generalities, but - what I would call "noetic participations."

    CSP thus invoked "thirdness," Scotus - formal distinctions, Aquinas - the "metaphysically" real,
    Aristotle - formal & final causes, the Capps - nature, or, in a word for them all, telos.

    But telos, alone, doesn’t solve our pantheistic-theopanic riddles. It only recites them. Our solution(s)
    can’t be solely analogical, purely formal or merely mereological.
    Our solution(s) must rather be somewhat Alexandrian, Cyrillian, quasi-miaphysite, Apollinarian,
    Severan, Leontian, personalist, existentialist, emergentist & univocal, while respectful of - not only
    divine, but - creaturely ontological aporia (e.g. bracketing even philosophies of mind). [2]

    2 re properly conceiving the analogia, see

    https://syndicate.network/symposia/theology/analogia-entis/

    Our solutions just might be Maximian, in the Logos-logoi identity, where there are logoi of - not only
    being (what), but - hypostases (that), the latter grounding identity although not an intelligible form.
    Thus the logoi account for all elements of participatory realities, including - not just the participated &
    participants, but - dynamical participation, itself. [3]

    3 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/moth.12382

    Here, we re-encounter the ineffable, indefinable, indescribable or what we might simply call
    “emptiness,” not unlike the way we realize Bodhichocolate. (comic aside). At least, we encounter one
    of the various analogous types of perichoresis.

    I have approached all of this inartfully and with an inchoate grasp in my own panSEMIOentheism,
    which will remain in redrafting & editing for the rest of my life. [4] Presently, it remains so much
    straw.

    4 https://independent.academia.edu/SylvestJohn

    The German idealists & Peirce have helped me grasp what’s at stake in this set of pantheistic-
    theopanic riddles.

    I'm with Ivan Karamazov. The Majority Opinion (aka Infernalism) describes - not the work of an artist
    in terms of fittingness, but - the consequentialism of a vulgar pragmatist.

    No doubt, all of our eschatological tautologies must make some type of mysterian retreat. It's just
    that I'd rather not surrender God's moral intelligibility & aesthetic apprehensibility, theologically.

    Instead, I'd prefer to grapple, anthropologically, with just how free & just how determined we really
    are per the universalist vision (radically enough, I'd say) and, exegetically, struggle to grasp the
    nuances of the aiōnios & eternal.
    While we're free enough to love greatly and even to sin gravely, only the absolutely free could ever
    absolutely & eternally reject He, Who's absolutely True, Beautiful, Good, Unitive & Free?

    We need be only sufficiently free & adequately determined to participate in divine love (logoi) i.e. as
    consistent with the tropoi of human persons (not those of divine persons, Who are absolutely free)?
    So, b/c his (CS Lewis') juxtaposition of free will vs automata is absolutist, why imagine it applies to
    humans?

    So, too, the classical incompatabilist (libertarian) vs compatabilist accounts are too either-or and all or
    nothing, inconsistent with any defensible anthropology?

    Our divine-creaturely agential accounts would remain sufficiently noncompetitive (e.g. as in our Neo-
    Chalcedonian Christology), just asymmetric vis a vis acts that are absolutely pure vs relatively limited
    (by potencies).

    As for evil in service of a higher good, while, temporally & ephemerally, privations of goodness can
    obtain ontologically via a “parasitic existence,” eternally, no coherent accounts of oikonomic
    condescension or kenotic tzimtzum could abide same and remain logically consistent and existentially
    congruent with the integrally related & inherently consonant divine logics as are revealed in our
    Scriptures, celebrated in our Liturgies & Devotions and realized in our Theoses.

    Evil is something God can do something about?

    WELL then - All may, can, will & shall be well. And you will know that all manner of things will be well,
    if you follow your Hart.

    In the universalist stance, the Artisan metaphor "works" as what was divinely intended was
    aesthetically realized, ultimately, even if subcontraries (ephemeral parasitic existences) were divinely
    permitted.

    In the infernalist stance, the Artisan metaphor collapses because the eternal nature of those parasitic
    existences indicates they were divinely intended, i.e. not subcontraries but teloi (per game theory). A
    utilitarian moral paradigm then obtains.

    The difference is permitting ephemeral subcontraries versus intending eternal evil.

    Because the Artisan metaphor (fittingness) is ultimately sustained in universalism, those subcontraries
    represent - not moral (utilitarian), but -aesthetic occasions for the divine, even though some of those
    very same subcontraries are determined by human ethical lapses, representing moral realities for
    creatures.

    While the divine aesthetic opera (works) are necessarily opera-tive in human acts, including the
    existential, efficient & formal, as are limited by essential, material & final potencies, they are not
    finally (sufficiently) determinative of all human telic realizations or subcontrary frustrations,
    temporally. In short, they aren't responsible for sin.
    The divine energeia (works) and Logoi, per the universalist stance, will ultimately, necessarily &
    sufficiently, determine our beatific destinies, inevitably closing the epistemic & axiological distances
    that provisioned the soul-making of each person's theosis.

    My take:

    So, no, temporally, we aren't absolutely free or absolutely determined. Yes, our eternal destiny is
    absolutely determined in terms of subjective beatitude (aesthetic intensity) while, in my view,
    sufficiently self-determined in terms of objective beatitude (aesthetic scope). So, human persons are
    sufficiently free & adequately determined contra absolutist accounts.

    I distinguish between our essential natures, as images of God who are constituted by I-Thou-ness-es,
    and our secondary natures, which we co-creatively fashion synergistically, when we cooperate with
    the Spirit to realize our telic purposes as likenesses of God.

    Of course, we do refer to both virtuous & vicious secondary natures and we don't want to suggest
    that both elements aren't somehow constitutive.

    Our virtuous & vicious natures are habits that are situated halfway between acts & potencies,
    variously enhancing or hindering our cooperation with the Spirit, fostering or frustrating our theotic
    realizations, realizing or thwarting our human authenticity, so facilitating or forfeiting our constitutive
    communion, but in no way ever potent enough to extinguish our eternal, telic potentials.

    There is indeed an ontological asymmetry in that our virtuous nature refers to an authentic existence,
    an eternal goodness, as every cooperation with divine logoi is, by definition, an eternalized work. Our
    vicious nature refers to a parasitic existence, as you said, privative. Still, it must be purged. Views vary
    regarding how & when this purgation obtains.

    In my view, no one can be wholly vicious and all can be virtuous to varying degrees.

    I believe that every virtuous act, by definition - a free synergistic act, gets simultaneously eternalized.
    Every vicious act freely forfeits authentic existence & constitutive communion and freely foregoes
    eternalization, hence is partially self-annihilative (diminishing one's secondary nature, forfeiting
    degrees of virtue).

    It's our intrinsically good essential nature, in my view, that guarantees our eternal subjective
    beatitude, (and argues against annihilation) and the degree of virtue of our secondary nature that will
    correspond to our objective beatitude. This is to suggest that we'll all populate the firmament, only
    some will commence the after life as tiny votive candles, while others will be, well, bright shining as
    the sun. After 10,000 years, of course, who knows?

    I guess that I'm suggesting that the host for evil's parasitic existence is our secondary nature, not our
    essential nature, since the potency of each essence as an imago Dei has already been reduced by the
    act of existence.

    Finally, I follow Scotus & Eleonore Stump re where I locate the will & intellect vis a vis efficient &
    formal acts, so it will be between those & various material & final potencies that the vicious parasite
    will find its host. But it can neither kill the host nor transist into eternity.
    I develop all this herein:

    https://www.academia.edu/43938792/PanSEMIOentheism_A_Neo_Chalcedonian_Cosmotheandric_
    Universalism

    Certain logical defenses regarding the problem of evil work for me (and for many atheists, too). But, in
    my case, they only work if human freedom & evil as privation are properly conceived, which is to say,
    as relative (not absolute) and ephemeral (not eternal).

    Theologians make a helpful distinction between artistic fittingness & moral consequentialism.

    In the apocatastatic account, there are no residues of a parasitic existence to account for, no wounds
    substantially unhealed, no realities unredeemed and so no-thing to suggest to one's imagination that
    this eschaton was not the play (re-creational) of an Artisan rather than the work of some quasi-
    Manichean collaborator. And, per DBH's elegant game theory analysis, any qualifying of an
    unredeemed evil as a only a conditional necessity fails miserably.

    Any absolutizing of human freedom & eternalizing of evil's parasitic existence relativizes God's
    freedom & goodness. How does this not devolve into a competitive divine-creaturely agential
    account, which is heretical?

    While logical defenses to the problem of evil work for many of us, evidential solutions (theodicies)
    should work for none of us. They are as morally repugnant & theologically incoherent as infernalism,
    even if used to explain evil as 'only' an ephemeral, parasitic existence. Our approaches to evidential
    problems must, instead, be existential, i.e. pastoral & merciful, corporally & spiritually.

    It is here (and not at the loci of God's moral intelligibility & aesthetic apprehensibility) that we must
    beat a hasty retreat into a positive theological mysterianism, where we know in our hearts that -
    based on Who God is & how God operates - He bears no moral responsibility for this or that evil,
    however horrendous or venial, also, that He neither causes nor (much less) necessitates evil as an end
    or instrument, only ever permitting its contingent & ephemeral privations of lesser goods, while
    eternally reordering them as occasions of graces that will gift us His highest goods.

    Even then, as to why He permits any given evil, we can't formulate any specific persuasive entreaties
    in our heads that should even satisfy every Grand Inquisitor or Jobian Interlocutor, or, in other words,
    ourselves. This makes perfect sense given that no eye has seen, ear heard or heart of wo/man
    conceived (1 Corinthians 2:9) the weight of the Eternal Glory (Romans 8:18). It is here our aesthetic
    apprehension of God comes up short, for our proleptic realizations (2 Corinthians 1:22) of the Higher
    Goods remain ineluctably confronted by the utter immeasurability of the eschatological beatitudes,
    which they promise.

    Without such knowledge, we can't even determine whether those persuasive entreaties
    (presumptuous theodicies) would need to take the form of an exculpatory argument or an aesthetic
    appeal. The universalist takes on faith that they'll involve the latter.

    The infernalist stance devolves into moral exculpation, as it's essentially an adjudicatory apologetic
    for an eternal evil that begs agential questions, which, in the end, won't even present to universalists.
    I's are constituted by Thou's

    In the Bulgakovian Riddle

    Each embodied antinomy

    Lacking an accommodative middle

    Creative tensions not entailing

    Dialectical mediation failing

    Our freedom's constituted by such necessities found

    Where absential aboutnesses are prevailing

    Such that He'll increase as we decrease

    In answer to our prayer

    Til it almost becomes a problem, here

    To know who is standing, there

    accommodative middle

    embodied antinomies” or dynamical ententional-absential aboutnesses

    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?

    PEM PNC vs LEM LNC

    Some fail to distinguish between the "principles" of PEM & PNC and the "laws" of LEM & LNC. The
    principles variously hold & fold for modal propositions & propositional subject terms. The laws
    pertain to existentially & universally quantified propositions.

    Some fail to distinguish between heuristic interpretations & empirical descriptions.

    Some fail to distinguish between types of correlation - classical (measuring systematic convergences
    of the concrete on the abstract) & statistical (measuring nonsystematic divergences from the ideal).

    Also, I wonder if the utility of paraconsistent logics might not really rely on jointly true statements &
    actual negations, but on jointly true statements & their subcontraries, e.g. in relation to pseudo-
    hypostases, i.e. parypostases (of parasitic existence).

    Finally, nonstrict identity has some appeal.

    Heuristics - normativity of classical vs statistical correlations

    Interpretively, the "principles" of excluded middle & noncontradiction variously hold & fold for modal
    propositions, where PEM folds for generalities, while PNC folds for possibilities, as well as for
    propositional subject-terms (object in/determinacy), where PEM folds for general subjects, while PNC
    folds for indefinite (vague) subjects. Holding or Folding means a principle does/n't apply & not that it's
    true/false.

    Empirically, the "laws" of excluded middle & noncontradiction refer to universally quantified
    propositions (all, some, many, few, most) & existentially quantified propositions (that).

    Maybe the utility of paraconsistent logic may not rely on jointly true statements & actual negations,
    but, empirically, on jointly true statements & their subcontraries, e.g. in relation to pseudo-
    hypostases, i.e. pary-postases.

    Lonergan's hermeneutical cycle might shed some light on the dynamics of persuasive entreaty.

    If his transcendental imperatives, as epistemological precepts, do successfully norm our inquiries, it's
    only because they've, first, successfully described them in relation to how persons realize values.

    To wit, per Lonergan, successful value-realizations ensue when one is attentive, intelligent,
    reasonable, responsible & loving.
    If we combine these precepts with Peirce's aesthetic primacy, wherein aesthetics precede ethics
    which precede logic, we can better recognize why our evaluative dispositions & aesthetic sensibilities,
    understandably, will so often get fore-grounded, rhetorically.

    Concretely, our entreaties will often begin with the imperative: "Be reasonable!," as otherwise
    couched in the terms of aesthetic appeal: "Who, honestly, actually feels THAT way?". And, next,
    whether anecdotally or imaginatively, we'll interrogate each other's authentic affective dispositions.

    And, right there, we may often encounter our persuasive impasse, prior to our normative proposals to
    "Be responsible!" and interpretive heuristics to "Be intelligent!". We can there encounter, with
    enormous incredulity, what only seem to be fiendishly disingenuous denials that anyone has ever felt
    THAT way in THOSE circumstances!

    At least, that describes the interior dialogue that had 40 years ago placed me, then unwittingly, in a
    "virtual" universalist stance, which I'd articulated to my children thusly: "While hell may be an
    indispensable, theological construct, abstractly, for all practical purposes, just forget about it being
    some actual, concrete, everlasting reality!".

    Of course, that message morphed, pragmatically, in age-appropriate ways.

    It still seems to me that, if people who are otherwise obviously "intelligent" and aspiringly moral,
    would otherwise be "attentive" to what we all hold to be undeniable connatural interpersonal
    inclinations (including agape, philia, storge & eros), then, they'd realize that universalism's the only
    "reasonable" stance. And their moral behavior would be all the more "responsible.”

    To be clear, the objective situation of one's infernalist stance, I hope, would never lead me into an
    alienation of affection, much, much less into a judgement of subjective imputability. And, when I do
    set excommunicative personal boundaries, including severe censures, harsh rhetoric, cyberdistancing,
    even physical banishment, I intend them as medicinal not vindictive.

    Scholars divide when evaluating individual church fathers & scholastics in terms of their stances
    toward determinism & freedom, compatibilism & libertarianism, intellectualism & voluntarism,
    and other such categories as pertain both to philosophical anthropology and to the relationship
    between divine & human agencies.
    Such confusion reigns because they ignore the noncompetitive nature of divine & human
    agencies, a theandric reality implicit in Chalcedonian Christology, & even more perfectly
    explicated in Neo-Chalcedonian distinctions.
    As a theoretic upshot of this noncompetitive agential account, absolutist readings of classical
    theologians will amount to facile caricatures. Those can otherwise be avoided by an
    appropriations theory approach, wherein theologians are better distinguished merely in terms of
    notable emphases, e.g. soft determinism, weak compatibilism, moderate libertarianism, moderate
    voluntarism, moderate intellectualism, etc.
    In human agency, for example, the intellect’s necessarily operative just not wholly
    determinative in volition. In divine agency, for example, creation ensues - not from an essential
    necessity, but - a volitional inevitability of divine hypostases that are - not quidditatively,
    relations, but - qualitatively, relational.
    As a practical upshot, this noncompetitive agential account should suggest (to those acquainted
    with universalist-infernalist debates) that arguments, among classical theists, for & against
    apocatastasis, need not turn on premises grounded in alternative accounts of divine-human
    agential relations.
    After all, per some narratives, we might characterize Isaac of Nineveh, Gregory of Nyssa &
    Aquinas as weak compatabilists, Maximus & Scotus as moderate libertarians.
    Furthermore, Augustinian, even Calvinist accounts, which altogether circumvent such agential
    issues, can be formulated consistent with apocatastasis. Finally, Báñezian accounts are consistent
    with a hopeful universalism.
    How, though, do we negotiate the logics that might implicate an essential vs hopeful (practical)
    universalism?
    One way or the other, whichever stance one takes, even totally for or against, the trick is to make
    some type of theological assertions, to ground them exegetically & patristically, to articulate
    them in some metaphysical idiom, & then, finally, to (legitimately) run for the apophatic cover of
    a positive mysterianism, whenever one's interlocutors point out the unavoidable antinomial
    residues.
    Our search for our (anti)apocatastatic apologetic, then, not escaping Gödelian constraints, will
    force a choice between consistency and completeness. As Hawking said, the good money's
    always on consistency, i.e. accepting the unavoidable incompleteness. More aptly, as the
    Nazianzen did, we're really just looking for the least inadequate way to convey our faith.
    In some respects, then, if we're going to have to embrace an ineluctable agnosticism, we can
    focus our arguments on exhaustively explaining HOW volition works, putting an end to our
    curiosity regarding the precise nature of noncompetitive divine-human agential interactions,
    opting for Augustinian, Thomistic or Scotistic emphases, while leaving an antinomial theological
    residue regarding WHAT God wills.
    Or, we can focus our arguments on exhaustively explaining WHO God is, putting an end to our
    curiosity regarding the precise nature of WHAT God wills, opting for the universalist "hints"
    gifted us by Origen, Isaac of Nineveh, Gregory of Nyssa, the Nazianzen, Athanasius, Maximus
    & others, while leaving an antinomial anthropological residue regarding HOW human volition
    works. The good money, seems to me, remains with cultivating an abiding aporetic sense
    regarding the precise nature of noncompetitive divine-human agential interactions. After all - not
    just theological, but - enduring metaphysical aporia also abound regarding the origins of - not
    just human language & sapience, but - even animal sentience.
    Thanks to Chalcedon, at least, we know via participation what it's like to imitate the divine &
    even to grow in likeness to Christ. We remain otherwise stumped regarding "what it's like to be a
    bat."
    When it comes to choosing one anthropological tautology over the next vis a vis our
    noncompetitive divine-human agential interactions, the tie-breaker for otherwise logically
    consistent accounts, for me, remains anthropological congruity with our time-honored, shared
    moral & aesthetic sensibilities. Any account, including speculative post-mortem anthropologies,
    that does violence to our quotidian experiences of human belonging, desiring, behaving,
    believing & becoming, I reject.
    As a theological corollary, since we are imagoes & similitudines Dei, incongruous images of
    God that do violence to our most deeply felt anthropological sensibilities, intuitions & discursive
    reasonings, I also reject.
    Accordingly, I heartily commend DBH's TASBS and offer my own Systematic Apocatastasis.
    A Theological Anthropological Meta-Heuristic for a Neo-Chalcedonian Cosmotheandric Universalism

    A Grammatical Heuristic for the Hypostatic Union:

    Person or hypostasis is primary, whether divine or human.

    Christ, the person, the Logos, has an essential divine nature and a secondary human nature.

    His assumption (becoming) of the latter humanizes the Logos.

    The essential nature of human persons is identical to Christ’s secondary nature, but it is not a nature
    each person fully exemplifies or realizes, initially. It is a nature we become. That becoming for us
    constitutes our deification.

    The identical uncreated logoi (divine volition & energeia) that humanize the Logos, deify the human
    person.

    Christ is constituted by & fully exemplifies the divine & human natures.

    Human persons are constituted by the same human nature, only progressively so, I would suggest,
    participating in the divine nature as vestige, then image, then likeness, thereby only “signifying” the
    divine nature which is analogous to the human nature, which different persons realize to varying
    degrees.

    So human nature is analogous to the divine nature, participating as an effect proper to its cause,
    resembling it to varying degrees, so signifying (semiotically) vestige, image &, eventually & hopefully,
    likeness. That essential nature, when fully realized, would be identical to the human nature assumed
    by the Logos.

    These are grammatical heuristics. BYOM (Bring your own metaphysic!)

    Given that heuristic for relating the divine & human natures in the Hypostatic Union, what constitutes
    this shared human nature – cosmically, noetically & logically?

    For every noetic form of knowing there is a corresponding form of logical engagement, as these
    epistemic approaches engage every aspect of our donative reality via probes that are
    methodologically autonomous but axiologically integral: descriptive, interpretive, evaluative,
    normative & contemplative. [1]

    Human Agency Acts:

    1) Cosmically, as vestigium Dei or Human Being, which reflects the cosmos, involves existential causes
    in potency to probabilistic essential causes, which include probabilistic telic realities-

    teleopotent (veldopoietic),

    teleomatic (cosmopoietic)

    teleonomic (biopoietic) &


    teleoqualic (sentiopoietic).

    Divine Causal Joint:

    The Spirit operates here via the Gratuity of Creation

    2) Noetically, as an imago Dei or Willing Human Person, which reflects the Divine Nous of the divine
    esse naturale and involves efficient causes in potency to probabilistic material causes as

    kinetic (dynamical) and constituting the will, which is teleological (sapiopoietic) and which responds
    [2] per innate nous, intellectus or sapienta, which can assent, refuse or remain quiescent (absence of
    refusal) & which engages

    descriptively via the

    perinoetic (empirical);

    interpretively via the

    dianoetic (logical), aporetic (diastemic), epinoetic (apophatic), & ananoetic (metaphysical);

    evaluatively via the

    anoetic (affective) ;

    normatively via the

    deonticnoetic (moral & prudential); and

    contemplatively (receptively) via the

    metanoetic (theotic).

    Divine Causal Joint:

    The Spirit willingly operates via the Gratuity of Grace on human persons as

    vestigia Dei thru divine energeia through their teleopotent (veldopoietic), teleomatic (cosmopoietic),
    teleonomic (biopoietic) &

    teleoqualic (sentiopoietic) natures (generally considered exceptional or miraculous), thereby effecting


    all manner of existential causes (which are efficient causes but not distinctly human) and as

    similitudines Dei thru divine energeia through their semiotic natures, thereby effecting all manner of
    formal causes in utterly efficacious but ineluctably unobtrusive ways.

    But the Spirit, condescendingly, refrains from operating on (coercing) the human will via any manner
    of distinctly human efficient causes (contra Reformed & Báñezian anthropologies). So the Spirit will
    not operate via the Gratuity of Grace without the human will’s assent or quiescence, as it will not
    coerce one who refuses to cooperate with Grace.

    3) Logically, as a similitudino Dei or Human Becoming, which reflects the Divine Logos of the divine
    esse intentionale and involves formal causes in potency to probabilistic final causes as
    phronetic (autonoetic) and constituting reason, which is teleological (scientiopoietic) and which
    responds [3] per logic or ratio, which can progressively transmute the will (metanoesis) by engaging

    descriptively via the

    empirical (perinoetic);

    interpretively via the logical (dianoetic), diastemic (aporetic), apophatic (epinoetic) & metaphysical
    (ananoetic);

    evaluatively via the

    affective (anoetic) ; and

    normatively via the

    moral & prudential (deonticnoetic); and

    contemplatively (receptively) via the

    theotic (metanoetic).

    Divine Causal Joint: The Spirit operates here via the Gratuity of Grace.

    A Gelpian-Lonerganian Architectonic – a missiological meta-heuristic

    Be attentive, orient, describe, truth, final causes, eschatological, protological, transjective necessity or
    Ens Necessarium – analog of paterological uniqueness

    Be intelligent, empower, interpret, unity, efficient causes, ecclesiological, interpretive, intersubjective


    intimacy – analog of hypostatic unity

    Be reasonable, sanctify & consecrate, evaluate, beauty, formal causes, soteriological, evaluative,
    charismatic, harmonic, unified self as intrasubjective integrity – analog of mystical, creaturely-divine,
    sophianic union

    Be responsible, sustain, nurture & heal, norm, goodness, material causes, sacramental, ethical,
    normative, interobjective indeterminacy – analog of essential unicity

    Be in love, save, contemplate, freedom, existential causes, synergy, sophiological, liberational,


    theotic, intraobjective Logos-logoi identity – analog of unitary energeia

    Notes:

    [1] These furnishings of the human epistemic suite correspond roughly to Lonergan’s transcendental
    imperatives and eightfold functional specialties, as explicated elsewhere in my Retreblement.

    [2] Noetic responses roughly correspond to aspects of “knowing” as, for example, Newman’s illative
    sense; Polyani’s tacit dimension; Maritain’s connaturality; Fries’ nonintuitive immediate knowledge;
    Peirce’s abductive instinct; Aristotle’s intuitive induction; even noesis as pistis or faith.

    [3] Logical responses roughly correspond to a more reflective engagement of existence’s donative
    realities, which are apprehended more inchoately when appropriated, noetically.
    This is a companion piece to my Retreblement – a Systematic Apocatastasis & Pneumatological
    Missiology per a Neo-Chalcedonian Cosmotheandrism

    Also to my Cosmotheandric Universalism

    Posted in philosophical theology, religious epistemology, systematic theophany, UncategorizedTagged


    apocatastasis, apokatastasis, cosmotheandric, cosmotheandrism, theological anthropology, universal
    salvation, universalism

    The hypostatic union of Px = an eternal protological, incarnational reality = an eschatological blueprint


    re how uncreated & created hypostases proportionally participate, each per their particular ranges of
    tropoi, in the very same uncreated logoi (incl all creaturely teloi).

    My late friend, Jim Arraj, a Maritain scholar, in conversations w/Norris Clarke, deciphered the Thomist
    conception of forms (as distinct from Aristotle's) in terms of a participation-limitation motif, tracing it,
    in part, to Plotinus & neo-Platonic sources.

    A formal cause exists in a much more dynamic way in St. Thomas than it could in Aristotle. Arraj
    would go on to reconceive same in terms of deep & dynamic formal fields (like Joseph Bracken's neo-
    Whiteheadian use of field as a root metaphor). https://innerexplorations.com/catchmeta/mys1 0.htm

    Bracken's field-conception of the Divine Matrix, b/c of its affinity to Classical Theism & Trinitarian
    doctrine, seems a fruitful way to imagine how Maximian logoi interplay among uncreated & created
    hypostatic tropoi, as interpenetrating fields humanize & divinize them.

    A mutual interpenetration of deep & dynamic formal fields can account for an exnihilating dynamic
    that creates novel creaturely teloi. Such a creatio ex nihilo would be consistent even w/any incipiently
    telic, eternal prevenient chaos (Griffin) or tehomic profundis (Keller).

    A Note on my reconceptions of Logoi, Tropoi & Teloi as used in my Retreblement

    uncreated logoi: what, essential nature, act of existence, imago Dei, wholly determinate

    un/created tropoi: how, actual secondary nature, virtues & vices, freedom/liberty, habits halfway
    between act & potency, variously in/determinate & self-determinate

    created teloi: why, potential secondary nature, formal act & final potencies, intimacization,
    authenticity, variously in/determinate & self-determinate

    Peircean Univocity of Reality in a Neo-Chalcedonian Cosmotheandrism

    Thinking in terms of Peirce's


    Being > Reality > Existence
    Considering a Neo-Chalcedonian Christology
    Univocity of Nomological Realities
    While we still refer to divine & determinate hypostases via semantic univocity & ontological
    analogy ...
    Can we say that the Logos-logoi identity that humanizes divine persons & deifies human persons
    invokes a metaphysical "univocity of reality" per a Peircean Thirdness of generals, including
    created logoi, teloi, nomicities, etc,
    all "participating" in a creatio ex deo, the essentially divine person self-determinately so, the
    essentially human person determinately ...
    such determinate effects variously exemplifying or signifying their Cause per their unique tropoi
    ...
     
    human persons as vestigia, imagoes & similitudines Dei ...
    the divine person as Logos in hypostatic union?
    This would distinguish Maximus, on his own terms, from Balthasar's Maximus, who overapplied
    the analogia?

    Analogia of an Aesthetic Teleology


    1) analogy of aesthetic intensity - fixed
    a) God: intrinsic perfection
    b) human: subjective beatitude, bliss of beatific vision
    2) analogy of aesthetic scope - variable in terms of manifestation
    a) creator, God: scope of manifestations increased thru ad extra "exemplifications" of Logos &
    Glory, i.e. of divine esse intentionale, more than mere Cambridge properties, thin passibility
    b) co-creator, human: scope of manifestations increased thru "significations" of Logos & Glory,
    objective beatitude, AMDG

    Analogia of Divine & Human Tropoi


    1) tropos of divine person
       a) essential nature exemplifies Logos
       b) secondary nature, exemplifies humanity
    2) tropos human person
       a) essential nature as vestigial & imaginal Dei signifies Logos, exemplifies evolving humanity
       b) secondary nature as similitudino Dei signifies Logos, exemplifies deified humanity

    Universalist Implications
    evil’s parasitic existence

    evil’s absolutely nothing only eschatologically


    There must be no relativization of Goodness beyond goodness
    Notes re Predications of Ousia, Hypostatic Idiomata & Energeia in my Retreblement

    There are different theories of idiomata. And different idioms for substance talk. As long as one is
    consistent, such different types of God-talk needn’t separate us.

    Do they merely secure the reference of proper names?

    Do they just identify things, epistemologically, or describe their properties, constitutively, defining
    them essentially? or both?

    When idiomata individuate numerically distinct hypostases, do they refer to properties that are:

    1) simple, non-shareable & non-coinstantiable; or

    2) shareable in-principle but a uniquely combined bundle of idiomata?

    How might we distinguish between metaphysically individuating idiomata & epistemic gnorismata,
    which secure references through names?

    How might we best distinguish between the semantic “signification” of the common nouns & natures
    of the ousia & semantic “indications” of the proper nouns & peculiar qualities of hypostases?

    Does “God” predicate any subject which shares divine nature?

    Does “God” signify the divine ousia in particular, as a kind or nature?

    Does “God” signify certain types of energeia or activities?


    Is the word “God” a substance-sortal at all, a special predicate expressing the divine nature itself? Is
    the word “God” just another predicate among predicates, attribute among attributes?

    Are natures or ousiai otherwise individuated by energeiai?

    Whether the word “God” signifies the divine nature or not (per Cross, yes; per Branson, no),

    if one employs an idiom wherein the ousia’s a secondary substance, the word “God” most certainly
    can be predicated of all the hypostases; and

    if one employs an idiom wherein the ousia’s a primary substance (immanent universal), the
    attribution “God” most certainly is exemplified by all the hypostases; and even

    if one eschews substance-talk & denominatively (connotatively) names the Father, “the One God” –
    not just as an epistemic gnorismata securing one’s reference via signification, but determinatively
    (denotatively) – as a metaphysically individuating idioma that differentiates the Father via some
    robustly personalistic, causal-relational indication, still, “the One God” as arche & aitia, would
    ontologically subordinate neither God the Son nor God the Holy Spirit.

    This is precisely because, even if the sole arche & aitia entails some type of analogous aseity, whether
    via such a God-conception as would be signified either thru

    1) predication & instantiation; or

    2) attribution & exemplification; or

    3) a supremely personal causal-relational activity —

    such an imparting of divine nature is shared as “God from God” and ergo must be clearly &
    emphatically distinguished from creation’s reception of “finite determinate being from God,” Who is
    Being Beyond being.

    Historically speaking, I take no position re how the Nyssan best be interpreted re God signifying the
    ousia (Cross) or not (Branson) and, similarly, no position re the basis of divine unity per the Nazianzen,
    the ousia (Cross) or the MOF (Beeley).

    Normatively, my own approach coheres with the views that “God” does not signify ousia & the MOF
    does secure divine unity.

    So, if Branson & Beeley are correct in their respective interpretations of the Nyssan & Nazianzen, then
    my position thus coheres with the Capps.

    Accordingly, “is God”

    predicates – not the divine nature (ousia), but – engagements in a certain type of activity (energeia),
    not in terms of quiddity or “what,” but in terms of doing or “how.”

    Hence “God” refers as is defined not in terms

    of the divine nature, but as a doer of a certain kind of energeia. In other words, “God” refers as an
    agent noun (like butcher or baker or candlestick maker).
    Although some approaches are nominalist re both ousia & idiomata, my own is realist re both
    idiomata and ousia.

    Re: how idiomata individuate numerically distinct hypostases, in my approach, they refer to
    properties that are shareable in-principle but in a uniquely combined bundle of idiomata.

    If one’s idiom refers to ousia as a secondary substance, God can thus be predicated of each divine
    hypostasis, as a property that’s shareable in-principle but within an otherwise uniquely combined
    bundle of idiomata.

    If one’s idiom refers to ousia as a primary substance, i.e. an indivisible immanent universal, the
    attribute, God, can thus be exemplified by each divine hypostasis, as a property that’s shareable in-
    principle but within an otherwise uniquely combined bundle of idiomata.

    In my approach, wherein ousia’s a primary substance & hypostases are exemplifications, I distinguish
    between semantic “significations” of the common nouns & natures of the ousia & the semantic
    “indications” of the proper nouns & peculiar qualities of hypostases. And “God” can signify certain
    types of energeia or activities. So, the word “God” is not a substance-sortal at all, i.e. not a special
    predicate expressing the divine nature, itself, but is just another predicate among predicates, attribute
    among attributes.

    Because natures, or ousiai, are individuated by energeiai as shared by all the hypostases, we can infer
    that they all share the same nature & that “God” can be predicated of each hypostasis even as “God”
    doesn’t otherwise signify the divine nature per se.

    The stances articulated above represent phraseology & paraphrases from Beau Branson’s LPT.

    Posted in interreligious dialogue, metaphysics, philosophical theology, religious epistemology, science


    & religion, spirituality, systematic theology, systematic theophany Tagged alexandrian fathers, Amos
    Yong, analogy of being, apocatastasis, apokatastasis, cappadocians, charles sanders peirce,
    christology, cosmotheandric, cosmotheandrism, Duns Scotus, maximus the confessor, missiology, neo-
    chalcedonian, patristics, pneumatology, Richard Rohr, st. basil, st. cyril, trinitology, universal
    salvation, universalism, univocity of being

    Note: Situating Zizioulas Systematically in Tillich per My Retreblement

    I don’t interpret Zizioulas’ existentialist & personalist approaches as developed out of classical
    existentialisms & personalisms, which are individualistic philosophies, b/c Z’s personalist conception
    is intrinsically relational, as difference in communion.

    We’d need to distinguish aspects of Z’s philosophical anthropology, which might be implicit &
    inchoate, from those of his theological anthropology.

    ISTM doubtful that the former could do anything other than to establish the reality of a person, that
    the “meaning” of a person must be imported from one’s worldview. There’s no doubt where Z’s
    concept of person gets its meaning & that freedom in the context of communion necessarily plays a
    constitutive role in person for him (think MOF).
    One might also appropriate everything that’s useful in Tillich (e.g. Biblical personalism, pneumatology
    par excellence, ground of being), while correcting his insufficiencies (e.g. Christology) in order to
    bolster Z’s personalist hermeneutic. While Z pursued a similar project to Tillich, substituting neo-
    Patristic for Biblical sources, his patristic interpretations have been harshly criticized.

    I don’t interpret Z’s thrust as anti-essential but as non-essential, so, retrieving Scotistic substance-talk
    into his hermeneutic needn’t explode it, but could, instead, better equip it to block unacceptable
    trinitological inferences. Also, Scotus’ eschewal of secondary substance-talk, trinitologically, would
    give Z an ontological idiom a tad more compatible with his preferred vocabulary vis a vis ousia,
    substance, hypostasis, person, etc

    So, to best advance a systematic project sympathetic to Zizioulas’ concerns, I’d retrieve Tillich’s
    Christian existentialism & Biblical personalism, with the added bonus being that their dialectical
    character is very reminiscent of Panikkar’s cosmo-the-andrism. And I’d retrieve a Scotistic ontology (at
    least to articulate trinitological grammatical contours).

    Finally, consistent with my triadic, axiological epistemology, as developed from Neville’s Peircean
    systematics, I’d turn to Peirce, Neville & Tillich for their conceptions re impersonal accounts of the
    Ground of Being to systematically situate Zizioulas’ causal-relational personalist interpretation of
    MOF.

    Because Z asserts that the personal existence of the Father constitutes his own existence, the F thus
    causes not only the Trinitarian unity but the divine ousia, so, not only imparts His being but causes it,
    characteristics like divinity derived from, because identical to, His personhood.

    In my own approach, I have not adopted but have adapted conceptions of the One & the many from
    Peirce, Tillich & Neville, often referred to with impersonal terms like Ens Necessarium and Ground of
    Being.

    I employ distinct categories like nondeterminate emptiness (analogous to ground of Tillich & Neville,
    Ens Necessarium of Peirce), nondeterminate nothingness (real but not existing) and indeterminate
    being (existing).

    There’s a certain paradoxical feel to juxtaposing Zizioulas’ MOF personalist approach with such
    impersonalist conceptions as Tillich’s Ground of Being, Infinite Abyss & Being-Itself?

    But, following the Tillichian dialectical methodology, orienting our existential orientations to ultimate
    concerns, coloring our anthropology theologically, we can theologically gift meaning to what are
    otherwise bare philosophical conceptions. For me, & why not for Zizioulas, why couldn’t “freely
    relating” constitute the Ground of Being, Who is the Freely Willing Loving One God, the Father?

    Note on Situating Zizioulas Systematically in Bracken in my Retreblement


    Pannenberg moved away from just a “relations of origin” MOF interpretation to include a “diversity of
    relations” dimension, e.g. handing over of Lordship. Even then, some conception of the Father as
    “unoriginate originator” remains intact, istm.

    B/c there’s so much affinity between Pannenberg’s & Joseph Bracken’s metaphysical approaches,
    appropriating such a modified MOF element in a Bracken-like approach seems a fruitful path forward.

    The reason I adapted rather than adopted the Ground of Being conceptions of Tillich & Neville is that
    it’s important for my systematic consistency to remain faithful to Peirce, e.g. Ens Necessarium
    abduction.

    Toward that end, the last element in my situating of Zizioulas, systematically, involves going beyond,
    but not without, Scotus, in a more robustly Peircean direction that’s also explicitly Trinitarian.

    That is why I turn to the metaphysic of Joseph Bracken, a Peirce scholar and neo-Whiteheadian. What
    makes Bracken further amenable to this project is his faithful retrieval of Classical Theism and his
    conscious Peircean avoidance of nominalistic tendencies, such as in Whitehead’s process approach,
    or, to some extent, adumbrations in Hartshorne’s neo-Classical theism.

    My favorite Bracken book remains God: Three Who Are One, 2008, Liturgical Press.

    I also commend 1) The Divine Matrix: Creativity as Link between East and West, 1995, Orbis Books; 2)
    The One in the Many: A Contemporary Reconstruction of the God-World Relationship, 2001,
    Eerdmans; and 3) Does God Roll Dice? Divine Providence for a World in the Making, 2012, Liturgical
    Press.

    For a great overview that shows how these approaches can fruitfully be placed in dialogue, see the
    dissertation of Dong-Sik Park: The God-World Relationship Between Joseph Bracken, Philip Clayton, &
    Open Theism.

    The above thread contextualizes how I situate Scotus, Peirce & Bracken with a sympathetic eye
    toward Zizioulas in my own Pan-SEMIO-entheism.

    Posted in interreligious dialogue, metaphysics, philosophical theology, religious epistemology, science


    & religion, spirituality, systematic theology, systematic theophanyTagged alexandrian fathers, Amos
    Yong, analogy of being, apocatastasis, apokatastasis, cappadocians, charles sanders peirce,
    christology, cosmotheandric, cosmotheandrism, Duns Scotus, maximus the confessor, missiology, neo-
    chalcedonian, patristics, pneumatology, Richard Rohr, st. basil, st. cyril, trinitology, universal
    salvation, universalism, univocity of being

    A Note on Grace as Transmuted Experience in my Retreblement

    “God not only gives things their form, but He also preserves them in existence, and applies them to
    act, and is moreover the end of every action.” (ST 1.105.5 ad 3)

    Does determinism follow from immediate causality, whether divine or created?

    Below is my paraphrased summary of William A. Frank’s “Duns Scotus on Autonomous Freedom &
    Divine Co-Causality,” Medieval Philosophy & Theology, Volume 2, 1992, Pages 142-164
    Determinism doesn’t follow from immediate causality, whether divine or created.

    Concurrent co-causes are necessary but not sufficient to bring about a given effect.

    Concurrent co-causes can be

    a) accidentally ordered, as in the case of needing two mules to pull a wagon, or

    b) essentially ordered, as in needing a male & female to produce offspring.

    When essentially ordered, even if one co-cause gives more toward an effect than another, the lesser
    cause can still be the total immediate cause of an effect, e.g. creatio continua vs creaturely volitional
    acts.

    Scotus further distinguishes essentially ordered partial co-causes as

    1) participative, requiring a sharing of power, &

    2) autonomous, requiring inter-dependent cooperation thru coordinated, complementary lines of


    efficient causality e.g. how the will & intellect co-cause volition, how divine & created wills co-cause
    created volitions.

    God’s immediate, efficient causality (uncreated) suffices for God’s knowledge in an extensional sense,
    as knowledge of His own act suffices for knowledge of the effect.

    Here, one might remain content to establish the fact of God’s role as a partial co-cause without
    delving into the mysteries of God’s inner life.

    Others aspire to travel further, explanatorily, with Suarez & Molina (middle knowledge), Baήez
    (premotion) or Scotus (attendant decision).

    My thoughts:

    The account above squares with how an Aristotelian God creates, conserves & knows.

    Beyond that, though, what manner of divine “dialogue” (dia-logos) with the world would implicate a
    more providential relation between God & creatures, beyond a divine general or universal
    concurrence,

    1) accounting for more of a theandric, even cosmotheandric, intimacy? via

    2) a more personalist conception of divine & creaturely inter-relationality? or

    3) a more robust account of participation in uncreated divine energeia, logoi & tropoi by creaturely
    teloi?

    See:

    https://www.academia.edu/42998704/The_Personalism_in_my_Retreblement

    Speculating further, the accounts of Thomistic physical premotion, Jesuit middle knowledge &
    Scotistic attendant decision aspire to explain more than just how it is that God creates, conserves &
    knows, as they even explore beyond how it is the divine influences creatures via uncreated logoi &
    tropoi & created teloi. That’s to say they go beyond the divine-created concurrent, co-causal account,
    as elaborated above, to propose yet other distinct aspects of divine immediate causation.

    For example, divine premotion would act “within” secondary causes, reducing material potencies to
    efficient acts, elevating instrumental causes to produce agapic (self-transcendent, loving, theotic, etc)
    effects proper to no known causes, so due to actual grace. God would thus act, however, without
    violating an agent’s causal integrity, still allowing those operations to be contingent & free, for God
    created not only necessary but contingent realities, including personal freedom. God moves (applies
    to act) necessary causes to cause necessarily & contingent causes to cause contingently according to
    their created natures. So, even if every reduction of material potencies to efficient causes should
    properly be interpreted as divinely caused & determined, that wouldn’t entail divine necessitation,
    except in the case of miracles.

    Still, must a divine reduction of material potencies to efficient causes necessarily be interpreted as a
    bridging of physical causes & effects such that, if God wasn’t as such always determining, He’d
    otherwise have to be considered always determined?

    I don’t see why that must necessarily be so. There’s nothing, in principle, to suggest that, to whatever
    extent that God might ever be variously determined by creatures, His intrinsic perfection would
    necessarily thereby be diminished (due to some divine impoverishment). Rather, such a divine
    affectivity might simply reflect a divine condescension (via a weakened DDS) that reflects divine
    changes in – neither aesthetic intensity nor intrinsic perfection, but – only aesthetic scope & kenotic
    relationality.

    Furthermore, the will, itself, should be located, at least in part, in efficient causation. Scotus would
    have us recognize a form of volition that determines whether one exercises one’s will (or refrains
    therefrom). It’s the volitional question that asks why the will wills at all, because it does remain free
    not to act, notwithstanding all logoi, tropoi & physical premotions.

    Proposed solution:

    If we relocate grace to an uncreated formal cause (like E. Stump), it could still be effected through the
    uncreated physical premotion of efficient causes that will have brought about circumstances that,
    after creaturely semiotic interpretation, will necessitate certain dispositions of a given person’s will,
    inviting (even urging but not compelling) it to participate in a divine effecting of various agapic &
    theotic realizations .

    I develop my semiotic approach to grace as transmuted experience, inspired by (but not developed
    from) James Dominic Rooney’s Stumping Freedom: Divine Causality and the Will, New Blackfriars
    (Volume 96, Issue 1066, November 2015, Pages 711–722)

    See also:

    http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/freedom and God.pdf

    Posted in interreligious dialogue, metaphysics, philosophical theology, religious epistemology, science


    & religion, spirituality, systematic theology, systematic theophany
    Tagged: alexandrian fathers, Amos Yong, analogy of being, apocatastasis, apokatastasis,
    cappadocians, charles sanders peirce, christology, cosmotheandric, cosmotheandrism, Duns Scotus,
    maximus the confessor, missiology, neo-chalcedonian, patristics, pneumatology, Richard Rohr, st.
    basil, st. cyril, trinitology, universal salvation, universalism, univocity of being

    note regarding Personalism as integral to my Retreblement

    The personalist approach with which I most resonate can be found in what’s been called
    cosmotheandrism.

    While I find the “cosmo-theo” part of Raimon Panikkar’s cosmotheandrism very inspirational, for the
    “theandric” part, there’s a very old Eastern Orthodox account that, in my view, can hardly be
    improved upon, i.e. Maximian Logos & logoi.

    These would both seem consistent with DBH’s intuitions as were articulated during his back & forth
    with Ed Feser re animals in heaven.

    On page 172 of An Emerging Cosmotheandric Religion?: Raimon Panikkar’s Pluralistic Theology Of


    Religions, Brill, 2005, Jyri Komulainene discusses the “personalism” in Panikkar’s “ecosophy.”

    I’ll paraphrase & summarize the highlights here.

    Per Komulainene, while Panikkar’s personalist idiom does convey his intent to avoid a “sheer
    monism,” he also approaches all of being in terms of communicatio, communio & communality.

    The Divine donates via “pure communication.”

    All creatures thus engage dialogically. While, per Panikkar, human persons do communicate per a
    particular interiority & consciousness, we best dialogue (dia-logos, thru the logos) with all of reality
    without losing sight of its “thou dimension” or else we’ll “excommunicate” ourselves from nature,
    God & each other, i.e. cosmotheandrically.

    The old EO approach with which I most resonate is Dionysius’ account of “theandric activity” as
    spoken of by Severus and as interpreted by Maximus

    per a Cyrillian Christology.

    At the link below, Rebekah Earnshaw summarizes a theology seminar presentation by Dr Brandon
    Gallaher entitled “The Word, the Words and the

    Trinity: A Preliminary Exploration of the Relationship of Eastern Orthodoxy to

    World Religions.” It touches on both Panikkar & Maximus.

    The Word, the Words and the Trinity


    Understanding the historical account & development of the terminology employed in Trinitology &
    Christology remains crucial for the proper interpretation of Severus, although Maximus transcended
    even his approach.

    I find the concept of the immanent universal [IU] to be very interesting, e.g. C. Kappes has a take re IU
    of Damacene & Nazianzen; Zachhuber & Cross differ on IU of Nyssan; IU of Scotus.

    We might ask why that distinction between the divine IU, as a primary substance, & the universals of
    determinate beings, as secondary substances, did not leave questions begging for many re, e.g. how
    "consubstantial" must refer differently in the hypostatic union to the divine vs human natures?

    If one allows Severus to define his own terms & properly reads him as a thoroughgoing Cyrillian, then
    he goes beyond not w/o Chalcedon. Christ remains consubstantial, divinely & humanly, respectively,
    via immanent & shared universals

    Cyril, ergo Severus, applied the Cappadocian trintological distinction, ousia vs hypostasis, to
    Christology.

    Christ’s divine ousia = indivisible immanent universal (an extreme realism) & created ousia = shared
    universal (a moderate realism). For Cyril & Severus, one nature referred to - not ousia, but -
    hypostasis.

    #
    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 and Byzantine Writers ~ Bogdan G. Bucur
    https://academia.edu/4996258/Foreordained_from_All_Eternity_The_Mystery_of_the_
    Incarnation_According_to_Some_Early_Christian_and_Byzantine_Writers
    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).

    Not thru Ontological Middling but thru Teleological Muddling do


    Sophia, Energies & Logoi Operate in a Neo-Chalcedonian
    Cosmotheandrism

    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.

    Creation happens.

    To Be or Not, to Sophianize or Not our human secondary nature: The Unbearable Lightness of
    Being (eternally self-determined)

    Divine Modes of Identity – Bulgakov, Balthasar & Bracken with Scotus & the Greek Fathers

    Retreblement – a Systematic Apocatastasis & Pneumatological Missiology per a Neo-


    Chalcedonian Cosmotheandrism
    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

    A New Process-Oriented Approach to Theodicy Joseph Bracken, Process Studies, Vol. 48, No. 1
    (Spring-Summer 2019), pp.105-
    120 https://jstor.org/stable/10.5406/processstudies.48.1.0105#metadata_info_tab_contents

    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

    ‘The Problem of Pantheism in the Sophiology of Sergii Bulgakov: A Panentheistic Solution in


    the…academia.edu

    The God-World Relationship Between Joseph Bracken, Philip Clayton, and the Open Theism, by
    Dong-Sik Park, Claremont Graduate University

    The God-World Relationship Between Joseph Bracken, Philip Clayton, and the Open
    Theismscholarship.claremont.edu

    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.

    See: https://sylvestjohn.org/2017/12/13/contemplative-being-behaving-believing-belonging-
    desiring-becoming-an-outline-of-foundations/

    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;

    e) theanthropically, androgyne, feminine & masculine realities;

    f) scripturally, divine wisdom;

    g) speculatively, antinomial (not dialectical) mediations & the essential unicity; h)


    eschatologically, the eternal protological ur-kenotic taxis, kenotic creatio continua & theotokos’
    incarnational fiat;

    i) soteriologically, an aesthetic teleology;

    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
    http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0036930605001390

    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

    https://www.academia.edu/9802768/_Bulgakov_s_Sophiological_Panentheism_keynote_address
    _at_the_Fourth_Annual_Symposium_in_honor_or_Fr._Georges_Florovsky_Creation_and_Creat
    urehood_The_Doctrine_of_Creation_in_the_Patristic_Tradition_Princeton_Theological_Semina
    ry_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.

    https://academia.edu/220401/_Graced_Creatureliness_Ontological_Tension_in_the_Uncreated_
    Created_Distinction_in_the_Sophiologies_of_Solov_ev_Bulgakov_and_Milbank_Logos_A_Jou
    rnal_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.

    Sophiology, Science And Technology

    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)

    Helpful Resources:

    The Subtle Doctor and Free Will, Part 1, Maximus Confesses

    The Subtle Doctor and Free Will, Part 2, Duns Scotus on Freedom of the Will and Divine
    Foreknowledge
    A paradox in Scotus account of freedom of the will by Gonzalez-Ayesta

    Duns Scotus on the Natural Will by C. Gonzalez-Ayesta

    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

    St. Maximus the Confessor on the Will—Natural and Gnomic by David Bradshaw, Ph.D.

    But the Problem of Free Will by David W. Opderbeck, Ph.D.

    Divine Freedom & Necessity (analogues & antinomies)

    no best possible worlds but a pareto front of equipoised optimalities, choosing among the
    perfectly good – jssylvest

    Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology, Oxford University Press, 2016

    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.

    Review of Brandon Gallaher, Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology (Oxford:
    OUP, 2016), Reviews in Religion & Theology 24.4 (2017): 697-699–Justin Shaun Coyle.pdf by
    Justin Shaun Coyle

    Retreblement – a Systematic Apocatastasis & Pneumatological Missiology per a Neo-


    Chalcedonian Cosmotheandrism

    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.

    Posted in religious epistemology, spirituality, systematic theology, systematic


    theophany, UncategorizedTagged apocatastasis, apokatastasis, Bulgakov, cosmotheandric, cosmothean
    drism, energeia, energeiai, Incarnation, kenosis, logoi, maximian logoi, maximus the
    confessor, Palamas, Palamatic, Palamism, pansemioentheism, pneumatology, retreblement, russian
    sophiology, Sophia, Sophiological, sophiological trajectory, sophiology, synergeia, tehomic
    panentheism, theological anthropology, theophany, theosis, Theotokos, trinitophany, universal
    salvation, universalism

    This is the roughest of drafts. It includes notes w/many citations yet missing & many
    duplications not yet edited.

    Retreblement primarily articulates my PanSEMIOentheism, with a meta-heuristic


    consistent w/a universalist eschatology & pneumato-christological missiology. It
    articulates a cosmotheandric vision consistent with a Cyrillian-Maximian Neo-
    Chalcedonian Trinitology & Christology, employing a speculative grammar inspired by
    Peirce, Scotus, Palamas, Poinsot, Eriugena, Abelard, Maximus, Severus, the Alexandrians
    & Cappadocians in a nuanced Neoplatonic stance.

    I’ve added an Addendum of Twitter media to better flesh out these notes, which are
    dense, abstract prose in need of more concrete storytelling explications.

    Updated Precis

    The Neo-Chalcedonian, Cosmotheandric Turn 

    As divine hypostatic realities, the logoi of all finite, determinate creaturely


    becoming proceed from the infinite, nondeterminate Logos-Spirit hypostases-
    exemplifications,
      pneumato-christologically in the gratuity of creation,
    christo-pneumatologically in the gratuity of grace,
    incarnationally in both, per the divine esse naturale.

    The logoi (hows) carry the divine esse intentionale (will & intentions), both freely
    affecting creatures & freely affected (per energeia) by the aesthetic scope of all
    telic creaturely becoming, although divine realities are never affected in aesthetic
    intensity.

    The divine esse naturale-intentionale is thus affected by more than mere


    Cambridge properties, but without any change in intrinsic perfection. Does this
    weaken DDS? Yes. Trivially, so.

    As it is, since we neither reify the essence (natures aren’t “existing things,”
    whether divine or created) nor hypostasize energeia, why ontologize the
    intentionale, inquiring about its mode of being, determinatively -what, rather
    than of identity, denominatively -how?

    Finite creatures proportionally participate (through a univocity of loving


    determinate effects or synergy) in the Logos-logoi identity, which, itself, grounds
    the differences of in/finite natures (through an analogia entis).

    This in/finite disjunction doesn’t quantitatively differentiate Being & beings


    through a multiplication of quiddities (determinative nouns, genera, species, i.e.
    whats) by infinity. Instead, it multiplies qualia (denominative modifiers &
    participles, hows, etc.) by infinity,
    recognizing the qualitative differentiation of divine & determinate hypostases, i.e.
    via propria-idiomata-relata vs essentially-existentially-relationally.
    Such a differentiation, then, entails no alienation from some Wholly Other, but,
    instead, fosters otherness & intimacy,
    participation via donativity-receptivity, & immanence in transcendence, all
    theotically.
    Cosmotheandric participation entails more than the mere growth in
    resemblances of vestigia & imagoes Dei into similitudines Dei, from image to
    likeness.

    Generally, participation further requires a participant to freely choose to (in


    various ways to various extents) “take possession” of WHAT the participated, as a
    whole, “IS.”

    Specifically, regarding God as Actus Purus, as participants, we, the Many, must
    freely choose, therefore, to “take possession” of HOW the Participated One, as
    the Whole, “DOES.”

     If we don’t go beyond an analogy of being, ontologically & determinatively, to a


    univocity of doing, semantically & denominatively, we can’t bust the Maximian
    move, theologically or anthropologically or cosmogonically, in an authentically
    Neo-Chalcedonian fashion.

    Cosmotheandric participation entails more than the mere growth in


    resemblances of vestigia & imagoes Dei into similitudines Dei, from image to
    likeness. It entails each participant’s progressive realization of facility in freely
    choosing to kenotically participate ... in how the ur-kenotic Participated One Acts,
    which is, *naturally*, Purely Loving.

    There can be no Shakespearean soliloquy: “To Be or Not to Be,” for that remains
    decidedly decided for every intrinsically valuable imago Dei, ensuing from its
    essential nature. Rather, the transcendental imperatives in-form-ing our
    existential orientations include both “To Be Like God or not?” and “To Do How
    God Does or Not?”.

    All of this is articulated in Lonergan’s imperatives, the Degrees of Humility of


    Ignatius, & Therese’s Little Way.
    A proper interpretation of the Capps Bros, Cyril, Maximus & Severus, et al, helped
    along by idioms like those of Scotus, Palamas & Peirce, et al, might say it the best?

    So, finally, re the Logos-logoi identity, while it’s "just" a semantic predication, the
    reference remains eminently realist. Still, in the same way we eschew any
    overapplications of an analogia entis, we’d desist, here, from any over-
    specifications of peircean generals, whether created or uncreated, nomicities or
    probabilities, etc b/c, for DBHartians, if there’s anything more frightening than an
    unwitting infernalism, that would be - not a spinozan modal collapse, but - an
    accidental baroque thomism via a báñezian praemotiophysica! (just kidding)

    INTRODUCTION
    After they had both heard the Gospel preached by the missionary bishop
    Paulinus, an advisor of King Edwin of Northumberland said to him:

    The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which
    is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein
    you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good
    fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the
    sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he
    is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather,
    he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he
    had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went
    before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new
    doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be
    followed.1

    1 Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, L.C. Jane's 1903 Temple
    Classics translation, introduction by Vida D. Scudder, (London: J.M. Dent; New
    York E.P. Dutton, 1910)
    Like King Edwin and his council of elders, who among us has not been warmed
    by life‘s goodness, fed by its truth, inspired by its beauty? Even then, who has not
    also poignantly experienced the wintry storms of life‘s poverty in so many
    different forms, the hunger pangs of our ignorance regarding life‘s ultimate
    concerns and the always swift flight of life‘s beauty from our sight? Prompting all
    of us to ask whether there might be more?

    To the extent that human life has always been an ongoing quest in pursuit of such
    value-realizations as truth, beauty, goodness, unity and mercy, life‘s unavoidable
    value-frustrations have given rise to many questions with clear existential
    imperatives. What is that? Describe it. What is that to us? Evaluate it. How might
    we best acquire (or avoid) that? Norm it. Might there be more? Interpret all of
    that!

    Thus it is that humanity‘s perennial value-pursuits have given rise to life‘s many
    different methods --- descriptive sciences, evaluative cultures, normative
    philosophies and interpretive religions --- each autonomous, all necessary, none
    alone sufficient, for every value-realization. The value-pursuits of truth, beauty
    and goodness, in a context of freedom, comprise an essential axiology, or
    interpretive axis, presupposed even by an evolutionary epistemology. 2

    Beyond this essential axiology, humankind has embarked on many different


    religious quests. That is also to say, we have adopted many different interpretive
    stances toward reality. The primary religious quest pursues truth, beauty and
    goodness, in a context of freedom, through a basic cosmology via a participatory
    imagination, which is respectively engaged with historical, socio-cultural and
    economic concerns in a political context (freedom presenting in degrees). Beyond
    this cosmology, though certainly not without its perspective, a theological
    imagination then respectively engages these same concerns through creed, cult-
    community and code, in a context open to transcendence (what we might call an
    ―outside assist‖). A more distinctly pneumatological imagination divines, again
    respectively, more precisely how it is that we are thus oriented, empowered-
    sanctified and healed, in a context of being saved. The Christological imagination
    then breaks open these categories of human concern and divine interactivity
    elaborating various approaches to eschatology, ecclesiology-theological
    anthropology and sacramentology within a context of soteriology-political
    theology. In no way necessarily mutually exclusive, these various imaginative
    engagements of reality reflect the urgency of our existential concerns with their
    forced and vital natures as each interrogates reality, once again, with that
    question born of our most insistent longings --- might there be more?

    2 For a compelling example of such an account, see Goodenough, Ursula and


    Terrence W. Deacon. 2003. "From Biology to Consciousness to Morality." Zygon:
    Journal of Religion and Science 38 (December): 801-819.
    Our Longing is Your Presence
    We seek because You’ve found us
    After Truth for thus You’ve oriented us
    After Beauty for thus You’ve saved & consecrated us
    After Goodness for thus You’ve sustained, nurtured & healed us sacramentally
    After Unity as thus You’ve empowered us as we become Your people
    After Freedom as thus You’ve sanctified us as we surrender to Your Will in growing
    intimacy
    Our wealth not in that which we possess but in You, Who possesses us
    Your wounds, our healing
    Our probings, Your penetrations
    Our yearnings unnamed but perduring
    Our desires muted not extinguished
    For this journey remains our destination
    This quest, itself, our grail
    Our incessant longing transmuted into Your Holy Indwelling Presence

    Retreblement - A Systematic Apocatastasis

    Not as a systematic conclusion, but per my vague heuristics, it seems quite plausible that
    there's no inconsistency between a proper libertarian conception of the will (e.g. those of
    Maximus & Scotus) and universal salvation (apocatastasis).
    As long as we draw the necessary distinction between choosing "between" good & evil
    (being & nonbeing) and choosing "among" goods (on a Pareto front of equally optimal
    choices), along with the further distinctions of our essential & secondary natures
    (Scotus) and natural & gnomic willing (Maximus), apocatastasis can be conceived as
    sufficiently self-determinative.
    Gnomic willing is what our one will, the natural will, does when epistemically-
    axiologically distanced, as it chooses to act or refrain from acting in accord with divine
    logoi, i.e. choosing or refusing participation in goodness & being, thereby forming or
    deforming one's secondary nature as, in varying degrees, virtuous and/or vicious.
    If we conceive our epistemic-axiological distancing in theotic terms, as our temporal
    journeying from image to likeness, our gnomic willing constitutes our co-creative
    participation in Being, beyond being, in Goodness, itself, beyond goodness. Our self-
    determined secondary natures, ad majorem Dei gloriam, will thereby gift us such
    holiness & beatitude that some souls will, indeed, outshine the sun.
    I have insisted, for decades, inspired by something, per my dim recollection, that Hans
    Kung once suggested regarding eschatological anthropology (though I can neither cite
    nor recite it): that every beginning of a smile, all wholesome trivialities,
    every trace of human goodness, will be eternalized. Upon further reflection,
    consistent with those thoughts, it seems to me that every self-determined refusal to
    participate in goodness & being will be likewise respected, as any vicious aspects of our
    secondary natures transist into eternal nonbeing, as those temporal moments are
    essentially constituted by self-annihilations of our secondary natures.
    I see no a priori reason that complete closures of each person's epistemic-axiological
    distancing cannot be accomplished post-mortem, e.g. such as in instantaneous life
    reviews or via other such purgative vehicles, thereby eternally "fixing" our secondary
    natures and, definitionally, ending all gnomic willing.
    If, in some unimaginable putative worst case scenario, a human person would transist
    into eternity with no measure of a virtuous secondary nature, no happy eternalizations,
    whatsoever, what might that entail?
    There can be no eternal annihilation of a person's essential nature, which will
    necessarily enjoy eternal being by virtue of its intrinsic goodness. That essential being
    can in no measure be diminished or demolished self-determinedly. No one conceives of
    a libertarian free will on such terms, especially those committed to the (theo)logical
    necessity of eternal fires & brimstone.
    How, then, might we conceive this bare personal essence, bereft of a virtuous (and
    vicious) secondary nature? Well, following the conventional "age of reason" approach,
    which defines the threshold for the growth of rudimentary, self-determined secondary
    natures (moral & theotic), I conceive such an essential nature in terms of early
    childhood, as precious sacred faces, whose voices make such precious sacred sounds.
    And, in an eternal environs, no longer situated per an epistemic-axiological distancing, I
    envision those children of God & ourselves in pure delight & as wholly beloved. Now, if
    in holiness & beatitude, they present as tiny votive candles, thoroughly on fire with
    divine love, while others shine forth as this or that blazing helios, surely, that will not
    diminish their lovability? That others might be holier than us, O' Lord, grant us the
    grace to desire it, provided we shall be as holy as you'd have us be!
    What might constitute different degrees of beatitude? both of different measures of self-
    determined, virtuous secondary natures & of precious, sacred essential natures?
    Different degrees of beatitude will be experienced commensurate with the self-
    determined ontological densities of each person, as measured in relative spiritual
    intensities (both moral & theotic) and experienced in degrees of expansive aesthetic
    scopes, that is in terms of the number of choices "among" eternal goods of which one
    has freely chosen to avail oneself. In this sense, the imago Dei will have grown in divine
    likeness, for, while the divine nature undergoes no change in perfection vis a vis
    aesthetic intensity, the divine will, esse intentionale, is ever "affected" in terms of
    aesthetic scope by our free, self-determined choices to participate in Being, in
    Goodness.
    It is in this sense that I would suggest that the difference between our essential &
    secondary natures might roughly map to such distinctions as we've always recognized in
    terms of, for example, imperfect & perfect contrition, eros & agape, early vs later stages
    of Bernardian love, illuminative & unitive ways, Ignatian degrees of humility and so on.
    It has always been accepted that imperfect contrition and love of self for sake of self &
    love of God for sake of self are sufficient. Such "enlightened" self-interest has always
    been sufficient for parents? I fully expect it will remain sufficient for our Heavenly
    Father and that it will obtain for all the requisite conditions necessary for our own
    eternal beatitude. For, as DBH has so compelling argued, who could enjoy an eternal
    existence separated from those we've always loved and will always love unconditionally?
    Divine Energeia & Simplicity
    In affirming a weak DDS (Scotists), thin passibility (personalist Thomists) or essence-
    energy distinction (Palamites), one shouldn't imagine this merely involves a Scotist
    formal distinction, Thomist metaphysically real distinction or Palamite denial of
    essential simplicity, all which refer to determinate realities & their un/realized potency.
    Any distinction between the divine esse naturale & intentionale, then, must be trans-
    formal, i.e. beyond our determinate categories, marked by a wide analogical interval &
    long apophatic moment. This apophasis might less so involve a logocentric negation,
    speculatively, but more so a transrational, ineffable experience (Lossky) that encounters
    the divine - not so much inferentially, intuitively or even affectively, but -
    participatorily, as we act with God in a synergy, thereby coming to know the Author of
    such works (Bradshaw) & becoming more authentically oneself via deification
    (Cappadocian).
    Indeed, such ineffable experiences would gift us with a transrational & trans-apophatic
    knowledge of God (Staniloae). We can conceive these relational, communal
    communications of knowledge in terms of divine manifestations of God's activities i.e.
    divine energies, among which, according to Bradshaw, the Greek Fathers would count
    simplicity.

    Bradshaw writes: As with any energy, God is both simplicity itself & beyond simplicity as its
    source. Just as the sun is simple & yet possesses an indefinite multitude of rays, so nothing
    about divine simplicity prevents God from possessing an indefinite multitude of energies.
    Likewise nothing prevents these energies from being affected by creatures.

    A metaphysical notion of simplicity, again, such as could be made in reference to


    determinate realities vis a vis Scotistic & Thomistic distinctions (formal &
    metaphysically real), in principle, eludes us regarding divine realities, especially suitably
    predicated apophatically & analogically.
    However, in a Maximian sense, regarding the "things around God," simplicity would
    symbolically mean that "the one Logos is many logoi, and the many logoi are one
    Logos.”

    Michael Horton writes: According to Bradshaw, what Palamas did was to synthesize the various
    strands of thought that existed in Eastern theology (the energies, the logoi, the “things around
    God”, and the divine “light”) and subsume them all under the term energeia.

    So, if we are to truly "pray our ontotheology," we must observe that apophatic moment
    - not just engaging in negations of our logocentric speculations, but - wherein,
    relationally, we participate in divine activities, choosing our every act in consideration of
    divine logoi, celebrating the ineffable divine manifestations of our own and others'
    theotic self-realizations. Such deifying effects will present as proper to no known
    determinate causes as we faithfully pursue holiness as characters in search of their
    Author.
    Law of Retreblement
    - both traditions, when they talk about the un/knowability of the divine ousia or essentia, are for
    the most part talking pious nonsense
    - no such ‘thing’ as the divine essence
    - no divine essence understood as a discrete object unto itself
    - any language that suggests otherwise, whether patristic, Thomist, or Palamite, is an empty
    reification

    David Bentley Hart


    The Hidden & the Manifest: Essays in Theology & Metaphysics
    Pity the patristic scholar, Thomist or neo-Palamite, who’s, over a career, deftly
    navigated past the theological shoals of modalism, tritheism & subordinations, only to
    discover per DBH’s critique that her oeuvre’s washed up on the shore of some desert
    island of divine quaternity, b/c she unwittingly reified the essence or hypostasized
    energeia. Such charges can happen to the best of scholars, e.g. Peter Lombard.
    I don’t intend to defend any given scholar or tradition, as I’m not sure who DBH meant
    to indict, in particular. But I certainly subscribe to his normative contours, generally.
    Many certainly presuppose the ousia’s not a thing, even if their rhetoric doesn’t
    explicitly express same. Let me suggest that, in fact, most, whom I’ve studied,
    hermeneutically employ, even if only implicitly, a trinitological Law of
    Retreblement.
    I discern a law of retreblement in play in all authentic trinitological discourse, derivable
    from St. Basil, where the essential, personal & relational must be always conceived
    together &, when articulated, if not explicitly expressed together, at least has been
    implicitly & mutually presupposed. Furthermore, I’d maintain, that, while trinitological
    propria, idiomata & relata (both ad extra & intra) are not merely logical but clearly
    onto-logical, they remain weak semantical references to, & in no way robust
    metaphysical descriptions of, divine realities.
    Such semantical references include:
     essentially, denominative & connotative propria (iconic, lexical-iconic, metaphorical &
    analogical kataphases);
     personally, determinative & denotative idiomata (existential, quantitative, locative &
    numeric apophases); and
     relationally, connotative-denotative experiences through participatory synergies,
    which manifest effects, both soteriological & sophiological (theotic), as would be proper
    to no known causes, donatively gifting - not only inferential, intuitive & affective
    intelligibilities, variously inchoate & adequate, but – a robustly relational knowledge
    that’s trans-kataphatic, trans-apophatic, trans-rational & trans-formal, hence ineffably
    unitive via the Energeia, i.e. the logoi, the things around God, the Light.
    Norris Clarke succinctly emulates this retreblement: “To be [being] is to be
    substance-in-relation.”
    Even Aristotle’s conceptions of ousia, since they can variously refer to arche (ground),
    substance (entity) or form (im/material quiddities or generalities), anticipate & evoke
    the triadic inseparability of the divine realities’ essential unitary arche, personal
    hypostatic unicity & relational unitive forms.
    This retreblement further evokes a mutual entailment of the divine realities revealed in
    the:
     Monarchy of the Father, essentially, personally & relationally per propria;
     generation of the Son & procession of the Holy Spirit, personally, relationally &
    essentially per idiomata; and
     mutual revelation of the energeia manifested (ineffably but participatively) in every
    divine-creaturely act of synergy in both the gratuities of creation (by imagines vestigia
    dei) & of grace (by theotic oikonomia), relationally, essentially & personally per relata.
    This mutual entailment avoids – not only modalism, tritheism & subordinationism, but
    – any quaternities, whether of a reified essence or hypostasized energeia (including
    Sophia).
    Some may recognize in this divine semi-formal retreblement heuristic the same triadic
    categories & semantic rules we use for determinate realities. Those otherwise differ,
    however, by admitting acts in limited potency in each such category and by affording, in
    the category of formal relata, a connotative-denotative generic determination, i.e. a
    quiddity not accessible for the incomprehensible divine essence. As such, divine
    propria, idiomata & relata only semantically refer to divine realities but simply
    cannot collapse modally into the properties, entities & relations of determinate
    realities, which otherwise afford robust metaphysical descriptions.
    Exploring the Other Side (well, one part, anyway)
    continued from here
    Bottomline:
    I could only ever conceive of a post-mortem annihilation of one's vicious
    secondary nature, never of one's essential nature (imago Dei), which
    would be held in existence b/c of its intrinsic goodness. I picture such a
    "mere" imago as a person of 7 or younger (not some horror!).
    To be or not to be, who we really are, that is the question, as we freely choose to act in
    pursuit of options that we know to be good (all equally or each sufficiently so) or not to
    act in consideration of same.
    One can act in an inconsiderate or thoughtless way, without considering the good, under
    some compulsion, hence exculpably, or after considering the good, sinfully, in both
    cases depriving one’s act and its effects of any distinctively human quality. One can,
    thereby, nihilate the very essence of one’s being in a de-privative act that can potentially
    render effects deprived of the good (privatio boni).
    Habitual patterns of in/considerate acts yield our secondary natures, which can include
    varying degrees of both virtuous & vicious natures, hence degrees of likeness to our God,
    extrinsically, varying in moral & spiritual intensities, which proportionately gift
    expansions of freedom & aesthetic scope. Our essential nature, an imago Dei, though,
    remains intrinsically good.
    It seems quite probable to me that every authentically free human act, participating in
    Goodness, itself, has an intrinsically eternal quality, that every trace of human goodness,
    every beginning of a smile, all wholesome trivialities, are sophianized, gifted an eternal
    aesthetic scope. Other acts are self-nihilations, diminishing our secondary nature's
    likeness to God in varying degrees, while, intrinsically & inviolably, our essential natures
    remain a precious, sacred imago Dei, a durable aesthetic intensity.
    We thus self-determine, in every act, how much of our secondary nature gets eternalized
    (as virtuous) or self-nihilated (as vicious), what degree of authenticity we freely will to
    realize.
    My Universalist Account
    Therefore -
    What if God honored all freely refused participations in eternal goods as ordered toward
    our contingent being?
    What if God honored all freely accepted participations in eternal goods as ordered
    toward our contingent being?
    What if that part of the nature of our contingent being, as it was formed by such refusals
    of eternal goods or being, was allowed to lapse into nonbeing, precisely respecting one’s
    free choice?
    What if that part of the nature of our contingent being, as it was formed by freely
    accepted eternal goods or being, was eternalized (becoming virtually essential being),
    precisely respecting one’s free choice?
    What would transist into eternity, then, whether proleptically and/or eschatologically,
    would therefore be our intrinsically good essential being, with its fixed aesthetic
    intensity, and extrinsically good (virtuous) secondary nature with its self-determined
    aesthetic scope, but never one’s vicious secondary nature, lacking sufficient moral
    intensity & self-determinedly ordered toward nonbeing, hence annihilation.
    Notes:
    Concepts to be Expanded:
    Emergence of probability
    Via transmuted experience
    In individuals as secondary nature, with a diversity of specific identities & uniformity of
    generalIn societies as culture, pluralistically, in particular religions & universal presence
    Mediated or not, pneumatologically
    Expressing or not, Maximian logoi

    A Consistent Trinitology & Robust Pneumatology?

    What might draw one to Scotus re trinitology? So as not to be coy, I’ll tell you why &
    where the choice matters to me (& doesn’t).
    If there’s no “substantive” difference, only terminological, between Scotist & Thomist
    accounts of nature & persons, and nothing separating either from the Capps re MOF,
    then, whatever motivates one to prefer one or the other account won’t involve concerns
    related to tritheism, modalism or subordinationism.
    Such a motivation could derive from one’s idiomatic preferences, finding one idiom
    more felicitous than the next, for whatever reason. That (& Franciscan sensibilities) first
    drew me to Scotus b/c his approach had influenced Peirce w/whom I resonated. Beyond
    that, systematically, I later discovered certain nuances of the “subtle” doctor that
    resonated w/my pneumatological sensibilities.
    While working w/Amos Yong, he reinforced why a proper approach to the filioque, &
    how an engagement with certain Orthodox emphases, might help me better articulate
    my pneumatology, which was concerned - not only with the Spirit’s particular activity in
    the gratuity of grace, but - the Spirit’s universal activity in the gratuity of creation.
    Both how one articulates the MOF & how one appropriates the DDS could have
    implications for how one conceives ad extra divine interactivity, i.e. how pervasively
    indwelling is the Spirit in creation and how profusely intimate is the Spirit in theosis?
    I consider the East & West, Byzantine & Latin, views of the Spirit’s eternal procession to
    have been largely reconciled through terminological disambiguations & in ways not just
    congenial to the stance of Maximus but which would’ve been satisfactory to both Mark
    of Ephesus & Palamas, even while I remain sympathetic to Zizioulas’ call for further
    clarification.
    Still, in asking just how pervasive might be the Spirit’s creaturely indwelling & profusive
    the Spirit’s theotic intimacy, we must inquire into the DDS & more precisely define
    impassibility. And here’s my Thomistic rub, my pneumatological nub and the
    theological hub, where the Franciscans (Scotus & Bonaventure), Maximus, Mark of
    Ephesus, Palamas and the Capps all seem to converge, as ISTM, their stances entail a
    weak DDS, not inconsistent w/a thin passibility, none of this incongruous w/certain
    open conceptions (not to be coy, I’m thinking of Tom Belt). I should note, Norris Clarke,
    a personalist Thomist, was receptive to this approach.
    Some might insist that the MOF differentiates the Persons only logically, that w/o
    robustly causal explanations it lacks intelligibility. Properly conceived, though, the MOF
    has definite ontological & causal implications, so, while wholly incomprehensible, it
    remains eminently & infinitely intelligible.
    Still, for certain analytic types, there’s no analogical interval too wide or apophatic
    moment to long to break their kataphatic stride. Because they misappropriate idiomata
    & propria, which are inherently limited in modelling power, their trinitologies will
    inevitably stall, epistemically, from the inordinate theo-ontological freight they’re
    expected to haul. These same analytics complain of Thomism’s strong DDS, often on the
    same grounds of unintelligibility. While I’m sympathetic to that charge, I reject their
    radically kataphatic solutions and resist their facile causal models, which prove too
    much.
    Contrastingly, what the East has consistently & properly held, in my view, is an
    appropriately (vaguely) causal MOF and suitably weak DDS. This remains congruent
    with the thin passibility that underwrites my robustly pneumatological intuitions of a
    Spirit, Who pervasively indwells in creation & profusely “intimacizes” in theosis.
    Further Discussion
    Scotus locates the will in efficient causation. For many, this represents a conceptual
    relocation from the formal. Conceiving the free will as efficient cause (in limited potency
    to material) implicates a volition that determines only WHETHER one exercises (or
    refrains therefrom) one’s will but not to WHAT it chooses, i.e. it must not refer to why
    this or that is chosen but only to why the will wills at all, because it does remain free
    not to act.
    As such, the will refers to the sole rational potency, never acting without the intellect,
    which is co-causally operative (in bringing the Maximian logoi to bear) even though not
    finally determinative.
    The will determines neither the act of existence in potency to essence nor the formal
    generically determinative act in potency to one’s final cause, which makes a human
    existent what one truly is, e.g. a human person, the symbolic species, an imago Dei, a
    beloved child of God, a sister of Jesus, a brother of the Cosmos.
    Taken seriously, this has enormous soteriological and sophiological implications, which
    is to say, regarding redemption, justification & sanctification, i.e. intiation into
    communion, adoption into the Kingdom, on one hand, and, on the other, beatitude &
    glorification, i.e. ascetically & mystically or theotically, further establishing the Kingdom
    via communal collaboration.
    In my view, Scotus would worry about the risk of any full blown liberty of indifference
    [1], i.e. including not just one’s aesthetic scope or efficient acts in limited potency to
    divine logoi, materially, but also, vis a vis aesthetic intensity (ontological density),
    existential acts (self-annihilation) in limited potency to divine logoi, essentially, as well
    as formal acts (generic self-determination) in limited potency to divine logoi, finally (as
    if we could become other than what we already are, what C.S. Lewis might call a
    “dismantling of humanity”). This amounts to what M. M. Adams would call a low
    doctrine of human agency [2], although I am not wholly familiar with her precise
    formulation and how it might comport with my own, above.
    Any such exercise and actualization of rationality makes one’s efficient acts good and
    increases the being of the Kingdom, ecclesiologically, both proleptically &
    eschatologically. But does that also increase one’s own being, intrinsically, as per a
    Thomistic metaethic, per se changing one’s esse naturale per a generic determination?
    [3]
    Or does it only change, per an agential extrinsic denomination, one’s esse intentionale?
    Does moral evil frustrate an increase in the being of one’s esse naturale, even to the
    point of its full diminishment, so to speak undoing one’s intiation into communion and
    adoption into the Kingdom, denying one’s very aesthetic intensity & ontological density?
    Rather, might it frustrate an increase in being only vis a vis one’s esse intentionale,
    foregoing further communal collaboration in the Kingdom, restricting one’s aesthetic
    scope, limiting one’s ecclesiological participation, as one neglects spiritual exercises and
    practices of presence? [4]
    I’m not suggesting my anthropological categories & applications measure up with
    anthropological rigor or even capture the points of disagreement between, for example,
    Eleonore Stump & Marilyn M. Adams. Even if they amount to an ahistorical, eisegetic
    account of Aquinas & Scotus, though, perhaps they still have some normative integrity
    all their own?
    If stable dispositions, derived from habitual spiritual exercices and practices of
    presence, to act in accordance with or contrary to one’s nature, i.e. virtues or vice, do
    produce second natures, whether virtuous or vicious, do those ontologically negate or
    just phenomenologically mask our primal human nature, hide the imago Dei?
    In my view, our primal being and goodness is both unalienable, due to divine esse
    intentionale, & inalienable, not a capacity of determinate esse intentionale.
    Eternally, are we dealt with in accordance with both or either of our natures, primary
    &/or secondary, however one conceives these volitional loci, as esse naturale or
    intentionale?
    If the goodness of our being is thus light, will our existence in Hell thereby
    be unbearable?
    Let’s consider Hart:
    [T]he wrathful soul experiences the transfiguring and deifying fire of love not as
    bliss but as chastisement and despair. [5]
    Does not this refer to the transformative & theotic dynamisms that I addressed, above.
    Will not those dynamisms cease post-mortem or in some eschatological closure of
    epistemic distance, such as in a particular judgment & life review? Hart doesn’t take this
    into account, when describing the tortures of hell, but only because he otherwise
    ultimately rejects an infernalist stance, not inconsistent with Bulgakov’s surmise that
    those dynamisms might continue post-mortem, finally rejecting eternal torment as a
    moral absurdity.
    So, if those dynamisms terminate post-mortem, wouldn’t we necessarily only be dealt
    with in accordance with our primary nature, which would comport with Maximian
    being, eternal being and well-being? Or, if also our secondary nature, only that level of
    goodness & being which emerged per Maximian logoi, never otherwise instantiating a
    privatio boni, which have no ontological reality?
    Might ill-being only ever be a transitory, purgative state? Or even a misconstrual of an
    eternal esse intentionale, which remains volitionally indifferent to any aesthetic scope,
    beyond its original endowment, not inconsistent with a Scotistic free will, located in
    efficient not telic causes?
    A post-mortem will that's closed all epistemic & axiological distances and has been
    purged of any residual vicious secondary nature could only refrain from determining
    among the goods of an enhanced aesthetic scope, choosing not to grow one's spiritual
    intensity. It would no longer be able to otherwise act inconsiderate of goods pertaining
    to temporal exigencies, due to having none, so, would no longer be able to sin, no longer
    able to vary its moral intensity.
    Bishop Barron [6] writes: If there are any people in Hell (and the church has never
    obliged us to believe that any human is in that state), they are there, not because God
    capriciously “sent” them, but because they absolutely insist on not joining in the party.
    This isn’t wholly inconsistent with the view of volitional indifference to a self-
    constrained aesthetic scope, but, again, what of my point that human volition is not
    otherwise constituted by self-constraints regarding aesthetic intensity (ontological
    density), existentially or generically, regarding THAT one is or WHAT one primally is
    (whatever one believes regarding self-constructed secondary natures)?
    How, then, would we psychologize that eternal disposition? I’m asking for a friend,
    who’s a social wallflower, who prefers to watch the mirrorball & swirling dervishes
    beneath, who doesn’t mind others coming over to sit in silent presence (90% is showing
    up, only 10% is dancing, perichoretically or otherwise?), while they keep the finger
    sandwiches & beers coming. One person’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens?
    As John O’Brien observers: Concerning the detailed specific nature of hell ... the
    Catholic Church has defined nothing. ... It is useless to speculate about its true nature,
    and more sensible to confess our ignorance in a question that evidently exceeds human
    understanding. [7]
    Fr Richard Rohr writes: To be frank, I think that perhaps no single belief has done more
    to undercut the spiritual journey of more Western people than the belief that God could
    be an eternal torturer of people who do not like him or disobey him. And this after Jesus
    exemplified and taught us to love our enemies and forgive offenses 70 x 7 times! The
    very idea of Hell (with a capital ‘H’), as Jon Sweeney explains in this magnificent book,
    constructs a very toxic and fear-based universe, starting at its very center and ground.
    Hatred, exclusion, and mistreatment of enemies is legitimated all the way down the
    chain of command.” [8]
    Jon Sweeney writes: "Ultimately, I choose not Dante's vengeful, predatory God who is
    anxious to tally faults, to reward and to punish. Instead I choose the God who creates
    and sustains us, who is incarnate and wants to be among us, and the God who inspires
    and comforts us. That God is the real one, the one I have come to know and understand,
    and that God has nothing to do with the medieval Hell." [9]
    Conclusions
    Following Scotus, I intuit that no eternally self-constrained aesthetic intensity is
    possible, neither existentially (THAT) nor generically (WHAT).
    And with Rohr & Sweeney, I’ll simply insist, apophatically, on what an eternally self-
    constrained aesthetic scope simply must NOT be like.
    Then, with O’Brien, I’ll confess ignorance, kataphatically.
    Notes:[1] MM Adams re Scotus’ concerns re liberty of indifference, as she cites Duns
    Scotus, God and Creatures: The Quodlibetal Questions, translated with introduction,
    notes and glossary by Felix Alluntis, O.F.M., and Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M. (Washington,
    D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1975), q.16, art. Il, 377-79·[2] ibid The
    Problem of Hell by Marilyn M. Adams[3] Dante's Hell, Aquinas's Moral Theory, and
    Love of God, Eleonore Stump, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 16 (2):181-198 (1986)
    [4] When God created us in the divine image, God intended us to be cocreators and
    participate in God’s plan. Hell may not be a literal burning fire, but does that mean it
    doesn’t exist?by Kevin P. Considine[5] The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the
    Tsunami? By David B. Hart[6] Bishop Barron[7] John Anthony O'Brien, The Faith
    of Millions: The Credentials of the Catholic Religion, pp. 19–20[8] from the Foreward to
    Dante, The Bible, and Eternal Torment by Jon M. Sweeney[9] Sweeney ibid

    The Contemplative Stance


    A contemplative posture orients one's disposition toward reality more than it offers
    propositions about reality. It more so norms "how" we see and less so describes "what"
    we see.
    Contemplation effects metanoia, which includes intellectual, affective, moral, social and
    religious conversions. While these conversion dynamics are distinct from developmental
    growth mechanisms (for example, as described by Piaget, Maslow , Kohlberg, Erikson
    and Fowler, et al), they are not unrelated as they do foster those processes.
    The conversions gift us horizon-situated dispositions, which
    1) open our perceptions via an awareness that there's more to any given reality than our
    own thoughts can suggest; via logos;
    2) open our minds to recognize the intelligence on display in other interpretations of any
    given reality outside of our own social and political circles; via topos;
    3) open our souls by expanding what's reasonable to expect regarding any given reality
    beyond what our own feelings might suggest; via pathos;
    4) open our hands by enlarging our sense of responsibility toward any given reality
    beyond our own moral and practical concerns; via ethos;
    and
    5) open our hearts to being in love with and beloved by God, others, the cosmos and
    even one's self; via mythos.
    See: Contemplative Being, Believing, Belonging, Desiring, Behaving & Becoming
    These conversions gift us with what Lonergan described as human authenticity, when
    he articulated his transcendental imperatives: be aware, be reasonable, be responsible
    and be intelligent.
    Still, what theorists like Lonergan, Maslow, Gerald May, Viktor Frankl and others all
    eventually came to understand was that self-actualization was in fact a by-product of
    self-transcendence (not the end-product of self-interested strivings). Any pursuits of
    self-actualization, authenticity, Enlightenment and such for their own sakes, i.e. as
    sought after end-products, would be self-defeating, frustrating their own realizations.
    Any who would aspire to be aware, reasonable, responsible and intelligent --- would best
    realize those values by, first, being in love!
    Without following the imperative to be in love, one could not realize sustained
    authenticity. Without seeking Enlightenment out of solidarity and compassion, rather
    than for one's own sake, Enlightenment would forever elude one.
    The contemplative stance, then, while mostly dispositional, does entail one universal,
    even if vague, propositional posit, which is that reality's origin and end, being and
    essence, value and appeal, meaning and purpose, is love.
    Thus contemplation, as entailed in the spiritual practices, asceticisms and disciplines
    across traditions, expresses a singular, orthodoxic, soteriological trajectory. This
    orientation goes beyond the norms of authenticity or of a suitable epistemic humility,
    dis-positionally, to also include, pro-positionally, a belief that reality is robustly
    relational. It warrants an existentially actionable interpretation that, wholly and
    thoroughly beloved, we simply must be loving. (As the children sing why they love
    Jesus ... because He first loved me).
    In many cases, through interreligious dialogue, we are discovering that, beyond this
    singular, shared, orthodoxic, soteriological trajectory, the great traditions and
    indigenous religions will otherwise diverge with pluralist, diverse, polydoxic,
    sophiological trajectories, which, more simply put, correspond to different ways of
    being in love with different aspects of reality, including God, others, self and cosmos.
    This is to recognize that, in many ways, as we move beyond the vaguely spiritual to
    embrace more specific religious paths, it will not necessarily entail competing
    interpretations of reality but only complementary approaches to reality, which can be
    variously more inchoate or developed, more or less inclusive, variously emphasizing our
    unitary being or our unitive strivings, more or less suited to foster conversions and to
    sustain authenticity, more or less perfectly articulating truth, enjoying comm-unity,
    celebrating beauty, preserving goodness and growing freedom & love. I mean to say all
    of that in full consonance with Pope Paul VI's proclamation, Nostra Aetate.
    When institutionalized religions fail in fostering conversions and in sustaining
    authenticity, many followers will, understandably, retreat into a spiritual but not
    religious stance. When religions are at their best, though, well, we "see how they love
    one another" as they foster open minds, open hearts and open hands!
    And we see where the quest, itself, becomes our grail; the risks of faith, hope and love,
    themselves, become our rewards; the journey, itself, becomes our destination; the
    spiritual process, itself, becomes our transformational product; the next good step
    becomes the entire recovery program; the commitment, itself, becomes our outcome;
    the prayer and sitting, themselves, become our consolation.
    Life's highest goods, alone, can thus be enjoyed without moderation, as the pursuits of
    truth, unity, beauty, goodness and freedom are, intrinsically, their own rewards. The
    contemplative stance embodies that real-ization. Good religion enhances it.
    In science, faith & quotidian life, epistemic virtues should first vault our speculative
    claims over the threshold of equiplausibility, where we can normatively adjudicate any
    competing responses using the principles of reasoning under uncertainty.
    The hermeneutical spiral, above, recapitulates Lonergan's transcendental imperatives &
    functional specialties.
    See: https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/contemplative-being-
    behaving-believing-belonging-desiring-becoming-an-outline-of-foundations/
    To wit:
    De-liberatively, regarding our references, descriptively & interpretively, epistemic
    virtues should first vault our speculative claims over the threshold of equiplausibility,
    where we can adjudicate, normatively, any competing responses, using the principles of
    reasoning under uncertainty, evaluatively.
    De-liberatively (cosmos & mythos – be free, be loving, be-loved per both temporal &
    ultimate teloi) …
    regarding our references …
    descriptively (logos or perception - be aware in research & communications) & …
    interpretively (topos or understanding – be intelligent in interpretation & systematics)
    …
    epistemic virtues should first vault our speculative claims over the threshold of
    equiplausibility, where we can adjudicate …
    normatively (ethos or acting - be responsible in dialectics & foundations), any
    competing responses, using the principles of reasoning under uncertainty …
    evaluatively,(pathos or judging & deciding – be reasonable in history & doctrines).
    I must stipulate with Hart & Milbank that any rivalry between ultimate worldviews, say
    nihilist vs theological, cannot be logically coerced. Reality remains far too ambiguous for
    us & way too ambivalent toward us to compel belief through speculative reason, alone.
    With the Thomists, I would insist that, even stipulating that nihilism has not thus been
    refuted, philosophy well demonstrates the reasonableness of natural theology as an
    equiplausible competing worldview.

    For me, Thomism’s reasonableness remains indispensable over against any


    thoroughgoing fideism, much less, nominalism, idealism, voluntarism or relativism.
    I do not receive Milbank as coming from some Thoroughly [Post]Modern Millie, but,
    instead, take (eisegetically) his postmodern critique as an admonition to avoid the
    temptations of dueling hyper-formalisms in countering those insidious -isms.
    This is to recognize that ---
    no essentialistic framing will finally foreclose nominalism, descriptively;
    no naïve realism will convincingly defeat idealism, interpretively;
    no intellectualistic speculation will logically overcome voluntarism, evaluatively;
    no absolutistic insistence will compellingly obviate relativism, normatively; and
    no rationalistic appeals will definitively refute fideism, existentially.
    But what amount to epistemic misfires for some are but caricatures for others, whose
    1) descriptive probes include semiotic & moderate critical realisms;
    2) interpretive heuristics employ a metaphysical fallibilism;
    3) evaluative dispositions engage an irreducible triad of logos-pathos-ethos, e.g.
    Aristotelian eudaimonia, Augustinian beatitudo or Thomist summum bonum;
    4) normative propositions allow some degree of ethical pluralism grounded – not in an
    insidious relativism or vulgar pragmatism, but --- suitable epistemic humility,
    metaphysical fallibilism & moral probabilism ; and
    5) philosophical preambula vault fidei past the threshold of equiplausibility.
    Thomism’s reasonableness thus gets vaulted philosophically past the threshold of
    equiplausibility by the valid & coherent arguments of natural theology & natural law.
    (And its deontological conclusions should be considered at least as modest as its
    ontological commitments are tentative). There, philosophy culminates in either the
    theological preambula fidei & its general precepts or a nihilistic cosmogony.

    Any "competing" theological or nihilistic mythos would come after a normatively


    justified existential leap.
    Past this threshold of epistemic warrant, speculative reason yields to practical
    reasoning under uncertainty. The speculative arguments between essentialism &
    nominalism, realism & idealism, intellectualism & voluntarism, absolutism & relativism
    and fideism & rationalism have previously been transcended by a fallibilist, critical
    realism.
    Normative justifications commence and can lead either to the fideistic, voluntaristic
    dichotomy of a theological versus nihilistic mythos or to an existential disjunction,
    where rational equiplausibility principles, albeit often implicit, adjudicate a decision to
    “live as if” that which is (more so, perhaps, they who are) the most life-giving &
    relationship-enhancing, the most beautiful & good, the most unitive & liberative, will ---
    first & proleptically, i.e. proximately & temporally, as well as eventually &
    eschatologically, i.e. ultimately & eternally --- also happen to be the most true.
    This constitutes meta-discourse, however inchoate or implicit, whether variously held
    provisionally or confidently, yes, prior to special revelations, and yes, on tradition-
    transcendent grounds. Importantly, this needn't be formal discourse or what can sometimes
    devolve into sylly syllogisms, but more often, via our participatory imaginations, comes from
    our common sense & common sensibilities, from connaturality, an illative sense, a tacit
    dimension, intuitions & informal abductions.

    The most problematical arguments of natural theology are rationalistically grounded in


    naïve rather than critical realisms. The most problematical arguments of the natural law
    are a prioristic, rationalistic, deductivistic, biologistic, physicalistic & infallibilistic,
    especially as they move from general precepts to specific concrete norms, particularly
    because of epistemic hubris and the lack of a more inductive, personalist relationality-
    responsibility approach. But the abuse of natural theology & natural law is no argument
    against their proper use.
    The questions that beg?
    What constitutes the most life-giving, existentially?
    How do we define & measure the most relationship-enhancing? The most unitive,
    interpretively & orthocommunally?
    Where's the most beautiful instantiated, evaluatively & orthopathically?
    And the most good realized, normatively & orthopraxically?
    And the most liberative, metanoetically & orthotheotically?
    These are not questions that yield to an armchair cognitive map-making but which
    must actively engage participative imaginations that are naturally embodied,
    historically situated, socially embedded, culturally bound, politically immersed &
    transcendentally horizoned.
    Of course it's incredibly problematical to apply our ortho-metrics to competing
    worldviews, precisely because their instantiations are so very particular & traditioned.

    But I wouldn't want to defend the notion that nihilism remains in that competition?

    Finally, Between an overly pessimistic Augustinian interpretation & overly optimistic


    transcendental Thomism, perhaps a Goldilocks theological anthropology can be
    articulated:
    /https://opcentral.org/resources/2015/01/12/donald-l-gelpi-two-spiritual-paths-
    thematic-grace-vs-transmuting-grace-part-1/
    https://opcentral.org/resources/2015/01/12/donald-l-gelpi-two-spiritual-paths-
    thematic-grace-vs-transmuting-grace-part-ii/
    Gelpi recognized both as donative realities - a gratuity of creation & gratuity of
    grace, the Spirit's universal presence (e.g. nomicities) & particular presence, where
    Grace is mediated via transmuted experience, where, for example, Kerygma matter
    immensely.
    This discussion continues here:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/15/augustinians-
    thomists-nature-grace-politics-religion/

    Where in the World is Sophia? ---a Sophiological footnote

    The created grace Gelpi refers to would be constituted by reality's actualized potencies,
    eternalized teloi (both temporal & ultimate teloi) of Peircean thirdness, efficient
    materialities of secondness, connaturalized indeterminacies of firstness, existentialized
    essences, formalized finalities, participatory intimacizations eternalized, all temporal
    realities coaxed forth Pneumatologically, Christologically & Paterologically via Divine
    Energies as would account for effects as would be proper to no known causes.
    Every trace of human goodness, for example, eternalized, i.e. every
    beginning of a smile & all wholesome trivialities!
    Whether interpreted in Platonic, Neoplatonic, Aristotelian, Thomist, Scotist, Palamitic
    or Peircean categories (and I cross hermeneutical bridges between them all), collectively
    & dynamically, these cumulative actualized potencies or eternally realized divine teloi
    may represent Sophia, who participates in the Divine Energies in a perichoretic
    Divine Dance.
    In The Wisdom of God, Bulgakov spoke of two Sophias, one created and the other
    uncreated. She to whom I refer above would be the created Sophia in her
    participatedness. While I affirm the Divine Energies per a formal distinction, I must
    defer to others regarding the manner of viewing Sophia in Orthodoxy. And still wonder
    just how we might best account for ecstatic visions of Sophia.
    See more re this theophany:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/14/essential-theophanic-putative-
    theo-ontological-aspects-of-human-divine-relations/
    FINAL NOTE:
    This body of work largely comprises my project, which I refer to as Pan-semio-
    entheism, because, as a systematic theology, while it is metaphysically realist, it
    prescinds from any given metaphysical root metaphor (substance, relational, process,
    experience, etc) to a phenomenological meta-heuristic.
    See: Amos Yong With John Sobert Sylvest, “Reasons and Values of the Heart in a
    Pluralistic World: Toward a Contemplative Phenomenology for Interreligious
    Dialogue,” Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 20:2 (2010): 170-93
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/contemplative-being-behaving-
    believing-belonging-desiring-becoming-an-outline-of-foundations/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/mapping-metaphysical-
    distinctions-aristotelian-thomist-peircean/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2016/12/09/morrells-4-d-imax-rohrian-
    perichoretic-adventure/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/divine-dance-rohr-morrell-
    panikkar-oh-my/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/%e2%80%8bfrom-
    ontotheological-trinito-logical-is-ness-to-theopoetic-trinito-phanic-dance-ness-yes/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/perichoresis-as-vehicle-
    negativa-in-rohrs-divine-dance-a-trinito-phany-in-continuity-with-orthodox-trinito-
    logy/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/the-trans-formal-distinction-
    between-the-divine-essence-energies/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/epistemic-distance-the-greatest-
    good-as-divinely-willed-ends-in-an-anti-theodicy/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/maritain-murray-macintyre-
    milbank-a-medieval-integralist-walk-into-a-bar/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/07/10/a-semiotic-phenomenology-
    toward-a-more-ecumenical-trinitology-and-trinitophany/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/freedom-from-aquinas-to-
    modern-emergentist-semiotics/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/04/a-defense-of-metaphysics-to-
    be-or-not-to-be-or-to-e-prime-or-not/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/07/truth-broadly-conceived/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/the-pre-political-grounding-of-
    both-liberal-illiberal-regimes/
    The architectonic set forth herein suggests philosophical norms & theological heuristics,
    the contours within which I methodologically approach systematic theology,
    comparative theology & Gospel inculturation.
    With this pan-semio-entheism, I aspire to develop a polydoxic, pneumatological
    missiology for the planting of ecclesial gatherings that will invite, orient, unify, sanctify,
    heal, nurture, liberate & send forth dual-practitioners & even multiple-belongers.
    Anthropos
    We must resist an under-estimation of the significance of special revelation in growing
    humanity's orientation to God, as it allows persons to move more swiftly & with less
    hindrance on their journeys, realizing both temporal & ultimate teloi.
    We must also resist either an over- or under-estimation (of an extreme intrinsicism or
    extrinsicism) of humanity's dynamic orientation to God & moral reality via natural
    theology & natural law.
    Even among the intrinsicists of the Nouvelle Theologie, the blurring of distinctions
    between nature & grace didn't remove anthropological tensions regarding the realities of
    sin & ecclesial accommodations to the world.
    While the intrinsicists all agree in principle that we can discern what's “common and
    accessible to all” and gradually move forward to the “highest data of theology,” some
    Thomists & Augustinians otherwise diverged precisely along the grounds for
    anthropological optimism & pessimism vis a vis both sin & worldly accommodations.
    See:
    Brandon Peterson, Critical Voices: The Reactions of Rahner and Ratzinger to 'Schema
    XIII' (Gaudium et Spes)

    Peterson quotes a post-conciliar interview of Rahner: I would say that the dangers of a false
    adaptation of the Church to the modern world, or of falling into a purely secular humanism —
    which are real dangers in the Church’s attempt to open itself outwards to the modern world can
    invite as a defensive reaction the opposite danger, namely, to turn inwards and to make the
    Church a closed sect. Theology must help the preacher preach the gospel in such a way that it
    can really be understood and assimilated today; and theology also has a critical function in
    preventing the Church in its preaching or in its practice from becoming a ghetto or a sect within
    the contemporary world.

    Peterson concludes: Christocentrism, anthropological methodology, and critical


    openness to the world stand in a creative tension which marks Gaudium et Spes itself, a
    tension which we must not relax if we are to be faithful heirs to this landmark council.
    For such a tension is an essential part of a theological approach which, executed
    properly, can proclaim the Gospel to a world that not only needs it, but needs to
    understand it.
    How might we best exploit these creative tensions?
    Reality emerges & gifts entities that present with different kinds of “aboutness” that
    suggest degrees of ontological density but which don't definitively reveal metaphysical
    natures.
    An emergentist heuristic might refer to these “aboutnesses” in terms of different degrees
    of telic influence.
    • 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.
    In this profusely pneumatological reality, divine interactivity gifts the Spirit's
    universalized presence via creatio continua, consistent with the Thomistic aphorism -
    “Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur.” This means that “whatever is
    received, is received according to the mode of the receiver.”
    All reality participates, constitutively & relationally, responding to various formal &
    formative divine promptings of divine esse intentionale & energies, each entity
    according to its given telic modes.
    Human persons interact with the Spirit's universalized presence, constituted by &
    engaging in all of the above-listed modes of aboutness, but uniquely, as reality's only
    sapiopoietic creature, via a teleological mode, in a robustly intentional way.
    The sapiopoietic nature of human persons equips them to also interact with the Spirit's
    particularized presence in special revelation.

    Per Aquinas in the ST: It is befitting Holy Writ to put forward divine and spiritual truths by
    means of comparisons with material things. For God provides for everything according to the
    capacity of its nature. Now it is natural to man to attain to intellectual truths through sensible
    objects, because all our knowledge originates from sense. Hence in Holy Writ, spiritual truths
    are fittingly taught under the likeness of material things. This is what Dionysius says (Coel. Hier.
    i): "We cannot be enlightened by the divine rays except they be hidden within the covering of
    many sacred veils." It is also befitting Holy Writ, which is proposed to all without distinction of
    persons — "To the wise and to the unwise I am a debtor" (Romans 1:14) — that spiritual truths
    be expounded by means of figures taken from corporeal things, in order that thereby even the
    simple who are unable by themselves to grasp intellectual things may be able to understand it.

    Per Don Gelpi S.J.’s anthropology:

    In an “experiential approach to human nature, any given human mind may or may not be
    oriented dynamically to God. Rather, each self must acquire such an orientation, either by fixing
    its personal beliefs on purely rational motives concerning the reality and nature of God, or by
    responding positively and graciously in faith to some event of divine self-revelation.”

    The gratuity of creation, experienced by human persons as they interact with the Spirit's
    universalized presence, can foster a rationally acquired dynamical orientation to God,
    gifting an awareness of & cultivating an aretaical disposition toward both temporal &
    ultimate teloi. It can thus foster – not only the secular conversions (intellectual,
    affective, moral & sociopolitical), but – an authentic theocentric religious conversion,
    which, while variously implicit & inchoate, cooperates with the obediential potencies
    formed by secular conversions.
    The gratuity of grace, experienced by human persons as they interact with the Spirit's
    particularized presence, can foster a dynamic reorientation of the self to God, if it
    responds positively and graciously in faith to some event of divine self-revelation.
    If this dynamic reorientation of the self results from a response in faith to a particular
    divine self-disclosure, whether initially or subsequent to a previous reorientation
    fostered by the gratuity of creation, it constitutes an infusion of supernatural grace via
    the gratuity of grace.
    Per Gelpi, supernatural grace “transmutes experience by endowing it with a new
    capacity to relate to God both correlative to God’s free act of self-disclosure and
    impossible apart from that self-revelation.”
    A theocentric religious conversion orients a person via Lonergan's transcendental
    imperatives as – beyond, temporally, being aware, intelligent, reasonable, responsible &
    in love with others, cosmos & even self – it also invites one into a relationship with a
    donative ultimate reality, much like Pip in Great Expectations as he related to his
    unknown benefactor or, perhaps, as Ralph McInerny put it, like characters in search of
    their Author. This represents the essential, orthodoxic, soteriological trajectory of the
    world's great traditions & indigenous religions.
    Consistent with Nostra Aetate, concerning the relationship of the church to non-
    Christian religions, in addition to that essential soteriological trajectory, various
    traditions & religions may otherwise diverge to various degrees in their polydoxic,
    sophiological trajectories, whereby persons grow in intimacy (theosis) with God.
    See:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/%e2%80%8bwhat-the-
    contemplative-stance-means-to-me/
    This is the Goldilocks anthropology that best exploits the creative tensions of the
    Nouvelle Theologie, which, when properly engaged, successfully sidesteps any sterile
    Neo-Scholasticism, transcendental Thomism or Augustinian radicalism.
    Special Revelation clarifies what would otherwise remain indistinct in the logos of
    General Revelation.
    First, in the order of logos:
    Determinacies
    We disambiguate ambiguities & define in/definite actualities, which are determinacies
    (in/definitive) that correspond to referenced or defined entities.
    Indeterminacies
    In/determinacies (in/determinable & in/determined) refer to generalities (probabilities
    & necessities) and vagueness (possibilities).
    We determine in/determinacies by delimiting vague possibilities & specifying
    generalities, i.e. probabilities & necessities.
    Beyond a mere propositional translation process (via our cognitive map-making)
    between noetic aspects of general & special revelations, as we move from natural to
    revealed theology or even between revealed traditions ...
    We must also engage in
    dispositional interpretations (via the inhabitations of our participatory imaginations) of
    culturally embodied unitive, aesthetic, ethical & liberative norms, if we are to adequately
    appropriate the theological idioms required for our Gospel inculturation.
    Then, beyond logos:
    Beyond a creedal logos, we need participatory immersion in revelation's other integral
    aspects: communal (topos), liturgical & devotional (pathos), moral (ethos) and ascetical
    & mystical (mythos).
    Natural Theology shouldn't be conceived in strictly logocentric terms, for even a
    theocentric religious conversion in the gratuity of creation, however inchoate, indistinct
    or implicit, propositionally, will dispositionally gift, both personally & culturally,
    embodied relationships to truth, unity, beauty, goodness & freedom.
    As one cooperates with prevenient graces & obediential potencies via General
    Revelation, while these propositional & dispositional embodiments remain confused,
    imperfect & indistinct, due to the indirect nature of one's knowledge of God, they reflect
    authentic existential orientations to the transcendental imperatives directly known via
    Special Revelation in the gratuity of grace.
    To wit: https://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles3a.htm#25

    Since all creatures, even those devoid of understanding, are ordered to God as to an ultimate
    end, all achieve this end to the extent that they participate somewhat in His likeness. Intellectual
    creatures attain it in a more special way, that is, through their proper operation of
    understanding Him. Hence, this must be the end of the intellectual creature, namely, to
    understand God.

    Below are accounts of secular & religious conversions.


    The architectonic, below, represents a hermenetical spiral, which proceeds successively
    & transformatively (via a divine gratuity of creation) through a cosmic, temporal
    chronos of logos, topos, pathos & ethos to a divine encounter with a mythic, eternal,
    kairos, whereupon, given a prevenient, obediential potency, a novel, foundational meta-
    ethos will donatively (via a divine gratuity of grace) emerge to thereafter norm, in
    reverse succession, the transformative dynamics of a doctrinal meta-pathos, systematic
    meta-topos & pastoral meta-logos.
    This spiral presents, wholistically, in the overall soteriological trajectories of each
    transformative journey. It is also recapitulated, holonically, in every discrete axiological
    trajectory of each individual value-realization.
    RIGHT BEING - PRESENCE
    COSMOS of PENTAPARTITE ANTHROPOLOGY
    GIFTED – authentic value-realizers - kairos of imago dei & chronos of cosmic evolution;
    an interpreting subject of a micro-cosmic mereological reality
     Intellectual – be aware
     Social – be intelligent
     Affective – be reasonable
     Moral & Practical – be responsible
     Religious – be in love
    RIGHT BELIEVING - WORD BROKEN OPEN
    LOGOS of PENTADIC METAPHYSICS & ONTOLOGY (WORD)
    GIVENS – orthodoxic phenomenology of objects of interpretation, sacred kairos &
    secular chronos; secondness
     Unitary Being as Intraobjective Identity
     Unitive Striving as Intersubjective Intimacy
     Unified Self as Intrasubjective Integrity
     Ultimate Unicity as Interobjective Indeterminacy
     Ens Necessarium as Transjective Necessity
    RIGHT BELONGING - COVENANT & PEOPLE GATHERED IN THANKSGIVING
    TOPOS of PENTAPRAGMATIC COMMUNITY & MISSIOLOGY
    THANKSGIVING – orthocommunal contexts & Eucharistic communities of
    interpretation (sacred kairos & secular chronos)
     Eschatological - historical & scientific as ordered by & to truth; Spirit-oriented
     Ecclesiological – sociological as ordered by & to unity; Spirit-empowered
     Soteriological - arts, humanities & cultural as ordered by & to beauty; Spirit-sanctified or
    dedicated
     Sacramental - economical & philosophical as ordered by & to goodness; Spirit-healed &
    nurtured
     Sophiological – political as ordered by & to freedom; Spirit-saved
    Beyond the mere propositional translations (via cognitive map-making), engaged
    dispositional interpretations (via inhabitations of participatory imaginations) of
    culturally embodied noetic, aesthetic, ethical, unitive & liberative norms will reveal the
    theological idioms necessary for Gospel inculturation.
    RIGHT DESIRING - ANAMNESIS & MEMORIAL
    PATHOS of PENTALECTICAL AXIOLOGY
    GIFTS – orthopathic value-realizations of proleptic kairos & evolutionary chronos;
    firstness & the primacy of esthetic interpretion
     Truth
     Unity
     Beauty
     Goodness
     Freedom
    RIGHT BEHAVING - ITE, MISSA EST
    ETHOS of PENTALOGICAL EPISTEMOLOGY (SPIRIT)
    RECEIVING – orthopraxic value-pursuits through acts of interpretation, sacred &
    secular, pneumatological (kairos) & participatory imagination (chronos); thirdness
     Descriptive
     Interpretive
     Evaluative
     Normative
     Contemplative
    RIGHT BECOMING - MEAL - You are what you eat!
    MYTHOS of PENTATARIAN THEOLOGY
    GIVER - orthotheotic participations - theological manifestations as invitations from
    image to likeness for we are the Body of Christ indwelled by the Trinity & participating
    in the Divine Dance; interpreting subjects of a macro-cosmic mereological reality
     Jesusology & Epiphany
     Trinitology & Trinitophany
     Paterology & Theophany
     Pneumatology & Pneumatophany
     Christology & Christophany
    DIVINE PROVISIONINGS & GRATUITIES
    Gratuity of Creation – the divine provisioning of co/operative connaturality, where
    humanization & socialization lead to authenticity via 1) secular conversions (w/inchoate
    grasp of natural law) and intimacization leads to sustained authenticity via 2) kenotic
    conversions (w/kenotic relational dynamics of temporal ends).
    Gratuity of Grace - divine provisioning of co/operative grace, where deification leads to
    transformative realizations via 3) religious conversions (w/polydoxic relational
    dynamics & inchoate grasp of natural theology) and christianization leads to
    transformative fruition of eternal ends via 4) theotic conversions (w/beatitudinal &
    beatific realizations).
    There’s a progressive realization of virtues, as one’s experiences are transmuted by
    cooperation w/the Holy Breath, w/decreasing risks of perverted ends, whether temporal
    or eternal.
    Sophia effected by Divine Energies will express immanent & divine entelechies (via
    various teloi) in the gratuities of creation & grace, in universal & particularized
    instances.
    CONVERSIONS
    I. Natural Conversions – intellectual, social, affective & moral
    A. descriptive - research/experiential perception – logos
    B. interpretive - interpretation/intelligent understanding - topos
    C. evaluative - history/judging – deciding - pathos
    vital options
    D. normative - dialectics/responsible acting - ethos
    forced options –
    II. Authenticity & Self-Transcendence - cosmos (self, others & world) via Spirit's
    universal ordinary presence in the gratuity of creation (obediential potencies;
    prevenient/operative & cooperative connaturality). This gratuity involves the divine
    provisioning of temporal ends proportionate to Aristotle's virtues of truth, beauty,
    goodness & unity (via humility) through operative (prevenient) & cooperative
    connaturality.
    normative - foundations
    live options - polydoxy
    existential leaps
    III. Religious Conversion – mythos (meta-cosmos or ultimate reality) via Spirit's
    particularity & extraordinary presence in the gratuity of grace (response to special
    revelations via prevenient/operative & cooperative graces). This gratuity involves the
    divine provisioning of eternal ends (meta-ethos) proportionate to Aquinas' theological
    virtues of faith, hope, love & unity (via communal oneness ) through operative
    (prevenient) & cooperative grace.
    A. evaluative - doctrines (meta-pathos)
    existential landings
    B. interpretive - systematics (meta-topos)
    theology of nature
    C. descriptive - communications (meta-logos)
    Gospel inculturation & moral enculturation
    Regarding Philosophical & Theological Distinctions
    A distinction is not truly philosophical if it hasn't been discerned to make a difference,
    existentially, helping one realize one's true temporal ends. And it's not truly theological
    if it hasn't been discerned to make an existential difference, helping one realize one's
    true eternal ends.
    One can only authentically become fully human by realizing our divinely ordained
    temporal & eternal ends.
    An anthropology may properly relate the perinoetic|empirical, dianoetic|logical,
    diastemic|aporetic, ananoetic|metaphysical, epinoetic|apophatic & kinetic|dynamical
    aspects of our human episteme, yet, without an holistic integration with the
    METANOETIC|transformative reality of human BECOMING, it's not robustly
    philosophical, much less theological.
    Note:
    If taken beyond methodological stipulations to metaphysical presuppositions, beliefs in
    sufficient reason/causation & reality's intelligibility will ontologically reduce to theism.
    Beyond that, dynamical questions re reality's immanent & transcendent entelechies may
    beg.
    One's metaphysical stances, sometimes implicit, toward any of a wide variety of
    interpretations of various origins (e.g. field, cosmic, quantum, life, sentience, language)
    may often then implicate: pan-, panen-, pan-en-, open or classical theism, deism or
    theistic personalism.
    Architectonic of Divine Gratuity
    Orthodoxic Path: Gratuity of Creation
    Polydoxic Path: Gratuity of Grace
    Theotic Path: Gratuity of Grace
    Architectonic of Participatory Divine Gratuities

    The apparent tension between divine simplicity & divine freedom results from
    the conflation of two distinct categories, the metaphysical & existential with
    the nonmetaphysical & quidditative.

    Especially Cf. The Formulation of Thomistic Simplicity: Mapping Aquinas’s


    Method for Configuring God’s Essence, JETS 57/2 (June 2014): 371–403.

    Other aporia remain but are located elsewhere.

    We successfully reference God, metaphysically, only apophatically, e.g. divine


    simplicity & ousia, abducting THAT God is, existentially.

    We successfully reference God, personally, per special revelation, variously


    employing kataphasis, apophasis, doxology, etc, inductively experiencing
    WHO God is, quidditatively, e.g. divine aseity & energeiai.

    Revelatory references employ common sense rhetoric with ontological


    implications but not always strict metaphysical categories & predications,
    which, at any rate, wouldn’t, in principle, lend themselves to anything but
    apophatic, existential – not quidditative, essential – metaphysics. Logical
    consistency not subject to parody in modal ontological arguments requires
    apophatic predication.

    That’s why I insist, for example, on labeling the essence-energies distinction


    as trans-formal.

    Analogical predications of God exert much more normative leverage on our


    embodied dispositions – aesthetically, morally & relationally – as we
    participate in reality’s excess of meaning, making appropriate (e.g.
    Eucharistic) responses to ultimate reality via myth & storytelling, which aren’t
    always completely true, literally, or robustly effective, analogically, i.e. they
    exert little descriptive leverage on our abstract propositions or deductive
    argumentations.

    I would thus urge any reference to a putative analogical god-talk to be restated


    as trans-analogical.

    We judge that the Reality of God will somehow, ultimately, make existence far
    less ambiguous for, & ambivalent toward, us in ways we can neither prove nor
    fully express, because …

    proleptically, we have participated through, with & in One, Who has loved us,
    Whose Spirit has gifted us first fruits, an earnest, a guarantee, a down
    payment, a seal, a promise, a confident assurance in things hoped for &
    conviction of glories unseen.

    How, precisely, might we avoid a Spinozan modal collapse?

    In my own Peirce-like modal ontology, first, we distinguish determinacies &


    indeterminacies. [1]

    For determinacies, we must disambiguate any ambiguities (univocal,


    equivocal, analogical, apophatic, etc) & define any in/definite actualities,
    which are determinacies (in/definitive) that can correspond to vaguely
    referenced or robustly described entities.
    In/determinacies (in/determinable & in/determined) refer to
    generalities(probabilities & necessities) and vagueness (possibilities). We
    determine in/determinacies by delimiting vague possibilities & specifying
    generalities, i.e. probabilities & necessities.

    Next, we distinguish possibilities, actualities & probabilities in terms of


    Aristotelian causation.

    A distinction may be real vs conceptual (re logical or virtual). Real distinctions


    can include modal distinctions (re temporality or adequacy).

    Modal temporality can include a formal or metaphysically real distinction.


    This maps, somewhat, to both Scotus’ formal distinction & Peirce’s category of
    thirdness or 3ns.

    Modal temporality as applied to Peircean categories can variously map to


    causes, where for:

    2ns or actualities, where noncontradiction [PNC] & excluded middle [PEM]


    hold and act maps to efficient & potency to material causes;

    3ns or regularities, where PNC holds but PEM folds and act maps to formal &
    potency to final causes;

    1ns or possibilities, where PNC folds & PEM holds and act maps to our
    embodied connaturalities and potency to their indeterminacies.

    Other real distinctions would include:

    Existential
    act – existence
    potency – essence

    Modal Adequacy
    in/finite
    whole/part or mereological
    Real vs Conceptual (re logical or virtual).

    Real distinctions include modal distinctions re temporality (above) or


    adequacy (in/finite or whole/part = mereological). Modal temporality includes
    a formal or metaphysically real distinction (PNC holds, PEM folds).

    It could map like this:

    Modal temporality can be applied to Peircean categories as mapped to causes,


    where for:

    actualities, act –> efficient & potency –> material;

    regularities, act -> formal; potency –> final.

    existentially, act -> existence; potency -> essence.

    Finally, we distinguish with Peirce, reality from existence. Gary E. Kessler


    describes Peirce’s distinction:

    Reality is a broader term that encompasses what exists but is not synonymous
    with it. For something to be real it must have properties sufficient to identify it
    whether anyone attributes those properties to it or not. The existent, strictly
    speaking, is what interacts with things in a spatio-temporal environment.

    Applying this distinction to God, then, in his excursus on Peirce’s Neglected


    Argument, [2] Kessler continues:

    Since God is not another spatio-temporal object, it amounts to fetishism, Peirce


    remarks, to say that God exists. Hence his argument, strictly speaking, is not an
    argument for God’s existence, but for God’s reality.

    Aaron Bruce Wilso writes, in Peirce’s Empiricism: Its Roots and Its
    Originality, Lexington Books, Oct 19, 2016
    If the above- described distinctions refer to categories for spatio-temporal
    realities, how must they be modified to successfully reference the Reality of
    God, even if not successfully describe some putative Being of God?

    Regarding the Reality of God:

    Modal temporality would not successfully refer, much less describe God,
    because God’s

    a) pure trans-actuality (actus purus or trans-efficient primal cause) lacks


    material potency as Ipsum Esse Subsistens.

    b) God’s pure trans-formal act (primal telos) of Ens Necessarium lacks final
    potency; and

    c) God’s pure trans-possibility lacks indeterminate potency.


    Existentially, God’s pure act of existence lacks essential potency.

    In terms of Modal Adequacy, the trans-infinite Reality of God lacks finitude.

    Prior to theo-ontology, our theophany would define essential donative,


    communicative, participative & liberative aspects of human-divine relations.
    It would preclude all fatalism & determinism, include a robust conception of
    agency & proper conception of freedom.

    Our dogmatic, relational essentials provide the theological contours within


    which we should remain as we aspire to our classical, neo-classical & other
    approaches.

    The question of modal adequacy raises further whole/part or mereological


    considerations:

    Would any of those dogmatic essentials necessarily be threatened in a theo-


    ontology that, for example:

    pan-entheistically employs an ontological distinction between humans &


    God, where God donates & communicates creatively as we participate & are
    liberated imitatively?

    panen-theistically employs a mereological distinction between humans &


    God, where God donates & communicates diffusively as we participate & are
    liberated substratively?
    My Pan-semio-entheism
    Bulgakov seems to echo Origen re: eternal creation, but Lossky - Athanaius, who
    deemed creation in time from God's will rather than nature. Related to distinctions of
    Norris Clarke: esse naturale v intentionale & Palamas: essence v energies. Keller's
    tehomic panentheism via creatio ex profundis makes sense to me as an eternal act,
    where the order of existence was the formless void of Genesis. CS Peirce affirms the
    atemporal Reality of God, where Being > Reality > Existence, denying God's an existent.
    To that being:reality distinction, I impute naturale:intentionale & essence:energy
    distinctions. The Reality of God would freely proceed as energeia, per divine will,
    diffusing the tehom's substrative forms w/divinizing finalities, that they may participate
    imitatively. Eternal creatio ex profundis & an in-time creatio continua preserve divine
    transcendence w/o sacrificing an intimate relationality, integral to a more robustly
    personalistic theology. (I'm trying to reconcile these approaches in resonance w/some of
    Staniloae's intuitions.)
    In the eternal generation of the Son & procession of the Spirit, the economic trinity
    manifests the immanent trinity.
    The non-determinate Creator gifts (originates or speaks) ...
    the uncreated, transcendent, trans-determinate Logos (norms) mediated by ...
    the empowering Spirit to ...
    the determinate creation, the order of which thus presents as an harmonious, telic
    configuration of pluralities.
    This manifestation of the economic trinity exhausts what can be said of the immanent
    trinity.
    Apart from the creative act & divine energeia, which reveal an extrinsic, relational,
    trinitarian divine esse intentionale ...
    we can attribute nothing determinate, intrinsically or essentially, to the trinitarian
    divine esse naturale in its aseity.
    While being, reality & existence refer to creatures, only being & reality refer to the
    Creator, a non-existent.
    The divine esse naturale (intrinsic, essential being of God) remains trans-formally
    distinct from the divine esse intentionale (extrinsic, relational reality of God).
    I thus eisegetically adapt Neville's creatio ex nihilo & Yong's pneumatology in my own
    meta-heuristic.
    Robert Cummings Neville's __God the Creator: On the Transcendence and
    Presence of God__ & Amos Yong's __Discerning the Spirit(s): A Pentecostal-
    Charismatic Contribution to Christian Theology of Religions__

    See Addendum below regarding a "dispositional" metaphysic.

    I argue that, in both cases, the answer is no.

    ALL of the Reality of God metaphysical formulations above set forth apophatic
    predications, where both PNC & PEM hold. Apophatic predications in modal
    ontological arguments preserve a logical consistency not subvertible by
    parody.

    HOWEVER, it is one thing to set forth such distinctions syntactically &


    grammatically following semantic rules (e.g. univocity of being) that foster
    successful references, allowing us to formulate logically consistent modal
    ontological arguments that can be rather compelling philosophically &
    metaphysically, as we abduct the Reality of God or THAT God really effected
    this or that effect as would be proper to no known causes —

    And quite another thing altogether to imagine that this great accomplishment
    of Natural Theology has also gifted us quidditative knowledge regarding to
    WHOM that Reality of God-concept refers in any robustly semantical or
    contextual (pragmatic) sense. It’s at this juncture we can begin telling
    untellable metaphysical stories, saying way more, metaphysically, than what
    can reasonably be known, proving too much metaphysically, abandoning all
    prudent aporetic sensibilities!

    It’s at this juncture where, happily, having evaded a fideistic leap, we must
    next turn to special revelation, not so much propositionally at first but
    dispositionally, inhabiting & embodying its belongingness, its desirings, its
    participations — tasting & seeing the beauty & goodness imparted by the
    Divine Energies, prudently imagining that the Reality of Natural Theology’s
    God must be true!

    Because the Reality of God successfully refers to the Ens Necessarium, not
    only God’s trans-actuality (essence) but also God’s trans-formal distinctions
    (energies) require a modal ontological grammar, where both PNC & PEM hold
    for the Creator.

    For the created spatio-temporal order, whether in the formal distinctions of


    generalities or in the vagueness of possibilities, indeterminacies must be
    admitted to avoid falling into the hopeless paradoxes of essentialism vs
    nominalism, idealism vs naïve realism, asymmetric temporality, logical vs
    efficient causation, and so on.

    PNC thus folds for temporal possibilities & PEM folds for temporal
    probabilities. This sharply distinguishes the modal grammars of metaphysical,
    apophatic, existential God-talk from those of spatio-temporal metaphysics?

    Enough theological aporia present on their own without our generating more
    by conflating metaphysical grammars.
    What sets Spinoza apart is his Principle of Sufficient Reason on steroids
    combined with an idealist monism, where an Ens Necessarium obviates all
    indeterminacies, where only one modal grammar operates.

    What distinguishes some atheological conceptions is a mereological


    distinction, where the fallacy of composition is presupposed and the whole
    does not beg questions for its necessary being, a materialist monist approach
    to a brute reality. Here the PSR is methodologically provisional & a
    philosophical naturalism essential, but not necessarily inconsistent with
    libertarian freedom, consistent with a number of philosophies of mind.

    Theological conceptions employ a nuanced PSR, essentially, with a


    methodological naturalism, provisionally. Conceiving God in classical or
    neoclassical, pan-entheist or panen-theist, conceptions, the Reality of God
    begs questions, either ontologically as asking “why not rather nothing?” or
    mereologically as asking “why not rather something else?”. The response to
    either question evokes an abduction of the Reality of the Ens Necessarium,
    which sharply distinguishes the Creator from the created order,
    metaphysically, but emphatically invokes participatory interactivity, whether
    creatively & imitatively or diffusively & substratively or perhaps even both. It
    could well be both, especially if the nihilo of creatio is, metaphysically, trans-
    existentiale & no-thing, thus avoiding the fetishism of saying that God exists.

    In an irreducibly triadic reality, perhaps our entitial states or actualities entail


    creative & imitative interactions, while our relational states or telic matrices
    entail diffusive & substrative interactions (think deep & dynamic fields).

    The move from the Ens Necessarium to donative participatory interactivity


    takes us from a natural (onto-theological) to a revealed (theophanic)
    theological methodology. A philosophical move to a theology of nature (theo-
    ontological) seeks embodied understandings & theological idioms as that
    method proposes distinctions like creative & imitative and/or diffusive &
    substrative.
    Logos
    experiential perception or research

    Human Existence – entitial, esse actuale as 2ns


    Topos

    interpretation or intelligent understanding

    “God is | not x | is true apophatically & literally” refers to Existence, onto-


    theologically & metaphysically.
    From Natural Theology or Onto-theology:
    Divine Being – actus purus (divine esse)
    Pathos

    history & judging – deciding

    Human Being – Imago Dei, created-imitative esse essentiale as 1ns, connaturality


    From Theophany & Theopoietics:
    The statement “God is | x | is true kataphatically & trans-analogically” refers to Being,
    quidditatively, theophanically & theopoietically.
    From Theology of Nature or Theo-ontology:

    “God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true relationally & really” refers to Reality, theo-
    ontologically & intimately.

    Divine Reality – relational, creative-diffusive essentiale (divine esse naturale) &


    uncreated substrative energeia (divine esse intentionale)
    Ethos

    dialectics & responsible acting

    Human Reality – uncreated substrative energeia, created, relational, esse


    intentionale as 3ns

    Theological Foundations - philosophical, historical & exegetical - explore a polydoxy


    of live options for our existential leaps

    Meta-Pathos

    Theological Doctrines as existential landings

    Meta-Topos

    Theological Systematics with further refined theology of nature

    Meta-Logos

    Theological Communications
    pastoral, homiletics, catechesis, evangelization, missiology, apologetics, Gospel
    inculturation & moral enculturation
    Let’s unpack a Dionysian-like Logic, where:
    God is | x | is true kataphatically & trans-analogically;
    God is | not x | is true apophatically & literally; and
    God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true relationally & really.
    Compare that to a Scotist- Peircean abduction of the Reality of God, where:
    Being > Reality > Existence
    The apophatic & literal statements work by metaphysically identifying God via such
    effects as would be proper to no known causes.
    Because kataphatic & trans-analogical statements refer to God existentially, they must
    employ theophanic & theopoietic idioms, which don’t reduce to formal philosophical &
    metaphysical categories, as existence can’t be predicated of God, but which do express
    reality's excess meaning in our stories & myths, liturgies & devotions.
    While such statements offer no onto-theological, metaphysical leverage for our natural
    theology, descriptively & propositionally, they can still do theo-ontology, accomplishing
    a great deal of heavy lifting, normatively & dispositionally, discovering & crafting the
    idioms for our theologies of nature, whereby we affirm that our stories & myths, liturgies
    & devotions, “really relate” to God.
    Therefore, we best formulate our real relational idioms of God in E-Prime (employing
    no verb forms of ‘to be’ or their equivalents), because, existentially, relational predicates
    will not successfully refer. With a Palamitic turn, real statements thus require the active
    voice as we refer to the manifold & multiform works done by God, energeia.
    The statement “God is | x | is true kataphatically & trans-analogically” refers to Being,
    theophanically & theopoietically.
    “God is | not x | is true apophatically & literally” refers to Existence, onto-
    theologically & metaphysically.
    "God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true relationally & really” refers to Reality, theo-
    ontologically & intimately.
    For moderate realists like Aquinas, Scotus & Peirce, the categories of Existence &
    Reality include, respectively, both entitial & relational created realities, i.e. the efficient
    acts & material potencies of entities and the formal acts & final potencies of teloi.
    The category of Reality would also include the uncreated relational reality of Primal
    Telos, which, as Pure Act, sources created reality’s polydoxic teloi …
    energetically diffusing divinizing finalities into divine substrative forms …
    thereby synergistically harmonizing the instrumental, efficient acts & material
    potencies of created, entitial existents that they might imitate the divine esse
    intentionale, growing dispositionally in an ever-deepening relational intimacy.
    Divine Simplicity, metaphysically, refers to the apophatic, metaphysical abduction of
    the Reality of God as Ens Necessarium, esse naturale.
    Divine Freedom, theophanically, refers to the uncreated energies of the Reality of God,
    which invite transformative effects (dis-positions) as would be proper to no known
    causes, hence from putative theotic participations, both entitial, creative & imitative,
    and relational, diffusive & substrative.
    Any tension between Divine Simplicity & Divine Freedom does not arise onto-
    theologically in natural theology, for freedom refers to Divine Esse Intentionale trans-
    analogically (descriptively weak, propositionally, but normatively strong,
    dispositionally).
    While denying a strictly metaphysical impasse between divine simplicity & freedom and
    while suggesting we've thus avoided any logical inconsistencies (e.g. due to parodies
    grounded in conceptual incompatabilities), it’s not to suggest we’ve also thereby
    eliminated the aporetic confrontations that inescapably attend to all theo-kataphasis. At
    the same time, it’s just no small victory to dismiss the facile caricatures & snarky
    parodies of “devastating” neo-atheological critiques?
    A theology of nature, following these speculative grammars, can affirm divine simplicitly
    as a natural theological argument, philosophically, going beyond it, theo-ontologically -
    not only invoking Thomistic distinctions between efficient & instrumental causes,
    primary & secondary causations, to preserve creaturely agencies & avoid modal collapse,
    but - to affirm a real & robust divine-nature interactivity, pneumatologically, thereby
    also going, coherently, beyond a mere deism.
    Theophanies & theopoietics aspire to successfully reference entitial realities,
    existentially, employing the ever-cascading & collapsing metaphors of our stories &
    myth, signs & symbols, liturgies & devotions, alternately revealing the concealed, then
    concealing the revealed, Who remains always timid but ever coy.
    Theo-ontologies & theologies of nature aspire to successfully reference relational
    realities, personally, relating the uncreated Primal Telos of divine esse intentionale &
    the polydoxic teloi of creation (note below), which culminate in human intentionality.
    The seductions of divine intentionale remain ineluctably unobtrusive but so utterly
    efficacious in the wooing of Sophia (created).
    Cf. regarding methodological distinctions of God-talk, see:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/24/the-apparent-tension-between-
    divine-simplicity-divine-freedom/

    the Spirit woos creation forth•


    makes this way south & that way north•
    invites each blade of grass to green!

    horizons, boundaries, limits, origins•


    perimeters, parameters, centers, margins•
    we're given freedom in between!
    thus truth & beauty & goodness grow•
    thus lizards leap & roosters crow•
    and dawns break with each new day!
    good news is ours to be believed•
    love freely given if received•
    the Spirit in our heart will stay!
    very old poem of mine
    N.B. regarding polydoxic teloi

    • 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
    Cf. https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/contemplative-being-
    behaving-believing-belonging-desiring-becoming-an-outline-of-foundations/
    Addendum:
    What I have set forth above is a meta-heuristic, what I feel is an essential (pun intended)
    phenomenological grammar that is preambular to any metaphysic, substance or
    process, any natural theology, or any theology of nature, whether classical or
    neoclassical, pan-entheistic or panen-theistic, or even pantheistic or atheological. This
    represents the foundations of most of my musings.
    After posting this, I happily discovered the work of Dr. Mariusz Tabaczek O.P., who has
    articulated a "dispositional" metaphysic. I commend his writings to all.
    Please see:
    https://ndias.nd.edu/fellows/tabaczek-mariusz/
    https://mariopblog.wordpress.com/
    Below is an excerpt from his dissertation. It is the best example of a theology of nature
    as would be consistent with what I am struggling to articulate.
    https://mariopblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/1234.pdf
    "A theory of emergence based on dispositional metaphysics would show a new
    explanatory potential as well. It would not only reconcile Aristotelianism with
    emergentism, but also have a significant impact on the view of divine action developed
    in reference to the theory of emergence. God’s action would no longer be conceived
    panentheistically as an influence on the totality of the world, which metaphysically
    assumes that the causation of God and creatures is of the same kind (univocal
    predication) and so runs the risk of collapsing into pantheism. The recovery of the plural
    notion of causation allows for a recapturing of the classical understanding of divine
    action as proposed by Aquinas. God is regarded as the ultimate source of forms, and the
    ultimate aim of all teleology in nature. With regard to efficient causation, God’s
    transcendence is protected by Aquinas’ distinction between the primary and principal
    causation of the Creator and the secondary and instrumental character of the causation
    of creatures. Therefore, God’s immutability, omniscience, omnipotence, infinity,
    eternity, and impassibility are not challenged, while his immanent and constant
    presence in all worldly events is by no means undermined."

    Notes:

    1) I say Peirce-like because I am not a thoroughgoing Peircean,


    metaphysically. I adapt, herein, his implicit modal grammar, importing
    Aristotelian, Thomistic & Palamitic distinctions.
    2) A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God (1908) by Charles Sanders
    Peirce

    Regarding the Neglected Argument, Gary E. Kessler writes:

    I begin with some distinctions. First, Peirce distinguishes between an argument


    and argumentation. An argument is “any process of thought reasonably tending
    to produce a definite belief” while argumentation refers to an argument that
    proceeds “upon definitely formulated premisses” (6.456). We must note that
    Peirce’s Neglected Argument (hereafter referred to as NA) is an argument, but
    not argumentation.

    Second, we must distinguish between reality and existence. Reality is a broader


    term that encompasses what exists but is not synonymous with it. For something
    to be real it must have properties sufficient to identify it whether anyone
    attributes those properties to it or not. The existent, strictly speaking, is what
    interacts with things in a spatio-temporal environment. Since God is not another
    spatio-temporal object, it amounts to fetishism, Peirce remarks, to say that God
    exists. Hence his argument, strictly speaking, is not an argument for God’s
    existence, but for God’s reality.

    Conversations that touch upon my take above:

    Mapping Metaphysical Distinctions: Aristotelian, Thomist, Scotist, Peircean &


    Palamitic

    The “Trans-Formal Distinction” between the Divine Essence & Energies

    Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse

    The Krueger-McHugh Debate: Theism or Atheism (2003)

    The Formulation of Thomistic Simplicity: Mapping Aquinas’s Method for


    Configuring God’s Essence, JETS 57/2 (June 2014): 371–403.

    Divine Simplicity and the Formal Distinction, Part 2


    PROLOGUE from 2011

    INTRODUCTION
    After they had both heard the Gospel preached by the missionary bishop
    Paulinus, an advisor of King Edwin of Northumberland said to him:

    The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which
    is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein
    you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good
    fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the
    sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he
    is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather,
    he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he
    had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went
    before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new
    doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be
    followed.3

    Like King Edwin and his council of elders, who among us has not been warmed
    by life‘s goodness, fed by its truth, inspired by its beauty? Even then, who has not
    also poignantly experienced the wintry storms of life‘s poverty in so many
    different forms, the hunger pangs of our ignorance regarding life‘s ultimate
    concerns and the always swift flight of life‘s beauty from our sight? Prompting all
    of us to ask whether there might be more?

    To the extent that human life has always been an ongoing quest in pursuit of such
    value-realizations as truth, beauty, goodness, unity and mercy, life‘s unavoidable
    value-frustrations have given rise to many questions with clear existential
    imperatives. What is that? Describe it. What is that to us? Evaluate it. How might
    we best acquire (or avoid) that? Norm it. Might there be more? Interpret all of
    that!

    Thus it is that humanity‘s perennial value-pursuits have given rise to life‘s many
    different methods --- descriptive sciences, evaluative cultures, normative
    philosophies and interpretive religions --- each autonomous, all necessary, none
    alone sufficient, for every value-realization. The value-pursuits of truth, beauty

    3 Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, L.C. Jane's 1903 Temple
    Classics translation, introduction by Vida D. Scudder, (London: J.M. Dent; New
    York E.P. Dutton, 1910)
    and goodness, in a context of freedom, comprise an essential axiology, or
    interpretive axis, presupposed even by an evolutionary epistemology. 4

    Beyond this essential axiology, humankind has embarked on many different


    religious quests. That is also to say, we have adopted many different interpretive
    stances toward reality. The primary religious quest pursues truth, beauty and
    goodness, in a context of freedom, through a basic cosmology via a participatory
    imagination, which is respectively engaged with historical, socio-cultural and
    economic concerns in a political context (freedom presenting in degrees). Beyond
    this cosmology, though certainly not without its perspective, a theological
    imagination then respectively engages these same concerns through creed, cult-
    community and code, in a context open to transcendence (what we might call an
    ―outside assist‖). A more distinctly pneumatological imagination divines, again
    respectively, more precisely how it is that we are thus oriented, empowered-
    sanctified and healed, in a context of being saved. The Christological imagination
    then breaks open these categories of human concern and divine interactivity
    elaborating various approaches to eschatology, ecclesiology-theological
    anthropology and sacramentology within a context of soteriology-political
    theology. In no way necessarily mutually exclusive, these various imaginative
    engagements of reality reflect the urgency of our existential concerns with their
    forced and vital natures as each interrogates reality, once again, with that
    question born of our most insistent longings --- might there be more?

    While we will aspire to describe here some significant measure of the sought after
    unity between traditions through this account of humanity‘s common methods
    and shared values, at the same time, this should in no way be mistaken for any
    facile syncretism, false irenicism or insidious indifferentism, for we will not be at
    all suggesting that every such engagement of humanity‘s forced and vital
    concerns is also, necessarily, a live option.5

    Still, what we may discover in this excursus is that, while many of our great and
    even indigenous traditions can not in the final analysis be fully live options,
    theoretically, in that they appeal to putative descriptions and norms that are on
    their face incompatible, they otherwise will have to be considered so, nonetheless,
    for all practical purposes, because it is just too early on humankind‘s journey to
    imagine that we can successfully adjudicate between all such disparate
    approaches. This is also to suggest that not all affirmations of religious plurality
    will be grounded the same way, methodologically, which is to say that some
    approaches may remain live options only because we remain ignorant, while
    others may be live options, indeed, because they reflect merely a legitimate

    4 For a compelling example of such an account, see Goodenough, Ursula and


    Terrence W. Deacon. 2003. "From Biology to Consciousness to Morality." Zygon:
    Journal of Religion and Science 38 (December): 801-819.
    5 Cf. The Will to Believe by William James. An Address to the Philosophical Clubs
    of Yale and Brown Universities. Published in the New World, June, 1896.
    plurality of aesthetical expression, which is otherwise ordered toward the same
    truth and goodness, and a bona fide diversity of ministry, though otherwise
    enjoying a great unity of mission. Finally, in none of this will we be saying that it
    is too early on humankind‘s journey to successfully adjudicate between at least
    some disparate approaches, especially where it is patently obvious that a growth
    in human authenticity is being either wondrously fostered or miserably thwarted
    by this or that religious cohort. Of course, many approaches will lie between these
    extremes and will thus serve us, because they are, as they say, good enough, even
    if not optimal. The quest thus perdures!

    What we hope to offer in this collaborative exercise is an axiological vision of the whole of reality
    that will assist all those who aspire to foster a growth in human authenticity in the members of
    their faith community. This vision, we hope, will also offer a meaningful contextualization of the
    Good News of Jesus Christ, one that answers humankind‘s quest --- not only for more, but ---
    for superabundance, pressed down, shaken together, running over, poured into our laps.

    About Our Triads and Tetrads

    From whence and whither the Fourthness of our tetradic arrangement of


    phenomenology, axiology, epistemology and theology, as well as the tetrads
    nested within them (i.e. the triad within each immanent frame plus a fourth
    element of transcendence) ? Is it a Platonic artifact? Certainly it makes no a
    priori claim on our metaphysics? Perhaps it simply mirrors the functions of the
    human brain quadrants as inventoried by our Jungian intuitions? Clearly, in
    semiotics, it reduces to the irreducible Thirdness of Peirce's modal ontology of
    the possible, actual and necessary, as inspired by an axiology of truth, beauty and
    goodness, as modeled by an epistemology of icon, index and symbol?

    We have presented a tetradic architectonic within which we have framed our


    triadic phenomenology, trialectical axiology, trialogical epistemology and
    trinitarian theology, each situated in both immanent and transcendent frames. In
    one sense, perhaps implicit in our transcendent frames, we are simply
    recognizing reality's depth dimensions as reality confronts us, respectively, with
    ontological vagueness, axiological frustration, epistemic indeterminacy and
    hermeneutical interpretation. In another sense, our radical finitude and fallibility
    leave us perennially wanting, always probing for something more. But is there
    necessarily more?

    We have characterized our descriptive sciences, evaluative cultures and


    normative philosophies as interrogations of reality, respectively asking: What is
    that? What is that to us? How can we, therefore, best acquire (or avoid) that?
    And we have recognized interpretive religion as a quest asking: Is there more
    where that came from? And such ultimate concerns, correspond to, in the case of
    what we would like to acquire, our fondest existential hopes, and in the case of
    what we would like to avoid, our worst existential fears. As they say, we thus hope
    vaguely and dread precisely. Merton describes these existential crises in terms of
    continuity (not mincing words, here, we all fear death in its many forms) and
    creativity (we all want to somehow matter and make a difference).

    In our view, it is precisely continuity and creativity that hold the key as we try to
    break open the portal of Fourthness to transcendentally gaze beyond our
    immanent frame. If reality is in any manner either pervasively triadic or tetradic,
    this does not necessarily entail our eschewal of such dyadic conceptions as we use
    to describe such polar realities, for example, as true and false (principle of
    noncontradiction), either- or (principle of excluded middle), this not that
    (haecceity, Peirce's nondescriptive reference), faith and doubt, beautiful and
    ugly, good and evil, right and wrong. But we will discuss later how such First
    Principles as noncontradiction and excluded middle will either hold or fold in
    each modal category of the possible, actual and necessary, particularly noting
    how metaphysical necessity often yields to probability in the Peircean category of
    Thirdness (which relates to laws, axioms, regularities and such). It is especially in
    this category of Thirdness that we can bring into sharp relief the tensions
    between pattern and paradox, symmetry and asymmetry, order and chaos,
    random and systematic, chance and necessity, vague and specific, determinate
    and indeterminate, and, finally, Merton's concerns with continuity and
    discontinuity, creativity and insignificance.

    Might there be a root metaphor that would best capture Thirdness, Fourthness
    and all of the above-described polarities, dynamisms and tensions? And that
    might also unitively reframe the dichotomy of immanence and transcendence,
    presenting a single polar reality to be realized in measures of degrees?

    The best such metaphor, in our view, would be that of freedom, the deprivation of
    which we often describe as coercion, the dynamism of which we recognize as the
    political6, broadly conceived.

    In our triadic phenomenology, determinate reality issues forth (ex nihilo)


    precisely as necessity kenotically prescinds to probability as the Creator shrinks
    to "free" new actualities from the realm of possibility. In our trialectical
    teleology, we grow in human authenticity (humanization is divinization is our
    theosis) precisely through a progressive realization of freedom via ongoing
    intellectual, affective, moral, sociopolitical and religious conversions. Lord
    Acton has clarified our confusion regarding this authentic human freedom,
    which, per his counsel, we should not misinterpret as a license to do what we
    merely want, but as the liberty, rather, to do what we simply must. Freedom
    realized down a path toward necessity? How dramatically ironic!

    6 See Yong‘s In the Days of Caesar – Pentecostalism and Political Theology, Wm. B.
    Eeerdmans Piublishing Co. 2010.
    Again, we encounter the utterly paradoxical but clearly efficacious kenotic
    dynamic of self-emptying as we co-creatively participate in our own shrinking
    (imago Dei) to free up novel realities from the realm of possibility in a reality
    framed by an aesthetic teleology, which realizes value precisely through the
    shedding of monotony and appropriation of novelty as our will is surrendered
    only to be transformed into a will that is free, indeed. The paradox lies in our
    striving to participate in the perichoretic dance of the Ens Necessarium, Who,
    necessarily, only loves, but with a love that issues forth from an utter fullness of
    freedom.

    In becoming a prisoner of love, paradoxically, we are thus transformed and


    realize authentic freedom. Perhaps this is what Maritain7 recognized as la
    dialectique immanente du premier acte de liberté (the immanent dialectic of the
    first act of freedom).

    In our trialogical epistemology, we amplify the epistemic risks we've already


    taken in our descriptive sciences, evaluative cultures and normative philosophies
    in order to augment our human value-realizations through an interpretive
    surrender that expands our horizons of concern thus freeing us up to realize new
    possibilities. Our trinitarian theology precisely addresses our most insistent
    human longings and most urgent existential concerns, again, inviting a
    paradoxical surrender to manifold assists coming to us from beyond (Patrology) ,
    beside (Christology) and within (Pneumatology) and promising to thereby set us
    free, indeed, in a word, saving us. In another irony, perhaps few understand this
    as well as those who are marginalized socially, economically, culturally, politically
    and even religiously, or who are otherwise radically in touch with our radical
    poverty in our dependence on God. As Richard Rohr suggests, there are generally
    two routes to transformation – suffering and mysticism.

    In other words, we don‘t enter the monastery or undertake a life of prayer to


    make us better human beings — rather, we urgently and in crisis and seriously
    and radically place the utter dependency and abject poverty of our selves
    (which are nevertheless good) at God‘s disposal in order to be dramatically
    rescued. Thomas Merton

    Pericean Thirdness, now conceived as necessity, next conceived as probability,


    might be reconceived in terms of reality's realization of various degrees of
    freedom, always paradoxically gifted through surrender. As a single polar
    reality, both our immanent and transcendent frames recognize it, even if in
    unfathomably different measures, as we participate in freedom in a way that is,
    at once, indeterminately transcendent, vaguely immanent, proleptically realized
    and always mediated, whether theologically, axiologically or semiotically.
    Fourthness thus conceptually reduces to that aspect of Thirdness which we
    experience as horizon, thirdness itself corresponding to various degrees of

    7 Jacques Maritain, Raisons et raisons 1947


    freedom in a reality that sometimes appears nearly wholly determined, while at
    other times very much free, at least within what we might otherwise imagine to
    be reality‘s initial, boundary and limit conditions.

    It is further interesting to note that emergence, itself, relies on information loss


    (mistakes even) in each introduction of novelty, in a teleodynamic process of
    alternating forgetting and remembering (anamnesis) that we‘ll explore later. It is
    no accident, then, that strategic sacrifice and surrender recur as a central motif
    in so many of our world‘s phenomenologies and theologies.

    About Our Pathways

    In the East, a distinction is drawn between the ―way of the baby monkey‖ and
    the ―way of the kitten,‖ the first way describing that of the ascetics in pursuit of
    Enlightenment, Knowledge and Wisdom, the second that of Devotion. The
    metaphorical implications are that there is more effort on the part of the baby
    monkey, which must actively cling tightly to its parent in getting transported
    around, while, as we are all aware, the kitten is passively transported by the nape
    of its neck in its mother‘s teeth. I offer another distinction, which is the ―way of
    the baby goose,‖ implying an imprinted following of the parent or an imitation of
    Action. Finally, we might consider the ―way of the baby martin,‖ which is
    familiar to any who‘ve observed the parents knocking a fledgling off of the Purple
    Martin House that it might thereby learn to fly, the implication here describing
    the Way of the Cross via formative, reformative and transformative suffering.

    If these are different path-ways, perhaps roughly corresponding to creed, cult,


    code and community in our great traditions, where do they ultimately lead?

    We will explore, herein, how they are all ordered toward a unitive Life in the
    Spirit and are animated via Lonergan‘s conversions (intellectual, affective, moral,
    social and religious) by the very same Spirit.

    One of the richest reflections on the contemplative life is in Merton‘s __New


    Seeds of Contemplation__, especially in the preface and first three chapters,
    which reflect on what contemplation is and is not and what the true self and false
    self are.

    We will engage Merton‘s formative spirituality at some length, but concise


    summary would be that,

    1) for our true self, our joy is found in God‘s glory;


    2) our will is oriented to God‘s love;
    3) the work of our journey is to co-create with God our identity through and with
    and in God;
    4) that we may become wholly in His image, holy in His image; 5) when we do
    have our memory, understanding and will integrated and holistically
    operative, we experience our true self but

    6) this co-creation of our identity and this surrender of our memory,


    understanding and will to faith, hope and love are effected through
    theological virtue gifted by the Spirit by an elevation of nature through grace
    and transmutation of experience through grace and not by a perfection of the
    natural order by our natural efforts, which is to say
    7) we are in need of salvation to overcome both death and sin and the
    most fundamental vocational call we answer is 8 ) to be saved and then
    9) transformed.

    An Ecumenical Pneumatological Ecclesiology


    A new generation of pentecostal scholars has entered into a credible dialogue
    with modern science, modern philosophy and modern theology. These
    approaches have profound implications for ecclesiology. What is emerging is
    nothing less than an ecumenical pneumatological ecclesiology. 8 It criticizes our
    Western approach, which is largely discursive theology. It emphasizes that Life
    in the Spirit is also an experience.

    They believe that our coming Christendom will be radically pluralistic, centered
    not in
    Rome or Canterbury but variously in Seoul, Beijing, Singapore, Bombay, Lagos,
    Rio, Sao Paulo and Mexico City. The emphases in dialogue will be: 1)
    postmodern theology that hears the voices of the marginalized 2)
    postpatriarchal theology 3) postfoundationalist theology that values
    methodological pluralism 4) postcolonial theology that privileges local
    traditions, languages and practices 5) posthierarchical that embraces
    dialogical and democratic processes 6) post-Cartesian theology that gives
    recognition to the inductive, lived, existential and nondual character of reflection
    alongside deductive, propositional, more abstract and dualistic forms of
    theologizing 7) post-Western and post-European theology open to
    engaging the multiple religious, cultural and philosophical voices of Asian
    traditions and spiritualities.

    8 The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh by Amos Yong (2005 Baker Academic).
    A pneumatological approach to revelation will then be 1) transcendental
    – Spirit breaks thru human condition from beyond ourselves 2) historical 3)
    contextual, concerned with real lives, real histories, real societies 4) personal,
    both interpersonal and intersubjective 5) transformational 6) communal 7) a
    verb not just a noun 8 ) progressive & dynamic Spirit calls us to interpret,
    respond and act 9) marked by love, an unmistakable criterion for discernment
    10) received by humble faith seeking understanding 11) propositional and
    resisting our fallen interpretations 12) eschatological.

    Getting from Is to Ought


    Our descriptive sciences and normative philosophies, in many ways, respectively,
    grapple with the "is" and "ought" of reality. Beyond the most general of norms
    (that is also to say within the constraints of the initial, boundary and limit
    conditions of reality's givens), our evaluative cultures will then otherwise enjoy
    and employ (co-creatively) the freedom we've been given, which we celebrate
    through a wonderful diversity of ministry and beautiful plurality of expression,
    historically, socially, economically and politically.

    Historical tensions forever push and pull us between an uncertain future and
    unforgiving past. But we continuously manage to get oriented and reoriented
    nonetheless.

    Social tensions have human dignity always precariously perched between


    individual autonomy and institutional necessity. But subsidiarity principles,
    when in play, will often enlighten and empower such decisions.

    Cultural tensions result from choices we must make between competing values.
    But we usually imagine that we and our choices can, perhaps, be sanctioned,
    maybe even sanctified.

    We inevitably experience economic tensions as we fail in our willingness to


    distinguish between wants and needs and our ability to match needs with goods
    and services. But healing, in all sorts of ways, keeps coming our way.

    We experience political tensions (broadly conceived) precisely because reality


    presents us with both coercion and freedom. But we always imagine that we can
    be saved, somehow, from reality's manifold and multiform coercions.
    How is it that humanity continues to be oriented, empowered – sanctified, healed
    and saved albeit in ways that are variously (more and less) efficacious?
    Might these be tantalizingly proleptic (value-)realizations of reality's enticingly
    telic dimensions, which gently coax (and sometimes impolitically cajole) us along
    on what seems to be a journey, on what undeniably is an adventure? 9
    One compelling hypothesis is that, in many of our Great Traditions our
    interpretive religions have gifted us with a pneumatological imagination, which
    discerns a Spirit active in every aspect of our lives, broadening our horizons of
    concern beyond ---

    the starkly historical to the remarkably eschatological (orienting


    us); the simply social to the robustly ecclesiological
    (empowering us); a merely cultural to a fully theological
    anthropology (sanctifying us); the mercilessly economic to the
    mercifully sacramental (healing us). and the nakedly political to
    the compassionately soteriological (saving us);

    This Spirit, Who is holy, has broken open our philosophies with the novel
    questions posed (although not answered) by our natural theologies and
    enlivened our sciences with an evocative poetry inspired by our theologies of
    nature.

    The reality of the Incarnation, Jesus, then further reveals how we are being:

    1) oriented, as the historical tension between past and future has been
    transcended by One Who broke into our now from eternity --- not to
    transfix our gaze on the utterly beyond, but --- to infinitely transvalue the
    significance of our fragile, temporal existence (cf. the Lukan gospel
    narrative);

    9 Our essential axiology and basic cosmology already recognize a minimalist telos
    at play in reality, prior to the more robustly telic dimension suggested by our
    pneumatological imagination. Modern semiotic science has room for both the
    formal and final causations as analogs to those of a classical aristotelian
    metaphysics. Obviously, an emergentist perspective, which would admit such
    causations and telos, need not violate physical causal closure. But neither would a
    more robustly telic dimension that is operative at the level of primal reality in its
    initial, boundary and limit conditions. Scientific methods, which are empirical and
    probabilistic, relying on falsification, would not, in principle, measure such
    improbable proleptic realizations, which otherwise get recorded as inexplicable
    anomalies.
    2) empowered, as the social tension between individuals and institutions has
    been transcended by One Who promised to be present where two or more
    are gathered
    in His Name and affirmed an even more radical solidarity in establishing
    --- not an earthly realm, but --- a Kingdom wherein belonging
    (community) and desiring (cult-ivation) enjoy a clear primacy over (even
    if not a complete autonomy from) behaving (code) and believing (creed)
    (cf. Sylvest & Yong's Contemplative Phenomenology, 2010 );

    3) sanctified, as the cultural tension between competing (and extrinsic)


    values has been transcended by One Who invites us to savor the
    intrinsically valuable approaches of faith, hope and love in the pursuit of
    truth, beauty and goodness (cf. the Lukan narrative, Acts);
    4) healed, as the economic tension between our needs and our means has
    been transcended by One Who, by initiating us all into a grand solidarity,
    has ushered in a compassion (that inevitably ensues from any awareness
    of our oneness) whereby a love begun in the Kingdom, now, will get
    perfected as it more fully comes to realization, eternally (cf. the Our
    Father); and
    5) saved, as the political tension between reality's coercions and freedoms
    has been transcended by One Who deemed even equality with God as
    nothing at which one should grasp (cf. also the Magnificat); saved, as the
    political tension between reality's coercions and freedoms has been
    transcended by One Who deemed even equality with God as nothing at
    which one should grasp (cf. also the Magnificat); The tensions we
    experience present in many ways and are not confined to those
    inventoried and fleshed out above regarding our evaluative and
    interpretive methods. Our descriptive sciences and normative
    philosophies have their own tensions and paradoxes, some which we are
    able to dissolve such as through perspectival and paradigm shifts, some
    which we can successfully resolve dialectically such as through an
    Hegelian-like approach, some which we simply evade by ignoring, at
    least, for all practical purposes, and some which we discover can be
    maintained in a creative tension to our utmost edification. We cannot
    know a priori which paradoxes will thus submit to which strategy.
    Neither can we a priori know when it is that our knowledge is being
    thwarted only temporarily due to methodological constraints or
    permanently due to some type of in-principle ontological occulting.

    What we do know is that reality presents us with values, affords us methods and
    provides us perspectives. It is a story of rewards, risks and relationships. Many of
    our value-augmentations precisely derive from strategic risk-amplifications. But
    rewards do not come from risk, alone; rather, they result from properly managed
    risk. Risk management involves a knowledge of reality‘s relationships, both its
    functional (objective) and personal (subjective) relationships. To the extent that
    much of reality is indeterminate and that certain of its relationships are not
    specifiable, it suggests that many of reality‘s relationships are interobjective,
    whereby we somehow recognize that there are various effects proper to no known
    causes even though we can in no way get at how this might be so due to an
    interobjective indeterminacy, which hints at some type of duality or degree of
    ontological discontinuity . However, a great deal of reality is indeed determinate
    and specifiable, even if sometimes in varying degrees of epistemic determinacy
    and ontological vagueness, and we have been able to establish both that there are
    certain effects as well as how they are caused because such relationships derive
    from a type of intraobjective identity, affirming a nondual aspect to many of
    reality‘s functional relationships. Humankind‘s greatest value-realizations are
    intersubjective, relationships between persons. And the quality of these
    relationships, often measured in degrees of intersubjective intimacy, is very
    much determined by one‘s relationship to self or one‘s intrasubjective integrity.

    The histories of philosophy and religion are littered with one school after another
    that over- or under-emphasized some method, value or perspective (or some risk,
    reward or relationship) in a fetish-like manner. This includes many of
    philosophy‘s so-called turns and many of religion‘s schisms as well as all manner
    of insidious –isms, which we needn‘t inventory here. We can affirm this – that
    methods precede systems. And we do accept that epistemology models ontology.
    However, to the extent we affirm only a fallibilist epistemology, any ontology will
    therefore be more than a tad tentative and any modeling power will be, shall we
    say, weak. Our deontologies, then, should be as modest as our ontologies are
    tentative. We are not at all suggesting that one should not take epistemic risks for
    these risk-amplifications are indispensable to our value-augmentations. We do,
    however, aspire to properly adjudicate between those options that are indeed live
    vis a vis epistemic virtue and those that fall prey to either an excess hubris or
    humility, respectively, the excesses of modernity (e.g. both Enlightenment and
    religious fundamentalisms) or of any radically deconstructive postmodernism
    (e.g. vulgar Rortyism).

    Any God-concept, suitably predicated apophatically, will take into account this
    interobjective indeterminacy. God‘s determinate nature, revealed in creation and
    amplified in special revelation, presents in a creative tension between some type
    of intraobjective identity, for our autonomy can only be quasi-, and some type of
    intersubjective intimacy, for this love has been revealed. Our own relationships
    to God, others and creation require a proper relationship to self or intraobjective
    integrity. All of these relationships can be cultivated through various ascetic
    displines and spiritual practices. These are addressed more fully, below, under
    Formative Spirituality.

    What does it mean to express faith, hope, and love in the 21st Century
    (or Post-postmodern world)?

    We should amplify the risks we took when we moved from our exclusivistic
    ecclesiocentrisms to a more inclusivistic Christocentricism by exploring a robust
    pneumatological inclusivism in our interreligious dialogue. Put simply, we
    should take more risks in our faith outlook by being more open regarding where
    we expect to find the Spirit at work in our world, for example, among other
    peoples, in both sacred and secular settings, thereby augmenting the value to be
    realized from a broader ecumenism.

    We should amplify the risks we‘ve already taken liturgically being more open to
    how it is the Spirit can form our desires, recognizing that we can fruitfully adopt
    the spiritual technology of other religions, such as certain asceticisms,
    disciplines and practices, without necessarily adopting their conclusions, thus
    augmenting the value to be mined from desiring the Kingdom above all else and
    being sensitive to its less visible manifestations.

    We should amplify the risks involved in our dualistic, problem-solving mind, with
    its empirical, rational, practical and moral approach to reality to engage reality
    more holistically and integrally with our nondual mind and its contemplative
    stance thus augmenting the value of relationship to God, others, the
    environment and even self.

    We should amplify the risks involved in our moral ventures by moving beyond
    our legalistic approach to moral realities in society to a more social justice
    oriented approach, striving less for a theocratic and coercive moral statism and
    more for the establishment of the Kingdom via our successful institutionalization
    of the corporal works of mercy, thus augmenting the value to be mined on behalf
    of those who‘ve been marginalized.

    We should amplify the risks involved in conducting a more scientifically rigorous


    Biblical exegesis, unafraid of historical-critical methods, literary criticism and
    honest Jesus scholarship, thus augmenting the value of the Good News for all
    people of the world through enhanced reliability, credibility and
    authoritativeness.

    We should amplify the risks involved in ministering to the world through


    noninstitutional vehicles, affirming them as partners and mining the value
    they create in the ecclesiological models they afford us, egalitarian models that
    are free of clericalism, paternalism, hierarchicalism, colonialism, parochialism,
    sexism, institutionalism and so on, thereby augmenting the value to be realized
    from a more dutiful engagement of the Sensus Fidelium.

    The Risk-based Approach to Value-Realization


    Faith, hope and love are adventures in that they involve risk or what Pascal called
    a wager. And it is a grand cosmic adventure in which we are invited to
    participate as we unconditionally assent to the proposition that the pursuits of
    truth, beauty and goodness are their own reward. This quest, itself, becomes our
    grail. This journey becomes our destination.

    As we observe this 13.7 billion year old universe, notwithstanding humankind‘s


    cumulative advances in science, philosophy, culture and religion, questions still
    beg regarding the initial, boundary and limit conditions of the cosmos. There is,
    however, an overarching narrative that begins to address these questions. It is the
    story of Emergence.

    Emergence gifts the universe with an increasing complexity as its novel structures
    and properties present the beauty that surrounds us. It is a complexity, however,
    that is willing to run the risk of disintegration. The greater the number of
    bifurcations and permutations involved in any given system, the more fragile.
    And, the more fragile, the more beautiful. Put most simply, an emergent cosmos
    amplifies risk and thus augments beauty.

    These are realities we can understand without the benefit of special divine
    revelation. We have explored how: A descriptive human science queries reality
    asking: What is that? Our evaluative human culture inquires: What‘s that to
    us? And our normative human philosophy then aspires to answer the ensuing
    question: How do we best acquire or avoid that?

    The answers we have derived for these perennial questions take the form of truth,
    beauty and goodness.

    And while each individual asks these questions everyday, as radically social
    animals, these values are realized in community. Because we are radically
    finite, hence needy, we form communities of value-realizers. Thus we talk
    about the scientific community, philosophic community, cultural community
    and so on. Each such community, in its pursuit of value, in its own way,
    embarks on a risk-taking adventure, amplifying risks in order to augment our
    human value-realizations of truth, beauty and goodness.

    The scientist, for her part, ventures forth with hypotheses that are inherently
    falsifiable by design. The philosopher, for his part, articulates a provisional
    closure, which is represented as this school or that. Human culture has been a
    veritable laboratory, wherein our falsifiable sciences and provisional philosophies
    have played out as anthropological explorations, as we know, sometimes to
    humankind‘s utmost benefit but, all to often, to humanity‘s everlasting dismay.

    Before we introduce competing meta-narratives, or axes of interpretation of


    reality, we already observe our communities of value-realization in pursuit of the
    intrinsically rewarding values of truth, beauty and goodness. And we observe
    science, philosophy and culture harvesting these values in abundance in what is
    an inherently spiritual quest. Before our interpretive narratives (religions) are
    introduced, our descriptive, evaluative and normative narratives are in place, as a
    cosmology, amplifying risks and thereby augmenting our value-realizations. In
    this regard, they might very well be considered both necessary and sufficient.

    Still, as the ultimate value-realizer, our species might naturally wonder: Is


    there, perhaps, more?

    In our distinctly human way, most of us not only wonder but also pursue more
    truth, more beauty and more goodness, than is already realizable by
    science, culture and philosophy. In so doing, we ask: How does all of that tie-
    together? And this re-ligation query is a distinctly religious question. It is,
    then, the interpretive aspect of our axiology.

    Now, if science, culture and philosophy, each in their own way, comprise a risk-
    venture in pursuit of truth, beauty and goodness, amplifying our epistemic,
    normative and evaluative risks toward the end of augmenting these intrinsically
    rewarding values, then what inheres in the very fabric of the religious quest is a
    further amplification of risks.
    These amplified risks are nothing less, then, than faith, hope and love.

    It is no accident, then, that the world‘s literature has ubiquitously employed the
    journey, the quest, the adventure as its root metaphor for the religious quest and
    that its preferred allegory has been an erotic love that risks all for the sake of all.

    We‘ve come a long way in this presentation without addressing the postmodern
    influence on our 21st Century expressions of faith, hope and love. And if you‘ve
    hung in here with me thus far, know that we‘re now on the threshold of
    describing the postmodern prescription for what has ailed our modernistic
    religious quest.

    The chief problem with the modernistic approach to the religious quest is that it
    lost touch with the essential risk-taking nature of faith, hope and love. Perhaps
    due to our natural human anxiety to banish all mystery, perhaps due to our
    rather feeble ability to tolerate ambiguity, and perhaps due to our insatiable need
    to either resolve, dissolve or evade all paradox, humanity has largely surrendered
    to a neurotically-induced hubris that imagines that all mystery has thus been
    comprehended, all ambiguity has thus been eliminated and all paradox is subject
    to either synthetic resolution, perspectival dissolution or practical evasion.
    The practical upshot of such hubris is that we begin to imagine that there are no
    risks to undertake, much less amplify, no further values to pursue, much less
    augment, no quests to launch, no journeys on which to embark. Life, then, is no
    longer an adventure.

    The chief malady of such a malaise is that an insidious ennui settles over us. It‘s
    not so much that we think we have all the right answers, which is bad enough, but
    that we imagine that we even have all the right questions. Our science devolves
    into scientism. Our culture caves into a practical nihilism. Our philosophies decay
    into a sterile rationalism. The only thing that remains to be seen is whether our
    planet will go out with a silent ecological whimper or a fiery nuclear holocaust.

    Our religion, for its part, gets hyper-eschatological with heavenly notions that are
    of little earthly use. A once enchanted world becomes inhabited with terribly
    disenchanted denizens.

    Modernism, in its pretense, bottled up the elixir of risk and offered us instead a
    vile concoction that it mistook for some type of truth serum, a formula with all
    the answers, which diluted any risk. It‘s ingredients included a fideism, which
    walled itself in to a house of language game mirrors claiming immunity for
    religion to cultural critique. It also mixed in an inordinate amount of theological
    nonrealism due to a hyper-active dialectical imagination that approached God as
    not only wholly incomprehensible (which He is), but as not even partly
    intelligible (which She is). It suggested that no reasons could be given for
    religious belief as if all reasons necessarily derived from empirical and rational
    argumentation with their informative propositions and epistemic warrants,
    when, so much of human reasoning, instead, is prudential and moral with
    performative significance and normative justification.

    Put much more simply, modernism overemphasized reasons of the head and
    relegated reasons of the heart to history‘s propositional dustbin.

    A radically deconstructive postmodernism, in one of philosophy‘s most tragic


    ironies, ends up being nothing more than a hypermodernistic outlook, with great
    hubris putting a priori limits on human knowledge … except, well, for one
    singular exception, which would be the limits they refuse to place on their own
    anthropology. In their caricature of all human communication as language
    games, the Wittgensteinian fideists misappropriate Wittgenstein as they saw off
    the epistemological limbs wherein their own ontological eggs are nested. In their
    anxiety to annihilate metaphysics, both the social construction theorists and the
    scientistic cabal do away with the very analogia that fuel both highly theoretical
    science and speculative cosmology. This is just as insidious as the tautologies that
    were inhabited by those who bought into Feuerbach, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche and
    others, whose anthropological conclusions were buried in their reductionistic
    premises and hidden in their cynical definitions.

    None of this is to deny that we do not all inhabit elaborate tautologies with their
    various circular references, causal disjunctions, infinite regressions and question
    begging. It is to suggest that not all tautologies are equally taut and that we can
    and should attempt to adjudicate between them based on such anthropological
    metrics as provided by Lonergan‘s conversions (expanded by Gelpi): intellectual,
    affective, moral, sociopolitical and religious.

    And this is not to claim that such sociologic metrics are readily available or easily
    interpretable but, come on folks, some religious cohorts are rather transparently
    dysfunctional, wouldn‘t you say? And judging different approaches to faith by
    employing such pragmatic criteria is admittedly not robustly truth-conducive but
    it is certainly reasonable to imagine that it is truth-indicative. Our inability to
    finally discriminate between all religious approaches, some which end up being
    quite equiplausible, even if not equiprobable, does not make our approach moot;
    rather, it makes it problematical. It does not mean that we do not have reasons
    (and very good reasons, at that) to embrace one faith approach and to eschew
    another; it only means that those reasons will not be universally compelling.

    Faith, hope and love in the 21st Century will look like an adventure. It will look
    like a risk-filled adventure where believers run the cosmic risk of disintegration
    in self-emptying kenotic love. Like Pip in Great Expectations, we will embark on
    a search for our Benefactor. Like Mark Twain‘s Huckleberry Finn, we will be a
    people of hope, always looking in expectant anticipation for what‘s around the
    river‘s bend. Like the cosmos, itself, and with the grand Cosmic Adventurer, we
    will actively participate, not without some moaning and groaning, in the great act
    of giving birth.

    Faith, hope and love in the 21st Century will look a lot more like that time of
    enchantment in the early days of Christianity, when the apostles and disciples
    and closest confidants of Jesus, Himself, took great risks in following Him. It will
    look a lot less like that self-righteous certitude of fundamentalistic religion,
    scientistic philosophy or even, ironically, a social constructionist nonrealism.
    These are, in the end, very pessimistic anthropologies whether gnostic or
    agnostic. We simply cannot a priori know how knowable or unknowable reality
    will turn out to be.

    It makes a lot more sense to believe that, as we progressively enhance our


    modeling power of reality, albeit in a very fallibilist way, our concepts and
    constructs and categories are making some of our tautologies much more taut vis
    a vis reality writ large. And this includes our God-concepts, which, in-principle,
    must be inherently vague. If there is a grand telic design and we actively
    participate in same, there is every good reason to hypothesize that the inexorable
    advance of human knowledge gifts us with a more coherent outlook on both
    proximate and ultimate reality. To the extent we understand reality better, the
    analogs we apply to ultimate reality will improve. This is not to deny that such
    analogs will invoke an infinite number of dissimilarities over against the
    similarities they will reveal. It is to affirm that those similarities, however meager,
    have profound existential import because they pertain to a VERY BIG reality,
    indeed.

    Over against any radically positive theology (kataphasis) of the gnostics,


    fundamentalists and rationalists, and over against any radically negative theology
    (apophasis) of the agnostics, nonrealists and fideists, a postmodern theology
    eschews both an epistemic hubris and an excessive epistemic humility in favor of
    a Goldilocks approach that is just right, an epistemic holism with an integral
    approach to reality.

    In our postmodern milieu, science, culture, philosophy and religion are


    intertwined. When one advances, they all advance. When one regresses, they all
    regress. This is not to say that they are not otherwise autonomous methodologies.
    A postmodern theology recognizes and affirms this autonomy. It is to say that
    these approaches to reality are integrally-related in every human value-
    realization. They are, then, methodologically-autonomous but
    axiologically-integral.

    Enhanced modeling power of reality, whether in science, culture, philosophy or


    religion, translates into an enhanced modeling power of reality writ large. We
    best not set these value-pursuits over against or in competition.

    A modernist rationalism is a failed risk-management technique, attempting to


    domesticate this risk and ameliorate its adventuresome nature. A modernist
    fideism is a failed risk-elimination technique, attempting to immunize faith from
    critique by reducing it to mere expression. Only a constructive postmodern
    approach can successfully retrieve, revive and renew our sense of adventure,
    enchantment and risk-taking, inviting us anew to journey on a quest for a grail
    worthy of our ineradicable human aspirations for more, a LOT more!

    Thus we amplify our risk in our pursuit of truth into a faith, often articulated in
    creed; in our pursuit of beauty into a hope, often celebrated in the cultivation of
    liturgy and ritual; in our pursuit of goodness in love, often preserved in our
    codes and laws; in our pursuit of community, often enjoyed in our fellowship and
    unity of believers. Thus humankind augments truth, beauty, goodness and
    unity in creed, cult, code and community. Thus we participate in the grand
    cosmic adventure, amplifying risks and thereby augmenting values, courageously
    running the risk of disintegration as God‘s fragile, but beautiful creatures.
    Retrieval, Revival and Renewal Dynamics
    While propositional or theoretical or creedal aspects of a movement are not
    unimportant, there seems to be a much greater emphasis on the primacy of the
    participatory and practical and experiential aspects. Thus questions of
    ecclesiology and pneumatology, or how to be church and respond in the Spirit,
    are being answered existentially in the way we live and move and have our being.
    One could not better describe our 20th Century church-emergent.

    To the extent theological breakthroughs occur, there are no new discoveries in


    anthropology, soteriology, Christology and eschatology, providing new
    propositions about what it means to be human, what is wrong with humanity
    and how to fix it, Who Jesus is and why our hopes are fixed on Him.

    Rather, there are rediscoveries of the truths long articulated in our creeds, of the
    beauties well cultivated in our celebrations of liturgy and ritual, of the goodness
    well preserved in God‘s laws and of the fellowship long enjoyed in our
    communities. There are corrections in various over- and under-emphases as we
    then eschew any decay (seemingly inevitable & recurring) of dogma into
    dogmatism, ritual into ritualism, law into legalism & moralism, and institution
    into institutionalism. The latest iteration of our church-emergent precisely
    emulates such retrieval, revival and renewal dynamics.

    And there is a reawakened nurturance of creative tensions as we re-cognize that


    life‘s deepest paradoxes remain ours to exploit, transformatively, and will not
    otherwise yield to our attempts to resolve (dialectically thru synthesis), dissolve
    (perspectivally thru paradigm shifts) or evade (practically by ignoring) them,
    reductively, as happens with life‘s lesser paradoxes of science, philosophy and
    metaphysics. Our world remains enchanted and needs re-enchantment, on an
    ongoing basis it seems, but only in our stance toward reality and not in Nature,
    Herself, which is enchanted through and through!

    When it comes to life‘s most important questions, then, the church-emergent du


    jour precisely resists the fundamentalistic, rationalistic, reductionistic strategies
    of dualistic problem-solving and nurtures a robustly nondual contemplative
    stance toward our ultimate concerns.

    The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls
    are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call
    paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo. … …
    Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor. ~ Soren
    Kierkegaard
    To the extent our anthropologies, soteriologies, Christologies and eschatologies
    do get rearticulated propositionally, there does seem to be an ongoing and ever-
    growing universalizing tendency (an ecumenical and inclusivistic catholicity) to
    affirm the radically egalitarian nature of the Good News as we better come to
    realize — over against our own marginalizations, hierarchicalisms, colonialisms,
    patriarchicalisms, clericalisms, sexisms, ecclesiocentrisms, exclusivisms,
    traditionalisms, institutionalisms, gnosticisms and, finally, even movementisms
    — that, sooner or later, the Gospel‘s preferential option for the poor will be
    consolation for every last one of us. To paraphrase Pogo: ―We have met the poor
    and they are us.‖

    So, as the Spirit moves when He wills, where She wills, how They will, may the
    Spirit of God‘s love, now, move within me and you and all. That‘s the fugal
    movement that perdures even as other movements, most assuredly, do come and
    go. When we look carefully at what is going on, what we call emergent, in one
    sense, might be the re-emergence of a reality that, inevitably, gets submerged,
    time and again. It‘s a reignition and conflagration of a Fire lit long ago.

    Emergence also has a more generic sense and, in that sense, is inextricably
    associated with novelty, a reality that will not go away for those of us who buy
    into telos, an inexorable movement built into the very fabric of creation. What
    seems radically new is humankind‘s conscious appropriation of emergentist
    dynamics and how they possess an autopoietic (self organizing, for better or
    worse) trait, which is to say that we now know we can harness some evolutionary
    impulses and possibly kedge forward10 with a more consciously competent
    emergence, shaping and forming11, as co-creators10 the unfolding of the Kingdom
    that we desire (Ps. 37:4). Conversely, we ignore this dynamic and forsake this
    movement at our own peril.

    The Nature of Our Theological Convergences


    To the extent our discussion often primarily involves a consideration of methods,
    practices and experiences and not, rather, belief systems, conclusions and
    propositions, and given our conversation‘s postfoundational orientation, what
    emerges will not always be in the form of arguments in the strict sense. Instead,
    we are discovering a convergence that is more so of nonpropositional nature.

    This is to say that this convergence does not articulate, for example, a new
    narrative arch of a distinctly descriptive, normative or speculative nature, which
    10 cf Mike Morrell & Frank Spencer‘s website – need url
    11 cf. Jamie Smith‘s ―Desiring the Kingdom‖) need
    citation 10 cf. Phil Hefner
    would be a cosmological enterprise. Rather, this convergence has an axiological
    trajectory, which is to say that it fosters a harmonic resonance of an evaluative,
    interpretive or existential nature.

    Interpretively, we are coming away with a deepened sense of solidarity.


    Evaluatively, we share a profound sense of compassion. We share, then, a great
    unity of mission even as we recognize our diversity of ministry and
    acknowledge our plurality of belief systems.

    What emerges, then, is not so much a convergence of metanarratives but,


    instead, of meta-perspectives. It is a convergence of perspectives that
    conditions HOW we will first see and experience reality, so to speak, desiring
    the Kingdom, and not of narratives setting forth WHAT we will eventually
    think about reality in order to somehow argue and prove the Kingdom.

    A lot of people, who remain immersed in dualistic mindsets with their problem-
    solving orientation to all of reality, have a difficult time evaluating such
    conversations. For so many, apologetics is primarily evidential, rational and
    presuppositional, proceeding with empirical, logical, practical and moral
    reasoning. And, by all means, this approach to reality is indispensable and
    necessary. When it comes to life‘s deepest mysteries, more ultimate concerns and
    most significant value-realizations, however, we must go beyond this dualistic
    approach and engage reality with a more nondual, contemplative stance.

    So, when we speak of a convergence in our conversation, we are not suggesting


    a novel set of concepts and categories. Neither should one look for a specific
    political agenda. It is not a convergence of moral reasoning, such that emergent
    folk will all necessarily share the same positions on one moral reality or another.
    Even regarding cosmological matters, we are not suggesting a convergence of
    views regarding such things as philosophy of mind, theological anthropology,
    divine interactions and so on.

    A distinctly nonpropositional convergence of shared practice and shared


    experience, of a deepened sense of solidarity and heightened sense of
    compassion, will very much condition our approach to environmental &
    social justice, ecclesiology, worship and Jesus. Notice how these are not
    primarily propositional realities but are, first and foremost, relational realities.
    We are not first preoccupied with getting answers right as if we were mostly
    dealing with ideas. This convergence is not about getting the correct relationships
    between ideas, whether through a harmony of reasons or even intuitions. This is
    about realizing the right relationships between humankind and God,
    ourselves and one another, ourselves and nature and even our
    relationship to our own self.
    This harmonic convergence, then, is like a symphony of many instruments, each
    with its own sound and timbre, all playing together in the same key, in harmony
    and to the rhythm of the same Drum. This is not to deny, however, that to the
    extent that we are conditioned, shaped and formed by a convergence of
    nonpropositional influences, that it will not eventually transvalue our more
    propositional approaches, effecting their convergence also. It will. But that
    requires a great deal of patience.

    Beyond socialization, we are opening ourselves up to ongoing transformation and


    a deep desiring of the Kingdom. We experience a deep desiring for environmental
    and social justice in solidarity with and compassion for humankind and our
    cosmos. Ever more identified with Jesus and His deep desiring of communion
    with the Father, we long for the coming of the Cosmic Christ. Our ecclesiology is
    more ecumenical and egalitarian as we go beyond institutional structures (and
    not necessarily without them) seeking authentic community in manifold and
    multiform ways, wherever two or more can gather in His Name. Our worship
    becomes the practice of the Presence of God as we seek an abiding relationship
    with Him – not Whom we possess, but – Who possesses us.

    In solidarity and sharing this same deep desiring, we may otherwise differ in
    HOW we see justice playing out morally, practically and politically, in HOW we
    see the Kingdom unfolding eschatologically and metaphysically. And we can
    abide with these differences because of our deep humility and deep love for one
    another, encouraging and forgiving one another, sharing a vision THAT in the
    Kingdom all may be well, all will be well, all shall be well and we will know that
    all manner of things shall be well.

    Our conversation, then, is less about positions and more about dispositions,
    about being disposed to a Deep Awareness, Deep Solidarity, Deep Compassion,
    Deep Humility, Deep Worship, Deep Justice, Deep Ecology and Deep
    Community. That these realities will play out in our lives we are confidently
    assured. How they will play out is something we explore in humility and civility
    with all people of goodwill. Ours is foremost a shared axiology, interpretively and
    evaluatively, of what we deeply desire and deeply value.

    We share practices that shape, form, cultivate and celebrate these desires and
    values. We believe that, one day, this will lead also to a shared cosmology,
    descriptively and normatively, consistent with the best science and best
    philosophy.

    ―Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what
    you desire.‖ Thomas Merton

    Triadic Phenomenology – Relationships: Word, Community & Spirit


    Economic Trinity & Immanent Ontological Frame
    Intraobjective Identity as Word

    Science – the physical

    Science vs Natural Theology vs Theology of Nature


    We should aspire to be clear regarding this project or the other regarding whether
    or not one is doing science, philosophy or theology. And we mustn‘t forget
    religion! And if one is talking about ALL of these spheres of human concern, in
    which sphere do they begin their conversation? and, in which do they end up?

    Except for the classical ―proofs‖ by Aquinas and Anselm, and CS Peirce‘s
    ―Neglected
    Argument for the Reality of God,‖ and the Modal Ontological Arguments as
    crafted by Godel and Hartshorne only to be lately and greatly improved by
    Christopher McHugh, we wouldn't consider much of what is going on, nowadays,
    to be natural theology or a natural philosophy of God. There is just not THAT
    much that one can say, in our view, about God, using philosophy as a starting
    point, at least not when methodologically restricting one‘s musings to the rubrics
    of formal argumentation. The same is true for any other notions regarding
    ―ultimate‖ or ―primal‖ reality, using either philosophy or science as a starting
    point. All anyone thus establishes is a modicum of epistemological parity with
    alternate worldviews, i.e. elaborate tautologies.

    Don‘t get us wrong. We are not at all dismissive of these enterprises, which
    demonstrate the reasonableness of faith (or, for those of you who consider this
    too strong, that it is not unreasonable or is, for what it‘s worth, as reasonable as
    other interpretive stances vis a vis their Scottish verdicts). For some, they have
    been indispensable parts of our journeys. For most, though, we‘ve been told they
    don‘t matter very much. And we trust what they report. Still, some say that
    they‘ve enjoyed many fruitful dialogues with many nonbelievers who do seek
    such apologetics and have thereby grown in mutual respect and understanding
    and self-understanding.

    Worldviews, thankfully, are not mere formal arguments. They represent deeply
    and profoundly experienced existential orientations and ultimate concerns. And,
    if they are authentically re-ligious, they ―tie life‘s experiences back together‖ and
    heal us that we may survive and grow us that we may thrive. If we are not
    experiencing both healing and growth, both broadly conceived, well, that‘s what
    the Prophets are for! They remind us that we are to be about the actualization of
    value.

    The interface between science and theology is not terribly interesting,


    philosophically, unless our project is to disambiguate their definitions. If it
    remains interesting, even early in the 21st century, it is only because so many
    scientistic and fideistic apologists are arguing past each other, precisely because
    they‘ve neglected the work of philosophical disambiguation, which
    understandably can be difficult subject matter.

    Unlike philosophy (natural theology) and science, wherein we bracket, best we


    can, our theology, in a theology of nature we start with God and see His
    presence in all things and hear Her siren song from all places! From a different
    explanatory stance, we break out in analogy and metaphor, poetry and song,
    allegory and parable, joke and koan, story and dance, ritual and sacrament! And
    we speak of trail dust and stardust, quarks and supernovae, maidens and sailors,
    the Cosmic Adventure (John Haught) and the Divine Matrix (Joseph
    Bracken), leaping whitetails and creeping lizards, bright indwelling presence and
    luminous dark nights,
    hope and love and faith …

    The Implications of a Semiotic Theological


    Anthropology for the Interaction Between Science and
    Religion
    Some Traditional Distinctions

    The human mind has been described in many different ways over the years by
    psychologists, philosophers, theologians and others. In psychology, it has been
    described in both structural and functional terms, both by its parts and by their
    activities.
    Psychology coursework typically combines sensation with perception, emotion
    with motivation, learning with memory, personality with development. There are
    Jungian terms like sensing, intuiting, thinking, feeling, perceiving and judging
    and Freudian terms like ego, id and superego. Philosophers have drawn a
    distinction between the brain and the mind. Most recognize distinctions like
    conscious, subconscious and unconscious. Neuroscientists describe a neuronal
    network that is distributed throughout the body. Theologians speak of memory,
    understanding and will. A host of other terms come to mind, like cognitive,
    affective, instinctual, inferential, noninferential, empirical, logical, practical and
    relational. One might also find the categories normative, descriptive, interpretive
    and evaluative helpful.
    In philosophy, there is a branch of study called epistemology, which is concerned
    with how it is that we know what we know and just what it is that we might know,
    when we say we know something. In theology, belief has been justified as
    evidential, when based on evidence, rational, when based on reason,
    presuppositional, when based on inescapable suppositions, and existential, when
    based on ultimate concerns. In psychology, different developmental theorists
    have studied human growth. The best known are probably Piaget (cognitive),
    Erikson (personality), Kohlberg (moral) and Fowler (faith). Lonergan, as a
    systematic theologian, described growth in terms of intellectual, moral and
    religious conversions to which Gelpi has added affective and social conversions.
    Normatively, Lonergan gave us the famous transcendental imperatives: Be
    attentive! Be intelligent! Be reasonable! Be responsible! Be in love!

    For every distinction listed above, there are further distinctions. We need not
    treat all of these nuances; however, just for example, let‘s further examine human
    inference. Peirce, the founder of American pragmatism, described three types of
    inference, all which presuppose the others, from the strongest form to the
    weakest, as deductive, inductive and abductive inference. Generally speaking, one
    might think of deductive inference in association with formal logical
    argumentation. Inductive inference is most often associated with the scientific
    method. Abductive inference might best be thought of as hypothesizing.
    Abduction is, then, informal argumentation and its ―methods‖ are quite often
    what might otherwise be known as logical fallacies in formal argumentation. This
    does not mean that it should be readily dismissed for this is how we do most of
    our critical thinking, which is to say, fallibilistically. For example, so often, with
    only very limited information, we necessarily find ourselves reasoning backwards
    (retro-ductively) from known predicates (or properties) of a reality to unknown
    subjects (of various classes, sets or subsets). We find ourselves venturing guesses
    as to what reality or type of reality we may have encountered and employing
    analogies in our references to and descriptions of such realities, when we
    otherwise cannot determine (epistemically) or specify (ontologically) this reality
    versus another. Sometimes, we wonder if this or that reality is novel, even? It is
    through such alternating conjecture and criticism, then, or what Popper called
    falsification, that much of human knowledge has advanced. This is not to say that
    knowledge has not also advanced, on occasion, through various leaps and
    bounds, or what Kuhn called paradigm shifts.

    Another pivotal distinction is that between a theory of truth and a test of truth.
    For our purposes, a conventional understanding of truth will suffice in place of
    any otherwise elaborately nuanced theory. A test of truth is a process that helps
    us navigate toward the truth while not otherwise constituting the truth in and of
    itself. A truth-conducive process, like deductive inference and formal
    argumentation, navigates us more or less directly toward the truth. A truth-
    indicative process, like abductive inference, navigates us indirectly by, at least,
    raising the probability that we are approaching the truth. As the weakest form of
    inference, abduction needs to be bolstered by repeated testing, which is to say,
    inductively. Beyond these rather simple, straightforward rubrics for human
    knowledge-advances, there are long histories and many competing schools in
    philosophy and theology and their interactions have not always been dialogical
    and irenic. At the risk of oversimplifying all things epistemological, we suggest
    that much of the confusion has been rooted in dualistic thinking which has
    viewed reality rather facilely in either-or and all or nothing terms, too often
    viewing what are mere distinctions as full blown dichotomies, too often mistaking
    partial truths for the whole truth, and too often absolutizing perspectives that are
    indeed relative to one‘s frame of reference. In theology, there is a word for such
    thinking, heresy. In philosophy, there is an adjectival suffix, -istic.

    Some Additional Distinctions

    Sociologically and linguistically, we would like to introduce some additional


    distinctions12 that are based on whether or not our concepts have been negotiated
    (accepted into general use, more or less) by the wider pluralistic community.
    Those that have been thus negotiated have theoretic status. Those still-in-
    negotiation are heuristic devices or conceptual placeholders. Dogmatic concepts
    are employed within communities of belief but have not been negotiated by the
    wider pluralistic community, more broadly conceived. Semiotic concepts are
    those presuppositional notions without which meaning and communication
    would not even be possible.

    Toward a Philosophical Anthropology

    Our purpose, thus far, has been to introduce enough categories and distinctions
    to provide each different member of what might be a rather diverse audience
    some handles with which to grasp our meaning and intent as it relates to our
    philosophical anthropology. Foundational to any theological proposal, one must
    have a philosophical anthropology, a perspective on humankind‘s psychological
    make-up that is grounded in good biological science and sound evolutionary
    epistemology. The history of philosophy has been characterized by one
    overemphasis after another, which is to say one – istic perspective after another,
    whether the empiricistic, rationalistic, positivistic, idealistic or pragmatistic. Its
    history might best be summed up as the struggle between the more static
    essentialistic and substantialistic approaches and the more dynamical
    nominalistic and process-like approaches, which are but the obverse sides of the
    same coin of an otherwise epistemically and ontologically bankrupt dualistic
    realm, which transacts in a philosophical currency that has no practical cash
    value for most of us who get along quite well with good old common sense. The
    history of theology, which takes philosophy as its handmaiden, necessarily fares
    no better as its approaches can alternately be similarly described as
    evidentialistic, rationalistic, fideistic and pietistic. One might justifiably wonder

    12 Sylvest & Yong 2010


    if, down through the centuries, an epistemic fetish is all one could be expected to
    come away with after a formal academic engagement of these disciplines.

    Perhaps that‘s what those in the modern scientistic cabal must think? No doubt,
    that‘s what the radically deconstructive postmodernists must imagine with their
    nihilistic bent? Do the arationally gnostic mysterians have the only mindset that
    can transcend these otherwise mutually unintelligible epistemic stances and
    totally incommensurable ontological approaches?

    Because of their overly facile dyadic approaches, neither an essentialism nor a


    nominalism, neither a substance nor a process approach, can account for the
    novelty we encounter in reality. Our known categories of givens include the
    primitives (like space, time, mass & energy), forces (like electromagnetism,
    gravity, strong & weak nuclear) and axioms (like the laws of thermodynamics &
    quantum mechanics). While it may be too early on humankind‘s journey for us to
    epistemically determine with any ontological precision the exact nature of such
    novelty in terms of our known theoretic givens, our inability to robustly describe
    this novelty does not mean that we can not otherwise successfully refer to it with
    good heuristic devices. To be clear, the novelties we are dealing with include
    those involved in the Big Bang and its earliest moments, the origin of life and the
    dawn of human consciousness.

    The question that should be begging for our readers, now, is just what is the most
    successful way to refer to reality, phenomenologically, even if we cannot
    otherwise robustly describe it, metaphysically? What concepts and categories
    can we most profitably employ and what rubrics for relating them would be most
    fruitful in their application?

    What can we reasonably aspire to say about reality without saying more than we
    know about such realities as the origins of life or human consciousness or even
    the cosmos, itself?

    It is beyond the scope of this consideration to set forth the details of our own
    philosophical journeys through these questions to our present provisional
    closures, but with a great deal of enthusiasm we can recommend the approach of
    the American pragmatist, Charles Sanders Peirce, as it has been employed and
    articulated by the biological anthropologist, Terrence Deacon 13, and the
    systematic theologian, Donald Gelpi, S.J.. While we will not unfold the arguments
    of these scholars in any detail, neither would we want our enthusiasm to be
    mistaken for an academic pretension to either a full understanding of their work
    or a comprehensive grasp of its implications.

    13 Deacon‘s Symbolic Species


    Deacon, for his part, employs an emergentist heuristic, which has also been well
    articulated by, and on several occasions even co-authored with, Ursula
    Goodenough, a prominent cell biologist and popular author at the interface of
    science and religion. Deacon and Goodenough are very circumspect in not telling
    what are otherwise untellable tales, as they comprehensively refer to many
    different natural phenomena without exhaustively describing them. In their
    popular writings, they take one on a cosmic journey where properties, even
    reality‘s laws, are seen to emerge, first thermodynamically, as mere shape
    interactions, then morphodynamically, as shape interactions playing out over
    time, and finally teleodynamically, as a consequence of shape, time and
    information. These orders of emergence refer to progressively higher orders of
    regularities, which are causal configurations. For all science can tell,
    teleodynamics, or 3rd order emergence, as Deacon and Goodenough say, define
    the onset of telos on this planet and, for all we now know, the universe. They go
    on to develop a correspondence between the human virtues of compassion, fair-
    mindedness, care and reverence with the inherited pro-social capacities of
    empathy, strategic reciprocity, nurturance and hierarchy, suggesting various
    symbolic accessions and syntheses whereby our otherwise innate groundings are
    complexified and transfigured into uniquely human capacities. In our view, this is
    hypothetically consonant with Gelpi‘s Peircean-nuanced definitions of selves as
    autonomous functioning tendencies (think higher order regularities and telos)
    and of human persons as selves capable of conversion (think of Gelpi‘s
    Lonerganian account of conversion).

    In any case, the human capacities for virtue can be realized both intuitively and
    imaginatively as well as rationally and inferentially. Because humans are finite
    and learn fallibilistically, each human value-realization attempt leads to an
    uncertain outcome, which is to recognize that it requires a wager or risk. As such,
    the augmentation of human value-realizations must be successfully managed
    through various risk amplification and risk attenuation strategies, which is to
    further recognize that we must be able to cash out the practical value of our
    concepts and risk amplification-attenuation strategies in what is our perennial
    pursuit of goodness, radically finite as we are. Thus it is that many fallacies of
    formal argumentation are employed in everyday common sense leading us
    fallibly but probabilistically toward value-realizations.

    For example, if it is true, we believe that it is also beautiful and useful, leading us
    to various attraction or avoidance strategies in our value-realization pursuits.
    While the converse, if it is beautiful or useful, then it is also true, is not
    necessarily true, still, we do raise the probability of something being true in our
    recognition that it is either beautiful or useful because if something is neither
    beautiful nor useful then the possibility of it being true is nil. Thus it is in science
    that we employ Occam‘s Razor and other truth-indicative criteria like simplicity,
    elegance, parsimony and symmetry. Thus it is in theology that orthopraxis
    grounds orthodoxy. Our existential orientations toward truth, beauty and
    goodness, which are innately grounded in our inherited pro-social capacities, get
    transfigured into the theological imperatives of faith, hope and love as a human
    value-augmentation strategy requiring the amplification of the epistemic risks
    already entailed in the normative sciences of logic, aesthetics and ethics. In our
    religious communities, truth is thus articulated in creed, beauty celebrated in cult
    or ritual, and goodness preserved in code. Such is the nature of the
    Kierkegaardian leap and of the Pascalian wager.

    Questions That Beg – Toward a Theological Anthropology

    Our emergentist account, appropriately modest in its description of


    thermodynamics, morphodynamics and teleodynamics, leaves profound
    existential questions begging, questions which leave all in wonder and awe, many
    in reverential silence, and many more musing imaginatively about what we would
    refer to as the proto-dynamics that gave rise to and the eschato-dynamics that
    might ensue from this emergent reality we have encountered. Some employ a
    root metaphor, like being or experience, to elaborate a speculative metaphysic.
    Others dwell in analogical imaginations, inchoately relating to ultimate reality
    through robust metaphors and sweeping metanarratives. While our own
    Peircean-informed sensibilities do not ambition a metaphysic (and we feel there
    is no attempt better than Gelpi‘s own triadic construct of experience), they are
    suggestive of a pneumatologically informed theology of nature, precisely derived
    from an analogy that one might draw between the Peircean telos, as
    minimalistically conceived in Deacon‘s teleodynamics, and the work of the Spirit,
    as broadly conceived in all of humankind‘s great traditions and most native
    religions, also.

    Our proposal is that what humankind relates to as an ineluctably unobtrusive but


    utterly efficacious tacit dimension comprised of a matrix of dynamical formal
    causal relations would, from an hierarchical perspective, correspond to a divine
    telic dimension, much like the interpenetrating causative fields of John Haught‘s
    process approach and aesthetic teleology, much like Joseph Bracken‘s Divine
    Matrix. We would point out that this conception is not an attempt to facilely
    blend otherwise incommensurate approaches, for example the Whiteheadian
    process versus Gelpi‘s Peircean account, and we do recognize and endorse the
    efficacies of the triadic over the classically dyadic (even di-polar) accounts.
    Rather, from a phenomenological perspective, we are invoking vaguely referential
    analogs as heuristic devices or conceptual placeholders, recognizing that
    metaphors and analogies are not, in and of themselves, system-bound. In other
    words, our robustly pneumatological imaginations are relating our triadic and
    social human experiences of phenomenal reality, with all of its many different
    patterns and regularities, to what we consider putative divine supremacies. We
    are not otherwise attempting, in the least, to account for manifold and multiform
    continuities and discontinuities between different orders of reality. We do believe
    that any who ambition a metaphysic must both account for divine alterity as well
    as differentiate the moral status of the human from other selves and creatures. All
    of this is to suggest that, because of the pervasive ubiquity in the use of the
    concept of Spirit down through the ages and still across the face of the Earth,
    arguably it meets the criterion of enjoying theoretic status contrasted with the
    dogmatic status of so many other theological concepts. In this regard, we might
    affirm with Radical Orthodoxy that, over against any notion that there exists a
    secular society writ large, as abstracted and reified by a militant but not truly
    regnant nihilism, our planet is inhabited, rather, by a pneumatologically-
    informed but broadly pluralistic community. With the Reformed epistemologists,
    we might affirm that being-in-love in the Spirit is a necessary and sufficient
    epistemic risk amplification for any who‘d aspire to most robustly
    (superabundantly) augment human value-realizations beyond those inherited as
    pro-social biases and transfigured (abundantly, to be sure) into our authentically
    human moral virtues.

    The Relations of Science and Religion

    What are the implications of this theological anthropology for the interaction
    between science and religion, viewing reality pansemioentheistically, employing
    the epistemic categories of the normative, descriptive, interpretive and evaluative
    and characterizing our concepts as semiotic, theoretic, heuristic and dogmatic?

    To the extent that we map science as a descriptive enterprise and religion as an


    interpretive enterprise and affirm them as autonomous methodologies but still
    integrally-related in every human value-realization, there can be no talk of
    conflict, as reigns in the scientism of the Enlightenment fundamentalists and the
    literalism of the various religious fundamentalists. Our axiological
    perspectivalism with its explicit integralism speaks of a model of interaction that
    coincides with Ian Barbour‘s Integration, John Polkinghorne‘s Assimilation,
    John Haught‘s Confirmation and Ted Peter‘s Hypothetical Consonance (and
    Ethical Overlap).

    In some sense, the very basis of a semiotic approach is grounded in the need for
    informational interpretation, a need that derives from the radical finitude of
    creatures, a need that plays out in our fallibilistic methodologies and heavy
    reliance on the weaker forms of inference, both abduction and induction, such as
    in the back-door philosophy of Popperian falsification and the informal
    argumentation that predominates, even mostly comprises, our common sense.
    The implication is, then, that absent this finitude and given a virtual omniscience,
    descriptively, and omnipotence, evaluatively, the normative sciences would
    consist of only aesthetics and ethics, logic would be obviated and the descriptive
    and interpretive would be a distinction without a difference, which might
    describe, in fact, an idealized eschatological epistemology whereby humankind as
    a community of inquiry has attained to the truth. At any rate, to be sure, that is
    manifestly not the case, presently.
    One practical upshot of this situation is that there need be no Two-Language
    Theory as discussed by Peters or Two-Language System as described by
    Peacocke, at least from our idealized theoretical perspective; however, from a
    practical perspective, science and religion will seemingly traffic in two languages
    because, if for no other reason, the latter is dominated by dogmatic and heuristic
    conceptions, the former by semiotic and theoretic conceptions. These need not be
    conceived as two languages, from a strictly linguistic perspective, but might
    better be conceived as two vocabularies that are slowly merging.

    There is another reason for religion‘s expanded vocabulary, though, but that
    derives from the fact that it has additional concerns (e.g. interpersonal) that are
    of no special interest to a purely scientific quest or merely descriptive enterprise.
    It is in that vein that one might invoke what Barbour and Polkinghorne have
    called Independence and Haught has described as Contrast. Willem Drees has
    developed a schema that more explicitly recognizes that religion has additional
    elements than the merely cognitive-propositional as much of religion‘s content
    rests on both religious experience and tradition.

    At this point, one might recognize that the various categories that have been
    employed for the interaction between science and religion are not all mutually
    exclusive. The categories we employ in our axiological perspectivalism are
    methodologically- autonomous but epistemically related and this noetic reality is
    affirmed whenever a scientist normatively invokes Occam ‘s razor, parsimony,
    symmetry, elegance or other aesthetic criteria to adjudicate between competing
    hypotheses. Thus it is that, whenever any methodologically autonomous realms
    do not fully overlap, but only partially overlap, and are placed in what Haught
    calls Contact, we would urge what Barbour and Polkinghorne suggest as
    Dialogue.

    Anticipations

    From the standpoint of interreligious dialogue, this hermeneutical circle of the


    normative, descriptive, interpretive and evaluative might be interpreted in terms
    of orthopathy, orthodoxy, orthopraxis, orthocommunio, each as an aspect of a
    religious interpretation which presupposes the other aspects. From a practical
    perspective, these distinctions are critical because they imply, for example, that
    the orthopathic aspects of our spiritual ―technologies‖ – by which we refer to the
    various spiritual disciplines, practices, asceticisms and devotions, for example –
    are not (necessarily) inextricably bound to any given doctrinal insights. Thus we
    would expect continued fruitful interreligious engagements such as have already
    been realized between Christianity and Zen, for example, and would encourage
    further orthopathic dialogue and exchange. Most theologians already recognize
    this dynamic, prudentially speaking, in their willingness to abstract orthopraxes
    – or moral and practical aspects – out of their doctrinal contexts in other
    traditions. Also, metaphorical and analogical language (ananoetic knowledge) is
    not system-bound, so our depth encounters of reality can be enriched by our
    interreligious ananoetic interchanges, which can provide common ground to
    explore together our theologies of nature, especially from a pneumatological
    perspective. We believe this approach can help prepare an ever more fertile
    ground for interreligious dialogue as our orthopathic, orthopraxic and ananoetic
    exchanges prepare the way to a much sought after unity even as we continue our
    search to discursively identify the commonalities in our otherwise diverse and
    pluralistic belief systems.

    We can discuss the philosophic focus of human concern in terms of the normative
    sciences. These sciences, in their mediation of our interpretive and descriptive
    foci will, in the final analysis, always come up short in rationally demonstrating
    and empirically proving our competing worldviews and metaphysics. We do want
    to ensure, normatively, that any of our competing systems at least
    minimalistically gift us with sufficient modeling power of reality such that we can
    establish an epistemic parity with other systems. Once we have established a
    modicum of equiplausibility or equiprobability, we might then invoke a type of
    equiplausibility principle to guide us in our existential choices. And such a
    principle can (should) adhere to normative guidelines for informal reasoning
    based on our abductive and retroductive inferential modes, which are
    presupposed in our triadic inferential dynamism along with induction and
    deduction. Here we reason from predicates and properties back to subjects and
    essences (nonstrict identities) in order to gain a probabilistic edge over otherwise
    arbitrary decision-making and prudential judgment. Thus we invoke parsimony,
    simplicity, elegance, beauty, symmetry, utility, goodness and other aesthetical
    and ethical and logical existential orientations, advancing notions like Pascal's
    Wager, for example, and taking courage to leap with Kierkegaard. And it is here
    that we would propose that these philosophic norms transist into theological
    virtue, which we propose might be understood in terms of the amplification of
    risks toward the augmentation of value. As we gather from Haught's Cosmic
    Adventure and aesthetic teleology, the more fragile the more beautiful. And, as
    we know from nonequilibrium thermodynamics, the greater the number of
    bifurcations and permutations in a structure's composition, the more fragile
    ---because it runs a greater risk of disintegration--- hence, the more beautiful. So,
    the leap, the wager, from a philosophic epistemic virtue to a theological virtue,
    from logic and aesthetics and ethics to faith and hope and love, is an
    amplification of risk (kenosis as risk of disintegration) toward the augmentation
    of value, an increase in truth, beauty and goodness, mediated by creed, cult and
    code in community, both a philosophical community of inquiry and a theological
    community of lovers.

    We are not, in any manner, suggesting that we believe that this is what many,
    or even most, people are doing consciously. This is how we conceive the
    underlying dynamism for common sense as practiced by humanity, whether
    consciously or not, competently or not.
    Our affinity for Peirce comes from our appreciation of his pragmatic logic and
    theory of meaning and affirmation of metaphysics as a valid but fallible
    enterprise. Beyond that, we otherwise sympathize with the analytical approaches
    and the advocates of common sense and any other approaches that incorporate
    some type of fallibilism or critical realism. And beyond that, we really are not
    looking for additional epistemological or methodological rigor other than that
    practiced by conventional science and that enjoyed in colloquial usage (including
    the "leap" of faith) and subject to linguistic analysis.

    It is our simple thesis that most people are competent in their interactions with
    reality because we have evolved that way. That is a tautology, to be sure. But it is
    a taut one, empirically. Peirce is exactly right in his use of the analogy of a cable
    with many strands or filaments to explain human knowledge. The reason most
    people are competent is that they have enough strands. We are also fallible,
    because no one has them all.

    Epistemology searches for an eschatological ideal that would account for every
    strand and epistemologists argue about the attributes of differently-stranded
    cables. Good for them. But these arguments, in my view, reach a point of
    diminishing returns where, for all practical purposes, the differences in their
    positions become so nuanced as not to be relevant to me vis a vis my value-
    realization pursuits.

    Ontologists, for their part, argue about how high they have rope-climbed these cables and what
    vista they have taken in, cosmologically, or how low they have descended into the deepest
    structures of matter to discern reality's microstructures. Their arguments, too, reach a point of
    diminishing returns vis a vis my value-realizations.

    Although there is no theoretical constraint on how high or low humankind can


    travel, hoisting itself on its epistemic cables, for all practical purposes, our radical
    finitude limits our horizons vis a vis humanity's ultimate concerns. And this,
    then, places us in deep sympathy with Wittgenstein, Pascal, James, Kierkegaard
    et al with my qualifying proviso being that faith takes us beyond but not without
    reason, which is to recognize that we do need different strands to construct our
    cables and that some cables are indeed better than others. Which strands are
    necessary and how many of them are sufficient is
    Problematical. What would make for the ideal cable is highly problematical. We
    think it is fair, then, to talk in terms of adequacy, abundance and superabundance
    (or degrees of participation, if you will) when it comes to epistemic cables vis a vis
    value-realizations. We might think, for example, of Lonergan's transcendental
    imperatives: Be attentive, empirically. Be intelligent, semantically, such as in our
    naming exercises, critically examining our referents, concepts and terms as they
    variously describe or refer to realities. Be reasonable, logically, whether in formal
    or informal argumentation, especially employing common sense. Be responsible,
    prudentially, in our practical and moral deliberations and judgments and in our
    analyses of actionable norms, guided by equiplausibility principles. Be in love,
    affectively, relationally interacting with reality guided, orthopathically, by
    authentic aesthetic sensibilities and a grammar of trust, proper assent, dutiful
    fidelity, a felt sense of solidarity expressed in compassion and by being-in-love
    (storge, philia, eros and agape).

    Now, one of our central contentions is that a philosophical anthropology that


    does not recognize and affirm a human exceptionalism is not empirically
    demonstrable and therefore not philosophically defensible. Further we contend
    that such a philosophical anthropology does not necessarily derive from a
    Peircean-informed perspective, neither from a religious nor a secular outlook.
    For example, we largely resonate with Ursula Goodenough and Terry Deacon,
    who have set forth what we interpret as a naturalistic account of human
    exceptionalism. However one defines the epistemic filaments that comprise the
    human cable of knowledge per the Peircean metaphor, epistemology is the study
    of which of the filaments are necessary and how many of them are sufficient.
    Beyond the necessary and sufficient, epistemologists also want to know what mix
    might be epistemically optimal.

    Presumably, because of our finitude, we are all operating suboptimally, some


    merely satisficing, minimalistically, others variously enjoying epistemic
    abundance and superabundance. One doesn't have to be a self-aware,
    consciously-competent epistemologist to realize human values because human
    common sense evolved as fast and frugal heuristics that probabilistically guide
    us toward knowledge, sometimes unawares. People with the requisite common
    sense are enjoying epistemic efficacies from these probabilistic heuristics. The
    normative and evaluative mediation of human knowledge-advances and value-
    realizations are grounded in these probabilistic heuristics and can be rendered, in
    fact, in terms of informal argumentation based on retroductive abductions that
    reason (backwards) from predicates to subjects, or, we might say, from various
    properties to various modal realities. (If it is elegant, it is true. If it is useful, it is
    true.) That is why Occam's Razor works, sometimes. That's how and why
    parsimony, symmetry, elegance, simplicity and utility work, sometimes.

    The epistemic efficacies, or gnosiological significance, of the logical and


    aesthetical and ethical sciences, or of truth and beauty and goodness, derive from
    the fast and frugal heuristics of an ecological rationality gifted by natural
    selection. When these heuristics are modeled like informal arguments, their
    fallibile and probabilistic nature is plain to see. Because we are fallible, our value-
    realizations involve risk-ventures. Risk ventures involve risk-management. The
    amplification of risks, within reasonable norms, augments human
    value-realizations. Like all other epistemic risk-taking, risk-amplification
    toward the end of value-augmentation is normed probabilistically and can be
    guided by equiplausibility (or even equiprobability) principles, which might
    suggest, for example, that one is acting within one's epistemic rights, only
    when one's risk-ventures are life-giving and relationship-enhancing.

    The concepts and terms employed in our various belief systems can be
    categorized as semiotic (if nonnegotiable, cross-culturally), theoretic (if
    negotiated), heuristic (if still-in-negotiation) and dogmatic (if non-
    negotiated). One's belief system, even when articulated with dogmatic and
    heuristic concepts and terms (in addition to the requisite semiotic and theoretic
    ones), enjoys epistemic parity with competing perspectives as long as one is
    acting within one's epistemic rights as guided by the actionable norms derived
    from acceptable equiplausibility principles, which have been established in a,
    more or less, pluralistic community. One's beliefs enjoy epistemic warrant in
    a community of value-realizers when one establishes epistemic parity with
    competing systems, acts within one's epistemic rights and articulates those
    beliefs using only semiotic and theoretic concepts and terms. A community's
    acceptance of actionable norms and establishment of semiotic and theoretic
    terms and concepts is, itself, a truth-indicative, probabilitistic (hence, still
    fallible) guide to optimal value-realization.

    The creeds, cults and codes of religious communities thus represent existential
    risk-ventures, Pascalian wagers and Kierkegaardian leaps, that go beyond (but
    certainly must not go without) the philosophic risk-taking of the normative
    sciences of the wider pluralistic community in a risk-amplification ordered
    toward optimal augmentation of human value-realizations of truth, beauty,
    goodness and unity. Which communities enjoy epistemic parity with competing
    interpretive systems and meet the criteria of acting within their epistemic rights?
    Which do not? Those are sociologic transactions, the currency of which is the
    pragmatic cashing out of values, not as a theory of truth (truth-conducively, as
    they say) per se but as a darned good test of truth (truth-indicatively).

    We consider ourselves minimalist realists, fallibilists. We draw our inspiration


    from Peirce's pragmatism (or pragmaticism). Theologically, then, the only thing
    we need in our epistemic suite to do the God-encounter is our common sense and
    a receptive heart. The existentialists and reformed epistemologists think all we
    need is that receptive heart. The classical rationalists think all we need is
    deductive inference. The presuppositionalists think the God-idea is axiomatic, as
    indispensable as other unprovable notions like belief in other minds, first
    principles and the intelligibility of reality. The evidentialists think all we need is
    inductive inference. The cumulative case folks think all we need is abductive
    inference.

    Peirce teaches us that inferential thought is irreducibly triadic and each


    inferential process presupposes the others and that, when our inferential
    processes end in a stalemate or Scottish verdict, we then necessarily fallback on
    our noninferential approaches to reality, like our receptive hearts, in order to
    adjudicate between competing actionable norms. So, as in theology, it is our view
    that in epistemology, heresy consists of our making a partial truth into an
    absolute. So, just like in theological apologetics, some folks adopt a
    perspectivalism that gives each of our epistemic witnesses to revelation a voice,
    our appropriation of the Peircean triadic logic is a nonfoundational
    perspectivalism that is holistic. Unlike those theological perspectivalists,
    however, who turn to Scripture as the normative perspective, we have somewhat
    of a positivist bent, which is to say that, for epistemology, broadly conceived, we
    do not consciously get into fallback mode noninferentially until the stronger
    types of inference have failed us, which they necessarily will vis a vis our ultimate
    concerns. Even then, where the heart comes in -- whether via beauty or goodness,
    we interpret as a type of informal reasoning, a probabilistic, truth-indicative sign.

    This is synthetic thinking, not systematic (which is for philosophers and


    theologians). This book sets forth an exploratory heuristic as a meta-critique of
    religious epistemologies and theologies of nature, hence, a nonfoundational
    perspectivalism normed by common sense and a receptive heart (inspired by
    Peirce's pragmatic logic) and a pneumatological theology of nature, a
    pansemioentheism, suggested by vague analogical references but not otherwise
    aspiring to robustly systematic descriptions.

    In terms of Lonergan's imperatives, the descriptive is a focus of concern that


    requires the epistemic virtue of being attentive. The normative requires being
    reasonable and being responsible. The interpretive requires being intelligent in
    our naming exercises. The evaluative requires being-in-love, broadly conceived.
    Peirce's pragmatic logic guides us in properly relating these epistemic foci and
    virtues such that our existential orientations correspond to transcendental
    imperatives. Our distinctions between the dogmatic, heuristic, theoretic and
    semiotic draw inspiration from and are a concrete application of the pragmatic
    maxim coupled with Peirce's eschatological definition of truth and is also an
    affirmation of pneumatological realities that are at play in the sensus fidelium
    and consensus gentium.

    Our nonfoundational perspectivalism is very much like John Frame's


    perspectivalism (his religious epistemology) which integrally relates the
    evidential, rational, presuppositional and existential methods of apologetics,
    except for the fact that his normative perspective is Biblical, while ours is
    Peircean vis a vis the normative sciences. While we deeply sympathize with the
    existentialist, fideist, presuppositionalist and reformed epistemologies, it is our
    rather mundane contention that beauty and usefulness guide us to truth and
    goodness because they are retroductive abductions with probabilistic
    significance that gift us, truth-indicatively, with a higher probability of realizing
    the truth than other more arbitrary criteria based on chance, alone. The same is
    true for the truth-indicative criterion of community consensus. Beauty, pragmatic
    utility and community consensus are informal arguments but fallacies of formal
    logic; when intertwined together as individual filaments in our epistemic cables
    they gain epistemic strength, even if fallibilistically. We are not wholly
    disagreeing with other epistemologies in the belief THAT orthopathic and
    orthopraxic dynamisms are efficacious but offering my philosophic defense of
    HOW and WHY they work, as well as suggesting that while they may even enjoy a
    certain methodological primacy and even autonomy in matters of ultimate
    concern, this is true only after they have established epistemic parity with
    competing worldviews and only when operating within their epistemic rights vis
    a vis equiplausibility principles (life-giving and relationship-enhancing). They are
    not otherwise autonomous systematically vis a vis the other perspectives
    required for all human value-realizations.

    Using a paradigm of risk-amplification/attentuation for value augmentation, we


    appropriate Haught's aesthetic teleology, ontologically, and we relate the
    theological virtues to other epistemic virtues, epistemologically. Normatively, the
    implications are that, in our search for a root metaphor to articulate a speculative
    metaphysics, we must employ an emergentist heuristic in order to robustly
    account for the novelty that we will encounter in reality, a novelty that
    corresponds, hypothetically, to various degrees of participation in the divine
    matrix, ergo, also accounting for meaningful differences in the moral status of
    emergent modal realities, meta-ethically, and affirming a divine alterity,
    theologically.

    Beyond these minimalist formulations of theological virtue --

    It may be that Spirit, broadly conceived, is a theoretic concept, crossculturally?

    It may be that this is an empirically defensible sociologic datum? This would be


    consistent with the suggestion that the term secular society is a reification, that
    our world community is, rather, a pneumatologically-informed pluralistic
    community and overwhelmingly so, demographically. Radical Orthodoxy may
    thus have some valid points regarding same?

    It may be, too, that, all things otherwise being equal theoretically and essentially
    vis a vis humanity's ultimate concerns, belief in Spirit is indeed epistemically
    warranted (beyond mere epistemic parity) practically and existentially,
    consistent with the Reformed perspective?

    Even if the Spirit is not nonnegotiable for human values, broadly conceived, it
    might certainly approach nonnegotiability for any who'd choose the path of
    normative risk-amplification in pursuit of such value-augmentations as would be
    fueled by humanity's ultimate concerns? So, to the extent that humanity's
    existential orientations to ultimate concerns are in play (and in whom are they
    not?) and to the extent that the Spirit would thereby be a semiotic concept, then
    this would be consistent with the presuppositionalist perspective?
    These are stronger positions to defend philosophically than what we have argued
    within these pages, but it is our belief that our exploratory heuristic provides the
    categories and the empirical thrust by which these epistemic hypotheses can be
    evaluated as sociologic data. It may be that narrowly conceived dogmatic
    formulations of religion, as strawgods, are deservedly in retreat, but belief in
    Pneuma writ large remains compelling and vital in our new age and, arguably, as
    indispensable as ever to any truly robust augmentations of human value-
    realizations.

    Let the half-gods depart that God may appear (borrowing


    phraseology from Emerson)!

    If we, as created co-creators, indeed participate in and are indwelled by our


    Creator in a dynamic Creator-creature relationship, then all dualistic conceptions
    of this relationship must give way to nondual approaches. There is a great deal of
    value that has been revealed by and that can be realized through our cosmology
    via its triadic constellation of descriptive science, evaluative culture and
    normative philosophy. Many report that there is even more value to be had if one
    allows this constellation to then spin around the interpretive axis of religion.
    If there is one thing that the great traditions and even many indigenous religions
    seem to have in common, then it would seem to be the notion that this Creator-
    creature relationship involves a Lover, a beloved and the love dynamic, itself,
    most often called the Spirit. Whatever else may be going on with onto-theologies
    and theo-ontologies and such root metaphors as being, substance, process or
    experience, we must recognize our creaturely autonomy as quasi (not
    inconsistent with the formal modal distinction of Scotus). So, too, it must be with
    this dynamic love triangle, wherein we recognize our otherness as also quasi. If
    we are not wholly autonomous in the intraobjective dimension of our experience,
    wherein we interact in reality's dynamic unfolding, however that activity might be
    conceived, neither are we wholly other in the intersubjective dimension of our
    experience, wherein we interact, hopefully, as lovers do.
    That we are never wholly autonomous or wholly other in any dimension of our
    experience is precisely due to our constitutedness as spirit in a perduring
    intrinsic relationship to the Spirit, a relationship that, for better and worse, is
    vectoral (characterized by both magnitude and direction). This is all to recognize
    that, like all participatory dynamics, there's an implied range of motion whereby
    one can participate or not and in varying degrees. The Spirit, we might suggest, is
    never timid (always present) but always coy (ever unobtrusive), a gentlemanly
    suitor, Who'd not force His way in, but a seductive siren, Who'll not stop singing
    from around the bend.
    As in any relationship, the Creator-creature dynamic is characterized by elements
    of vulnerability and risk, sacrifices, even, of that which is good for that which
    might be better. There's a divine kenosis, in fact, in the act of creation, itself. This
    self-emptying or delimitation is like a fugue playing in every dimension of our co-
    creative reality as we shed monotony and appropriate novelty, augmenting value-
    realizations through all manner of risk-amplifications, running even the risk of
    disintegration in the pursuit of more truth, beauty, goodness and unity.
    The quasi-autonomy of creation is a "managed" risk, reminiscent of my old
    banking trope that profits do not come from risk-taking but from superior skills
    at managing risks. However one might conceive of such boundaries and limits, or
    laws and axioms, in a divine kenotic act of self-delimitation, the Ens Necessarium
    "relaxed" its boundary and limit conditions in devising the initital conditions of
    creatures and creation thus processed forth with regularities, habits, tendencies,
    capacities, or an agapic Spirit, if you will, coaxing it along in a dance of discovery
    toward a divine romance.
    The cosmos, for its part, gave itself over to emergence dynamics as it surrendered
    to a state far from equilibrium, where novelty could be teased forth from the
    bifurcations and permutations that were compounded in the formation of each
    dissipative structure, structures that, in running the risk of disintegration,
    experienced increases in fragility that were only to be exceeded by their increases
    in beauty.
    Animals emerged whose behavior became increasingly plastic only because their
    brain processes became decreasingly algorithmic, which is to say more capable of
    error. But the animals exploited these errors, where different parts of otherwise
    discrete memories became dissociated from each other only to be recombined in
    novel (mistaken) ways. Their brains became open-ended rather than close-ended
    processors as mere icons and indexes gave way to symbols (mistakes) that
    presented models (more and less perfect) of reality that could compete with
    reality, itself, for the animals' attention and responses. This is to say that
    predicates could now be stripped from their subjects, properties from their
    objects, accidents from their essences, and combined in novel ways (even bigger
    mistakes) to tell stories and make myths, some which, lo and behold, evoked
    novel but appropriate (adaptive) responses to reality. Mistakes were being
    exploited by creatures as their algorithmic, rule-governed behavior became
    progressively de-limited, more open-ended, an imago Dei dynamic, to be sure.
    Homo sapiens thus emerged as the symbolic species, modeling reality through
    story-telling and myth-making. This modeling abilty was very rudimentary and
    was, ironically, a tad too rule-governed and dualistic in its conceptions. This is to
    recognize that humankind's epistemology was not modeling reality's ontology
    very well. For a participatory reality which was governed much more so by
    probability and much less so by necessity, which had initial, boundary and limit
    conditions that were much more relaxed and much less fixed, which was
    profoundly relational, triadic and semiotic and much less empirical, logical and
    dualistic --- well, when it came to 1) logic, there was way too much emphasis on
    the deductive and inductive and not enough attention given to abduction; 2)
    reason, there was way too much emphasis on conceptual map-making and not
    nearly enough on participatory imagination; 3) aesthetics, there was way to much
    emphasis on art as imitation & mimesis, as essentialism and formalism, and not
    enough on art as expressivism and instrumentalism; 4) ethics, there was way too
    much emphasis on the deontological and contractarian and not enough on the
    teleological
    (consequentialistic) and aretaic (virtue); 5) paradox, there was way too much
    emphasis on its resolution through dialectic, dissolution through paradigm shifts
    and evasion through pragmatics and not nearly enough on the exploitation of its
    creative tensions; 6) first principles, there was way too much emphasis on the
    excluded middle and noncontradiction of actualities & necessities (radical
    empiricism and logical positivism) and the folding of noncontradiction in
    possibilities (metaphysics run amok) and way too little emphasis on the folding of
    either-or thinking (excluded middle) in probabilities; 7) causations, there was
    way too much emphasis on efficient causation, while material causation was
    taken for granted, and not nearly enough attention paid to the emergent realities
    of formal and final causation (essential to the study of semiotics); 8) and so on
    and so forth.
    The practical take-away is that a participatory ontology can gift us with an
    enhanced modeling power for reality. And this does not really challenge the
    notion that methods precede systems because a participatory ontology is not
    really a system but is a practice, which is to say, a method, an approach to reality,
    an interpretive axis, a confessional theological stance that is moreso practical and
    not so much speculative. It inspires a turn to community because it invites one to
    love and be-loved via the Spirit. It allows us to leverage up our cosmological
    approaches of descriptive science, evaluative culture and normative philosophy
    through the orthodoxic, orthopathic and orthopraxic risk amplifications known
    as faith, hope and love, which augment our value-realizations of truth, beauty and
    goodness. Think Eucharist. Do Eucharist.
    Next time you encounter a mistake, an imperfection, a blemish, an uncomfortable
    arousal from a serene equilibrium --- welcome that Cross with open arms. It's the
    paschal mystery come to call and great things are about to happen --- if you hold
    on loosely but don't let go. That's the divine fugue and your co-creative calling to
    bring an even greater harmony into a love relationship. What does this mean in
    terms of esse? or the immanent trinity? Heaven if I know. And it's increasingly
    hard to care less these days.

    Ontology – the metaphysical


    Is Metaphysics Moonshine?

    Look at some of the words and phrases associated with studies of consciousness:

    ... the explanatory gap, the hard and easy problems, functionalism, eliminativism,
    epiphenomenalism, interactionism, panpsychism, intrinsic monism,
    representationalism, nonreductive materialism, nonreductive physicalism,
    property dualism, substance dualism,dual aspect monism, cartesian dualism,
    eliminative materialism, mentalism, weak supervenience, strong supervenience,
    logical supervenience, ontological supervenience, higher order theory, multiple
    drafts theory, neutral monism, aristotelian hylomorphism, quantum theory of
    consciousness ...

    And think about some of the ideas associated with theoretical physics:
    ... indeterminacy, superluminality, nonlocality, superpositioning,
    complementarity ...

    It is enough to make anyone feel a little tipsy.

    Whether we are studying speculative cosmology or speculative cognitive science,


    from that end of the Great Chain of Being, where consciousness emerges, to that
    end near the earliest moments after the Big Bang, where we encounter the
    deepest structures of matter, ineluctable paradox confronts us.

    Despite the incredible complexity these realities present, our attempts to


    eliminate the paradoxes they generate are rather simple. They essentially boil
    down to four basic categories: 1) revisions of our logic; 2) revisions of our
    descriptions of causality; 3) propositions of incompleteness or hidden variables;
    and 4) submission to reductio arguments.

    Revised Hermeneutics?

    Proposed revisions to our logic and our understanding of causality, respectively,


    deal with epistemology and ontology, while propositions regarding hidden
    variables involve cosmology. Whether we attempt to resolve paradox with
    epistemological, ontological or cosmological revisions, we soon learn that the
    descriptive problems we are faced with are intractable and that every time we
    open a new interpretive window, reality shuts another hermeneutical door. Often,
    our last resort is a reductio argument, demonstrating the manifest absurdity of a
    given revision, but science, in its inexorable advance over the centuries, has
    justified the issuance of a caveat emptor on any casual rejection of the
    counterintuitive.

    How, then, are we to revise our logic? What epistemological tool do we abandon
    first? Excluded middle? Noncontradiction? Bivalence?

    And what about causality? What ontological determinations are we to give up?
    the Real? the Possible? the Actual? the Necessary?
    Which of our cosmological descriptions should we change? the Primitives? the
    Axioms?

    Perhaps we should not only break with our bivalent logic constructions,
    epistemologically, but also our realist conception of inquiry, ontologically?

    Problems

    Epistemologically confronted by godelian incompleteness, ontologically faced


    with friesian undecidability and cosmologically challenged by peircean unlimited
    semeiosis, are we the servants of our own formal symbol systems, unable to
    transcend them to see the reality that our language and thought are supposed to
    represent? Is there any way, rather, that language could be our servant, a calculus
    always subject to reinterpretation as we employ it in our progressive attempts to
    model reality? Whatever the case may be, one thing is certain: a priorism is
    clearly untenable.

    Let‘s back up.

    Does philosophy have to be confronted with the challenges of modern


    speculative cosmology and speculative cognitive science in order to
    recognize human cognitive limitations? And what precisely is at stake? The
    status of various truth propositions or merely the establishment of these
    limitations? Can we escape the epistemological, ontological, cosmological,
    and even axiological and teleological, cartesian dilemmas?

    Solutions

    It is our thesis that, prior to any confrontation by modern cosmology or cognitive


    science, we can prescind from our metaphysical perspectives to positions of both
    ontological and cosmological agnosticism, gaining virtual meta-ontological and
    meta-cosmological vantage points. Such a retreat might be energized by an
    essential pragmatism that avails itself of both well-known human cognitive
    limitations as well as well-founded human cognitive aspirations.

    Truth be known, epistemologically, our logic does apparently need some


    tweaking but certainly not a major overhaul? Ontologically, navigating from the
    possible to the actual, even employing the rigors of scientific method, is very
    problematical using the necessary at either helm or stern, wheel or rudder.
    Cosmologically, our descriptions of reality in terms of givens (or primitives), such
    as space, time, mass and energy, and of axioms, such as of the various forces
    (weak, strong, electromagnetic and gravity) and physical laws, are still
    incomplete, inviting propositions that consider manifold and multiform hidden
    variables.

    Epistemologically, then, we needn‘t abandon noncontradiction or excluded


    middle, but we might retreat to a contrite fallibilism, which recognizes the frame-
    dependent and contextual-relational aspect of our perspectives.

    Ontologically, we needn‘t give up our conceptions of possible and actual, but we


    might retreat to a modal logic that nuances necessity as conditional, the
    necessary yielding, instead, to the probable.

    Cosmologically, faced with the eternal fugue of pattern and paradox, order and
    chaos, chance and necessity, the random and systematic, we might minimally opt
    for a prime reality that is symmetric over against asymmetric, driven by the same
    exigencies that drove our modal logic revisions, compelled by humankind‘s long
    successful experience with knowledge advances as invariably driven, historically,
    by our incessant search for symmetry, such a search as may yet introduce new
    primitives or propose new axioms.

    Are there efficacies to be realized as we thus prescind to the functional and


    phenomenal from the ontological and cosmological? Can this be done in the
    modern day scientific cultural milieu where ontologies wage a battle royale in the
    philosophy of mind interdisciplines, where cosmologies collide in their
    implications for both our origin and our destiny?

    Emergence

    There is one unifying metanarrative and that appears to be that of


    emergence.

    In the great chain of being there are levels stretching from the quantum to the
    sociological. There are levels of being within levels of being. There are theories
    that govern interactions within levels and sometimes between levels, sharing
    concepts. The concepts concern 1) parts and wholes; 2) properties and 3) natural
    laws.
    There are three ways to look at the possible relationships between these levels. If
    a lower level completely explains a higher level, then we have reductionism and
    the strongest relation possible. When speaking in terms of parts & wholes,
    properties & laws, it is possible that reductionism will not explain a higher level,
    but we can still maintain supervenience, which is to say that any differences in
    parts, wholes, properties and laws at a higher level must have corresponding
    differences at the lower level (covariance without reduction). If a theory
    explaining higher level properties & laws is, in principle, unpredictable from a
    theory at a more fundamental level, then we have emergence, which is to say,
    novelty.

    Emergence is sometimes considered to correlate with supervenience, such that


    strong supervenience correlates with weak emergence and weak supervenience
    with strong emergence. Systems have also been characterized as closed emergent
    and open emergent systems. Closed emergent systems are epistemologically
    closed insofar as all of the system parameters for parts & wholes, properties &
    laws, are known; as such, closed systems are relatively deterministic at their
    lowest levels, even if indeterministic at their higher levels. Open emergent
    systems are epistemologically open, characterized by epistemic uncertainty. They
    may be either ontologically open or closed, which is to say they may or may not
    require new physical laws in their naturalistic explanations.

    Basically, if our current understanding of an emergent system is lacking, it is


    epistemologically open and if new physical principles are invoked, it is
    ontologically open.

    These distinctions speak directly to our evolutionary psychology as we climb the


    phylogenetic ladder adding sensation, perception, emotion, motivation,
    computational cognition, language, semiotics (syntactical & semantic) and
    nonalgorithmic cognition. I think the general consensus, among cognitive
    scientists, is that all of the system parameters for the parts & wholes, properties &
    laws of human consciousness are not known. In fact, they are extremely
    overdetermined. Presently, then, any understanding of the emergent system of
    human consciousness is epistemologically open, marked by substantial epistemic
    uncertainty. Until there is a more robust understanding of the properties and
    laws governing consciousness, we risk reification of both the structural and the
    functional concepts that describe our mental states and their interactivity with
    the physical.

    The putatively ontologically open systems of human consciousness would include


    Avery‘s dimensional structure of consciouness, Penrose‘s new physical laws, Ayn
    Rand‘s objectivist epistemology and several other systems that amount to a
    naturalistic dualism, describing consciousness as primitive, as a fundamental
    property like space, time, mass or charge. Such systems are advanced by those
    who insist that the distinction between syntax and semantics in semiotic science
    are critical, that the distinction between computational and nonalgorithmic
    cognition is pivotal. Those who propose ontologically closed systems include the
    psychoneural identity theorists and others with various views regarding the
    Turing Test, Artificial Intelligence, eliminativism, epiphenomenalism,
    functionalism and such as Dennett over against Chalmers on qualia.
    The categories that distinguish between the open and closed systems,
    epistemologically and ontologically, are philosophical categories. Discussions of
    supervenience and emergence in the study of human consciousness, such as we
    set forth above, for the reasons we set forth above, presently are moreso
    subsumed under the philosophy of mind, not so much the science of mind. This
    notwithstanding, there is nothing discussed above that is not naturalistic, though
    a few approaches were nonphysicalistic.

    Regarding the mind-body problem, William James wrote: We are thrown back
    therefore upon the crude evidences of introspection on the one hand, with all its
    liabilities to deception, and, on the other hand, upon a priori postulates and
    probabilities. He who loves to balance nice doubts need be in no hurry to decide
    the point. Like Mephistopheles to Faust, he can say to himself, "dazu hast du
    noch eine lange Frist" [for that you've got a long wait], for from generation to
    generation the reasons adduced on both sides will grow more voluminous, and
    the discussion more refined.

    I'm more optimistic than James. Is the current explanatory gap epistemic?
    Perhaps we'l eventually close it, but only asymptotically approaching godelian
    boundaries. Is it ontological? Even then, I think our abductions will guide us
    toward an accumulation of indirect evidence, such evidence subjected to ever
    more rigorous statistical analyses and resulting in increasingly compelling
    inferences about the nature of consciousness, again constrained by godelian
    dynamics. As such, it will never be exhaustive of the competing ontological and
    cosmological approaches but will remain congruent with many of them through
    the highly refined nuancing suggested by James. Still, if we continue our search
    for the most comprehensive, and at the same time discriminating, synthesis of
    whatever is best in rival systems, then we think we'll get closest to the truth.

    Semiotic Emergence

    A very fruitful way of engaging a most comprehensive, yet very discriminating,


    perspective on emergence dynamics is through the hermeneutic of semiotic
    emergence. From the purely phenomenal perspective, prior to describing reality,
    ontologically, in terms of absolute necessity, cosmologically, in terms of
    primitives and their attendant axioms, or epistemologically, in terms of absolute
    logic, we can more tentatively and fallibilistically approach reality using an
    interpretive scheme of semiotic emergence, with meaning essentially defined as
    the establishment of information loops.

    In semiotic emergence, from a: 1) meta-epistemological perspective, the


    establishment of meaning is frame-dependent, contextual-relational, the laws of
    logic still holding; 2)meta-ontological perspective, semiotic realities are
    designated as real per a modal logic designating ontological status as possible,
    actual or probable, rather than necessary; and 3) meta-cosmological perspective,
    semiotic realities transcend classical metaphysical descriptions of primitives and
    their governing axioms for the nature of the universe, such as in substance
    metaphysics with respect to being or materiality, such as in process metaphysics
    with respect to experience, or even such as in participative metaphysics with
    respect to entities.

    In approaching a semiotic reality epistemologically, we have prescinded from


    such as the excluded middle, not to take permanent refuge from the bivalent in
    the multivalent, rather, only retreating to a contextual-relational vantage with the
    clear intent of returning to perform our conventional logical operations. In
    approaching a semiotic reality ontologically, we have prescinded from such a
    modal logic as governed by necessity having observed in the crucible of
    experience that reality is apparently more so governed by probability. In
    approaching a semiotic reality cosmologically, we have prescinded from such an
    account of the nature of the universe as a priori relies on an invariable set of
    primitives and governing axioms, while nevertheless holding to a meta-
    cosmological bias toward symmetry.

    As with our epistemological circumspection, we can then return to the ontologies


    and cosmologies of our Weltanschauung and, having viewed reality through the
    interpretive lens of semiotic emergence, can better avoid confusing our maps for
    our territories, earnestly critiquing them, whether substance, process,
    participative or some other variety. (They will all, nevertheless, still be
    encumbered by this or that paradox of infinite regress, circular reasoning, ipse
    dixit, etc Oh, bother!)

    The semiotic emergence paradigm [SEP] can serve as an indispensable


    hermeneutical hygiene insofar as it clarifies our thinking about reality, enabling
    us to rise above the insidious cartesian dualisms, which breed the mutually
    unintelligible distinctions such as between essentialism and nominalism, realism
    and idealism, empiricism and rationalism, reductionism and holism, phenomenal
    and noumenal, foundational and nonfoundational, correspondence and
    coherence, deontological and teleological ethics, contingency and teleology, etc
    This hermeneutic is no more immune to paradox than any other, suffering as it
    does from an infinite regress of semiotic realities, but that is a small price to pay
    for the enhanced modeling power it provides us for reality, especially once
    considering the manifold and multiform efficacies than ensue from its
    transcendence of cartesian spectres.

    Efficacies of the SEP

    With respect to an anthropocentric, human exceptionalism, the SEP gives


    impetus to our attempts to jettison the cartesian baggage that weighs down our
    existential cargo holds and overloads our hermeneutical overhead bins. What
    baggage? The cartesian dualisms that prevent us from taking anthropological
    flight and attaining ecological altitude insofar as we allow them to:

    a) estrange us from our cosmic origin and cosmic support as they are
    mediated by nos environs;
    b) uproot us from our epistemological ground as we get trapped in infinite
    loop errors inside our own heads;
    c) alienate us from our own bodies as a result of our narrowly conceived
    substance ontologies that pit mind against matter;
    d) conflict us through inadequate theodicies as we struggle with the
    polynomial and bivalent nature of our values, lost on the path from the given to
    the normative, axiologically blind to any oughts that might inhere in the is; and
    e) set us aimlessly adrift without the benefit of a coherent teleonomy and a
    morally compelling eschatological vision that teleologically connects to our
    present milieu giving impetus to our interventions now, conveying a sense of
    urgency in our dire need to awaken to our solidarity that compassion might more
    quickly ensue, everything belonging (Rohr).

    The SEP counters any paradigm wherein biology is considered both necessary
    and sufficient in explaining human behavior. It also takes issue with any
    paradigm wherein the biological continuum and human instinct are excessively
    downplayed with cultural conditioning otherwise considered both necessary and
    sufficient in describing human behavior.

    Elements of an SEP

    There are many problems, solutions and efficacies addressed in the hereinabove-
    proposed hermeneutical revisions to classical metaphysics. What specific
    ingredients might best comprise an acceptable Semiotic Emergence Paradigm?
    My guess is a
    Polanyian-Peircean approach to biosemiotics, which incorporates the
    aristotelian insight:

    We have our virtues neither by nor contrary to our natures. We are fitted by
    our natures to receive them. If brains are amazing, the human brain is flat-out
    astonishing. .... No doubt about it: Our symbolic minds allow us to access
    mental experiences, like mathematics, aesthetics and spiritual intuitions, that
    we have every reason to believe are novel, unique to the human. ...But we
    suggest that it is also of utmost importance that we not lose track of our mental
    evolutionary antecedents. ... Any perspective on the human condition that
    brushes this fact aside is an incomplete perspective, --indeed, we would say that
    it is an impoverished perspective. ... Given that we have evolved from an
    intensely social lineage, we are uniquely aware of what it feels like to be pro-
    social, and it is this awareness of what it feels like to be moral -- this moral
    experience -- that undergirds and motivates the actions of a moral person.? by
    Ursula Goodenough and Terrence Deacon 14

    Proving Too Much

    People like Teilhard, Polanyi and Aurobindo have, in our view, thought deeply and in the right
    direction, but otherwise "prove too much" with their metaphysics. This is still far better than
    those who "prove too much" with their science and metaphysics in what seems to me to be the
    wrong direction!

    That Fr. Bede and Merton and other spiritual technologists engaged the East
    seriously and recognized gifts for all of humankind in the Eastern traditions is
    important. It makes us want to pay attention, to take them seriously but not
    necessarily literally (speaking of such as Aurobindo's evolutionary ideas). In
    other words, however much their spiritual practices are integrally related to their
    ontologies and doctrines, it is curious that we can borrow their practices (again,
    for example, Aurobindo's accounts of Yoga) and have them work very well for us
    even if we do not buy into their ontologies and doctrines. It is especially curious
    if one buys into the maxim --- orthopraxis authenticates orthodoxy.

    We see all major traditions, not just Christianity, in search of a metaphysic. We


    think those (all) ontologies represent rather fallible and awkward attempts to
    articulate what humankind had ALREADY discovered to be the truth (or an
    approximation, at least) phenomenologically, which is to say that we know THAT
    such realities present themselves and THAT such practices work even as we do
    not always know HOW and WHY. This is to suggest that folks like Aurobindo
    were paying incredible and excellent attention to reality, especially human reality
    (like the Sufi mystics and the Enneagram, for example). The same is true for
    kundalini, just for another example. That we experience this reality,
    phenomenally, is not in dispute for those of us who have experienced such
    energies. The WHAT and HOW is of less importance. That we submit all to the
    guidance of the Holy Spirit and the counsel and discernment of community is
    what we are called to do.

    If we dug into these seemingly disparate doctrines and ontologies (East vs West)
    and their attendant language games and cultural embeddedness, then we just
    might find, at least, some minimalistic grounds for a syncretistic approach that is
    not heterodox after all; a true mystical core shared by the great traditions. (We
    think of John Hick, here.) Our suspicion is that those grounds would be
    pneumatological, which is to suggest the involvement of the Holy Spirit.
    Interreligious dialogue could proceed with our [Christology] in brackets and the
    Spirit out front and center.

    14 From Biology to Consciousness to Morality by Ursula Goodenough and Terrence


    Deacon, Zygon D 03; 38(4): 801-819
    We wonder if our perspectives diverge at the point where we either search or do
    not search for, and if we search, whether we find or do not find, what some refer
    to as foundations and justifications? Or, perhaps, following Hans Kung, whether
    or not we even care to explain such a fundamental trust in uncertain reality
    as it seems we must all share, in some degree, in order to have these discussions
    in the first place?

    Kung talks about a justified fundamental trust in uncertain reality, which is to say
    that some folks do bother to tell others why they trust uncertain reality. He also
    talks about a nowhere anchored and paradoxical trust in uncertain reality.
    However, might we not further distinguish between the process of dropping
    anchor and the actual realization of anchoring, which is to ask: How would we
    know we are not, rather, merely dragging anchor?

    Whitehead suggested that all metaphysics are fatally flawed. Considering


    the source and knowing the value he invested in that very pursuit, perhaps he'd
    suggest that we can cash out some value in our anchoring attempts and that this
    value would be denominated in terms of realizing the least morbid system, the
    one least infected with paradox --- veridical, falsidical, antinomial, conditional, or
    the system that is most consistent while least incomplete (Godel). Perhaps
    dragging an anchor is better than being blown haphazardly and willy nilly about.

    Still, we can build systems (the great traditions and ideologies). We can remain a
    respectful silence re: systems (phenomenology and some Buddhist approaches).
    We can gainsay and critique systems and need no system of our own in order to
    efficaciously do so (radically deconstructive postmodernism and practical
    nihilism). None of these approaches requires Ontology, this notwithstanding the
    fact that many adherents of these above-listed stances have attempted such
    metaphysical articulations. It was also Whitehead who said that Christianity was
    a religion in search of a metaphysic; and he was exactly right; just look at the
    many different types of thomism, for example, including aristotelian, analytical,
    existential, transcendental and more.

    What we are suggesting is that, at some level, given where humankind is on its
    journey, that all of the above stances, which might be variously categorized
    regarding their stance toward system building: system building
    affirmation/ontology, meta-system phenomenology, system agnosticism, and
    nonsystematic gainsaying and critique ... that all of these stances are still what
    William James might call live options. And we suppose the best way to
    adjudicate between them, to cash out their value, is in terms of modeling power
    of reality and with such a "power" oriented toward human value realizations
    and the bolstering of authentic human aspirations. Somehow, true dialogue
    might require us to at least be able to stand in one another's existential moccasins
    and to get in touch with why our otherwise disparate hermeneutics might truly
    remain live options. And then we can get on with the project of doing ethics, of
    seeking a more universally compelling morality and the articulation of a truly
    global ethic. And we had better not wait for an ontological consensus. We don't
    have time. We must come to the dialogue table with our ontologies bracketed and
    build on the common ground we already share vis a vis general precepts, human
    dignity, common good, universal declarations of human rights and so on and so
    forth with a premium placed on THAT we share them and a discount issued
    regarding WHY we share them (vis a vis our justification attempts). This is not to
    suggest that, at the same time, we should not otherwise still be seeking the most
    nearly perfect articulation of truth, beauty, goodness and unity attainable (and
    then urging it on others only with a great deal of circumspection and good sense
    of propriety).

    Emergence – the phenomenological


    Intersubjective Intimacy in Community

    Intrasubjective Integrity of Spirit

    Lonerganian Conversions

    Formative Spirituality
    The Road to Completion

    We might consider giving up the old spiritual paradigm, which frames OUR
    journey in terms of perfection, and embrace another, which suggests we‘re on a
    road, rather, to completion.

    We will experience lacking and painfully and poignantly so. And, as Richard
    Rohr emphasizes, that pain which we do not allow to somehow transform us
    we will continue to transmit to others. Allowing pain to do its transformative
    work is precisely a journey into intimacy because intimacy is what will complete
    us. So this pain impels us to longing and yearning.

    Consider these beautiful Gerald May15 quotes:

    We are conscious not just because our hearts are beating but because they are
    yearning (1).

    15 Gerald May – need citation – probably from Will & Spirit


    The only way to own and claim love as our identity is: to fall in love with love
    itself, to feel affection for our longing, to value our yearning, treasure our
    wanting, embrace our incompleteness, be overwhelmed by the beauty of our
    need (2).

    Love is present in any desire … in all feelings of attraction, in all caring and
    connectedness. It embraces us in precious moments of immediate presence. It is
    also present when we experience loneliness, loss, grief and rejection. We may
    say such feelings come from the absence of love, but in fact they are signs of our
    loving; they express how much we care. We grieve according to how much of
    ourselves we have already given; we yearn according to how much we would
    give, if only we could (3).

    So, our choices play out in terms of whether our responses will be existential,
    which is to say life-giving and relationship-enhancing, or neurotic, which is to
    say life-detracting and relationship-destroying. And these are the choices
    whether we experience guilt, anger, lust, greed, envy, jealousy, pride or any other
    passion, whether somewhat bridled or not. We sit in the front row of a crowded
    theater and, on the big screen, a train is lurching toward us, picking up speed,
    getting ever larger and ever louder. Our sympathetic nervous system kicks in,
    adrenaline is released, our liver glycogen converts to glucose, our muscles tense
    and our heart starts pumping furiously as we enter fight or flight mode. To run
    out of the theater would be neurotic. On the other hand, should we be strolling
    down the railroad tracks, leisurely tossing stones into the adjacent stream, and a
    train rushes toward us, to jump off of the tracks into the stream would be
    existential. So, with Gerald May, let us value our feelings as they give us
    information about both our external environment and internal
    milieu. And let us enjoy the ways we squirm, cringe, and avoid life
    and relationships, existentially rather than neurotically.

    Nondual Awareness

    EVERYBODY has contemplative, nondual moments. The only reason for the fuss
    is that too often we squander them or allow them to be taken from us.

    A nondual stance toward a reality is that moment of pure raw awareness prior to
    any problem-solving processing. If that reality is another person, for example, if
    our encounter of that person places us immediately in a problem-solving mode,
    whether from our perspective or their‘s, whether of a moral or a practical nature,
    then we are using our dualistic mind, which is empirical (measuring), rational
    (logical), practical (making use or meeting a need of either person) or moral
    (evaluating right and wrong, good and evil) and so on.
    Sometimes this functional mode is absolutely what is called for. On the other
    hand, if our encounter of that other person is sheer enjoyment of presence and
    wholly relational and involving verbs like trust, love, forgive and such, and if we
    are engaging in what is more like pure play and growing intimacy and self-
    forgetful ecstasy, then we are using our nondual mode.

    One can think in terms of paradox, too. In our problem-solving mode, we can
    resolve paradox (dialectical synthesis), dissolve paradox (thru paradigm and
    perspectival shifts) or evade paradox, practically (for example by ignoring it).
    Life‘s biggest paradoxes, its cosmic ironies and deepest mysteries (like theodicy
    questions), it seems, do not lend themselves very readily to problem-solving
    resolutions, dissolutions or evasions but require, instead, what I like to call
    exploitation, whereby we take a tension and exploit it transformatively by
    maintaining the tension as a creative tension.

    In a nutshell, if you read the Old Testament and make a list of all of the
    complaints issued by the Psalmists and questions raised in Job, or even look in
    the New Testament, you notice that the age-old time-honored philosophical
    questions regarding life‘s deepest mysteries like 1) what about creation, how and
    when did that take place 2) suffering and why THAT? and 3) other questions
    put directly to Jesus — are not answered in philosophical or scientific or
    empirical or rational terms.

    God did not answer our night terrors from our beds with explanations and ideas.
    He answered by showing up, hugging us, telling us everything will be alright. He
    answered in a relational way but not a problem-solving way. He doesn‘t
    deconstruct our boogeymans. He holds us and sings us a lullaby. And we forget
    how scared and lonely we were.

    The nondual is robustly RELATIONAL.

    The problem is that people think religion is mostly about what is right and wrong,
    morally, or what we can do to earn God‘s love; or religion is about how to have
    our practical needs met, our pocketbooks and health and prosperity Gospel
    garbage; or that religion answers our empirical questions about creation; or that
    religion shows us how to think logically to solve philosophical puzzles.

    If you listen to fundamentalistic evangelists, whether Protestant or Catholic, if


    they are preoccupied with empirical, rational, practical and moral questions,
    which are NOT unimportant or irrelevant, but spend very little time on
    RELATIONAL questions, like growing in trust, intimacy, forgiveness and love,
    then they are reinforcing the dualistic mindset and human socialization processes
    but neglecting the nondual stance and human transformational processes.
    We do not need special divine revelation to know what is true empirically,
    logically, rationally, practically or morally for that is all transparent to human
    reason (general revelation). The value-added aspect of special divine revelation is
    the GOOD NEWS of Jesus that God is not the deistic watchmaker but the lover,
    the Daddy. That‘s where the emphasis needs to be placed — on the Good News
    and less on the old news that anyone could figure out (like how to be good), even
    without Jesus.

    Nondual awareness is what one does when they are being loved,
    being love, beloved one.

    Thomas Merton – contemplative prayer

    ―there must be a renewal of communion between the traditional,


    contemplative disciplines and those of science, between the poet and the
    physicist, the priest and the depth psychologist, the monk and the
    politician.‖ Merton

    While Merton affirms that our symbols can bring us into closer contact with
    reality, he cautions against identifying them with reality. In a sense, he was
    saying, with Ralph Waldo Emerson : ―Heartily know, When half-gods go, The
    gods arrive.‖.

    ―What is this (contemplative prayer) in relation to action? Simply this.


    He (and she) who attempts to act and do things for others or for the
    world without this deepening of his own self-understanding, freedom,
    integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. He
    will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own
    obsessions, his aggressiveness, his egocentered ambitions, his delusions
    about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.‖ Thomas
    Merton,‖ The Climate of Monastic Prayer‖

    Merton – the False Self (properly understood)

    The concept of False Self is unfortunate. Why unfortunate? Because the False Self
    is not bad. We might better to draw such distinctions as early on our journey
    versus later on our journey thus and such happens. (This is not to deny that
    many unduly put off the journey to such things as transformation and even
    adulthood.) The early stages of formation and transformation are good. So are
    the later. And nothing that takes place on our early journey is abandoned. The
    false self represents our socialization, moving from little animals to humans. It
    represents our humanization. And our humanization and divinization are
    inextricably intertwined, not really distinguishable really. The more fully human
    we become, the more we reflect the Divine Image, the imago Dei. So, we don‘t
    abandon the false self. Not at all. Rather, we take full possession of it in order to
    surrender it to crucifixion. (And one cannot surrender what one does not form
    and possess.) We give it up in order to be radically saved (from sin and death); it
    is no mere pious gesture. Thus the seed falls to the ground and dies … Thus every
    other metaphor for the Paschal Mystery … This is my False Self. I give it up for
    you.

    Teresa of Avila did say that we must desire and occupy ourselves in prayer not so
    much so as to receive consolations but so as to gain the strength to serve. Still, a
    careful reading and parsing will note that she didn‘t negate or eliminate our
    desire for consolations but only added to them. I like the simple distinction
    between eros or what‘s in it for me? and agape or what‘s in it for God & others?

    Agape, however, does not extinguish or negate eros, but, rather, transvalues it
    and recontextualizes it. Thus we do not let go of what‘s in it for me? even as we
    strive to transcend it with agapic love.

    Merton – It was Him! He done it!

    Another distinction from Merton.

    Merton discusses two of the types of confessio, of confession. One was laude or
    praise.
    The other was re: the more familiar ―It was me. I done it.‖ that we know from the
    Rite of Reconciliation and from police shakedowns, or parental busts regarding
    hands in cookie jars. This distinction makes for rich reflection and meditation but
    our focus here is on the transformative process.

    The confession of praise is the converse: ―It was God. He done it.‖

    The psalms are about 50:50 penitential supplication taking the form of ―I done
    it‖ and of praise taking the form of adoration of ―He done it.‖

    Merton – insoluble problems?

    Merton has touched upon a dynamic, when he speaks of existential crisis, which
    is very much related to the Cross for Christians although it happens with all
    people, even in science.
    The dynamic, more specifically, involves our confrontation with a problem. We
    initially perceive the problem as soluble and we work mightily to solve it. It
    matters not whether it is a philosophical conundrum or some scientific
    hypothesis or some existential crisis/spiritual emergency. We exhaust all of our
    resources and then arrive at the point where we pretty much conclude that this
    particular issue is insoluble. At this point, we resolve to leave it alone, give it a
    rest, to forget about it altogether. So, we do.

    Then, when you least expect it, whether in a dream or while playing or working or
    chopping wood and carrying water, the solution comes to us in a flash, totally
    gratuitously and unmerited as pure grace, so to speak.

    Now, this dynamic is very natural and involves the workings of the human
    mind at a subconscious level, intuitions bubbling up to the surface, to be sure,
    not unaided by the Holy Spirit.

    Our Need for God per Merton

    "there must be a renewal of communion between the traditional, contemplative


    disciplines and those of science, between the poet and the physicist, the priest
    and the depth psychologist, the monk and the politician." Merton

    While Merton affirms that our symbols can bring us into closer contact with
    reality, he cautions against identifying them with reality. In a sense, he was
    saying, with Ralph Waldo Emerson : "Heartily know. When half-gods go, The
    gods arrive.".

    We'll begin with the partial retelling of a Merton story from earlier. Merton
    discusses two of the types of confessio, of confession. One was laude or praise.
    The other was re: the more familiar "It was me. I done it." that we know from the
    Rite of Reconciliation and from police shakedowns, or parental busts regading
    hands in cookie jars. The confession of praise is the converse: "It was God. He
    done it."

    The psalms are about 50:50 penitential supplication taking the form of "I done it"
    and of praise taking the form of adoration of "He done it."

    Now, there comes a point where we pass through existential crisis or a series of
    crises and recognize that there is little meritorious effort on our behalf other than
    cooperation with grace and that all else is pure unmerited Grace. This is part of
    recognizing our
    radical dependence on God, Whom we can trust
    because, well, look around at What He Done!
    Prior to getting to that place of praise and He Done It, we must get both to the
    place of I Done It regarding our abject sinfulness as well as It Isn't/Wasn't Me!
    regarding our manifold blessings and very existence.

    Part of the nondual experience, then, is the existential realization of It Isn't Me ---
    not this creation, not these feelings, not these thoughts, not any rule-following or
    goodness, iow, It Isn't Me cognitively, affectively or morally, that's responsible for
    starting all of this, holding it all together and taking it anywhere.

    This can be quite liberating.

    The famous singer-songwriter, James Taylor, once made a wisecrack about AA,
    saying that half of the people that are in it are trying to come to the realization
    that they are not God, while the other half had the job once and are desperately
    busy trying to tender their resignation.

    Well, it isn't enough to stop with It Isn't Me, and that is where an existential
    experience of the no-self can leave us. But this apophatic realization must be
    dialectically related to HE DID IT! IT'S HER! and this is the positive, kataphatic
    content that is truly fitting and proper, coming from a tongue that cannot confess
    same without the initiative of the Spirit's prompting.

    So, the loss of the affective ego can occur, in any of the many ways we have
    conceived it and experienced and particularly in a manner that Merton wisely
    discerned was apophatic, impersonal, existential, but needing completion in the
    kataphatic, personal and theological, these processes nurturing and mutually
    enriching and entailing one another.

    Point is, the confession of It's Not Me is necessary but not sufficient.

    What comes to mind with respect to adulterers and murderers like both King
    Herod and King David, is what, ultimately, makes the difference between our
    going Herod's route or that of David?

    To a certain extent, all that society asks by way of reformation is that we be


    rehabilitated into a good social persona, that we function well in our
    interpersonal dealings -- politically, economically, socially and culturally. IOW,
    society asks that we follow the rules, that we obey the law. Adherence to the Law
    is what was required of these Old Testament persons, in accordance with the Old
    Covenant. David became a good man and a great king by meeting these
    standards. He became his true self, the psalmist, when he went deeper in his
    relationship to God.

    So, in its very essence, the Old Covenant very much corresponds to that second
    level of development, that which pertains to our socialization, and, although there
    were certain prophecies and foreshadowings, the crosses borne by these peoples
    were not the same as THE CROSS.

    Certainly, there must have always been some opportunity for humans on earth to
    partake of the transformative process effected by Jesus for once and for all
    through his birth, life, passion, death and resurrection. Indeed, many did
    undergo such radical transformation, especially, one might suspect, someone like
    David, the Psalmist, who points the way to Jesus, to the Father, in the Spirit.

    At the same time, the explicit announcement of the New Testament, the
    proclamation of the Good News, the living out of the Gospel, of the Kerygma,
    through the Cross, marked an existential crisis at a global level for ALL
    PEOPLES, and played itself out as, not a total renunciation but, as a total
    surpassing of the old way. This is directly analogous to the death to self that is
    called for on the journey of each individual but involved a type of death for the
    People of God as a whole, who were being called to a new level of intimacy.

    Again, we invoke, as individuals, because we have been convoked, as an entire


    People of God. We are called as a People and respond, radically alone (in many
    respects), as individuals.

    Another lesson that is taught about David by Louis Evely is That Man Is You ,
    which is to say: what is wrong with the world is ME. What happens as we make
    the turn and drop the persona, which, again, was formatively necessary, is that
    we seek enlightenment out of compassion for the world, which constantly suffers
    our unenlightened selves.

    No longer are we in search of consolation or sensible positive affect because


    Perfect Love is its own reward, is totally unconditional, entirely kenotic. We lay
    down our false selves, not for our own benefit, not because we are tired of the
    pain it causes us, but because of the pain we are transmitting to our loved ones, to
    the world. Any pain that is not thusly transformed, however neurotic or psychotic
    or emotional or idiopathic, we transmit to others. We seek to be rid of this pain
    that we may desist from transmitting it to others.

    Perfect Love and Perfect Contrition are inextricably bound up. It is sufficient to
    enter the Kingdom, through the law, through the old gate, of following the rules
    and being sorry for the consequences to ourselves when we don't. That was the
    old way and it still works. BUT, if we take up our cross, go through the existential
    crisis, and come to that breakthrough where we are moreso sorry for our sin
    because of the consequences to others and to God, then we crucify the Old Man
    and rise as a New Creation, seeking the contemplative gaze, as Teresa says, not so
    much for the consolations but, rather, in order to gain the strength to serve. We
    become Christs. We allow God to be God-in-us, our truest selves. This isn't a
    requirement, but it is an invitation. The most important one that any of us will
    RSVP or not.

    Let us insert this here. Losing something like fear does not mean that we have
    come to any pollyannish conclusion that all of the bad things that could happen
    to us are not going to happen --- rather, it means that, we know full well they are
    even likely to happen but are nothing, ultimately, to fear. So, too, with guilt,
    anger ... We give up the neurotic version in exchange for the existential version,
    which is quite THE CROSS to arrive at the resurrected version, which is ALL IS
    WELL.

    This, too, is dialectical, like the Kingdom. It is on its way. It has already arrived.
    Paradise is ours to inherit. It is already in our hearts. All is decidely NOT well,
    temporally, in this earthly tent wherein we dwell, BUT, in reality, ours is a robe of
    resplendent glory and, eternally (not at the end of time or for a long time, but
    outside of time where we have both origin and destiny), ALL is, indeed, well.

    St. Thomas described how our love of God increases in proportion to our
    knowledge of God. And this is true.

    St. Bernard described how our knowledge of God increases in proportion to our
    love of God. This, too, is true.

    The knowledge of God that St. Bernard describes, however, surpasses that which
    St.
    Thomas was speaking and writing about. St. Thomas was talking about that
    knowledge of God that comes from both general and special revelation, a
    discursive knowing that increases through our study of philosophy, metaphysics,
    theology and such, such a knowing as could never attain to God's essential nature
    even as it might infinitely advance toward same.

    The love of which both Thomas and Bernard spoke of, however, can indeed
    communicate with God's essential nature, leading one to a mysterious type of
    knowledge that certainly informs our normative sciences (of logic, aesthetics and
    ethics) and descriptive sciences (for instance, natural science) but which also far
    surpasses them, a knowledge difficult to describe or articulate. Such a love is
    experienced on the threshold of contemplation. Such is the love which casts out
    all fear. The perfect love that casts out all fear is a love that has grown in
    dependency on God, has learned to trust God, that knows that, however bad the
    situation or dire the circumstances, in the final analysis, all will be well. It is the
    mystical love of Julian that sings all may, can, will and shall be well and is the
    realization of the promise that you will know that all manner of things will be
    well.

    Here, then, is the distinction we draw between existential fear and neurotic fear,
    existential guilt and neurotic guilt, existential anger and neurotic anger, the
    existential always in service of life and love and relationship, the neurotic
    invariably life-detracting, love-detracting, relationship-destroying. We are not
    dealing only with neuroses that are overcome in the process of individuation but
    also those sinful resistances to conversion that are overcome on our journey of
    transformation, distinct but intertwined realities.

    So, we might describe the loss of the affective ego as an energy inversion whereby
    the emotions and feelings and affective life don't so much energize our behaviors
    by initiating them but rather energize our behaviors by reinforcing them. It seems
    that this state could be effected all of a sudden through some precipitating event
    or could arise through time and a habit of virtue.

    Love, eminently reasonable, needs no reason, inasmuch as it is sufficient unto


    itself. Happiness, finally, cannot be pursued but must ensue. So, too, with good
    feelings. They aren't needed but will often ensue, which is to say, follow, love.
    Merton noted that often, when we are in pain and conflict and contradiction, we
    incorrectly associate same with old wounds, with old injuries that truly have been
    resolved and healed already. During such times, Merton encourages us to
    consider the very real possibility that we are, rather, being invited to open
    ourselves to a new level of being through such pain and conflict and
    contradiction. In other words, if we are not properly attentive, then we run the
    risk of stagnation, desolation and aridity, sometimes for months or years,
    dwelling on the wrong integrative and transformative issues, missing the
    invitation to move to another level, a level that could be attained in a day even.

    One of the chief obstacles to advancing in the spiritual life, then, is to gain a
    certain clarity of vision regarding the route to sanctity or to psychological
    integration (routes that are much intertwined) and then acting as if the vision
    itself is the attainment when, in fact, it is not the mapping of the journey that
    marks our growth but the walking of the road, which is to say that, if you are on
    the illuminative or unitive way, then get on with it, and so on. Further, the
    mapping never involves the entire journey but entails, rather, our next good step,
    a step which is the spiritual equivalent of taking the entire journey. Thus it is that
    the entire road is traversed, one step at a time in faith with the trust that that step
    is truly what is required for now, for today. We can get caught up with seeing the
    road and then fail to walk it, is our constant peril.
    Two lessons here: Sometimes one has to quit beating one's head against the wall
    just because it feels good when you stop. Sometimes one has to quit circling the
    same developmental block on the journey just because some of the signs look the
    same, which is to say that emotional memories can get in the way by misleading
    us into thinking that our pain is rooted in old unresolved issues when it is moreso
    about leading us in a new direction entirely (with a genesis in new issues),
    inviting us to another level entirely. Then, once we see this new direction, it is of
    the essence to WALK it and not merely content ourselves in the consolation of
    SEEING it!

    Well, this remains a very loose rendering of the meaning we have gathered from
    Merton and any misconstructions are our own. The point is that old emotional
    memories can get improperly associated with new spiritual emergence issues and
    that we can misdiagnose the reason for our present pain, conflict and
    contradiction.

    Merton noted that the spiritual path and the path of scientific breakthroughs is
    analogous.
    Specifically, the steps are: 1) We find an issue, sort through it and set about to
    solve it. 2) We grapple and grapple with it until we realize that it is virtually
    irresolute, unsolvable, beyond us, too difficult. 3) We let go and move on. 4)
    Sometimes, years later, the solution comes to us in an instant, in a flash.

    Nothing very profound here.We've all used this approach in balancing our
    checkbooks, eh? But the point is that that is how our human natures are
    constructed and that that is how our unconscious and conscious minds and
    spirits seem to interface. Seeing after not before is axiomatic for the spiritual
    mapping of the journey. Others' journeys, even those of the great mystical
    doctors, let's say the Carmelites like John of the Cross and Teresa of Jesus, can
    give us touchpoints for the journey, indications that we are on the road, but they
    have no predictive value. The same is true with Ignatian and sanjuanian
    discernment such as regarding: consolation and desolation, maybe even such as
    regarding loss of affect, depression, acedia, beginnings of contemplation -- where
    we are moreso discerning retrospectively and not so much being guided
    prospectively.

    The contemplative gaze in love transcends our cognitive and discursive faculties
    and penetrates through to the Divine Essence, actually communicating and
    relating to God's essential nature, a nature that is, in principle, incomprehensible.
    We must be careful, however, in confusing incomprehensible with unintelligible.
    If these experiences were unintelligible and God was unintelligible, this
    discussion wouldn't be possible?
    Another Mertonesque thought: We are moving toward an existential realization
    of how critical to our spiritual survival prayer really is. This realization is attained
    when we feel our need for prayer as acutely as we would feel the need for a breath
    when underwater. This has something to say to us all whether we are called to
    discursive mediation, lectio, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio, operatio or what
    have you. Whatever our prayer gift as led by the Spirit, it is to be engaged with the
    sense of critical and acute and urgent need that affirms our radical dependence
    and perennial state of existential crisis.

    Now, don't get Merton wrong. This is all dialectical. One moves into crisis to lose
    crisis. One loses self to gain self. First, there is a mountain. Then, there is no
    mountain. Then, there is. One recognzies one's radical dependency to move to
    place of radical trust. One experiences one's emptiness and abject poverty to
    realize one's utter fullness. One moves into paradox and pain and contradiction
    to realize that, what do you know, all is well.

    This is something re: the loss of self that is affirmed by the Sufi (Islamic)and the
    Hasidic (Jewish) mystics and that Merton, building on Buber as well as the Sufis,
    so well understood. So, too, with human affects and desires. John of the Cross
    speaks of disordered appetites and Ignatius speaks of inordinate desires. It is not
    the appetite or desire we seek to eradicate, ultimately, but through proper
    asceticism and renunciation, we lose our emotional energy that intitiates so many
    of our behaviors (both virtue and vice) only to regain it to reinforce our virtues.
    Think of Ignatian discernment regarding consolation and desolation, for
    example, and of how the different spirits console or afflict us, variously, as we
    either cooperate with Grace or backslide.

    This dialectic is working, likely, with the affective ego. Now, there may be
    something very deeply analogous going on with spiritual consolations and
    desolations and psychological affects that is not completely identical. This could
    account for how psychologically developmentally deformative influences might
    intefere/interact with spiritually transformative processes. This is no easy nut to
    crack and might profoundly influence with what facility one moves through an
    existential crisis to the experience of nocrisisafter-all. In other words, a spiritual
    emergence issue that gets foisted upon someone may not achieve its dialectical
    goal of teaching one to breathe underwater but could, for all practical purposes,
    drown a person.

    When He knew for certain only drowning men could see Him, He said all men
    shall be sailors, then, until the sea shall free them. Leonard Cohen

    Merton speaks of a Sufi scholar, who draws many parallels to psychoanalysis,


    which is to say who sees the therapy process as analogous to the spiritual journey.
    If in therapy our primary concern is the resolution of unresolved subconscious
    conflicts, then Sufism might be thought of in the same way, only on a deeper
    level. In therapy and normal individuation, we are resolving certain conflicts, the
    resolutions of which 1) take us from an infantile level, take us from the merely
    instinctual animal to a human type of being where our cognitive and affective
    development is concerned 2) then further take us and adapt us to successful
    social and cultural beings. Many struggle at the first level, such as with an
    Oedipus complex, by way of example, staying Momma's boys their entire life, but
    most get through it to the second level of struggle, some falling prey to escapes
    from the difficult realities of social-cultural life. AA is an example of a good way
    to deal with such evasions, helping primarily by providing motives to change,
    wise to the fact that one has to want to change in order to change and no one can
    do it for us. This is pretty much where conventional therapy stops, helping one
    deal with one's neurotic evasions of social responsibility.

    This, however, is insufficient for bringing about the general honesty required to
    go deeper and to become an authentic human who has faced life's fundamental
    challenges, life's BIGGER problems, gaining life's existential awareness.

    What are these BIG PROBLEMS? 1) continuity vs discontinuity - death 2)


    creativity - having a life that is meaningful, a presence that makes a difference.

    What are the mistakes that even analysts/therapists make here? What mistakes
    are made by us as individuals at this level? We treat these issues as if they were
    problems of social adaptation (that second level we talked about). In other words,
    if you are esteemed by your society or in a particular cultural milieu, then you've
    conquered these problems, your presence not only has made a difference but lives
    on, in a manner of speaking. WRONG! This "solution" leads people into a further
    evasion from a truly meaningful life. This blueprint is wrong and must be torn up
    and thrown away. Think here of our affective reward system and not only what
    vices are reinforced by certain emotions but also by what so-called virtues are
    being reinforced by our range of emotions. There needs to be a rewiring.

    What is called for, rather, is a BREAKTHROUGH into existential awareness. In


    other words, we recognize that this social esteem and instinctual control we have
    gained is MEANINGLESS, not meaningless, to be sure, for our functioning in
    ordinary life, but certainly in terms of life's ultimate meaning. (Here Merton
    recommends Viktor Frankl.)

    So, from this deeper level, our social success is meaningless. On one hand,
    though, it is great and necessary, but, on the other, it is TOTALLY NUTS!

    How do we get in touch with what is needed on the deeper level?


    Through the Psalmist is one way, for the deeper level whether praying the mad,
    glad or sad psalms is always GOD.

    The CROSS is the demonstration of this struggle, the realization of this conflict in
    Jesus, a conflict between the establishment of the religion, such as in society, on
    one hand, and the realization of authentic religion, such as in one's heart, otoh. It
    REJECTS the silly notion of "Keep the rules and there you've got all the answers,"
    which Merton calls a wooden nickel. It similarly rejects: "Don't keep the rules,"
    which is a stupid form of the same silly game.

    The ultimate solution to our biggest subconscious unresolved conflicts, our


    existential questions, is experiencing our rootedness in God, God in our very
    hearts. Death loses its significance as an end because we are already finalities,
    already ends unto ourselves because of our being-in-God, being-in-love, which is
    sufficient unto itself with no further reason or justification. Our creativity is
    found in our issuing forth from the Creator and not in anything we do to gain
    social approval or cultural amenities. The obligational has become aspirational.
    One then studies and prays, fastening and binding one's spirit to God, clinging to
    God, after the manner we wrote about previously, needing prayer as badly as one
    who is under water needs a breath. Then, in all we see and experience, God is
    present, and we don't at all take seriously the self we have to be to operate in
    society, the role playing, the best things in life not being demanded by us but
    received a pure gift from God FOR ME, who lets God be Himself in me, when my
    false self has vanished.

    The old emotional programming, that was even formative and not deformative,
    must be re-wired, in order to move on to the deeper level of a human being-in-
    love-with-God. Hence the dark Nights. Hence, the transformation of the affective
    ego as we move from a false to a true self. Hence, what Merton is describing is our
    social persona, which must die. True enough, our formation from the animal-
    instinctual to the social-cultural self is required, is necessary for the journey. In
    fact, we cannot surrender this self to the Cross, which is to say, to the existential
    crisis, until we have fully come into possession of same.

    The existential crisis, then, involves a confrontation of the I with the not I , of the
    true self with the false self, and, when it is upon us, everything we see and
    observe and relate to in our existence is then seen through the lens of this crisis,
    of this Cross. For society-at-large, then, the Gospel is this lens. The problem is
    that we have talked about the Cross so much, about the Gospel so much, that we
    have, in some sense, trivialized it and robbed it of its profound and radical
    significance for our individual lives and our lives in community. While in this
    crisis, however, we come to realize that the reason the world has so many huge
    problems -- socially, culturally, politically, economically -- is because of people,
    people like us who are living on a phony, superficial level of existence, out of
    contact with our true source, Who is God, alone.
    The ultimate idolatry, then, is our self. So, we take this socially-formed self and
    crucify it and it is not like going to a movie or coming into an Internet discussion
    forum but is, rather, much more like walking into a fire.

    The reward system, the reinforcement mechanisms, the old emotional programs,
    which worked so well for those of us who made it through our formative years
    with more formation, reformation and information than deformation, must be
    transformed. This mirrors, in fact, how our loving knowledge of God no longer
    comes through our senses, no longer is accompanied by sensible consolations,
    but is a direct communication with the Divine Essence that is beyond our
    discursive faculties. All of this is a massive upheaval of the way things have been
    for us --- cognitively, affectively, morally even, for it is no longer a mere following
    of the rules that brings one closer to God, although that part of our formation was
    absolutely necessary. This is a huge project and undertaking, multilayered and
    multitextured and quite unique for each individual, although we have discussed
    the touchpoints and the mapping of this journey.

    The soul now approaches the God, Who needn't approach, Who dwells within,
    and the heart remains restless that has not made God its all. Rooted in God in
    radical trust and surrender, a new reward and reinforcement system gets set in
    place, where Love of self for sake of self has been transcended by love of God for
    sake of self, which has been transcended by love of God for sake of God, 'til,
    finally, our true self emerges and we love that self for the sake of God. The
    dialectic takes us back into self-possession, paradoxically, by self-surrender. This
    has cognitive, affective and moral aspects. This is why we are here.

    The care and nurturance of a soul is a most awesome task! You will appreciate
    this, once again, from C.S. Lewis:

    "It is a serious thing, to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to


    remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one
    day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to
    worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only
    in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one
    or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming
    possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we
    should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all
    play, all politics. There are no 'ordinary' people. You have never talked to a
    mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations -- these are mortal, and their
    life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whome we joke with, work
    with, marry, snub and exploit -- immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.
    This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our
    merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists
    between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously -- no
    flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and
    costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner --
    no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies
    merriment." From __The Weight of Glory__

    Spirituality Integrally Conceived as Life‘s Value Pursuits

    If we take life as a journey made up of individual steps, which we might consider to be value-
    pursuits, and we measure the distance we travel in terms of milestones, which we might
    consider to be value-realizations, then we might consider each complete movement to require,
    minimally, three separate motions, optimally four. Those motions would be 1) the descriptive
    motion, where we ask: Is that a fact? 2) the evaluative motion, where we ask: What's it to us?
    and 3) the normative motion – normative sciences per Peirce being the logical (symbolic),
    aesthetical and ethical – where we inquire: How do I best obtain (or avoid) it?

    There is no value-realization movement that does not consist of these three integrally-related
    motions. We won't specify, here, how this differentiates us from other animals as Homo sapiens,
    but will note that these distinctly human motions and movements are the very essence of
    spirituality. And we may, through the vagaries of formation, deformation and reformation, be
    variously competent or incompetent, spiritually. Also, even if competent, we may be either
    consciously or unconsciously competent, which is where the fourth motion comes in, 4) the
    interpretive, which asks: How does all of this tie together?

    This interpretive motion, coupled with our evaluative attitudes, comprise the very essence of
    religion, which may variously be institutionalized (organized) or not, which may even be theistic,
    nontheistic, atheistic or agnostic. Thus it is that many can say they are spiritual but not religious,
    or that they are religious but not "believers."

    Growth, Development & Conversion

    A fulfilling spiritual journey thus requires our ongoing development and growth intellectually,
    affectively, morally and socially. Optimally, it will also be religious, which, as an interpretive and
    evaluative motion, necessarily entails much more than mere propositional assent, descriptively,
    but also the celebrations of the beauty we have encountered, evaluatively, the preservation of the
    goodness we have discovered, normatively, and the enjoyment of the community we have
    realized, unitively.

    Piaget, Erikson, Kohlberg, Fowler and other developmental theorists have described such
    growth dynamics psychologically. Gelpi, building on Lonergan, describes them in terms of
    conversion, which leads to progressive human authenticity.

    There is much that humanity shares spiritually, and even religiously, of a nonpropositional
    nature. This allows us to endeavor together to celebrate the beauty, advance the goodness and
    enjoy the community we have already realized and can foster our engagement in ever more
    authentic dialogue that we might together construct a much more compelling metanarrative.

    A Merton-inspired Reflection of the Journey

    In Thomas Merton‘s writings and recorded lectures, he generally describes our human journey
    in terms of humanization, socialization and transformation. Early on, formatively, we become
    less like little animals and more human. Primary school teachers report that parents turn in
    mixed results in this regard, speaking of the little animals that often occupy our primary schools.
    After some success with humanization, next we are socialized in all sorts of ways by all sorts of
    institutions like marriage, religion, government and schools. Through socialization, we learn
    how to function in society and we get our needs met through mutual give and take. This is
    mostly a pragmatic dynamic governed by extrinsic reward systems. We think in terms,
    hopefully, of enlightened self-interest as we buy into such notions of truth, beauty, goodness and
    unity. At some point, we might attempt to describe their origins, which, minimalistically and
    reductionistically might be partly explained in terms of evolutionary adaptive significance and
    sociobiology. These existential orientations might also be explained as transcendental
    imperatives.

    This is about as far as much of humanity ever goes. And, to be sure, it is nevertheless a beauty
    and wonder to behold. Sometimes, due to exceptionally good formation, but maybe most often
    through crisis, as Merton would say --- usually a crisis of continuity (death in all its forms) or of
    creativity (the need to matter or make a difference) --- some journey further, which is to say
    beyond mere humanization and socialization to transformation.

    Transformation has many descriptions, which vary from tradition to tradition, but its essence, in
    our view, is marked by the move beyond extrinsic reward systems to intrinsic reward systems,
    which is to recognize that some pursue truth, beauty, goodness and unity as ends in themselves,
    or, as we might say, as their own reward. By definition, one needs no apologetic or defense or
    explanation of such a path. And, it sometimes can make little sense to invite anyone to take such
    a path because there is no way to explain such a reward system to the uninitiated. For one thing,
    it may not be developmentally appropriate. Also, it can only be self-realized. At any rate, this
    type of approach is more often "caught" than taught.

    Another hallmark of transformation is the gifting of a new interpretive lens and evaluative
    disposition, which views reality not just empirically, logically and practically but also
    relationally. Merton often spoke of Bernardian love which progresses from 1) love of self for sake
    of self to 2) love of God for sake of self to 3) love of God for sake of God to 4) love of self for sake
    of God. Richard Rohr has often spoken of this same transformative dynamic by contrasting the
    dualistic mind, which is preoccupied with its practical and functional concerns using its
    problem-solving mindset, with the nondual approach, which is a loving gaze at reality, a trusting
    stance, a wholly different consciousness. Hans Kung describes a justified fundamental trust in
    uncertain reality. What seems to be equally compelling to many people, if I have properly
    interpreted their religious naturalist stance is this transformative dynamic, which progresses
    from 1) love of self for sake of self to 2) love of cosmos for sake of self to 3) love of cosmos for
    sake of cosmos to 4) love of self for sake of cosmos, where the cosmos is broadly conceived to
    include us all in ineffable solidarity with depthful compassion.

    Transformational Dynamics

    Most of the great traditions very much affirm what we would call the erotic aspect of our
    relationship to reality, or, in other words, the "what's in it for me" dynamic. This is a good thing
    and quite natural. This eros is, in fact, both necessary and sufficient, spiritually and religiously,
    for all reality really requires of us, at bottom, is an enlightened self-interest. This is, in fact, the
    exoteric aspect of most traditions. The cessation of suffering in Buddhism would be such an
    example. The mystics of all traditions, however, also give witness to a more esoteric aspect,
    which is the agapic dynamic, which is the realization of the superabundance to be found in the
    intrinsically rewarding parts of our journey. This goes beyond doctrines and metaphysics and
    belief systems, though not necessarily without them. Similarly, agape goes beyond eros although
    not without it. This goes beyond the empirical and rational and practical to the robustly
    relational, to the "just-because-ish-ness" of reality.

    This theme also resonates in the writings of many humanists and very poetically so in the
    writings of our early American transcendentalists and universalists. In the spirituality practiced
    by all of the great traditions, we do encounter many utterly transformed people and can
    reasonably attribute this to their esoteric teachings and mystical practices (and we broadly
    conceive mysticism to include both existential and theological varieties). And that is quite the
    essence. They otherwise differ, then, in the exoteric and socialization aspects of the human
    journey. And we do not want to say that getting those aspects as right as we possibly can is not
    important because optimal humanization and socialization and indoctrination can best foster
    transformation and better form people for transformation. Adjudicating which paths best lead to
    authenticity, following the aphorism that orthopraxis authenticates orthodoxy, is another task
    for another consideration. What we want to emphasize is that it is important to pay attention to
    the world's transformed people and to listen to their reflections on how it is their
    transformations may have come about because each such story contributes, along with many
    others' reflections regarding their paths, to part of the blueprint for the human journey. Also, it
    is great to recognize what we have in common with others even as we grapple with those aspects
    of the journey that are different. If all had transformation in common, we'd collectively figure
    out the norms of humanization and socialization much faster!

    The Contemplative Stance

    For those who cultivate a habitual contemplative approach, as commended by Merton and
    reinforced by Rohr and many romantic humanists, it can be difficult to discuss reality at a level
    that is one or two removes from experience. As one dwells habitually in a relationship to reality
    with an approach that goes beyond words and without prejudgment, with an approach that is
    robustly relational and not solely analytical, the ineffability that inheres in the process does not
    readily lend itself to a lingua franca of mysticism precisely because we are being led into an
    experience beyond words. We must rely, rather, on stories and myths and songs and koans and
    poetic narratives and metanarratives. And it seems to me that this presents special challenges
    for contemplative dialogue, whether interreligious or with coreligionists, or existentialist or
    humanist. How do we, then, otherwise profitably discourse with others about such experiences?
    Does contemplative experience lend itself to philosophical parsing and theological
    anthropology? Yes, but with caveats.

    In our view, any dialogical segue back into the world of words and analysis, in order to remain
    consonant with our contemplative approach, must simply and foremost proceed, similarly,
    without prejudgment and with a simple loving gaze. It also proceeds more profitably from an
    enhanced self-awareness of our own descriptive, evaluative, normative and interpretive stances
    as this awareness, in turn, heightens our awareness that others won't always share our
    descriptions and interpretations or our norms and values and that they won't always use our
    concepts and categories when making various claims about their experiences. Contemplative
    dialogue, then, perhaps more than many other types of dialogue, especially lends itself to
    idiosyncratic use of vocabulary and especially leads to situations where people can easily talk
    past one another. There is another type of dialogue where this happens often, metaphysical talk.
    And there is yet another, perhaps the most challenging of all and, as you guessed, it is the
    metaphysics of contemplative experience.

    Perhaps this is why so many contemplative critiques seem rather facile and also fraught with
    misunderstanding as people try to fit one another with hermeneutical straightjackets. The
    difficult spade work of philosophical disambiguation of categories and concepts is indispensable
    if the garden of dialogue is to bear good fruit. Even within faith traditions, which share
    vocabularies, dialogue is challenging because there is so much disagreement regarding what is
    essential vs accidental, core vs peripheral, regarding those traditions and their teachings and
    practices.

    Ecstatic, Enstatic & Epektasis – we bear the future Oneness now

    Even as we accept the view of atonement as a teleological striving, we still affirm


    an eschatological dynamic (even if not apocalyptic), a mark toward which we
    press vis a vis the epektasis of Philippians 3:13 and in our prayer for the
    coming of the Kingdom, as taught by the Master. And insofar as it is indeed your
    and my inheritance as members of the Mystical Body (and not just some esoteric
    privilege of the so-called initiated) to both see the Oneness, ecstatically, and to
    see from Oneness, enstatically , we enjoy — in this very present moment, in
    this very Presence — a real participation in this Oneness as we proleptically
    bear the future consummation, now!

    We accept our incompleteness and through kenosis self-empty in order to be


    filled with the utter fullness of God. Paradoxically, we are not promised any
    cessation of the satiety of our desire, according to Gregory of Nyssa (the one who
    looks up to God never ceases in that desire). Hence, through contemplation we
    see with the Dionysian ray of darkness. Thus the ecstatic yields to the enstatic.
    Thus Merton says that we do not have an experience but become an experience.
    Merton explains:

    And here all adjectives fall to


    pieces. Words become stupid.
    Everything you say is
    misleading – unless you list
    every possible experience and
    say: That is not what it is.
    Metaphor has now become
    hopeless altogether.
    Talk about the darkness if you must: but
    the thought of darkness is too dense and
    too coarse.

    Ascetic Disciplines & Spiritual Practices

    What practices and disciplines might best support the value-realizations


    associated with our phenomenal experiences of interobjective indeterminacy,
    intraobjective identity, intersubjective intimacy and intrasubjective integrity?

    Philip St. Romain has described different possible relationships between God,
    Self and Ego16, and the disciplines to support these. St. Romain has also examined
    these practices and disciplines in greater detail17. A quick sorting of practices &
    disciplines per the categories I have set forth above might look like this, below,
    even though it is a very rough mapping, again, just a heuristic & mnemonic device
    to foster reflection & help our memory.

    Intrasubjective Integrity (e.g. humanization, Ego-Self, individuation)

    Johari Window
    Writing a Faith History
    Studying the Nature of Attachments
    Learning How to Drop an Attachment/Addiction
    Disposing Oneself to Transformative Gifts
    Becoming Aware of One‘s Type and Temperament
    Discovering the Manifold Spiritual Pathways

    16 Philip St. Romain God, Self & Ego - Discerning Who's Who on the Spiritual Journey (self-
    published 2010)
    17 Philip Romain Handbook for Spiritual Directees (self-published 2010)
    Functional Intersubjective Interactions (e.g. socialization, functional
    relationships, extrinsic rewards, moral - consequences to self & eros and practical
    considerations)

    Daily Review
    The Way of Service
    Understanding the Origin of the False Self System
    Being Aware of Characteristics of the False Self System
    Pursuing the Way of Knowledge
    Employing the Via Negativa (when the interobjective is indeterminate)
    Engaging in Jesuit and llay spirituality.
    Karma yoga
    Studying the Ethics implicit in the demands of service and daily work
    Studying the Ethics implicit in the order of the universe.

    Personal Intersubjective Intimacy (e.g. transformation, God-Ego, Other-Ego,


    personal relationships, intrinsic rewards, moral -consequences to others & agape)

    Methods of Prayer
    Awareness Examen (Consciousness Examen)
    Examen of Relationships
    Guidelines for Discernment
    Learning Spiritual Theology
    Charismatic Gifts
    Transformative Gifts
    Pursuing the Way of Loving Devotion
    Devotional Christianity
    Bhakti yoga
    Studying the Ethics implicit in the demands of relationship.

    Intuitions of Intraobjective Identity

    Clarifying Your Images of God and Creation


    Pursuing the Way
    of Insight Raja yoga
    impersonal
    mysticism

    A key theme that is implicit in these ascetical disciplines and spiritual practices
    even across traditions is that ---

    Orthopraxy authenticates orthodoxy and is first mediated by orthopathy


    in orthocommunio.

    Alternatively ---

    Belonging precedes desiring which precedes behaving which


    precedes believing.

    These are descriptive observations regarding human developmental trajectories


    and not normative epistemological suggestions. A good norm might recognize,
    for example, that one may begin in media res within any such hermeneutical
    spiral and then must successfully complete the spiral in order to optimally realize
    the associated human values. This is all to be pragmatically cashed out in terms of
    a growth in human authenticity. That is to say that they will result in conversion,
    growth, and development in our intellectual, affective, moral, sociopolitical, and
    religious spheres of existence.

    The categories below may seem rather facilely mapped but they are not presented
    systematically, as if to advance an argument, only as a heuristic device to foster
    reflection.

    Belonging | to an interpretive community | mediated by religious


    conversion | via participatory imagination | presuppositionally being super-
    rational | realizing intrinsically rewarding unitive values | of intersubjective
    relationships (e.g. God-ego and other-ego with their phenomenal experience of
    intersubjective intimacy) | trans-valuing the extrinsically rewarding into the
    intrinsically rewarding for all other relationships | as bounded realities interact
    personally

    Desiring | per certain evaluative posits | mediated by affective conversion


    | via cultural methods | existentially being reasonable | realizing extrinsically
    rewarding aesthetical values | of intrasubjective relationships (e.g. ego-self,
    individuation processes with their phenomenal experience of intrasubjective
    integrity)| as bounded realities realize optimal integrity and freedom
    Behaving | following a normative framework | mediated by sociopolitical
    & moral conversions | via philosophical methods | rationally being intelligent &
    responsible | realizing extrinsically rewarding logical, pragmatic & ethical values |
    of interobjective relationships (although constrained by the phenomenal
    experience of interobjective indeterminacy as some realities remain either
    epistemically indeterminate or ontologically vague, for whatever reason, e.g.
    God's indeterminate nature or even the initial, boundary & limit conditions of
    various primal realities or any other realities that present with what we might
    refer to as unfathomable depth dimensions)| as bounded realities interact
    functionally

    Believing | a descriptive account | mediated by intellectual conversion |


    via scientific methods | evidentially & empirically being attentive | realizing
    extrinsically rewarding truth values | of intraobjective relationships (e.g. God &
    self, nature & self, God & nature with their phenomenal experience of
    intraobjective identity)| as bounded realities experience mutually
    interpenetrating immanence via boundary transcendence (even apparent
    dissolution)

    A Few Words on Practices & Energy Paradigms regarding Ki, Qi, Chi, Prana &
    Kundalini (& Reiki)

    Rather than treat these so-called energies, specifically, for there is much written
    elsewhere, let us raise another issue from a wider perspective. Much of the thrust
    of the epistemological approach advocated throughout this book has been
    directed at the need to prescind from robustly metaphysical accounts of reality to
    more vaguely phenomenological perspectives, precisely to avoid saying more
    than we know, to refrain from telling untellable stories — or, quite simply, to
    avoid certain dogmatisms and gnosticisms (as well as a host of other insidious
    -isms or epistemic vices).

    Generically, then, to assert any type of energy paradigm apart from science would
    involve gnosticism or superstition. In our view, it is not helpful to interpret our
    life experiences in such paradigms while asserting metaphysical reality to such
    phenomena.

    The wider perspective asks whether or not various Eastern techniques —


    practices, rituals and exercises — might not be abstracted from their classical
    metaphysical (or even, sometimes, robustly theological) accounts and interpreted
    from a more vague phenomenological perspective, especially when they are
    associated with certain therapeutic efficacies realized in genuine life experiences,
    some of these efficacies yet to be fully described scientifically regarding their
    precise mechanisms of action, in which case it is best left to such entities as the
    National Institute of Health18 to sort out.

    In our view, when we reappropriate such ―technologies‖ to situate them in a


    Christian perspective, while they will no longer be classically metaphysical and,
    just perhaps, not even authentically Eastern, there should be no a priori
    dismissal of their efficacies, especially when legitimate research remains
    underway due to the global ubiquity of this or that technology; such a dismissal
    would, itself, be gnostic!

    In any case, practitioners should be more clear, in their employment of related


    terminology, like chakras and ki and kundalini, that these words are being
    employed as general concepts corresponding to real life experiences (various
    constellations of experiences and symptoms in association with specific
    practices that recur in noticable patterns that merit investigation) of millions of
    people that are to best be understood as vague phenomena, which are still being
    researched by science, and not rather as specific terms, which are heavily
    invested in gnostic metaphysics. Such a distinction is easy enough to make and
    quite valid. References to energy paradigms should not be taken literally but
    claims regarding these patterns of experience deserve to be taken seriously.

    Gosh knows, Christianity‘s had its own problems with gnostic metaphysics, for
    example, interpreting life, gender and sexual realities in rationalistic categories
    little resembling, and thus not well corresponding to, the lived experiences of the
    faithful. Some of its teachers would do well to take their own counsel and
    guidelines19.

    All of our deontologies should be as modest as our ontologies are tentative, both
    East and West. And, if one‘s ontology is not tentative, then, one is way out in
    front of science, themselves.

    The way we like to approach this is to say that we can appropriate reiki, like so
    many other wonderful spiritual technologies of the East, as a practice, as an
    exercise, as a ritual. This is true of other meditative practices, yogic exercises and
    so on, all of which are being actively researched by the NIH-CAM precisely
    because of the efficacies reported by MILLIONS. Science does not have to fully
    understand what is going on with, for example, acupuncture, in order for it to be
    efficacious. Gosh knows, this is true for most psychoactive pharmaceuticals
    where we can only speculate about the precise mechanisms of action. So, our
    position is to continue to prayerfully minister and practice all of these time-
    honored Eastern technologies and to situate them within one‘s Christian
    worldview while refraining from characterizing them in precise physical and/or
    18 http://nccam.nih.gov/
    19 http://www.usccb.org/dpp/Evaluation_Guidelines_finaltext_2009-03.pdf
    metaphysical terms. We do not need to know HOW something works in order to
    discover THAT it works. It is enough to say that science does not fully
    understand; we do not need to offer any physical or metaphysical hypotheses
    along with our treatments; only our loving intentionality.

    When we speak of kundalini or reiki (both of which Sylvest has experienced), we


    consider them realities yet to be explained. When we experience phenomena
    associated with certain ―practices,‖ we needn't feel a need to label these
    metaphysically even as we cannot account for them scientifically. So, we actually
    agree with the bishops that it would be gnostic or superstitious to make definitive
    metaphysical assertions about the putative reality of chakras, life forces or subtle
    energies. We adamantly disagree and am saddened that they do not avail
    themselves of such distinctions as we‘ve proposed, whereby we can successfully
    abstract spiritual technologies — useful rituals, devotionals, practices and
    exercises — from their classical metaphysical accounts and enjoy the many
    efficacies that flow therefrom, as attested by so many other people of large
    intelligence and profound goodwill and actual experience, which they ignored.

    Immanent Trinity & Transcendent Ontological Frame


    Interobjective Indeterminacy & Ens
    Necessarium

    Trialectical Teleology – Values: Truth, Beauty & Goodness

    Immanent Axiological Frame


    Cosmological Axiology

    Historical
    Social & Cultural Anthropology
    Economic

    Transcendent Axiological Frame

    Political

    Trialogical Epistemology – Methods: Science, Culture & Philosophy


    Immanent Epistemic Frame
    Descriptive Sciences

    Evaluative Cultures

    Normative Philosophies

    Why PostmodernISM & ModernISM are Both Silly

    Human knowledge advances incrementally, building on what we learned in and


    from the past. We see how this plays out in our word usage as we add various
    prefixes and suffixes and come up with new words (neologisms). Three prefixes
    come especially to mind: 1) post-, 2) trans- and 3) meta-. In the way I most often
    use these prefixes, 1) post- means after, 2) trans- means beyond or through and
    3) meta- means more comprehensive. None of these prefixes necessarily also
    means without (which is most often indicated by the prefix a-). Not even the
    prefix nonnecessarily means without; it primarily means we are talking about
    something else.

    The postmodern critique remains a critical assessment of modernism. It suggests,


    for example, that modern methods should not be considered systems, modern
    practices should not be confused with conclusions and philosophical approaches
    should not misconstrued into schools of philosophy. It recognizes that the best
    methods, practices and approaches are fallible but self-subverting, self-critical,
    self-correcting and guided probabilistically (in other words, neither absolutely,
    infallibly nor apodictically). Our closures are then provisional.

    Ironically and tragically, there has been a perversion of this critique from a
    method into a system, a practice into a conclusion, an approach into a school of
    thought. This tragedy, postmodernism, mimics the failed school of modernism in
    its over-reaching. Modernism, for its part, was guilty of epistemic hubris.
    Postmodernism, a tonic turned toxic, proceeds with an excessive epistemic
    humility, which is manifestly unwarranted.

    Silliness thus abounds.

    Modernity gone awry with its conflation of methods into systems gave us
    scientism, an arrogation of science into a full-blown philosophical school, as
    well as fideism, a subjugation of faith via its divorce from reason. A metaphysic,
    misconstrued, imagines it can decouple from physics and many claim to be
    transrational whose approach is, in fact, arational. All manner of insidious
    -isms abounded as the approaches of modernity were inflated into such schools
    as logical positivism and radical empiricism. Religious approaches were
    perverted into encratism, pietism, rationalism, quietism and every variety of
    absolutist fundamentalism, including both sola scriptura and solum
    magisterium approaches of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

    As a therapeutic critique, the postmodern perspective would have us go beyond


    the modern not without it. We go beyond science but not without it. Faith,
    narrowly conceived as an epistemic leap beyond such nonrational
    presuppositions as nihilism, solipsism and relativism, is an indispensable
    prerequisite to knowledge. More broadly conceived, faith is a super-reasonable
    and existential response to reality that can be considered a forced (not to choose
    is to choose), vital (pertains to our ultimate concerns, most urgent and insistent
    longings, and most deeply cherished values) and live (neither empirically
    measurable nor logically demonstrable but still rationally equiplausible and
    practically defensible) option.

    Our great traditions, with their interpretive approaches to ultimate reality, and
    our science and philosophy, with their descriptive and normative approaches to
    more proximate realities, are all ordered, evaluatively, toward human value-
    realizations, which can be in turn assessed for how well they institutionalize our
    ongoing conversion and transformation, intellectually, affectively, morally, socio-
    politically and religiously (what Gelpi building on Lonergan might equate with a
    growth in human authenticity).

    What is the way forward?

    If it is indeed going to be posthierarchical, in addition to being more dialogical


    and democratic, will it necessarily be ahierarchical? or even necessarily
    noninstitutional? Or will some hierarchical and institutional apparatus
    inevitably emerge as a necessary evil, at least where it is, so to speak,
    developmentally appropriate? For that matter, if authentically post-Western,
    post-European and postcolonial, won‘t we much more narrowly conceive the
    meaning of developmentally-appropriate, especially vis a vis language,
    practices and cultural traditions? Under any other circumstances, it positively
    must be postpatriarchal and postpaternalistic? Certainly, it will be
    postfoundational, recognizing a plurality of methodologies and the primacy of
    narrative in all human knowing, but will it also acknowledge certain
    indispensable propositions and essential metanarratives? Certainly metaphysical
    and moral realisms are indispensable presuppositions? It will affirm that science,
    philosophy, culture and religion are methodologically-autonomous but will it
    acknowledge that they are also axiologically-integral? Will it eschew
    evidentialism, rationalism, presuppositionalism and existentialism in favor of a
    more holistic perspectivalism but without defining holism in terms of a facile
    moderation or simple balancing act, acknowledging that certain approaches will
    sometimes enjoy at least a primacy if not an autonomy? This is to ask, then, if
    the dual and nondual approaches to reality might better be described as the
    transdual, which necessarily goes beyond, but not without, our dualistic,
    problem-solving mind in approaching life‘s most important values, primarily,
    from a nondual approach?

    Whatever we do, let‘s not be silly. Let‘s avoid modernism and


    postmodernism as we embrace the best of the modern and postmodern, as we
    embrace reality, one another, ourselves and our God.

    When we encounter a seemingly insoluble conundrum or deep mystery, we will


    not a priori know whether such a paradox might resolve dialectically (in an
    Hegelian-like synthesis), dissolve perspectivally (from a simple paradigm shift,
    changing how we approach the problem or overcoming a category error), best be
    maintained in a creative tension between competing aspects in a both-and
    manner or might present in a truly antinomial fashion (such that a reductio ad
    absurdum cannot be overcome without sacrificing the basic presuppositions of
    reason, itself). For life‘s most important questions and most pressing concerns,
    don‘t expect easy problem resolutions and dissolutions. One best learn to nurture
    creative tensions and to live with absurdity. All of the great wisdom traditions are
    in agreement about this reality; in Christianity, it‘s called the Cross. In the end,
    our trust in this process must go beyond our rational problem-solving and
    apologetics to be grounded in a relationship, which believes and hopes for the
    sake of love, alone, and loves for the sake of love, itself; in Christianity, this
    relationship is grounded in Jesus.

    Sillier Yet? The New Atheism - a wimpy caricature of the old

    The New Atheism is a superficial conflation of descriptive science, normative


    philosophy and interpretive metaphysics, which amounts to an Enlightenment
    fundamentalism or scientism. It is the obverse side of the epistemic coin of the
    same philosophically bankrupt realm as religious fundamentalism or fideism,
    which similarly conflates these approaches to reality.

    This wimpy atheism is but a caricature of the kind we encounter in the history of
    philosophy placing us in jeopardy of engaging what would be tantamount to a
    straw-man argument in bothering to refute it at length. For their part, however,
    the new atheists don‘t hesitate to engage only those religious fundamentalisms
    that are but a caricature of modern theology.

    As for any suggestion by David Bentley Hart that an authentic Christianity


    nurtures its own nihilism insofar as it‘s our supposed view that what we‘re given
    by nature and tradition is nothing if not transformed or unredeemed, that is
    poppycock! At least there are those of us with a radically incarnational outlook,
    who do not view at-one-ment as a response to some ontological rupture located
    in the past but instead as a teleological striving oriented toward the future, who,
    with Scotus and the Franciscans, hold that the incarnation was not occasioned by
    some felix culpa but was otherwise in the cosmic cards from the get-go. Even
    among those who take a more classical approach to atonement, not all buy into a
    notion of total depravity, anyway. And this leads into my next point, which is that
    we do not believe that special revelation is or was necessary in order for
    humankind to discern right from wrong, to distinguish good from evil. At the
    same time, we would not deny that the Good News helps us to journey more
    swiftly and with less hindrance through all of Lonergan‘s ongoing conversions
    (intellectual, affective, moral, social and religious, as expanded by Don Gelpi).

    As a radically social animal and story-teller, humankind is inescapably liturgical,


    although the liturgy will be either doxologic or nihilistic. Among the doxologic
    approaches, in addition to such as the Eucharistic stance (of thanksgiving), there
    is the existentialistic, which even if not explicitly theistic need not be necessarily
    considered nihilistic, whereby people of large intelligence and profound goodwill
    realize such values as truth, beauty, goodness and unity, as they care deeply, are
    concerned with ultimates and celebrate whole-heartedly. How such people were
    formed and how many are where are historical and sociologic data, which are
    beyond us. That we should expect to encounter them, however, is our own
    theological anthropology grounded in a pneumatological (or even Christocentric)
    inclusivity?

    It does seem that the Enlightenment project ran amok on the Continent in its
    marginalization of religion but that the US approach properly integrated and
    even strengthened the influence of religion through its separation and non-
    establishment provisions. Still, while we needn‘t bracket our metaphysical and
    religious views in the marketplace, we must translate them in a pluralistic society.

    The Epistemological Limb where our Ontological Eggs are Nested

    Any postmodernISM, which aspires to the status of a philosophical system,


    inexorably, gets radically deconstructive, tending toward a litany of epistemic
    perjoratives: practical nihilism, moral relativism, essential pragmatism, facile
    syncretism, insidious indifferentism, false irenicism, ad nauseum and self-
    subversively sawing off the epistemological limb where its ontological eggs were
    nested.

    The postmodern CRITIQUE, on the other hand, was serious and deserving of a
    response by an excessively rationalistic and a prioristic foundationalism, which
    aspired to apodictic certainties, whether via the empirical demonstrability of a
    scientism informed by an Enlightenment fundamentalism or via the medieval
    metaphysical proofs argued by a sterile scholasticism.

    There has been some tendency 1) in evangelical & Arminian traditions to


    overemphasize the evidential (evidence that demands a verdict) 2) in reformed &
    Calvinist traditions - the presuppositional (belief as philosophically basic) 3) in
    fideist, Lutheran & neoevangelical traditions - the existential (faith as experience)
    and 4) in Catholic, both Roman & Anglican, the rational (logical argument). In all
    of these traditions, a more holistic approach is EMERGING.

    This approach is best articulated, in our view, by the American Pragmatist


    Tradition, particularly the pragmaticism of Charles Sanders Peirce, wherein
    pragmatic criteria are truth-indicative, which is to say pragmatism is a TEST of
    truth & not a THEORY of truth. In this sense, then, we still affirm a metaphysical
    realism, even a moral realism, even as we embrace a contrite fallibilism,
    recognizing our apprehension of values is somewhat problematical. This
    nonfoundational approach is not too different, for all practical purposes, from
    those critical realists who still embrace a weakened foundationalism.

    Peirce's approach combined with that of Bernard Lonergan makes for a very
    integral perspective. It is not too very different from Wilber's AQAL (all
    quadrants, all levels) with the notable exception being that AQAL must be better
    nuanced as AQALST, where the ST = same time, otherwise what is being affirmed
    as transrational becomes, instead, an arational gnosticism. Lonergan's protege',
    Daniel Helminiak, takes Wilber to task on this, but their differences might resolve
    with more nuance.

    Finally, all value realizations involve both propositional knowledge (epistemic


    duality) & participatory understanding (epistemic nonduality), involve the
    empirical, logical, practical & moral aspects of our descriptive & normative
    approaches to reality, cosmologically, as well as the relational & social imaginary
    aspects of our interpretive & evaluative approaches to reality, axiologically. The
    medievals have a name for this type of AQALST openness, contemplation. This
    contemplative stance, goes beyond but not without the dualistic mind.

    The most succinct statement of this position is that the normative mediates
    between the descriptive & interpretive to effect the evaluative. We derived this
    from Don Gelpi, SJ‘s Peircean take: The normative sciences (logic, aesthetics,
    ethics) mediate between phenomenology & metaphysics. This left the question
    begging: Toward what end? And we added the evaluative aspect based on the
    work of Robert Cummings Neville. The editor of Zygon (Institute on Religion in
    an Age of Science), Wim Drees, draws a distinction between the cosmological and
    axiological, which overlays nicely on our Peircean-Nevillean derived scheme.
    We recognize familiar distinctions such as between doing and being,
    propositional knowledge & participatory understanding, conceptual map-making
    and the social imaginary, and, following Jacques Maritain: We distinguish in
    order to unite, which is to say that we needn‘t introduce false dichotomies or to
    place these value-realizations in an over against/versus dynamism (necessarily).
    Rather, we can affirm how all of these different aspects of human rationality (incl
    pre-, non- and trans-) are integrally-related.

    This is not some wimpy perspectivalism, however. When we say that none of
    these human rationalities is AUTONOMOUS, this is NOT to suggest that we are,
    at the same time, denying that any given aspect of human rationality may not be
    enjoying a certain PRIMACY, or ―its moment,‖ so to speak, during this or that
    human value-realization.

    These various aspects tend to wax and wane, to now come in to sharper relief and
    to now fade into a background context. For example, life‘s lesser goods, which we
    tend to enjoy only in moderation and as extrinsic rewards of a dualistic mindset,
    are most often PURSUED via our propositional, problem-solving knowledge.
    Life‘s greater goods, such transcendentals as truth, beauty, goodness and unity,
    which are intrinsically-rewarding and can be enjoyed without measure, most
    often seem to ENSUE from our relational, participatory understanding.

    During our empirical and logical and moral and practical value-realizations, then,
    our problem-solving mind is enjoying a certain primacy, even though noticably
    transvalued and conditioned by our participatory understandings (including
    evaluative dispositions). These value-pursuits mostly involve getting the
    answers right.

    When we are pursuing the intrinsically rewarding existential orientations of our


    transcendental imperatives to relationship with others and God/de, in truth,
    beauty, goodness & unity, our participatory understanding is enjoying its
    moment, a certain primacy, even though noticably transvalued and conditioned
    by our propositional knowledge.

    In each case, we go BEYOND but not WITHOUT.

    It does seem, then, that in the life of one who‘s adopted a contemplative stance,
    who‘s given the nondual perspective its moment, habitually, that orthoPATHOS
    will enjoy a certain primacy, even if not autonomously, as it mediates between
    orthodoxy and orthopraxy to effect orthocommunio. This is an acknowledgement
    that the existential enjoys a certain primacy over the evidential & rational &
    presuppositional even as it in no way can be considered autonomous.
    Balance and moderation, then, in such a perspectivalism, is not achieved by
    always giving equal place and equal time to each perspective --- descriptive,
    normative, interpretive and evaluative ---, as through some a priori rational
    schema, but is something that requires a posteriori empirical discernment in
    community as orthopraxis authenticates orthodoxy. In other words, this is
    problematical, as one might expect our richly textured existence to require. The
    most important value-pursuits in life more so involve, then, less so getting the
    answers right as in getting the right questions, which will retain, if truly wise, an
    element of mystagogia.

    When we say descriptive, it is jargon mostly for science, falsification, positivism


    and such, which, in the simplest of terms, asks: What is THAT? Or, Is that a
    FACT? When we say normative, it stands for philosophy, mostly, especially logic,
    aesthetics and ethics
    & epistemology (How do we know what we know?) and asks: How can I best
    acquire/avoid IT (or THAT)? Taken together, this is what Wim Drees seems to
    be calling cosmology. In our view, this is Everybody‘s Story and we should not go
    around wily-nily just making this stuff up. It is mostly given. And this includes
    morality (is to ought, given tonormative), which we hold is something anyone can
    figure out without the benefit of any special revelation.

    When I say evaluative (Drees‘ axiological), we are talking about our posits
    regarding values, or in the simplest terms, asking the question: What‘s IT to me?
    What does THAT mean to me? as it relates to the interpretive, which refers to the
    question: How does all of this TIE-BACK-TOGETHER? = religate = religious.

    Lonergan-Gelpi talk about conversions – intellectual, moral & social and affective
    & religious. One might think of these in terms of developmental stages (think
    Piaget, Kohlberg, Fowler et al – the stage theorists in psychology). It so happens
    that the axiological concerns are our deepest and most insistent and that, in large
    measure, when it comes to life‘s most important concerns (our ultimate
    concerns), well, from a cosmological perspective, we‘re totally thwarted. There is
    a certain amount of epistemic parity here, which is to say, even after our best
    empirical investigations and rational demonstrations, the best verdict we can
    offer, cosmologically, is the Scottish verdict = unproven. So, while we cannot go
    around fashioning a cosmology to suit our tastes, we do have a great deal of
    freedom in choosing our axiological stance = What‘s it to me? and How does this
    all hold together? As William James noted, such a choice is vital (it matters a
    lot), forced (we pretty much have to choose & not choosing is a choice) and a live
    option (follow your heart but don‘t betray your head).

    So, while we do not accept that there are competing cosmologies, we do recognize
    competing axiologies and we do believe we can successfully adjudicate between
    those that are good, better and best, within many constraints, by looking at how
    well any given tradition or religion or denomination or cohort has
    institutionalized conversion (Lonergan-Gelpi not Evangelical-style), which is to
    ask how its people have developed intellectually, morally and socially
    (cosmologically, propositional knowledge) and also affectively and religiously
    (axiologically, participatory understanding).

    Remember, we are talking about epistemology here. Our references to both


    cosmology and axiology address methods not systems, questions not conclusions.
    It is our view that methods precede systems, fallibilistic systems at that.
    Metaphysically, then, we are agnostic on such ―ontological‖ matters as
    philosophy of mind, the essential nature of reality, various root metaphors such
    as substance, process or semiotic approaches and so on. If someone put a gun to
    our heads, on philosophy of mind, we‘d probably choose a nonreductive
    physicalism but without losing sleep over the possibility of some type of spooky,
    ghost-in-the-machine, Cartesian dualism. We thus affirm metaphysics as a
    project but feel that it is WAY too early on humankind‘s journey to come to even a
    good provisional closure, ERGO, we had best move along without a definitive
    view vis a vis our other human value-realizations.

    While some emphasize the existential approach to our ultimate concerns and
    dismiss evidential, rational and presuppositional arguments, we say not so fast.
    Our religious interpretive approaches are constrained by the best that scientific-
    descriptive and normative-philosophic approaches have to offer, such knowledge
    as has advanced slowly but inexorably. A good interpretive approach, or religion,
    when it is busy TYING IT ALL together, cannot fabricate its own scientific facts
    and philosophic norms but must incorporate same within its perspective. A
    religion, like Christianity, may not be able to empirically investigate or logically
    demonstrate in a conclusive manner its entire stance toward reality, but any
    evidence it does muster must be historically accurate and any arguments it does
    fashion must be, at least, valid if not otherwise demonstrably sound per extant
    scientific methods and coherent philosophical norms. It must be reasonable and
    it must be as reasonable as other competing stances, which is to say that it must,
    minimally, not be disproved even if not proved. Any faith is going to require some
    epistemic risk and any such risk demands some type of reward in terms of human
    value-realizations. We amplify such risks to augment values but these risks must
    be dutifully ―managed.‖

    In Phyllis Tickle‘s writings, she employed a cable metaphor, a cable of meaning


    with various strands. It is interesting that Charles Sanders Peirce employed a
    cable metaphor, also, in a not wholly unrelated way, epistemologically. Peirce‘s
    pragmatism, more appropriately pragmaticism, employs a nonfoundational
    approach, to be sure, but it is a constructive postmodernism, a semiotic realism,
    which affirms metaphysical and moral realisms along with its contrite fallibilism.
    There are many things in life we cannot empirically investigate or rationally
    demonstrate: 1) belief in other minds over against solipsism 2) belief in reality‘s
    intelligibility over against nihilism 3) belief in first principles like identity,
    excluded middle and noncontradiction. We take risks and are rewarded when we
    believe in realities like truth, beauty, goodness and unity. Hopefully, when we
    amplify these risks into creed, cult, code and community, we augment such value-
    realizations.

    The strands of the Peircean cable could be said to include the descriptive,
    normative, interpretive and evaluative, as well as abduction (hypothesizing),
    induction (empirical testing) and deduction (logical argument). It is
    nonfoundational epistemologically, only questioning the nature of our grasp of
    reality, which is not the same thing as denying either reality, itself, or the fact that
    we can apprehend reality, partially, even if we do not comprehend it, wholly. It
    recognizes that our systems are tautological but it also recognizes that just
    because something is a tautology does not mean it is not true. Further, it suggests
    that not all systems are equally taut and we can devise tests to see which best
    comport with reality, fostering authentic value-realizations like intellectual,
    affective, social, moral and religious development. It eschews the epistemic
    hubris of modernism and the excessive epistemic humility of postmodernism,
    embracing an epistemic holism that is more akin to weakened foundationalisms
    than wimpy postmodernisms.

    The consensus view in science employs an emergentist heuristic, which does not
    aspire to an exhaustive explanatory adequacy but does provide some very helpful
    conceptual placeholders. As Ursula Goodenough says, emergence means we get
    "something more from nothing but."

    We recognize that in this far from equilibrium environment in which we live,


    novel (but dissipative) structures arise. Some semiotic (info-conveying &
    meaning-making) realities arise which, apparently, transcend but do not violate
    physical causal closure. The take-away is that even reality's laws are dynamic and
    emergent, with some continuity to be sure but also some undeniable
    discontinuities (one could call them ontological and vaguely refer to them even
    when unable to robustly describe them).

    There is, then, a certain danger in extrapolating universal laws from a reality that,
    for all theoretical & practical purposes vis a vis Primal Reality, might be as local
    (and recent) as the by-laws of your neighborhood condominium association.
    Approaches like string & quantum theory interest us more so because any
    enhanced modeling power of reality will provide us with richer metaphors that
    will last longer before collapsing and more taut tautologies from which we can
    better navigate our ways from IS to OUGHT, but much less so because they might
    somehow better facilitate our so-called metaphysical grasp of reality's essential
    nature or (much less) improve our God-concepts. This is why we have some
    misgivings about any temporal critical realism & various (speculative,
    propositional) cosmological positions as related to theology and emphasize,
    instead, our (participatory) axiological dispositions.

    When it comes to humanity's ultimate concerns, our evidential, rational and


    presuppositional apologetics are not unimportant. They are, in our view,
    necessary but not sufficient because they cannot, whether alone or together,
    coerce a belief, or maybe better a stance,whether of nihilism or panentheism. We
    all end up falling back on our existential orientations with an attitude of gratitude
    & what Kung calls a justified fundamental trust in uncertain reality or with any
    number of other dispositions people indulge from time to time and in the course
    of a lifetime (sometimes even a day). So, even as we go BEYOND the evidential,
    rational & presuppositional apologetics of yesteryear, we do not want, in our
    view, to go wholly WITHOUT them and we certainly need to temper our reliance
    on them (BIG TIME).

    Below is a quote regarding Wim Drees20:

    "Critical realists such as Barbour, Peacocke and Polkinghorne have been careful
    to avoid theological speculations about t=0, recognizing that its status is
    controversial and subject to the shift in theories. However, they have not been
    equally attentive to the challenge to temporality per se by special relativity and
    general relativity, let alone by quantum cosmology and quantum gravity.
    Moreover, Drees claims the latter ought not be dismissed merely because they
    are speculative. Such a strategy to insulate temporal critical realism is ad hoc,
    since temporal critical realists are already committed epistemologically to a
    hierarchical unity of the sciences, and thus changes - even if only potential ones
    - at the fundamental level of the hierarchy carry enormous epistemic leverage.
    For its part, the timeless character of physics and cosmology leads us to view
    God in more Platonic terms. Drees explores this option in some detail, including
    the problem of divine action, the arguments for viewing God as an explanation
    of the universe, and the constructivist view of science as myth. He concludes by
    suggesting that axiology may be a more apt focus for theology than cosmology,
    and this in turn would lessen the impact science has on theology."

    Nonfoundational Epistemology & Normativity?

    There is often resistance to nonfoundational approaches because, apparently, many have a


    difficult time imagining how a compelling metaethic could be grounded by anything other than
    the epistemological building blocks of a classic foundationalism with its self-evident, a priori
    and apodictic access to transcendentals and absolutes. All other approaches seem to capitulate,
    in their view, to a radically deconstructive postmodernism with its corrupting relativistic outlook
    and nihilistic bent. To be moral, however, one needn‘t resolve the debates between opposing
    epistemological stances and come down, finally, on the side of correspondence, coherence,

    20 http://www.counterbalance.org/ctns-vo/drees2-body.html
    foundherentism, pragmatism or any other theory of truth or justification. However it is finally
    determined that we are grounded and justified, there can be no denying that, due to our radical
    finitude and invincible fallibility, our access to putative absolutes is highly problematical.

    Resultantly, our approach to truth is a lot more like the strenuous climbing of an epistemic rope,
    which gains its strength from the intertwining of separate strands --- descriptive, evaluative,
    normative and interpretive ---, which makes for an ecological rationality that is inescapably
    fallible but slowly and inexorably progressive as each successive series of alternating hand, arm
    and leg value-pursuit motions effects a value-realization hoist, though not without the
    occasional slip or ropeburn. It is a lot less like the stacking of epistemic building blocks on a
    foundation of absolutes, always in jeopardy of crumbling should a bad brick be placed in the wall
    or, worse, should our site be discovered on shifting sands.

    To whichever realism we subscribe, it must be self-critical. It must also respond to critiques,


    which need not come from competing systems to be effective, for one cannot credibly claim that
    the postmodern critique was of no moment. At the same time, deconstructionism, which cannot
    coherently hold itself out as a system, was nothing but an epistemic thief who‘s come in a
    philosophical backdoor, co-opting another‘s tautology and turning its inconsistent concepts,
    categories and claims on itself like a knife found in a dwelling and placed to the occupant‘s
    throat. This thief did not slay deontology but, admittedly, weakened it.

    Whatever metanarrative one employs, it would necessarily contain within it, in the interest of
    descriptive accuracy, the manifold and multiform shared values that emerge from our somewhat
    universal human condition. To the extent our evaluative posits are attributes of a universal
    human condition, then, even though they may be relative, which one needn‘t concede, still, they
    would avoid much of the difficulty normally associated with such relativity by virtue of being
    remarkably consistent, despite their relativity.

    These posits thus would remain relative from a theoretic perspective but not so much so from a
    pragmatic perspective. When you think about it, this, and not some foundational, authoritative
    deontology, accounts for the resonance and shared respect we do enjoy for such as the UN
    Declaration on Human Rights, the US Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and such.
    Is it not evident that all of humankind does not share the same metaphysical conceptions, that
    all foundationalists don't appeal to the same foundations, and that all authoritarians don't point
    to the same authorities?

    We need to be mindful of the proportional mix of dogmatic, heuristic, theoretic and semiotic
    terms that are employed in any given metaphysical affirmation. It is not enough, I maintain, to
    issue forth with metaphysical claims that do not conflict with positivist data; rather, in our
    formulations and affirmations, we must keep as favorable a ratio as possible of semiotic and
    theoretic terms to heuristic and dogmatic terms; thus we can better avoid idle tautologies
    (rationalisms) that bear little resemblance and have little relevance to people's daily lives and
    lived experiences.
    What about Philosophy of Mind?

    Preliminarily, our particular account, above, is somewhat derived from Terry


    Deacon's work. Such hypotheses remain highly speculative and not at all
    uncontroversial. Phenomenologically, we think it is fair to suggest that we can
    refer to these distinct biosemiotic realities in terms of function but that our
    understanding is woefully inadequate in terms of structure and evolution, too,
    especially once considering how distributed linguistic functions seem to be in the
    brain. We must not confuse successful referencing of these biosemiotic functions
    with successful description of their distributed structures and pretend that we
    have thereby attained explanatory adequacy for the hard problem.

    So, let us be very clear, our project of describing this biosemiotic heuristic is
    AGNOSTIC to philosophy of mind issues and neurophysiology, too, for that
    matter. Our emergentist perspective and biosemiotic perspective and peircean
    perspective provide a combined heuristic that can help us keep our categories
    tidy and enhance our ability to make successful references to biosemiotic
    realities. This should enhance our modeling power for reality. It does not matter
    whether one otherwise prefers the approach of the
    Churchlands, Chalmers, Dennett, Deacon, Penrose, Ayn Rand, Searle or anyone
    else. We use Deacon to explicate my heuristic, not to propagandize our
    provisional closures re: philosophy of mind. Still, Deacon impresses us greatly.

    So, what might be going on?

    This may be something of a peircean minding of matter and mattering of mind.


    As a heuristic, it's somewhat agnostic to prevailing philosophy of mind
    perspectives. If we had to offer my sneaking suspicions, well ... let's see where
    that goes ...

    It is not always easy to specify the relationships between the concepts we employ
    to refer to our biosemiotic heuristic propositions and our biosemiotic algorithmic
    phenomena, the former being language-dependent and public, the latter
    referring to ineffable and private experiences. It is even difficult to clearly specify
    which of our heuristic practices, all propositional, are doxastic versus
    subdoxastic. There is something that phenomenal knowledge and subdoxastic
    propositional knowledge have in common; where both are concerned: We know
    more than we can say. But they should not otherwise be confused for one is
    highly symbolic and language-dependent and the other language-
    independent. The language-dependent, subdoxastic propositional knowledge
    can come into conscious awareness and we can learn to speak about such and
    more clearly specify it.
    What type of mutation-generated changes in nondoxastic practices and
    structures, common to humans and animals, encountered what kind of selection
    pressures to produce adaptively significant quasi-doxastic and subdoxastic and
    doxastic structures and practices unique to Homo sapiens? To the extent
    language function is associated with anatomically new areas of the brain,
    phylogenetically speaking, we can implicate some brain structure changes
    (remembering that language function is distributed). What practices, like
    imitation or aping, for example, involving animal signals and communication,
    could have been available to selection pressures and both culturally and
    adaptively significant? By what quantum leap did evolution take the apes
    from the phenomenal to the propositional and inferential?

    Our inferential and propositional and symbolic biosemiotic heuristics allow us to


    model reality.

    The Mode of Discovery?

    There are a lot of ways to define the different "modes" of discovery. We are
    sometimes tempted to suggest that there is only one mode of discovery.

    And we are tempted to then call what we most often consider to be modes,
    instead, something else. In fact we have called them aspects, or better yet,
    "moments" in the singular and integral act of knowing (or "the" mode of
    discovery). In this sense, philosophically, we would be saying that epistemology is
    epistemology is epistemology. And these "moments" in the singular and integral
    act of knowing, then, precisely gain their sympathetic potential from the fact that
    each moment actually presupposes the other moments, none getting the job of
    discovery done alone, all getting the job of discovery done together. These
    moments are autonomous only in the sense that they are asking
    distinctly different questions of reality and cannot, therefore, conflict
    with one another, in principle. And this is why they are, necessarily, in some
    sense, mutually limiting. These moments are otherwise, in a word, entangled
    (hierarchically-related perhaps being too strong a concept to defend).

    In the heuristic we have under consideration, we might think of these moments


    in terms of the interpretive, descriptive, prescriptive, normative and evaluative.
    Or, we might think in terms of the paradigmatic, positivistic, prudential and
    philosophic (all above-defined). So, too, we might think in more classical terms
    like apophatic and kataphatic, like cognitive and affective. The history of
    philosophy is littered with systems that wrenched some of these moments from
    their context in the whole of the integral act of knowing, or from their place in the
    singular mode of discovery, and then let them swell to madness in their isolation
    (to borrow phraseology from CS Lewis re: Scriptural exegesis).
    Without the mutual limitation of one moment versus another, and without the
    entanglement of these otherwise autonomous probes of reality, various so-called
    modes of discovery, powered by all too vivid human imaginations, get,
    improperly and variously, overemphasized and/or underemphasized.
    To wit:
    An overemphasis of the kataphatic and cognitive = rationalism.
    An overemphasis of the kataphatic and the affective = pietism.
    An overemphasis of the apophatic and the cognitive = encratism.
    An overemphasis of the apophatic and affective = quietism.
    Various overemphases of the positivistic, descriptive and/or of science =
    positivism, empiricism and scientism.
    Various overemphases of the paradigmatic, interpretive and/or of
    theology (or even atheology) = fideism, on one hand, Enlightenment
    fundamentalism, on the other, or dogmatism.
    An overemphasis of the prescriptive and normative, or on the law and code =
    legalism.
    An overemphasis on the evaluative = moral relativism and an embrace of the
    so-called fact-value dichotomy. And when combined with the
    rubrics of religion = ritualism.
    For a modern example, Ken Wilber claims an integral approach and an
    affirmation of the transrational. His approach is NOT integral just by the mere
    fact that he claims to holistically embrace objective, subjective, interobjective and
    intersubjective "modes" of knowledge (and these roughly correspond to our
    positivistic, philosophic, paradigmatic and prudential spheres of concern). It is
    not the affirmation of all such "moments" that makes one's approach integral;
    rather, it is the proper inter-relating of such moments that gifts them with their
    integral nature; it is their holonic inseparability that makes them holistic. What
    happens here? Ken allows unfettered reign (no mutual limitation) to the
    intersubjective and transrational moment of what should otherwise properly be
    considered but one moment, presupposing all the other moments, in an integrally
    related mode of discovery. Mysticism, then, goes wherever it wants, probes
    reality, comes back with reports that are unassailable. What we end up with is an
    unmitigated 1) arational 2) gnostic 3) radical apophaticism.

    The remedy, again: the philosophic mediates between the positivistic and the
    paradigmatic to effect the prudential. Or, put another way: the normative and
    evaluative mediate between the descriptive (science) and the paradigmatic
    (theology) to effect the prudential (moral and practical judgment). Each moment
    presupposes the others. Each moment has its moment, whether implicitly or
    explicitly, in the integral act of knowing, the singular mode of discovery. This is
    reinforced by Charles Sanders Peirce's observation that the three forms of
    inference all presuppose the others; induction (reasoning from the specific to the
    general), deduction (reasoning from the general to the specific) and abduction
    (the act of spontaneously hypothesizing or quickly coming up with an If-Then
    statement) all presuppose the others, none even making sense without the others.

    Transcendent Epistemic Frame


    Interpretive Religions & Natural Theology

    Intelligent Design – a poorly designed inference

    There are many different issues in play in a consideration of intelligent design.


    Three come quickly to mind. The first concerns biblical hermeneutics, which we
    won‘t address. The others involve the design inference and demarcation criteria
    for science.

    Advocates of the design inference confuse complexity and improbability. When


    they say a structure is irreducibly complex or suggest a specified complexity, they
    describe it as either an inordinately high improbability or virtually zero
    probability and they further confuse improbability (chance) and coincidence.

    Coincidence is something that pertains to the present or past. Chance has


    meaning only when information is lacking. So, we distinguish the two in temporal
    terms. If we are considering an event a priori, chance is in play. If we consider it
    a posteriori, we have coincidence (something which, however, over the course of
    a lifetime — even of a multiverse — might otherwise be considered likely).

    So, the concept of probability has no validity vis a vis a coincidence and statistical
    science thus pertains to chance and not coincidence. Probability deals with the
    epistemically unavailable, is an empirical notion subject to empirical methods
    and is assigned to arguments with premises and conclusions (and not rather to
    events, states or types of same).

    Specified complexity and the strong anthropic principle thus deal with the past
    and with coincidence. It is not that one could not imaginatively walk oneself
    backwards in time and thereby properly invoke chance or probability. However,
    we do not know enough about the initial conditions of life‘s origins much less that
    of the universe to inform our grasp of what should or should not be expected of
    this reality.
    A Radically Orthodox Epistemological Architectonic – an exploratory heuristic

    reintroducing enchantment or what G. K. Chesterton called the thrilling romance of orthodoxy

    Precis

    the normative mediates between the descriptive and interpretive


    to effect the evaluative

    Epistemological Posture – a nonfoundational perspectivalism situated in a fallibilistic, triadic


    semiotic realism

    Epistemic Rubrics

    Semiotic
    Aspects
    normative
    descriptive
    interpretive
    evaluative

    EPISTEMOLOGY AS VALUE-REALIZATION

    We can think about human activities in terms of value-realizations. Each value-realization


    seems to consist of several other value-realizations. Each of these, while distinct , is
    indispensable and integrally-related to the others. What makes them distinct are their unique
    goals along with their distinct strategies and tactics for achieving those goals. To put it another
    way, we could say that they each employ different methods or rules or logics. So, we can say that
    they are intellectually-related even if not strictly logically-related. For example: 1) One value we
    could pursue is to get the answer to such questions as Is that a fact? Is that what I think it is?
    What is that? 2) These questions are different from such concerns as What's it to me? What do I
    care? Do I want that? 3) And those questions are different from such inquiries as How can I get
    some of that? What's the best way to get that?

    That first category involves descriptive value-realizations with methods like empirical
    observation and measurement, falsification, logical demonstration and hypothetico-deductive
    reasoning and it provides our descriptive premises. The second category reveals our evaluative
    posits. The third category involves normative things like best practices and provides us
    prescriptive premises. There is a fourth category which involves our interpretive concerns and
    which answers the question How do we tie all of this together? It provides the framework for
    the methods we will choose and the justifications we will employ in support of our evaluative
    and normative goals. Without resolving all of the interpretive questions left begging, we can
    observe that our normative pursuits mediate between our descriptive and interpretive endeavors
    to effect our evaluative concerns. And this is to recognize that once we know what something is
    and whether or not we care about it and want it, then we turn to our best practices, hopefully, to
    see how to optimally obtain it. At this point, what we have done, formally, is to have coupled a
    prescriptive premise --- that is either self- evident (so called) or agreed upon by social
    convention as a valid premise --- to a descriptive premise and then we have syllogistically
    reasoned our way to a valid normative conclusion, which, if also sound, will allow us to realize
    our evaluative goal.

    What we are engaging is an exploratory heuristic that combines insights that we gleaned from
    Don Gelpi regarding Charles Sanders Peirce and also from Robert Cummings Neville. Gelpi
    describes one Peircean rubric this way: The normative sciences mediate between
    phenomenology and metaphysics. Neville's axiology is heavily informed by human value
    pursuits. These insights are combined, herein, into this epistemic rubric: the normative
    mediates between the descriptive and interpretive to effect the evaluative.

    These are very broad categories. The normative sciences include logic, aesthetics and ethics, for
    example. If we wanted to narrow these conceptions, for any particular application of the rubric,
    we could say, for example, that the prudential mediates between the empirical and metarational
    to effect this or that value-realization. It could be further narrowed to describe the prudential in
    terms of either the practical or moral. What we are doing is providing an exploratory heuristic
    or metatechnica to help us talk about such problems as are being discussed here, or to talk about
    such things as the putative fact-value dichotomy or even the hard problem of consciousness.
    Such a heuristic provides placeholders for patterns that most can recognize and many can use,
    no matter what interpretive stance they bring to the conversation. By referring to the different
    logics of these categories, we are of course recognizing distinctly different value commitments as
    well as the axioms we employ in their pursuits but also am observing that there is a mix of
    propositional and nonpropositional, rational and nonrational, inferential and noninferential
    approaches in play.

    One way to look at it is that, while these categories involve distinctly different value
    commitments, employ radically different axioms and engage both our rational and nonrational
    faculties, each category necessarily presupposes the others; each is methodologically
    autonomous but all are inextricably intertwined, triadically, in the same way that abductive,
    inductive and deductive inferences presuppose each other, in the same way that the modal
    categories of possible, actual and necessary/probable imply each other.

    Conceptual Dispositions
    semiotic
    theoretic
    heuristic
    dogmatic

    The Language We Use and the Ideas We Have – a classification scheme

    Humankind, as a community of inquiry, a community of value-realizers, articulates its


    descriptive, evaluative, normative and interpretive claims and stances with categories and
    concepts that are variously semiotic, theoretic, heuristic or dogmatic. These categories and
    concepts can be classed, broadly speaking, according to whether or not any given assembly of
    value realizers has negotiated their meaning.

    Negotiated terms are thus considered theoretic. Those still-innegotiation are heuristic,
    acting as placeholders. Non-negotiated terms, not shared by the community-at-large or held
    only by a restricted assembly of value realizers, are dogmatic. Semiotic terms are non-
    negotiable because they include such as First Principles and self-evident values on which
    meaningful communication, itself, depends.

    The proper integration of the various aspects and perspectives of human value-realization, as
    measured by the appropriate emphases to be placed on each in relation to the others, can best be
    discerned in the language employed by humankind‘s different communities of value-realization,
    as it reveals each community‘s collective assessment of its various, relevant conceptualizations
    by virtue of any given concept‘s expressive status as semiotic, theoretic, heuristic or dogmatic.
    This is because, presumably, such epistemic status will reveal the amount of value that the
    community has been able to cash out for any given concept per that community‘s established
    evaluative criteria, corresponding, roughly, to the old scholastic notations of possible, plausible,
    probable, certain, uncertain, improbable, implausible and impossible.

    Conceptual Categories

    qui
    (who)
    quid
    (what)
    quand
    o
    (when)
    quo
    (where
    ) quam
    (how)
    quare
    (why)
    quantu
    s (how
    much)
    quotie
    ns
    (how
    often)
    quia
    (becau
    se)
    quale
    (what
    kind)
    quod
    (that)
    haec (this)

    This Scotistic perspective resonates with Jack Haught‘s aesthetic teleology and von Balthasaar‘s
    notion that truth and goodness are imperiled in a culture that loses its sense of beauty. It seems
    to me that if, with Scotus, we do not take the Incarnation to be a response to some felix culpa
    but a cosmogenic inevitability, we might reimagine our felix culpa to otherwise reside in our
    radical finitude. Because we are finite, we experience an epistemic-ontic divide, which is to
    recognize that ours is an ecological rationality that is inescapably value-driven, which is to
    further suggest that we must go beyond the empirical and logical aspects of our intellect to heed
    our evaluative aspects --- not only to thrive, but --- to survive. In Scotistic terms, then, the
    descriptive, normative, interpretive and evaluative aspects of our ecological rationality are
    formal distinctions of an otherwise singular human reality, which is the value-realization. Such
    a value-realization for a finite being requires a harmonic balancing of the perspectives, which we
    will prescribe below in terms of a fallibilistic, nonfoundational perspectivalism. The pursuit of
    such harmony is also normed by our deeply-felt aesthetic sensibilities.

    Scotus gifts us with other insights. Going beyond qui (who), quid (what), quando (when), quo
    (where), quam (how) and quare (why), and even quantus (how much) and quotiens (how often),
    in our search for the ever-elusive quia (because), Scotus especially invites us to also consider the
    significance of quale (what kind) and quod (that) and maybe most especially of haec (this).
    Because of his quid-quale distinction, we learn that we can divorce our semantics from our
    ontology and affirm, for example, a univocity of being. Because of his concept of haecceity, or
    thisness, we learn that, as Peirce would later take it, we can make nondescriptive references like
    quod, for example Wittgenstein‘s THAT things are, which is the mystical. This opens the door to
    engage in a robust phenomenology even as we prescind from any particular metaphysics as we
    recognize that it is one thing to successfully describe or explain a reality and quite another to
    successfully reference and model a reality. We can talk intelligibly about realities that lie beyond
    our full comprehension by at least apprehending them, in part.

    Evaluatively, haecceity opens us to the reality of individual significance, which affirms the
    precious value to be realized in each otherwise inimitable creature and moment, which then
    especially affirms the dignity of each human, and this all has tremendous normative impetus. If
    in our competing accounts of primal reality we reach a Scottish verdict, establishing, at best, an
    empirical and logical epistemic parity, then, as a result of this radical finitude, normatively,
    applying the equiplausibility principle, we might choose to be guided by beauty and goodness
    rather than caving in to a practical nihilism, and this felix culpa of ours will require of us a
    radical kenosis, a self-emptying of memory, understanding and will in surrender to hope, faith
    and love, the greatest of these being love. And this is to recognize that, if we must move beyond
    our best truth-conducive aspirations and operations and theories of truth to rely on our best
    truth-indicative approaches, both aesthetical and moral, as the Fab Four said: All you need is
    love. And that is as true for John, Paul, George and Ringo as it was for Matthew, Mark, Luke
    and John.

    Conceptual Distinctions

    epistemic indeterminacy – methodological constraints


    epistemic a priori and a posteriori ontological
    vagueness – modal ontological necessity and
    contingency semantical vagueness – excluded middle
    and noncontradiction semantical analytic (explicative)
    and synthetic (ampliative)

    Elements of Actionable Norms

    truth-conducive and truth-indicative


    arguments epistemic warrant and epistemic
    parity philosophical methods and
    philosophical systems equiplausibility
    principle and Pascal‘s wager

    Processes

    Informal Logic

    Argumentation might be examined from three different perspectives: the logical


    perspective, regarding its product; the rhetorical perspective, regarding natural persuasion;
    and the dialectical perspective, regarding the processes of argumentation. Our specific focus is
    on the logical perspective and the establishment of probative weight and epistemic warrant.
    What are the criteria for assigning these scholastic notations: possible, plausible, probable,
    certain, uncertain,improbable, implausible and impossible?

    To be clear, then, we are not discussing formal logic, which is indefeasible, monotonic and
    deductive, the assertions of which must be surrendered if not proven. Rather, we are dealing
    with informal logic, again, as employed in everyday common sense, scientific hypotheses and
    legal argumentation. It is provisional, defeasible and nonmonotonic and can be classed as
    either inductive inference, such as the statistical syllogism, or presumptive inference,
    which is known by its reversals of the obligation to prove (presumption must be given up if
    disproved). The 1) inductive inference is weaker than 2) deductive inference (strong inference)
    and probability is employed to help us gauge the frequency with which the argument will hold
    true. 3) Presumptive inference is weaker still, made up of both a) abductive inference, which
    employs probability values in its minor premises, such as an inference to the best explanation,
    and of b) plausible inference, the weakest of all, which employs confidence values and is
    normed by the equiplausibility principle21, for example. For our purposes, the
    equiplausibility principle norms our provisional closures and actions by placing before us the
    decision to choose that which is the most lifegiving and relationship-enhancing, amplifying
    beauty, goodness and unity in our ongoing pursuit of truth. For example, given the equiplausible
    notions that there is, in the dim light, either a snake or a rope on our parlor floor, we shall treat
    the thing as a snake. Given the equiplausible notions that this uncertain reality is a glorious
    contingency or a grand design, we shall respond
    eucharistically, with profound thanksgiving to Our Benefactor, and like Pip, in
    Great Expectations, set off in search.

    Robert Cummings Neville22 writes:


    I think rather that the question is how we respond to the ground of being that creates
    the natural world with such indifference, and here Corrington and I are not together. He says
    that sadness has the last word and that the proper response is lamentation. So his philosophy
    is a brilliant naturalistic theory that laments the fact that the mother who ejects us is cold
    indifferent effulgence. My response was forged in the grief of the death in infancy of our first
    daughter, which occurred a few short weeks before I had to deal with the copy editing of God
    the Creator. There was a passage toward the end of that book where I originally had quoted
    with approval the line from Job: "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the
    name of the Lord." My wife and I had loved our daughter with a love whose limits had not
    been reached, and she was taken away. Could I leave that line in? The result of much soul-
    searching was to leave it in as the mark of my response to the Giver and Taker. What it meant
    was that I could still adore the creator of a world whose forces of disease are blind to the
    purposes and passions of the human economy. The Dao is simply like that. That was in 1966,
    and nearly everything I have written since then has aimed to search out the ways, hows, and
    whys of that world, and the loveliness of its creator whose ways are not our own. Eternity and
    Time's Flow is my most explicit treatment of the shortness of life and other kinds of sadness.
    It's looking into the abyss no matter how you cut it. The issue is whether to rage like an
    abandoned orphan or melt in bliss at the loveliness of that power.

    Methods

    21 See Douglas Walton‘s Argument from Appearance: A New Argumentation Scheme in Logique
    et Analyse, 195, 2006, 319-340, which is available here:http://io.uwinnipeg.ca/~walton/papers
    inpdf/06arg_from_appearance.pdf
    22 Robert Cummings Neville in AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY
    Vol. 18 NO.3 September 1997
    "there must be a renewal of communion between the traditional, contemplative disciplines and
    those of science, between the poet and the physicist, the priest and the depth psychologist, the
    monk and the politician." Merton

    Our overall thrust is geared toward the search for enhanced modeling power of reality, toward
    trying to better define and attain epistemic virtue, toward a reconsideration of the "best
    practices" to be employed in our normative sciences of logic, aesthetics and ethics. It is a search
    for a Goldilocks epistemology, which is to say, one that has neither too much hubris nor an
    excessive humility. When it comes to humankind's descriptive enterprises, which are inherently
    normative, when we encounter paradox, we sort through different scenarios and try our best to
    determine its origins. To the extent we cannot determine whether any given knowledge advance
    is being thwarted by, on one hand, methodological constraints, or on the other, some type of in-
    principle occulting, the proper bias is to assume the former and eschew the latter. This is simply
    a pragmatic approach wherein methods will generally precede systems. Our methods will
    necessarily assume such things as common sense notions of causation, reality's intelligibility,
    certain first principles like identity, noncontradiction and excluded middle, such principles
    alternately holding or folding in a semantical vagueness that flows naturally from the ontological
    vagueness and epistemic indeterminacy we ordinarily encounter in reality. Ontological
    vagueness means we change our modal ontology from the possible, actual and necessary to the
    possible, actual and probable. Epistemic indeterminacy is when we don't know if we are
    constrained methodologically or ontologically (the in-principle occulting I mentioned above).
    Epistemically, we can draw distinctions between the a priori and a posteriori. Ontologically, we
    can draw modal distinctions between the necessary and the contingent. Semantically, we draw
    distinctions between the analytic (explicative) and synthetic (ampliative). While the knowable
    and unknowable might be valid categories, this distinction is problematical and invites yet
    another between the provable and the knowable. For example, with Godel we might accept that
    we cannot prove the truth of the axioms of our systems, in theory, but this does not imply that
    we might not otherwise be able to see their truth, for all practical purposes.

    So, while the postmodern critique deserved a response, the proper response, in our view, was
    the move from a naive realism to a critical realism or even a pragmatic fallibilism. Even if reality
    writ large remains wholly incomprehensible, it is also still partly apprehensible, which is to say
    intelligible, lending itself to varying degrees of modeling power. Anyone who wants to enhance
    this modeling power must accept the onus of cashing out their novel methods in practical value-
    realizations. The most succinct summary of the difference between the pragmatists and the
    traditionalists of other schools, in our view, would be that the pragmatists' agenda would
    generally seek to replace the philosophizing of sociology with the sociologizing of philosophy.
    Below is a list of how we conceive the pragmatists' agenda in a conversation with the other
    schools of philosophy. If we honor a pneumatological hermeneutic, we will seek truth, beauty,
    goodness and unity wherever they may be found, which will always be in pilgrim churches and
    fallible, finite individuals. We must not make fetishes out of our own perspectives but should
    engage other perspectives recognizing the traces of the Holy Spirit‘s creative work in all others,
    of course realized in varying degrees.

    The history of philosophy, unlike other sciences (Kuhn notwithstanding), has been marked less
    by the standing on others‘ shoulders from preceding generations and more by the successive
    generations standing on their ancestor‘s necks (McInerny), with overly pejorative rhetoric and
    often even incivil discourse. Going forward, striking a more irenic pose, let us endeavor, instead,
    to employ others‘ perspectives moreso as an assist and less so as a foil.

    To wit:

    With foundationalism, remain realist but fallibilist

    With rationalism, seek internal coherence and logical consistency but with provisional closures

    Avoid confusion between necessity, an analytic concept, and probability, a synthetic concept,
    which is grounded in psychological expectations

    With the insights of both essentialism and nominalism, employ descriptions using vague
    heuristic devices

    With the insights of naive realism, enjoy a second naivete with a truly critical
    realism

    Honor today‘s time-honored, standard practices by updating them with always revisable
    methods

    Honor today‘s time-honored, standard systems by updating them with always revisable theories

    Honor the notion of objectivity by fearlessly committing one‘s concepts to a broader community
    of inquiry & social practice

    Augment the insights gleaned from the epistemological problems of representation, mirroring
    and correspondence with those to be gained from our grappling with such problems as are
    related to human value-realizations via perpetually enhanced modeling power of reality

    Consider what might happen if we repaired the Cartesian split, disavowed the Platonic myth,
    subverted the Kantian paradigm, worked an end-around the Humean critique, chastised the
    confidence of the Traditionalists and pragmatized Analytic philosophy or not. Can we a priori
    dismiss all of the insights of old systems, even if they are otherwise seemingly mutually
    incommensurate or unintelligible? How can we a priori know which paradoxes are veridical,
    falsidical, conditional, antinomial? And whether or ignorance is grounded in temporary
    methodological constraints or some permanent ontological occulting?
    Honor philosophy by distinguishing it from science, not by its a priori character, not by
    suggesting that academic disciplines are divided (horizontally) by nature‘s carvable joints, but
    with the realization that such borders are drawn, rather, according to levels of abstraction
    (vertically)23.

    With Dionysius, we might recognize the apophatic character of all literal predications of God.

    With the Medievals, we might recognize the very weakly analogical, which is to say,
    metaphorical, nature of all kataphatic predications of God.

    With the Skeptics, we must recognize that even the most rigorously formulated god-concepts
    cannot compel assent in as much as they, at most, demonstrate the reasonableness of some faith
    formulations (which is not insignificant), at best, yield a Scottish verdict --- not proven, when
    subjected to the rigors of philosophical scrutiny.

    With Lombard, we can leverage our fundamental trust and radicalize it into an unapologetic
    and unqualified commitment to truth, beauty, goodness and unity, desisting, however, from any
    notion that we can absolutize our access to same as we convert our existential orientations
    toward these self-evident and intrinsically rewarding values into robustly, even if inchoate,
    theological imperatives.

    With Scotus, we can recognize our limitations in articulating any truly coherent principles that
    might demonstrably foreclose on all of our philosophical problems of beginning, whether of
    infinite regress, causal disjunctions, tautological self-reference and circularity; rather, we can
    only employ philosophy in the elucidation of our concepts, such as, for example, in Peirce‘s
    abduction of the Ens Necessarium and Occam‘s association of necessity with the divine order.

    This pansemioentheist stance positively resonates with Franciscan sensibilities and


    creation-sensitivities, especially with the radically incarnational perspective that took God‘s
    involvement with the cosmos as an eternally preordained given notwithstanding the popular and
    classical felix culpa theories. The soteriological efficacies remain, in any case.

    With Erasmus, we can affirm a minimalist deontology, following Adler‘s explication of


    Aristotle‘s ethics.

    With Locke, we can affirm the probabilistic elements of any assent, such as those involved
    in the preambles of faith, which establish, at least, epistemic parity with other interpretive
    systems vis a vis primal conditions, providing some epistemic virtue as must necessarily
    precede other normative justifications of assent, however strong or weak.

    23 See Rorty, Putnam, and the Pragmatist View of Epistemology and Metaphysics by Teed
    Rockwell at http://users.sfo.com/~mcmf/rorty.html
    With Hume, we can recognize the problems that inhere in our informal logic and inference.

    With Kant, we might gain an appreciation of the putative immanentist and transcendentalist
    natures of divine interactivity, but we best temper any overly optimistic theological
    anthropology with the recognition that, as radically social animals, optimal realization of human
    values requires the successful institutionalization of Lonerganian conversions.

    With Hegel, we can form an inchoate panentheistic vision.

    With Freud, Marx, Feuerbach and Nietzsche, we gain an invaluable assist in our efforts to
    dispatch, as per Emerson, the half-gods, that God might then arrive.

    With Kierkegaard, we can better recognize the radical nature of our trust.

    With Newman, we can recognize, in our grammars of assent, the cumulative nature of
    otherwise independent probabilities, reminiscent of Peirce‘s description of a rather strong cable
    made from otherwise intertwined weak strands, or filaments of belief, all consistent with a
    nonfoundational, fallibilistic approach.

    With James, then, we‘ll assert our will to believe (however firmly or tentatively) or assent
    (however strongly or weakly) based on those concerns that are vital and ultimate (Tillich) and
    existentially forced upon us.

    With Dewey, we will sociologize philosophy rather than merely philosophize


    sociology.

    With Peirce, we will cash out the value of our conceptions considering only such options as are
    epistemically and normatively live (James) and dutifully ordered toward such human value-
    realizations (Neville) as best foster human authenticity (Lonergan) as measured in terms of
    intellectual, affective, moral, sociopolitical and religious conversions (Gelpi‘s Lonerganian
    account).

    With Peirce, we might recognize the distinction between philosophical argumentation


    (discursive and dialectical analyses, both inductive and deductive) and the philosophical
    argument, itself (the product of abduction).

    With Wittgenstein, we can gain a self-awareness of our language games and how they implicitly
    entail normative criteria for justification of beliefs, our everyday beliefs as well as distinctly
    religious beliefs, again, our informal logic, if you will.
    With Haldane, we can recognize that religious faith resembles the unprovable but incorrigible
    first principles, which make science possible, which establishes a modicum of epistemic parity
    between scientific descriptions and religious interpretations, while also recognizing that
    philosophical naturalism is not entailed by methodological naturalism.

    With Haack, we might recognize that while philosophy and science are not distinguishable,
    horizontally, by carvable joints in reality, they do, nonetheless differ in their approach,
    vertically, by levels of abstraction.

    And so, with Murphy, we might recognize the differences between science and theology in terms
    of degrees and not in kind, hence affirming our assertion that one epistemological shoe fits all
    philosophical feet.

    We have now demonstrated that the history of philosophy 24 can be viewed in terms of various
    over- and under-emphases that result in various fetishes or absolutizations. Different aspects of
    the singular, integral act of value-realization --- descriptive, normative, interpretive and
    evaluative --- have been treated as autonomous modes of value-realization.

    Let us issue a cautionary note here. When we say beyond rationality and speak of the
    transrational, we are recognizing that, in addition to the empirical, logical, practical and
    prudential, there are also nonrational and relational aspects to human value-realizations; and it
    is only because we are finite and fallible that we must necessarily fallback on what are weaker
    truth-indicative signs (like defeasible inference, symmetry, parsimony and usefulness, for
    example) and cannot otherwise rely solely on the more robustly truth-conducive operations like
    empirical observation and logical demonstration. We must first exhaust our best truth-
    conducive efforts before relying on truth-indicative signs (as fallible tie-breakers); and we must
    keep all of these modeling power attempts very integrally related even as we respect the
    autonomy of their different methodologies. In summary, we must distinguish between our
    theories of truth and our tests of truth.

    Norming Actionable Knowledge

    One practical upshot of this consideration, in our view, seems to be that epistemology is
    epistemology is epistemology. There need not be one epistemological scheme for one human
    value-realization and yet other schemes for other value-realizations. This is not to deny different
    integrally-related yet otherwise autonomous methodologies with their specific axioms suited for
    distinct value-commitments. This is to suggest that the different strategies for norming
    actionable knowledge, belief or assent should not involve the raising and lowering of some

    24 The historical basis for this biographical excursus was drawn from an article by James
    Swindal of
    Duquesne University, which is entitled, Faith and Reason, as accessible in the Internet
    Encyclopedia of Philosophy at http://www.iep.utm.edu/f/faith-re.htm
    mythical epistemic bar, one suitable to the evidentialists, another for different fideists and yet
    another for so-called reformed epistemologies.

    A committed fallibilist doesn‘t shorten or lengthen the field of epistemic play, does not move the
    epistemic goal posts for this type of human endeavor but not another, does not variously place
    high and low hurdles, or even none at all, around the epistemic track basing such maneuvers on
    the type of value being pursued. Rather, one runs as far as one can, jumps whatever hurdles are
    there, high or low, pursuing one‘s value-realization goals with singular purpose, taking from
    reality what it offers today and returning tomorrow to see what it may hold. If one gains
    knowledge, wonderful, forms a firm belief, great, or can only develop a weak assent, oh well.
    One simply must act and one simply must norm such action and justify it based on one‘s
    fundamental trust in uncertain reality (Kung), one‘s recognition of certain incorrigible first
    principles and one‘s legitimate aspirations to realize the best and the most of humankind‘s
    entire evaluative continuum, which is to say, robustly employing all manner of aesthetic,
    pragmatic and prudential criteria.

    Whatever attitude of trust or assent, whatever act of will or commitment, one might recognize
    that, while all integrally-related value-pursuits have rational and irrational aspects, out of
    fidelity to and trust of uncertain reality, itself, human intellectual pursuits must be
    transrational, which is to say, always and necessarily, going beyond mere rationality but never
    without it.

    Hermeneutical Approaches – epistemically indeterminate and semantically and ontologically


    vague phenomenological approaches

    intersubjective
    intraobjective
    intrasubjective
    interobjective

    While the respective methodologies of these different aspects of value-realization are indeed
    autonomous, they are otherwise relativized by being intellectually-related even if not strictly
    logically-related. The same thing has happened with our different hermeneutical approaches ---
    intrasubjective, interobjective, intraobjective and intersubjective --- as they have alternately
    been privileged, one over the next, rather than integrally-related as complementary vantage
    points, all contributing to each human value-pursuit.

    Anthropological Outlook –

    existential orientations and humanistic imperatives as Lonergan‘s conversions; minimalistic


    realisms: semiotic, aesthetical, moral and metaphysical; Kung‘s nowhere anchored and
    paradoxical trust in uncertain reality; practical nihilism of strong and weak agnosticisms,
    nontheisms and speculative atheism
    Natural Theology – abduction of the Ens Necessarium; weak realisms: semiotic, aesthetical,
    moral and metaphysical; Kung‘s justified fundamental trust in uncertain reality; deism, theisms

    co
    m
    mu
    nity
    cre
    ed
    cult
    cod
    e

    The Semantical Perspective of Natural Theology

    Our methods precede our systems. We can successfully reference realities we have not yet
    successfully described. We can model realities we have not yet fully explained. We can partially
    apprehend
    (intelligibly) realities we have not yet fully comprehended. We can thus apprehend, reference
    and model a reality, even if we cannot otherwise comprehend, describe or explain that reality.
    However, we cannot a priori know whether our lack of comprehension, description or
    explanation drives from temporary methodological constraints, from a permanent ontological
    occulting, or some combination of same.

    Faced with such epistemic indeterminacy and ontological vagueness, we must retreat into a
    semantical vagueness. This semantical strategy thus prescinds from any robustly metaphysical
    approach to a more modest and tentative phenomenological perspective. Our modal ontological
    categories of the possible, actual and necessary change to possible, actual and probable. Our
    application of first principles then varies from one modal category to the next such that 1) both
    noncontradiction and excluded middle hold for actualities, while, 2) for possibilities,
    noncontradiction folds and excluded middle holds, and 3) for probabilities, noncontradiction
    holds and excluded middle folds. Possibilities thus differ from probabilities in that the former
    are overdetermined and the latter are underdetermined.

    The necessary, or necessity, is an analytic concept, while the other categories refer to synthetic
    concepts derived from human experience and psychological expectations. The practical upshot
    of all this is that when an overdetermined, epistemic indeterminacy, as epistemology, models an
    underdetermined, ontological vagueness, as ontology, we cannot aspire to a robustly
    metaphysical comprehension of such a reality and can neither successfully describe nor explain
    such a reality using robustly theoretic concepts. Rather, we can only reference and model such a
    reality using indeterminate and vague heuristic concepts. One might consider our theoretic
    concepts as those that have already been negotiated by a community of inquiry, while our
    heuristic concepts are those still-in-negotiation.
    This consideration is methodological and semantical, an analytic and not a synthetic account of
    human signification, a semiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce, which Scotus, and maybe even
    Pseudo-Dionysius, anticipated, inchoately, such as with Scotus' univocity of being and formal
    distinction and Dionysius' neoplatonic logic? In this order of knowing and signifying
    (designating), we might say, with Wittgenstein, that we can distinguish our discourse about
    THAT things are from our discourse about HOW things are, such that we not confuse a
    successful reference with a successful description, a successful model with a successful
    explanation. This approximates the Scotistic quid-quale distinction although the quid is yet to be
    described. .One might refer to the reality of God, for example, by referencing God as a vague
    cause, a cause proper to such effects, a substance proper to such accidents, as could not be
    predicated of any other known causes. Thus we would have an existential statement involving
    universals, a meaningful statement because its predicates (effects and accidents) have a referent.
    Univocity of thatness, like necessity, is a logical or analytic concept. Apophasis is involved here
    to the extent we are literally saying, for example, not this cause and not that one and not any
    other cause known to us vis a vis primal realities. These semantical rubrics apply for all
    speculative sciences, for example, both metaphysics and theoretical physics, as well as natural
    theology.

    As one's investigation proceeds, turning from a semantical perspective to an ontological


    consideration, which requires the equivocity of howness, we invoke the subset of equivocity ---
    analogy, and the different subsets of analogy, like metaphor (weak analogues), in our God-talk,
    and also in metaphysics and the speculative sciences. Kataphasis and apophasis are involved
    here, both sharing the positive epistemic valence of increasing our descriptive accuracy (beyond
    mere successful reference), describing what something is or is not like. Apophasis can also serve
    in our devising of coherent concepts for formal argumentation, such as in modal ontological
    arguments, where negative predications can serve to guarantee conceptual compatibility of
    concepts used in an argument and also to avoid parody of an argument. Kataphasis may also, of
    course, aspire to robust literal explanations, and maybe even full theoretic comprehension, for
    those realities that are more epistemically determinable and more ontologically precise.

    At any rate, the divorce of our semantics from our ontologies is thrust upon us by different
    encounters with different realities insofar as they are variously overdetermined and
    underdetermined, epistemically indeterminate or ontologically vague. Not having normalized
    our accounts of gravity and quantum mechanics, much less primal reality, itself, Christianity
    remains in search of a metaphysic (Whitehead) but, happily, has thrived and will continue to
    thrive, enjoying a more or less phenomenological perspective. An ontological question still begs
    regarding God's transcendence and the analogy of being, metaphysically speaking, and it is that
    of causal disjunction. How can any reality enjoy a causal efficacy upon another reality if related
    only as a weak analogue or metaphor? Must there not be a matrix of interrelated causes and
    effects holding reality together?And might that be a Divine Matrix (Joe Bracken)? Might the
    neoplatonists have an insight into this vast intraobjective identity of all realities from which
    emerges our grand intersubjective intimacies with one another and Reality in a vague
    participatory way?
    Might this support, if not a more epistemically determinate and ontologically precise
    panentheism, a more phenomenologically indeterminate and imprecise panSEMIOentheism, to
    which we can successfully refer even if not robustly describe?

    We needn't reject analogy within the order of being itself, for it is necessary to increase our
    descriptive accuracy of realities, both determinate and indeterminate, both vague and precise.
    But is mere analogy also sufficient?

    Robert Cummings Neville25 writes:


    I maintain the controversial view that although we are responsible for our own actions
    insofar as they result from our decisions our decisions are also part of the overall singular
    creative act of God, and thus God and we are both authors of those actions in appropriately
    different senses." Issues of consistency and coherence aside, how does the experience of God
    bear upon this? Surely God is sometimes experienced as external, and we sometimes
    experience the perversity of our hearts, if not our moral successes, as being both non-divine
    and in opposition to God. But surely also we sometimes experience the loss of self, its
    evaporation, in the singular act of God, with the consequence that personal identity, including
    negative (or positive) moral identity, is trivialized and all is appreciated as a divine movement
    beyond good, evil, or personal significance. The constant fight against antinomianism in
    nearly all religions testifies to the latter kind of experience. I don't know which is most basic of
    the two experiences, but my theory allows for both and the process theory for only the first.
    Process theology in the long run is hostile to mysticism.

    A Peircean pansemioentheism, relying on Peirce‘s concept of thirdness (habits, regularities,


    axiological realities), would take a firm pneumatological stance in accord with a neoplatonic
    participatory schema. In the final analysis though, one cannot mend the causal disjunction
    problem onto-theologically, because, to the extent reality presents as an ongoing fugue between
    pattern and paradox, order and chaos, the random and systematic, we cannot a priori know and
    do not a posteriori yet know whether reality‘s regularities emerged from chaos and contingency
    or from order and consistency insofar as probabilities occupy something of a middle ground
    leaving us to wonder about their primal origin and whether or not we inhabit a glorious
    contingency or grand probability. In the end, our hermeneutical turn, metaphysically, is a theo-
    ontology, an account of primal reality that enjoys epistemic parity with competing accounts and
    which then invokes the equiplausibility principle, which leverages our minimalist realisms into
    more robust but still critical realisms going beyond mere satisficing and survival values to
    ultimate concerns and meanings.

    In addition to the semantical, univocal predication of being between Creator and creatures, also
    ontologically, in order for there to be any meaningful interactivity between the Uncreated and
    created, we can only suspect that there is some metaphysical reality that could, in principle, be

    25 Confer Robert Cummings Neville in AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY &


    PHILOSOPHY Vol. 18 NO.3 September 1997 REPLY TO SERIOUS CRITICS 281: 16 See
    Soldier. Sage. Saint (New York: Fordham University Press, 1978), chapter 5.
    univocally predicated of both Creator and creatures, even as we concede that, for all practical
    purposes, the epistemically determinate and ontologically precise nature of such a reality could
    be grasped only through special revelation. Our guess is that it would be described semiotically
    and would involve an otherwise ineluctably unobtrusive but still utterly efficacious tacit
    dimension, which invites us, kenotically, per ardu ad astra, ad veritatem per caritatem. For our
    God is a gentlemanly suitor, Who would not force His way; neither timid nor coy, She
    seductively and patiently pursues us.

    Abduction of the Reality of the Ens Necessarium & Its Modal Ontological Proof

    Peirce's rejection of the notion that firstness and secondness could robustly
    account for the world as we know it, in my view, marks his retreat into
    ontological and semantical vagueness. To describe reality in terms of alternating
    pattern and paradox, chance and necessity, order and chaos, random and
    systematic, does seem rather question begging.

    It is also true that, nowhere, do we observe necessity in reality; necessity


    everywhere eludes us. It is equally true that human kind cannot avoid the
    inference of the necessary; necessity everywhere suggests itself. Like Polanyi's
    tacit dimension, necessity may be closer to us than we are to ourselves.

    It is at this juncture that humankind's Abduction of the


    Reality of the Ens Necessarium
    emerges and that the Peircean triadic semiotic straddles the unable to model in
    terms of ―knowing more than we can say,‖ which, as we noted, consists of both
    phenomenal knowledge and subdoxastic propositional knowledge. We might ask
    how we make the leap between the subdoxastic and the doxastic, learning how to
    talk about what we previously experienced in less than full conscious awareness,
    learning how to model at least one part of our internal milieu, which had
    previously eluded our symbolic grasp. We‘d suppose the simple answer is that we
    likely gather more symbols and learn from serious self-reflection and self-critique
    (employing our inferential triad) and from exposure to others‘ ideas regarding
    same, whether in dialogue or through reading and study.

    But this does not speak at all to why it is we cannot seem to successfully model
    our phenomenal knowledge and cannot successfully communicate it to others,
    language-independent as it is. We can make the analytical observation and voice
    the reason tautologically: We cannot talk about it because it is language-
    independent. We cannot model it because it is symbol-independent. But
    neuroscience can gift us with enough synthetic knowledge to infer that the more
    phylogenetically primitive brain areas are not involved in the distributive
    language function. That information is just not presented to our propositional
    biosemiotic heuristic.
    Still, what do the apes lack, even in part, regarding their internal and external
    milieus and what do we possess regarding our internal milieu, which allows us to
    successfully relate our symbolic manipulations to one another through language,
    gifting one another with our inferential output, for better and worse, forming and
    deforming and reforming and transforming our paradigms, socially and
    culturally?

    Obviously, the apes must lack symbols for both their internal and external
    milieus. And, as we mentioned previously, they also lack our new brain areas.

    When it comes to that part of our own internal milieu that is language-
    independent, it seems that we lack more than symbols. We cannot model our own
    non-symbolic internal milieu because our model would lack the stomach that
    does the aching is all. We‘d need to rig up another stomach in vitro and attach it
    to our brain stem in order to fully model a stomachache, even if we did have
    symbolic facilities and connections to and from our more phylogenetically
    primitive brain areas.

    The question still begs as to how selection pressures interacted with which
    specific behaviors, however rudimentary. We got something new, propositional,
    biosemiotic heuristics, from nothing but phenomenal, biosemiotic algorithms.

    Maybe a Siamese Twinned ape developed two pairs of furrowed brows every time
    it got a stomach ache and two pairs of furrowed brows and a couple of winces
    every time it got constipated and symbolic communication was born as the two
    ape heads gazed knowingly into one another‘s eyes, thus bridging the
    phenomenal-propositional chasm, crossing the epistemological Rubicon. And
    although this bridge was not subject to selection pressure regarding the internal
    milieu of animals, the symbolic communication regarding the external milieu (re:
    each other‘s facial expressions) was the rudimentary prototype of inferential
    facility and, once it was aped throughout their society, language born as
    constipated apes not only furrowed their brows and winced, but also let out loud
    moans. (Levity intended; this should have heuristic value even if no humor.) In
    all seriousness, if brain structure differences (between us and higher primates,
    but see
    Caveat below) are pretty darned clear, how big a leap is it to think behavioral
    differences (necessarily or probably) were not far behind, adaptively significant to
    this day, perhaps, assuming we don‘t use the phylogenetically new-found facility
    toward the end of effecting a nuclear holocaust, prior to the near-inevitable
    ecological whimper. No need for ghosts. No talk of machines.

    Emergent processes involve remembering. But all novelty requires some type of
    forgetting. What is lost is information. What is gained is complexity, that is if and
    when selection pressures thus foster rather than eliminate same. This is true in
    1st, 2nd & 3rd order emergence - thermodynamics, morphodynamics &
    teleodynamics and especially semiotic processes.

    Think of instincts as very strict algorithmic feedback-loops and learning &


    memory as closed electro-chemical circuits, neuronal structures where sensations
    & perceptions are physically stored. A genetically-induced disruption or short-
    circuiting of these loops during development could have resulted in physical dis-
    locations of these stored sensations, which could have produced a phenomenal
    experience wherein properties of a given perceived reality were dissociated from
    that entity in memory such that, for example, the redness of an apple became a
    physical memory distinct from the apple, itself. Dissociate enough properties
    from different entities and, sooner than later, phenomenal experience presented
    the individual not only with what were mostly accurate sensations, perceptions &
    memories but also with manifestly inaccurate impressions of reality, which
    became "models" of reality that competed with actual reality & memories when it
    came to eliciting behavioral responses, on which selection pressures were
    exerted. These models of reality became constellations of icons, indexes and
    symbols --- or imag-ination, which hosted possibilities in addition to actualities
    and which also re-cognized the relative regularity with which such possibilities
    and actualities were paired or not. The individual's behavioral repertoire became
    much more plastic, versatile and adaptive. Mistakes were thus opportunistically
    parlayed into survival advantages. Those mistakes now have many names In
    addition to grunts and groans and winces): predicates, subjects, analogies,
    metaphors, models and so on (hallucinations, delusions, dreams, etc). It's
    difficult to imagine a world without them. But they also make it easier to imagine
    worlds that are not real.

    Baldwinian evolution suggests an account where downward causation can be


    effective but without violating physical causal closure. We think the Peircean
    semiotic realism is a much more robust account and that nuance matters greatly.

    We have come, full circle:

    Biosemiotic heuristics X (Environment X Biosemiotic Algorithms) --> Behavior


    Propositional Knowledge X (Environment X Phenomenal Knowledge) -->
    Behavior

    The philosophic mediates between the paradigmatic and positivistic to inform


    praxis.

    Some Caveats:
    Per Deacon: Surface morphology and underlying brain functions are not directly
    correlated in most cases. If we project at least minimal symbolic capacity
    back to more recent, phylogenetically-related primates, increased brain size and
    language acquisition may be as much effects of language-acquisition as its causes.

    Grene & Depew address the complex interaction and mutual feedback among a
    whole variety of factors in the relatively sudden emergence of language.

    Complexity is good to keep in mind re: genes, memes, symbols, language,


    coevolution. They must not be wrenched from their context in the whole and
    swollen to madness in their isolation (to reapply CS Lewis). Or, from
    Wittgenstein: One might almost say that these foundation-walls are carried by
    the whole house. (So much for skyhooks. So much for cranes.)

    To equate cognition only with algorithmic or rule-governed computation is the


    computational fallacy. It is what it is in humans only in relationship to
    pragmatic and semiotic realities.

    To characterize genes as active agents or selfish or purposeful is an unhelpful


    shorthand. They gain their significance only in the context of the same dynamical
    semiotic and pragmatic realities. (Dawkins didn‘t literally misconceive this,
    himself).

    To equate memes only with replicators, as if they were analogous to parasites, is


    to isolate them outside of the dynamical semiotic and pragmatic realities that
    they should presuppose and is the memetic fallacy26. (Dawkins did commit this
    fallacy.)

    The same is true for human inferential heuristics. They are irreducibly triadic --
    abduction, induction and deduction, each presupposing the other in the overall
    context of the same dynamical semiotic and pragmatic realities.

    None of these considerations conclude anything ―ontological‖ about ―the mind.‖


    However, the inference to the best explanation is probably naturalistic and
    wouldn‘t require the introduction of new primitives to space, time, matter and
    energy (like consciousness, for instance). But we could be wrong. And that is
    okay. We are fallibilists.

    26 See: The trouble with memes (and what to do about it) by Deacon on Arisbe.
    If this heuristic has as its goal, the successful referencing of a reality even as
    successful descriptions of same elude us, then, we know that our project, from it's
    outset, does not ambition a robust explanatory adequacy. In order to successfully
    refer to the modal category of the necessary, we must turn to modal logic, itself.
    As we turn to modal logic, we begin to straddle ontological vagueness and
    metaphysics, or ontology with a capital "O."

    Many caveats and qualifiers will thus pertain to the framing of the argument,
    taking the Peircean concept and abduction from argument into formal
    argumentation. As we straddle ontological vagueness and ontology, semantical
    vagueness will begin to give way to careful parsing and rigorous disambiguation.

    Thus the argument must:

    1) employ suitable predication (equivocal, univocal or analogical);


    2) employ concepts that reflect the guaranteed conceptual compatibility of the
    different properties that they describe using only apophatic
    predication (increase of descriptive accuracy sought through negation, i.e.
    literally, what a reality is not like, analogically, or is NOT, literally);

    3) employ concepts that reflect the guaranteed conceptual compatibilities of


    different properties via the logical impossibility of their coinstantiation;
    4) employ a grammar of the modal category of the actual (where
    noncontradiction and excluded middle both must hold); and 5) not lend itself
    to parody yielding the absurd.

    None of this is to suggest that that which has been essentially defined employing
    only negative properties would not also be compatible, accidentally, with some
    positive properties. It is to claim logical consistency for our essential
    definition/concept of a reality when that reality has been essentially defined
    using only negative properties, then meeting another criterion, which is that it is
    not logically impossible to coinstantiate these properties.

    Using this logic of positive and negative terms, it follows that our definition
    cannot entail any conceptually incompatible attributes. Such an argument is not
    only valid but its reasoning is immune to parody using positive properties.
    Parody using additional negative properties can succeed but not against a concept
    with positive predicates that are analogical.

    Heidegger's question: "Why is there not rather nothing?" has been rendered a
    pseudo-question by those who'd employ an eliminativist strategy of considering
    "nothing" a conceptual reification, accusing all, who take existence to be a
    predicate of being, of a meaningless tautology. Indeed, not even Aquinas thought
    that natural philosophy could determine, absent positive revelation, whether or
    not nature itself was eternal. The tautology may, nevertheless, be sound; it simply
    does not add new information to any of our systems.
    Heidegger's existential question is better framed in terms of cosmological and
    ontological speculation: "Why is there not rather something else?"

    In this sense, clearly the reframed question does not refer to emergent realities
    per se but what might be described, rather, as the aegis of their initial conditions
    and boundary conditions, which, derivatively, even if analytically and
    tautologically, ground all of the "something elses" that have emerged from these
    "nothing buts" of a primal aegis and its initial conditions, aegis and initial being
    rather loaded terms, at best, otherwise totally question begging, to say the least.
    This Primal Nothing But, if taken as brute fact, has an occulted ad intra nature to
    it and is just a given. The initial conditions and boundary conditions ensuing
    under its aegis would have an ad extra nature discernible as the ensuing
    Something Else of emergent realities.

    Any such Ens Necessarium should, at a minimum, then, possess at least the
    following conceptually compatible properties27 (all meeting the above-listed
    criteria). It should be non-contingent and non-dependent. The proof of a
    suitably predicated aegis with initial conditions and boundaries might be thus: 1)
    Either the putative reality of the modally necessary, i.e. the non-contingent and
    non-dependent, is logically necessary or logically impossible. 2) It is not the case
    that this putative reality of the modally necessary, i.e. the non-contingent and
    non-dependent, is logically impossible. 3) The reality of a non-contingent and
    non-dependent aegis of initial conditions and boundary conditions is logically
    necessary.

    Now, pursuant to this assertion: This Primal Nothing But, if taken as brute
    fact, has an occulted ad intra nature to it and is just a given. The initial
    conditions and boundary conditions ensuing under its aegis would have an ad
    extra nature discernible as the ensuing Something Else of emergent realities.

    Given the Ens Necessarium, however occulted its inner nature of non-
    contingency and non-dependency, one might properly infer something of its ad
    extra nature from its ensuing emergent realities. The properties of any such
    nature would have to be argued with the same modal logic and they must be
    guaranteed as conceptually compatible in the same way as those of the Ens
    Necessarium. What has been proven, thus far, is the reality of a) a demiurge b)
    deism c) creatio continua d) a panentheism lacking nuance or some such reality
    with a capital ―R.‖

    27 To go beyond that, see Christopher McHugh's modal ontological formulation,


    which we relied on, above, at
    http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/doug_krueger/krueger-mchugh/mchugh1.shtml
    Now, mind you, Peirce considers argumentation for God (such as our syllogism)
    a fetish and would have us desist from same, stopping with our abduction, our
    argument (distinguished from argumentation per CSP). But, taking heart from
    both Godel and Hartshorne, and inspiration from Christopher McHugh, we
    simply could not desist.

    Alas, our project is undertaken as poetry and not really prose. Who would write
    prose like this?

    No, what is going on, introspectively, is well characterized by Chris Southgate


    who writes:

    “David Daiches suggests five strategies for the religious poet.


    He/she may: address God, tell the reader about God, recount a
    visionary experience, find God through the workings of nature, or
    lastly agonize about God‟s existence. The Divina Commedia in his
    opinion alternates „in a most remarkable way between the visionary
    and the almost pedantically explanatory‟. And so too Four Quartets,
    though being written in the age of Russell and Wittgenstein rather
    than that of Aquinas, Eliot‟s sequence approaches its religious task
    in a profoundly oblique way.”

    Somewhere in these pages, one will find all of that, we hope.

    More About This Ens Necessarium

    Like Daniel Dennett, who wrote Consciousness Explained, but who, otherwise
    contrastingly, has a militantly atheistic stance, many unwittingly conflate one's
    ability to successfully refer to certain realities with one's ability to describe
    them (which requires a measurable degree of explanatory adequacy). In a
    nutshell, then, one must avoid "proving too much." One diagnosis for this
    illicit move is this: In one's arguments, one will substitute "the necessary" in
    place of "the probable." And fallibility then gets sacrificed on the altar of
    epistemological hubris.

    One thing has been impressed upon us, lately, as we systematically work through
    the modal categories of possible, actual and probable with their underlying
    grammars; there can be no ontology with a capital "O" until we abduct the reality
    of the necessary. Without the modal category of the necessary, our
    metaphysics cannot transcend mere phenomenology and our systems
    cannot transcend mere heuristic devices.

    There is an inescapably ineffable quality, though, to such a reality as would be


    necessary and it would have, in principle, an occulted ad intra nature (for
    nowhere in observable reality does the necessary present, insofar as all appears
    radically contingent). It's ad extra nature presents everywhere in observable
    reality as the deepest and most persistent human abduction of the reality of the
    necessary, which grounds our common sense understandings of causation and all
    other (sub)doxastic realities, i.e. first principles and other unjustified
    foundational presuppositions. This abduction is the foundation of the
    pneumatological imagination and one's first encounter with the Creator
    Spirit. Properly formed and nurtured, well, let's just say that, all manner of
    efficacious orthopraxis will ensue as reality is then perceived as an arena of
    pervasive intentionality.

    The economic Trinity is indeed the immanent Trinity (but maybe not vice versa).
    To do Ontology is to do Theology because there can be no successful reference to
    the reality of the necessary that is not predicated using the same modal
    ontological arguments as Godel, Hartshorne and Christopher McHugh. (And we
    see this realization dawning on
    Stephen Hawking in an inchoate fashion.) This is to maintain that, when scientists speak of
    initial conditions and boundary conditions in terms of brute facts, they have implicitly argued
    for the modal category of the necessary, which is inescapably an argument for the reality of the
    Ens Necessarium, which can be predicated as, at least, nothing less than an un-nuanced deism,
    which prepares the philosophical soil for positive theology.

    There can be no criticism of this minimalist theism from a systems perspective.


    Like radically deconstructive postmodernism, which was a critique but could not
    comprise a system, the atheistic critique must either come from a practical
    nihilism, which is naught but a manner of living and which articulates no system,
    or from a systematic monism, whether materialist or idealist, which can only be
    atheistic or pantheistic. Such accounts, however, in aspiring to system status,
    must abduct, at least implicitly, the reality of the necessary. This is required, even
    if only, to successfully refer to those systems' boundary conditions, such as, for
    example, for an eternally oscillating multiverse. Otherwise, those accounts must
    flounder in incoherency. An oscillating multiverse, from a pantheistic
    perspective, cannot coherently be described solely in terms of probabilities and
    contingencies but must invoke the radically other, ens necessarium, if only to
    successfully refer to the reality asserted as "the oscillating." This is all to suggest
    that atheism and pantheism, as systems, are incoherent, or, at least, ignorant of
    their own implicit presuppositions. (They are unconsciously competent pan-en-
    theists.)

    Thus, there are only three options: 1) remain a respectful ontological silence like
    some Buddhists and inhabit merely phenomenological perspectives employing
    merely heuristic devices 2) abduct the reality of the ens necessarium like most
    major traditions or 3) live out the consequences of an unmitigated nihilism with
    Kung's nowhere anchored and paradoxical trust in uncertain reality, unequipped
    with a system (because a materialist monism, of any stripe, cannot coherently do
    ontology with a capital "O" without, in principle, expanding science's modal
    categories of possible, actual and probable to include the necessary).

    There you go. We just "proved" God. Actually, we have just suggested that all
    coherent systematic accounts must be either deistic, theistic or panentheistic. The
    other alternative is to bark at all metaphysical passersby and to nihilistically howl
    at the moon, resorting to epistemological and ontological realisms only when it is
    time for supper and one is looking for one's bowl. McHugh‘s proof, cited above, is
    a grand exercise in apophatic theology and formal argument (even formal
    symbolic logic). It is compelling and succeeds for those who buy into modal logic
    and its grammars. There is a Supreme Reality, an intentional reality. But is our
    love for Her unrequited? Will He love us in return? Theodicy issues emerge (but
    do not perdure, philosophically or theologically, only existentially.)

    McHugh notes that ―there are two ‗problems‘ of evil: 1) There is the theological
    problem, which is ‗Why does a good God allow evil?‘ 2) There is the
    philosophical problem, which is ‗Can the existence of evil be used as evidence
    against the existence of a good God?‘ ."

    If one can at all buy into our distinctions between methodological and
    philosophical naturalisms and between epistemological and ontological
    emergentist stances, which may be either open or closed, then let us suggest a
    way forward. Our own methodological naturalism and epistemological
    emergentism represent provisional closures toward such a metaphysical realism
    as can only be supported, via strict empirical observation, by such a
    phenomenological stance as is characterized by my heuristic of ontological,
    semantical and epistemic vagueness. We described ontological and semantical
    vagueness hereinabove. Epistemic vagueness presents either through
    methodological constraints or through such a putative natural occulting as might
    occur, for example, as we approach T=0 of the Big Bang or peer into the deepest
    structures of matter.

    Bias for Methodological Naturalism?

    We do well to look for our lost keys underneath the lamp post, for there is little
    hope of finding them in the dark. For some of us, that does not, at the same time,
    suggest that we have a priori decided where those keys may or may not be.

    The required steps forward, from a metatechnica to metaphysics, in our view,


    would take one from phenomenology to ontology and from a heuristic device to a
    system. One way of making this move would be to adopt some type of root
    metaphor to describe reality. But there is an intermediate step and it is not that
    complicated on paper. All one has to do is to change one's modal ontological
    categories from possible, actual and probable to possible, actual and necessary.
    Is such a move warranted? Nowhere do we observe necessity in reality; necessity
    everywhere eludes us (as contingency apparently rules observable reality). It is
    also true, however, that humankind cannot seem to avoid the inference of the
    necessary; necessity everywhere suggests itself.

    What about what some have referred to as the aegis of initial conditions and
    boundary conditions? Could these conditions, non-contingent and
    nondependent, and by some taken to be brute facts, be logically necessary? What
    question might they answer?

    Heidegger's question: "Why is there not rather nothing?" has been rendered a
    pseudo-question by those who'd employ an eliminativist strategy of considering
    "nothing" a conceptual reification, accusing all, who take existence to be a
    predicate of being, of a meaningless tautology. Indeed, not even Aquinas thought
    that natural philosophy could determine, absent positive revelation, whether or
    not nature itself was eternal. The tautology may, nevertheless, be sound; it simply
    does not add new information to any of our systems.

    Heidegger's existential question is better framed in terms of cosmological and


    ontological speculation: "Why is there not rather something else?"

    And this is the question that, perhaps, begs for a modal ontological argument of
    the necessary, which would be non-contingent and non-dependent.

    Sound or not, the argument would, in my view, articulate a valid philosophical


    inference. One would not have a TOE, at this point. One would not even have a
    strict ontology but would have the validation of metaphysics as a project,
    ontology as a respectable ambition. The modal category of the necessary would be
    logically necessary.

    This describes a move forward beyond the categories of the merely


    phenomenological and the merely heuristic to the more robustly ontological and
    robustly systematic. It affirms that there are many metaphysical blanks to be
    filled in. It acknowledges that many have already been filled in and that there is
    great promise for even more to be filled in. It also recognizes that many blanks
    remain blank and will likely remain so for quite some time.

    This rejects the excessive epistemological humility of a radically deconstructive


    postmodernism and the excessive epistemological hubris of Enlightenment
    fundamentalism. It is a Goldilocks epistemology . It is a tentative and fallible
    metaphysical approach that doesn't prove too much and doesn't exert
    unwarranted normative and prescriptive impetus on humankind's fallible but
    inexorable attempts to find its way forward.

    Now, mind you, we have not successfully described this putative reality, the
    necessary, but would only claim to have successfully referenced same.

    Analogically speaking, we might venture to say that it would in some ways be like
    our dictionary definition or be like our geometric concept, for example. It might
    even be like Polanyi's tacit dimension or Bohm's implicate order or what have
    you. We might thus speak of this reality's intelligibility even as we acknowledge
    it's regnant incomprehensibility.

    Trinitarian Theology – Christology, Patrology & Pneumatology

    Special Revelation – Transcendent Incarnational


    Christological Axiology

    Transcendence of Historical Tensions (past & future)


    Transcendence of Social & Cultural Tensions (individuals &
    institutions and competing, extrinsic values)
    Transcendence of Economic Tensions (needs & means)

    Transcendence of Political Tensions (coercion & freedom)

    Patrological Axiology

    Eschatology
    Ecclesiology & Theological Anthropology
    Institutionalized Christianity

    All of the great traditions and even indigenous religions are Spirit-animated
    human attempts to articulate truth in creed, celebrate beauty in cult or ritual,
    preserve goodness in code or law, and celebrate fellowship in community. They
    engage us, participatively, in myth, story-telling, song and symbol, addressing
    our most insistent longings and ultimate concerns. They all suffer tendencies for
    dogma to decay into dogmatism, ritual into ritualism, law into legalism and
    community into institutionalism, but all have also gifted humankind with
    authentically transformed individuals.

    Orthopraxy authenticates orthodoxy such that the efficacies of a religious


    approach would be reflected in how well it institutionalizes Lonergan‘s
    conversions (as expanded by Gelpi): intellectual, affective, moral, social-political
    and religious. At the same time, this is not to suggest that we can very easily
    gather and interpret such sociologic data in order to adjudicate which path(s)
    work(s) best.

    For its part:

    1) Christianity has a robustly self-critical, self-correcting prophetic tradition.

    2) Christianity has elements of a true myth.

    3) Even if other traditions or denominations enjoy a salvific efficacy via our own
    belief in a pneumatological inclusivity and even if one could live a life of
    abundance via an implicit faith, we might legitimately aspire, nonetheless, to a
    life of superabundance, to the most nearly perfect articulation, celebration,
    preservation & enjoyment of truth, beauty, goodness and unity available even
    if it is terribly problematic figuring out what that might be.

    4) Being on one path vs another might result in our moving more swiftly and with
    less hindrance on our ongoing journeys of conversion and transformation and
    we want to get this right out of genuine compassion for all.

    5) There may well be a dynamic in play of what is or is not developmentally-


    appropriate for one individual or another, even one culture or another, or
    even for humankind as a whole, different pages for different stages, so to
    speak.

    6) Christianity reveals a God inviting us into an ever more intimate and personal
    relationship.

    7) Jesus did not answer the philosophical and metaphysical questions of old or
    provide a well-worked out theodicy in response to Job and the psalmists or
    fully address our propositional concerns but responded to our deepest needs
    with Presence, both modeling and warranting a trust relationship with the
    Father and encouraging, even now, the same thru a Helper, the Spirit.

    8 ) The Resurrection Event may be hard to describe in historical detail or a


    metaphysical account of HOW but has an overwhelming impetus and significance
    for us insofar as we can be confidently assured THAT something happened and it
    is responsible for our being here together, now, in love.
    Regarding any notion of ―piping in God‖ or mediated God-experiences, in an
    incarnational view, we might see God coming to us and at us from many
    different angles and perspectives, using His creatures, indirectly, sometimes
    overwhelming us with Her Beauty more directly. It seems that we can recognize
    and affirm a sacramental economy that mediates presence, thanksgiving,
    reconciliation, healing and other gifts of God, while at the same time
    acknowledging that these very same gifts are available, variously directly and
    indirectly, sometimes more versus less mediated. As cocreators in a
    participatory unfolding, we are witnesses to and participants in a Divine
    Largesse that bowls us over from every angle.

    That said, we do want to avoid clericalism, institutionalism and other insidious


    -isms. There will likely be increasing numbers who will mindfully eschew and
    purposefully avoid institutional vehicles, as did Simone Weil. Many of these folks
    are authentic voices of prophetic protest, who don‘t just critique by walking away
    but who then articulate and live an alternative approach on its own terms and in
    a positive manner, which is to say not in solely an over against manner.

    At the same time, institutionalization is a natural response for humankind as


    radically social animals, a necessary evil in our temporal juridical realm of social,
    economic, political and cultural realities, which must employ civic coercion
    toward the end of fostering the common good. Even then, such coercion only
    legitimately extends to the maintenance of that aspect of the common good
    known as the public order.

    Our religious institutions are not ordered toward the juridical temporal realm,
    however, but are ordered to trans-temporal realities, which admit of no
    coercion. If, in our early religious formation, things are presented in an
    obligational mode, they are thus geared in a developmentally-appropriate way
    and religion will have, hopefully minimalistically, juridical functions and a
    somewhat coercive tone and tenor. If, later on our journey, we have not realized
    that religious realities, instead, belong to a much more aspirational mode of life
    and relationship, then we will have very much missed the whole point, which is
    that the essential nature of love, beyond early formation, knows nothing of
    coercion.

    In other words, when you came to your parents‘ table as a child, it may be that
    you were required and also that you would not have otherwise been fed. Coercion
    thus served a function and met your extrinsic needs. Hopefully, as you return to
    your parents‘ and grandparents‘ tables for Thanksgiving, it will be for personal
    not functional reasons, for the intrinsic rewards of being together and not
    because you were coerced or would otherwise not be fed!
    Sacramentology
    Liturgical Spirituality serves an erotic love

    The ―Collected Works of St. John of the Cross‖ translated by Kavanaugh &
    Rodriguez
    (ICS) has a Scriptural Index which reveals that Juan cited almost every book of
    the Old & New Testaments in his writings and the citations number somewhere
    between 800-1,000 bible references (we didn‘t count precisely, but that is a fair
    estimate)!

    It is easy to understand how new students of contemplative spirituality focus on,


    what is to them, the novelty of Juan‘s via negativa. One could err, however, by
    failing to take into account Juan‘s fidelity to Scripture, Sacraments, Liturgy and
    almost-Ignatian emphasis on ―God in All Things‖ and almost-Franciscan
    emphasis on creation. (How‘s that for a litany of kataphatic modalities?)

    Denis Read OCD, an ICS member, calls Juan the ―liturgical mystic‖ and
    sanjuanist spirituality ―liturgical spirituality‖. In addition to Juan‘s love and
    fidelity to Scripture, to the Eucharist (one of greatest personal trials in prison in
    Toledo was not being able to celebrate Eucharist) and to the other sacraments
    (strong emphasis on reconciliation), Juan quoted the Church‘s liturgical books
    liberally, including hymns, antiphons of the Liturgy of the Hours – Divine Office,
    Roman Ritual, etc!

    Richard Hardy, PhD in ―Embodied Love in John of the


    Cross‖ states: “The question we must answer is whether
    John is espousing the goal of an ethereal, “purely
    spiritual” love, or rather an embodied love replete with
    sensuality and delight.”
    Juan‘s emphasis on nature, the imagery of his poetry, his relational imagery
    reveal a man overflowing with sensuality and delight! He is selling us on nothing
    less than Divine Eros and as Hardy says: “in the light of this erotic love
    challenges today‟s Christian to embrace a lifestyle that risks all for
    the sake of all.”

    The apophatic-kataphatic remains in a highly creative tension with Juan and gets
    resolved, not by emphasis on one mode versus the other, but rather by a
    rhythmicity, by Juan‘s recognition of God‘s every ―spiration‖ and by Juan‘s ―re‖-
    spiring in accordance with same. Juan does NOT move us away from sensory
    delight but to purified sensory delight. Juan does not negate the kataphatic
    devotion but moves us to transformed devotion.
    Sanjuanist liturgical mysticism is ―mysticism par excellence.‖

    In ―Open Mind, Open Heart,‖ Thomas Keating writes about


    aprophatic/kataphatic contemplation that there has sometimes been a
    misleading distinction suggesting opposition between the two, when, in fact, a
    proper preparation of the faculties
    (kataphatic practice) leads to apophatic contemplation, which in turn is sustained
    through appropriate kataphatic practices.

    To risk all for the sake of all … now that‟s something worth considering!

    Map-making & Story-telling – the twain shall meet

    Closely related to our liturgical reflections is story-telling.

    Oliver Sacks‟ book and movie, ―Awakenings‖, describes how brain-damaged


    individuals can be roused out of stupor by music and art when nothing else can
    reach them.

    Tony deMello spent his life teaching the importance of awareness versus
    analysis, of insight versus information, perhaps patterned after the founder of his
    order, St. Ignatius, who emphasized the need to ―taste‖ the truth versus merely
    ―knowing‖ the truth.

    From Amos Wilder: ―Imagination is a necessary component of all profound


    knowing
    and celebration … It is at the level of imagination that any full
    engagement with life takes place.‖

    From Morton Kelsey: ―God knew that human beings learn more by story and
    music, by art, symbols, and images than by logical reasoning, theorems, and
    equations, so God‘s deepest revelations have always been expressed in images
    and stories.‖

    Jamie Smith recently published Desiring the Kingdom, which a publisher‘s


    review describes as a focus on the themes of liturgy and desire: ‖Malls, stadiums,
    and universities are actually liturgical structures that influence and shape our
    thoughts and affections. Humans–as Augustine noted–are ―desiring agents,‖
    full of longings and passions; in brief, we are what we love.‖
    The lesson we take away, here, is that not only is our relationship with God
    shaped and influenced through story-telling, the manner in which we live,
    move and have our being in the world is also.

    Charles A. Coulombe writes of one of Catholicism‘s greatest story-tellers,


    J.R.R. Tolkien:

    ―It‘s been said that the dominant note of the traditional Catholic liturgy was
    intense longing. This is also true of her art, her literature, her whole life. It is a
    longing for things that cannot be in this world: unearthly truth, unearthly
    purity, unearthly justice, unearthly beauty. By all these earmarks, Lord of the
    Rings is indeed a Catholic work, as its author believed: But it is more. It is this
    age‘s great Catholic epic, fit to stand beside the Grail legends, Le Morte d‘Arthur
    and The Canterbury Tales. It is at once a great comfort to the individual
    Catholic, and a tribute to the enduring power and greatness of the Catholic
    tradition, that JRRT created this work. In an age which has seen an almost
    total rejection of the faith on the part of the Civilization she created . . . Lord of
    the Rings assures us, both by its existence and its message, that the darkness
    cannot triumph forever.‖
    Story-telling thus engages our concrete, imaginative & practical mind through
    our social imaginary, which can be thought of as the equivalent of hometown
    knowledge. Hometown knowledge is our experience of understanding how to get
    from home to school to the grocer‘s and back home. This nondiscursive
    participatory understanding is quite different from our propositional
    knowledge, which engages our abstract, conceptual & theoretical mind through
    our discursive map-making approach to reality.

    The difference between these complementary approaches to reality might best be


    appreciated as we think back on occasions in our lives when newcomers or
    strangers to our hometown stopped and asked us for directions. Have you ever
    had the uncomfortable experience of being asked for directions only to bumble
    and fumble and stumble and mumble your way to a helpful response? That‘s your
    story-telling ability trying to translate its understanding of into knowledge about
    using your map-making ability. It‘s not that we are never asked for directions by
    someone who otherwise shares our hometown knowledge, who shares our
    understanding of our local community. When they do, however, we experience
    the ease and facility of remaining in our story-telling mode without having to rely
    on our map-making skills (The new grocer‘s is behind the school).

    While most of us rely most heavily on our story-telling mode as we navigate


    reality together with others, whether in the classroom, living room or boardroom,
    all of us, at some time or another, must fall-back on our map-making and map-
    using mode of processing reality. Furthermore, it is a great curiosity to many that
    there are a few of us who, by temperament, are natural born map-makers. In fact,
    that is their default approach to reality. In other words, they primarily engage
    reality through their abstract, conceptual, theoretical mind employing mostly our
    propositional knowledge and map-making ability. If you ask them a question,
    they‘ll hand you a map (rest assured it‘s already been drawn) and it may even be a
    map of your hometown or your own backyard. And you will look at it with total
    fascination but utter bewilderment, unable to recognize the intricate
    representation of reality you‘ve been handed. And they‘ll look at you, gazing
    proudly at their marvelous creation, waiting for that aha moment of recognition
    on your face, a moment that, disappointingly and unfortunately, seldom seems to
    materialize.

    Now, we're using the image of a map, metaphorically, of course, to illustrate the
    map-maker‘s abstract, conceptual, theoretical approach to processing reality,
    which pervades both their spoken and written word, leaving others scratching
    their heads and talking about them behind their backs (if they‘re lucky). And this
    is being contrasted with story-telling, which has the ability to frustrate the map-
    makers as much as they frustrate others. You‘ve heard the old joke: I asked her
    for the time and she told me how to make a watch. Well, that pretty much
    summarizes how most map-makers experience most story-tellers.

    Soteriology

    Pneumatological Axiology

    Orienting
    Empowering & Sanctifying
    Healing

    Saving

    General Revelation – Immanent Indwelling


    Theology of Nature

    Yet Another Design Inference – telos properly conceived

    While we have seen a design inference regarding any particular reality that, in
    our view, makes for good science or good philosophy, at the same time, we very
    much affirm a design inference regarding reality as a whole. While the various
    ―proofs‖ of the reality of God are not empirically demonstrable or logically
    coercive, they raise valid questions that are left begging and they frame answers
    that, vis a vis other interpretive stances toward reality, are equiplausible.

    Modern semiotic science has reinvigorated notions of formal and final causation,
    which, for quite awhile, had been abandoned by science, which restricted its
    ambit to efficient causation. Notions of formal, final, efficient, material and
    instrumental causation have variously given rise to such ―proofs‖ of God as we
    might call, respectively, epistemological, teleological, cosmological, ontological
    and axiological.

    Whichever ―root metaphor‖ one chooses for one‘s metaphysics, any account
    aspiring to both completeness and consistency eventually collapses due to
    question begging, circular referentiality, infinite regress, causal disjunction and
    so on. Still, just because an account is tautological doesn‘t mean it isn‘t true; it
    only means we have not added any new info to our system.

    At any rate, from a semiotic approach to reality, we know that certain tacit
    dimensions of reality can be ineluctably unobtrusive while utterly efficacious. We
    also know that such semiotic realities can effect a downward causation without
    violating physical causal closure. It is perhaps beyond the scope of this
    consideration to explore this in more depth but we bring this up in the context of
    recognizing the role of telos in ordinary physical reality. By analogy, one would
    not unreasonably extrapolate this minimalist telos into a more robustly conceived
    telic dimension. This is exactly what John Haught does in his writings such as
    regarding the Cosmic Adventure (or even The New Atheists) and what Joe
    Bracken does in what he describes as The Divine Matrix.

    These approaches begin within the faith and are theologies of nature, which
    proceed via analogy and metaphor and sheer poetry, and they go beyond the
    proofs of God of such as natural theology as begins within philosophy but ends
    with the Scottish verdict, unproven.

    In one sense, we can recognize that generic faith is epistemologically prior to


    science, which could not otherwise proceed without our belief in reality‘s
    intelligibility, a belief which, itself, cannot be proved (just like our belief in other
    minds over against solipsism). This hermeneutical moment or basic interpretive
    stance toward reality is thus analogous to our belief in a Primal Design, Primal
    Cause, Primal Meaning, Primal Being, Primal Support, Primal Ground and so on.
    Primal Reality would not, in principle, lend itself to empirical measurement or
    logical demonstrability or rational proof, but the inference of such a Cause as
    would be proper to the effect we know as reality-as-a-whole is in no way
    unreasonable and remains eminently compelling to most of humankind. This
    inference, epistemologically, precedes both descriptive science and normative
    philosophy, and admits of no apologetic, whether evidential, presuppositional,
    rational or existential. It is what Hans Kung describes as a justified fundamental
    trust in uncertain reality over against a nowhere anchored and paradoxical trust
    in uncertain reality.

    Faith‘s chief foil is nihilism, a practical interpretive stance toward reality that is
    essentially an evaluative posit, having no way to articulate propositional
    cognitions. We either fundamentally trust uncertain reality or we do not because
    we are presented with options in faith and nihilism that are forced and vital. And
    make no mistake, both of these options are ―live‖ in that most of us choose
    between them every moment of
    our waking life, living a life of vibrant faith but lapsing, too often, into what a
    dispassionate observer might otherwise conclude is a practical nihilism.

    A Theology of Nature - Pansemioentheism

    To the extent that we recognize, with science, that telos, as far as we now know,
    first emerged at that juncture in cosmic evolution that Deacon has described as
    3rd order emergence or teleodynamics, and to the extent we next venture forth
    with Haught, theologically, guided by his aesthetic teleology, we are perhaps de
    facto suggesting that reality is pansemiotic. For those whose theological
    sensibilities do not resonate with any pantheist perspective, as ours do not, it
    would follow that our theological vision might otherwise be considered a
    pansemioentheism.

    To be clear, we offer this as a vague reference and not a robust description, which
    is to say that we are suggesting this as an analog that recognizes and affirms the
    Peircean categories phenomenologically without intending to imply any
    particular root metaphor, as would necessarily be required in the articulation of
    either a speculative metaphysic or a natural theology. This pansemioentheism is,
    instead, offered as a theology of nature, which originates not from natural
    philosophy but from our distinctly Christian perspective. While we affirm, in
    principle, the possibility of a speculative metaphysic, and we strongly encourage
    the search for the next most taut metaphysical tautology, which will employ the
    next most robust root metaphor for reality, we might, at the same time, recognize
    that humanity‘s metaphysical quest remains somewhat quixotic. Should we not
    gauge the practical efficacies of any of our root metaphors by attempting to cash
    out their value in such an exercise as, just for example, reconciling and
    renormalizing gravity and quantum mechanics?

    Theology of Nature & the Holy Spirit

    The Holy Spirit is so ineluctably unobtrusive while so utterly efficacious, a tacit


    telic dimension of a pansemioentheistic matrix of interrelated causes and effects,
    a pansemiotic Peircean thirdness breathing fire into Stephen Hawking's
    equations, a sacred reality we relate to impersonally until we awaken to the
    absolutely personal and intimate calling of all of creation forth to participate
    together in the eternal movement of divine kenotic delimitation in a community
    of ever-creative love. This divine urge is so tangibly present, so palpably real, so
    amenable to our successful references while ever-elusive to any successful
    descriptions.

    The Spirit, active in all of the great traditions, in all human endeavor, thus has
    many names and many analogs and it is not always clear when it is we are
    relating to the Spirit modally, which is to say literally, or when it is we are
    invoking the Spirit analogically. Surely, not all of our God-talk need be, in
    principle, merely apophatic or metaphorical? Still, this is not to say that whatever
    it is that could be univocally predicated of both creature and Creator is yet
    conceivable by humankind, even as a root metaphor. If we have come close, then
    our guess is that we share a creative, self-emptying love.

    In addition to many ontological and metaphysical considerations, we have also


    described an axiological epistemological outlook, a value-driven, fallibilistic
    perspectivalism. All things being equal, this perspectivalism honors the
    positivist agenda that defines epistemic virtue in terms of empirical rigor and
    logical consistency but takes heed of our radical finitude, which requires us to
    look beyond such truth-conducive virtue, when it yields only equiplausible
    accounts of reality, to pay heed to the normative guidance available in the truth-
    indicative virtues of aesthetics, ethics and pragmatics.

    This is not to say that we do not aspire to the epistemic warrant but only to
    recognize that, sometimes, all we can attain is epistemic parity. This is not to
    privilege the truth-indicative over the truth-conducive, for this perspectivalism is
    holistic and not holonic, which is to say that all of the integrally-related epistemic
    perspectives are necessary in each human value-realization, none sufficient. Thus
    we avoid epistemological vices like positivism, rationalism, empiricism, fideism,
    arationalism, gnosticism, pietism, encratism and other insidious -isms that
    comprise a long litany of epistemic pejoratives that have historically been tossed
    back and forth between competing philosophical schools.

    For all practical purposes, then, when it comes to humankind's most insistent
    longings and most passionate urges, we necessarily look beyond the mere
    evidential, rational and presuppositional to the existential and we recognize that
    the descriptive and interpretive perspectives would form an identity but for the
    fact of our radical finitude, which is to recognize our profound value-
    neediness. If the normative must then mediate between the descriptive and
    interpretive to effect the evaluative, then we can face this human condition in
    either existential despair and epistemic resignation or we can, instead, embrace
    our situation in recognition of the radical plenitude that putatively corresponds
    to our radical finitude. And we can be on the lookout for this abundance precisely
    because creation has gifted us with a down payment, an earnest, a
    guarantee, or, in other words, first fruits.

    We can take the mere fact of existence as brute and to be expected or we can
    remain ever-surprised and forever-befuddled by a glory that is surely not merely
    contingent. Reality's contingencies and possibilities indeed seem to be poised
    precariously between the random and systematic, between chance and necessity,
    between order and chaos, between pattern and paradox, but only to a mind
    immersed in modernist dualisms that are resolved by many postmodernists into
    different nihilistic urges, by many foundationalists into philosophical certitudes,
    whether the positivistic or fideistic variety, respectively, of Enlightenment or
    religious fundamentalism.

    If reality's possibilities and actualities do not point solely to chance, chaos, and
    randomness, neither can we discern sheer necessity and clear order. Reality is,
    rather, probabilistic, which is to recognize that possibilities and actualities are
    mediated by probabilities. The practical upshot of this reality is that our value-
    realizations cannot be guided solely by mathematical certainties and empirical
    verities but are also normed by beauty and goodness. That humankind must
    fallback on resources like beauty and love, otherwise lacking omniscience and
    omnipotence, one might receive as either poignantly glorious or positively
    scandalous, which is to recognize that we can rebel against our human condition
    and assert either our foundational, fundamentalistic certitudes or express our
    nihilistic despair, or we can embrace this cross, not taking equality with God as
    something at which we would grasp.

    We have moved swiftly and cursorily through the philosophical, epistemological,


    ontological and metaphysical considerations, which we have treated elsewhere at
    length, to arrive at a more theoretical theological perspective and a more practical
    spiritual outlook. What we wish to affirm is a radically incarnational
    perspective, which implies a moderately optimistic theological anthropology that
    affirms the Spirit's role in every trace of human goodness, at every point in
    human formation, reformation and transformation, in all human conversions
    (Gelpi's Lonerganian inventory), in both Merton's humanization and socialization
    and both his false self and True Self, in the gentle telic invitations of every
    unfoldment of the Cosmos.

    We can affirm a sacramental economy that consciously and efficaciously effects,


    explicitly, what it liturgically and ritualistically brings to mind together with an
    incarnational economy of the Spirit that effects the very same value-realizations
    albeit unconsciously and implicitly in all people of goodwill, who cooperate with
    the Spirit's creative urges whether knowingly or unknowingly. In our every
    encounter of truth, beauty, goodness and unity, we cooperate with Grace.
    Let us consider imperfections, whether embodied in our humanity, in particular,
    or playing out in creation, in general. Might we not take these imperfections and
    receive them with gratitude as icons of the One, Who alone, is perfect, as constant
    reminders lifting our hearts and minds in praise? At what level of imperfection
    would we otherwise be more or less satisfied with our "distance" from God, such
    that our lack of so much omniscience and omnipotence would ameliorate our
    misery and fulfill our incessant desire? Could creation have been more perfect,
    just a little less uncomfortable? Need we really account for some Fall, some felix
    culpa, to apologize for our finitude? Might we not rather recognize that we have
    been gifted, already, beyond any account of merit or demerit, with more than we
    could have ever imagined or conceived, just to have opened our eyes on the sky
    even if only to suddenly perish? Yet so many human lives are further gifted with
    many more days, even years.

    That we should exist at all is incredible. That we should then ever experience
    more than a rock might experience is not just brute fact but incredibly
    miraculous. How are we all not rather stuck at the fact of existence? struck by the
    glory of it all even as we are immersed in such finitude, some assuredly more
    painfully than others?

    Human imperfection, beyond the mere physical, shows forth in all manner of
    idiosyncrasies and personality foibles, less often as character flaws, rooted in who
    knows what vis a vis deformative influences, illness or failures to otherwise
    cooperate with grace.

    Although we can easily enough recognize failures to cooperate with grace, to walk
    in the Spirit, it is not our privilege to ever know which such failures result from
    willful rejections (sin) and which come from lack of formation or deformative
    influences, from differently-abledness or illness, or, even, plain and simple,
    human mistakes. Interestingly, there is a poignant beauty in so many human
    foibles and idiosyncrasies, even those that most often "get on our nerves." Older
    people know, from a longer experience and many funeral eulogies, that a loving
    gaze on our imperfect humanness turns these peccadilloes into endearments, into
    unique signatures of a glorious existence that, in the end, seems all too
    ephemeral. How we would long to be graced by such faultiness, finitude and
    fussbudgets again? Why did we not better recognize the beauty and the goodness
    and the glory in this imago Dei, whose presence we would so willingly now suffer,
    whose imperfections we'd so easily look past, if only we could hear their silliness,
    see their struggles, and hold them close again?

    Such longsuffering and forbearance does not just apply to our loved ones but
    should be extended to all humans, whom we tend to alternately deify or demonize
    based on our wholly unrealistic expectations of them, along with our typically
    dualistic all or nothing and either/or perspectives of reality, in general, other
    people, in particular. That our world leaders, national politicians and religious
    leaders, among others, are less than perfect, should come less as a surprise and
    more as par for the course. There is a lot less room for criticism of those who hold
    different views when we realize with Merton that we are so often morally
    fantasizing in a vacuum, which is to recognize that the world is a lot more
    complex socially, politically, economically and culturally than our facile political
    and moral prescriptions admit. In fact, too often, practical differences in problem
    solving get mischaracterized as moral differences in problem solvers, in a cyncial
    effort to manipulate the passions of the electorate. There is a lot less room for
    incivil discourse and the invocations of moral superiority than most political and
    religious "dialogue" would seem to display. All people deserve our compassion
    and our benefit of the doubt, even those whose behavior we must otherwise
    interdict, from time to time. Humanity, in our brokenness, is a wonder to behold,
    is made to be held, in solidarity and compassion. These are phenomenal truths
    that transcend our categories like natural and supernatural, nature and grace,
    physical and metaphysical.

    If creative advance, as per Whitehead, indeed takes place only on the borders of
    chaos, might this not be true both epistemologically and ontologically? Might
    creation not have advanced by divine self-delimitation? Might our own
    cooperation with grace as created co-creators (Phil Hefner) follow this pattern of
    kenotic self-emptying, as all creation yet groans in one act of giving birth? Is a
    world --- where all knowing and all-power eludes us thus requiring us to yield,
    normatively, to beauty, goodness and love in order to realize its values --- really
    somehow less perfect than some reality we otherwise imagine in our facile
    theodicies? Or is a reality wherein the more we need God and recognize our
    radical neediness the more we will see of Him, as per the universal testimony of
    the mystics, "good enough"?

    This is the poverty of St. Francis, the perfect joy, and not some otherwise
    misguided severe asceticism. This is the preferential option for the poor and
    marginalized, whom we eventually recognize, in genuine humility, as our very
    selves in full communion with all others who've been cast out of some idol-
    festooned eden.

    Our leprosy is okay.

    We are all lepers; this much is certain.

    Those of us who truly "know" this will not be scandalized but will go, in our radical nakedness,
    to be bathed, as a prelude to then being wed by the Beauty, Who sees our beauty, the Goodness,
    Who knows our goodness, the Love, Who desires our love.

    divine liminoid as
    formative play chaos
    theory complexity theory
    evolution and emergence
    physical anomalies &
    paranormal

    Aspects of Thirdness - Logos


    Definition of Delimitation: creativity
    Definition of Relimitation: help
    Definition of Liminal: transformatively helpful creativty and
    creative help; limit exploitation
    Definition of Liminoid: formatively creative play; limit exploration

    Thirdness as Limits: pneumatological delimitation, relimitation &


    liminality

    Kenosis as Divine Delimitation both Pneumatological and Christological

    Divine Liminal Threshold (neoplatonic proodos)

    Firstness - modal ontology of the possible


    Reality of the Ens Necessarium
    Liminal Space (neoplatonic
    mone)
    ontology of quasi-autonomy referenced by Process approach of divine matrix

    Thirdness - modal ontology of probable


    generally unobtrusive but utterly efficacious and tacit
    dimensionality incarnational reality as pneumatological relimitation
    and human divinization divine relimiting prerogatives hesychastic
    theoria signs and wonders charisms
    Theosis as Human Delimitation
    Human Liminal Threshold or Limen (neoplatonic epistrophe)
    ontology of intimacy described by Thomistic analogy of
    being ontology of identity described by Scotistic univocity of
    being

    Secondness - modal ontology of the actual


    incarnational reality as Christological
    relimitation
    divine humanization
    Jesus of Nazareth
    Mystical Body
    Cosmic Christ
    Human Liminoid Experience

    In a more comprehensive consideration, we would survey a hermeneutical progression from


    epistemology through the philosophies of science, mind and religion to a theology of nature,
    describing a putative fugue of Peircean thirdness as it resonates in each of these foci of
    human concern (hence, a tetradic fugue). Epistemologically, we would propose an
    exploratory heuristic to facilitate the discovery of this Peircean dynamic as it consistently and
    coherently informs the philosophic methods that will ultimately frame our theology of nature.
    Our epistemology, while nonfoundational, is manifestly realist, albeit in a minimalist sense.
    This particular fallibilist and critical realism also commits to both metaphysical and moral
    realisms. Peircean thirdness plays out in a triadic dynamic wherein the normative mediates
    between the descriptive and interpretive to effect the evaluative.

    In our philosophy of science, we consider the emergentist paradigm and consider thirdness
    in life forms, especially associating it with the characteristics of third order emergence, whereby
    spatial properties playing out over time begin to replicate, thus providing a substrate for
    selection dynamics, which involve an intricate interplay of initial conditions, boundary
    conditions and limit conditions. These conditions and characteristics of thirdness come into
    sharper focus with the teleodynamic interactions we consider in our philosophy of mind
    heuristics, whereby biosemiotic realities effect a minimalist telos, or downward causation, on
    other biosemiotic realities through an ineluctably unobtrusive but utterly efficacious implicate
    ordering or tacit dimensionality.

    In our philosophy of religion and natural theology, our analogical imaginations engage this
    thirdness in our abduction of the Ens Necessarium, a putative mediating reality intuited from
    our inescapably vague modal ontology, where we prescind from the necessary to the probable,
    for, even as it ubiquitously seems to suggest itself, always and everywhere, the necessary
    invariably eludes us.

    Thus the stage has been set for our Pansemioentheism as our pneumatological imaginations
    engage this pervasive thirdness in a Creator Spirit in our theology of nature.

    The fundamental argument that we would set forth is that a robust pneumatological
    imagination that is externally congruent, logically consistent, internally coherent, hypothetically
    consonant and interdisciplinarily consilient with both a Peircean metatechnica and the rubrics
    of modern empirical science is the 21st Century Rosetta Stone for unlocking an enhanced
    modeling power of reality as described by science, normed by philosophy, interpreted by
    theology and evaluatively realized by humankind in all of its prudential (both practical and
    moral) and aesthetical value realizations.

    Hereinabove, we already addressed some practical aspects of this systematic theology for
    formative spirituality, in particular, the life of faith, in general. Improperly considered, faith
    aspires to establish epistemic warrant in order to attain foundational interpretations of primal
    reality and articulate absolute norms for categorical imperatives, which can be a priori and
    objectively validated, privately even, through various noncontradictory abstractions. Properly
    considered, faith, propositionally, aspires to epistemic parity with other equiplausible
    interpretations of primal reality, and, evaluatively, radicalizes our fundamental trust in reality,
    transforming our existential orientations and temporal value-pursuits into the actionable norms
    of our transcendental imperatives and ultimate concerns, the transcendent nature and universal
    validity of which must be 1) communally discerned (orthocommunio); 2) tested argumentatively
    through rational discourse (orthodoxy); 3) authenticated pragmatically (orthopraxis) and 4)
    ritualistically cultivated (orthopathos). These norms are thus communally, or intersubjectively,
    actionable, which is to recognize that we invoke because we have first been convoked
    (ecclesially). And the action, then, is pneumatological, which is to say, divine.

    Theology as Open-Sourced and Per to Peer (P2P), Non-hierarchical?

    When Reuther uses the phrase ―intrinsic aspect of the mission of the church,‖
    one might sense in that a subversion of some of the logic employed by many in
    her church‘s teaching office. There is an old, sterile scholasticism that employs a
    substance metaphysic as an ontology from which a deontology then issues forth
    with all manner of descriptions that specify the intrinsic nature of this reality or
    that. Where sex and gender issues are involved, such an approach is sterile
    because it is too rationalistic, a prioristic, biologistic and physicalistic and
    therefore divorced from the concrete lived experience of the faithful. It‘s all
    abstractions, like the sentences above, which leave us scratching our heads and
    asking: say what?

    Put differently, such an approach takes too narrow a view of the way things are
    (ontology) and then reasons to how things ought to be (deontology) from their
    very nature (intrinsically). A male is created like this and a female like that,
    therefore a male must do this and a female must do that and neither must do
    otherwise because that would go against one‘s intrinsic nature. This then
    pervades one‘s views of church polity, moral doctrine, sacramental theology and
    church disciplines.

    Now, we're all for deontology- is it right? (complemented by consequentialist- is


    it helpful?, contractarian- is it fair? and aretaic - is it virtuous?, approaches), but
    it is premised on starting with a good ontology, which, when we‘re talking about
    people, means a good anthropology. We can ask the question, what if we as
    created co-creators, rather than being passive observers and characters playing
    out an author‘s script, have been gifted with a participatory role in creation such
    that we have something to contribute to how things are supposed to unfold
    (teleologically)?

    What if this whole notion of original sin as some ontological rupture rooted in
    the past is bass-ackwards and our experience of a most radical finitude is due,
    instead, to
    Somebody‘s unfinished business, which we experience as a teleological striving
    oriented toward the future? (cf. Jack Haught‘s aesthetic teleology.) In that case,
    we as created co-creators, while still partially determined and bounded (by our
    genetic inheritance & environmental parameters), would also be autopoietic
    (self-organizing) and free (quasi-autonomous in the divine matrix). (cf. Phil
    Hefner‘s theological anthropology and
    Joe Bracken‘s Divine Matrix)

    From an axiological (value-oriented) perspective, as semiotic (meaning-making)


    animals, we would not just discover meaning and values, but, without in any way
    disvaluing those we have discovered, or violating them, we would create new
    meanings and new values, which is to say that they would be novel, emergent
    realities. (combining Robert C. Neville‘s axiology and Charles Sanders Peirce‘s
    triadic semeiotic)

    If we thus change our perspective on the nature of our finitude, then we must
    change our understanding of the nature of atonement. This is to say that, if we
    change our assessment on what we think is wrong with reality (original sin and
    the Fall), this changes our view of how reality is to be fixed (soteriologically),
    which changes our view of the incarnation, itself (why God became man and why
    the Spirit so profusely permeates our reality, panentheistically). This would
    suggest that the incarnation, rather than being some grand cosmic repair job of
    some ontological rupture located in the past (―the‖ Fall), was a grand telic design
    built into the plan from the cosmic get-go, teleologically (cf. Teilhard and Scotus
    & Jack Haught‘s Cosmic Adventure28).

    This would all then change our perspective on 1) where things might be headed
    in the future (eschatologically) 2) Who the Cosmic Christ is (Christologically),
    and 3) how the Spirit empowers us (pneumatologically), all which then bear
    directly on 4) how we will experience one another in community
    (ecclesiologically).

    And we think the answers to these questions will have to take into account a
    radically incarnational and profusely pneumatological reality, which is then
    ―intrinsically‖ participatory, profoundly inclusive and wonderfully universalist in
    its indelible catholicity. This need not, in the least, call into question the salvific
    28 John F. Haught Cosmic Adventure available online
    efficacy of the incarnation and its indispensable role in effecting our at-one-ment.
    Rather, it broadens our conception of how deep is the love of the Trinity for
    creation and how we are called to a relationship of unspeakable intimacy in
    response to this divine eros, which then impels our agape‘ toward self, toward
    other, toward our cosmos and toward our God, all in right relationship, shall we
    say, intrinsically. (cf. Thomas Merton re: these 4 vectors of love)

    A servant-leader‘s role becomes that of a host, patterned after this grand cosmic
    hospitality that we just described. As such, this role more so resembles that of a
    scribe or note-taker, asking each Participant where they‘ve been, what they‘ve
    been up to and where they‘ve witnessed the Spirit at work and inviting each to
    give voice in hymn, psalm, story-telling, ritual-sharing and fellowship-enjoying
    community, as they say, lex orandi lex credendi, our worship birthing our creeds.

    There is nothing exclusively top-down about this. It‘s all peer to peer (p2p), in
    essence.

    Do we institutionalize sacrament? Sure we do, as the radically social animals we


    are. Is there a clerical role? Sure there is, but we needn‘t be clericalistic. Neither
    do we need to be institutionalistic, over-identifying the Mystical Body with one
    aspect of an institution or another, denying the salvific efficacies of other
    traditions, institutions or even what are, ostensibly, noninstitutional vehicles.

    We might ask what the role of a hierarchy is in a p2p environment and whether
    that need be an intrinsic feature of its architecture. Emergence, itself, is
    intrinsically hierarchical, which is to recognize that a system‘s novel emergent
    properties can indeed effect a top-down causation. But we must also recognize
    that it is also in the nature of this causation to not violate the structures and
    properties from which it emerged. Complex emergence is a rich reality with both
    bottom-up and top-down causations. The essential element of the systems
    approach is that the value added to the system comes from the relationships
    between the parts and not from the parts per se, which is to suggest that the
    hierarchy doesn‘t impart value per se but that the value derives from the feedback
    loop as the hierarchy channels the information it has received from other system
    structures and processes, all for the good of the system as a whole. Anything else
    devolves into a degenerate hierarchicalism.

    In robustly semiotic systems, we must also pay heed to Walker Percy‘s distinction
    between information and news, or what Benedict XVI calls the informative and
    performative, the latter which can be of profound existential import and
    eminently actionable. We might call such: Good News.
    What the hierarchy is to pass along, then, for example, is only that
    information first heralded by a shepherd who asked: Do you see what I see?
    Do you hear what I hear? Do you know what I know?

    It is only then that the king has any authority to say:


    Listen to what I say!

    That‘s what an epiphany is per dictionary.com: a sudden, intuitive perception of


    or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated
    by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.

    If it isn‘t simple, homely or commonplace in origin, well… our advice is to leave it


    alone.

    David Foster Wallace said it well:

    It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do
    with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of
    what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time,
    that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
    ―This is water.‖
    ―This is water.‖

    Charles Sanders Peirce drew a helpful distinction between the theoretic and the
    practical, suggesting that we should speculate boldly in our theoretical endeavors
    but move more tentatively in our practical affairs. One way of interpreting his
    approach might be to say that we should employ a progressive bias in our
    academic, propositional disciplines and a conservative or traditionalist bias in
    our practical and pastoral approaches. This strikes us as right-headed in that,
    while in the first instance, we are dealing with relationships between ideas, in the
    latter case we are dealing with relationships between people. This aphorism
    seems easy enough to apply when we are drawing a distinction such as between
    our theoretic sciences and our practical politics. It gets more complicated,
    however, when we adopt the view that theology, itself, is very much more a
    practical science, not so much a theoretical endeavor.

    What are the implications?

    For starters, this means that theology advances as a science much more
    inductively via empirical observation than deductively via rational considerations
    (ahem, or at least it should). It also means that when theology gets descriptive
    and normative, what it describes and norms are interpretive and evaluative
    realities, like religions and cultures, and not physical, metaphysical, practical and
    moral realities, like sciences and philosophies. More concretely, then, theology
    does not gift us with cosmological insights, such as taking positions on the
    philosophies of mind, the origins of species or the putative reconciliations of
    gravity & quantum mechanics. Theology gifts us with axiological insights,
    observing and reporting how it is that humankind interprets cosmological
    realities and what it is about these realities that humans value most.

    One needn‘t be a distinctly Christian theologian to recognize that humankind, by


    and large, has interpreted reality pneumatologically, which is to say that it
    interprets reality with Spirit as a rather basic and universal category, and also
    participatively, which is to recognize that we all have co-creative roles. As we
    move from the vague to the more specific, our interpretations begin to diverge.
    Where we enjoy the strongest convergence, though, is evaluatively vis a vis what
    it is we most treasure or desire and, by and large, humankind desires the
    Kingdom of a God, Who is love. Again, as we move from the vague to the specific,
    there‘s some divergence in value-realization strategies, what we call spiritual
    practices and disciplines, but, increasingly, we are eagerly exploring and
    profitably exchanging them.

    If human religious realities are pretty much universally conceived, then, as


    thoroughly pneumatological, robustly participatory and profitably pluralistic,
    then theology as a discipline, it would seem, is going to be incredibly open-
    sourced. Those whose gifts include teaching and leadership charisms will exercise
    those roles, primarily by hosting, listening and observing those who are
    participating and profiting from manifold and multiform interpretations and
    practices and then exchanging that information with the rest of us.

    This is how Scripture itself came about, as a collation of hymns, psalmody,


    prayers, meditative practices, myths, parables, wisdom sayings, narratives,
    stories, rituals and other traditions. This is how my own tradition‘s magisterium
    is conceived as listening to and observing the faithful and then promulgating
    these hearings and observations to all via the articulation of truth in dogma,
    celebration of beauty in the cultivation of ritual & liturgy, preservation of
    goodness in code & law and enjoyment of fellowship in community. This is to say
    that what we promulgate is the sensus fidelium or sense of the faithful, which is
    an inherently bottom-up, grass roots activity and not a trickle-down reality,
    whatsoever. And no hierarchy goes around wily nilly making changes based on
    ivory tower theological abstractions and constructions. Instead, it involves an
    indispensable active listening and observing process. Caveat: Note we said that
    this is how a magisterium is conceived and did not represent that this is how it
    always works in practice.
    What‘s the practical upshot of all of this? Well, as our communication vehicles
    become increasingly peer to peer (p2p), the exchange of interpretations and
    practices will accelerate and will less and less require institutional channels.

    What is so very curious about all of this open-sourcing is that, perhaps


    counterintuitively, from a practical and pastoral perspective, rather than
    anarchically and indiscriminately jettisoning the old and embracing the wholly
    novel, what seems to be emerging is, instead, a radical orthodoxy, a returning to
    our roots, a retrieval, revival and renewal of our ancient interpretations and
    practices, an ardent appreciation for all that has been true in our creeds, beautiful
    in our cults, good in our codes and unitive in our communities. If joy is the
    infallible sign of the presence of God (Madeline L‘Engle), then truth, beauty,
    goodness and unity are assuredly an indelible sign of the presence of the Spirit.

    Although humankind has often lacked much in the way of cosmological


    knowledge, it has more than compensated for this deficit with an abundance of
    axiological wisdom. That we move forward rather tentatively in our practical
    (most vital) affairs suggests that Peirce was more so making an observation
    rather than a suggestion. That‘s why this open-source theology doesn‘t scare me
    at all. If all the academic tongues were still, the noise would still continue; we
    rocks and stones, ourselves, will start to sing: Hosanna, heysanna, sanna, sanna,
    ho, sanny he, sanny ho, sanna!

    To Place This Project in Context a Quote from Walker Percy:

    This chapter, as well as other parts of the book, owes a good deal to Carl
    Sagan's splendid picture book, Cosmos. I hope he will not take offense at some
    fanciful extrapolations therefrom. Sagan's book gave me much pleasure, a
    pleasure which was not diminished by Sagan's unmalicious, even innocent,
    scientism, the likes of which I have not encountered since the standard bull
    sessions of high school and college—up to but not past the sophomore year. The
    argument could be resumed with Sagan, I suppose, but the issue would be as
    inconclusive as it was between sophomores. For me it was more diverting than
    otherwise to see someone sketch the history of Western scientific thought and
    leave out Judaism and Christianity.
    Everything is downhill after the Ionians and until the rise of modern science.
    There is a huge gap between the destruction of the library at Alexandria and the
    appearance of Copernicus and Galileo. So much for six thousand years of
    Judaism and fifteen hundred years of Christianity. So much for the likes of
    Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen, Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Grosseteste. So much for
    the science historian A.C. Crombie, who wrote: "The natural philosophers of
    Latin Christendom in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries created the
    experimental science characteristic of modern times."
    So much, indeed, for the relationship between Christianity and science and the
    fact that, as Whitehead pointed out, it is no coincidence that science sprang, not
    from Ionian metaphysics, not from the Brahmin-Buddhist-Taoist East, not from
    he Egyptian-Mayan astrological South, but from the heart of the Christian
    West, that although Galileo fell out with the Church, he would hardly have taken
    so much trouble studying Jupiter and dropping objects from towers if the
    reality and value and order of things had not first been conferred by belief in
    the Incarnation.
    Yet one is not offended by Sagan. There is too little malice and too much
    ignorance. It is enough to take pleasure in the pleasant style, the knack for
    popularizing science, and the beautiful pictures of Saturn and the Ring nebula.
    Indeed, more often than not, I found myself on Sagan's side, especially in his
    admiration for science and the scientific method, which is what he says it is—a
    noble, elegant, and self-correcting method of attaining a kind of truth—and
    when he attacks the current superstitions, astrology, UFOs, parapsychology,
    and such, which seem to engage the Western mind now more than ever—more
    perhaps than either science or Christianity. What is to be deplored is not
    Sagan's sophomoric scientism—which I think I like better than its
    counterpart, a sophomoric theism which attributes the wonders of the Cosmos
    to a God who created it like a child with a cookie cutter—no, what is
    deplorable is that these serious issues involving God and the nature
    of man should be co-opted by these particular disputants, a
    popularizer like Sagan and fundamentalists who believe God created the
    world six thousand years ago. It's enough to give both science and Christianity
    a bad name. Really, it is a case of an ancient and still honorable argument
    going to pot. Even arguments in a college dormitory are, or were, conducted at
    a higher level. It is for this very reason that we can enjoy Cosmos so much, for
    the frivolity of Sagan's vulgar scientism and for the reason that science is, as
    Sagan says, self-correcting. One wonders, in fact, whether Sagan himself has
    not been corrected, e.g., by Hubble's discovery of the red shift and the present
    growing consensus of the Big Bang theory of the creation of the Cosmos, which
    surely comes closer than Sagan would like to the Genesis account of creatio ex
    nihilo. 29

    An Emergentist Account of the Biosemiotic Categories of Religion from a


    panentheistic perspective

    "Awakening to beauty, truth, and goodness is to waken to the unfoldment


    of Divine Life within us." -Thomas Keating

    ―In philosophy classes we were told that there were three things that especially
    opened us to the Transcendent: the good, the true, and the beautiful.
    Come join us as we again put together what was never really apart!‖ –
    Richard Rohr

    29 Lost in the Cosmos: the Last Self-Help Book (New York: Farrar, Straus &
    Giroux, 1983), 201-202.
    Prologue
    Something tells us Keating and Rohr are right. Maritain said that we distinguish
    in order to unite. Our Peircean heuristic draws distinctions between evaluative,
    normative, descriptive, interpretive and prescriptive stances but eschews any
    dichotomization of these identifiable moments in the otherwise integral act of
    human value realization. Each moment, necessarily, presupposes each other
    moment, as we harvest truth, beauty, goodness and unity. Of course, my framing
    of this heuristic in terms of value realization recognizes humanity's radical
    finitude. If we are in search of value, then this is a reflection of that inescapable
    reality of our vast neediness, our utterly contingent nature.

    All that said, this is not to suggest that we, as humans, do not enjoy the first fruits
    of what, anagogically, we hope will be an eventual eschatological harvest of all
    value, that we have not received, through the Holy Spirit, an earnest, a down
    payment, a foretaste of value realization.

    This heuristic thus defines epistemic virtue in terms of such value realization and
    cashes out its own value in terms of the successful institutionalization of this
    value realization whereby intellectual conversion harvests those contemplative
    moments we encounter as truth, affective conversion harvests those encountered
    as beauty, moral conversion those of goodness and sociopolitical conversion
    those of unity. Thus all contemplation leads to politics, which are most
    efficaciously articulated when we integrally tie all of these moments back
    together, religiously, transvaluing them through ongoing religious conversion.

    The aspect of institutionalization honors our biological, i.e. biosemiotic, heritage


    as radically social animals. The epistemic goal of human value realization is thus
    fostered in a community of inquiry writ large. It may have been Merton who
    recognized that truth often comes flying in on the wings of beauty. This is an
    implicit recognition, in my view, that, in our more robustly contemplative
    moments, we are likely to realize truth, beauty, goodness and unity together, and,
    also, that our individual invocations of same grow out of our first being
    convoked as a community of value-realization.

    In trying to draw out the implications of this heuristic for a theological


    anthropology, which we are framing in terms of value realization strategies, we
    cannot help thinking of Sartre's description of the ―universal human condition‖
    as the reason for our shared values and sensibilities. Still, one must suspect that
    any such sharing of sensibilities and values is not rooted in the value realization
    moment we might call inference. Tom Short thus contextualizes Peirce: "if 'the
    faculty of reasoning' were 'of the first importance to success in life,' then
    'natural selection would [have] operate[d] to breed the race for vigorous
    reasoning powers,' whereas, 'comparatively few persons are originally
    possessed of any but the feeblest modicum of this talent'."

    Instead, in Short's words, drawing on Peirce's distinction between theoretical and


    practical reasoning, "the one requires radical thinking and reliance on one‘s own
    powers of ratiocination, the other best relies on instinct, sentiment, and
    tradition, or, in short, the accumulated experience of countless generations."

    In our own description of human biosemiotic heuristics, there emerges, through


    the putative coevolution of language and brain, a novel capacity for
    intersubjectivity, which corresponds to Joseph Campbell's "transpersonal
    identity." We cannot help but recognize this emergent novelty in our species and
    it warrants a characterization of "exceptionality" vis a vis other biosemiotic other
    biosemiotic realities. One might ask whether such an exceptionality warrants
    further description in ontological terms and, given the received opinion of the
    philosophy of mind community, that answer must be an emphatic "Nyet!". For
    that matter, although most would consider the so-called hard problem of
    consciousness "epistemologically open," and while many nevertheless consider it
    "ontologically closed," still, even in that cohort that considers it "ontologically
    open," most of those philosophers hold to naturalistic, even if not physicalistic,
    positions. Biosemiotically, then, all life is apparently cut from the same fabric.

    Furthermore, and anyhow, the semiotic perspective does a conceptual end-


    around the classical realism-idealism conundrum and avoids the philosophical
    cul-de-sac of the mutually unintelligible essentialism-nominalism dichotomy. It
    may be too strong a position to defend, to a priori characterize such paradoxes
    using Quine's categories of veridical, falsidical and antinomial, but most of the
    synthetic and a posteriori money is on the antinomial view, which is to say that
    someone is asking the wrong questions of reality if they are still arguing within
    such Scholastic categories and coming away confounded.

    The practical upshot of this is that, because of our intersubjective and


    transpersonal human evaluations, decisions and tendencies, our species is gifted
    with a heightened awareness, not only of our radical finitude and contingent
    nature, but also, of our unfathomable solidarity with one another and the cosmos.
    As we have always maintained, "when we awaken to our solidarity, compassion
    will ensue." And this orthopathos has evaluative relevance and normative
    impetus and, hence, per our Peircean-derived heuristic, mediates between our
    ortho-communio (as a community of inquiry) and our ortho-doxy (value-
    realization paradigms) to effect ortho-praxis (our prudential judgments, both
    moral and practical). If orthopraxis thus authenticates orthodoxy, then
    our hypothesis is that one will most assuredly find them flying in on the wings of
    orthopathos and orthocommunio. If this has normative impetus, it precisely
    comes from its descriptive accuracy as a theological anthropology. We will
    discuss our epistemic, aesthetic and ethical sensibilities in more detail, later, as
    they respectively inspire assent, awe and reverence for Reality. If we have learned
    anything from the Godelian-like constraints on human ratiocinations, then it is
    that, with both Ignatius and the Psalmist, we are to "taste and see" the truth,
    beauty, goodness and unity of Reality, and, however necessary syllogisms are,
    they are not sufficient.

    There is a certain resonance, then, between the Scotistic notion that the
    Incarnation was a cosmic inevitability (almost Teilhardian) and not rather
    occasioned by a felix culpa, and the approach of Irenaeus, who sees creation as a
    place for soul-making, which corresponds to Scott Peck's metaphor of "life as a
    cosmic boot camp." In classical terms, then, we might view reality moreso
    through Haught's aesthetic teleology, oriented toward the future, creation
    crossing a vast teleological expanse toward the Eschaton, and not so much as an
    ontological rupture located in the past. Whatever metaphysical aspect of the
    nature of Jesus remains occulted, His moral nature is utterly transparent,
    eminently biosemiotic, setting always before us the way, the truth and the life as,
    meanwhile, all creation groans, hopefully, in one great act of giving birth.

    Our theological anthropologies have practical implications for our meta-ethical


    enterprises, which is to say, considerable normative impetus for the politics that
    govern relations between societies. In an apparently pervasively semiotic ecology,
    we only distinguish between humankind and the cosmos in order to unite. As a
    Eucharistic community, how well we "bust that move" called "The Dismissal," or
    Ite, missa est, will be revealed in our aspirations to realize our evaluations by
    making decisions with a tendency we might call Transignification, which, with
    the Jesuits, sees God in all things. There can be no dichotomizing, no
    compartmentalization, for our lives are a continuous extension of Eucharist in an
    ongoing hermeneutical cycle of value realization, or, are going to be fragmented
    and in peril of an otherwise regnant practical nihilism, which isn't difficult to see,
    not rewarding at all to taste.

    For those who do not buy into the notion of any so-called naturalistic fallacy, this
    theological anthropology of "who we are" will speak directly to the question of
    "what must we do," both morally and practically. If the Kantian interrogatories
    are irreducibly triadic in realizing values in terms of what we can know, what we
    must do and what we can hope for, then the Peircean triadic semiotic is also
    irreducibly triadic in correspondingly recognizing those tendencies that will most
    efficaciously mediate between our evaluations and decisions vis a vis society and
    the cosmos, which is to recognize that it is incoherent to reductionistically turn
    such distinctions as individual human beings, society and the cosmos into
    dichotomies as if they did not necessarily presuppose each other. Derivatively, it
    is also incoherent, then, to talk in terms of dominion and autonomy, for this is to
    take a de facto over against stance in relationship to our very selves. This is also
    to overemphasize the dialectical imagination and to explicitly disavow the
    immanence of the deity, one of humankind's longest and strongest evaluative
    sensibilities.

    If we are to articulate a consilient and coherent ecotheology, we have to recover


    that "instinct, sentiment, and tradition, or, in short, the accumulated experience
    of countless generations" that best preserved the seamless garment of human
    value realization, that best articulated the irreducible relationships between all
    (transkin) biosemiotic realities, that best articulated the eco-nomic or laws of
    eco-logical exchange, that best articulated the sociopolitical realization of
    reciprocal solidarity and compassion, and that best articulated such an Ens
    Necessarium as implicately orders all pansemiotic possibilities, actualities and
    probabilities and utterly unobtrusively, yet eminently efficaciously, coaxes them
    forward toward .... .... .... ....

    That recovery effort, then, might best take us back to that hermeneutical place
    that some of humankind inhabited prior to infection by Hellenistic rationalism
    and prior to the schizoid fractures brought on by cartesian dualisms.

    For Starters: What Do These Words Mean to us?

    Emergentist Account:

    In the great chain of being there are levels stretching from the quantum to the
    sociological. There are levels of being within levels of being. There are
    theories that govern interactions within levels and sometimes between levels,
    sharing concepts. The concepts concern 1) parts and wholes; 2) properties
    and 3) natural laws.

    There are three ways to look at the possible relationships between these levels. If
    a lower level completely explains a higher level, then we have reductionism and
    the strongest relation possible. When speaking in terms of parts & wholes,
    properties & laws, it is possible that reductionism will not explain a higher level,
    but we can still maintain supervenience, which is to say that any differences in
    parts, wholes, properties and laws at a higher level must have corresponding
    differences at the lower level (covariance without reduction). If a theory
    explaining higher level properties & laws is, in principle, unpredictable from a
    theory at a more fundamental level, then we have emergence, which is to say,
    novelty.

    Bio-semiotic: refers to life (bio) and significance or signs & symbols (semiotic). In
    humans, some biosemiotic capacities (the way we use information one might say)
    are language-dependent and public (shared between people) and some are
    ineffable and private experiences (and language-independent). They might be
    thought of as propositional (dealing with propositions like the logical categories
    of deduction and induction and inference), in the first case, and phenomenal, in
    the latter (feelings and dispositions).

    The first category refers to capacities that are innate (hardwired into our brains)
    but which are very open-ended and flexible (some say plastic). These we call
    heuristics because a heuristic just provides general guidelines and leaves the
    thinker or experiencer with wide latitude in proposing solutions and drawing
    conclusions. The second category is also innate but is fixed, inflexible, and so we
    call it algorithmic because there is no latitude as it drives human responses to
    "conclusions" and solutions quite directly (think of the immune system reacting
    to "information" automatically). One might also think in terms of fuzzy logic and
    formal logic for these categories. What is most important is that one understand
    that all animals are bio-semiotic, all life, in fact, but that only humans use such
    biosemiotic heuristics as would involve language.

    Categories of Religion:

    This involves a naturalistic account from an evolutionary perspective on the


    philosophical categories of most religious traditions. The four categories of
    religious practice that we will attempt to describe are Cult, Community, Creed
    and Code. Others might think of these in other terms such as Ritual or Liturgy,
    Fellowship or Church, Dogma or Doctrine, and Law or Rubrics.

    Religion: comes from root concepts that we interpret to mean "to tie life's
    experiences back together" so as to heal us that we may survive and grow us that
    we may thrive. It is about the actualization of the values to which we would
    aspire.

    Panentheistic: can be interpreted two ways. Some speak of a panen-theism,


    where creation and God are conceived in such a relationship that creation is part
    of God but where God is the Whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. This
    is not our take. Our take is pan-entheism, where God and creation are in a very
    intimate relationship, God indwelling in creation, implicately ordering it and
    gently coaxing it forward.

    A Word About Categories

    Recall the old scholastic notations: im/possible, im/plausible, im/probable and


    un/certain. Think, too, of the modal categories of possible, actual, probable and
    necessary.

    We want to draw a distinction between what we might call a positivist stance, or


    science, or the empirical, or the descriptive, on one hand, and, on the other hand,
    what we might call a paradigmatic stance, or metaphysics, or the analytical, or
    the interpretive. It seems to us that the positivist focus traffics in categories like
    im/plausible, im/probable, uncertain and also the possible, actual & probable.
    We like to call these categories modal phenomenology. Science deals with
    these modes of reality. At least empirical observations, thus far, reveal reality's
    pervasive contingency.

    It seems to me that the paradigmatic focus employs categories like im/possible,


    un/certain, and also the un/necessary. We like to call these categories modal
    ontology.

    In our view, both modal phenomenology and modal ontology are legitimate
    enterprises. What would make them both viable is an approach that eschews a
    priori modal assumptions and embraces, instead, only fallibilist hypotheses,
    which are verifiable and/or falsifiable, a posteriori. It seems that we can ask
    different questions – normative, evaluative, descriptive, interpretive or
    prescriptive; or, put another way, philosophic, preferential, positivist,
    paradigmatic or prudential (moral/practical) --- about the same reality and
    cannot a priori suggest that any given answer to any given question will, so to
    speak, in principle and eventually, be un/answerable.

    Some additional comments re: modal phenomenology and modal ontology ---

    Both often employ metaphors, analogies and models, not just pedagogically
    (as teaching tools) but epistemologically (in empirical methodology). Both
    propose hypotheses, some more highly speculative than others, some more
    readily falsifiable or verifiable than others. Both can involve naturalistic
    speculation about reality's givens in terms of space, time, matter and energy
    (primitives), forces (4 forces, so far) and axioms (laws like thermodynamics and
    quantum mechanics); about the advent of consciousness,
    the origin of life and other apparently emergent realities; about reductive and
    nonreductive physicalism; and such.

    Various Theories of Everything (TOE's) and various God Hypotheses are modal
    ontologies.

    It is difficult to draw a line of distinction between highly speculative cosmology


    and theoretical physics, on one hand, and what has traditionally been called
    metaphysics, on the other. However nuanced one's distinctions, those enterprises
    cannot really be facilely dichotomized. Some proposefalsifiability as a criterion to
    separate science and metaphysics, but propositions can be framed up that are
    falsifiable or verifiable, we might say, eschatologically. Others might suggest that
    any time we tweak, amend, addend or modify reality's givens, as presently
    received by most scientists, then we are going beyond physics to metaphysics.
    Maybe defining metaphysics is not as important or as meaningful as keeping
    track of our categories and their associated grammars and rubrics and looking
    over our shoulders at our various leaps of faith.

    Some thinkers, who have an apparent antipathy toward metaphysics, and a


    palpable animus toward theology, in their anxiety to annihilate those spheres of
    human concern from the realm of the cognitively meaningful, end up,
    inadvertently, trashing the epistemological methods that humanity has long
    employed at the frontiers of science (and those frontiers have of course changed
    greatly through time).

    Metaphysics, however broadly or narrowly conceived, is here to stay, and for at


    least as long as science and faith. It is an integral aspect of human value
    realization and in a dynamical relationship with the positivist, and all other,
    horizons of human concern.

    Adjudicating Competing Tautologies (or how Christian Culture Helped Birth


    Science)

    In any my tautology is tauter than your tautology dispute, there must be


    a cashing out of epistemic value in one approach over against the other. Why does
    this approach gift us with enhanced modeling power re: reality?

    If the topic under consideration could be adjudicated solely in terms of logical


    consistency, internal coherence, hypothetical consonance, interdisciplinary
    consilience, and conceptual consistency, then one interpretive framework would
    trump the other as it better interprets and predicts certain empirical observations
    or factual realities. Failing adjudication by those criteria and failing to provide a
    distinctly more robustly explanatory account in terms of predictability of
    phenomena, actionability of an ontology (albeit fallibilist), normative impetus
    (hopefully tentative), etc, then, with a more formally structured adjudication
    beyond our reach, we then fall back on such aesthetic criteria as elegance,
    parsimony, symmetry, facility of abduction and simplicity, and on such pragmatic
    criteria as usefulness, e.g. hypothetical fecundity.

    Regarding hypothetical fecundity, then, we might ask what happens to our


    research programs and what happens to falsifiable hypothesis-generation if one
    adopts this tautology versus that? Restated, in addition to organizing existing
    knowledge, does this tautology generate new hypotheses? Might it contribute to a
    new cognitive regime or paradigm shift or cast light on why this or that approach
    seems pregnant with paradox? Thus, once all other epistemic virtues have been
    taken into consideration for an issue, that a significant part of the philosophical
    and/or scientific community considers unresolved, i.e. under-explained, there is
    a certain inefficacy in approaches that are ignostic, noncognitivist and
    eliminativist, that try to a priori reframe this or that problem as a pseudo-
    problem, insofar as they discourage research or support the illusion that it is
    unnecessary. There is a certain irony in that a priori claims to the occulted nature
    of a given reality, or mysterian-like positions, are similarly inefficacious.

    Assuming all other epistemic criteria are equal (just for argument's sake), we then
    ask, how does this versus that alternate view measure up vis a vis hypothesis-
    generation?

    Epistemic Virtue

    One aspires to epistemic virtue insofar as one wants to be clear regarding what it
    is that one can reasonably say one knows. And, one wants to be clear in
    distinguishing belief from knowledge.

    At some level, one must wonder how this above-described epistemological


    exercise, itself, can be inherently normative insofar as one is going from an is,
    which is described as a distinction between knowledge and belief, to an ought,
    which one might prescribe (or proscribe ) as a prohibition against any argument
    regarding norms for belief in relation to metaphysical concepts.

    In some sense, one will have already busted that move insofar as one has, albeit
    minimalistically, set forth a meta-ethic for arguments regarding metaphysical
    concepts.

    How does one justify one‘s belief in one‘s own knowledge of the distinction
    between knowledge and belief?

    How does one justify one‘s belief in reality's intelligibility (over against an
    unmitigated nihilism)?

    How does one justify one‘s belief in such first principles as noncontradiction and
    excluded middle?

    How does one justify one‘s belief in common sense notions of causality?

    How does one justify one‘s belief in the existence of other minds (over against
    solipsism) such that one could argue with those minds regarding one‘s theory of
    knowledge and refrain from arguing with them regarding their metaphysical
    beliefs?
    These foundational presuppositions are not really propositional are they? One
    thus believes in order to know.

    There are some beliefs that must require no justification insofar as their negation
    would negate what we are calling knowledge, itself. Some beliefs demonstrably
    enhance our modeling power of reality. We do not demonstrate them, however,
    through formal argumentation. They are otherwise warranted by practical
    judgment. And this is why human knowledge is not strictly empirical in the first
    place; it has empirical, logical/rational and practical aspects, among others. If
    one accepts this approach, then, one might see fit to move beyond any
    agnosticism regarding some so-called metaphysical concepts and develop some
    epistemic criteria for when such beliefs are warranted.

    So, human knowledge is not strictly empirical, over against the radical
    empiricists and logical positivists; not strictly rational, over against the
    rationalists; not strictly evaluative, over against the noncognitivists; not strictly
    practical, over against an unnuanced pragmatism. It derives from aspects of value
    realization that are intellectually-related even though not robustly logically-
    related: normative, evaluative, descriptive, interpretive and prescriptive.

    At the same time, these aspects of value-realization need not be thought of as


    some type of metaphysical transcendental imperatives: truth, beauty, goodness
    and unity, for example. Rather, they can be thought of as an ecological
    rationality for an animal trying to make it in a particular niche.

    Human knowledge and beliefs, taken together, and thus conceived through the
    perspective of an evolutionary psychology, is really just a set of fast & frugal
    heuristics that have tremendous adaptive significance and were gifted our
    species via the courtesy of natural selection. As such, we need not hold, a priori,
    that these heuristics must obtain to transcendentals; rather, these fast and frugal
    heuristics can be thought of as existential orientations of a bounded rationality
    that are satisficing and not maximizing, which is to say that they are good
    enough for this or that end.

    This may all beg the question of how we might do ethics and politics without
    coming to closure on an ontology.

    Perhaps our solution requires what we might call a minimalist de-ontology,


    where our ontology is not a full blown metaphysic that accounts for so called
    transcendental imperatives, but is, instead, a modest account of distinctly human
    value-realization strategies. Such strategies, through nature and nurture, adapt
    us to reality with a good enough modeling power, which enables us to get
    along relatively well in the world, settling for optimal value realizations even as
    maximal realizations elude us. In this sense, then, we can maintain that
    epistemology models ontology (Polkinghorne) even as we have no need to a
    priori accept or reject the Kantian disjunction between phenomena and
    noumena. Then, we can still do politics even as the philosophical onto-policy
    wonks continue to work their way, fallibly but inexorably, toward a
    (meta)physical consensus in our community of inquiry.

    To Do or Not To Do – Ontology

    We once looked at Peirce's semiotic and tried to describe his different sign
    categories in psychological terms vis a vis the different ways that humans might
    experience different modal realities. We made a matrix to ensure that we didn't
    inadvertently leave out any categories, but our matrix had more categories than
    Peirce had signs. We proceeded with our exercise anyway and then examined my
    leftover categories. They included what, psychologically, we would call delusion,
    hallucination, psychosis, mistakes, misinterpretation, etc

    Successful reference and description of reality takes place through ongoing, even
    infinite, semiosis, as we progressively but fallibly tighten our grasp on reality.
    And I have just described some of the reasons why we are fallible, why we need
    disambiguation and reinterpretation. Thus, an indispensable part of sign theory
    is the fact that we are error-prone at the same time that we are semiotic realists.
    So, in our attempts to model reality with an ever enhanced modeling power, we
    can, semantically, deal with something analogous to what the Kantian disjunction
    is trying to deal with in its distinction between phenomena and noumena. We say
    analogously because, in order to enhance our modeling power, semiotically, we
    do not need to a priori accept or reject the Kantian disjunction. We can, at the
    same time, then, affirm a theoretical role for ontology and be very circumspect in
    defining the conditions for when it can most efficaciously contribute to our
    enhanced modeling power, while also recognizing that, from a practical
    perspective, when it is facilely applied and casually employs such modal
    categories as certain, impossible and necessary, it most inefficaciously detracts
    from our modeling power and gets tied up in essentialistic-nominalistic knots.

    If we stick to a description like epistemology models ontology, then maybe we


    better capture how tentative and provisional our ontological projects are and how
    any ensuing normative impetus must be significantly curtailed, especially if our
    ontologies are not otherwise robustly actionable due to limited predictive
    accuracy and hypothetical fecundity, or are otherwise deficient vis a vis some
    foundherentist (just for example) criteria of epistemic virtue.

    As we see it, many metaphysicians have made their fallibilist move, which makes
    their ontologizing more benign and efficacious. And semioticians have
    acknowledged a role for ontology, in theory. The divide that remains seems to
    then focus on our practical judgment regarding ontologizing and just how
    practicable and actionable most ontological projects have been, are or will be.
    Note:
    This project is inherently difficult because we are trying to build an architectonic
    that includes physical and biological sciences, psychology, philosophy, religion
    and theology, each with its own jargon. The conceptual-bridging project gets even
    harder as one then tries to inhabit rather unique perspectives within those major
    disciplines, perspectives with their own specialized jargon, too. The Peircean
    perspective might have the most jargonistic stance one can possibly encounter in
    philosophy inasmuch as it is replete with CSP's own idiosyncratic neologisms. But
    we are trying to genericize it and make it more accessible. We hope any
    exchanges this project generates will make what we are proposing more
    accessible to others and my heuristic a tad less dense. We are not married to the
    vocabulary as much as we are to the categories and their associated grammars.
    We wish this could be fleshed out with no jargon whatsoever, while not
    abandoning the nuances.

    A Trinitarian Theology of Nature: pansemio-entheistic

    Peirce's rejection of the notion that firstness and secondness could robustly
    account for the world as we know it, in our view, marks his retreat into
    ontological and semantical vagueness. To describe reality in terms of alternating
    pattern and paradox, chance and necessity, order and chaos, random
    and systematic, does seem rather question begging. It is true that, nowhere, do
    we observe necessity in reality; necessity everywhere eludes us. It is equally true
    that human kind cannot avoid the inference of the necessary; necessity
    everywhere suggests itself. Like Polanyi's tacit dimension, necessity may be closer
    to us than we are to ourselves. Here we may encounter that type of biosemiotic
    reality that informs what we call our subdoxastic routines, or our biosemiotic
    heuristic subroutines. Thus, we draw yet another distinction between biosemiotic
    heuristic dynamics: the subdoxastic and doxastic. To some extent, they may be
    thought of in terms of unconscious competence and conscious competence, the
    first corresponding, somewhat, to common sense.

    In our schema, firstness corresponds to the epistemic field (where abduction has
    its moment); secondness corresponds to the ontic field (where induction has its
    moment) and thirdness corresponds to the semiotic field (all fields presupposing
    the others). Following the Franciscan Duns Scotus, the Incarnation, in our view,
    was a semiotic inevitability, part and parcel of an aesthetic teleology (Jack
    Haught), and any experience of a rupture between our essentialistic idealizations
    and their existential realizations is not some ontological rupture located in the
    past, occasioning a felix culpa and atonement, but, rather, results from a
    teleological chasm that we are crossing and oriented toward a future, an
    eschaton. Jesus is the eminently ontic, then, mediating between the
    immanent and the transcendent. With respect to thirdness, morally, He is
    transparent, the Trinity‘s immanent nature revealed in splendor; metaphysically,
    with respect to firstness, His nature is occulted, the Trinity's transcendent nature
    presenting to reality. Equivocally, He is True God and True Man. The Father, is
    eminently epistemic and utterly transcendent, characterized by the ungraspable,
    incomprehensible richness of the qualities of firstness. And so, the immanent
    Trinity mediates between the transcendent Trinity and the
    incarnational Trinity to effect the economic (semiotic and
    pragmatic)Trinity, which implies theosis.

    Again, where we wrote that: It is true that, nowhere, do we observe necessity in


    reality; necessity everywhere eludes us - it is equally true that humankind
    cannot avoid the inference of the necessary; necessity everywhere suggests itself.
    Like Polanyi's tacit dimension, necessity may be closer to us than we are to
    ourselves. Here we may encounter that type of biosemiotic reality that informs
    what we call our subdoxastic routines, or our biosemiotic heuristic subroutines.
    And here we have the abduction of the ens necessarium, the robustly telic field
    of reality, which mutually interpenetrates the epistemic, ontic and semiotic fields
    of reality, and which, as the immanent Trinity, also mediates between the
    transcendent Trinity and incarnational Trinity. Analogous to Baldwinian
    evolution, which in the coevolution of language and brain, operates via downward
    causation without the violation of physical causal closure, the telic field of the
    immanent Trinity operates via omnidirectional causation, eminently semiotically,
    without any violation of observable physical causation. It is thus unobtrusively
    yet utterly efficacious. All may be well. (Dame Julian) Don't you know it's gonna
    be alright.
    (John Lennon)

    The Holy Spirit is precisely how we'd refer to the eminently telic and eminently
    semiotic Reality, which accomplishes theosis through Homo sapiens,
    biosemiotically mediated, and which accomplishes any other natural mediations
    through implicate ordering (so called upward causation, impelling emergent
    reality forward) or through downward, or even, omnidirectional causation,
    ordering and re-ordering pansemiotic fields. As we see it, once we invoke
    downward causation in reality via Baldwinian evolution, as possibly even through
    Bohm's quantum interpretation and Sheldrake's morphic resonance, then, it is a
    valid move to infer a Trinitarian analogue, as long as our conception of same can
    cash out some value (pragmatic maxim) for human theosis and/or cosmic
    aesthetic teleology.

    We have wanted to preserved the patristic, dionysian logic in such a way that
    the medieval conceptions of the Scotistic univocity of being and the Thomistic
    analogy of being can be reconciled by employing proper predication -
    equivocal, univocal and analogical. To wit: 1) to speak of Firstness, the Father, the
    transcendent Trinity, the eminently epistemic, one must employ an analogy of
    semiosis; 2) to speak of Secondness, the Son, the incarnational Trinity, the
    eminently ontic, one must employ equivocal predication, or equivocity of
    semiosis, such that morally, the Godhead is made transparent, metaphysically,
    remains occulted; and 3) to speak of Thirdness, the Spirit, the immanent Trinity,
    the eminently telic, one must employ univocal predication, a univocity of
    semiosis. Thus, there is a place for one's dialectical imagination, one's
    analogical imagination and one's pneumatological imagination, which
    we refer to in terms of one‘s imaginative take on reality as an arena of pervasive
    intentionality via a web of infinite semiosis in the community of inquiry.

    Following the notion that whether or not creation is eternal, our treatment holds
    that this cannot be known from natural philosophy (and we understand that the
    discussion is framed from a theology of nature instead). At any rate, if one does
    not take existence to be a predicate of being, rendering Heidegger's "Why is there
    not rather nothing?" a reification of "nothing," then one still encounters a
    creatio continua, and the question then begs: "Why is there not rather
    something else?" and modal ontology pursues this with vigor, but so can the
    semiotic perspective. Rationalists attempt fail also because the metaphysical is a
    moving and sometimes hidden target. Process theologies (e.g. Whiteheadian
    projects) often fail because they have traded essentialism for nominalism, in
    abandoning their substantialism. Only the Peircean take maintains a robust
    epistemological realism (and does not justify, a priori, leaps to idealist and
    materialist conceptions of mind).30

    Regarding Gregory Palamas and the Orthodox, we appreciate their perspective


    and do not see it over against any part of our tetradic heuristic. It actually makes
    pretty good sense vis a vis our omnidirectional semiotic causation. Their take on
    energies, however, may not be helpful other than to affirm some theotic
    epiphenomena, (such as John of the Cross, for instance, might have us ignore,
    anyway).

    Let's begin with how physical causation operates in the natural world. From an
    emergentist perspective, as we observe emergent properties, the pattern
    seems to be that they represent something more than their constituent parts but
    are clearly nothing but the combination of those parts. Hence, we have Ursula
    Goodenough's something more from nothing but, or some prefer
    something else from nothing but.

    Sometimes emergent realities present in a very straightforward manner and our


    reductionistic accounts are easy to come by. Sometimes they present in a very
    problematical manner and explanatory adequacy eludes us.

    30 These thoughts were also developed in dialogue with this publication: ROBINSON,
    Andrew J. (2004). Continuity, Naturalism and Contingency: A Theology of
    Evolution drawing on the Semiotics of C.S. Peirce and Trinitarian Thought.
    Zygon: Journal of
    Religion and Science 39 (1): 111-136 Visit: http://www.andrew-robinson.info/
    We can acknowledge the centrality of emergence without claiming to have
    acquired full explanatory adequacy for the entire spectrum of emergentistic
    phenomena, including all that might be involved in human neurophysiology.
    Thusly, our emergentist account does not ambition explanatory adequacy and is
    only a heuristic device.

    Accordingly, while we prescind from an ontological perspective, bracketing


    metaphysics, we are not, a priori, suggesting that anyone should therefore
    jettison their metaphysic. We are am simply suggesting that, if one keeps our
    Peircean categories and grammars in mind, then 1) their decision to do ontology
    or not, for this aspect of reality or not, will be more coherent 2) their
    metaphysic, if pursued, will model reality with measurably enhanced
    modeling power. The pragmatic maxim suggests that one must precisely
    demonstrate the enhancement of one's modeling power when one sees fit to
    multiply ontologies, cashing out the values of one's conceptions precisely in
    terms of such a significance as would be geared toward the realization of
    human values.

    Regarding the computational fallacy, we are simply saying that algorithmic or


    rule-governed computational accounts are necessary but not sufficient when
    referring to human cognition. Those biosemiotic algorithms are innate and
    hardwired, relatively closed-ended and inflexible, and language-independent.
    Their logic is, in a word, fixed. Whatwe are calling biosemiotic heuristics are
    also innate and hardwired, but are open-ended and flexible, or plastic, and
    language-dependent. Their logic is, in a word, fuzzy.

    One can observe and successfully refer to these biosemiotic realities and make
    note of their emergent properties, without claiming to have, in the same instant,
    described same with any degree of explanatory adequacy. So, no, we are not
    describing any philosophical fallacies that arise from competing ontological
    claims regarding human value-realizations. We would imagine that any number
    of ontological descriptions could fit quite comfortably underneath my heuristic
    umbrella. Our emergentistic heuristic is not robust enough to adjudicate between
    all of the really good hypotheses re: consciousness. It‘s value is cashed out solely
    in terms of making successful references to reality and not, yet, in terms of
    successful descriptions.

    Level 1

    The probable mediates between the possible and the actual to effect the novel
    dissipative structures of nonequilibrium thermodynamics. The quasi-telic
    mediates between the quasi-epistemic and the quasi-ontic to effect the pan-
    semiotic. Quasi-telic because, while downward causation is clearly operative,
    violations of physical causal closure are not.
    Quasi-epistemic because only phenomenal experience is processed as knowledge.
    Quasi-ontic because emergent and novel, bounded and limited, autopoietic
    realities are dynamical and dissipative, probabilistic and modal. Pansemiotic
    because, in environments far from equilibrium, symmetries and other temporal
    patterns are preserved through successive bifurcations and permutations in
    increasing levels of complexity, presenting as first and second order (Deacon)
    emergent properties.

    Level 2

    The quasi-telic mediates between the quasi-epistemic and the quasi-ontic to


    effect the biosemiotic. Biosemiotic because emergent properties are somehow
    progressively encoded, constraining the temporal patterns of second order
    systems, novelty replaced by replication, presenting a dynamic of adaptive
    significance and selection pressure whenever novelty re-presents.

    Level 3

    The quasi-telic mediates between the epistemic and the quasi-ontic to effect the
    biosemiotic. Epistemic because propositional knowledge interacts with
    phenomenal knowledge as symbols are added to icons and indexes, knowledge
    not only syntactic but semantic. Boundaries mediate between limits and the
    autopoietic (self-organizing) to effect freedom (open-ended processor).

    To contextualize the dynamic in Hefner‘s lexicon: The philosophic mediates


    between the positivistic and the paradigmatic to effect the pragmatic.

    Our articulation of the Peircean maxim is that the normative sciences mediate
    between phenomenology and metaphysics. The necessary (Peirce‘s ens
    necessarium) mediates between the probable and the actual to effect the
    pansemio-entheistic.

    Our articulation of the argument in Peirce‘s Neglected Argument for the Reality
    of God: The philosophic mediates between the positivistic and the theistic to
    effect the theotic (Peirce‘s pragmatic maxim).

    Our articulation of Helminiak‘s horizons of human concern, the theotic, in


    Peircean terms representing the cashing out of value of the meaning of the
    conception, ens necessarium, as it must consist of the practical effects the
    conception would have on human behavior, orthopraxis authenticating
    orthodoxy.

    The Pan-entheistic Perspective – brief introduction


    From a pan-entheistic perspective, the necessary mediates between the probable
    and the actual to effect Reality. The necessary entails the eminently telic,
    epistemic, ontic and semiotic. In observable reality, nowhere do we encounter
    such intentionality as would be eminently telic, which I‘d define as acting on
    reality in violation of physical causal closure. Nowhere do we encounter the
    eminently epistemic, human knowledge being necessarily fallible. Neither does
    the eminently ontic present insofar as emergent realities are all contingent,
    bounded and limited, dynamical and ephemeral, modal but probabilistic and
    dissipative even if self-replicating. Finally, the eminently semiotic does not
    present in observable reality, the practical upshot of which is that metaphysics as
    a project is seriously constrained; we must frequently prescind from
    metaphysical hypotheses to ontological vagueness and semantical
    vagueness, employing the Peircean grammars of modal ontology and triadic
    semiotic logic, reassessing the epistemic vagueness that constrains us,
    sometimes, methodologically, and sometimes through that which may be
    naturally occulted as we near T = 0 approaching the Big Bang, or, perhaps, in the
    deepest structures of matter. At bottom, nowhere in observable reality do we
    encounter the ens necessarium, although it is a valid philosophical inference.
    This is why many folks eschew metaphysics and ontology altogether.

    In what we are calling the pan-semio-entheistic heuristic, rather than reality


    presenting as three mutually interpenetrating fields of epistemic, quasi-ontic and
    semiotic influence, which are irreducibly triadic, a fourth modal category is
    introduced, the necessary, with its telic influence, efficaciously and
    unobtrusively coaxing reality toward the attainment of the maximum aesthetic
    value (Haught‘s aesthetical teleology). The four interpenetrating fields form a
    tetradic matrix, which corresponds analogously, in very many ways, to the
    tetradic heuristic we describe below. The eminently epistemic and truly ontic axes
    represent panentheistic transcendence. The axis representing the necessary and
    telic represents the panentheistic field of influence that is immanent and telic,
    implicately ordering the semiotic field of influence, all fields still mutually
    interpenetrating, hence, pansemio-entheistic. Even as we speak of ―fields,‖
    we only refer to same as conceptual placeholders, as heuristic categories, and do
    not offer them as ontological realities, for example, some type of substance-
    process dynamic. What is important is THAT such categories seem to present,
    phenomenologically, even as HOW such categories might interact remains an
    open question for science. Science can offer us some compelling inferences and
    analogies though, for example, vis a vis downward causation.

    But let‘s back up and unpack the concepts of this heuristic.

    Biosemiotic Categories of Religion #1


    Below, we venture a naturalistic account from an evolutionary perspective on the
    philosophical categories of most religious traditions. The four categories of
    religious practice that we will attempt to describe are Cult, Community, Creed
    and Code. Others might think of these in other terms such as Ritual or Liturgy,
    Fellowship or Church, Dogma or Doctrine, and Law or Rubrics.

    This account will be written from a biosemiotic and pragmatic perspective. We


    intend to describe the origin and development of religious categories in terms of
    doxastic practices. We will draw a distinction between propositional heuristics
    and phenomenal experience but will focus on the normative aspects of the
    former. Insofar as religions attempt to model reality, we will describe their value-
    realization strategies in terms employed by traditional philosophical perspectives.
    Simply put, we will ask what philosophy makes of beauty, unity, truth and
    goodness and suggest that religion does something similar. We will briefly touch
    on what humans make of these values at the primary level of experience. We will
    describe the biosemiotic heuristic in some length and provide an example.

    In a nutshell, we will travel from biology to religion at warp speed, but this is
    moreso a heuristic than an hypothesis. Some hypothetical implications will be
    clear. This isn't going to sound very religious but will have an epistemological
    slant. After all, we're sketching religion's undergirdings from biology through
    evolutionary psychology to philosophy. We won't discuss this in that order,
    though, because it would be more helpful, we think, to describe how
    propositional heuristics work, starting in media res, where we find ourselves
    now.

    Biosemiotic Heuristics are characterized by simplicity & facility, are fast & frugal.

    Biosemiotic Heuristics include induction, abduction & inference to the best


    explanation.

    Biosemiotic Heuristics evaluate novelty, newly observed effects.

    Abduction reasons from a presently observed, novel effect to propose a set of


    probable causes.

    My hard drive won‘t spin up. Either that outside transformer is still defective,
    lightning got me again or we need to put this outlet on a different amp fuse.

    Induction reasons from an actual cause present to propose a set of probable


    effects.
    This power strip is off. The computer, monitor and printer will not work.

    Induction immediately critiques abduction, and if the set of probable effects


    contains the presently observed effect, the cause associated with that particular
    inductive inference could be tested, possibly explaining the novel effect (and
    falsifying the abductive inferences), possibly falsifying the inductive inference
    and possibly leaving the novel effect unexplained.

    The power strip is now on. The computer hard drive is spinning up.
    The power strip is now on, but this strip had other things plugged into it, not the
    PC.
    The power strip is now on and the monitor and printer are working but not the
    computer.

    If the process continues, induction further critiques abduction, limiting the set of
    probable causes to the set of actual causes present.

    If the sets of probable and actual causes do not overlap, abduction continues,
    conjecturing more probable causes.

    There were thunderstorms; the power company replaced the transformer last
    week and there are no fuses because there‘s a panel of circuit breakers, none
    tripped. Let‘s open the computer up and try a new power supply.

    If the sets of probable and actual causes do overlap, a search for more effects
    commences in order to further reduce this overlap, successive searches possibly
    winnowing down such set overlap, eventually, to a set with a single cause.

    There were thunderstorms but there have been no brown outs, and circuit
    breakers are used, not fuses. Check the clock radio and TV.

    If the search for more effects introduces additional novel effects, the process of
    alternating conjecture and criticism could be either compounded or simplified.

    The clock radio works but the TV doesn‘t.

    Deduction is presupposed in the irreducibly triadic logic of inference. It


    determines the logical consequences of hypotheses (abductive inferences) as they
    are tested inductively via actualities.

    The deductive inferences may be valid, only.


    There were storms? Lightning took out both the TV and computer.

    They may also be sound.

    Someone else unplugged the TV from its nearby outlet and unplugged the
    computer from the power strip, because a thunderstorm was on the way.

    The exhilaration one experiences from turning on the TV and computer (after
    having ever-so-briefly imagined that they‘d both been destroyed) upon hearing
    the whirr of the hard drive against the background of the Seinfeld theme ―song,‖
    is not part of the triadic inferential logic, and neither are the sounds of the
    whirring or the song. Those experiences are part of the Phenomenal
    Knowledge of Biosemiotic Algorithms, while the computer troubleshooting is
    part of the Propositional Knowledge of the Biosemiotic Heuristics. The latter
    depends on the former, but only the propositional is language-dependent. The
    analysis would be more complicated if, when the TV was turned on, we heard,
    instead, Becker yelling at Bob and Linda. (Actually, it is already WAY more
    complicated but just grasp that there are real distinctions.) Their innate
    neurophysiological processes are distinct, both innate but only the Biosemiotic
    Algorithms are hard-wired, accomplished in finite steps, even if repetitive,
    accomplishing some biological end. We use the word algorithm analogically, not
    because we‘re talking math problems but because the system is inflexible while
    the Biosemiotic Heuristics are very plastic, and open-ended. The recursive
    interplay, in Biosemiotic Heuristics, of abduction, retroduction, inference to the
    best explanation, induction, deduction and other layers of symbolism, is
    distinctly human.

    Primary Level Experiences & Meta-Level Evaluations #2

    Propositional Knowledge X (Environment X


    Phenomenal Knowledge) --> Behavior
    How does this correspond to our maxim that the philosophic mediates between
    the positivistic and the paradigmatic to inform the practical?

    The philosophic gifts us with heuristics to guide our propositional applications of


    phenomenal knowledge.

    Our normative rationality, then, mediates between the analytical and empirical to
    inform the practical. Let us unpack this. It is clear enough, perhaps, how the
    rational is associated with the philosophic and inferential and the empirical with
    phenomenal knowledge and our senses. The practical relates to our actions, our
    behavior, ordered toward biological and socio-cultural imperatives of the species.
    The association between the environment and the analytical honors the fact that
    we are radically social animals and our environment is largely linguistic,
    comprised of other people and their propositional knowledge. Interestingly, that
    environment also includes our own internal milieu with its own propositional
    input and output. As we propositionally process our own propositions, our
    abstractions progress to second and third orders and meta-levels.
    Thus, the environment corresponds to the paradigmatic (but is not exhausted by
    same).

    Starting at the primary level of experience:

    Our experiences of beauty (symmetry, elegance, simplicity, facility, novelty), at


    the primary level of experience, are linguistically, semantically and neurologically
    processed and meaning is imparted at this meta-level and corresponds to what
    we call our aesthetical values. Our primary experiences of goodness (the
    practical fulfillment of biological and socio-cultural imperatives) thus become
    ethical and moral values. Our evaluations of the successes and failures of our
    alternating conjectures and criticisms provide us the rubrics and
    formalization (to the limited extent our inferential facilities are formalizable) of
    our noetical values, the axioms of different abstract logics, again, at this meta-
    level. Our primary experiences of the social and communal, in terms of
    reinforcement or reward, are reflectively abstracted into unitive values.

    At the meta-level, then, the aesthetical, practical, noetical & unitive aspects
    of normative rationality mediate between the analytical and empirical to inform
    the practical. I said, previously, that the philosophic gifts us with heuristics to
    guide our propositional applications of phenomenal knowledge. So, we are also
    saying that the philosophic resides at this meta-level, even comprises it. This
    philosophic perspective is not exactly the same as what we call the study of
    philosophy.

    Second order abstractions and propositions, as a meta-level


    structure, do not necessarily derive in full conscious awareness but
    are imparted through the acquisition of cultural symbolism (already
    layered) and through our own innate biosemiotic heuristic processes
    and neurocircuitry. These propositional facilities, albeit meta-level, because
    they are not fully conscious, might function as subdoxastic routines and
    consist of such as our foundational presuppositions and first principles.
    Most philosophical schools seem to address, in some way or another, what we are
    here calling subdoxastic routines or heuristic subroutines. This is not to at all
    suggest that conceptual mapping across various philosophical hermeneutics can
    be done facilely. Nevertheless, for example, we have Maritain's connaturality,
    Polanyi's tacit dimension, Newman's illative sense, Fries' nonintuitive
    immediate knowledge and Peirce's abduction. These are described, in our
    view, as innate existential orientations. Other subdoxastic routines are smuggled
    in as implicit presuppositions of culturally imparted paradigms.
    Heuristic Subroutines or Subdoxastic Routines #3
    So, again, how might this correspond to the maxim that the philosophic mediates
    between the positivistic and the paradigmatic to inform the practical? In other
    words, what are some concrete examples of what might be considered
    subdoxastic routines or heuristic subroutines, which are not in full
    conscious awareness, this notwithstanding they are clearly second order or meta-
    level structures? We will characterize them as beliefs, but they are usually tacit
    or implicit beliefs.

    We label these beliefs as a literary device to lure people into awareness. How
    many of these heuristics do you accept without proof? Some of this is jargonistic
    but enough is accessible to gather our main thrust.

    Philosophic Horizon, Normative Sciences: a) belief in human intelligence


    over against radical skepticism; b) belief in other minds over against solipsism; c)
    belief in the recursive interplay of the inferences: deductive, inductive, abductive,
    retroductive, inference to the best explanation [IBE]; and in abstract, formal
    logic; d) belief in aesthetic-heuristic maxims of elegance, simplicity, parsimony,
    facility; e) belief in first principles: noncontradiction, excluded middle; f) belief in
    epistemic vagueness, how much ignorance is due to invincible methodological
    constraint versus ontological occulting; g) belief in fast and frugal heuristics of
    ecological rationality; h) Kung's fundamental trust in uncertain reality; i)
    eschewal of overworked distinctions (as if they were dichotomies), underworked
    dichotomies (as if they were mere distinctions), overworked analogies (where
    metaphors yield causal disjunctions) and traffic in trivialities, regressions,
    circularities & tautologies; j) embrace of distinction between necessary &
    sufficient; comprehensive & exhaustive; k) embrace distinction between veridical,
    falsidical and antinomial paradox

    2) Positivistic Horizon, Empirical Science: a) belief in reality's


    intelligibility over against an unmitigated nihilism; b) belief in common sense
    notions of causality; c) belief in alternating conjecture & criticism, falsifiability

    3) Heuristic Horizon, Paradigms: a) belief in Godel's Theorem; b) belief


    in modal ontology and ontological vagueness, the necessary and the probable; c)
    belief in semiotic realism and semantical vagueness, conditional use of
    noncontradiction and excluded middle; d) belief in renormalizability of
    incommensurable systems; e) belief in emergentist heuristic of something more
    from nothing but (or something else)
    4) Pragmatic Horizon, Praxis: a) belief in pragmatic maxim; b) belief in
    cashing out one's paradigm in terms of what and how much difference they
    make.

    Most people seem unaware of these implicit presuppositions. When they become
    aware, they then struggle with justification. How do you justify any of these that
    you recognize as operative in your own hermeneutic?

    Doing philosophy; from subdoxastic to doxastic #4


    What happens when we consciously reflect on these subdoxastic routines and do
    philosophy?

    How might these heuristics correspond to various schools of thought?

    The philosophic mediates between the positivistic and paradigmatic


    to inform praxis.

    This tetradic heuristic unfolds into four value-realization holons whereby


    subjective, intersubjective, objective and interobjective horizons of human
    concern each realize aesthetical, unitive, noetical and ethical values.

    The aesthetical thus mediates between the unitive and noetical to inform the
    ethical. Or, why truth often comes flying in on the wings of beauty and goodness.

    The subjective, intersubjective, objective and interobjective horizons correspond,


    respectively, to Jungian thinking, feeling (harmony between people), sensing and
    intuiting (harmony between ideas) functions, which further correspond,
    respectively, to left frontal, right posterior, left posterior and right frontal, cortical
    brain quadrants. Philosophically, these horizons generally correspond to rational,
    analytical, empirical and practical normative sciences.

    We approach aesthetical value realization 1) intrasubjectively, through formalism


    or essentialism in art; 2) intersubjectively, through expressivism or emotionalism
    in art; 3) intraobjectively, through mimesis and imitationalism in art; and 4)
    interobjectively, through art as instrumentalism.

    We approach unitive value realization 1) intrasubjectively, through possibilities


    and objective (conceptual) reality; 2) intersubjectively, through probabilities and
    semiotic reality; 3) intraobjectively, through actualities and physical reality; and
    4) interobjectively, through ultimate (telic) reality.
    We approach noetical value realization 1) intrasubjectively, through virtue
    epistemology; 2) intersubjectively, through a semiotic, community of inquiry; 3)
    intraobjectively, through correspondence; and 4) interobjectively, through
    coherence.

    We approach ethical value realization 1) intrasubjectively, through aretaic


    or virtue ethics; 2) intersubjectively, through contractarian ethics; 3)
    intraobjectively, through deontological ethics; and 4) interobjectively,
    through teleological or consequentialistic ethics.

    Folks that raise any of these elements to an exclusive perspective or school of


    thought are simply indulging an epistemic fetish (except for the Peircean
    pragmatism, of course).

    What Else Is Going On in this Matrix of 16 Philosophical Categories?

    Our employment of the Peircean take on reality pretty much drives one directly to
    where
    Ursula Goodenough & Terry Deacon ended up in From Biology to Consciousness
    to Morality. Now, take Morality, for example, it has always seemed to us that,
    when approached philosophically, philosophers have elaborated theories that we
    could taxonomically characterize under four major categories and that those
    categories could be associated with the four major brain quadrants, which are
    variously dominant in different temperament types. And one could take
    Aesthetics and Epistemology and Social theories and see a similar type of
    association. That provided us 16 sets of jargon above, which we did not bother to
    unpack, YET, incorporating, as they do, the entire history of philosophy.

    Now, we are certain that one might recognize that our primary level encounters
    with reality generate different evaluative stances in terms of moral, aesthetic,
    epistemic and social sensibilities/inclinations. And one may be surprised to hear
    us assert that, for the most part, as human beings, we get along quite well in our
    encounters with reality, especially with one another, without bothering to
    elaborate major theories about these sensibilities, at least not beyond our
    naturalistic accounts of their origins. And this is to say that not many of us take
    the concepts we employ, when we are sharing and exchanging such sensibilities
    with one another, and then manipulate them into second or even third order,
    meta-level abstractions. So, this might also seem to suggest that, it is not the
    process of abstracting we must constrain as much as it is the process of, willy-
    nilly, drawing new inferences regarding those abstractions, so to speak, in a
    vacuum, isolated from sensible reality. The reason for constraint is that Peirce's
    pragmatic maxim is in play for those abstractions that are both helpful and
    harmful because, as semiotic creatures, we WILL cash out the value of such
    conceptualizations, for better and worse, by putting them into practice one way or
    another, either to our everlasting glory or by accelerating our inevitable demise.

    Nevertheless, all these caveats notwithstanding, humankind HAS elaborated


    such theories as have arisen from our moral, aesthetical, epistemic and social
    sensibilities and their meta-level, inferential structures. At one level, which
    appears to be mostly subconscious, these structures are hardwired, even if
    otherwise plastic and open-ended. They are not articulated beliefs but do
    comprise what most of us would recognize as common sense, and what the
    philosophers might call first principles, or unspoken presuppositions. This isn't
    to suggest that some cultural overlays, nurture adding on to nature, do not
    variously help or hinder common sense; it is only to recognize that, even when
    they do, they, too, remain rather tacit or implicit, most folks never bothering to
    articulate what, to some extent, must generally seem to be self-evident and thus
    rather trivial observations, which is to say, relevant but too much of a grasp of
    the obvious. The practical upshot is that we have taxonomically laid out 16
    major philosophical approaches, which, in our view, can be characterized in
    association with brain quadrants, this notwithstanding the notion that our
    symbolic-linguistic function is rather distributed. So, in a nutshell, we have
    naturalized philosophy, itself, much less religion. (And, we do believe glucose
    metabolism in the brain can be measured to demonstrate what areas are
    "burning hotter" when --- in relationship to Myers-Briggs temperament
    typologies.)

    Stepwise, then, as Goodenough and Deacon take us from biology to


    consciousness to morality, our departure point is to then take morality and
    further reduce it to four major approaches; and to then recognize that their
    account applies to other evaluative sensibilities, too, and to then reduce them,
    each, to four major approaches. We do not see it as a facile mapping exercise.

    Now, the real shame is this. So many folks have, in their metalevel abstractions
    and inferences, moved from the realm of unconscious competence to unconscious
    incompetence. By doing philosophy, they have made themselves STUPIDER.
    Forget Jupiter, in medieval times, when a rather sterile scholasticism began its
    reign: Boys went to college to get more stupider. It has been said that, using logic,
    one of humankind's most efficient tools, an intelligent person, with a false
    premise and/or ambiguous concepts, can get further from the truth, faster and
    more efficiently, than any imbecile could ever aspire. And that is what goes on as
    folks inhabit their metalevel castles. It takes rigor and discipline and self-critique
    and self-reflexive awareness to "do metalevels" right. The cure for this is a move
    from unconscious competence to conscious competence, making what we call our
    unconscious subdoxastic beliefs more robustly conscious doxastic beliefs. Most of
    the trouble ensues when folks get busy trying to justify that which calls for no
    justification. One must not go overboard, though, throwing out the justification
    baby with the dirty metalevel bathwater because 1) so much of reality still begs
    questions and 2) there is a right way to do metalevels, which we won't prescribe
    presently (except to suggest that Peirce is our guide).

    We derived a heuristic from Peirce who said that the normative sciences mediate
    between phenomenology and metaphysics. This can be derived in simpler terms.
    We can say that probabilities mediate between possibilities and actualities. It may
    not be a stretch to even say that the aegis of initial conditions and boundary
    conditions and emergent hierarchies of biases mediate between possible novel
    emergent properties and actual emergent entities. This is a modal grammar. It
    has specific rules for how certain so-called first principles work in each category,
    but we'll desist from describing those now. We won't unpack what Peirce means
    by normative sciences, phenomenology and metaphysics either except to say that,
    if you are one who suffers an immediate negative visceral reaction to the word,
    metaphysics, fret not. This isn‘t what Peirce is doing (necessarily). The simple
    way to diagnose this supposed malady of the mind is to watch and see if one
    speaks in terms of possibilities, actualities and necessities --- and not rather
    probabilities.

    Mapping theTetradic Heuristic onto Ursula Goodenough‘s Categories for


    Religious Naturalism & Daniel Helminiak‘s Lonerganian Approach:

    Again, our heuristic is this: The philosophic mediates between the positivistic and
    the paradigmatic to effect the pragmatic.

    Our mapping of this heuristic onto Goodenough‘s project is this: The spiritual
    mediates between the emergentist perspective and the interpretive to effect the
    moral.

    The philosophic describes our ethical, aesthetical and epistemic sensibilities and
    includes the concepts that we might symbolically abstract from our primary level
    encounters with reality via our cognitive-affective juxtapositions. An inward
    personal response to 1) a deeply felt ethical sensibility might be that of reverence;
    2) an aesthetical sensibility might be that of awe; and 3) an epistemic sensibility
    might be that of assent.

    To be philosophic is not the same as to do philosophy. Philosophy tries to change


    these sensibilities into standards and employs the language of norms. If the
    philosophic describes our evaluative sensibilities, then philosophy describes
    standards (norms) to help us realize their corresponding values. The philosophic
    answers the question: "What's it to ya?" and philosophy answers the question:
    "Where can I get some of that?" The philosophic is thus evaluative, while
    philosophy is normative. The philosophic is spiritual and thus deals with the
    prioritizing of values, describing not only what it is we value but what it is we
    value most and the order in which we place our often-competing values
    (ordinacy). We associate the normative with the Jungian category of Thinking,
    located in the left frontal cortex of the human brain, because our ethical,
    aesthetical and ethical sensibilities, here, give impetus to our rational attempts at
    normative justification. These rational attempts are meta-level processes that
    consciously reflect on the answers to the question "Where can I get some of that?"
    and then attempt to answer this question: "Why should I trust your, my or
    anyone else's answer to that question?" or, to use Kantian interrogatories,
    they attempt to navigate us, regulatively, to the answers to: What can I know?
    What can I hope for? What must I do?

    The positivistic describes our scientific endeavors and answers the question: "Is
    that a fact?" and is thus descriptive (associated with the Jungian category of
    Sensing, located in the left posterior convexity of the human brain). It aspires to
    successful reference through heuristics and explanatory adequacy through
    theory. It includes our emergentist perspective. Classically, it answers: “What
    can I know?”

    The pragmatic and moral describe our prudential judgments, hence informing
    our outward communal responses, answering the question: "What must I do?"
    and is thus prescriptive, aspiring to harmony between people (associated with
    the Jungian category of Feeling, located in the right posterior convexity of the
    human brain). Pragmatically, the question is: “Is it useful?” Morally: “Is it
    good?”

    The paradigmatic describes our overall orientations, including our positivistic


    understandings of nature, our philosophic and spiritual evaluations arising from
    the sensibilities that ensue from our primary level encounters of reality, and our
    pragmatic and moral responses to one another as radically social animals, as a
    symbolic species. The paradigmatic is interpretive, aspiring to harmony
    between ideas (associated with the Jungian category of Intuiting, located in the
    right frontal cortex of the human brain). It is an attempt to answer the question:
    “What‟s it all about, Alfie?” or put in more anagogical terms: “What can I
    hope for?”

    How new is any of this? In some sense, we internalized these


    distinctions from patristic and medieval mystics, like Origen, pseudo-
    Dionysius and Duns Scotus. Origen„s senses of scripture 1) moral 2)
    allegorical/spiritual 3) anagogical and 4) literal/historical,
    correspond to moral, spiritual, interpretive and positivistic
    understandings set forth above. The dionysian logic and predications,
    alternately analogical, anagogical, mystagogical, apophatic,
    kataphatic, univocal and equivocal are precisely what is at work in
    these present considerations using different concepts. And Scotus
    and Peirce resonate semiotically (such as between the scotistic formal
    distinction and the peircean distinction between objective and
    physical realities).

    References to brain quadrants are over-simplified but the functional categories of


    temperament type are meaningful.

    At this point, we have only mapped the categories of Religious Naturalism to our
    Peircean categories. We want to now describe the practical implications of our
    Peirceanesque tetradic heuristic: The philosophic mediates between the
    positivistic and the paradigmatic to effect the pragmatic.

    Daniel Helminiak, building on Lonergan, describes four progressively expanding


    horizons of human concern, the determinations of each successive horizon
    constraining those of the previous horizons. He describes the 1) positivistic 2)
    philosophic 3) theistic and 4) theotic. These correspond to my genericized
    categories of the 1) positivistic 2) philosophic 3) paradigmatic and 4) pragmatic.
    These correspond to the RN categories of 1) emergentist perspective 2) spiritual
    3) interpretive and 4) moral. As Phil St. Romain interprets Helminiak:
    "Spirituality, as a uniquely human phenomenon, is grounded in the philosophic
    level" and grounded in authenticity. Helminiak describes it thus: "For Lonergan,
    authenticity implies on-going personal commitment to openness, questioning,
    honesty, and good will across the board. In this sense, commitment to
    authenticity is exactly what characterizes the philosophic viewpoint."

    Now, the most immediately obvious practical upshot of this heuristic is that,
    while one is entitled to one's own overall interpretive orientation, or
    paradigm, one is not entitled to one's own positivistic determinations.
    It was Senator Moynihan who admonished: "One is entitled to one's own
    opinion, but one is NOT entitled to one's own facts." In fact, Helminiak's
    hierarchy of human foci of concern, placing the philosophic between the
    positivistic and theistic, is an implicit recognition of our peirceanesque heuristic,
    which would treat his concepts thusly: The philosophic mediates between the
    positivistic and theistic to inform the theotic, which is nothing less than the
    journey to authenticity via intellectual, affective, moral, social and religious
    conversion (think: development e.g. Piaget, Erikson, Kohlberg, Fowler et al).

    How, then, might the philosophic or spiritual, constrained by the positivistic,


    then be considered to, in any way, constrain the paradigmatic?

    Helminiak might suggest that Lonergan has described such spiritual constraints
    in terms of an "on-going personal commitment to openness, questioning,
    honesty, and good will across the board." Religious Naturalism might amplify
    this with such epistemic values as humility and reverence and assent toward
    reality.
    What anchors morality? How might we articulate a more compelling morality in
    a pluralistic society and on global venues? What we have just described, above, is
    human rationality. This rationality is emergent, bounded, autopoietic, normative,
    spiritual, positivistic and ecologically evaluative, the last criterion suggesting that,
    together in the same cosmic niche, our ethical, aesthetical and epistemic
    sensibilities will largely converge. The succinct way of putting this is that human
    prudential judgment, both moral and practical, is transparent to human reason.
    The practical upshot is that one is entitled to one's own interpretive paradigms
    and evaluative dispositions, but one is not entitled to one's own moral positions,
    which must be reasoned out in the community of inquiry writ large. After all, to
    quote a wise friend: "Life is not about survival of the fittest; it's about fitting in."

    Changing gears entirely. Heidegger's question: "Why is there not rather


    nothing?" has been rendered a pseudo-question by those who'd employ an
    eliminativist strategy of considering "nothing" a conceptual reification, accusing
    all, who take existence to be a predicate of being, of a meaningless tautology.
    Indeed, not even Aquinas thought that natural philosophy could determine,
    absent positive revelation, whether or not nature itself was eternal. The tautology
    may, nevertheless, be sound; it simply does not add new information to any of
    our systems. Heidegger's existential question is better framed in terms of
    cosmological and ontological speculation: "Why is there not rather
    something else?"

    The implicit answer, as if brute fact, might be proffered as "the aegis of initial
    conditions and boundary conditions." It is clearly not for everyone.

    The Grammar That Operates in This Peirceanesque Tetradic Heuristic

    If one buys into this mapping exercise whereby we have related my heuristic to
    that of Goodenough and Helminiak, then one may be interested in the grammar
    that governs the interplay of these categories: The evaluative-normative mediates
    between the descriptive and interpretive to effect the prudential (moral and
    practical).

    There is a modal logic of ontological vagueness that has us prescind from any
    scheme where the necessary mediates between the possible and the actual. This
    is because we are immersed in contingency as dissipative structures and finite
    entities, alternately emerging and perishing. And, as a brief aside, this has
    everything to do with aesthetic sensibility. Beauty, itself, is being birthed as
    the greater the number of bifurcations and permutations that are at play in the
    novel dissipative structures of reality, the greater the threat to system stability in
    terms of fragility and the greater, most folks seem to report, the beauty. The
    aesthetical axiom seems to be: the more fragile, the more beautiful.
    What gives these categories the type of hierarchical relationship invoked by
    Peirce and described by Helminiak, captured in our own tetradic heuristic? It is
    the interplay of the first principles of noncontradiction (these cannot both be
    true) and excluded middle (either this or that is true). Most people do not pay
    heed to first principles. Rather, we take them for granted as foundational
    presuppositions of common sense. It is the interplay of noncontradiction and
    excluded middle that comprises the semantical vagueness that is an integral
    logic of this heuristic.

    In the category of the probable, including the evaluative-normative,


    noncontradiction holds but excluded middle folds. This is to say that our
    conceptualizations must be conceptually compatible and their logic consistent.
    The concepts in play cannot negate each other and make any sense. They have a
    certain self-evident character. This is noncontradiction coming to bear. At the
    same time, we are in a probabilistic mode, so excluded middle folds, which is to
    suggest that we cannot know, a priori, which of this range of conceptualizations
    (let's say, frequencies, types and degrees of emergent properties) will present in
    reality.

    In the category of the actual, including the descriptive, both noncontradiction


    and excluded middle hold. This is the arena of reality where we encounter brute
    facts and the one most intuitive to most people, who have not, ordinarily,
    prescinded from the modal category of necessary to probable.

    In the category of the possible, including the interpretive, noncontradiction


    folds but excluded middle holds. This is the arena of reality that lies a tad beyond
    our grasp and mutually exclusive propositions, which are conceptually
    incompatible and logically mutually exclusive, remain live options. This is the
    folding of noncontradiction. At the same time, excluded middle holds as we know
    that one or the other paradigms must be true; they cannot both be true. An
    aesthetic teleology, for example, such a paradigm as experiences reality as an
    arena of pervasive intentionality, as takes an intentional stance writ large and not
    as a minimalist heuristic device (Dennett), is a live option, but it and a so-called
    self-evident nihilism cannot both be true. One or the other may be falsified or
    verified, as Hick might say, eschatologically.

    What is operating beneath the surface of both our ontological and semantical
    vagueness is precisely the biosemiotic heuristic we have described elsewhere,
    which can be thought of as the interplay between deduction (re: the probable and
    necessary), induction (re: the actual) and abduction (re: the possible). What
    undergirds our strategy of semantical vagueness is the triadic semiotic logic. It is
    a dynamical system. Implicit in the vagueness, both ontological and semantical, is
    the open-ended, plastic nature of our biosemiotic heuristics, which are easily
    contrasted with our closed-ended, fixed, biosemiotic algorithms. Strict logic has
    yielded to fuzzy logic, the latter being adaptively significant for a symbolic species
    operating in an arena of pervasive contingency.

    Human knowledge thus advances inexorably but ever so fallibly. But there can be
    no question that our grasps of reality are getting tighter and tighter and that our
    competing tautologies are getting ever more taut as they alternate between
    conjecture and criticism through both self- and mutual critique. All of this is to
    suggest that epistemology is epistemology is epistemology and that the reason
    there is no regnant moral relativism is that, at some level, we are all reading off
    the same sheet of music even as we seem to be singing in different keys. Some
    choir voices, however different, sound harmonious, others rather discordant.
    Through time, though, humanity will get progressively more symphonic, or, will
    go the way of the dinosaurs.

    Hermeneutics in Dialogue
    Our Dialogue Conceived as Prayer

    This dialogue doesn‘t really lend itself to categories used to describe systems,
    products, conclusions or movements; rather, it is more so about methods,
    processes, practices or conversations. This dialogue, then, is best conceived as
    prayer, as people interacting with God and one another. It is an ongoing exchange
    of Do You Hear What I Hear? as the Spirit moves among the People of God as
    always.

    Sometimes, the Spirit moves and we respond competently even if not wholly
    consciously. We respond implicitly even if not with an explicit awareness. At
    different times in church history, our response becomes a tad more self-reflective,
    explicitly-aware, self-critical and consciously competent. That‘s what the
    postmodern conversation is to me – not a novel move of the Spirit per se or a
    response of the church, but – another moment in time where many are simply
    paying more attention and appropriating a new awareness of what our gracious
    God has always been about. Certainly, efficacies will always flow when implicit
    faith is made explicit, when unconscious competence is made conscious, when we
    pause, from time to time, to reflect and resource and retrieve and revive and
    renew.

    Because we view every theological conversation as dialogue and


    prayer, the fruits of which are quite unpredictable as they flow from the hand of
    a sovereign God, Who seems to have quite the sense of humor, we find it helpful
    to view the conversation through the lens of Lectio Divina, our prayer. If there
    is a ―movement,‖ then it is really no more and no less than prayer, itself, which
    does not lend itself to specific programs and definite agenda but yields itself to
    transformation, solidarity and compassion. These are realities that come about
    quite spontaneously and outside of our preconceived channels.

    While in creation, novelty arises that transcends but does not violate the order
    from which it emerged, still we cannot really look behind to get a sense of where
    we‘re headed. Rather, we can look back and realize that others have been in
    places like this before and have been superabundantly rewarded in unpredictable,
    novel ways when they have trustfully surrendered. Joy remains a surprise. What
    emerges from this conversation will inspire joy but will be no less a surprise. The
    Spirit is like that is all I can observe. Seldom do we know how God‘s designs will
    be worked even as we look forward with a confident assurance that all will be
    well.

    Below, we will describe 6 moments in prayer and 6 dynamics at play during


    these moments. They capture, for us, 6 dialogues going on in our postmodern
    conversation.

    6 moments in prayer

    1 ) Creation reveals God in a moment of Creatio. In the beginning was The


    Word.

    2 ) The Word is received in a moment of Lectio by the Witnesses to Revelation.

    3 ) The Word is pondered in a moment of Meditatio as the Witnesses meditate


    together on Revelation.

    4 ) As the Word is accepted and spoken in a moment of Oratio, Revelation


    transforms its Witnesses.

    5 ) As transformed Witnesses in a moment of Contemplatio, we respire the


    Word in every contemplative breath as the Word becomes life, itself.

    6 ) We act on the Word in a moment of Operatio as the Word is integrated into


    every aspect of our lives.

    6 dynamics at play

    1 ) In Creatio, Revelation pours forth in Truth, Beauty, Goodness &


    Unity in a Teleological Dynamic which speaks to the transcendental
    imperatives and divine attributes that we experience in our existential
    orientations. This includes a robustly relational dynamic with four vectors as
    each value is realized in the self, the other, the environment and God, trajectories
    emphasized by Merton and further explicated by his description of Bernardian
    love – of self for sake of self, of God for sake of self, of God for sake of God, of self
    for sake of God.

    This is what some have called Beginning with the End in mind. It‘s articulated in
    the question What‘s It All About Alfie? All of the great traditions have in their
    own way articulated truth, celebrated beauty, preserved goodness and fostered
    unity.

    2 ) In Lectio, we encounter the witnesses to Revelation in a Perspectival


    Dynamic which listens to the voices of these witnesses from intraobjective,
    intersubjective, interobjective and intrasubjective perspectives that mutually
    critique each other. For example, Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience.
    Or, in apologetics, the evidential, presuppositional, rational and existential
    approaches.

    We might think here of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, the Anglican Three-Legged


    Stool, Fides et Ratio.

    3 ) In Meditatio, we employ a Methodological Dynamic which has four


    moments, the descriptive and normative moments of our cosmological methods
    and the evaluative and interpretive moments of our axiological methods. For
    example, we employ descriptive science and normative philosophy and
    evaluative culture and interpretive religion, each which is methodologically
    autonomous but axiologically-integral, which is to say all
    necessary but none sufficient, all intellectually-related though not strictly
    logically-related, in every human value-realization.

    Here we are reminded of the Science & Religion Dialogue, of Postmodern


    epistemology and other such discussions.

    4 ) In Oratio, we speak the word as a first moment of accepting it and


    allowing it to work toward our transformation in a Developmental Dynamic,
    whereby we move toward authenticity in ongoing intellectual, affective, moral,
    socio-political and religious conversion.

    We especially think of Bernard Lonergan‘s conversions as expanded and


    explicated by Donald Gelpi.

    5 ) In Contemplatio, we live out of a Paradoxical Dynamic which takes


    us beyond but not without our dualistic, problem-solving mind to engage reality
    with a nondual approach that is more robustly relational. In our dualistic mind
    we have grappled with some success in dealing with paradoxical tensions,
    resolving some dialectically in synthesis, dissolving some perspectivally
    through paradigm shifts that introduce new concepts and categories, and
    evading others practically, although they are otherwise true antinomies, which
    reveal the limits of our formal approaches (as they would require our forsaking of
    some aspects of reason, itself, in order to eliminate certain apparent absurdities).

    These strategies of resolving, dissolving and evading paradox are


    somewhat successful as we grapple with life‘s cosmological questions in science
    and philosophy, where we deal with how to describe and norm reality. When it
    comes to life‘s most important questions, our most ultimate concerns and most
    significant value-realizations, as we grapple with life‘s axiological questions in
    human culture and religion, our strategy shifts from getting the right answers
    through problem-solving to getting the questions right, in other words, to
    embarking on the right quest. This is about getting relationships right.

    Axiological paradox, which deals with how we value and interpret reality, does
    not yield to cosmological speculation with its empirical, rational and practical
    resolutions, dissolutions and evasions of paradox. Its paradoxical tensions are,
    instead, nurtured and maintained creatively. Creative tensions are the stuff of
    life‘s deepest mysteries and most profound meanings and yield its most cherished
    value-realizations. One might say, then, when it comes to life‘s deepest
    paradoxes, we exploit them transformatively.

    There is no better treatment of paradox and the nondual approach than that of
    Franciscan Richard Rohr.

    6 ) In Operatio, where we act on the Word and integrate it into every aspect
    of our lives, we employ an Integral Dynamic, which fosters integrity and
    authenticity through an ongoing process of boundary establishment, boundary
    defense, boundary negotiation and boundary transcendence. These boundary
    dynamics can be healthy or unhealthy, hence efficacious or counterproductive, if
    not maintained in a creative tension. Dogma can decay into dogmatism, cult into
    ritualism, code into legalism and community into institutionalism.

    Creed can otherwise articulate truth. Ritual can otherwise celebrate beauty. Code
    can otherwise preserve goodness. Community can otherwise enjoy fellowship.

    6 dialogues in our Conversation

    1 ) The exploration of teleological dynamics is quite straightforward in


    that it reflects a collective voice of prophetic protest that is coming from the
    margins of institutionalized Christianity and calling us to snap back into
    awareness in order to quit mistaking the finger pointing at the moon for the
    moon itself. It‘s nothing less than the age old clarification of means and ends.

    2 ) The exploration of perspectival dynamics reflects the wisdom of


    mutual critique and the avoidance of various over- and under-emphases, whether
    sola scriptura or solum magisterium, whether a rationalistic foundationalism or
    a radically deconstructive postmodernism.

    3 ) The consideration of methodological dynamics looks at the


    methods that are employed from within all of the perspectives and affirms their
    autonomy as each constrains and mutually critiques the others. Thus we avoid
    the conflation of science and religion and philosophy and respect what each
    contributes to every human value-realization. We therefore eschew scientism as
    well as fideism, for example.

    4 ) The dialogue about developmental dynamics respects the human


    growth trajectory and recognizes that we are being transformed both as
    individuals and as a people. We think here of Bernard Lonergan‘s conversions,
    Clare Graves Spiral Dynamics and so on.

    5 ) Our interest in paradoxical dynamics draws its impetus from life‘s


    inescapable mystery and inexhaustible depth dimensions. Here we explore the
    wisdom of uncertainty, the reality of doubt even in the midst of faith, the nondual
    nature of the contemplative stance.

    6 ) Our exploration of integral dynamics is an exploration of boundary


    realities and how we are to establish, defend, negotiate and transcend this
    boundary or that, while maintaining our integrity and growing our authenticity.

    Gospel – differentiating its brand in the marketplace

    Right & wrong. Good & evil. Merits & demerits. Debits & credits. Reward &
    punishment. Responsibility & accountability. These are the obligational aspects
    of human socialization, a process of formation & reformation that helps us
    function in society. Every society already ―gets‖ this without the benefit of special
    revelation. The Old Testament revealed that a personal, faithful God was active &
    involved with humanity, establishing covenants, making promises.

    In the New Testament, the Gospel, the Good News, Jesus revealed the
    aspirational aspects of human transformation, a process that brings us into
    an intimate Daddy-like relationship with a tender, loving God. This differentiates
    the Gospel in the marketplace, so the aspirational should be emphasized at least
    as much as the obligational. Maybe more?

    So, the obligational aspect of our growth is about things like enlightened self-
    interest, imperfect contrition (sorrow for consequences to ourselves), extrinsic
    rewards and eros (what‘s in it for me?).

    The aspirational is about the intrinsic rewards of truth, beauty, goodness & unity,
    the pursuit of which is its own reward. It‘s about agape (what‘s in it for others)
    and perfect contrition (sorrow for consequences that others suffer). It‘s about
    growing in intimacy.

    The Old Covenant still works and the meeting of our basic obligations is still
    sufficient to enter the Kingdom (& to enjoy abundance). It‘s just that, in the
    Gospel, the New Covenant, we are called to so much more, to superabundance!
    God, like any good father or mother, wants more for us than we want for
    ourselves. When we see anyone settle for less, it is natural to grieve, but we
    should be gentle & accepting of where they are and respectful of their choices.
    Our invitation to come along to the New Creation should reflect our own faith &
    hope & love & joy & courage & peace!

    Interreligious Dialogue

    About [Bracketing] as opposed to ―Jettisoning‖ Our Ontologies

    We cannot have authentic dialogue if people arrive at the table and "jettison"
    some of their core positions. The [bracketing] of certain positions is only a
    dialogical tool (and not rather an epistemic maneuver) which challenges us to
    rearticulate our truth in a more universally compelling way that is more
    transparent to human reason. For example and concretely, then, we cannot urge
    others in a pluralistic political forum to join our side on the basis that the Bible or
    Koran "tells me so," even if, at bottom, that may be what formed our moral
    position. We must dig deeper and come to grips with WHY the "Bible told me so"
    and then offer that explanation with the logic and reasoning tools all humans
    share. And this logic must be tested against reality, too, because, without this
    inductive, positivistic or scientific grounding, logic can take us further from the
    truth, and more quickly, too.

    Evangelizing & Catechizing(& Proselytizing)

    It has been said that those who‘ve done the best at evangelizing have not always
    done as well at catechizing and vice versa. While there is danger in
    overgeneralization, there is often some insight we can gain. To the extent
    catechesis fosters re-cognition, evangelization fosters real-ization. The first
    movement is propositional, evidential, rational, presuppositional, moral and
    practical and the next is existential, experiential and robustly relational. The
    distinction is between seeing the path and walking it, between conceptual
    mapmaking and participatory imagination.

    Both the emerging church conversation and pentecostalism do seem, in my view,


    responses to a modernist rationalism.
    Interestingly, my own reflections on these matters have not so much dealt with
    the emergent and pentecostal as recent phenomena via a vis the postmodern
    critique, but have employed a postmodern (postfoundational) approach to bring
    together emergence as a useful heuristic device as has been appropriated in the
    hard and human sciences, in general, and a pentecostal perspective as gathered
    from the Biblical narrative regarding the implications of the Incarnation &
    Pentecost. So, there are two contexts that might be of special interest, one being
    an overarching narrative and the other a specific historical event.

    Regarding the recent phenomena, to some extent, pentecostalism has better


    instilled first fervor and a fully realized first naivete. Emergence has perhaps
    better served as a vehicle for 2nd naivete. This works much like the Zen
    formulation of first, there is a mountain (precritically), then there is no
    mountain (critically), then there is (post-critical). It might be rendered: first
    there is a premodernist essentialism (naive realism & enchantment), then there is
    a modernist nominalism (nonrealism & disenchantment), then there is a
    constructive postmodernism (critical realism & re-enchantment).

    Emergent and pentecostal perspectives, held together in a creative tension,


    provide an answer to modernist excesses that have led to a/theological
    nonrealism, moral relativism and practical nihilism, as well as sterile scholastic
    rationalisms and Wittgensteinian fideisms. Taken together, we get a more holistic
    theological anthropology that mines all of the value to be realized from our pre-
    modern, modern and postmodern experiences without the need to cut out and
    invalidate large swaths of our Christian tradition.

    We do not want to lose our ―First, there is a mountain‖-encounter of Pentecost


    and the fire of first fervor gifted by our participatory, analogical imagination, nor
    do we want to lose the ―Then there is no mountain-recognition‖ provided by our
    conceptual map-making and dialectical imagination, as we move into the
    reappropriation of ―Then there is‖ and we realize through our 2nd naivete and
    pneumatological imagination that everything that‘s old is new again, as we see
    the original realities come alive in inculturated forms that reveal that the Good
    News is as fresh and vibrant and relevant to humankind as it was in the
    beginning, is now and ever shall be.

    We have seen some in their Pentecostal experience get rather stuck in a pre-
    critical first naivete. We have encountered some who, from an Emergent stance,
    have gotten stuck in a radically deconstructive nonrealism, what some have called
    Evangellyfish, washed up on postmodern shores, unable to get fully back into the
    swim. Those who severely critique both movements are generally describing
    these elements of Pentecostalism and emergence, which are mere caricatures of
    what these movements are and can become as they exploit the creative tension
    that they offer each other in ongoing and ever-fruitful mutual critique.
    We have enjoyed the fruits, in interreligious dialogue, as our rather exclusivistic
    ecclesiocentrisms have slowly yielded on the ecumenical front to a more
    inclusivistic Christocentrism. Without forsaking our own Christocentric stances,
    we might foster an even more fruitful interreligious dialogue by opening same
    with a pneumatological inclusivism.

    Pentecostals & Charismatics have led the way on such mutual understanding
    within Christianity, sharing our experience of Spirit. Might this be the model for
    advancing dialogue and understanding between the Great Traditions, too?
    Pentecostals might have some suggestions for a way forward.

    Religion‘s Core Competency

    Our disparate faiths, including many indigenous religions as well as the great
    traditions, have a certain core competency. From that core competency derives
    the nature of their distinct value-added contribution, their unique role, in our
    lives. This role is not to describe reality scientifically, not to prescribe reality
    morally or ethically, not to norm reality philosophically, not to manipulate reality
    practically, and not to govern reality politically. These functions belong, rather, to
    the cosmological story told by science and philosophy, what some have called
    Everybody‘s Story, and rightly so, because it transcends cultures. And it does
    include our rather rudimentary, vague understanding of a Creator Spirit, one
    could say, pneumatologically.

    There are other stories to be told by religions and cultures, which are axiological.
    Their role is to help us interpret reality evaluatively. More plainly, their distinct
    contribution is to help us celebrate and value reality.

    The opposite of good religion is neither bad science nor bad morality, although
    many would leave us with that impression. The opposite of religion is
    indifference and nihilism, an attitude that reality offers nothing of enduring value
    to celebrate. We cannot talk people out of such an attitude with empirical
    evidence, logical reasoning or moral persuasion because these basic attitudes are
    not constructed of formal arguments. Instead, good religion forms people
    through exchanges of stories about lives well-lived, and through moments of
    celebration, and through the handing down of formative and transformative
    practices and through the comfort and enjoyment of fellowship in community.

    Inter-religious dialogue, then, is much more an exchange of practices and has


    very little to do with conclusions. It has a lot more to do with celebratory methods
    and transformative processes and very little to do with philosophical systems and
    products of moral reasoning. Religion is more so a participatory engagement and
    much less a propositional exchange.
    Much of the strife on our planet comes from religion masquerading as cosmology,
    attempting but failing to co-opt the prerogatives of good science and good
    philosophy with pseudo-religion. Creationism isn‘t bad religion; it‘s bad science.
    Theocratic rule isn‘t bad religion; it‘s bad political science. Misogyny and
    homophobia aren‘t bad religion; they‘re grounded in bad anthropology and are
    bad morality. Such dysfunctional approaches to reality inevitably result when
    religion departs from its core competency, strays from its distinct role and fails to
    attend to its own unique contribution, which Merton emphasized was
    transformation not socialization.

    A lot of strife also comes from various insidious –isms. Many words that end in
    -ism and -ist are merely descriptive and only get pejorative when morphed into
    -istic. There are some, however, that describe realities precisely in terms of their
    normative implications, typically involving over- and under-emphases of various
    epistemic perspectives, e.g. empiricism, scientism, rationalism, positivism. In the
    realm of faith, for example, an overemphasis on the 1) kataphatic and affective is
    pietism, sometimes fideism 2) kataphatic and speculative is rationalism 3)
    apophatic and speculative is encratism and 4) apophatic and affective is
    quietism.

    There are many terms that otherwise describe what we might consider in terms of
    giftedness vis a vis the roles one might play in community, for example, as a
    settler or pioneer, conservative or progressive. Following St. Augustine‘s
    aphorism – in essentials, unity; in accidentals, liberty or diversity; in all things,
    charity – those with a conservative or traditionalist charism help preserve and
    celebrate the essentials of the faith, while those with a liberal or progressive
    charism help explore and celebrate the plurality of our faith expressions.

    In this vein, then, it seems there have always been some who are
    traditionalistic or fundamentalistic in their tendency to treat faith‘s
    accidentals as if they were essentials and no too few who are, conversely,
    liberalistic or progressivistic in that they tend to treat essentials as if they
    were accidentals. (Which elements of the Christian faith are the essentials and
    which are the accidentals is not the focus, here.) Such considerations will often
    involve different epistemological schools and various theories of truth and
    justification vis a vis modernism and postmodernism and various
    non/foundationalist approaches.

    Religion in the Public Square

    In the old thomist tradition, distinctions were drawn between an essentialist or


    idealist interpretation and application of Gospel norms and an existentialist or
    realist interpretation and application of them. This distinction is necessary
    because we live in a tension where we are undeniably realizing the Kingdom now
    even as we, as created co-creators, join all of creation in the labor and groaning of
    the act of giving birth to an ever more full Kingdom realization.

    The essentialist understanding seizes upon the efficacies of the Spirit‘s help and
    the Word, itself, proclaimed and lived by faithful witnesses. The existentialist
    understanding recognizes our human frailty due to our radical finitude and
    sinfulness and so makes allowances knowing humankind will yet fall short of
    Gospel ideals. One would not want to say that the essentialist approach is
    theoretical and the existentialist practical, because one would not want to
    discourage any courageous persons from living out the Gospel, radically, as
    prophetic witnesses and lovers of God and all. We can say that the existentialist
    approach is pastoral, however, looking with compassion and understanding on
    us in our human condition, helping us to do the best we can.

    Concretely, then, for example, this tradition affirms both pacifism and just war
    principles as legitimate expressions of Gospel ideals.

    Even those who are not themselves pacifists can be in deep solidarity with and
    very much supportive of their pacifist sisters and brothers. We would not want to
    live in a world without their voice of prophetic protest and without the witness of
    their lives.

    With respect to the law, the same distinctions apply. Those who eschew any
    active and coercive legal and political engagements can also serve as authentic
    voices of prophetic protest and witnesses to the reality of the Kingdom, now
    among us and yet to come more fully. From a pastoral perspective, consistent
    with an incarnational outlook, we can also legitimately seek to permeate and
    improve the temporal order. We can be thankful that our US founders integrated
    religion into the public square, strengthening its influence through
    nonestablishment and free exercise provisions. This was a healthy response to
    Enlightenment principles, healthier than the Enlightenment fundamentalism of
    the Continental experience, where religion was marginalized by secularistic
    forces.

    So, there's nothing wrong with a robust engagement of religious and


    metaphysical perspectives in the public square. That‘s not what‘s wrong per se
    with the approach of many today. Where they go wrong is twofold: 1) They too
    often fail to translate their moral stances into a language that would give their
    moral intuitions a normative impetus for other groups of believers and even
    unbelievers. 2) They too often give jurisprudential considerations short shrift,
    emphasizing form over substance, paying too little heed to whether a law will, in
    actuality, be efficacious and bring about its desired aim, especially in a pluralistic
    society where demographics may reveal that a proposed law will not only be
    unenforceable but possibly even counterproductive. There is a related problem,
    which is that the failure to successfully translate some religiously-derived moral
    intuitions otherwise results from the fact that certain of those intuitions are
    philosophically and anthropologically indefensible.

    Bearing the Pain of Cultural Divides

    First, we acknowledge our grief and then naturally grieve all of this pain and
    misunderstanding. And we allow this pain to somehow transform us that we will
    not continue to somehow transmit it. How can MY response change is my first
    responsibility.

    Where others are concerned, we must recognize that such deeply held
    convictions, whether wholly or partly erroneous, are a very complex combination
    of irrational, pre-rational, nonrational, rational and supra-rational dispositions.
    As such, they do not yield in the face of superior logical argumentation, debates
    about religious epistemology, scriptural prooftexting, pragmatic appeals,
    enlightened self-interest, meta-ethical reformulations or natural law syllogisms.
    Such approaches only serve to further harden hearts and close minds.

    To reach people holistically, with a full body-soul-spirit and heart-mind ―blow,‖


    we need parables, stories, poems, songs, plays, movies and other musical &
    dramatic arts presentations. And, even more than that, primarily, we need to
    tell our relevant personal stories, share and exchange our personal, real life
    experiences, reinforcing our compassionate outlooks and forming and reforming
    our desires in prayer and liturgy.

    And we need to recognize that, such seeds that we plant, we may not be around to
    see sprout but others will assuredly reap the benefits. We must be willing to plant
    trees, the shade of which will not be ours to enjoy.

    Ministers of Reconciliation and Story-tellers are the most important people in the
    world (on average, about two generations after they‘re dead.)

    Natural Mysticism & Enlightenment

    To the extent that natural mysticism and enlightenment seem to gift humans with
    what are authentic insights and intuitions about cosmotheandric unity and
    human solidarity and Divine immanence, then they foster human authenticity in
    the fullest lonerganian sense. They contribute to Lonergan‘s secular conversions:
    intellectually, affectively, morally and socially. So it is with anything that truly
    humanizes a human being: good diet, good hygiene, good discipline, good
    awareness, good asceticism, good habits, etc
    Even the construction of the false self, the social persona, is part of the
    humanization process of this animal, Homo sapiens. So, this drives at the
    question of whether or not humanization and divinization are the same thing,
    perhaps. And we can answer in the affirmative.

    However, complete humanization, into the Imago Dei, seems to require the
    Lonerganian religious conversion, too, and seems to require Helminiak‘s theotic
    focus or realm of concern. Humanization and divinization go hand in hand but
    the process can be frustrated before one undergoes religious conversion and
    before one‘s realm of concern opens up beyond the positivistic, philosophic and
    theistic into the theotic.

    So, yes, there is something dynamically ordered about Zen and TM and natural
    mysticism, that moves one toward humanization and authenticity and which can
    improve on human nature in such a way that grace can build on a better
    foundation. That is what the Holy Spirit does n‘est pas? Grace builds on nature.
    So, anything that helps us more fully realize our humanity and authentic human
    nature can help dispose us to gifts of the Spirit. We can say this especially since
    enlightenment seems to gift one with docility, openness, quietness, stillness,
    solitude, solidarity, compassion, good asceticisms and habits that transmute into
    true virtue, all related to the life of love and prayer.

    The Spirit, however, as with anyone who progresses in the prayer life on through
    advanced stages of meditation to the simplest forms of active prayer, remains
    sovereignly in control of contemplative grace.

    Further, it does seem that one must have habitually nurtured kataphatic devotion
    and loving intentionality in a fully relational approach, in addition to any
    apophatic experience of nonduality or void, if one is to then expand their focus of
    concern to include the theotic, if one is to have their secular conversions
    transvalued by a distinctly religious conversion, which is clearly explicit and
    kataphatic, devotional and intentional and relational. In other words, for
    example, ditching one‘s mythic-membership consciousness (credally) is NOT the
    way to go, for that would entail the negation of a stage and not rather its
    transvaluation.

    East Meets West interreligiously – but how?

    ―Awakening to beauty, truth, and goodness is to waken to the unfoldment of


    Divine Life within us.‖ Thomas Keating

    ―In philosophy classes we were told that there were three things that especially
    opened us to the Transcendent: the good, the true, and the beautiful. Come join
    us as we again put together what was never really apart!‖ Richard Rohr
    ―The philosophers are wrong, he [Scotus] argues; ordered love, not knowledge,
    defines and perfects human rationality. Human dignity has it foundation in
    rational freedom. In contrast to the philosophical, intellectualist model of
    human nature and destiny, the Franciscan offers and strengthens the Christian
    alternative, centered not merely on knowledge but on rational love. Throughout
    his brief career, Scotus works to put together a more overtly Christian
    perspective on the world, the person, and salvation that might stand up to this
    philosophical intellectual/speculative model and, by using the best of its
    resources, transcend it. The Franciscan tradition consistently defends a position
    wherein the fullest perfection of the human person as rational involves loving in
    the way God loves, rather than knowing in the way God knows. His position in
    this overall project can be best understood within Franciscan spirituality, which
    emphasizes the will and its attraction to beauty, love, and simplicity.‖ Ingham
    and Mechthild‟s The Philosophical Vision of John Duns Scotus

    We do well to learn from India‘s very long history of reflection on God and
    gods, Goddess and goddesses, if we are to speak intelligently of the God in
    whom we believe and to whom we pray. Faith ought to be single-minded, but
    theology has a duty to be broad and ever more open to new learning.
    Francis X. Clooney, S.J. America Blog, Teaching God at Harvard, Spring
    2009

    Fr. Richard Rohr OFM describes much of Buddhism as gifting one with
    ―practices‖ and not ―conclusions.‖ In this consideration, we'll break open the gift
    of this succinct insight and offer one interpretation of what this might mean for
    Christianity.

    The Advaita Vedanta and Bhakti schools of Hinduism, and the Mahayana school
    of Buddhism, are now the major (larger) schools of these great living traditions
    and all have prominent devotional elements. While the dualist and modified
    nondualist Vedantic schools are primarily associated with Bhakti thought, even
    the Advaitic school can be associated with devotional elements through its
    founder, Shankara. Even in Zen Buddhism (Mahayanan), both Chinese (Chan)
    and Korean (Soen) schools integrate devotional elements. What about the
    ―reform‖ movement of the Japanese (Soto) school, which, by many accounts,
    does not so readily accommodate devotional elements? Some say this movement
    was rooted in the late 19th-early 20th Century Japanese nationalist tendencies,
    which both sought to differentiate itself from other schools in Asia and to support
    the country‘s militaristic approach. Others say the reform was a response to Zen‘s
    commercialization in Japan. Whatever the case may be, for manifold and varied
    historical reasons, the Japanese school lineages predominate in North America.
    To the extent that Japanese Zen lacks a governing body and a per se orthodoxy,
    unlike other Asian schools, it naturally lends itself to what would otherwise be
    considered heterodox adaptations, such as the emergent Christian Zen lineage.
    Our purpose in providing this background is to dispel any facile misconception
    that Eastern spiritual practices writ large, even when otherwise associated with
    various nondualities, necessarily lack a robust relationality or are otherwise
    incompatible with devotional elements. This is also to suggest that Americans,
    who have been primarily exposed to the Soto school, may especially fall prey to
    caricaturizing what are in fact the largest and most predominant living traditions
    of the East based on what for them has otherwise been a very narrow exposure to
    a ―reform‖ element that turns out to otherwise be somewhat aberrant. We say
    this to affirm that, in my view, relationality is essential in all aspects of the life of
    the radically social animal known as Homo sapiens. We would argue that it is
    considered essential by most people in most all sects and denominations of the
    great traditions.

    It therefore seems likely that there is no, so to speak, ―essential‖ Enlightenment


    experience for most people, neither East nor West, which is to suggest that most
    people, who undertake the ascetic disciplines and nondiscursive and/or
    apophatic meditative practices that can lead to experiences of absolute unitary
    being, cosmic awareness or even various energy arousals and awakenings, are
    already both formatively prepared and kataphatically situated in a devotional
    environs that is, more or less, conducive to an orderly unfolding of the psychic
    energies often associated with spiritual emergence such that they will not
    otherwise fall prey to what can be some very unsettling spiritual emergencies.

    This has profound implications for our inter-religious dialogue, especially as it


    pertains to our mutually enriching exchanges of spiritual technologies (ascetic
    and meditative practices), which might be a lot more adaptable (abstracted from
    doctrinal elements) between Eastern and Western traditions than one might first
    suspect, especially if only familiar with Japanese Zen as is the case with most
    Americans .

    Normatively speaking, this is to suggest that our emergent Christian Zen lineages
    need not feel compelled to turn away from devotional practices and may indeed
    want to more actively engage the many other schools of Hinduism and Buddhism
    precisely in search of their devotional modalities. Another problem in the West is
    the fact that there is an emergent pop-Advaitan and/or neo-Advaitan lineage that
    facilely engages Shankara‘s illuminative teachings while ignoring the founder‘s
    devotional practices. This can only exacerbate the misconceptions, hence
    misapplications, that arise from the already narrow and misguided view of the
    Eastern traditions. Thankfully, many Western and Christian Zen lineages do offer
    caveats regarding any such over-conceptualizations of Zen.

    At the same time, as Robert Sharf31 points out: ―… there is a world of difference
    between issuing such warnings in a monastic environment where ritual and

    31 Robert Sharf Sanbokyodan: Zen and the Way of the New Religions p. 427-428
    doctrinal study are de rigueur, and issuing such warnings to laypersons with
    little or no competence in such areas. In short, the Sanbokyodan has taken the
    antinomian and iconoclastic rhetoric of Zen literally, doing away with much of
    the disciplined ceremonial, liturgical, and intellectual culture of the monastery
    in favor of the single-minded emphasis on zazen and a simplified form of koan
    study.‖

    Whatever the divergent ontological views of our many traditions, for the most
    part, in the East, there is a subtle distinction that is drawn between ultimate or
    absolute reality and phenomenal or practical reality, such that it is lost on many
    Westerners that various words/cognates, in fact, retain their conventional or
    pragmatic usefulness in a movement that, first, suspends our naive affirmations,
    then, subjects them to philosophical scrutiny and, finally, returns them back to
    their conventional understanding with deeper insights and with maybe a hygienic
    hermeneutic of suspicion. This insight and hermeneutic does not cast suspicion
    with the skeptics on all matters unseen but instead invites us to go beyond (not
    without) our senses and reason to penetrate reality more depthfully.

    In Christianity, Richard of St. Victor thus informs the Franciscan tradition thru
    Bonaventure about the occulus carnis (eye of the senses), the occulus rationis
    (eye of reason), and the occulus fidei (eye of faith). This ―eye of faith‖ is what
    Rohr refers to as the ―third eye‖ and, consistent with Merton, it integrally takes
    us beyond our senses and reason but not without them. This conceptually maps
    fairly well, but not completely, over such as Jewish and Tibetan concepts of Third
    Eye seeing.

    Rohr often refers to knowledge through connaturality, which, per Maritain is


    knowledge through union or inclination, connaturality or congeniality, where
    the intellect is at play not alone, but together with affective inclinations and the
    dispositions of the will, and is guided and directed by them. It is not rational
    knowledge, knowledge through the conceptual, logical and discursive exercise
    of Reason. But it is really and genuinely knowledge, though obscure and
    perhaps incapable of giving account of itself, or of being translated into words.

    Rohr writes: ―Contemplation is also saying how you see is what you will see,
    and we must clean our own lens of seeing. I call it knowing by ―connaturality‖
    (Aquinas), or knowing by affinity or kinship, it is the participative knowing by
    which the Indwelling Spirit in us knows God, Love, Truth, and Eternity. LIKE
    KNOWS LIKE, and that is very important to know. There definitely is a
    communion between the seer and the seen, the knower and the known Hatred
    cannot nor will not know God, fear cannot nor will not recognize love. Because
    this deep contemplative wisdom has not been taught in recent Catholic
    centuries, and hardly at all among Protestants, it is a great big lack and
    absence in our God given ability to know spiritual things spiritually, as Paul
    would say (1 Cor.2:13).‖
    Clearly, then, Rohr advocates nonduality and not nondualism. The latter is a
    metaphysical proposition; the former is an epistemic method. In philosophy, we
    have recognized that methods can be successfully extricated from systems. In our
    East-West dialogue, we have recognized that some practices can be successfully
    extricated from their doctrinal contexts.

    Nonduality is a practice, a method, that can be successfully extricated from


    nondualism (as system or doctrine). In fact, it has a philosophical meaning vis a
    vis the false dichotomy fallacy that is quite independent of any Eastern traditions.
    That‘s the meaning employed by Rohr.

    Here‘s a quote on the same theme from Pseudo-Dionysius: ―Do thou, in the
    intent practice of mystic contemplation, leave behind the senses and the
    operations of the intellect, and all things that the senses or the intellect can
    perceive, and all things which are not and things which are, and strain
    upwards in unknowing as far as may be towards the union with Him who is
    above all being and knowledge. For by unceasing and absolute withdrawal
    from thyself and all things in purity, abandoning all and set free from all, thou
    wilt be borne up to the ray of the Divine Darkness that surpasses all being.‖

    Christianity is recovering its mystical core via a neoplatonic-influenced dionysian


    logic. The classical emphasis has been on the dialectic between the apophatic and
    kataphatic, the former referring literally to what God is not, the latter an
    affirmation of what God is like, analogically. This has reduced all God-talk to
    metaphor and leaves a question begging as to how there can be any causal
    efficacy between Creator and creatures with such a causal disjunction as is
    necessarily implied by such a weak analogy.

    The classical logic32 looks like this:

    1) God is | x | is true analogically and kataphatically.


    2) God is | not x | is true literally and apophatically.

    Dionysian logic breaks out of this dualistic dyad, going beyond it but not
    without it: 3) God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true unitively.

    This triadic perspective resolves the tension between the classical neoplatonic
    henosis, which refers to the dance between intersubjectivity and identity with
    ultimate reality, and dinonysian theosis, which refers to the growth in intimacy
    with ultimate reality, by affirming both an intraobjective identity between
    creature and Creator, in a panentheistic divine matrix of interrelated causes and

    32 [need to footnote Samuel Brainard‘s work here if possible]


    effects, as well as an intersubjective intimacy between creature and Creator, the
    creature thus being quasi-autonomous. (auto = self)

    The practical upshot, then, which might be quite the essence (pun intended), of
    such a nondual perspective is that all may be well and that all are radically
    interrelated and this is true whether one is indeed an absolute monist, qualified
    monist, panentheist or classical theist. The theoretical rub would be ontological
    but all traditions, in fidelity to right speech, had better remain in search of a
    metaphysic at this stage on humankind‘s journey?

    For Rohr, I‘d say the nondual refers mostly to an epistemic process, such as in
    Zen‘s dethroning of the conceptualizing ego in order to otherwise relate to some
    seeming contradictions, instead, as paradoxes, which might perdure as mystery,
    resolve dialectically, or even dissolve from a stepping out of an inadequate
    framework of logic or any other dispositions (or lack thereof) known to this
    paradox or another. This maps well with the broad conceptions of nonduality
    such as at Nonduality Salon and Wikipedia. Predominantly, though, Rohr
    affirms nondual thinking in an over against fashion as related to either-or
    thinking, i.e. false dichotomies, and as related to a failure to self-critique one‘s
    own systems and logical frameworks, as a failure, too, to affirm the rays of truth
    in other perspectives and traditions. It is a failure to move beyond the Law thru
    the Prophets to the Wisdom tradition, not to do away with them but to properly
    fulfill them.

    We can draw a distinction between Rohr‘s philosophical treatment or method of


    nonduality or nondual consciousness and the practice of contemplative prayer
    forms. The former is at the service of the latter, to be sure, but it is also at the
    service of all other value-realizations, as one should expect from a whole brain
    approach. Here we come full circle back to our consideration of the devotional
    elements that can be fruitfully employed in conjunction with any nondual
    approach, whether conceived from an epistemic and/or ontological stance.

    Rohr33 thus goes beyond any Mertonesque Zen-like formulations when he says
    that contemplation is a long, loving look at what really is. He writes:
    ―Contemplation means returning to this deep source. Each one of us tries to
    find the spiritual exercise that helps us come to this source. If reading the Bible
    helps you, then read the Bible. If the Eucharist helps, then celebrate the
    Eucharist. If praying the rosary helps, pray the rosary. If sitting in silence
    helps, just sit there and keep silence. But we must find a way to get to the place
    where everything is. We have to take this long, loving look at reality, where we
    don‘t judge and we simply receive. Of course, emptiness in and of itself isn‘t
    enough. The point of emptiness is toget ourselves out of the way so that Christ
    can fill us up. As soon as we‘re empty, there‘s a place for Christ, because only

    33 Richard Rohr, Simplicity revised from 1991, Crossroad Publishing 2003


    then are we in any sense ready to recognize and accept Christ as the totally
    other, who is not me.‖

    In a nutshell, the general thrust of this whole brain approach is that, in order to
    have a relationship with your spouse in marriage, as was intended in creation,
    one has to approach one‘s spouse with more than words, logic, science, math,
    analytical skills and pragmatic considerations. One has to go beyond (NOT
    WITHOUT) these ways of knowing (Aquinas-like approach) to a knowledge that
    comes from love (Bonaventure‘s approach). One must enter a relational realm, in
    addition to the logical, empirical and practical realm. One must move beyond the
    language of math, philosophy, business & commerce, engineering and so on to
    learn the language of relationship, the grammar of assent, loyalty, fidelity, trust,
    faith, hope, love. We tend to eventually ―get this‖ in marriage, or it dissolves (and
    half of all marriages do). There is reason to suspect, then, that ―getting this‖ in
    our relationship with God is similarly problematical for most people.

    In the story of Malunkyaputta34, who queried the Buddha on the fundamental


    nature of reality by asking whether the cosmos was eternal or not, infinite or not,
    whether the body and soul are the same, whether the Buddha lived on after
    death, and so on, the Buddha responded that Malunkyaputta was like the man
    who, when shot with an arrow, would not let another pull it out without first
    telling him who shot the arrow, how the arrow was made and so on. Thus the
    Buddha turns our attention to the elimination of suffering, a practical concern,
    and away from the speculative metaphysical concerns.

    This story of Malunkyaputta might thus help us to reframe some of our concerns,
    both regarding Buddhism, in particular, and metaphysics, in general. For
    example, perhaps we have wondered whether, here or there, the Buddha was ever
    1) ―doing‖ metaphysics or 2) anti-metaphysical or 3) metaphysically-neutral. In
    fact, we might have wondered if the soteriological aspects of any of the great
    traditions were necessarily intertwined with any specific ontological
    commitments. In some sense, now, we certainly want to say that all of the great
    traditions are committed to both metaphysical and moral realisms. However, at
    the same time, we might like to think that, out of fidelity to the truth, none of our
    traditions would ever have us telling untellable stories, saying more than we
    know or proving too much.

    One interpretation of Malunkyaputta‘s story, then, might suggest that it is not


    that the Buddha eschewed metaphysics or was even ontologically neutral; rather,
    it may be that the Buddha just positively eschewed category errors. This would
    imply that the Buddha would neither countenance the categorical verve of
    yesteryear‘s scholastics nor the ontological vigor of our modern fundamentalists
    (neither the Enlightenment fundamentalists of the scientistic cabal nor the

    34 Jeryy Katz, One – Readings in Nonduality, 2009 need citation, see my review at
    his site online
    radical religious fundamentalists, whether of Islam, Christianity, Zen or any other
    tradition). Thus we might come to recognize that our deontologies should be as
    modest as our ontologies are tentative, that we should be as epistemically
    determinate as we can but as indeterminate as we must, that we should be as
    ontologically specific as we can but as vague as we must and that our semantics
    should reflect the dynamical nature of both reality and our apprehension of same,
    which advances inexorably but fallibly. The Buddha seemed to at least inchoately
    anticipate this fallibilism and, in some ways, to explicitly preach and practice it.

    To the Buddha‘s point, then, regarding the no-self — humankind, as a community


    of earnest inquiry, has no better grasp now than we did then of the ultimate
    nature of the cosmos or the soul. The Mahayanan Buddhists, and many in other
    traditions and schools, apparently have no problem dealing with the self in
    conventional, hence practical terms, whether in the temporal or celestial sphere,
    and have a lively devotional practice, affirming a robust interrelationality vis a
    vis their pantheon of goddesses and gods, whom they worship, and all sentient
    beings, whom they offer karuna. They would thus seem to have no more trouble,
    practically speaking, in relating to ―self‖ or ―other‖ as a phenomenal experience
    than Westerners would have. Where they would have trouble is when,
    theoretically speaking, it comes to defining self using ontological categories,
    whether substantialist or process, essentialist or nominalist, in ways that would
    pretend to exhaustively comprehend primal reality. This, one might observe, is
    the type of trouble more Westerners should have. We are otherwise inclined,
    then, having some exposures to certain phenomenal experiences ourselves, not to
    interpret the no-self experience, ontologically, and instead associate the
    experience with what Jim Arraj calls the loss of the affective ego.

    As Arraj35 writes and we agree: ―It would probably by wrong, as well, to


    imagine that Zen Buddhism, or even the advaitan Vedanta is making any kind
    of ontological nondualist claims. Rather, they are trying to take into account a
    nondual experience, and sometimes their post-experience reflections can leave
    the impression that they are creating a nondual ontology. But they are not
    interested in philosophy in the Western sense, but rather, leading people to the
    experience, itself. The real question, which we will pursue later, is whether
    enlightenment is nondual in itself, or is presented in a nondual way because of
    the very means by which the enlightenment experience is attained. There should
    be no rush to judgment on the part of Christians as if they need to express
    Christianity in some nondual ontological fashion. This is not precisely what Zen
    Buddhists, and advaitan Hindus are doing.‖

    It would be considered comical, if it were not otherwise so distressing, the way


    Advaitan accounts of absolute reality are manipulated in cyberforums and some
    popular literature, drawing the most absurd conclusions as they are misapplied to
    the practical considerations of our phenomenal experience, when conventional
    35 James & Tyra Arraj, Christianity in the Crucible of East-West Dialogue,
    innerexplorations.com
    usage would otherwise indeed be the prescribed approach even for orthodox
    nonduality.

    Arguably, even Shankara‘s philosophy need not be interpreted as an absolute


    monism, especially once taking into consideration its account of causation in
    phenomenal reality, which at least resembles Aristotle‘s vis a vis its teleological
    dimension, even if otherwise approaching Plato‘s idealist conceptions. The
    Advaitan ontology addresses causes and effects in sufficiently vague references
    and its epistemology is most notably triadic, wherein the pramana (sources of
    knowledge, Sanskrit) each form one part of a triputi (trio), which include the
    subject and object mediated by the cause or means of knowledge.

    There are thus inchoate traces of the ontological vagueness, epistemic


    indeterminacy and semantical versatility that have made their way through the
    West vis a vis such as the Dionysian logic of the Neoplatonists, Meister Eckhart‘s
    apophatic predications, Scotus‘ formal distinction, Peirce‘s triadic semeiotic and
    some postmodern criticisms. One might properly wonder if Hindu‘s Rita
    successfully refers to, even if it does not robustly describe, such regularities as
    Peircean Thirdness, deontological accounts of right and wrong, liturgical
    celebrations of ritual or other analogs, maybe even modalities, of the eternal
    Logos and Spirit at the mystical core of all of our traditions? Thus we might think
    of Hindu‘s Dharma and Rita, Taoism‘s Tao, Buddhism‘s Dhamma, Judaism‘s
    Torah and Christianity‘s Pneuma & Logos.

    Toshihiko Izutsu36 poetically describes certain regularities that, in my view,


    demonstrate a tacit dimensionality that, like the Spirit, is ineluctably
    unobstrusive but utterly efficacious: ―Listen! Do you not hear the trailing sound
    of the wind as it comes blowing from afar? The trees in the mountain forests
    begin to rustle, stir, and sway, and then all the hollows and holes of huge trees
    measuring a hundred arms‘ lengths around begin to give forth different sounds.
    There are holes like noses, like mouths, like ears; some are (square) like
    crosspieces upon pillars; some are (round) as cups, some are like mortars. Some
    are like deep ponds; some are like shallow basins… However, once the raging
    gale has passed on, all these hollows and holes are empty and soundless. You
    see only the boughs swaying silently, and the tender twigs gentle moving.‖

    Father Rohr spent five weeks, during Lent 2008, in a hermitage, in solitude. He
    spent this time reflecting and writing a new book, The Third Eye37. On Easter
    Monday, he made a presentation of an outline of these thoughts. Fr. Rohr defines
    his conception of the Third Eye as derived from two 11th Century monks, Hugh
    and Richard of the Monastery of St.

    36 Toshihiko Izutsu , Sufism and Taoism, p. 368-369


    37 This was eventually published as Seeing as the Mystics See. Need citation. This was
    compiled from an audio recording regarding Third Eye Seeing.
    Victor in Paris. The flowering of this thinking in his Franciscan tradition, he tells
    us, took place in the 12th and 13th centuries. Although the metaphor is similar to
    the same concept of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, it is apparently independent
    of those in that there was no contact between those and this Christian
    conceptualization, which is talking about the eyes of 1) sense, 2) reason and 3)
    faith. Basically, Fr. Rohr is amplifying his teaching on contemplative living,
    which, best we can discern, continues to be heavily informed by his love of
    Thomas Merton. He makes frequent references to Merton, False Self and True
    Self and compares and contrasts them in many different ways, using many
    different adjectives and metaphors.

    Fr. Rohr likes the word ―realization‖ and sees it as being richer than the word
    ―experience‖ for he describes the robust encounter of God as a ―total body
    blow,‖ where not only head and heart are engaged but the body, too.
    Unfortunately, he says, we ―localize knowing‖ and too often try to access God
    only in the top 3 inches of the body and only on the left side at that. This
    dualistic, binary or dyadic thinking, which we employ in math, science and
    engineering, or when we are driving a car, is of course good and necessary. It is
    the mind that ―divides the field‖ Rohr says into classes and categories and then
    applies labels through compare and contrast exercises. It is the egoic mind that is
    looking for control and order, but, unfortunately, also superiority. It can lead to
    both intellectual and spiritual laziness, however, to an egoic operating system
    (Cynthia Bourgeault), which views all through a lens of ―How does it affect me?‖

    The contemplative mind goes beyond the tasks of the dualistic mind to deal with
    concepts like love, mercy, compassion and forgiveness. It doesn‘t need to ―divide
    the field‖ for such tasks. The contemplative mind is practicing heaven in that it
    sees the Divine image as being ―equally distributed‖ and present in all others. We
    see that presence, honor it and know it. The contemplative mind starts each
    moment with ―yes.‖ It is vulnerable before the moment, opening ―heart space.‖
    It is present to people and does not put them in a box. So, in our primary level
    encounter with others, we do not prejudge. At the secondary and tertiary level, a
    ―no‖ may be absolutely necessary. Once you know you can say ―yes,‖ then it is
    important to be able to say ―no,‖ when appropriate. Rohr makes clear, in his
    words, that we ―include previous categories‖ and ―retain what we learn in early
    stages.‖ Our goal, in his words, is to master both dualistic and nondualistic
    thinking. This matches my interpretation of the different perspectives engaged in
    the East, both the absolute and phenomenal.

    We must go beyond (not without) that part of our tradition that was informed
    mostly by Greek logic in order to be more open to paradox and mystery. Rohr
    described some of the early apophatic and nondual elements of the Christian
    tradition, especially in the first three centuries with the Desert Mothers and
    Fathers, especially in the Orthodox and eastern Christian churches, and
    describing John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila as the last supernovae. The
    apophatic and unknowing tradition has not been constant. For 400 years after
    these Carmelites there has been no real tradition. He credits Merton with almost
    single-handedly retrieving authentic contemplative teaching that has not been
    taught for almost 500 years. This type of mysticism, he, like Merton says, is
    available to all but it takes a type of humility to ―let go of our control tower.‖

    We and others are living tabernacles, even given the contrary evidence. That God
    dwells in us is the foundation of human dignity. Fr. Rohr discusses the Gift of
    Tongues in this contemplative vein and notes that when it died out, prayer-based
    beads emerged. He went on to discuss prayer beads in other traditions. Fr. Rohr
    notes that the East and West differ in that more emphasis is placed on discipline,
    practice and asceticism in the East, while, in the West, we emphasize surrender
    and trust. Both East and West have elements of all of these approaches, of course.
    Our Christian path is more one of letting go and yielding of self. He believes that
    most of us, a very high percentage, have enjoyed unitive moments, but that there
    was no one there to say ―that‘s it.‖ He thinks that it would be useful to retrieve
    our contemplative tradition because we apparently need some degree of
    discipline or practice to keep seeing and trusting our unitive moments, our union,
    our communion. The Spirit will thus teach us all things and re-mind you that you
    are in union with God, that you are select; you are chosen; you are beloved. We
    need to learn how to live in communion, now, for that is what we‘ll enjoy in
    heaven.

    Fr. Rohr then describes practices that open up this contemplative mind: silence,
    stillness, solitude, patience about needing to know everything, poetry, art, body
    movement, music, humility and redemptive listening. He describes how we need
    to stand back and compassionately and calmly observe reality, without initial
    regard for how it affects us, but to see persons and events nakedly, seeing our
    drama almost as if it wasn‘t us. If we cannot thus detach, then we are over-
    identified. Whenever we‘re defensive, it is usually our false self. What
    characterizes an addict is typically all or nothing thinking. We do not hate the
    False Self. We must simply see it. It is not our ―bad‖ self, just not our ―true‖ self.
    We need to better learn to hold together opposites and contradictions. A modern
    retrieval of our ancient practices of contemplative seeing can foster this type of
    non-judging awareness.

    Rohr says that a master of nondual thinking needs to also be a master of dualistic
    thinking. The Catholic tradition has great wisdom in retaining icon and art and
    symbols and music. The primary teachers of this approach to God and others and
    all of reality are great love and great suffering. Our primary paths have been
    suffering and prayer. When head and heart and body are all connected, that is
    prayer. This, says Fr. Rohr, is not esoteric teaching. Everybody has the Holy
    Spirit!
    What appears to be the new theme emerging from Fr. Rohr‘s latest thought is
    that of supplementing and complementing our traditional approach to belief-
    based religion with more practice-based religion. In particular, he sees great
    wisdom in retrieving those practices which have been lost or deemphasized that
    we can better cultivate a contemplative outlook. In prayer, we are like ―tuning
    forks‖ that come in to God‘s presence and seek to abide inside of a resonance with
    God. We need to set aside whatever blocks our reception, especially a lack of love
    or lack of forgiveness. And we need to embrace the gifts of the East, which, as
    Rohr properly recognizes, are ―practices‖ and not ―conclusions.‖ I see the
    Buddha smiling.

    May namaste, then, become more than a greeting but a way of life, as we look
    always
    and everywhere and in everyone for the pneumatological realities we profess
    herein. May our inter-religious stance be more irenic as we acknowledge the
    Spirit in one another with true reverence, in authentic solidarity and utmost
    compassion. A most fundamental aspect of the unqualified affirmation of human
    dignity would seem to be our nurturance of the attitude that all other humans
    come bearing an irreplaceable gift for us, that we are to maintain a stance of
    receptivity toward them, open to receive what it is they offer us through, with and
    in the Spirit. Whether the Magi were occidental or oriental, Jesus was receptive.
    When John offered baptism, Jesus was receptive. When Mary anointed his feet,
    Jesus was receptive. When invited to dine with tax collectors and prostitutes,
    Jesus was receptive.

    A critical gaze not first turned on oneself and one‘s ways of looking at reality will
    have very little efficacy when it is otherwise habitually and arrogantly turned first
    on others.

    All of this is to observe that, beyond whatever it is that we offer to the world as
    our unique gift, rather than always approaching our sisters and brothers as fix-it-
    upper projects in need of our counsel and ministry, sometimes the Spirit may be
    inviting us to listen, observe and learn from them in a posture of authentic
    humility and from a stance of genuine affirmation of their infinite value and
    unique giftedness. While our encounters of the Spirit may be manifold and varied
    from one phenomenal experience to the next, especially when situated in one
    major tradition versus another, we may be saying more than we know if we
    attempt to describe such experiences with more ontological specificity than can
    be reasonably claimed metaphysically or theologically, suggesting, for example,
    that such experiences necessarily differ in either origin or degree even if they
    otherwise differ, as might be expected, in other cognitive, affective, moral, social
    or religious aspects.
    More than semantics is at stake, here. We are not merely saying the same thing
    using different words when we draw such distinctions as between nature and
    grace, natural and supernatural, acquired and infused, existential and
    theological, immanent and transcendent; such explicit denotations also have
    strong connotative implications that might betray attitudes of epistemic hubris,
    pneumatological exclusivity or religious hegemony, which are clearly
    unwarranted once we understand that our faith outlooks are effectively
    evaluative. We say this because, in our view, our belief systems are otherwise, at
    best, normatively justified existentially after essentially attaining, minimally, an
    epistemic parity with other hermeneutics vis a vis our best evidential, rational
    and presuppositional approaches. While there are rubrics for discernment of
    where the Spirit is active and where humans are cooperative, they do not lend
    themselves to facile and cursory a priori assessments, neither by an academic
    theology with its rationalistic categorizing nor by a popular fideistic piety with its
    supernaturalistic religiosity, predispositions that tend to divide and not unite, to
    arrogate and not serve, with their vain comparisons and spiritual pretensions.

    ―It is a serious thing, to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to


    remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one
    day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to
    worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only
    in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one
    or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming
    possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we
    should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all
    play, all politics. There are no ‗ordinary‘ people. You have never talked to a
    mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their
    life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work
    with, marry, snub and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.
    This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our
    merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists
    between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously – no
    flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and
    costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner —
    no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies
    merriment.‖ C.S. Lewis__The Weight of Glory__

    Nonduality must be approached with great circumspection, which is to say, with


    both appropriate epistemic imprecision and ontological vagueness, as necessarily
    inheres in the matter at hand. There is a real tendency for Western minds, in
    general, Christian minds, in particular, to engage the thought of the East from an
    ontological or metaphysical perspective. Now, we are not going to deny that there
    might even be some heavy metaphysical lifting going on in much of Eastern
    thought, for that denial, in and of itself, would entail falling into the trap that we
    are trying to help you avoid. So, just imagine, if you will, as we discuss nonduality
    that we are not so much trying to gift you with another way of interpreting or
    processing reality as we are trying to invite you to another way of seeing or
    experiencing reality.

    Put another way, a proper engagement of nonduality is not so much an exercise


    in discursive analysis as it is a cultivation of a more authentic awareness. It does
    not promote cognitive insight as much as it promotes conceptual clarity with a
    concommitant affective cleansing, which will result from ensuing detachments
    (broadly conceived). When engaging the literature on nonduality, in general, it
    might be helpful to receive what seem to be metaphysical assertions as epistemic
    stances or what seem to be ontological descriptions as more so a relating of
    phenomenal experiences. After all, there is no room to presume that folks — who,
    self-described, would kill the Buddha — are returning from ineffable experiences
    only to clearly effable about reality, or that they are telling us tales about, what
    they claim to hold in-principle as, untellable stories.
    Something else is going on, which is an invitation into an experience and not an
    initiation into a philosophical system.

    Many people with profound existential longings (comparing favorably to your


    own) enjoy authentic phenomenal experiences that point to a deep
    interconnectedness of all Reality. This interrelatedness is ineluctably
    unobstrusive, which is why so few see it, but utterly efficacious, which is why all
    experience it, even unawares.

    Because we are dealing with phenomenal experiences and existential realizations


    and
    not, rather, philosophical arguments, category errors and confusion will abound
    for any critic who chooses to analyze these experiences through dualistic
    Cartesian lenses rather than, instead, engaging the wisdom that is there to be
    had, even in, maybe especially in, paradox and uncertainty. As Fr. Richard Rohr,
    OFM observes regarding so much of Buddhism, we are being gifted with
    practices and not conclusions. I would add that we are being gifted with stories
    of experiences of unitary reality and not ontologies.

    One recurring theme, for example, is the triadic movement from 1)


    phenomenal appearances (illusions) through 2) interpretive critique
    (broadly conceived, such as lingustically, psychologically, etc) and back to 3) a
    new awareness (often an awareness of self and other that is so conventional
    and common sensical as to, ironically, be unconventional and uncommon, given
    so many of us succumb to the fogging of our lenses, save for occasional
    contemplative glimpses).

    From Nicholas of Cusa:


    "I have found the place where one can find Thee undisguised. It
    is surrounded by the coincidence of opposites. This is the wall of
    Paradise in which Thou dwellest. Its gate is guarded by the
    ―highest spirit of reason‖. Unless one overcomes it, the entrance
    will not open. On the other side of the wall of the coincidence of
    opposites one can see Thee, on this side never."

    The coincidence of opposites is a certain kind of unity


    perceived as coincidence, a unity of contrarieties overcoming
    opposition by convergence without destroying or merely
    blending the constituent elements. Although in once sense not
    obliterated, in another the constituent elements shed their
    multiple, differentiated status. Examples would include the
    coincidence of rest and motion, past and future, diversity and
    identity, inequality and equality, and divisibility and
    simplicity.
    ... coincidence does not really describe God. Rather it sets forth
    the way God works, the order of things in relation to God and
    to each other, and the manner by which humans may
    approach and abide in God. God is beyond the realm of
    contradictories. God ... preceded opposites, is undifferentiated,
    not other, incomparable, and without opposite, precedes
    distinctions, opposition, contrariety, and contradiction.

    [need the citation – likely Rohr]

    What Nicholas of Cusa describes regarding the coincidentia oppositorum is


    very reminiscent of the type of nuance we find in semiotic theory vis a vis the
    principles of excluded middle and noncontradiction and when they hold and
    when they fold. It is also found in all approaches to the univocity and equivocity
    and analogy of being, whether of Scotus or Aquinas. It is found in early Dionysian
    logic, in Meister Eckhart, in the modern
    American Pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce and the teachings of Richard
    Rohr. It resonates our own Franciscan sensibilities, incarnational imaginations
    and appreciation for Scotus.

    Fr. Rohr says here: "The Secret" which is now gaining popularity in the USA, is
    probably a classic example of something that is partially true, and even good,
    being made into the only lens through which you read reality, and then it
    becomes untrue. Heresy could be defined as when we absolutize a partial truth,
    and I believe that is what is happening here. But I would also love for Christians
    to learn the partial truth, and that is why we teach the contemplative mind
    here.
    And he says this in the context of speaking against Gnosticism and for
    Incarnationalism, which is our portal to the Divine via the particular, the
    concrete, the physical ... even the sad and painful. That's what we'd expect from a
    good Franciscan, n'est pas?

    Fr. Rohr also wrote: "The Secret" which is now gaining popularity in the USA, is
    probably a classic example of something that is partially true, and even good,
    being made into the only lens through which you read reality, and then it
    becomes untrue. Heresy could be defined as when we absolutize a
    partial truth, and I believe that is what is happening here. But I would also
    love for Christians to learn the partial truth, and that is why we teach the
    contemplative mind here.

    We think he is right on in what he is saying here. At the same time, we must take
    great care, semiotically and semantically, to make sure that the terms, categories
    and logic employed by any vocabulary of choice in our dialogue are referencing
    and describing the same realities, hence our ongoing emphasis on the need for
    deliberate disambiguation, careful parsing, high nuance, rigorous definition and
    suitable logic or grammar.

    From THE PARADOX OF NON-DUALITY by Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO

    The state of non-duality is addressed in most of the advanced spiritual


    traditions of the world religions. It is sometimes referred to as No Self or
    Emptiness, as in Buddhism. It refers to the death of the false self or ego and the
    diminishment or extinction of the separate self sense, along with the abiding
    sense of unity with Ultimate Reality.

    One reading of Keating might suggest that he is facilely mapping one set of
    experiences over another without much rigor, disambiguation or parsing.
    Looking more closely, we feel safe in attributing an epistemic stance to him
    rather than an ontological perspective because we can glean that from within the
    context of other things he wrote in that same article and other things he's written
    over the years.

    It is not just a distinction between an epistemic stance and an ontological


    perspective, which is crucial, it is also a matter of distinguishing between states,
    structures and stages that, on one hand, ordinarily correlate (which we think it is
    fair to say) or, on the other hand, necessarily indicate (which would be patently
    absurd) one transformative or unitive level or another.

    We conceive of the False Self as the persona, which is a good and necessary thing,
    just not a sufficient thing for completing the transformative journey. We go
    beyond it but not without it. The No Self is not, then, the True Self that follows
    the development of the persona on our journey of individuation and
    transformation. The No Self is, rather, an experience of nondual awareness, of
    absolute unitary being. It may be, though, that this No Self experience is
    correlated with the journey to True Self. We find them together, often.

    Keating: Non-duality is clearly a state beyond what is called in the Christian


    contemplative tradition ―Transforming Union.‖ The Cistercians, Franciscans,
    Carmelites, and other religious groups have described this state as ―bridal
    mysticism.‖

    Nondual awareness is a metaphysical intuition, not a state of virtue or level of


    transformation. It is, rather, value-neutral, in fact. Now, again, it may be that it is
    well-correlated with this state of virtue.

    Keating: The unifying force of divine love draws and unites the soul into
    ineffable experiences of union with the Beloved and forgetfulness of self. They
    remain two however.

    This seems quite alright vis a vis a spousal or bridal mysticism, in and of itself,
    which should not otherwise be equated with nondual states of awareness but
    might well be highly correlated with experiences of same. It is preferable to other
    formulations of No Self, which annihilate the ego, self or even personhood.

    Keating: St. John of the Cross in the ―Living Flame of Love‖ hints at higher
    states of union, but is not explicit. Some of the Beguines of the 12th and 13th
    centuries wrote explicitly of the Transforming Union as initiating a further
    journey into states of unity consciousness that parallel the descriptions of no self
    or enlightenment found in Buddhism, Advaitic Vedanta, or Sufi literature. Here
    there is no self at all.

    We must be clear as to whether or not we are talking about a fleeting epistemic


    experience or an ontological reality. Keating properly speaks in epistemic terms is
    our take.

    Keating: Perhaps it might be useful to orient practitioners to the paradox of


    living a life that is neither dual nor non-dual, just as some spiritual traditions
    affirm that the Absolute is not this, not that—or similar to the statement, not
    one, not two. These paradoxes point to the fact that God is beyond all that exists
    and beyond all categories of being and non-being, as well as in all that exists.

    We rather like that.


    It seems clear that Fr. Keating talks in terms of awareness or a sense of this or
    that, which is to say in epistemic terms, but does not commit the metaphysical
    category errors of others who make sweeping ontological & metaphysical claims.
    He affirms the dialectic between apophatic and kataphatic, nondual and dual
    (and transdual).

    Bernard of Clairvaux On the Song of Songs


    But notice that in spiritual marriage there are two kinds of birth, and thus two
    kinds of offspring, though not opposite. For spiritual persons, like holy mothers,
    may bring souls to birth by preaching, or may give birth to spiritual insights by
    meditation. In this latter kind of birth the soul leaves even its bodily senses and
    is separated from them, so that in her awareness of the Word she is not aware
    of herself. This happens when the mind is enraptured by the unutterable
    sweetness of the Word, so that it withdraws, or rather is transported, and
    escapes from itself to enjoy the Word. The soul is affected in one way when it is
    made fruitful by the Word, in another when it enjoys the Word: in the one it is
    considering the needs of its neighbor; in the other it is allured by the sweetness
    of the Word. A mother is happy in her child; a bride is even happier in her
    bridegroom's embrace. The children are dear, they are the pledge of his love,
    but his kisses give her greater pleasure. It is good to save many souls, but there
    is far more pleasure in going aside to be with the Word. But when does this
    happen and for how long? It is sweet intercourse, but lasts a short time and is
    experienced rarely! This is what I spoke of before, when I said that the final
    reason for the soul to seek the Word was to enjoy him in bliss.

    So, for all the talk of stages and levels and ways regarding the transformative
    journey, it is good counsel to give up the need to know where we are or where
    others are on this journey for there is no way to accurately judge such things. It
    is important, in our view, to draw a distinction between phenomenal states and
    psychic structures, on one hand, and transformative stages and levels of virtue,
    on the other hand. It is enough to know that they can often be highly correlated
    but important to know that they are not necessarily otherwise truly indicative one
    of the other. Some are given glimpses. Some experiences are fleeting and
    transitory. Others are more perduring. All is unmerited and freely given by God
    for reasons known to Him alone. This is how we would conceive any state beyond
    transforming union. This is clearly, in St. Bernard's view, a matter of experience,
    a type of awareness, an affective moment, an epistemic value-realization and not,
    rather, a perduring ontological reality.

    The following is an excerpt from an introduction to St. Bernard's Sermons on the


    Song of
    Songs by Prof. Katherine Gill for her courses at Yale Divinity School and Boston
    College: Sermon 52 illustrates Bernard's conviction that contemplation is a
    foretaste of heaven and a mystical (bridal) sleep that vivifies the mystical
    senses. But he also viewed it as a type of ecstatic dying to the world and as an
    apophatic, imageless-therefore, "angelic"contemplation of God. For St. John of
    the Cross, bridal sleep is the most apostolic work a person can do for the
    Church, because therein a person does what he or she was created for: to love
    and to be loved. The selected text from Sermon 74 is one of the most stunning
    attempts in the entire Christian mystical tradition to describe the mystical
    experience. When the Word invades the soul, he cannot be perceived by the
    senses. However, the heart, or the person's deepest center, suddenly becomes
    alive and
    its most secret faults are disclosed. When the Word leaves, it is like a boiling pot
    removed from the stove. The Life of the soul's life seems to have disappeared.
    Sermons 83 and 85 describe spiritual marriage and spiritual fecundity. The
    Word actually takes the soul as his bride, and two become one in spirit, yet
    remain two. Spousal mysticism emphasizes a differentiated unity. In other
    words, love actually makes two one, but also enhances personal identity. Love
    makes the soul equal to God, God by participation, but not simply God. Also,
    Bernard emphasizes that bridal love loves God for his own sake. Although as
    bride, the soul desires the Bridegroom's embrace, as mother she loves her
    children, that is, her neighbor.

    We must honor the distinction between a mystical experience, on one hand, and a
    level or degree or stage or state of sanctity or virtue or perfect charity, on the
    other. Sure, there are manifold and multiform phenomenal states, psychic
    phenomena or experiences that can be correlated with whether or not one is on
    the purgative or illuminative way, whether one is in this or that interior mansion,
    whether one is at base camp or the summit of Mt. Carmel.

    When speaking epistemically, especially of nonduality, a state would be


    temporary, an epistemological structure, or if you prefer stage, would be more
    permanent, which is to recognize a type of nondual consciousness that is not so
    much an experience per se as it is, instead, a way of perceiving reality.

    Of course, there is another notion of nondual realization, not of an experience


    or perception or type of awareness, in which case the state of one's consciousness
    doesn't matter: nonduality is just there to see. And it does seem that a good
    panentheist might figure this out through philosophical contemplation, someone
    else through an intuition of being, still another through a kundalini experience,
    yet another through enlightenment.

    At any rate, there is more to this stage paradigm than just the experiential aspect;
    when speaking of the transforming union we are talking not just about
    phenomenal experiences but habitual virtue, increased charity & sanctifying
    grace, preservation from serious sin and general avoidance of venial sin and so
    on. Mystical ecstasy is a type of nonduality, but does not exhaust that reality.
    Keating speaks of the transient nature of such ecstasy as is associated with bridal
    mysticism. We do not interpret him to be suggesting that this is what becomes
    permanent. Rather, at this point, we'd suspect he thinks in terms of nondual
    realization, an epistemological structure, whether one thinks of that in terms of a
    perduring unitive consciousness (or way of perceiving reality), or, as Wilber
    would (and Keating leans on Wilber), nondual realization, which doesn't require
    any form of consciousness per se.

    Now, this may all seem to leave a question begging ... of why, when it comes to
    nonduality, so many go the pantheistic route, or, worse, the materialist monist
    route, or maybe not as bad, the idealist monist route, rather than the panentheist
    route. And we're just going to leave this here as a footnote. The reason is, in our
    view, that they have not seen the wisdom of Dionysian logic, as has a modern
    counterpart in the semiotic approach of Charles Sanders Peirce; or they have not
    been exposed to a dialogue between the univocity and analogy of being, of Duns
    Scotus and Thomas Aquinas. Or, they just don't know how to get around the
    seeming inviolability of the principle of noncontradiction. The answer lies in the
    coincidentia oppositorum of Nicholas of Cusa.

    When it comes to a theism properly conceived, which excludes atheism,


    pantheism and other nontheistic traditions, we think the big divide, theologically,
    precisely has to do with defining our relationship to ultimate reality. It often
    seems that, when talking about God, some people equate our unitive striving in
    terms of a journey toward intimacy, or even more plainly put, as a
    transformation from what might start out as a merely functional relationship
    into a purely personal relationship. It has to do, then, with getting closer.
    Others conceive of this unitive striving as a dance between relationship and
    identity, as a journey from intersubjectivity into absolute subjectivity. Some
    affirm this intersubjectivity and then strive to transform it into absolute
    subjectivity; others see this intersubjectivity as an illusion. There is nothing in the
    Christian tradition that corresponds to this second type of unitive striving.
    Anyone who suggests this isn't so much being a heretic as they are just plain
    being silly.

    Now, it is possible to conceive of God, philosophically, as mostly in a functional


    relationship with creation, so there are other ways to be theistic without relating
    to the Creator as Abba or as in bridal mysticism. This isn't an option for the
    Christian. If Jesus revealed anything, then He revealed an actively involved and
    deeply caring God, building on the Hebrew experience. (Of course, let's not forget
    the Song of Songs, either). Thus, He taught us to pray, Our Father ...

    Aside from these distinctly theological concerns, nondual has different meanings
    that pertain to 1) psychological states: altered states of consciousness, ecstasy
    2) epistemological states and structures: nondiscursive, preconceptual and
    transconceptual awareness; avoidance of subject-object cleavage; epistemic
    vagueness; nominalism & essentialism 3) linguistic and semiotic
    approaches: Dionysian logic, semantical vagueness, triadic semiotic grammar;
    deconstruction strategies 4) metaphysical & ontological theories: idealist
    and materialist monisms; aristotelian hylomorphism; ontological vagueness;
    modal ontology 5) philosophical: false dichotomies; binary logic; dualistic
    conceptions 6) ascetical practices & spiritual disciplines of all sorts, what
    we might call spiritual technology.

    When evaluating phenomenal states, psychic structures, psychological stages,


    Lonergan's conversions and ontological and theological degrees of perfection, we
    must carefully define their essential nature, inventory the graces that might
    accompany them and identify their fruits. In other words, we need to draw
    distinctions, but as Maritain said, in order to unite.

    We need to employ Dionysian logic, to embrace the coincidentia


    oppositorum. We must distinguish between univocal and equivocal
    predications of God. We generally cannot employ univocity when speaking of
    God and creatures, which is to recognize that the words we use to describe
    humans, like person, for example, cannot be literally predicated of God. There is
    an equivocity in play in any words we use to describe both God and humans.
    The way we bridge these distinct realities is to employ, then, analogical
    predications, which is to affirm that the Trinity is in a relationship LIKE that
    enjoyed by us a persons. When we speak of the Mystical Body of Christ or the
    Cosmic Christ, we speak of an eternal reality and employ such words as body and
    cosmic, not literally, but analogically. Even when we speak of Jesus in His life on
    earth, the precise nature of His humanity remains shrouded in mystery and these
    rules of predication would apply metaphysically. Revelation, though, has literal
    and historical dimensions (what can I know?), anagogical dimensions (what
    can I hope for? Last Things?), mystagogical dimensions (how does this all
    relate? and initiate into mystery), allegorical sense (how is this metaphor
    sustained?) and the tropological sense (morally and theotically, what must I
    do?). So, while we cannot say literally and metaphysically how Jesus' essential
    nature was realized, we can say that spiritually and morally He revealed the
    fullness of God's Trinitarian Life to us, as well as how we are to respond and what
    is in store for us.

    We think it is fair enough to say that our relationship with God is, in some sense,
    undeniably personal. As we conceive of the Mystical Body of Christ, there is
    obviously something transpersonal, that goes beyond our understanding of the
    personal, which is not employed univocally of God and creatures in the first
    place. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with also recognizing that the
    Reality of God cannot be robustly described using any of our human categories
    for, apophatically, the only literal descriptions we can predicate of God are those
    statements of what God is not.
    What we have, then, in Dionysian logic, is a trialectical (tetradalectical?) interplay
    between the both/and of apophatic/univocal predications and the
    kataphatic/equivocal predications, as well as the neither/nor of the unitive
    subversion of binary logic, hence, dichotomous thinking. Temporally
    speaking, we also have a tension between what we can experience now vs
    eschatologically versus proleptically (as though the future were present).

    An elucidation of Buddhism by Dumoulin with an assist from Peirce, Polanyi


    and
    Lonergan

    In Heinrich Dumoulin‘s Understanding Buddhism38 one might discover possible


    resonances between our own Peircean-Nevillean inspired axiological
    epistemology, which opens to a Neo-Platonic, participatory ontology, and certain
    understandings of Buddhism as explicated by Dumoulin.

    First, on the question of metaphysics, Dumoulin‘s observations seem to concur


    with those of our late friend Jim Arraj39, whom we quoted above but will repeat
    here for emphasis: ―It would probably by wrong, as well, to imagine that Zen
    Buddhism, or even the advaitan Vedanta is making any kind of ontological
    nondualist claims. Rather, they are trying to take into account a nondual
    experience, and sometimes their post-experience reflections can leave the
    impression that they are creating a nondual ontology. But they are not
    interested in philosophy in the Western sense, but rather, leading people to the
    experience, itself. The real question, which we will pursue later, is
    whetherenlightenment is nondual in itself, or is presented in a nondual way
    because of the very means by which the enlightenment experience is attained.
    There should be no rush to judgment on the part of Christians as if they need to
    express Christianity in some nondual ontological fashion. This is not precisely
    what Zen Buddhists, and advaitan Hindus are doing.‖

    Dumoulin writes: ―Turning to the question of God, I shall dwell on the


    enigmatic silence with which the Buddha responded to metaphysical questions,
    and show that this can be seen as one of the several ways in which Buddhism
    gives witness to divine transcendence.‖ (pg 2) He continues in the same vein:
    "Worldviews described as pessimistic are of three kinds: ontological, existential
    and theological. Pessimistic philosophies of the first kind — nihilism or
    Manicheanism — declare the being as such is empty of value and meaning, that
    the foundations of the universe are askew. The Buddhist diagnosis does not
    entail anything of this sort, for it either refrains from raising questions of
    metaphysical ontology, or it does so only in a soteriological context, and then
    answers them in a way that cannot be called pessimistic.‖

    38 Heinrich Dumoulin‘s Understanding Buddhism (Weatherhill, NY & Tokoyo,


    1994) as translated and adapted from the German by Joseph S. O‘Leary
    39 James and Tyra Arraj, Christianity in the Crucible of East-West Dialogue at innerexplorations.com
    We have conceived of epistemology in terms of four autonomous methodologies
    that are otherwise integrally related axiologically: descriptive, normative,
    interpretive and evaluative. Preliminarily, it seems that these roughly correlate to
    Wim Drees‘ definition of theology as a cosmology plus an axiology, where our
    descriptive and normative categories correspond to Drees‘ cosmological category
    and our interpretive and evaluative roughly correspond to his axiological. These
    categories also roughly correlate with the traditional categories of theological
    apologetics: evidential, rational, presuppositional (all cosmological) and
    existential (axiological). We need to dutifully employ such categories as these
    when parsing texts in interreligious dialogue in order to avoid facilely reductive
    interpretations of different traditions.

    In our realist approaches to reality, we can draw a further distinction, that


    between a methodological and pragmatic realism and a theoretical and
    metaphysical realism.

    Even our metaphysical realisms can be further distinguished as weak, moderate


    and strong, or as robustly descriptive versus vaguely referential. These realisms
    are primarily distinguished from a nominalism, which reduces all meaningful
    discourse to issues of nomenclature. Polanyi critiques nominalism by advancing
    his notion of a tacit dimension, which we might describe as an ineluctably
    unobtrusive but utterly efficacious type of causation, such a causation as
    complements the efficient causation of the natural sciences with the
    minimalistically conceived formal and final causations of modern semiotic
    science.

    Lonergan critiques nominalism, which he calls conceptualism, by drawing a


    distinction between our naming exercises, which correspond to his imperative to
    be intelligent, and our judging exercises, which follow his imperative to be
    reasonable.

    Peirce critiques nominalism with his category of thirdness, which recognizes the
    reality of law-like generalities (probabilities and necessities) beyond the mere
    categories of firstness (possibilities as predicates) and secondness (actualities as
    subjects). These are the types of distinctions that we sense are very much coming
    into play as we parse the text and disambiguate the concepts of Buddhism in
    order to properly engage them in comparative theology and contemplative
    dialogue.

    If Buddhism is not doing ontology, then what exactly is it claiming,


    soteriologically, when invoking such ideas as nirvana and the no-self?

    Dumoulin addresses both realities:


    He writes of nirvana: ―Such reductive interpretations [of nirvana] cannot
    explain the language in which nirvana is evoked in radiant images of bliss,
    peace, security and freedom. The literal meaning of the word nirvana is
    extinction, but this can give a misleading impression. When the Buddha was
    asked about the state of the Perfected One after death, he pointed out that even
    in this life his state is ―deep, immeasurable, unfathomable as is the great ocean.
    When the fire is quenched, one does not ask in which direction it has gone, east,
    west, north or south. This is not because the fire no longer exists, but because, as
    an Indian audience would have gathered, the fire has returned to a non-
    manifested state as latent heat. Likewise, the nirvanic state is beyond our grasp,
    but it is not nothingness.‖ (pg 29)

    He continues regarding selfhood: ―Modern Theravada Buddhism adopts no


    single clear stance towards the question of non-self and selfhood, and the
    complicated development of the Abhidharma philosophies impedes an
    unambiguous formulation. One both finds the denial of any kind of self, and the
    acceptance of a self. The position attributed to the Buddha himself rejects both
    nihilism (uccheda-ditthi) and substantialism (sassata-ditthi). The radical
    deniers of any kind of self can with difficulty avoid being found in a nihilistic
    position in the end, while the acceptance of a self leads easily to a substantialist
    metaphysics of being. The Buddha avoids both by his silence.‖ (pg 37)

    There is certainly a minimalist ontology of vague references, a phenomenology,


    which the Buddha employs in these soteriological and pragmatic contexts. This
    does not, in our view, entail a denial of the self, existentially, only a deliberate
    prescinding from a robust description of the essential nature of the self,
    metaphysically. Not even a root metaphor like being can exhaust the reality of a
    human being, much less God. Cosmologically, or descriptively and normatively,
    the Buddha desists from saying more than one can know, from proving too much,
    from telling an untellable story. Axiologically, or interpretively and evaluatively,
    there is an inchoate opening to transcendence and a conditioning and
    prioritization of one‘s values as ordered toward both personal transformation and
    a profound compassion, which ensues from one‘s radical awakening to a deep
    solidarity with reality writ large.

    To wit, per Dumoulin:―The true self, as my act of existence, is trans-


    categorical, not graspable in concepts, ineffable.To actualize the true self, one
    must undergo a dying of one‘s ego. Such an experience of self is an experience of
    transcendence, an opening to absolute reality, though the transcendence is
    represented in an impersonal, cosmological language rather than a personal
    theologicalone.‖ (pg 43)

    ―This down-to-earth faith is far removed from the abstract pessimism which
    Westerners often associate with Buddhism. Thus the basic human experience,
    whereby one breaks through the bounds of the ego to open oneself to an all-
    embracing, protecting, and helping Power, works itself out in Buddhism in a
    distinctive style. Knowledge and nescience, transcendent faith and this-worldly
    confirmation, blend here in a rich varioety of forms.‖ (pg.63)

    ―This defining ideal of Buddhism [compassion] is embodied in the Buddha, the


    bodhisattvas, and the Buddhist saints. The philosophical systems developed in
    Mahayna Buddhism were unable to provide a satisfactory philosophical
    illumination of this topic. Christian love, which has also found a convincing
    embodiment in countless lives, cannot be explained in philosophical terms
    either, though its foundations in divine transcendence are clear.‖ (pg 86)

    Is Buddhism, then, transcending nominalist tendencies or reinforcing them?

    In our view, Buddhism, transcends nominalism pragmatically. First, there is a


    mountain, in its Peircean secondness, in actuality, in Lonergan‘s imperative to be
    attentive. Then, there is no mountain, as Lonergan‘s imperative to be intelligent
    critiques our conceptual formulations and choice of predicates as referenced in
    Peircean firstness or possibilities. Then, there is, once again, a mountain,
    pragmatically and phenomenologically, as we enjoy our second naivete‘ following
    Lonergan‘s imperative to be reasonable in our judgments of fact, as we affirm the
    Peircean thirdness in what Lonergan has called emergent probabilities. This
    reasonableness moves forward with the recognition that we do not have to have
    the essential nature of reality fleshed out in robustly metaphysical terms in order
    to navigate through reality realizing its manifold and multiform values, but can
    enjoy our value-realization pursuits with provisional closures and a contrite
    fallibilism.

    Buddhism honors Polanyi‘s tacit dimensionality in its affirmation of an ineffable


    transcendent reality. Perhaps no word better captures the Buddhist conception of
    our human relationship to transcendent reality than participatory? While there
    can be no robust description of either the self or of transcendent reality in an
    unambiguous ontological language or system, both per Buddhism and my own
    take on metaphysics, neither can there be any doubt that the self is caught up in a
    universal relationality, extending beyond the empirical ego to the dimensions of
    the cosmos (pg 38).

    Dumoulin writes: ―Interpreted thus [Great Self as no-self], the sense of being
    one with the cosmos is an acceptance of one‘s relative place in the total web
    of things.‖ (pg 39)

    This participatory realization, however, does not grow out of a Buddhist


    cosmology, descriptively and normatively. It is, rather, an interpretive stance
    toward an experience, which conditions one‘s outlook on reality, evaluatively.
    Existentially and axiologically, then, one opens oneself to one‘s place in the web
    of existence and approaches reality with a radical acceptance, a deep okayness, a
    willingness to participate on reality‘s terms in order to further realize one‘s
    solidarity with the One and to express the profound compassion that necessarily
    ensues from this experience.

    Dumoulin discusses an East-West convergence of apophatic mysticism. It raises


    our own suspicions about a possible convergence of these participatory
    ontologies, both conceived vaguely: ‖Speaking of Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory
    of Nyssa and John Chrysostum: These great theologians provided a solid basis
    for the thought of Psuedo-Dionysius, who also drew heavily on the thought of
    the Neo-Platonist philosopher Proclus. Are the similarities between Eastern and
    Western mysticism due exclusively to a convergence on the level of spiritual
    experience, or was Christian negative theology prompted by an encounter with
    Asia? There has been much discussion of possible Indian influences on the
    Middle Platonic and Neo-Platonic ideas which these theologians had absorbed,
    particularly in connection with Plotinus‘s mysticism of the One. Emile Brehier
    spoke of the orientalism of Plotinus and of deep affinities between certain
    aspects of Plotinian doctrine and the Upanishads. It is hard to dismiss the belief
    that the stream of negative theology, preserved and expanded in Christian
    mystical thought down to the present time, has one of its sources in that distant
    encounter with a form of Indian spirituality closely related to Buddhism.
    Though the channels of interactions remain obscure, these early interactions
    between Eastern and Western spirituality are a haunting theme in the history of
    religions and loom in the background of the present encounter between
    Buddhism and Christianity.‖ (pp. 5-6)

    Dumoulin closes: The Christian sees ultimate reality revealed in the personal
    love of God as shown in Christ, the Buddhist in the silence of the Buddha. Yet,
    they agree on two things: that the ultimate mystery is ineffable, and that it
    should be manifest to human beings. The inscription on a Chinese stone figure
    of the Buddha, dated 746, reads:
    The highest truth is without image.
    If there were no image at all, however, there would be no way for truth
    to be manifested.
    The highest principle is without words.
    But if there were not words at all, how could principle possibly be revealed?

    As our own sacramentology thus affirms - our symbols reveal what they
    conceal & conceal what they reveal.

    Other Kindred Voices

    Affirming Multiculturalism & An Ancient-Future Aproach

    We do not want to too narrowly conceive when and where it is that value is to be
    mined, and not just liturgically speaking, but broadly speaking, philosophically,
    culturally, scientifically and religiously. The primary value to be realized from an
    Ancient-Future approach, as I conceive it, is the retrieval, revival and renewal of a
    harmony that existed between science, culture, philosophy and religion. This is
    not to ignore the fact that each of these human endeavors was being conducted at
    a much earlier stage of development than the stage we enjoy now. However, it is
    to suggest that the relationship between these human values was more holistic
    and integral. This is to recognize and affirm that theology must always be
    contextual, which is to say, related to our concrete lived experiences, where we
    can recognize how the Gospel speaks to the problems we encounter, here and
    now. A contextual approach requires, then, an inculturated theology, which
    involves much more than worship forms.

    To the extent our outlook is radically incarnational and robustly pneumatological,


    we will be on the lookout for the treasures of different cultures, whether across
    time or geography, because the Spirit has helped place them there. And we will
    want to preserve their diversity, form, expression and integrity. Such cultural
    realities not only include song, dance, meditative practices, story-telling and
    worship forms. They also include social realities like conceptions of marriage and
    family life, community interactions, pastoral approaches, philosophical norms
    and scientific-technological adaptations. Such cultural values are to be integrated
    into Christianity, which in turn is to be inserted into each culture.

    Ancient-Future covers only a temporal dimension, which needs to be


    complemented by a geographic dimension, North-South and East-West, vis a vis
    inculturation. We do not have to choose between the old and new or East & West;
    we get to have it all! We especially don‘t want to cloak the Gospel in exclusively
    European garments for others to put on. We risk not only the renewal of an
    authoritarian approach but a terribly parochialistic, colonialistic, paternalistic
    and hierarchicalistic approach.

    The most salient issue is making the Gospel relevant in this place, in this time, to
    this person, to these people. And we are called to pay attention to that truth,
    beauty, goodness and unity that have already emerged within a given culture,
    because the forms those values have taken are gifts from created co-creators,
    who‘ve responded to the same Spirit.

    The harmony to be rediscovered, retrieved, revived and renewed is the holistic,


    integral relationship between the distinct value-endeavors of science, philosophy,
    culture & religion, whereby our descriptive, normative, evaluative and
    interpretive methodologies are affirmed as methodologically-autonomous but
    axiologically-integral. This DOES seem to more so characterize our premodern
    situation, wherein we affirmed approaches to reality that were robustly
    participatory and common sensical. It is a harmony that can heal the Cartesian
    split of modernism and bridge the nihilistic abyss of a radically deconstructive
    postmodernism. It is nothing less than an affirmation of the mind, spirit, heart
    and soul in proper relationship to one another within each person and each
    people. We don‘t want to too narrowly conceive how this harmony can be
    nurtured and sustained, not temporally, not geographically.

    These are cute lyrics:

    Call me a relic call me what you will


    Say I‘m old fashioned say I‘m over the hill
    Today‘s music don‘t have the same soul
    Just give me old time rock and roll

    But the fact of the matter is that today‘s music DOES have soul, just like
    yesterday‘s. And African drums and Indian sitars do, also. Who wants a world
    without Ravi Shankar and the cultural intermingling he fostered in more ways
    than one? We‘d have no Norwegian Wood! Worse yet, we‘d have no Norah Jones!
    We shudder to think about it.

    A Trust Relationship with Reality?

    We can back up and look at the overall thrust of Jesus‘ life, and that of other
    traditions even, from a more vague perspective, and we can reasonably come
    away with the idea that the saints and mystics and authentic practitioners of
    these traditions are testifying to profound experiences of a reality that is
    ultimately unitive and love-filled, that awakens us to solidarity and inspires in us
    compassion, and that inspires a trust-relationship with and toward reality, itself.
    This, then, is a rather universal testimony to the idea THAT reality is, at bottom,
    friendly, even as we might be left to wonder exactly HOW this may be so, because
    the evidence, of course, is ambiguous. Once we situate Christianity and its
    specific message in the context of the other great traditions, its specific hopes –
    that all may be well – do not appear wholly unreasonable.

    I think the novelist Walker Percy was very faithful in his articulation of the
    human predicament, as informed by his appreciation of the French existentialists
    and folks like Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard. Sartre and Camus et al and their
    perspectives on the human condition are not to be facilely engaged and then
    casually dismissed. Tillich was spot on in recognizing that faith was a polar reality
    with doubt an indispensable element, a state of being ultimately concerned and
    not, rather, propositionally certain.

    Walker said: ―I suppose my typical protagonist or hero or anti-hero is a fellow


    to whom a great deal has happened, who sees all the dark things that we are
    talking about, who‘s more or less dislocated like a Sartrean or a Camus
    character, but who, nevertheless, despite everything, sees a certain hopefulness,
    but has a certain resilience and reserve, and a feeling that there is something
    around the bend, like Huckleberry Finn.‖
    Now, that Walker quote strikes me as a distinctly axiological take on reality. It
    interprets and evaluates reality and speaks to the forming of our desires and the
    nurturance of our hopes. It‘s an interpretive-evaluative posit that has neither
    denied nor ignored the ambiguous and often brutal cosmological evidence. It‘s a
    practical existential response that goes beyond but not without the evidential and
    rational perspectives.

    To some extent, until we move beyond the extrinsic reward and punishment
    paradigm — driven by the what‘s in it for me approach of our early moral and
    affective development — in order to enjoy the intrinsic rewards of the pursuit of
    truth, beauty, goodness and unity for their own sakes, an approach associated
    with a more advanced affective and moral development, our religion has only
    socialized us and not really transformed us.

    Transformed folks have stared into the abyss, in one way or another, and not
    unflinchingly, and have nevertheless said: ―Let‘s see what‘s around the bend!‖
    and then go on loving, creating beauty and searching for truth. The journey
    becomes their destination. The quest becomes their grail.

    Our questions and concerns, hopes and desires, unite us far more than any
    metaphysical propositions and theological answers ever will.

    Is Reality Arbitrary?

    As we affirm the ancient-future approach we consider, also, both ―the now‖ &
    ―the future‖ aspects of the Kingdom. There are fruits we enjoy now even as we
    orient to a more complete realization in the future.

    The question of God being arbitrary involves all of the philosophical issues
    surrounding how we apply predicates to God via kataphasis, where we attempt
    an increase in our descriptive accuracy of a reality by employing positive
    affirmations via analogy and metaphor, and apophasis, where we increase such
    accuracy through negative descriptions of what God is not (literally) or is not like
    (metaphorically). For example, God is true, good and beautiful. God is like a
    parent. God is not indifferent. God is not uninvolved.

    So, one might go back and notice how each theologian must first deal with the
    disambiguation of the concept, arbitrary, and then must grapple with its
    application as a divine attribute through alternating kataphatic and apophatic
    descriptions. On the surface, one may come away with the initial impression that
    there has been some disagreement between these theologians. Upon further
    review, this is not really the case, whatsoever, because not everyone, when
    disambiguating and clarifying the concept, defined it & then employed it in the
    same way.

    Some were more so kataphatic in tenor, others more apophatic. Some were
    grappling via a propositional approach to the question, metaphysically. Others
    addressed the question in a more relational way, de-emphasizing conceptual
    map-making and more so engaging our participatory imaginations and how they
    engage God nonpropositionally via our existential & trans-rational orientations
    with their evaluative posits and affective dispositions. Put another way, we can
    answer that question with our mind, our spirit, our heart or our soul, but best
    answer it, holistically, with Ignatius engaging and then surrendering, our
    memory, understanding, our entire will, seeking only love.

    This is not unrelated to our postmodern giftedness, whereby our ontological


    modal categories changed from the possible, actual and necessary, to the
    possible, actual and probable. No longer is ours a philosophical or
    existential tug of war between pattern or paradox, order or chaos,
    chance or necessity, symmetry or asymmetry, or the random or
    systematic. These are false dichotomies, just like arbitrary or nonarbitrary.

    Reality is, instead, probabilistic.

    On one hand, it appears to have initial, boundary and limit conditions, while, on
    the other hand, it seems to be coaxing us forward toward a somewhat open
    future.

    We might suggest that Einstein was wrong in that it does look very much like God
    does indeed play dice; but the nihilists are manifestly wrong insofar as those dice
    very clearly appear to be loaded. Everywhere in reality, especially in mathematics
    and logic, the modal category of the necessary seems to suggest itself. But
    nowhere in reality have we ever encountered its physical instantiation!

    God may very well be the Ens Necessarium, but this doesn‘t leave us with a
    choice between determinism and indeterminism, ontologically. Instead, it leaves
    us in a fallible position, epistemologically, where our takes on reality are
    variously over- and under-determined.

    If we take the word arbitrary as a mathematical conception related to chance and


    necessity, then it cannot be predicated of God, metaphorically, because nowhere
    in reality can we find their physical analog, for reality is, instead, probabilistic.
    If we take the word arbitrary as an interpersonal reality related to the whimsical,
    then we are dealing with an affective disposition and we would find it very
    difficult to suggest that reality, from a human perspective, does not appear
    somewhat ambiguous for us and clearly ambivalent toward us. What we choose to
    imagine is that, should reality be less ambiguous for us and ambivalent toward
    us, it would somehow limit our freedom and coerce our relationship to God, Who,
    in spite of the apparent ambiguity and ambivalence, already seems true enough,
    beautiful enough and good enough to encourage our trust, inspire our awe and
    abide with our doubt and fear. But even when we cannot even imagine that
    inchoate theodicy, we believe, anyway, hope, anyway, love, anyway and trust,
    anyway. To Whom else can we go?

    As Hans Kung notes, we all have a fundamental trust in uncertain reality. For
    some, this trust is paradoxical and nowhere anchored. Others anchor this trust in
    God. Anchor is too strong an analogy to describe our trust. A sailing metaphor
    would seem more apt. We‘ve seen so many of our sisters and brothers throughout
    history, time and time again, who catch the winds of both incredible fortune and
    outrageous misfortune, alike, in the fragile but resilient sails of their human
    spirits.

    And then we‘ve watched them courageously tack and jibe their way back to the
    shores of faith, hope and love. We want to be like them. We can trust these winds,
    and use them, even when we cannot predict or understand their variable nature.
    And even when they are headwinds and not rather tailwinds.

    Nurturing the Creative Tensions of Paradox

    The dialectical imagination (think Barth and apophasis) and analogical


    imagination (think catholic and kataphasis) are best held in a creative tension
    where neither drowns the other.

    Wittgenstein correctly affirmed the methodological autonomy of science,


    philosophy and religion, but a Wittgensteinian fideism fails to recognize that
    these different horizons of human concern are axiologically integral, which is to
    suggest that they mutually influence each other. Whether we employ a language
    game paradigm or an ontology with a chosen root metaphor, these human
    endeavors, while not logically-related, are very much intellectually-related. And
    this is to further suggest that religion is not merely expressive but also
    interpretive and to further recognize that it is not immune to cultural criticism
    employing prudential, pragmatic and practical criteria, which in themselves are
    at least weakly inferential or truth-indicative even if not robustly inferential and
    truth-conducive.
    The dialectical imagination enjoys a certain primacy in God-talk and it critiques
    the analogical imagination in that, where God is concerned, we employ the
    weakest of analogies in metaphor, which express dissimilarities that differ
    infinitely vis a vis any similarities they may otherwise invoke. The analogical
    imagination critiques the dialectical insofar as the exclusively dialectical would so
    distance God in a radical apophaticism as would render all God-talk
    incomprehensible and suggests that, however meager our metaphorical
    knowledge, it is precisely because we are grappling with a reality on the order of
    an infinitude that such knowledge becomes increasingly significant to us who, as
    radically finite creatures, greet such knowledge recognizing that it has profound
    existential import to us in our human condition.

    This is to say, then, while our dialectical approach properly invokes God‘s utter
    incomprehensibility, our analogical approach affirms His infinite intelligibility.
    God dwells in ineluctable mystery and it would drown us if we tried to drink it all
    in, but we can taste and see His goodness in drops because He is not wholly
    unintelligible. It is a false dichotomy, indeed, that juxtaposes a choice between
    incomprehensibility and a final theory of everything. Rather, we move slowly but
    inexorably in our partial apprehensions and with our fallibilist provisional
    closures regarding ultimate reality, closures that do not aspire to the level of
    robust theory but, instead, to the presentation of a rather vague heuristic.

    A radical apophaticism and hyper-active dialectical imagination quickly devolve


    into such a theological nonrealism as will cut large swaths out of our Christian
    tradition, leading finally to insidious metaphysical and moral nonrealisms, too,
    which support nothing, in the end, but a practical nihilism and sad cynicism. This
    is existentialism, to be sure, but not of the Christian variety. It is Sartre and
    Camus and not Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard.

    In science and philosophy, we evaluate paradox and attempt to resolve it


    dialectically in synthesis, or to dissolve it perspectivally via paradigm shift, or to
    even evade it practically, such as by ignoring it. When it comes to life‘s most
    ultimate concerns and deepest mysteries, any attempts to resolve, dissolve or
    evade paradox are futile. What we do rather, such as where God-talk is involved,
    is we exploit paradox, transformatively, nurturing the creative tensions that
    present in the mutual critique, for example, between our dialectical and
    analogical imaginations.

    While it is certainly true that our existential move into faith involves an
    unconditional assent, quite often it will be pragmatic arguments that lead us to
    the ocean‘s edge and prudential criteria that will inspire our leap, where we
    discover the buoyancy of faith. And we will be thus tempted by the psalmist to
    taste and see the goodness of the Lord. And sometimes our human predicament
    will make us feel as if we‘re about to drown. But when Jesus knew for certain,
    only drowning men could see Him, he said all men shall be sailors, then, until
    the sea shall free them (Leonard Cohen). So, our life of faith will very much
    require us to many times praise the Lord, anyway.

    And so we believe with a certain resiliency despite life‘s tragedies. And we nurture
    God‘s analogical goodness in a creative tension with His infinitely dissimilar
    dialectical goodness, exploiting the paradox transformatively, neither banishing
    the mystery with our ill-conceived aspirations to an exhaustive theodicy nor
    refraining from our frail theodicies, which, in the end, must properly retain the
    element of mystery.

    Love is not a syllogism. God is not an argument.

    But incomprehensibility and unintelligibility are two radically different semiotic


    realities.

    A deeply compassionate pastoral sensitivity will help us to hold our God-analogs


    loosely without letting go of our apophatic dialectic and to nurture the creative
    tension in the paradox presented by natural evil in a world created by, yes, a good
    God, as we suffer with God and transform our suffering co-creatively. Only a
    puerile iconoclasm inspired by a seriously misguided theological nonrealism
    would try to snatch these consoling God-analogs, however simplistic, out of a
    suffering world‘s hands. Cajoling people with the distinctions of theo-esoterica in
    an attempt to dispossess them of the exoteric apprehensions of their God is at
    best an exercise in pedantry and at worst may leave others feeling not edified but
    bullied. Finally, it‘s just plain philosophically indefensible to resolve such
    paradox in a wholly dialectical manner.

    Note: In applying scholastic notations like possible, plausible, probable, certain,


    uncertain, improbable, implausible and impossible to arguments and
    propositions regarding our ultimate concerns, while it may be true that we are at
    most dealing with equiplausible or equiprobable propositions and while it may
    also be true that the lex dubia non obligat axiom applies, meaning one has no
    obligation in conscience, it is manifestly not true that one can find no reasons to
    assent to one proposition rather than another, especially employing pragmatic
    criteria and prudential & relational (trust) arguments, which also happen to have
    normative epistemic force as truth-indicative criteria. Such existential moves
    might be transrational or suprarational or super-reasonable, but they need not be
    irrational or arational or without reason.

    A More Authentically Integralist Approach


    In some sense, the great traditions have always been about the articulation of
    truth in creed, preservation of goodness in code, celebration of beauty in cult (or
    ritual) and enjoyment of fellowship in community.

    An authentically integralist approach, then, will recognize Wilber‘s quadrants


    such that the intraobjective enjoys its moment of primacy in our pursuit of truth,
    the interobjective in our pursuit of goodness, the intrasubjective in our pursuit of
    beauty and the intersubjective in our pursuit of community.

    Where we are headed, ecclesiologically is toward a model of church that is 1)


    pneumatological, which is to say that it will primarily engage in interreligious
    dialogue from the perspective of the Spirit, this over against any ecclesiocentric
    approach and perhaps even bracketing our various Christological approaches 2)
    servant, which is to actively grapple with the questions of social justice & peace
    3) herald, which is to recognize the orthopathic efficacies of the contemplative,
    nondual stance, inviting others to transformation via a shared social imaginary as
    cultivated by authentically transformative liturgical approaches, this
    participatory approach emphasized over (while complementing) the sterile and
    stale propositional apologetics of yesteryear and 4) mystical body, a visible
    manifestation of an invisible reality, to be sure, but dropping our old and
    insidious overemphases on the manifold and varied institutional structures. (cf.
    Dulles‘ models of church)

    Wim Drees defines theology as a cosmology plus an axiology. Drees notes that,
    and serious emergentists might pay special attention, the discontinuity in
    emergent reality threatens the unity of the sciences. Because laws, themselves,
    emerge, we are on thin theoretical ice when speculating metaphysically regarding
    the nature of primal reality, causal joints for divine prerogatives, and so on.

    While cosmological and axiological approaches are integrally-related, they are


    methodologically autonomous. Cosmology answers the questions 1) Is that a
    fact? (descriptively) and 2) How do I best acquire/avoid that? (normatively).
    Daniel Helminiak, a Lonergan protege, would describe these as positivist and
    philosophic activities and rightly affirms, in my view, the philosophic as spiritual
    quest.

    Even if one concedes, for argument‘s sake, our ability to travel from the
    descriptive to the prescriptive, given to normative, is to ought (and Mortimer
    Adler well-demonstrates that we can get from an is to an ought) still, due to our
    universal human condition, wherein we are all, for the most part, similarly
    situated, even if our reasoning differs for certain precepts and would be
    theoretically relativistic, still, from a practical perspective our precepts are going
    to be remarkably consistent.
    The practical upshot of all of this is that cosmology, thus narrowly conceived, is
    truly Everybody‘s Story, which is to say we really shouldn‘t go around wily-nily
    just making this stuff up because it isn‘t really negotiable but is given.

    The reason we even have such a category as interpretation results from our
    radical human finitude. It is not that we don‘t affirm such a metaphysical realism
    as recognizes the validity and soundness of a putative best interpretative ―vision
    of the whole,‖ but that, at this stage of humankind‘s journey, it is exceedingly
    problematical to fallibly discern and adjudicate between competing
    interpretations, especially as they fit into elaborate tautologies, all which are
    variously taut in their grasp of reality.

    In some sense, our cosmology comprises the propositional aspect of our


    metanarratives (aspiring to successful and robust descriptions with indications
    of correspondence) and our axiology comprises the narrative aspect (aspiring to
    vague but successful references with invitations to particpate). The postmodern
    critique does not instill incredulity toward our metanarratives per se; rather, it
    takes note of how every narrative aspect of our metanarratives is rooted in myth
    (yes, including scientism no less than fideism). Analogous to Gödel‘s
    incompleteness theorems, we cannot prove our system‘s axioms within the
    system (evidentially, rationally, presuppositionally or propositionally), itself, but
    this does not mean that we cannot taste and see (existentially, as recommended
    by Ignatius, the Psalmist & enlightened speculative cosmologists …) the truth of
    those axioms, which we would necessarily express – not formally, but – through
    narrative, story, myth.

    This framework establishes a certain amount of epistemic parity between


    worldviews and religions, which then get authenticated by how well they
    institutionalize conversions: intellectual, affective, moral, social and religious and
    adjudicated with an equiplausibility principle, which looks for life-giving and
    relationship-enhancing criteria when choosing between otherwise ambiguous
    courses of action. We can also remain on the lookout for Gospel norms like a
    language of descent or ―downward mobility‖ and a prophetic element (self-
    criticism). So, we do draw distinctions between a theory of truth and a test of
    truth and we do recognize that some aspects of reality are best grasped through
    correspondence while other aspects grasp us through participation.

    One lesson we take away is that our reliance on myth reveals that reality
    overflows our ability to process it, that creation, Creator and people present
    unfathomable depth dimensions that no encounter can capture or exhaust. If in
    our cosmologies, with their empirical, logical and practical foci, it is very much
    our intent to get the right answers, when it comes to our axiologies, with their
    relational foci, then, our quest is to get the right questions (Whom does the grail
    serve?).
    Our fundamental trust in uncertain reality requires no apologetic, then, and
    fashioning one is as futile as explaining why we love our Beloved in empirical,
    logical and practical terms (as if only extrinsically rewarding). Embodiments of
    truth, beauty, goodness and unity are their own rewards (intrinsically); they
    grasp us and possess us as we participate in these values with our existential
    orientations to these transcendental imperatives. As we distinguish between
    wants and needs, real and acquired desires, lesser and higher goods, our
    axiologies orient and dispose us to the higher goods, which we can enjoy without
    measure, and properly dispose us to the created goods that we really need in
    moderation and not in a disordered (John of the Cross) or inordinate (Ignatius)
    way.

    Our cosmology, which is scientific and philosophic, descriptive and normative,


    also includes our essentially spiritual quest, which is shaped by the positivist and
    normative sciences and addresses the orthopraxes of our ethical and moral
    strivings as well as those ascetical practices and disciplines that enhance
    awareness, including certain meditative practices, many which come from the
    East and are not inextricably bound to any religion or worldview (hence some are
    indeed spiritual without being religious, explicitly anyway). In our cosmology, we
    better come to grips with our empirical, logical and practical foci of concern and
    foster intellectual, moral and social conversions. Our axiology, which is
    interpretive and evaluative, goes beyond but not without our cosmology and is
    shaped by our religious myths and liturgical celebrations, which address the
    orthopathos of our prayer and worship, public and private, forming and
    reinforcing our aspirations and hopes, answering the question ―What‘s it to me?‖
    in a manner that is properly ordered, truly fitting and proper, which is to say,
    Eucharistically.

    There is no worldview or metanarrative without either an implicit or explicit


    axiology that is integrally related to one‘s cosmology (so we‘d best tend to an
    explicit axiology in a consciously-competent manner). In fact, in addition to their
    methodological autonomy, our axiologies enjoy a primacy in relation to our
    cosmologies, although otherwise axiologically-integrated. It is our orthopathos
    that mediates between our orthodoxy and orthopraxis to effect an authentic
    orthocommunio. If our unitive strivings come up short, whether geopolitically or
    in our primary communities and families, we might look at our prayer lives for, if
    we invoke, it is only because we have been convoked. In our axiology, we better
    come to grips with our relational foci of concern, where our value-realizations are
    trust, assent, fidelity, loyalty, faith, hope, love, eros, philia, agape and so on and
    we better foster affective and religious conversions.

    We do our best to discern where Lonergan‘s conversions have been


    institutionalized, looking to see which interpretive approach best fosters ongoing
    intellectual, affective, moral and social growth and development, leading to
    human authenticity. But we‘re clearly in more negotiable territory here with
    discourse dominated more by dogmatic (non-negotiated) and heuristic (still-in-
    negotiation) concepts, this contrasted to cosmological discourse, which has more
    theoretic (negotiated in community) concepts and semiotic concepts (non-
    negotiable becausec meaning, itself, is invested in them).

    What would intentional evolution address? Nothing less than creed, cult, code
    and community (institutionalized), which are deconstructible, as semiotic
    realities ordered toward truth, beauty, goodness and unity, which are not
    deconstructible. How would it address them? Through the amplification of
    epistemic risks as ordered toward the augmentation of human value-realizations.

    Less abstractly and more concretely, how does one amplify epistemic risks?

    Understanding yields to faith, memory to hope, will to love and alienation to


    community.

    There are rather clear archetypal themes playing out in our cosmologies and
    axiologies, likely related to brain development and individuation processes.

    A cosmology engages mostly our left-brain (thinking function of the left frontal
    cortex & sensing function of the left posterior convexity) as the normative and
    descriptive aspects of value-realization alternately establish and defend
    boundaries; we encounter the King-Queen and Warrior-Maiden with their light
    and dark (shadow) attributes as expressed in the journeys of the spirit and the
    body, primarily through a language of ascent.

    An axiology engages mostly our right-brain (intuiting function of the right frontal
    cortex & feeling function of the right posterior convexity) as the interpretive and
    evaluative aspects of value-realization alternately negotiate (e.g. reconciliation of
    opposites, harnessing the power of paradox) and transcend boundaries; we
    encounter the
    Crone-Magician and Mother-Lover with their light and dark attributes as
    expressed in the journeys of the soul and the other (Thou), primarily through a
    language of descent.

    Our propositional cosmologies and participatory axiologies seem to best foster


    transformation when, beyond our passive reception of them as stories about
    others, we actively engage the archetypal energies of their mythic dimensions
    with a contemplation ordered toward action, and also, when in addition to our
    rather natural expectations, they include 1) a priestly voice that sings of the
    intrinsic beauty to be celebrated in seemingly repugnant realities 2) a prophetic
    voice that is robustly self-critical when speaking the truth 3) a kingly voice that
    articulates a bias for the bottom, expressing both a privileging of the
    marginalized and a principle of subsidiarity when preserving goodness 4) a
    motherly voice that, seeing and calling all as her children, draws every person
    into her circle of compassion and mercy with no trace of exclusion, only a vision
    of unity.

    Over-Against Theological Nonrealisms

    What if we say that Everybody‘s Story, which is what we all know (from
    descriptive science), is both necessary and sufficient to provide humankind with
    morality, ethics, logic, aesthetics and such (our normative understandings) and
    with what we value, like truth, beauty, goodness & unity (our evaluative posits),
    which are intrinsically rewarding (the pursuit of same is its own reward)? These
    descriptive, normative & evaluative stances would form one‘s core cosmology.
    It‘s a cosmology that can really work for everyone and speaks of abundance, even
    given life‘s tragic aspects. We're thus relying only on what we see and hear and
    know to discern a cosmology, something we feel like we all share as spiritual
    quest.

    Our interpretive axis of interpretation, or axiology, while not essential for


    morality & value-realization, would be theistic, something we pursue as a
    religious quest, hoping & believing (not without warrant) there might be MORE!

    The Everybody‘s Story narrative and the typical Religious Naturalist response
    would both well articulate what we call our cosmology, which is something we
    feel like we KNOW (without getting rigorously philosophic about what ―know‖
    might mean). What we call our axiology, our axis of interpretion, is oriented to a
    putative reality for which we feel like we can (not without reason) HOPE and in
    which we feel like we can TRUST, and not without a great deal of difficulty at
    times, faith and doubt being a single polar reality.

    For those of a more philosophic bent, we might say that we feel like our
    cosmology enjoys an epistemic justification, which means that we look at
    competing cosmologies and feel like they are not equally probable, and we feel
    morally compelled to go with the most probable account, even if it is a
    provisional closure. Now, when it comes to our axiology, or our interpretive
    stance toward reality‘s putative initial, boundary & limit conditions, competing
    stances do seem rather equiprobable, more so equiplausible. A normative
    justification, pragmatic criteria, then govern this wager (cf. Wm. James).

    Whether one employs good old common sense or a rigorous philosophy, we can
    reasonably say that questions beg. And it seems that – not only do we not have all
    the answers – we don‘t even have all the questions. And of all the possible
    questions, it is highly problematic knowing which questions successfully refer to
    reality.

    Emergence, itself, is a powerful heuristic device that provides us some conceptual


    placeholders. It does not aspire to explanatory adequacy. Along with novel
    structures and properties, new laws emerge. In some attempts to probe the
    depths of nature, folks will often extrapolate these emergent laws into putative
    descriptions of a primal reality. But some of these laws, for all practical purposes,
    may be as local as the by-laws of our neighborhood bridge club.

    We often see such terms juxtaposed as chance or necessity? pattern or paradox?


    order or chaos? random or systematic? But nowhere in reality have we seen a
    physical instantiation of a so-called necessity. And reality is clearly not wholly
    described by chance or randomness. We do see nature presenting us with
    probability. But probability is premised on a temporal reality, which also
    emerged. Metaphysics? Caveat emptor.

    This all speaks to our wonder regarding reality‘s intelligibility. Haldane said
    reality was not only stranger than we imagine but stranger than we CAN imagine.
    Chesterton, on the other hand, cautions that we do not know enough about
    reality to say that it is unknowable. Clearly, we cannot say, a priori, when it is
    that our knowledge advance is being thwarted due to methodological constraints,
    epistemologically, or due, instead, to some type of in-principle ontological
    occulting. As far as final theories of everything, Gödel instructs us that we cannot
    prove a formal symbol system‘s axioms within that system, itself. But human
    knowledge does not advance solely thru formal argument. Few need to proceed
    halfway thru the Principia with Whitehead and Russell where the axioms for
    2+2=4 are proved, but can taste and see the truth of those axioms. Perhaps
    someday a Theory of Everything will be put forth, the axioms of which we‘ll find
    variously non/trivial, or un/interesting, or whatever?
    Pragmatically, when thwarted, we assume temporary methodological constraints
    & not ontological occulting, which would be an epistemic cul-de-sac. This is to
    say that a formal Theory of Everything will always be coupled with an informal
    narrative. An utterly incomprehensible reality just might be infinitely intelligible?

    As we examine criteria for adjudicating between competing worldviews, we


    acknowledge that they are problematical. But this is not the same thing as being
    moot.

    Let us play John Lennon here. Imagine.

    Imagine that what is right and wrong, good and evil, is transparent to human
    reason. Imagine, too, that we can distinguish between apparent and real goods
    and lesser and higher goods and then reason our way from an is to an ought
    without religion. Imagine that, except for a few very complex moral realities, we
    mostly enjoy a consensus about life‘s deepest values and have already articulated
    them in such documents as the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence and
    codified them in such documents as The US Constitution & the Bill of Rights and
    the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Imagine that, with such a moral consensus,
    politics was the art of the possible and dealt more so with practical solutions and
    prudential judgment, even on matters of war and peace, but especially with
    regard to keeping everyone healthy, optimally educating everyone and striving for
    full employment.

    Imagine, too, that rather than having Republicans and Democrats, with such
    practical biases as so often morph into ideological absolutes, we would have,
    instead, the Tenders of the Golden Goose (because they are experts in keeping
    geese healthy, geese like business & industry & individual taxpayers) and
    Distributors of the Golden Eggs (because they were experts in delivery of
    essential products and services). Imagine, too, that all the Goose Tenders & Egg
    Distributors were all astute enough to know not to stress the Goose and
    fairminded enough to optimally distribute the eggs.

    Imagine, too, that rather than having Conservatives and Liberals, we would have
    Settlers and Pioneers, folks that were gifted with such charisms as, on one hand,
    boundary establishment & defense, on the other hand, boundary negotiation and
    transcendence.

    Now, what in the world would religion have to do if it were not otherwise
    preoccupied with moral and practical realities, much less encroaching on such
    empirical realities as fall under the purview of science?

    There is no question that as one‘s axis of interpretation, or axiology, an


    interpretive religion would transvalue our cosmological pursuits, those being
    descriptive science, normative philosophy and evaluative culture. Our cosmology
    serves the end of socializing humans, making us able to function in society,
    meeting one another‘s needs. It deals with empirical, rational, moral and
    practical realities, as Merton would say, first taking us through the process of
    humanization, then through socialization. The problem is that our religious
    institutions have become more so instruments of socialization and less so of
    transformation.

    Religion gains its traction, then, not primarily or directly through the means of
    socialization and political institutionalization of services and political coercion.
    Religion gains its traction by fostering transformation, or Merton‘s True-Self-
    realization, or the Ignatian contemplation to attain love, or the Buddhist
    awakening to our solidarity that compassion might naturally ensue.
    Religion is a risk-taking adventure whereby we amplify the risks involved in our
    cosmological pursuits of truth, beauty & goodness into the axiological pursuits of
    faith, hope and love toward the end of augmenting all human value-realizations.

    But religion has been domesticated into one more social institution alongside
    others. The sense of adventure has been lost and the risk-taking aspects have
    been tamed. It‘s become a vehicle of respectability and social amenity when it
    should be, instead, instilling passion and shaping of desires. We need to honestly
    ask ourselves: What if science, morality and politics were already in good hands,
    then what value-added contribution would religion be expected to make? And we
    need to get on with THAT!

    The question then becomes, what if I told you that reality, at bottom, was friendly
    and that Someone loves you and has dreams for you beyond your own wildest
    imaginings? How would you respond to that Good News? That you are BE-
    LOVED! And what if we did all we could to sacrifice ourselves in kenotic, self-
    emptying for this person, these people, with whom we are sharing this Good
    News?

    There ain‘t no Religious Right and Religious Left. Those are nominal socio-
    political realities cloaked in the garment of so-called religion. We need to emulate
    Ghandi and Martin Luther King and do an end-around all of these institutions
    with their sick identity structures trying to suck us into some machine on their
    own terms. In the end, it can change who‘s in Congress and so on, but that would
    be a by-product not the designed end-product.

    The Spirit moves when He wills, where She wills, how they will — and is
    ineluctably unobtrusive even if utterly efficacious, subtle but powerful,
    triumphing without coercion.
    Non-violent civil disobedience and other tools of the trade are out of vogue.
    WHY? We‘ve got viral memes and blogs to publish treatises. Why not?

    A worldview, in my view, is an axiology, or an axis of interpretation, around


    which our cosmology spins. This distinction between an axiology and cosmology
    is explicated in an article previously cited by Wim Drees 40.

    Such interpretive stances lend themselves to three verdicts: proved, disproved


    and unproven.

    40 Drees. Willem B. ―A Case Against Temporal Critical Realism? Consequences of


    Quantum Cosmology for Theology‖ at counterbalance.com
    Some worldviews can be disproved, but only to the extent they‘ve committed
    category errors that place them at cross-purposes with other autonomous
    methods, like science and philosophy (e.g. epistemology). For example, an anti-
    evolution creationism is untenable. Equally untenable would be an epistemic
    nihilism, solipsism and stances that abandoned common sense understandings of
    causation. Of course, we can not prove such principles as noncontradiction,
    common sense notions of causation or even a critical realist stance, itself, or
    disprove such stances as nihilism and solipsism through formal argumentation or
    syllogistic reasoning. We proceed, instead, with an informal reductio ad
    absurdum or the essentially pragmatic criterion that going there just doesn‘t
    work, while going here does. The foundation remains bare and we are immersed
    in irony long before we start busting a/theological moves, which, if they cohere
    with our cosmology, are rendered, at best, the Scottish verdict unproven.

    Our point is that a metaphysical realism and natural theology are necessary to at
    least get us to this Scottish verdict while avoiding the disproved verdict. This is
    what Peirce would distinguish as an argument, a coherent framing of the
    question, as distinct from argumentation, which, when it pertained to the
    putative reality of God, he considered a fetish.

    When it comes to coherence, some adopt it as a theory of truth. As semiotic


    realists, we still hold the correspondence theory of truth but employ coherence,
    along with a host of other truth-indicative criteria, as a test of truth. Now, we do
    not vacillate between solipsism, nihilism and critical realism based on whether
    we had Cheerios or bacon & eggs for breakfast, even if the irony of our situation is
    ineradicable. Others might, but there is no sense in arguing with them. While we
    recognize and appreciate that, in a theological move, one will have to further
    amplify the risk that one‘s already taken (already taken to get past a more
    fundamental absurdity), our point is that any irony arrived on the scene long
    before one busts that move.

    As to whether or not one is open to such charges as have been leveled by Marx,
    Feuerbach, Freud or even the sociobiologists, those are impoverished
    anthropologies, which fall prey to what many semiotic scientists, nontheists
    included, call the adaptationist fallacy. It engages but a caricature of the life of
    faith. But that‘s not a controversy we feel called to settle or even further address.

    Our point is that ALL of our moves are essentially pragmatic and that ironist
    assumptions apply to ALL of our encounters of reality. (But we are not employing
    pragmatism as a theory of truth. There is a difference between what Peirce was
    doing versus Dewey, James and others in that lineage, much less Rorty.) We are
    suggesting that our essentially pragmatic moves, whether applying to common
    sense, or metaphysics, or theology, differ in degrees and not in kind. And that the
    same might be said of irony.
    In conversations with our nontheistic religious naturalist friends over the years, a
    fondness for Rorty surfaces from time to time. In exploring their minimalist
    religiosity, we found that we shared a cosmology (e.g. science, epistemology &
    values) and we‘ve actively explored and have been trying to tease out the
    differences between our interpretive stances or axiologies. And we have resisted
    attempts to categorically dismiss Rorty, feeling there was something there to be
    exploited. The phenomenon of faith is a reality thatneeds to be more broadly
    conceived. If we too narrowly conceive it, we do violence to the depth dimension
    (or immense complexity) of human beings. If we get too vague, it means nothing.
    But there is more than the conventional understandings and more than even our
    nuanced Peircean understanding that can count for what we call faith. For some,
    it is not a Kierkegaardian leap but more like a single Petrine step out of the boat.
    In other words, a Rortian Ironism could be appropriated as a type of faith and
    might well describe, in fact, the type of faith that untold numbers practice and
    have practiced.

    This is all to recognize that in science we advance hypotheses that are inherently
    falsifiable and call them ―working hypotheses.‖ In philosophy we adopt what we
    call ―provisional‖ closures. In metaphysics our speculation is inescapably fallible.
    In theology our faith can proceed moment by moment with a response that is
    ―right enough.‖ Faith, by definition, has never proceeded with the premise that
    we have captured God as She ―really‖ is but, still, even our apophatic (via
    negativa) predications are clear attempts to increase our descriptive accuracy and
    differ from our kataphatic (via positiva) predications only insofar as they can be
    both literal and analogical. In other words, our positive affirmations are
    metaphors and have always only been metaphors. None of this, necessarily,
    entails a nonrealist approach. It might get the ironist out of the predicament of
    imagining she‘s not getting closer to reality or feeling that he‘s not able to take
    himself seriously? At any rate, we see a Rortian Ironism as eminently reasonable
    as either a secular or religious response to reality, all of these positions, again,
    describing various degrees of pragmatism and irony. We appreciate that Rorty
    might‘ve found such an appropriation repugnant. But we wonder if we have
    discovered a position where many stand? Our own Peircean pragmatism is vague
    enough to include a quasi-Rortian, religious ironism within a minimalist realism.

    This does not mean that we are not deeply sympathetic to the idea that some stuff
    is socially constructed. And we affirm metaphysics as an enterprise that helps us
    clarify helpful categories, disambiguate vague concepts (not specific terms),
    frame-up coherent arguments and validate meaningful questions. To that extent,
    we can at least adjudicate between those provisional interpretations of reality
    that are totally out to lunch and those that are at least asking meaningful
    questions.
    The approaches that are most coherent, in our view, will acknowledge irony,
    abide with paradox and will not proceed to advance their arguments through
    some type of syllogistic argumentation, as if life‘s deepest questions can be thus
    answered.

    But some suggest there is a threshold (e.g. God-concepts) where nonrealism kicks
    in and all things epistemological just aren't that tidy. It‘s too neat, too facile, too
    arbitrary, to say now I‘m a realist and now I ain‘t. Our grasps of reality, instead,
    admit of degrees and these differing degrees require increasing amounts of risk.
    And faith, hope and love are risk maneuvers and these risks are not just epistemic
    but existential. That‘s the type of candor one might reasonably expect of
    believers.
    But one goes too far with one‘s iconoclasm, in our view, to suggest that believers
    are just making stuff up. How people frame issues invites parsing? For example,
    what might one mean by ―reason‖ or even ―sufficient‖, when writing: "I‘m not
    denying that believers are able to trust that their God is benevolent and has some
    sort of plan that will redeem a long, senseless history of random human suffering.
    I‘m just saying that there isn‘t sufficient reason to believe in such a God.‖

    Well, it is one thing to say that the case for God cannot be conclusively
    adjudicated through evidence. It would be quite another to suggest there is no
    evidence.

    It is one thing to say that the rational arguments for God cannot coerce belief. It
    would be quite another to suggest that belief in God is wholly nonrational much
    less irrational.

    It is one thing to say that there are no empirical and scientific reasons to believe
    in God. It would be quite another to suggest that there are no coherent
    philosophic and pragmatic reasons for belief in God.

    It is one thing to say that our approach to God and reality does not proceed from
    indubitable foundations. It would be quite another to suggest that post-
    foundational epistemology and theology must be necessarily, then, nonrealist.

    It is one thing to recognize life‘s irony and paradox and to affirm, even, an
    essential pragmatism. It would be quite another to suggest that Rorty‘s vulgar
    pragmatism is definitive.

    It is one thing to suggest that our belief in God takes us BEYOND the evidential,
    rational and presuppositional. It would be quite another to suggest that we make
    such an existential move WITHOUT them.
    It is one thing to lament that there are many who remain stuck in a naive realism
    with an unnerving certitude and dangerous fundamentalism. It would be quite
    another to suggest that there can be no coherent cumulative case approach to the
    reality of God, mitigating against the distance one must leap, or, in some cases,
    perhaps, step (as a Rortian ironist), with a rather confident assurance in what one
    might ―reasonably‖ hope for, with no small conviction regarding certain things
    unseen.

    Alas, Rorty‘s neo-pragmatism resembles Peirce only superficially. Susan Haack 41,
    a neoclassical pragmatist, wrote an enjoyable play that demonstrates their
    otherwise profound disagreements. She explains: The point of my
    ―conversation‖ between Peirce and Rorty was, of course, to bring out how
    utterly different Rorty‘s literary-political, anti-metaphysical ―pragmatism,‖
    with its disdain for logic and repudiation of epistemology, is from Peirce‘s
    pragmaticist philosophy. And Rorty‘s neo-‖pragmatism‖ is not only very
    different from Peirce‘s; it is also quite distant from James‘s, and even from
    Dewey‘s. The old pragmatist whom Rorty most resembles is F.C.S. Schiller —
    the British philosopher whose radically relativist position James once described
    as ―the buttend foremost‖ version of pragmatism.

    A philosophical goal to which we might reasonably aspire is to frame up our


    questions regarding our ultimate concerns in a manner that is congruent with
    reality (doesn‘t contradict established scientific theory), logically consistent
    (employing concepts and arguments that reflect good critical thinking) and
    internally coherent (don‘t have us working at cross-purposes with our own
    approaches to reality).

    If a ball comes flying over our fence into our yard and breaks a sliding glass door,
    it is not unreasonable to inquire of its origins. While we may never be able to
    ascertain its unknown cause, we may, from the nature of its effects, determine
    whether or not they are consistent with any other known causes, like kids playing
    ball, like lawn mowers hurling trajectories, like pitching machines in batting
    cages, like homemade potato guns and so on. And we may reasonably rule out
    any of the above possibilities by inference based on such properties as the nature
    of the damage inflicted on the door, the condition of the ball, the ball‘s putative
    trajectory & velocity & acceleration as well as its mass & material composition. All
    such inferences will actually increase our descriptive accuracy of the cause even if
    only through negation, apophatically ruling out all known probable causes by
    saying it couldn‘t be this or that or anything like them, either. And we may
    increase our descriptive accuracy of the origin of the projectile through
    kataphatic affirmation by analogically describing what the cause must have been
    like, asserting far more dissimilarities than similarities.

    41 Susan Haack ,―We Pragmatists‖ Peirce and Rorty in Conversation


    This globe we live on is hurtling through a space-time, mass-energy plenum
    leaving us perplexed and often frightened out of our minds. Our inquiry into its
    origins leaves us speculating, not idly, regarding its putative cause. And it is the
    most natural thing in the world for humankind to inquire after same. And I think
    we at least want to get our questions right and to avoid category errors as we
    continue our quest. We would not be treating this topic if we did not presuppose
    that some approaches to the problem are better than others, some more helpful,
    others downright hurtful. Some approaches deserve to be placed in baby strollers
    without bonnets and brought to a nearby hilltop and let go in a Monty Python
    skit. Others have the makings of a fairly good grail quest.

    But we dissent from any notion that philosophy cannot hold court on what‘s
    beyond. Some notions of what‘s beyond are incongruent with science,
    inconsistent with logic, incoherent with our shared norms and unacceptable vis a
    vis the moral and practical courses of action they inspire, on which humans then
    embark. Good philosophy holds court on things beyond and, although it has not
    yet, at this point of humankind‘s journey, rendered a proved verdict for any given
    worldview, it has competently and within its jurisdiction adjudicated both
    disproved and unproved (Scottish) verdicts. While there is no room for epistemic
    hubris, we need not surrender to an excessive epistemic humility or radical
    apophaticism.

    We understand and appreciate, then, that a nuanced agnosticism, nontheism or


    even nonmilitant atheism might have the same epistemic status as our own
    nuanced theism. Good philosophy helps us adjudicate an unproved verdict, which
    is not unimportant over against competing worldviews, including
    fundamentalistic theisms, scientistic atheisms and unmitigated practical
    nihilisms, which can be disproved. These competing worldviews all exert an
    incredible amount of normative impetus affecting the moral and practical
    approaches of the people who hold them, suggesting descriptions of what might
    ail them and insidious prescriptions for what might cure those ails. We don‘t just
    make coughing noises regarding their bullcorn. We enter the courtroom and
    argue our case, suggesting interdiction of these very real dangers.

    We affirm a fallibilist, metaphysical realism and a semiotic pragmatism and stand


    with Wittgenstein‘s student, Anscombe, when it comes to such arguments as have
    been advanced, for example, by CS Lewis, on occasion. But we do not buy into a
    Kierkegaardian fideism, which seems to us to be an over-correction to an
    Hegelian scientism. Neither do we buy into a Kantian transcendentalism, which
    should have confronted the Humean critique practically. We see much value in
    what William James and Pascal had to say, but correct them with Peirce.

    Might philosophy hold court on things beyond? Might we expect philosophy to


    have something definitive to say on the matter in the future?
    We're with GK Chesterton in that it is too early on humankind‘s journey to say
    that reality is unknowable. Our knowledge advance is slow but inexorable. We've
    made clear that nothing is being proved. Our findings are epistemological
    critiques of scientism, fideism and nihilism, also essentialism and nominalism.
    And both a vulgar Rorty pragmatism and theological nonrealism.

    Some have suggested that philosophy and science both converge here to tell us
    that the question of the origin of space and time is a confused question, precisely
    because we cannot know what ―rules‖ govern ―nothing.‖

    It was Wittgenstein who said that it is not HOW things are but THAT things are
    which is the mystical. That sounds a lot like Heidegger‘s query: Why is there not
    rather nothing? Sounds to us like the Thomists, Wittgenstein, Heidegger et al
    might be reifying this conception called ―nothing‖ and we have no a priori reason
    to know whether or not it successfully refers.

    One might, instead, more profitably invoke Godel and our inability to prove a
    system‘s axioms within the same formal system. Alas, that is not satisfying either
    because we humans do not advance our knowledge solely through formal symbol
    systems. Sometimes we can see the truth of our axioms even though we cannot
    prove them, which is to admit, for example, that one needn‘t work halfway
    through the Principia with Whitehead and Russell in order to see the truth in the
    axioms used to prove 2 + 2 =4.

    A better question might be: Why is there not rather something else?

    At any rate, we think others are confused if they equate quantum vacuum
    fluctuations with nothing.

    We do not buy into the dualistic distinctions between essentialism and


    nominalism, substance and process approaches, the noumenal and phenomenal
    and such but prescind to a more phenomenologial stance with a semiotic realism.
    Our conceptions have value insofar as we can cash same out pragmatically (as a
    test of truth, not a theory of truth). For example, whatever our conception of good
    is vis a vis the predicates and attributes we want to apply, that conception and
    those predicates don‘t lose intelligibility just because they get employed in a
    metaphor. Perhaps we might concede that some metaphors invoke analogies that
    are so very weak as to provide us very little information about the concept we are
    trying to describe? That is certainly true. However, when we are talking about a
    reality as BIG as God, a little bit of info goes a long way. Most people will say that
    God is good despite outstanding theodicy issues, despite the fact that His
    goodness differs from anything with which we're familiar. We know that, in our
    attempts to enhance our modeling power of reality, we will all inhabit somewhat
    elaborate tautologies. But just because a statement is tautological doesn‘t mean it
    is not otherwise true. It only means that we have not added any new info to our
    systems. But some tautologies are more taut than others and some metaphors are
    more resilient than others, even if all eventually collapse due to circular
    references, causal disjunctions, question begging or infinite regressions.

    The postmodern critique, properly considered per our view, did not dispossess us
    of our theory of truth, which remains a nuanced correspondence. It properly
    changed our theories of knowledge from a naive realism to different types of
    critical realism (some nonfoundational, others a weakened foundationalism).
    There are a host of criteria we can apply to working hypotheses like external
    congruence, internal coherence, logical consistency, inferential fecundity,
    interdisciplinary consilience, hypothetical consonance, symmetry, parsimony,
    elegance, abductive facility, pragmatic utility and on and on. Each such criterion,
    applied alone, amounts to a formal fallacy. Taken together, we've got something
    like common sense. But it would amount to a caricature of human knowledge to
    suggest that only the stronger forms of inference, like deduction and induction,
    lead us to what we call knowledge, as if we only advance same in formal, truth-
    conducive argumentation. Rather, reasoning our way retro-ductively back from
    such predicates as usefulness, elegance, parsimony and so on, most human
    knowledge advances fallibly as we reason our way informally, employing truth-
    indicative criteria. Not everything that is useful is true, indeed; that would be an
    insidious pragmatism. But we can say that what is useful, what works, has a
    higher probability of being true or real.

    And thus theologians have coined the aphorism that orthopraxis authenticates
    orthodoxy.

    And so we establish criteria for cashing out the value of our various theological
    conceptions in terms of their ability to foster (rather than stifle), for example,
    intellectual, affective, moral, social and religious development.

    We do not want to defend a position that suggests that metaphysical claims are
    not fantastic, which is likely why we don‘t subscribe to any given ontology. But we
    do defend the project. We do not know, a priori, when it is that our knowledge
    advances will be thwarted by methodological constraints, epistemically, or will be
    otherwise halted by some in-principle occulting, ontologically. But we generally
    eschew the latter assumption because it inevitably leads us down an epistemic
    cul-de-sac and assume the former, because it fuels our search in hope. The chief
    problem with any anxiety to annihilate metaphysics, though, is that
    we do away with speculative theoretical science along with it.
    All philosophical theology has ever done is to clarify the nature of our questions
    and to demonstrate that some of our putative answers are not unreasonable even
    if not provable. So, there is no denying the series of leaps we take, for example,
    over against solipsism and nihilism and the humean critique of our common
    sense notions of causality, and for some, also the leap called faith.

    But we need to examine the nature of these leaps and we find that those that go
    beyond descriptive science and normative philosophy but not without them will
    much better foster human development. And we can measure same, not without
    difficulty, empirically. In which civilizations did science eventually flourish and
    where was it stillborn? Which cultural cohorts are turning out radical
    fundamentalists, militarism, moral statism and creationism?

    Reality is no longer carved into discernible ontological joints or disciplines, but


    human knowledge still relies on different orders of abstraction and we need to
    govern this process, best we can. Getting radically apophatic and mysterian is
    self-defeating and not defensible, a priori. For all practical purposes, the deeper
    we get into the structures of matter and the closer we get to the earliest moments
    after the Big Bang, the more intractable are our problems. And we further
    acknowledge that, from what we observe in emergent processes, there is even
    novelty in the laws governing properties; ergo, there is a danger in extrapolating
    such laws as might, for all practical purposes, be as local, cosmologically, as the
    by-laws of our neighborhood Bridge Clubs. This might compel us to focus our
    analogia also on Christocentric realities and what Jesus reveals about God‘s
    nature, in particular, and not just on the metaphors that He employed in His
    parables and discourses employing Mother Nature, in general.

    We're very sympathetic to radical orthodoxy and some of our ideas, originating
    with Lonergan, very much resonate with Hauerwas, Milbank, even Lindbeck.
    BUT, aside from some very general observations, sociologic metrics that would
    help us figure out which ecclesiologies have been delivering the goods are difficult
    to come by and hard to interpret. All of the great traditions have turned out
    mixed results, each with its own set of problems. And if ―we‖ truly believe in a
    radically incarnational reality with a profusely pneumatological presence, then
    we must recognize and affirm the efficacies of the Spirit in all peoples and places,
    wherever the fruits are manifest, including nontheistic sources. Sanity and
    sanctity appear to run horizontally across the denominations and traditions
    rather than within this one or that. We would thus mightily resist any new
    triumphalism, colonialism, paternalism, hierarchicalism, ecclesiocentrisms,
    elitism and so on. So, we don‘t want to trade one fundamentalism for another.

    We know that analogy and metaphor are indispensable in our attempts to


    describe unknown causes even in science, where we do not really need a root
    metaphor in order to proceed profitably. And we know that we employ apophatic
    and kataphatic modes to increase descriptive accuracy in our ordinary speech,
    kataphasis proceeding via affirmation and apophasis by negation. So, we
    recognize and affirm these modalities, in general. A problem arises, however.
    Not all analogies are equally direct or strong or useful. In God-talk, we employ
    only the weakest of analogy, metaphor. Most of this metaphor takes place from a
    stance within the faith as a theology of nature. As for the type that takes place
    prior to the faith, a natural philosophy or theology, it can prove nothing,
    syllogistically.

    What we are attempting to do with our method is to preserve analogy, in general,


    as useful speech, while at the same time providing a rubric for different degrees
    of usefulness. For example, we need it to advance particle physics as we infer new
    particles from novel effects of heretofore unknown causes. But it has also been
    applied to cosmic origins, such as when we employ imaginary numbers using the
    square root of negative one to devise an hypothesis that the universe is finite but
    unbounded. And it has been applied to putative primal realities, such as when
    arguments have been advanced for primal origin, primal being, primal cause,
    primal goals, primal order, primal meaning and the classical so-called proofs –
    ontological, cosmological, teleological, axiological, epistemological and so on.

    Peirce drew a distinction between the initial abduction of an hypothesis or the


    formulation of an argument, itself, and what he called argumentation or the
    process of reasoning through to a conclusion, syllogistically. We recognize the
    possibility that there might be a particular question begging and that our
    attempts to frame up some meaningful categories and heuristics in order to
    attack it is an eminently reasonable exercise. This formulation of the argument is
    telltale of the reasonableness of our quest. It validates our wonder. It says: Very
    good question. So far, so good. But the situation can quickly devolve into an
    argumentation that, for various reasons, like a lack of sufficient information
    regarding initial, boundary and limit conditions of a system, Peirce would
    consider to be, in his words, a fetish.

    So, here‘s the problem. We need criteria, a method, a rubric, to distinguish


    between such analogical reasoning as pushes backs the frontiers of knowledge
    and advances science and such reasoning as manipulates abstractions of varying
    degrees and truly indicates a fetish of sorts. So, we can ask, for example, what is
    the pragmatic value that can be cashed out of this conception versus the next, of
    this analogy vs another. In this way, we can avoid the tu quoque comeback that
    I‘m merely reasoning analogically and speaking metaphorically, which is the
    same thing you are doing, so, where‘s the rub?

    And the rub is this. Humankind, as a broad community of inquiry (or value-
    realization), and various of its smaller cohorts or communities, do not just go
    around wily nilly employing abstractions just for the hell of it (of course we do,
    but that‘s a discussion for another day) but, instead, our employment of signs and
    symbols are oriented to value-realization and, in that vein, have been negotiated
    by the community (you know, language convention). So, without delving very
    deeply into semiotic theory or linguistic analysis or anything, we proposed a
    heuristic of four broad categories consisting of those concepts that 1) have been
    negotiated, the theoretic 2) remain still-in-negotiation, the heuristic 3) are
    nonnegotiable, required for meaning itself, the semiotic and 4) have not been
    negotiated between persons or across communities, the dogmatic.

    In a nutshell, then, the difference in one form of analogical argumentation and


    another vis a vis one that meets a host of informal, truth-indicative epistemic
    criteria (pragmatic utility, elegance, parsimony, fecundity, coherence, consistency
    and so on) and one that amounts to, well, a pure fetish, distills down to the
    relative mix of theoretic, heuristic, semiotic and dogmatic concepts employed in
    the argumentation. The higher the proportion of concepts previously negotiated,
    the better our chances for cashing out some value in practical terms. Yes, we all
    take leaps, such as the nonnegotiable semiotic leaps we take over against
    solipsism, nihilism & the humean critique of common sense notions of causality,
    such as the ones we take in favor of such first principles as noncontradiction and
    excluded middle, none of the semiotic leaps provable via syllogistic reasoning but
    presuppositions of reasoning, itself, both formal and informal. It‘s the number
    and the nature of the other leaps, as gauged by our employment of too many non-
    negotiated dogmatic conceptions and too few theoretic ones that then sets apart
    meaningful discourse from a fetish.

    Much of what passes for natural theology is a fetish. The argument formulation is
    fine and can demonstrate the reasonableness of our questions, recognizing that
    we are at the end of our epistemic cable of intertwined truth-indicative criteria.
    The argumentation beyond that gets us nowhere.

    This is why we cannot argue against the view that metaphysical claims are
    fantastic. This is why we draw distinctions, though, between incomprehensible
    and unintelligible. We eschew absolute dichotomies when it comes to knowledge
    and prefer to deal with them in matters of degree per our rubric.

    This brings us to our assignment of God attributes and the nature of the analogies
    and metaphors applied in our putative god-concepts when we are reasoning
    philosophically prior to any leap of faith. How dialectical and how analogical are
    such? One might employ a descriptor vis a vis the attribute of goodness, for
    example, the nth degree. That matches our own, which is of an infinite order.
    Simplistic kataphatic affirmations of primal reality are not philosophically
    defensible. They are highly problematical. Our rubric allows us to provide some
    rigor and provides us some tools to adjudicate competing claims for who is the
    most out to lunch epistemically. Not all leaps of faith are equally warranted.
    When we leave behind science, we have forsaken the descriptive, positivist and
    theoretic concepts from which humankind has cashed out a great deal of
    pragmatic value. When we leave behind philosophy, we have forsaken the
    normative, logical, aesthetical, ethical and semiotic concepts, which are also
    indispensable.
    We proceed beyond them but not without them or we proceed at our own peril.
    These are the grounds by which we can reject creationism and such a moral
    statism as claims to be advocating philosophical deontologies when, in reality,
    because of an inordinate degree of dogmatic concepts are putting forward what
    are essentially religious positions. This is how we avoid the charges of absolute
    fideism and radical fundamentalism or even a radically deconstructive
    postmodernism. These are also the grounds upon which we stand to advance the
    charges of positivism, empiricism, scientism and an Enlightenment
    fundamentalism, which imagine that the only meaningful discourse is scientific
    or philosophic, as if the natural progression of human knowledge has never
    employed heuristic devices with our concepts proceeding through ongoing
    negotiation and renegotiation, as if our semiotic concepts were not, themselves,
    resistant, in principle, to the filters of hypothetical falsification and empirical
    verification, and as if they were not perduring as nonnegotiables only via an
    otherwise resilient reductio ad absurdum.

    But, again, when one says "I‘m not denying that believers are able to trust that
    their God is benevolent and has some sort of plan that will redeem a long,
    senseless history of random human suffering. I‘m just saying that there isn‘t
    sufficient reason to believe in such a God." ---

    When they speak of reason, here, are we including both epistemic/theoretic and
    prudential/practical reason?

    And in what sense do they mean believe?

    In tradition we pretty much mean an unconditional assent that does not depend
    on inference, or we mean an acceptance disposing one to trust, or even willfully
    accepting and acting in a way to inculcate trust, all implying that there is no
    seeing of the complete truth of the matter. We would suppose this also implies
    that there is going to be more than one interpretation of a reality that is possible,
    plausible (maybe even variously probable?) but manifestly not demonstrable or
    provable. In some sense, then, the very definition of belief vis a vis the faith life
    will preclude, in principle, epistemic reasons in that we are dealing with an
    unconditional assent? And to the extent such belief will involve our unconditional
    assent, hence willfully accepting and acting in a way that might further inculcate
    trust, then it would seem that a suitably nuanced pragmatic appeal might at least
    provide us some prudential reasons to go on and accept one interpretation rather
    than another and then act on it (think a nuanced Pascal & James here).

    In our view, in theory, we could conceive of a host of criteria that might be


    indicators of the relative practical efficacies and inefficacies of different
    interpretive stances toward reality, in general, and a vague god concept, in
    particular. The present constraints would seem to be methodological vis a vis
    properly gauging various sociologic metrics. Our provisional closures regarding
    same may not be universally compelling, but this approach does not seem to me
    to be unreasonable or unhelpful. The truth claims in question are not only
    a/theological but also often cosmological and anthropological, and the latter are
    accessible to scientific and philosophic critique.
    The pragmatic criteria proposed in tradition – orthopraxis authenticates
    orthodoxy– employs Lonerganian ―conversions‖ (developmental processes akin
    to Piaget, Kohlberg, Fowler, Erikson et al) as criteria asking how well
    institutionalized practices foster intellectual, affective, moral, social and religious
    development. These are cross-cultural anthropological criteria and difficult to
    gauge but these are legitimate questions. Of course, it only works if one accepts,
    at least, semiotic and moral realisms (e.g. w/such distinctions as real and
    apparent needs, lesser and higher goods & some coherent approach that pays
    homage to aretaic/virtue ethics, deontological, consequentialist & contractarian
    ethics and so on; or at least a Sartrean view of our shared human condition
    leading us to devise similar prescriptions for what ails humankind despite our
    differences, such as we encoded in the UN Declaration of Human Rights). We
    can thus discern where it is that science flourished and where it was, rather,
    stillborn. We can discern who is cranking out the most fundamentalists,
    creationists, militarists. The caveat is Distinguishing between, for example,
    Christendom and Christianity, between where Buddhism has failed and where it
    may not have even been tried.

    We do not know enough about reality to say what will remain unknowable. But
    let us say this in Wittgensteinian terms that others might better grasp our
    meaning: “To draw a limit to thought you must think both sides of
    that limit.”

    And that is where many have grievously erred in their defense of nonrealism,
    both metaphysical and theological. One may wish to consult the life‘s work of
    Wittgenstein‘s literary executor, Elizabeth Anscombe, for a more universally
    compelling appropriation of his thought.

    FAITH

    Having faith, for us, has meant placing our trust, whether in this reality or that, or in Reality
    writ large, and then willingly living out the consequences of this or that trust relationship. We
    describe my faith life, then, in terms that apply to relationships, like fidelity, loyalty, love, trust
    and not so much in terms that describe my stance toward various propositions or, in other
    words, that involve any particular fixation of belief. Our faith does not ignore the empirical and
    logical, for that would be unfaithful, a betrayal of our trust relationship with Reality. Our faith
    goes beyond the empirical and logical, super-reasonably you might say, to the robustly practical
    and relational, acting as an interpretive lens through which we evaluate descriptive and
    normative realities. Faith defines what we care about and shapes our responses to Reality with
    such a trust in and fidelity to and love of Reality as will generally allow for a steadfastness of
    those responses even in the face of a seeming rejection of us and our cares by Reality. Through
    faith we choose to relate to Reality like any other beloved of ours, going way beyond (but
    certainly not without) mere propositional knowledge of who or what we care about to a robustly
    relational dynamic marked by such a faith, hope and love as requires no justifications and
    makes no apologies. We can no more tell you why we love and trust Reality than I can tell you
    why we love our spouses and children, but we'd have to imagine that having known such love
    and beauty we have been rendered forever unable to fix our gaze, or place my trust, elsewhere.

    A (Moderately) Radical Orthodoxy


    Philosophically, in this Peircean metatechnica, the classical approaches (rational or internally
    coherent) mediate between the evidential approaches (empirical or externally congruent) and
    existential approaches (relational or subjective) to effect human valuerealizations.

    Theologically, in this Radical Orthodoxy, the rational (Catholic, BOTH Roman & Anglican) or
    presuppositional (reformed, Calvinist) mediates between the evidential (evangelical, Arminian)
    and existential (fideist, Lutheran, neoevanaglical) to effect human value-realizations 42.

    The reformed approach cannot truly aspire to an epistemology per se because philosophy is an
    autonomous methodology and it is a category error to call it ―Christian.‖ Frame‘s reformed
    epistemology, however, might be well situated in our own epistemological architectonic,
    resonating, as it explicitly does, with our own robustly integral approach, only departing from
    our essentially philosophical treatment by uncritically substituting presuppositional scriptural
    norms in place of our own Peircean normative sciences of logic, aesthetics and ethics. Frame‘s
    move is thus theological and, ergo, philosophically illicit, although our Peircean hermeneutic
    precisely takes one to the threshold of the abduction of the Ens Necessarium, thus leading into
    our pansemioentheist theology of nature, which values the reformed epistemology as a theology.

    Sure, there are those who fideistically conflate existential outlooks with evidential
    methodologies, who are rightfully charged with placing God in gaps, but there is no discernable
    increase in philosophical rigor by those who commit the inverse category error, scientistically
    suggesting that we must all necessarily conflate our descriptive and normative methods with our
    interpretive systems and then rush with them to metaphysical closure as philosophical
    naturalists.

    With Emerson, we believe that God arrives when the half-gods depart, and thus offer a re-
    enchanted (through and through) worldview over against any notion that either modernism‘s
    incessant chant of secularistic God of the gaps pejoratives, or postmodernism‘s nihilistic

    42 For an explication of these philosophical correlations with these theological categories, see Faith Has Its
    Reasons by Kenneth D. Boa and Robert M. Bowman, Jr. http://www.bible.org/series.php?series_id=190 wherein
    John Frame‘s presuppositional perspectivalism inchoately articulates our own nonfoundational perspectivalism).
    sensibilities, have ushered in either a philosophical naturalism, or an insidious relativism, as the
    default paradigm for primal reality, where our God of the ... gasp! still reigns.

    We question the classical patterns of dichotomous thinking, or at least suggest an overworking


    of same, as they necessarily divide reality into such categories as natural or supernatural, chance
    or necessity, existential or propositional, subjective or objective, reason or revelation, material
    or spiritual, nature or grace, acquired or infused, rationalist or empiricist or existentialist,
    evidentialist or fideist, secular or sacred, fact or value, and so on. We must discern which of
    these dyads are mere phenomenal distinctions and which are indeed ontological dichotomies
    without a default bias to either dualistic or nondualistic accounts. Instead, we affirm a holistic
    and integrative approach that, over against any sterile metaphysical compartmentalizations or
    epistemic absolutisms, and engaged by a robustly
    pneumatological imagination, sees creation thoroughly permeated by and wholly shot-through
    with the glory and splendor of our indwelling God-with-us. Our world is thus wholly, wholly
    holy (yes, theodicies notwithstanding).

    If, with Lonergan (and Gelpi), we believe that orthopraxis authenticates orthodoxy, then our
    political, economic, cultural and social metrics of success will be gauged in terms of intellectual,
    affective, moral, sociopolitical and religious development of our citizens, a much more holistic
    and expansive set of goals than can otherwise be measured by stock, bond and commodity
    indices, labor statistics, gross domestic products, monetary and fiscal measures, median
    incomes, cost and price indices and other measures of so called wealth. For, if wealth is not that
    which we possess but that which possesses us (Disraeli?), we may be otherwise seriously
    impoverished.

    As contemplation attains to politics, we must only emphasize that the political will only
    efficaciously mediate between the economic and the cultural to effect the social if it originates
    from an authentically contemplative stance, which is to suggest that, in the public square, we
    should not ever secularistically bracket our [religious] perspectives but should strive, rather, to
    semiotically translate them into whatever lingua franca is most accessible in this or that
    dialogical arena, which is to say with a suitably inculturated theology, which is what we aspire to
    offer to the American public as grounded in a Peircean-inspired nonfoundational epistemology.
    Most importantly, though, it is through our vibrant communities of creed, cult and code, that
    such conversion will be most efficaciously effected and not through state power or market
    forces.

    Human creativity and flourishing are so much more than can be gauged by marketplace metrics
    and are inextricably intertwined with the Holy Spirit, the source of all creative help and all
    helpful creativity. May we thus engage the Spirit both consciously and competently!

    Religious Naturalism

    In Goodenough‘s Sacred Depths of Nature (2000 Oxford Univ Press), page xvi,
    concepts like a) culture-independent, globally accepted consensus and b) our
    scientific account, to me, do not seem to refer. They sound more like legitimate
    aspirations than laudable achievements. Further, there is a mix of theoretical
    (evolution and Big Bang) and hypothetical (origin of life & advent of human
    consciousness) concepts that do refer but differ radically in their degrees of
    explanatory adequacy. We do not, therefore, in my view, seem to be to the point
    of attainment of the story, the one story, that could get us to a shared worldview
    with a global tradition.

    Even the emergentist perspective remains only a heuristic device, not robustly
    explanatory; it provides us with more successful referents, is how it's value is
    cashed out, even as successful descriptions continue to elude us. Finally, MANY
    of us DO agree on the high probabilities of certain accounts (regarding both the
    origin of life and the advent of human consciousness) but are not otherwise in
    agreement, paradigmatically or interpretively, regarding reality's brute facts. The
    emergentist perspective, itself, does not refer to one set of brute facts versus
    another. In fact, it would seem to implicitly give one pause in any rush to closure
    regarding the nature of initial conditions and boundary conditions insofar as
    novelty abounds and even laws themselves seem to evolve making reductionistic
    accounts problematic, almost in principle, vis a vis emergentism. Thus, we might
    bracket [initial] and characterize our references to same as provisional and
    contextual. For instance, one might say, as we near T=0, or might say, in the
    deepest structures of matter, to distinguish between contexts. One might refer to
    the Copenhagen or Bohm interpretation to describe one's provisional closure. So,
    too, with philosophy of mind issues and approaches to the so-called hard
    problem.

    In many of their joint writings, Goodenough & Deacon consider the emergentist
    perspective and the shared moral sensibilities of humankind. That's a story
    outline we all can share even as many pages are left to be written. Those
    emergent sensibilities (aesthetical, ethical and epistemic) are necessary for one to
    be fully human, whatever one's interpretive stance. As their associated cognitive-
    affective juxtapositions ripple over our soma, flooding our synapses, the
    neurotransmitter fluid levels are sufficient to drown some in ecstasy.
    Emergentism thus describes what is necessary for all, necessary and sufficient for
    a few, but doesn't quite get to sufficient for most, it seems.

    As we employ our strategies of ontological and semantical vagueness and triadic


    semiotic logic, inviting the robust interplay of abductive, inductive and deductive
    inference, accounting for the possible, actual and probable, we can aspire to
    consensus on the answer: "What must I do?", but it is too early on humankind's
    journey to foreclose on the interpretive possibilities regarding the answer: "What
    can I hope for?". For most, it is clear, that nature is not enough. And that is a
    descriptive not a prescriptive statement. There are competing accounts (variously
    conflicting and overlapping) that proffer an answer to "What can I hope for?" and
    they are variously compelling and have some probabilistic status. Reasonable
    people of large intelligence and profound goodwill can reasonably differ in their
    interpretations of reality. In this sense, then, the nontheistic cohort of
    religious naturalism would not be characterized by such as a militant atheism
    but would more resemble the reverent silence of some types of Buddhism
    regarding certain aspects of reality and any theistic cohort would be
    characterized by more subtle conceptualizations of deity, for example, a highly
    nuanced and rigorously predicated panentheism, and not at all by the more
    fundamentalistic and fideistic approaches that are all too regnant in many parts
    of world (including the US).

    Socially & Culturally, then - or secularly

    Orthopraxis authenticates orthodoxy through the successful institutionalization


    of affective (beauty & aesthetical), sociopolitical (community & unitive),
    intellectual (truth and noetical), and moral (goodness and ethical) conversions
    (secular). People celebrate beauty through the arts and humanities endeavors,
    enjoy community through civic & social organizations and political &
    governmental institutions, articulate truth through academic institutions and
    media communications and preserve goodness through legal & justice systems
    and military institutions.

    Religious Conversion - reality as an arena of pervasive intentionality

    Religious conversion, another second/third order or meta-level evaluative


    heuristic, transvalues these secular conversions such that orthopathos mediates
    between orthocommunio and orthodoxy to inform orthopraxis. The great
    traditions reinforce and realize these values through cult,
    community, creed and code, which, respectively, celebrate beauty,
    enjoy unity, articulate truth and preserve goodness.

    Religious Critique

    Some nontheistic naturalists, called religious naturalists, affirm a deep


    overlap between their moral sensibilities and evaluative impulses and those of
    existing ethical and religious traditions (Ursula Goodenough 43). Some prefer an
    irenic engagement of liberal religion, while working actively against
    fundamentalists (Michael Ruse). Others recognize the need for myth,
    aesthetically pleasing deceptions and noble lies to fend off a resurgent and self-
    evident nihilism (Loyal Rue). Some are active and outspoken against religion
    (Dawkins & Dennett).

    43 Ursula likes to quote Jerry Fodor: Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could
    be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea how anything
    material could be conscious.
    Bias for Methodological Naturalism?

    We do well to look for our lost keys underneath the lamp post, for there is little
    hope of finding them in the dark. For some of us, that does not, at the same time,
    suggest that we have a priori decided where those keys may or may not be.

    Theism, Nontheism & Atheism and Agnosticism

    We can frame up this question regarding belief systems, or interpretive stances,


    in essentially pragmatic terms, such as with the thought of the American
    pragmatists, i.e. Peirce and James, and also of Pascal.

    Peirce would distinguish between belief and knowledge. Sometimes a/gnosticism


    and a/theism refer, respectively, to totally different questions, on one hand,
    knowledge and description, on the other hand, belief and interpretation.

    The belief-knowledge distinction is not a dichotomy, however, as they are in a


    dynamical relationship insofar as humankind's knowledge advances fallibly but
    inexorably, insofar as our different types of beliefs can, in fact, have a role in
    advancing knowledge (or thwarting it, for that matter).

    Peirce relates these approaches by saying that the normative sciences mediate
    between phenomenology and metaphysics. We employ a derived formula which
    suggests that our evaluative & normative stances mediate between our descriptive
    and interpretive stances to effect our prescriptive stances. Restated, our
    philosophic (spiritual) stance mediates between the positivistic (like science) and
    paradigmatic (like a/theology or a/gnosticism) stances to effect the prudential
    (moral and practical) stances.

    Implicit in this approach, human knowledge enterprises are inextricably intertwined with
    human value realizations, which is to recognize that our rationality is an ecological rationality
    (has adaptive significance). Also, we can see how these different stances are moreso
    intellectually related and not strictly logically related, which is to recognize, for example, that
    nonformal and quasi-formal stances often have a role in navigating us, however fallibly, to the
    truth. I am talking, for example, about such epistemic criteria as coherence, symmetry, elegance,
    beauty, simplicity, Occam's Razor, Pascal's Wager and reductio arguments (from ignorance).
    This is to also recognize that human cognition is not merely computational or algorithmic or
    syntactical but is also nonalgorithmic and semantical, again, dealing with meaning or value.

    And these stances resonate with William James' criteria for the Will To Believe:
    a) live choice b) forced choice and c) momentous choice.
    G. K. Chesterton said that we do not know enough about reality to say that it is
    unknowable. And it does seem too early on humankind's journey to make such a
    claim. Whitehead said that all metaphysics were fatally flawed but did not desist
    from the enterprise himself. When confronting the unknown, we cannot a priori
    know which of Quine's paradoxes (veridical, falsidical or antinomial) afflict us, or
    which type of vagueness --- epistemic, ontological or semantical --- we are
    dealing with, respectively: 1) Are we methodologically constrained? 2) Is there
    some type of in-principle occulting due to the emergentist nature of the reality in
    question? or due to its so-called "brute fact" status? 3) Does the problem stem
    from issues surrounding the predication and, hence, disambiguation of our
    concepts, themselves?

    The theological noncognitivism argument is interesting. Someone has paid close


    attention to the high nuance and rigorous predication of certain God-concepts
    insofar as they aspire to an increase in descriptive accuracy 1) thru negation,
    which is to say through the employment of negatively defined attributes
    (apophasis); and 2) thru affirmation, but only in a relational sense and only
    through the employment of analogical and metaphorical statements (kataphasis).

    There is a real problem, however, in that this noncognitivist critique, in its


    anxiety to an-nihilate (yes, the seemingly nihilistic choice) theology and
    metaphysics, would also destroy speculative cosmology and theoretical physics,
    too (in other words, science). This problem stems mostly from the failure to draw
    a distinction between the successful description of a reality and the successful
    reference of a reality, the latter not gifted with a robust explanatory adequacy, to
    be sure, but not at all necessarily devoid of this so-called "concrete meaning."
    This distinction has always been in play at the frontiers of science, such as when
    modern genetics and natural selection were merging into our now received
    neodarwinian understandings, as our mostly phenomenological references to
    genes yielded to robust biochemical and biological descriptions, or such as in our
    ongoing attempts to merge quantum mechanics and gravity, where our theories
    and terms do not only not mutually describe but do not even mutually refer.

    Now, we do not, at the same time, therefore, countenance giving people's


    imaginations free reign in hypothesizing, as if logical consistency and deductive
    validity were the only criteria of epistemic virtue, for we also saddle them with
    the responsibility of articulating inductive inferences, which is to require,
    empirical falsifiability. And because certain realities, by their very nature, tend to
    be only eschatologically falsifiable or verifiable, leaving us with a Scottish verdict
    (theism, atheism, nontheism), we are left adjudicating these competing claims
    with essentially pragmatic criteria and evaluative sensibilities. This, alone, does
    not make them noncognitive, unless one's apologetic is "grounded" fideistically or
    scientistically, which is to say by an unjustified and a priori pre- or post-
    Enlightenment fundamentalism. The proper grounding is described, in part,
    above, in the heuristic setting forth the interplay of our different stances toward
    reality, and, also, insofar as Peirce's approach entails a theory of knowledge,
    which presupposes an ontology even as it employs a pragmatic maxim, which
    requires us to cash out our beliefs in terms of value realization.

    Finally, people provisionally close, all the time, on all things philosophic,
    positivistic, paradigmatic and prudential, without, at the same time, necessarily,
    laying claim to any apodictic certainty. And they do so with varying degrees of
    confident assurance in what they hope for, discerning best they can what is
    possible, plausible, probable, certain, uncertain, improbable, implausible or
    impossible, variously well warranted or not. Therefore, agnosticism remains a
    live option. It is not a self-refuting belief --- neither in science nor metaphysics
    nor speculative, theoretical a/theology. For most of us, though, theology is a
    practical science. And that is exactly why the faith-based outlook, the
    emergentist perspective, some Buddhist stances and agnosticism, writ large and
    sufficiently nuanced, can all be correct insofar as they suggest, regarding this or
    that aspect of reality, that, sometimes, the most appropriate response is a
    reverent silence.

    Footnote Regarding Positivism

    Problems with ignosticism, such as theological noncognitivism, run much


    deeper than many recognize insofar as its core commitment to the principle of
    verification is the same employed by logical positivism, which is thoroughly
    undermined by its very own humean stance toward reality. Falsification has been
    extremely useful, but it is not, itself, falsifiable. We've been in a post-positivist era
    for some time? Verificationism is a dead-end, incoherent. At best, we have
    heuristic devices in verification, falsification, parsimony and other criteria and
    not self-evident foundations or indubitable starting-points for our otherwise
    commonly received methodological naturalism.

    Also, epistemology is inherently normative, so false dichotomies between


    cognitive and noncognitive aspects of the human intellect are not meaningful in
    our theory of knowledge insofar as normative/evaluative, descriptive/referential,
    interpretive/paradigmatic and prescriptive/pragmatic modes of value realization
    are intellectually related even if not logically related.

    However, even if one did not raise these objections of incoherence and igno-
    ignosticism and conceded a definition of so-called "concrete meaning," which
    allows only positive definitions for primary characteristics before applying
    secondary attributes and relational attributes, such an approach can be parodied
    to do away with science, itself.

    To wit:
    When we observe effects from unknown causes, sometimes, all we can do is to
    refer to those causes using models, analogies and metaphors, which is to
    acknowledge that the primary attribute is defined negatively, in other words, as
    being not literally this or that, and the secondary attributes are defined as
    being like this or that. And the thing is also assigned a relative characteristic,
    which is to say, as a cause relative to an effect. Do we really want to defend a
    definition of science that eschews analogies and models?

    Descriptive accuracy can be increased through either negation or affirmation.


    Why arbitrarily rule out negative definitions? Successful referencing is not
    robustly explanatory, but why must meaning be limited to successful description?
    Some realities are not wholly comprehensible but are certainly partly
    apprehensible, so, why limit one's definition of intelligibility and insight to full
    comprehensibility?

    When reality's givens are defined in terms of primitives like space, time, mass
    and energy, in other words, presupposing a space-time plenum, our use of terms
    like nonlocal, nonspatial and nontemporal are references to primary
    characteristics of putative realities as we near T=0. After all, time came into
    existence with the Big Bang. When describing the putative initial conditions and
    boundary conditions of the universe, or hypothesizing singularities, why a priori
    eliminate the meaningfulness of imaginary numbers? Without the use of analogy,
    we would lose M-Theory, string theory, multiverses and parallel universes, many-
    worlds & Bohm & Copenhagen interpretations. Furthermore, quite often, our
    equations refer to our models and not to nature, herself. And physical theories
    are mathematical models, which are subject to Godelian-like constraints, hence
    are intrinsically incomplete (or otherwise inconsistent).

    In Dialogue With Ken Wilber

    The most important take-away from what we are trying to say is that our different
    perspectives (subjective, intersubjective, intraobjective & objective) and methods
    (descriptive, normative, evaluative & interpretive) or disciplines (science,
    philosophy, culture & religion or even empirical, rational, moral-practical,
    relational) are methodologically-autonomous but axiologically-integral. In some
    sense, this seems to differ from what Wilber has said at times about, for example,
    the trans-rational. His work is very highly nuanced and he does, after all, say
    AQAL. However, what seems to come across, for all practical purposes, is that
    Wilber is saying that these perspectives are both methodologically-autonomous
    and axiologically-autonomous.

    The difference in what we are saying boils down to our suggesting that each of
    these perspectives (methods, disciplines or approaches) is necessary but none,
    alone, sufficient in every human value-realization. Wilber seems to be saying that
    each perspective is both necessary and sufficient, now for this value-realization,
    now for that. That said, we're not suggesting that ours is a devastating critique.
    We do think there are important differences that deserve high nuance and that
    have great import, for example, in our religion and science dialogue.

    We suppose we could say that, when we are using the word integral, we mean all
    quadrants, all levels, all the time (time not in a strictly temporal sense but
    meaning in every value-realization spiral). This is to say, then, that the trans-
    rational does well to go beyond the rational but has nothing to say to us when it
    goes without it. What we want to very much affirm is the value in listening to,
    during every human value-realization (think truth, beauty, goodness and unity),
    our pre-rational, non-rational, rational, trans-rational (maybe even irrational)
    voices, allowing them to mutually critique each other. What we positively want to
    avoid is giving any one of these voices the last word, which would not be an
    authentic trans-rational approach, but would be, instead, arational.

    In other words, authentic integrality does not come from our willingness to give
    each perspective its say about reality, now this voice for that value-realization,
    now that voice for another value-realization. Integrality employs a harmonic
    symphony of voices in every value-realization, all quadrants, all levels, all the
    time (AQALAT).

    Of course, this requires nuance because we do recognize that, as we move from


    one value-realization to the next, certain of our perspectives or voices will enjoy a
    certain primacy as it steps up to the microphone and others take their place in the
    chorus waiting for the conductor to to signal a pause or crescendo or what have
    you. For example, in apophatic, contemplative silence, other voices may be muted
    but any value-realization from that nondual moment will necessarily ensue from
    its place in the choral arrangement in relationship to other voices or moments,
    even if they occupy, in that instant, a rather tacit dimension. Tacit dimensionality
    plays a prominent role in semiotic science, as we like to say, ineluctably
    unobtrusive but utterly efficacious. A person formed in an Eastern tradition may
    be present to a moment of apophasis with an interiority that will receive its flow
    like a cliff receives water in a cascading waterfall while a westerner may
    experience the same moment with an interiority shaped like a winding riverbed.
    Different efficacies might thus ensue from these different semiotic sea-scapes
    (however otherwise tacit).

    On one hand, we have never worried much about having a general audience
    because most of what we have written is a defense of common sense and a
    subversion from within of sterile philosophies and metaphysics. In other words,
    we think your average Joe and Mary are at least mostly unconsciously competent,
    which is sometimes more poignantly beautiful than the self-inflated conscious-
    competents. On the other hand, the average person is thus susceptible to being
    radicalized precisely because they depart from common sense to inhabit these
    elaborate tautologies which they then cannot escape, unable to JOTS [jump
    outside their systems] of apodictic certainty. They do not need a LOT of
    hermeneutical help, only to be encouraged that their original native state of
    doubt even in faith is their salvation, that their ability to tolerate ambiguity and
    live with paradox is their true glory (ortho-doxy). It‘s the only thing that can save
    our species: Healthy doubt, Therapeutic uncertainty.

    In Dialogue With Gadamer

    Cynthia R. Nielsen, at Per Caritatem writes:

    ―In a sense, the C major triad is both a one and a many-it is a C major triad and
    thus has an integral unity of meaning; yet, it is a many because of its intimate
    connection to and function within the symphony itself-that place where it lives
    and moves and has its being. The dialectical self-cancelling movement occurs due
    to the fact that as the C major triad emerges from the background of the whole, it
    must ―cancel‖ part of itself (the whole) in order to do so. (This sounds very
    Heideggerian, which is no surprise given the latter‘s influence on Gadamer). Yet,
    to avoid mis-interpretation, it must not become completely severed from the
    whole, lest in a very real sense it die. If this is a correct understanding of
    Gadamer on this point, there are some interesting Christian connections to be
    made.‖

    In Dialogue With Walker Percy

    1 ) We suppose all we‘ve really done in saying that the descriptive,


    interpretive and normative are methodologically autonomous but axiologically
    integral is that we have affirmed, with Peirce, that a descriptive, inductive science
    and an interpretive, abductive metaphysic and a normative, deductive philosophy
    are irreducibly triadic (Walker Percy‘s Delta Factor). This is not unrelated to
    Walker Percy‘s consideration of the various antinomies of science and philosophy
    vis a vis culture in that the source of antinomy lies in the limitations of the
    methods, themselves. Thus the need for mutual critique and meta-critique. Thus
    our recognition of manifold and multiform dynamics: teleological, perspectival,
    methodological, developmental, paradoxical and integral. Think here, too, of
    Percy‘s treatment of the irreducible character of intersubjectivity.

    2 ) And, perhaps, with Neville, our affirmation of the evaluative (culture) is


    but the application of Peirce‘s pragmatic maxim, a recognition of the end to
    which the triad is ordered, teleologically.

    3 ) Our distinctions between the theoretic, heuristic, semiotic (Walker


    Percy‘s protocol statements) and dogmatic thus recognize degrees of pragmatic
    realization in the cashing out of values from our various conceptualizations.
    4 ) Our distinctions between semantical, ontological and epistemic
    vagueness are recognitions of the fallible nature of semiosis.

    5 ) Our suggestion that usefulness, beauty, goodness, elegance, parsimony,


    symmetry, facility and other aesthetic, pragmatic and ethical sensibilities
    (including, then, various pre-rational, nonrational and supra-or trans-rational
    approaches) can serve as truth-indicative signs is but a recognition of the
    probabilistic nature of semiosis as we reason, retroductively, from predicates
    back to putative subjects, for example, very often from effects to causes (and such
    known, or even unknown, subjects or causes to which only those predicates or
    effects could be proper). This is also to recognize that deductive, inductive and
    abductive inferences get progressively weaker even as we recognize that they‘re
    all we‘ve got to work with.

    6 ) Our equiplausibility principle recognizes this probabilistic nature of


    semiosis and affirms such distinctions as between information and news (Walker
    Percy‘s Message in a Bottle) or informative and performative knowledge,
    affirming that our solutions to many of life‘s paradoxes, ironies and questions are
    not so much theoretical as they are practical in that they provide us with
    existentially actionable knowledge, employing more so our participatory
    imagination than our propositional (conceptual map-making) cognition.

    7 ) Finally, we step back from metaphysics, with Percy prescinding entirely


    from final ontological constructions as befits an empirical science, and
    approaching existential realities solely in light of an empirical finding – the
    uniquely human symbolic transformation (Symbol as Hermeneutic in
    Existentialism).
    Walker Percy44 spoke of Kierkegaard ‘s On the Difference Between a Genius and
    an Apostle :

    Like the readings that mean most to you, what it did was confirm something I
    suspected but that it took Søren Kierkegaard to put into words: that what the
    greatest geniuses in science, literature, art and philosophy utter are sentences
    which convey truths sub specie aeternitatis , that is to say, sentences which can
    be confirmed by appropriate methods and by anyone, anywhere, any time. But
    only the apostle can utter sentences which can be accepted on the authority of
    the apostle, that is , his credentials, sobriety, trustworthiness as a newsbearer.
    These sentences convey not knowledge sub specie aeternitatis but news .

    This reiterates the distinction between our cosmology as knowledge sub specie
    aeternitatis and our axiology as Good News .

    In Dialogue With Reformed Epistemology & Radical Orthodoxy

    44 Zoltan AbadiNagi, The Art of Fiction XCVII: Walker Percy by 1986.


    Of course we have rejected foundationalism but we are also rejecting the
    ―solution‖ offered by Reformed epistemology. We are deeply sympathetic to
    Radical Orthodoxy and its aim to mediate between faith and reason but are
    offering what we think is an indispensable corrective.

    Too many in RO seem to be saying that philosophy, metaphysics and theology are
    integrally-related methodologically and thereby overcome any insidious dualisms
    with their claim that all approaches are at bottom confessional. Their intuition
    that all of these approaches to reality have confessional elements is spot on but
    these approaches to reality remain, indeed and nevertheless, methodologically
    autonomous. If these approaches stay out of each others‘ way, it is not because
    they‘ve been methodologically conflated, it‘s because they are asking distinctly
    different questions, employing distinctly different commitments, all as explicated
    in our own heuristic. RO is correct in that these approaches are integrally-related.
    Our corrective is that this integral relationship is axiological and not
    methodological.

    All put another way, we do want to affirm faith and reason while avoiding fideism
    and rationalism. The Reformed strategy reclassifies faith as a basic
    presupposition, immunizing it from an autonomous philosophy. RO‘s strategy
    reclassifies faith AS reason so fideism and rationalism dissolve in a categorial
    disappearing act.

    If, in the first instance, a belief in God is basic (and supposedly properly so, at
    that) and, in the next, all presuppositional beliefs are confessional (and
    unapologetically so, at that), both fideism and rationalism indeed disappear and,
    along with them, so do philosophy and metaphysics and, along with them, any
    lingua franca for conducting interreligious dialogue and, further, any
    autonomous methodology for adjudicating between competing truth claims.

    Our axiological epistemology employs another strategy to overcome both fideism


    and rationalism a) affirming the confessional nature of our methods via a contrite
    fallibilism and b) integrally-relating the distinct approaches to reality
    axiologically but c) maintaining the methodological autonomy of those
    approaches. Unlike the Reformed strategy, we do not redefine the essential
    nature of different types of belief but do otherwise distinguish them vis a vis
    epistemic risks. Unlike the RO strategy, we do not invoke epistemic parity
    between different types of belief vis a vis their different risk profiles but we do
    recognize and affirm an epistemic parity vis a vis their shared epistemic virtues.
    Faith remains. Reason remains. Philosophy remains. Metaphysics remains.
    Because all play an indispensable role in every human value-realization, fides et
    ratio are preserved and fideism and rationalism are thus avoided. (Essay for
    another day: John Duns Scotus is the wrong theological whipping boy for RO!)
    Theology of Nature – pansemioentheism, a pneumatological theology of nature

    Apologetics – theological perspectives, a theological perspectivalism;

    robust realisms
    rational and
    presuppositional
    evidential existential
    trans-evaluative

    Anthropological Outlook – existential orientations as theological imperatives


    (theosis)

    community as orthocommunio
    creed as
    orthodoxy cult
    as orthopathos
    code as
    orthopraxis

    THE THEOLOGICAL INTERFACE

    Turning our attention, now, from a mostly philosophical consideration, let us treat the interface
    between this architectonic and a more theological stance. Authenticity, in our view, grows as our
    faith transists from the clear but tentative to the vague but certain (a paraphrase of Benedict
    Groeshel). And this so happens to track our spiritual movement beyond (but not without) the
    discursive and kataphatic to the nondiscursive and apophatic, beyond (but not without) the
    merely rational and practical
    (as well as storge' and eros) to the robustly transrational and relational (as well as agape' and
    philia), which is the essence of the contemplative gaze.

    Merton grappled with such distinctions as between immanent and transcendent, impersonal
    and personal, apophatic and kataphatic, existential and theological, natural and supernatural,
    implicit and explicit, acquired and infused, as did Rahner, in an effort to reconcile East and
    West. Many of these theological conundrums were rooted, perhaps, in philosophical error, as
    the essentials of the Christian message became needlessly entangled with arcane and archaic
    metaphysics.
    What if, for example, Transcendental Thomism was ultimately derived from Kant who, instead
    of responding to Hume, should have ignored him? What if Rahner's thematic grace was, instead,
    a realization of transmuted experience (Gelpi)? What if we viewed original sin not so much, or at
    least not solely, in terms of an ontological rupture located in the past but as a teleological
    striving oriented toward the future (Haught)? What if the Incarnation was not a response to
    some felix culpa but a panentheistic reality featured in the cosmic cards and loaded in the
    probabilistic quantum dice from the eternal get-go (Scotus), metaphorically-speaking? Might
    the dichotomy between the natural and supernatural resolve into the ontological possibility that
    "it's all supernatural" and that all experience is thus graced and differs, thusly - not necessarily
    in kind but, instead - in degree? Might addiction psychology better explain at least some cases of
    so-called demonic oppression and possession? If with Scotus, we take the Incarnation as an
    eternal inevitability, and with Phil Hefner, we take humanity as created-cocreators, might our
    theodicy questions change in focus from why it is that we suffer to what it is we will do about it?
    Rather than the Rube Goldbergesque theological machinations of this or that Thomism
    (transcendental, existential, analytical, aristotelian and so on), for example, could we not,
    rather, prescind from our specific metaphysical ontological approaches to a more vague
    phenomenological perspective that affirms the robustly relational and personal, still conforming
    to humankind's vague intuitions regarding "intimacy" with the Divine, while recognizing that
    our autonomy from Bracken‘s Divine Matrix of interrelated causes and effects is, necessarily,
    only "quasi," thus also conforming to humankind's vague intuitions regarding "identity" with the
    Divine?

    Perhaps some of Merton's dualistic conceptions are mere distinctions and not, necessarily, true
    dichotomies, at least from the standpoint of salvific efficacy, which was the real conundrum with
    which Merton and Rahner were, in essence and at bottom, grappling --- that over against a
    somewhat prevalent exclusivistic ecclesiocentrism. If all reality is graced and not bifurcated out
    into natural and supernatural, the very questions change even as the Incarnation remains the
    Answer, for it has never been an ideology or merely another set of affirmations, but, instead is
    an initiation into an intimate relationship. If grace is transmuted experience and all experience
    is graced, from the standpoint of salvific efficacy and Lonerganian conversion, then, we
    (humankind) have all been abundantly gifted with what is necessary and sufficient (let's say, at
    least, minimalistically speaking). Implicit faith might thus be viewed as a type of unconscious
    competence. What is at stake, then, via explicit faith (amplified in sacrament and liturgy, for
    example) is the further transmutation of our human experience into a conscious competence,
    which leads, in turn, to a superabundance.

    In this context, certain questions will not arise, for example, such as those that require such
    distinctions as acquired and infused contemplation, natural and supernatural, immanent and
    transcendent, while others take on a new significance, such as between the impersonal and
    personal, apophatic and kataphatic, existential and theological, implicit and explicit, for
    example. Our experiences of God will thus differ not necessarily in kind but in degree and not
    necessarily in ontological terms of either substance or process but in those of fullness of
    realization. Our vague intuition of "identity" can re-gift us with the realization of our unitive
    destiny, we believe, reinforcing just how close God is to us via the Divine Matrix of interrelated
    causes and effects (without leading us into quarrels over monisms and pantheisms). It can serve
    to moderate our dialectical imaginations, which, in some parts of Christianity, have redistanced
    God in a manner tantamount to a de facto Deism, which is clearly at odds with a reality Jesus
    conveyed by calling Yahweh "Abba.". At the same time, and ironically, our analogical
    imaginations have overemphasized the analogical and metaphorical and this has raised
    questions of relevance via causal disjunction, for how can a reality described only via analog
    interact causally with anything else? The "identity," which we like to describe as "intra-
    objective," we believe reinforces and does not detract from but, rather, enhances the
    "intersubjective intimacy" in a reality that is radically graced, pervasively incarnational.

    We are perhaps guided more so by Beauty and Goodness to hold these types of beliefs as Truth
    and not so much by metaphysical proofs, which, while they indeed hint at the reasonableness of
    our beliefs, cannot compel one to recognize their veracity or soundness. They can be
    normatively justified and evaluatively relevant, enjoying epistemic parity with other
    explanatory attempts, even if not otherwise epistemically warranted. This is also to say that
    being in proper relationship to Love is intrinsically rewarding, an end unto itself beyond any
    apologetic or theodicy. Some of our experiences of God, East versus West, for example, thus may
    or may not differ with respect to their origin, natural versus supernatural (as we might attempt
    to describe same metaphysically, for example in ontological terms of substance or process
    approaches), but rather with respect to degrees vis a vis the fullness of our realization of the God
    encounter. This simply recognizes that there's a lot of room for discussion in this regard, to wit:
    Rahner vs de Lubac vs Gelpi vs other modernists and postmodernists vs the old dualistic
    extrinsicism of scholasticism.

    Insofar as it does help tremendously to know what you're doing, we think we must recognize the
    distinction between conscious and unconscious competence vis a vis explicit and implicit faith.
    We very much affirm that our God encounters differ "in kind" from this perspective. What we do
    resist, however, is any temptation to suggest that this versus that experience is necessarily
    natural or supernatural or that the Holy Spirit is necessarily here but not there (pneumatological
    exclusivity). Still, we would not deny anyone's experiences or even their own interpretation of
    those experiences even as we think we might properly question how much normative impetus
    such interpretations could and/or should exert for others in the broader community of human
    value-realizers.

    Because there are metaphysical implications which flow from revelation, we prefer to think of
    human value-realization in terms of a recursive feedback loop such that the normative mediates
    between the descriptive and interpretive to effect the evaluative. Each of these human value-
    realizations presupposes the others. This is not a strictly truth-conducive algorithm (or strong
    type of inference) but a fallible process that is also, maybe even moreso, truth-indicative (a
    much weaker form of inference). We cannot even give a complete theoretic account of how
    knowledge works but can attest, pragmatically, that it indeed works, slowly and falteringly but
    inexorably advancing such human value-realizations as truth, beauty, goodness and unity
    (through such as creed, cult, code and community). The categories, concepts and claims
    associated with each aspect of this feedback loop are communicated, unavoidably, by a mixture
    of dogmatic, heuristic, theoretic and semiotic terms, which we can describe, respectively, as
    non-negotiated, still-in-negotiation, negotiated and nonnegotiable vis or vis this or that
    community of inquiry or value-realizers.
    Here are the practical implications of this schema. First, clearly, our dogmatic interpretive
    positions have clear metaphysical implications, especially implicit in our affirmation of God.
    This leads to a positivist-like descriptive claim, to be sure, but it tends not to get in the way of
    other positivist endeavors because, as far as our metaphysical enterprise is concerned, it is a
    claim regarding primal and/or ultimate origins, boundaries, limits and initial conditions, (and,
    analogously, the tacit dimension of the Holy Spirit via a Peircean thirdness) or what we might
    consider to be ontological paperwork that resides in the bottom drawer of the last desk in the
    back corner of the basement of our metaphysical library.

    Again, we do not want to say, for example, that all hypotheses (let's say, this time, theological
    anthropologies) are equally worthy of acting as working hypotheses (let's say, spiritualities), as
    if it were sufficient that our logical arguments be merely valid but not also sound. But what
    epistemic criteria are at our disposal when it comes to speculative systematic theology, for
    example? or natural law interpretations vis a vis a practical moral theology? such that we can
    differentiate levels of external congruence with reality in addition to other criteria like logical
    validity and internal coherence? Or, to put it another way, how do we determine which tautology
    has the most taut grasp of reality?

    Well, there are a host of considerations such as inventoried in the work of Stanley Jaki, and
    other criteria we previously listed such as hypothetical fecundity and such, as well as being
    mindful of the proportional mix of dogmatic, heuristic, theoretic and semiotic terms that are
    employed in any given metaphysical affirmation. It is not enough that we engage our fanciful
    imaginations vis a vis what might have happened to humanity (i.e. death) regarding original sin
    in light of evolution. It is not enough to claim that our natural law interpretations are
    philosophical and not theological in order to compel a moral vision. We must be mindful of our
    terms and definitions and employ as many nonnegotiable (semiotic) and negotiated (theoretic)
    concepts and categories as possible, and as few non-negotiated (dogmatic) ones as necessary,
    employing those that are still-in-negotiation (heuristic) mindfully and respectfully. Otherwise,
    our moral and political discourse will only be heard and heeded in ideological and dogmatic
    echo chambers. Otherwise, we are "proving too much." Otherwise, we will experience major
    disconnects from other people and their lived experiences, thus missing out on other credible
    and important witnesses to revelation.

    PANSEMIOENTHEISM – a pneumatological theology of nature

    grounded in a minimalist realism


    a charismatic Franciscan contemplative perspective

    By pansemio- we are not specifying an ontology but are recognizing a phenomenological pattern
    that might include the proto- and quasisemiotic, such as in thermo- and morpho-dynamics (or
    first and second order emergence), in addition to the biosemiotic and teleodynamic (third order
    emergence). Reality may present, for instance, with proto- (or primal) dynamics,
    thermodynamics, morphodynamics, teleodynamics and eschato- (or final) dynamics, similar to
    a neoplatonic procession. First, second and third order emergence 45, or thermo-, morpho- and
    teleo- dynamics may thus represent proleptic realities. Both the formal causation (a Polanyian
    tacit dimension) and final causation (downward causation) of biosemiotic realities, however
    minimalistically conceived and without violations of physical causal closure, would proleptically
    present both back and front doors for a radically interconnected matrix (Divine per Bracken) of
    causes and effects in reality. Such interactivity can be utterly efficacious while still ineluctably
    unobtrusive acting pervasively through primal reality‘s initial, boundary and limit conditions,
    whether temporally, atemporally or trans-temporally.

    This is a hermeneutic for a thoroughly enchanted nature, recognizing no necessary distinctions


    between natural and supernatural, or hierarchical orders of grace, or privileged levels of
    revelation, emphasizing, rather, the degrees of realization, levels of awareness and growth in the
    Spirit over any dualistic dichotomies and exclusivities. Most postmodern Christian theologies of
    nature seem to be in the throes of metaphysical angst, as if other hermeneutical rushes to
    closure now require us to place our ontological cards on the dialogical table. Christianity was
    once said to be in search of a metaphysic (Whitehead) and that sounds very right-headed to us,
    still. Why should we join the rush to declare our position and specify our ontological claims just
    because everyone else is busy committing category errors, conflating their methods and
    systems? When has the Kerygma ever competed with positivistic and philosophic, descriptive
    and normative, methodologies? Do our theological anthropologies require the successful
    resolution of initial, boundary and limit conditions of the universe or multiverse, or even a
    decision in favor of one philosophy of mind or another --- eliminativist, epiphenomenalist,
    nonreductive physicalist, emergent monist or even a radically Cartesian dualist account?
    Haven‘t we always survived and thrived, even, with our phenomenological accounts and
    subjective and intersubjective experiences?

    The final methodological descriptions of our cosmic origins and epistemic faculties, however
    they turn out, will not change the essential thrust of our interpretive stances, whether of an
    aesthetic teleology or a pneumatological theology. We know from our empirical observations
    that biosemiotic realities require both a minimalist formal and final causation in addition to
    efficient causation. We can affirm, methodologically, top-down and bottom-up causations?
    There can be no denying of the possibility of a Divine Matrix of interrelated causes and effects
    even as we prescind from any robust descriptions of either the causal joints or the divine
    prerogatives. Whatever one‘s ontic account of our putative cosmic or epistemic boundaries, we
    haven‘t yet an account of primal reality, herself. All competing interpretations, if
    methodologically faithful to prevailing positivistic and philosophic norms, at best, are
    equiplausible accounts that, ontologically, enjoy epistemic parity but certainly not the epistemic
    warrant we might otherwise properly ascribe to our various ontic disciplines. All competing
    interpretations should not pretend to have discovered the perfect root metaphor, the complete
    consistent system (Godel), or metaphysical Mecca. For gosh sakes, we haven‘t yet reconciled
    gravity and quantum mechanics. And this isn‘t a capitulation to the notion that theology only
    rushes in to fill gaps left by the positivistic sciences. This isn‘t to deny that some theologians
    45 See Terrence W. Deacon, Emergence: The Hole at the Wheel's Hub, __Chapter 5, The
    Re-Emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion__
    (Hardcover) by Philip Clayton (Editor), Paul Davies (Editor) Oxford University
    Press, USA (August 24, 2006)
    once did such a thing, and many still do; rather, it is to recognize that, when they do, they are
    simply being bad scientists. And vice versa; so many scientists are awful philosophers and god-
    awful theologians.

    However integrally related our methods and findings are, they still represent autonomous
    aspects of inquiry about distinctly different value-pursuits. Interpretations of primal reality, as
    equiplausible accounts of primal reality, while descriptive enterprises, theoretically, are
    essentially evaluative posits, practically speaking, precisely because their propositional elements
    have left us with Scottish verdicts and in search of other actionable norms, which, then
    necessarily, go beyond the inferential to the manifold and multiform other aspects of human
    value-realization.

    The strategy we put forward for competing with other metaphysical accounts is not to compete;
    their questions are wrong. Thus it is that phenomenology remains both necessary and sufficient
    for doing theology, which ends up being a practical and not a speculative science, for the most
    part. To the extent, then, that epistemology models ontology, and our ontology is a
    phenomenology, which is to say vague, then our epistemology is going to be, quite simply,
    fallibilistic. Hereinabove, then, we described what we like to call a Peircean metatechnica, which
    does not ambition metaphysical specificity but does rely on, provisionally, some patterns one
    can discern phenomenologically in nature. While we think it is important to affirm metaphysical
    realism, in general, we do not think it is otherwise important to engage any particular and
    robust metaphysic, in particular.

    Saint Bonaventure taught us Franciscans that when you stop seeing the divine presence in one
    of the seven links of the Great Chain of Being, the whole thing will fall apart. When you cannot
    recognize the divine indwelling in the earth itself and the waters upon the earth and the plants
    and trees that grow upon the earth and the animals, you will not see it in the human. And
    that‘s what has happened. We finally don‘t see that presence in the angels, saints or the divine
    itself. from Richard Rohr's Great Chain of Being

    Applications – philosophies of science, mind and religion; theologies of nature; formative


    spiritualities

    WHAT IS METAPHYSICS THAT WE SHOULD BE MINDFUL OF IT?

    In our view, following Whitehead, Christianity indeed remains in search of a metaphysic, but so
    does all other human endeavor. So, we have a very open mind about "how" it is that all manner
    of things may, can, will and shall be well. And we have to be similarly open regarding just what
    ―well‖ means. Exactly "how" this may be so is, for me, a positivist or descriptive endeavor (e.g.
    scientific, falsifiable), which articulates its claims with categories and concepts that are, in a
    word, theoretic, in other words, scientific or positivist.
    Those claims and concepts and categories are negotiated by those in humanity who participate
    in our fallible but earnest community of inquiry. As previously set forth, many claims and
    concepts and categories are still-in-negotiation (heuristic) in this community of inquiry that we
    call humankind. Humanity, as a community of value-realizers, also engages in interpretive and
    evaluative endeavors, staking various claims regarding whether or not --- "that" --- all manner of
    things may, can, will and shall be well and articulating them with categories and concepts that
    are religious or ideological and, generally, not negotiated (dogmatic).

    Human spirituality more fully comes into play as a philosophic or normative endeavor, which
    might be thought of in terms of "best practices" that serve to mediate between our descriptive-
    positivist and interpretive endeavors to effect our evaluative goals in all types of human value-
    realizations. Ultimately, what is "best" is not negotiable; it is, then, in a word, semiotic, making
    meaning and intelligibility possible, in the first place, like various "first" principles; it simply is
    what it is, although discovering it is somewhat problematical. The normative, then, mediates
    between the descriptive and interpretive to effect the evaluative. Or, we could say that the
    philosophic mediates between the positivist and ideological-theological to effect human value-
    realizations.

    The practical upshot of this hermeneutic is that our interpretive and evaluative stances make
    some claims on our normative approaches, which, in turn, will certainly bolster our descriptive
    endeavors through enhanced modeling power of reality without, at the same time, making any
    specific descriptive or positivist claims. These various stances, approaches and endeavors are
    integrally related,
    intellectually, but not strictly related, logically, which is to recognize that human value-
    realizations, such as knowledge, for example, are not merely formally derived or driven by strict
    computational algorithms, instead being open-ended or plastic and dynamic. What we are
    suggesting is that metaphysics is mostly a descriptive and positivist endeavor and that we do not
    look to religious or existential mystical traditions for direct metaphysical insights. Our religious
    and ideological traditions exert their influence over positivist endeavors, instead, indirectly,
    through their shaping of our normative or philosophic outlooks, thereby, hopefully, enhancing
    our modeling power of reality.

    All of this is to say, then, that, for example, we do not look to any religion or ideology to
    determine the nature of human consciousness, to determine whether or not what we call the
    human soul is intrinsically immortal, to determine whether or not the universe is eternal, or how
    to resolve the many paradoxes that result from the classical tensions between essentialism and
    nominalism, substance and process approaches, or all manner of dual and nondual claims,
    categories and concepts. We do affirm metaphysics as a viable enterprise and say let a thousand
    metaphysical blossoms bloom, but let us judge them empirically, rationally and practically in the
    crucible of human experience by how well they foster Lonergan's conversions.

    Metaphysics, at this stage of humankind's journey, in our view, remains a great way to "probe"
    reality but not a reliable way to "prove" reality. Our deontological claims, then, should be
    as modest as our ontologies are tentative. However, they have been anything but modest
    as the general tendency among the great traditions, religious and ideological, has been, as we see
    it, to attempt to "prove too much." Perhaps we reflexively recoil from Mystery and thus try to
    banish the vague by anxiously pursuing the specific? There is a certain irony in that it is in our
    encounter with the concrete and particular that we most encounter the vague and mysterious, in
    the depth dimension of reality and other persons, while the abstract and conceptual only
    provides a "seeming" escape into the clear and certain.

    Still, we would not deny anyone's experiences or even their own interpretation of those
    experiences even as we think we might properly question how much normative impetus such
    interpretations could and/or should exert for others in the broader community of human value-
    realizers.

    Summary: an Epistemological Architectonic as Exploratory Heuristic

    Think of human value-realization in terms of a recursive feedback loop such that the normative
    mediates between the descriptive and interpretive to effect the evaluative. Each of these human
    value-realizations presupposes the others. This is not a strictly truth-conducive algorithm (or
    strong type of inference) but a fallible process that is also, maybe even moreso, truth-indicative
    (a much weaker form of inference). We cannot even give a complete theoretic account of how
    knowledge works but can attest, pragmatically, that it indeed works, slowly and falteringly but
    inexorably advancing such human value-realizations as truth, beauty, goodness and unity. The
    categories, concepts and claims associated with each aspect of this feedback loop are
    communicated, unavoidably, by a mixture of dogmatic, heuristic, theoretic and semiotic terms,
    which we have described, respectively, as non-negotiated, still-in-negotiation, negotiated and
    nonnegotiable vis or vis this or that community of inquiry or value-realizers.

    Even if we concede our inability to reason from the given to the normative (which we do not,
    following Adler), we caricaturize human reasoning if we describe it strictly in terms of formal
    argumentation or logic. This is all just to recognize that the hermeneutical, philosophic,
    positivist hierarchy is not wholly a one-way street and that, while our distinctly different value-
    commitments for our different human endeavors do involve autonomous methodologies, no
    value-realization, in and of itself, is otherwise fully autonomous but results from the fruits of
    this integrally-related feedback loop. They are, rather, indispensable separate motions required
    for any movement (as previously explicated).

    AFTERWARD --- NORMATIVE IMPLICATIONS:

    May namaste, then, become more than a greeting but a way of life, as we look always and
    everywhere and in everyone for the pneumatological realities we profess herein. May our inter-
    religious stance be more irenic as we acknowledge the Spirit in one another with true reverence,
    in authentic solidarity and utmost compassion. A most fundamental aspect of the unqualified
    affirmation of human dignity would seem to be our nurturance of the attitude that all other
    humans come bearing an irreplaceable gift for us, that we are to maintain a stance of receptivity
    toward them, open to receive what it is they offer us through, with and in the Spirit. Whether the
    Magi were occidental or oriental, Jesus was receptive. When John offered baptism, Jesus was
    receptive. When Mary anointed his feet, Jesus was receptive. When invited to dine with tax
    collectors and prostitutes, Jesus was receptive.

    A critical gaze not first turned on oneself and one‘s ways of looking at reality will have very little
    efficacy when it is otherwise habitually and arrogantly turned first on others. All of this is to
    observe that, beyond whatever it is that we offer to the world as our unique gift, rather than
    always approaching our sisters and brothers as fix-it-upper projects in need of our counsel and
    ministry, sometimes the Spirit may be inviting us to listen, observe and learn from them in a
    posture of authentic humility and from a stance of genuine affirmation of their infinite value and
    unique giftedness. While our encounters of the Spirit may be manifold and varied from one
    phenomenal experience to the next, especially when situated in one major tradition versus
    another, we may be saying more than we know if we attempt to describe such experiences with
    more ontological specificity than can be reasonably claimed metaphysically or theologically,
    suggesting, for example, that such experiences necessarily differ in either origin or degree even if
    they otherwise differ, as might be expected, in other cognitive, affective, moral, social or
    religious aspects.

    More than semantics is at stake, here. We are not merely saying the same thing using different
    words when we draw such distinctions as between nature and grace, natural and supernatural,
    existential and theological, immanent and transcendent; such explicit denotations also have
    strong connotative implications that might betray attitudes of epistemic hubris, pneumatological
    exclusivity or religious hegemony, which are clearly unwarranted once we understand that our
    faith outlooks are effectively evaluative. We say this because, in our view, our belief systems are
    otherwise, at best, normatively justified existentially after essentially attaining, minimally, an
    epistemic parity with other hermeneutics vis a vis our best evidential, rational and
    presuppositional approaches. While there are rubrics for discernment of where the Spirit is
    active and where humans are cooperative, they do not lend themselves to facile and cursory a
    priori assessments, neither by an academic theology with its rationalistic categorizing nor by a
    popular fideistic piety with its supernaturalistic religiosity, predispositions that tend to divide
    and not unite, to arrogate and not serve, with their vain comparisons and spiritual pretensions.

    Indeed, we have been admonished not to be seduced by any false irenicism, insidious
    indifferentism or facile syncretism. And this seems fair enough --- to the extent that we are
    thereby trying to affirm the role of epistemic virtue in our approach to fides et ratio, in general.
    However, to the extent one might otherwise be suggesting that any given faith approach, in
    particular, is necessarily privileged and that other approaches do not enjoy epistemic parity (by
    virtue of their own normative justifications) vis a vis one's own given approach, that would be
    too strong a position to defend, philosophically? While it would be illicit to a priori claim that
    primal reality is in-principle knowable (scientism) or unknowable (agnosticism), still, it is
    clearly too early on humankind's journey to imagine we have successfully described or explained
    primal reality. Clearly, we do not know where it is on our knowledge journeys that we will be
    methodologically thwarted or otherwise ontologically occulted, although the philosophical
    naturalists rush to closure with the former conclusion and urge their god of the gaps pejoratives
    on the fideistic mysterians, who hold out for the latter position, not altogether certain where that
    final gap will irreducibly present itself. Even given Godelian constraints on completeness and
    consistency, there is no a priori reason to believe that we may not one day be able to see the
    truths of the axioms we will otherwise be unable to prove.

    And those aspects of reality that we are unable to successfully describe and explain, we may very
    well be able to successfully refer to and model. I suppose that all of this is to suggest that we can
    aspire to the rudiments of an onto-theology, modestly extrapolating a phenomenological
    pneumatology from our abduction of the Ens Necessarium as it emerges from our
    nonfoundational perspectivalism. This move doesn't require any robustly metaphysical
    commitments such as to necessarian or regularistic perspectives on natural laws, which is also
    to say that it does not require any final epistemic determinacy or ontological specificity but can
    abide with the same semantical vagueness employed by the early Church Fathers, Pseudo-
    Dionysius, the Neoplatonists and the Medievals like Scotus.

    This is to say, then, that Christianity, properly conceived, still remains in search of a metaphysic
    even if, epistemologically, it commits to metaphysical realism. Even the Peircean Thirdness,
    with its minding of matter and mattering of mind, when combined with other emergentist
    accounts, can be appropriated as but a fallibilistic exploratory epistemological heuristic and not
    a metaphysical commitment to any realist, idealist, monist or dualist categories, for example. It
    does not seem like this minimalist pneumatology need offend anyone's epistemic sensibilities or
    theological imaginations. It does seem like it could pave the way to a much more irenic
    engagement in interreligious dialogue. For those of us whose theological anthropologies were a
    tad too optimistic vis a vis our transcendental thomistic perspectives and felt the Kantian
    foundations of same crumbling beneath our Gospel-ready shoes, this pneumatological
    hermeneutic can reinstill an optimism even if a more chastised and modest optimism. For those
    who affirmed a Perennial Philosophy or even a mystical core of organized religions, our
    approach can situate same philosophically. To the extent we affirm a mystical core, why should
    our approaches not be a lot more irenic? why could we not affirm some modicum of syncretistic
    sensibility? Perhaps we could legitimately engage others' perspectives less so as a foil (to
    understand them better while deepening our own self-understanding) but more so with the aim
    of looking to them for an assist? And this includes not just their theological imaginations but
    also their manifold and varied philosophical ruminations, all which (presumptively) glimpse
    some aspects of reality as led by the Spirit according to the mode of the receivers vis a vis
    different stages of Lonerganian conversions of individuals and their societies, cultures and
    institutions.

    Most of all, we suppose this is an invitation to come on a philosophical journey that involves less
    hubris but not too much humility, that engages others looking for an assist and not a foil, that
    does not try to prove too much, that does not immodestly claim excessive normative impetus for
    (what can only be) tentatively held ontological conclusions, that emphasizes what we have in
    common while respecting why it is we differ, that doesn't enforce our own language and
    categories on others' unique experiences, that doesn't smack of pneumatological exclusivity, that
    doesn't claim normative superiority and reinforce theological one-upmanship on other
    hermeneutics that truly enjoy epistemic parity with our own having been, in the final analysis,
    "chosen" on what are - all things being equal after other more basic empirical (evidential) and
    normative (rational & practical) justifications - essentially evaluative (existential) "grounds."

    All this considered, then, one might see very little legitimacy in any competing claims for
    denominational superiority within Christianity or even between the major traditions, for
    example, especially once considering that there are no a priori grounds for making such claims
    and that any a posteriori evidence would be of a sociologic nature and nothing our sciences
    could, presently, successfully adjudicate given the complex social and institutional realities in
    play (and nothing our denominations, as perennially pilgrim churches, would want to submit to
    given their often pervasively dysfunctional status, for example, vis a vis their successful
    institutionalization of Lonergan‘s conversions). This is to also suggest that, just because one is
    not religiously jingoistic does not mean she is also, then, an indifferentist.

    The essential teachings of Christianity certainly rely on a metaphysical realism, which is an


    epistemological outlook, but do not require the types of ontological specificities or metaphysical
    schools as many would seem to explicitly suggest or implicitly imply. It is enough to speak,
    phenomenologically, of our general phenomenal experiences and expectations when, for
    example, discoursing about deontological morality or contemplative spirituality, for the living of
    a good moral life and the growing of a good spiritual life do not require robustly metaphysical
    accounts regarding all manner of putative ontological continuities and discontinuities. At this
    stage of humankind‘s journey, we are saying more than we can presently know if we insist on
    one metaphysical account or another in our interreligious dialogue or our moral deliberations.
    Such ontological claims are highly speculative
    and our derived de-ontological claims, regarding such as how we should behave or even pray, for
    example, should, therefore, be commensurately tentative. Any specific teachings and traditions
    heavily invested in such claims, specifying, for example, all sorts of dual versus nondual realities,
    would necessarily be accidentals of the faith, not essentials.

    Clearly, some aspects of our creaturely reality, even if presently unknown, would be
    ontologically continuous with the Creator and univocally predicable of both creatures and
    Creator, otherwise questions would be left begging regarding how one reality could efficaciously
    effect another reality if related only by the weakest of analogies, i.e. metaphor? The East has
    something to say about this insight and how it leads to authentic solidarity and compassion.
    Clearly, the intersubjective aspect of our relationships between one another and our Creator
    affirm an aspect that is ontologically discontinuous? Clearly, we are then, in the broadest of
    phenomenological terms, quasi-autonomous and suspended in something like Bracken‘s divine
    matrix of interrelated causes and effects, participating in a reality something like the Neo-
    Platonist conceptions of participation, perhaps unfolding in accord with Haught‘s aesthetic
    teleology as per Hartshorne‘s notions of nonstrict identity. The West has something to say about
    this insight and how it leads to authentic solidarity and compassion. It is silly to argue about
    which insight is the most profound or important. Which realization comes first or last likely has
    more to do with whether one was raised with Eastern or Western sensibilities and ways of
    engaging reality and much less to do with which insight is the loftiest, whether spiritually,
    theologically or epistemically. (And such arguments DO take place!)
    One practical upshot of this, below, is that we are somewhat reticent when it comes to a priori
    granting many distinctions full status as ontological dichotomies, while not at all denying that
    such distinctions might otherwise spring, quite authentically, from our collective phenomenal
    experiences. This is not to say that we a priori affirm or deny this or that dichotomy, dualism or
    nondualism; we are only suggesting that obtaining such ontological specificity is highly
    problematical. More plainly, we are hesitant in applying such labels as natural and supernatural,
    secular and sacred, profane and holy, acquired and infused, material and spiritual, evidentialist
    or fideist, existential or propositional, objective or subjective, nature or grace, chance or
    necessity, reason or revelation, and so on. Phenomenally, of course, we simply must recognize
    the undeniable differences in the degrees of our realization of various relationships and values
    even as we prescind, ontologically, from any facile ascriptions of differences in origins vis a vis
    the above-listed distinctions and/or dichotomies. This applies, for example, to our relationship
    to the Holy Spirit. If something is lifegiving and relationship-enhancing and fosters intellectual,
    affective, moral, social and religious growth, my hermeneutical presupposition attributes same
    to a pneumatological dynamic. This is a fallibilistic default bias, an optimistic theological
    anthropology, always open to the possibility of being wrong.

    None of our thoughts seem to me to be novel, in the least, although our syntheses
    might be novel (and a tad idosyncratic). We may not have fully followed others'
    thoughts on their own terms but may have had a tendency to appropriate them
    and modify them to suit our own philosophical and theological agenda. Still, we
    are pleased to have engaged them because they guide our life of worship, which is
    our life in community with humankind and the cosmos, and we value
    accountability to this community, whom we love with all our being. We hope this
    becomes a genuine assist to somewhat of an ongoing movement from 1) an
    ecclesiocentric exclusivism to 2) a Christological inclusivism to 3) a
    pneumatological inclusivism that is Christologically normed. The
    pneumatological inclusivism recognizes that the Spirit active in creation has
    gifted humankind with all that is necessary and sufficient to live a life of
    abundance. The 4) Christological norming, then, explicitly recognizes the
    otherwise implicit soteriological efficacies and incarnational realities that, when
    progressively appropriated into an ever more consciously competent awareness
    of said realities, leads the community, proleptically and eschatologically, into a
    life of superabundance (vis a vis value-realizations). 5) Any ecclesiocentric
    norming would then aspire to the most nearly perfect a) articulation of such truth
    through creed or dogma, b) celebration of such beauty thru cult or ritual, c)
    preservation of goodness through code and d) enjoyment of fellowship through
    communion, over against any facile syncretisms, insidious indifferentisms or
    false irenicisms. Of course, the Christological and ecclesiocentric elements can be
    bracketed for authentic dialogue, where there is so much that can be done on the
    pneumatological level.

    AN ACCESSIBLE SUMMARY OF OUR HERMENEUTIC

    What about religion? Is it necessary?


    A religion is an axis of interpretation, an interpretive stance or axiology , around
    which our cosmology spins. Our cosmology is necessary to realize truth, beauty
    and goodness and, in that regard, it is also sufficient. Religion, then, is not
    necessary. One can live an abundant life without it. One can realize truth, beauty
    and goodness without religion. For example, many say they are spiritual but not
    religious ; they are not being disingenuous.

    What do you mean by “our ” cosmology? I thought there were as many


    cosmologies as there were religions?

    Cosmology represents the relationship between science, culture and philosophy.


    Science is a descriptive method that asks: What is that ? Culture, an evaluative
    stance, asks: What is that to us ? Philosophy is a normative method that asks:
    How do we best acquire or avoid that ?

    Now, humankind celebrates this cosmological reality in many diverse and


    beautiful ways. But this story of the cosmos and our place in it is not really up for
    grabs. It‘s Everybody ‘s Story. We are stardust. We are golden. But we ‘re not
    necessarily making our way back to the garden (although that ‘s a rather popular
    interpretive stance). Our cosmological knowledge has advanced slowly but it does
    advance inexorably. It includes both cosmic and biological evolution, for
    example, and the paradigm of emergence .

    How does religion fit in? If an abundant life of truth, beauty and
    goodness already available to us, what ‟s left for religion to do?

    Religion looks at cosmological reality and asks: How does all of this tie back
    together or religate?

    Put more simply, it looks at life‘s truth, beauty and goodness and asks: Is there,
    perhaps, more ?

    Religion, then, is our pursuit of superabundance .

    To the extent that life is a journey, we aspire to travel even more swiftly and with
    less hindrance toward truth, beauty and goodness. Religion seeks to augment
    these value realizations by amplifying the risks we have already taken in science,
    culture and philosophy. Religion amplifies these risks through faith, hope and
    love and realizes these augmented values in creed, cult and code. In creed , we
    articulate truth in doctrine and dogma. In cult , we cultivate beauty in liturgy,
    ritual and practices. In code , we preserve goodness in law and disciplines. And
    this new law, by the way, is love . And its justice is known as mercy .
    And its methods are not coercive; they ‘re nonviolent . Where nonviolence is
    concerned, think of Polanyi ‘s tacit dimension or of how in semiotic science and
    Baldwinian evolution there can be a downward causation without any violation of
    physical causal closure. Such forms of non-energetic or formal causation can be
    ineluctably unobtrusive while, at the same time, utterly efficacious. This provides
    a great analog for the gentle, yet powerful, influence of the Spirit on all of
    creation, always coaxing but never coercive. If it‘s any consolation to our human
    passions, Jesus suggests that our nonviolent responses are experienced by our
    detractors like the heaping of burning coals upon their heads. Above all, we enjoy
    our unitive fellowship in community . A community (koinonia) of peace or grand
    shalom , where we find – not perfection – but wholeness .

    If all religions are about the task of aspiring to superabundance, then


    why all the fuss about, for example, an insidious indifferentism, a
    facile syncretism or false irenicism regarding different religions?

    Well, we are not indifferent in that we want to give God the greatest possible
    glory, ad majorem Dei gloriam . So, while it is one great image to conceive of us
    all there together in Eternity, lighting up the firmament to our fullest capacity,
    fired up by the very glory of God, it might otherwise be a somewhat sobering
    thought to also imagine that many of us will have escaped as through a fire with
    our little 40 watt bulbs while folks like Mother Teresa shine forth as a blazing
    helios . We can believe, in my view, that every trace of human goodness, every
    beginning of a smile, will be eternalized. Each moment of our lives is ripe for
    eternalization or will be burned off as ever to be forgotten chaff.

    But, far more than any fanciful contemplation of our eternal state, we are not
    indifferent because not all are equally able to enjoy and realize life ‘s truth, beauty
    and goodness, life ‘s intrinsically good and potentially abundant nature. And, yes,
    we affirm life ‘s beauty and goodness and abundance, unconditionally, very much
    aware of some rather significant cosmic irony, not indifferent to the immensity of
    human pain, the enormity of human suffering. And, while we haven‘t ignored
    some of those French existentialists (Camus and Sartre), we have paid more
    attention to their Russian counterparts (Dostoevsky).

    We do believe that it is when we awaken to our solidarity that compassion will


    ensue. So, it seems like we would want to aspire to practice such a religion as
    would best foster human development and growth: intellectual, affective, moral,
    sociopolitical and religious. We want to get religion as right as we can in order to
    help as many as possible to run life ‘s race more swiftly and with less hindrance,
    sharing and enjoying life ‘s abundance. We seek enlightenment for ourselves,
    even, out of compassion for our fellow wo/men who would otherwise have to
    suffer our unenlightened selves.
    It may be too early on humankind ‘s journey to successfully discern which
    religions are best fostering such growth and conversion, but these are criteria
    about which we should care very deeply. We need to dialogue deeply and with
    great humility. Religions that get away from Everybody‘s Story and tinker wily
    nilly with cosmology are indeed out to lunch. Cosmology is not something one
    can just make up; it‘s comprised of autonomous methodologies, like science and
    philosophy.

    Where, then, does the Incarnation fit in?

    Well, it is about atONEment but not, necessarily, in our view (or that of Scotus
    and the Franciscans), a penal, substitutionary atonement. In other words, it may
    not have been occasioned by some felix culpa (happy fault) as if in response to
    some grand ontological rupture located in the past. Rather, it may have been in
    the divine cards from the cosmic get go, this, God-is-with-us, Emmanuel . It may
    have more to do with a Teilhardian like teleological striving oriented toward the
    future. Most concretely, it‘s all about a profound intimacy with a deeply caring
    Lover. It‘s a dance, perichoresis.

    What, then, about soteriology and eschatology?

    Well, we're with all the existentialists in recognizing that we are in a predicament
    of sorts. But we're also with those who affirm a radically incarnational view,
    which sees us as co creators in an unfinished universe, hence the moaning and
    groaning in this grand act of giving birth. We suppose we could join the
    theodicists and suggests that, surely, there must ‘ve been a better way! But we‘ve
    finally quit beating our heads against that wall just because it felt good when I
    stopped and have decided to just put our shoulders to the plow and plant a few
    seeds for the Kingdom.

    Eternity is not something that happens before or after time. It is an atemporal


    and thoroughly NOW thing! As has been said, it‘s heaven all the way to heaven,
    hell all the way to hell. Heavenly thoughts that are of no earthly significance will
    not be realized in eternity because by not being now here they‘ll end up being
    nowhere. The truth of religion is found in a soteriology that measures its success
    in terms of how well we are fostering an eschatological realism grounded in
    conversion (Lonergan ‘s) and compassion (leading to diakonia , service), NOW.

    What about God talk, metaphysics and such?

    There is a type of God talk that begins with cosmology. We could call that
    philosophical or natural theology . We are metaphysical realists, even regarding
    God concepts. Here we clarify categories, disambiguate vague concepts, frame up
    questions and formulate arguments. Here we affirm the reasonableness of our
    questions. This is not unimportant. But it is woefully insufficient for a number of
    reasons, like the excess of meaning we are dealing with, for example and to say
    the least. With Peirce, however, after forming the argument and asking the
    question, we then stop! We don ‘t pretend to have answered the questions and we
    don ‘t proceed with God proofs via syllogistic argumentation, which Peirce
    considered a fetish (and we agree).

    There is another type of God talk that proceeds from within the faith. We call that
    a theology of nature . Here we wax metaphorical with our analogical
    imaginations. All metaphors eventually collapse of course, but it is our belief that
    those drawn in fidelity to our cosmology are going to be the most resilient
    because our analogs will be better, our tautologies more taut.

    Of course, there are other descriptors for God talk, such as kataphatic and
    apophatic , both aspiring to increase our descriptive accuracy of God, the former
    through positive affirmations and the latter through negations. These categories
    apply to both natural theology and a theology of nature. Most Godtalk is going to
    come from our theology of nature. We can exhaust what can be known from the
    perspective of natural theology in a
    single afternoon ‘s parlor sitting. The currency of natural theology is the
    affirmation: Good question! This does not mean, however, that the lingua franca
    of a theology of nature is going to therefore be: Good answer! A theology of
    nature traffics, instead, in iconography. It brings us to value realizations via a
    more nondual, contemplative stance toward reality. The chief caveat emptor
    where icons are concerned is their elevation into idols . In this regard, our 21st
    Century religion could use a huge therapeutic dose of ancient apophatic
    mysticism to ensure that our icons do not become idols.

    Another good distinction between natural theology and a theology of nature is


    that the former is philosophical and engages our problem-solving dualistic
    mindset while the latter is robustly relational and nondual. Even some of the best
    theologies of nature, like Jack Haught‘s aesthetic teleology and Joe Bracken ‘s
    divine matrix , with all of their sophisticated references to the biological and
    cosmological sciences, are poetic ventures, metaphorical adventures, much more
    akin to St. Francis ‘ hymns to nature than, for example, Gödel‘s modal ontological
    argument.

    What do you make of institutional religion and such approaches as


    involve clerical and hierarchical models?

    Well, for starters, we shouldn ‘t confuse means and ends . And, once we ‘ve
    identified the means, we shouldn ‘t so quickly insist that they are the only means.
    The Spirit, it seems, is well capable of work arounds? Even the hierarchical
    structures we're familiar with are conceived in a way that gives primacy to bottom
    up dynamics. In other words, in theory, the top down dynamic is a dissemination
    of what ‘s been received from below, not a de novo fabrication emanating from
    above. When a hierarchy, on occasion, loses this integral relationship or integrity,
    it is in a state of excommunication,a reality that travels a two way street.

    What about interreligious dialogue?

    We have made progress in moving from our exclusivistic ecclesiocentrisms to a


    more inclusivistic Christocentrism. We think our next good step is a
    pneumatological inclusivism , which needn ‘t bracket our Christology but should
    lead, at least, with the Spirit. Those of us with a radically incarnational view of
    reality can affirm the Spirit at work in science, philosophy and culture and can
    recognize the truth, beauty and goodness realized on the human journey, which is
    pervasively graced. And we can recognize the value realizations that have been
    augmented by our great religious traditions, affirming the efficacies and
    recognizing the inefficacies in their attempts to foster intellectual, affective,
    moral, sociopolitical and religious growth, development and conversion. We need
    to dialogue regarding what we ‘re getting right and what we ‘re getting wrong —
    not preoccupied with heavenly destinations, but — in order to give God the
    greatest possible glory and in order to compassionately console and help others
    to travel more swiftly and with less hindrance on life ‘s journey, realizing life ‘s
    deepest values and greatest goods.

    A Movement Toward Praxis?

    A movement toward praxis might be one of the value-added takeaways for any
    who resonate with this speculative account. Such a movement is embedded in
    every aspect of this hermeneutical spiral.

    Peirce leads one away from what can often become an endless and fruitless cycle
    of abductive hypothesizing and deductive clarifying, such as can happen with a
    sterile scholastic metaphysic, by leading one always back to inductive testing.
    Indeed, one will there enjoy a recovery of the measure of concrete reality; but this
    is only a recovery of logical import. Such a pragmatic turn is but a test of truth; it
    is merely informative.

    Neville‘s axiological turn leads us to a recovery of the measure of that which has
    vital import, which is performative. Lonergan‘s conversions provide us the
    categories through which we recover the measure of this Peircean-Nevillean
    axiological epistemology in terms of the transformative.

    In Merton‘s encounter with the East and his excursus on humanization,


    socialization and transformation, one can see these pragmatic and axiological
    turns playing out in categories that correspond to a naturalistic, evolutionary
    epistemology that then extends to an existential phenomenology.
    Phenomenologically, any robust description of the human species will require a
    radically social ontology. This is because Homo sapiens is not merely social but,
    singularly, the symbolic species (Terry Deacon). Merton was known for his
    emphasis on the relational and situated the human in a tetradic relationship to
    self, other, world and God. To robustly describe the distinctly human experience,
    any authentic social, hence participatory, ontology must break open such
    categories as self, other, world and horizon. It must also provide a semeiotic
    account that recognizes the telic dimension of this experience. One does not yet
    encounter, here, telos in the classical sense or transcendence as a theological
    notion. One is grappling, rather, with a minimalist telos and a minimalist
    transcendence. One has crossed the threshold of spirituality when gazing over
    this philosophic horizon of human concern (Daniel Helminiak) but not in any
    robustly pneumatological sense.

    If philosophy and theology are both confessional exercises, what will characterize
    the theological turn to telos, transcendence and pneumatology, all robustly
    conceived?

    This question brings us full circle back to the creative tension that presents
    between the speculative and practical, between justification of beliefs and critical
    engagements of praxis, between our exoteric mythical accounts and our esoteric
    mystical experimentations, and even between radical fundamentalisms
    (including Enlightenment narratives) and radically deconstructive
    postmodernisms (such as Rorty‘s vulgar pragmatism).

    Our postmodern milieu has had believers searching for an apologetic to articulate
    what it is that the common folk of all religious traditions, in every culture and
    age, have always known in their bones. This has been a difficult search because
    the philosophers of religion, at every so-called ―turn,‖ have repeatedly buried
    this apologetic by variously misrepresenting it in many different forms of
    rationalism, evidentialism, fideism, presuppositionalism, existentialism and
    perspectivalism.

    For philosophers of religion, there has been, then, a rather frantic attempt to
    recover a measure of certainty, which was lost with the demise of various
    foundationalisms, by establishing some type of epistemic parity between, for
    example, the beliefs of science, culture, philosophy and religion. It will be the
    nature of the strategy employed in any given argument for epistemic parity that
    will distinguish one apologetic from the next.

    Certainly, one must attend to the validity and soundness of the reason, the
    quantity and quality of the evidence, the nature of the leaps, the basicality of the
    presuppositions, the existential actionability of the options and the integral
    relations of the perspectives. However, as we sort through our various scientific,
    cultural, philosophical and religious beliefs, it is too facile a notion to suggest that
    their epistemic playing field has quite simply been leveled by the postmodern
    critique such that, for example, one can merely claim that these beliefs are all
    confessional (and unapologetically so) or all basic (and properly so).

    We have already demonstrated, in our consideration of the Peircean semeiotic,


    that rationality is robustly participatory and imaginative and not merely
    conceptual and cognitive. From our axiological epistemology, we have gathered
    that it is value-oriented but horizon-situated, thus establishing both a minimalist
    telos and transcendence over against any facile charge of an unmitigated nihilism
    in secular approaches to reality. This is to recognize that the human condition
    offers an abundance of value-realizations, juxtaposed though they may be with
    the cosmic irony of its value-frustrations.

    How, then, do we evade the charges of either rationalism or fideism? Our


    axiological epistemology aspires to value-realization and thus to epistemic virtue.
    Any epistemic parity we enjoy vis a vis our various scientific, cultural (social,
    political, economic), philosophical and religious beliefs will derive from a shared
    virtue (when they meet such criteria, of course, which they can but often do not).
    We must otherwise concede that, even when equally virtuous (being neither
    unreasonable nor unwarranted), not all beliefs entail the same amount of
    epistemic risk, hence the perceived (and undeniable) epistemic disparity. This is
    not to suggest that any increased risks will necessarily take our hermeneutical
    spiral out of its otherwise virtuous epistemic cycle; rather, we look to each risk-
    amplification for some concomitant value-augmentation. It is this epistemic
    maneuver, then, that characterizes any theological (or atheological) turn. Such
    augmentations of value become cultural data (anthropological, psychological,
    social, political and economic).

    Thus would go any apologetic which recommends the theological turn in terms of
    risk-amplifications and value-augmentations. Thus we‘d describe the movement
    from a minimalist telos, transcendence and spirituality as a participatory
    phenomenology and ontology would conceptually map them onto reality with a
    much more robustly telic, transcendent and pneumatological imagination in play.
    The cultural data of just such a hermeneutic (the ubiquity of which makes me
    want to equate it with an open-hearted common sense) has universally been
    sought after and variously conceived in terms of gifts (risk-amplification
    encouragement) and fruits (value-augmentations) of a spirit. It is not only the
    task of the comparative theologian, then, but that of cultural anthropologists,
    sociologists, geographers, historians, economists and even political scientists, to
    discover and discern when and where and whether (or not) it is the Spirit, whom
    we call Holy.

    Below are the methodological presuppositions that situate my outlook


    as articulated above.
    This is the precis for a theological anthropology that seems to be coming together
    in an emerging postmodern pentecostal theology. One day we may be inspired to
    substantiate these claims. They describe, in part, what I believe might best
    correspond, cross-culturally and inter-religiously, to what we call the
    pneumatological imagination.

    1 ) However one conceives different value-realization approaches to reality,


    those approaches are each methodologically-autonomous but all axiologically-
    integral. That is to simply say that all are necessary, none sufficient, in every
    human value-realization. (See note below for various approaches.)

    2 ) Our value-realization conceptions are irreducibly tetradic. Each tetrad


    functions as a holon or fractal unit which, in various ways, will correspond to
    truth | beauty | goodness | unity.

    3 ) Sometimes explicitly and well formulated, at other times implicitly and


    inchoately, such an axiological epistemology finds expression in Continental
    phenomenology and
    American pragmatism, also in various strands of Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist
    philosophies.

    4 ) An authentic axiological epistemology will necessarily extend from an


    evolutionary (naturalistic) epistemology.

    5 ) An authentic theological anthropology, as a theology of nature, will then


    necessarily extend from both an evolutionary epistemology, scientifically, and an
    axiological epistemology, philosophically.

    6 ) In each of the Great Traditions and in many indigenous religions, an


    authentic theological anthropology typically emerges whenever a cohort of
    practitioners moves beyond an exoteric mythic spirituality to also practice an
    esoteric mystical spirituality. Both mythic and mystical spiritualities are
    practiced in all traditions and some mystical elements are introduced at every
    stage of faith development. So, the emergence of a mystical cohort then presents
    in varying degrees of mystical realization and not, rather, as an either-or binary
    reality. This is a profoundly relational and participatory reality, which cashes out
    its value in terms of intimacy.

    7 ) Counter-intuitively to many, humankind‘s aspirations to inter-religious


    unity would proceed more swiftly and with less hindrance — not first by unitive
    strivings on the exoteric plane of religious reality via some putative
    reconcilement of otherwise disparate mythic elements vis a vis our cognitive
    propositions between our traditions, but rather — by better fostering greater
    degrees of esoteric experimentation and mystical realization vis a vis our
    participatory imaginations within our traditions. This is to suggest that,
    transformatively, the performative enjoys primacy over —but not autonomy from
    — the informative. Good News, then, enjoys a primacy over good knowledge.

    8 ) Put differently, orthopraxy authenticates orthodoxy and is first mediated


    by orthopathy in orthocommunio. Put simply, belonging precedes behaving
    which precedes believing.

    9 ) Esoteric experimentation and mystical realization can be pragmatically


    cashed out in terms of a growth in human authenticity. That is to say that they
    will result in conversion, growth and development in our intellectual, affective,
    moral, sociopolitical and religious spheres of existence.

    10 ) In each of the great traditions, the esoteric and mystical will present in
    terms of a) some form of critical realism in their axiological epistemologies b) a
    critical scriptural scholarship c) a nondual, contemplative stance toward reality
    d) social justice component in their eschatological realism e) an eternal now
    awareness permeating their temporal milieu f) an institutionally marginalized yet
    still efficacious voice of prophetic protest g) a solidarity with and preferential
    option for the marginalized h) a deep compassion ensuing from an awakening to
    a profound solidarity i) broadly inclusivistic and ecumenical sensibility j)
    emergent, novel structures that are radically egalitarian.

    Note: tetradic — employing categories like truth|beauty|goodness|unity and


    orthodoxy|orthopathy|orthopraxy|orthocommunio and creed|cult|code|
    community and descriptive|evaluative|normative|interpretive and science|
    culture|philosophy|religion and theoretic|heuristic|semiotic|dogmatic and
    objective|subjective|intraobjective | intersubjective

    Suggested Reading
    Lonergan, Bernard, Method in Theology (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972)
    Deacon, Terrence, ‗Emergence: The Hole at the Wheel‘s Hub‘ in The Re-
    Emergence of
    Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion by Philip
    Clayton
    (Editor), Paul Davies (Editor) (Oxford University Press, 2006)
    Deacon, T. & Goodenough, U., ‗The Sacred Emergence of Nature‘ in The Oxford
    Handbook
    of Religion and Science (Oxford Handbooks in Religion and Theology) by Philip
    Clayton
    (Editor), Zachary Simpson (Editor) , (Oxford University Press, USA, 2006)
    Gelpi, Donald L., Varieties of Transcendental Experience: A Study in
    Constructive
    Postmodernism (Collegeville, Minn.:Liturgical press/Michael Glazier,
    2000) Gelpi, Donald L. , The Gracing of Human Experience: Rethinking
    the Relationship between
    Nature and Grace (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press/Michael Glazier, 2001)
    Haught, John, The Cosmic Adventure: Science, Religion and the Quest for
    Purpose (Paulist
    Press: 1984)
    Bracken, Joseph, The Divine Matrix: Creativity as Link between East and West
    (Maryknoll:
    Orbis, 1995)
    For comprehensive discussions and bibliographical materials pertaining to the
    relation between science and religion, visit http://www.counterbalance.net/
    Barbour, I., When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners?
    (HarperOne, 2000) and Religion in an Age of Science: Gifford Lectures 1989-
    1991, Vol 1 (HarperOne, 1990)
    Polkinghorne, J., Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion
    (Yale
    University Press, 2007) and Science and Theology (Augsburg Fortress
    Publishers, 1998) Haught, J., Science and Religion: From Conflict to
    Conversation (Paulist Press, 1995) and
    The Cosmic Adventure: Science, Religion and the Quest for Purpose (Paulist
    Press, 1984)
    Peters, T., Bridging Science and Religion (Theology and the Sciences) by Ted
    Peters (Editor), Gaymon Bennett (Editor) (Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2003)
    and Evolution from Creation to New Creation: Conflict, Conversation, and
    Convergence by Ted Peters and Martinez Hewlett (Abingdon Press, 2003)
    Peacocke, A., The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth Century (University of
    Notre
    Dame Press, 1986) Paths from Science Towards God: The End of All Our
    Exploring (Oneworld Publications, 2001)
    Drees, W., Religion, Science and Naturalism (Cambridge University Press, 1996)
    and
    Religion and Science in Context: A Guide to the Debates (Routledge, coming in
    2009)

    DRAFT TABLE OF CONTENTS -


    GENERAL ORGANIZATION OF THIS MAUSCRIPT
    Triadic Phenomenology – Relationships: Word, Community & Spirit

    The Economic Trinity & Our Immanent Ontological Frame

    Intraobjective Identity as Word

    Science – the physical


    Ontology – the metaphysical
    Emergence – the phenomenological

    Intersubjective Intimacy in Community

    Intrasubjective Integrity of Spirit

    Lonerganian Conversions
    Formative Spirituality
    Disciplines and Practices

    The Immanent Trinity & Our Transcendent Ontological Frame

    Interobjective Indeterminacy & Ens Necessarium


    The Actual in Creative Tension with the Possible mediated by the
    Necessary prescinding to the Probable

    Trialectical Teleology – Values: Truth, Beauty & Goodness

    Immanent Axiological Frame

    Cosmological Axiology

    Historical
    Social & Cultural Anthropology
    Economic

    Transcendent Axiological Frame


    Political
    Coercion in Tension with Freedom mediated by subsidiarity

    Trialogical Epistemology – Methods: Science, Culture & Philosophy

    Immanent Epistemic Frame

    Descriptive Sciences

    Evaluative Cultures

    Normative Philosophies

    Transcendent Epistemic Frame

    Interpretive Religions & Natural Theology


    The Immanent Intuits an Assist from Beyond

    Trinitarian Theology – Christology, Patrology & Pneumatology

    Special Revelation – Transcendent Incarnational Hermeneutic

    Christological Axiology

    Transcendence of Historical Tensions (past & future)


    Transcendence of Social & Cultural Tensions (individuals &
    institutions and competing, extrinsic values)
    Transcendence of Economic Tensions (needs & means)

    Transcendence of Political Tensions (bias toward freedom &


    subordination of coercion mediated by Incarnate Word)
    Patrological Axiology

    Eschatology
    Ecclesiology & Theological Anthropology
    Sacramentology

    Soteriology – an assist from beyond? Anticipating a Messiah

    Pneumatological Axiology

    Orienting
    Empowering & Sanctifying
    Healing

    Saving – an assist from within? Proleptic Realizations of


    the Cosmic Christ

    General Revelation – Hermeneutic of Immanent Indwelling

    Theology of Nature

    Hermeneutics in Dialogue
    Interreligious Dialogue
    Other Kindred Voices

    Ur-kenosis & Ur-analogy in a Trinitarian, Kenotic Panentheism - Bracken's


    Peircean approach can bring Hegel, Bulgakov & others together
    One might appropriate Hegel & Bulgakov through Peircean lenses, using, for example,
    Joe Bracken’s panentheism.
    One can thereby also avoid any apparent (Hegel) or latent (Bulgakov) nominalist
    tendencies (thick in Whitehead, thin in Hartshorne) and affirm a robustly Trinitarian &
    kenotic panentheism.
    Hegel (too deterministic? I'm not so sure. See thought experiment, below.), perhaps,
    needs an appropriation of Peirce (no nominalism) & Schelling (personalist, more
    freedom) for his panentheism to be distinguished from Aurobindo's, and to conform
    more to Bracken’s panentheism, which is more consistent with Classical Theism.
    The following makes sense within such a stance:

    Clayton cites Hegel's recognition that the logic of the infinite requires the inclusion of the finite
    in the infinite and points towards the presence of the world in God (Clayton 2004b, 78–79).
    Clayton, along with Joseph Bracken (1974; 2004), identifies his understanding of panentheism
    as Trinitarian and kenotic (Clayton 2005, 255). It is Trinitarian because the world
    participates in God in a manner analogous to the way that members of the trinity
    participate in each other although the world is not and does not become God. God freely
    decides to limit God's infinite power in an act of kenosis in order to allow for the existence of
    non-divine reality. The divine kenotic decision results in the actuality of the world that is taken
    into God.
    https://stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/archives/spr2012/entries/panentheism/

    It seems that, as long as we don’t misconceive Logos & logoi (e g. of Maximus, Neo-
    platonists, etc) as universals, thoughts or ideas, i.e. abstractly, in essential or formal
    terms, but think of them in concrete terms of a freely acting Person with intentions or
    wills, reasons or purposes, to Whom some end is “fitting,” ---
    Then, we can apply the Anselmian principle, potuit, decuit, ergo fecit: ‘twas possible
    & “fitting,” ergo accomplished - to all Trinitarian missio ad extra, both vestigia of
    the gratuity of creation and oikonomia of soteriology & theosis of the gratuity of grace,
    without attributing such contingent effects to a *necessity* as would be grounded in
    God’s nature, divine esse naturale, but, instead attributing same to an *inevitability*
    grounded in God’s Will, divine esse intentionale.
    As a thought experiment, how might Hegel's determinism be cast in (or reconciled to)
    Maximian terms of logoi, Peircean realist (not nominalist) terms & a Scotist libertarian
    will, all in defense of a strong apocatastasis, e.g. consistent with Hart, perhaps.
    If one conceives 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, and eternal
    being, then, the creature self-determines – not its depth, but – its breadth of being.
    The creature self-determines the kenotic scope of its theotic participation (perhaps even
    choosing to annihilate much of it), while God, alone, determines the kenotic intensity of
    that participation (in an aesthetic teleology).
    Whatever one’s eschatological anthropology, any irreversibility could only refer to one’s
    self-determination of scope, i.e. in terms of foregoing superabundant being. Existence,
    itself, abundantly & gratuitously, partakes of being over against nonbeing, limited in
    potency to divine logoi (rather than, e.g. merely uncreated essences or universals).
    If appetitive movements cease in some instance, e.g. due to closure of a creaturely
    epistemic distance, at some moment like a particular judgment, then, per the
    determinative Maximian logoi, this could not entail a cessation of ardor vis a vis the
    depth of one’s desires & loves, i.e. the very fact that one desires & loves per an intrinsic
    orientation, but only could refer to a self-determination regarding the breadth of those
    ardors.
    Some may call this eternal ill-being, if they must, but ill*being* would strike me as a
    paragon of oxymorons, i.e. once considering the intrinsic goodness of any and all
    participation in Being, itself, beyond all being.
    The thought that some of us might populate the firmament like a tiny votive candle,
    while others might shine forth like a blazing helios, would not likely be off-putting to
    anyone, who’s ever been a parent, whose love for each child knows no bounds, no limits,
    and differs in neither depth nor breadth, intensity nor scope, from one to the next,
    however much they participate or reciprocate in family-being, however differently abled
    regarding, or disposed toward, same.
    So, as parents, we’ll always pray: That our children & grandchildren may become holier
    than us, provided that we may become as holy as we should, Jesus, grant us the grace
    to desire it.
    At any rate, that’s where I was headed, when suggesting:

    I conceive the afterlife as a state wherein the will remains, eternally, in relation to an extrinsic
    aesthetic scope, however otherwise unsurpassable the realization of one’s intrinsic aesthetic
    intensity. (This is an imago Dei riff on the divine esse intentionale.) This requires a conception
    of volition, whereby one, while only ever freely willing that which is suited both to one’s
    advantage & justice (& never freely pursuing privatio boni or evil for evil), also enjoys the
    radical freedom to choose - from among the infinity of aesthetic options as they'll lay before us
    in eternity, none, in any way, suboptimal (an eternal Pareto Frontier). This requires my Scotist
    conception of quasi-libertarian freedom, which would include the power to refrain from willing
    one optimal choice, while willing another (equally optimal), both choices self-interested & both
    just.

    O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.


    From the desire of being esteemed,
    Deliver me, Jesus.
    From the desire of being loved...
    From the desire of being extolled ...
    From the desire of being honored ...
    From the desire of being praised ...
    From the desire of being preferred to others...
    From the desire of being consulted ...
    From the desire of being approved ...
    From the fear of being humiliated ...
    From the fear of being despised...
    From the fear of suffering rebukes ...
    From the fear of being calumniated ...
    From the fear of being forgotten ...
    From the fear of being ridiculed ...
    From the fear of being wronged ...
    From the fear of being suspected ...
    That others may be loved more than I,
    Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
    That others may be esteemed more than I ...
    That, in the opinion of the world,
    others may increase and I may decrease ...
    That others may be chosen and I set aside ...
    That others may be praised and I unnoticed ...
    That others may be preferred to me in everything...
    That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should…

    Litany of Humility
    Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val (1865-1930),
    Secretary of State for Pope Saint Pius X
    A Further Defense of my Eschatological Anthropology
    In further defense of this apocatastatic hypothesis, let me further defend its
    eschatological anthropology, which employs an analogy of divine and determinate esse
    naturale & intentionale, the determinate as imago Dei.
    By aesthetic depth or intensity, I refer to the ontological density of the human person’s
    essential nature, which, in the great chain of being, transcends (but includes) all teleo-
    potent, teleo-matic, teleo-nomic & teleo-qualic realities as a teleo-logic reality, as the
    symbolic species.
    From the anthropological account of a Peircean axiological epistemology, this entails an
    holistic epistemic suite, marked by an aesthetic primacy (no more voluntarist than the
    Scotist’s primacy of will). As such, we distinguish the determinate esse naturale and
    intentionale only formally, as integrally related, inseparable aspects of the human
    person.
    God gifts this reality, an imago Dei, an absolute, intrinsic value, the perfection of which
    cannot be enhanced or diminished by extrinsic changes in the aesthetic scope of its esse
    intentionale.
    Aside from the gifts of its existence & redemption, where this makes some sense, what
    are we to make of theotic realizations, of Lonergan’s secular & religious conversions, of
    our journeys to Authenticity & Sustained Authenticity, of mystical theology’s Ways of
    Perfection, of Ascetic Theology’s path from the false to True Self, where this makes less
    sense?
    In other words, to what does Transformation refer in terms of any reality’s movement
    from vestige to image to likeness?
    Transformative movements, in my view, refer to all manner of self-transcendence, a
    by-product of which is self-actualization.
    Such movements, per Bernardian love, move us from
     love of self for sake of self,
     love of God for sake of self,
     love of God for sake of God, to
     love of self for sake of God.
    Ignatius similarly gives account of this journey in his Degrees of Humility.
    More simply put, we move from imperfect to perfect contrition, from the eros of self-
    enlightenment to the agape of Gospel love.
    Imperfect contrition is necessary and sufficient, however, for increased
    beatitude!
    Even love of self for sake of self, that most basic of desires, the storge’ & eros of Lewis’
    Four Loves, remains both necessary & sufficient in a human reality that’s already
    essentially & absolutely, intrinsically valuable to God, as an imago Dei, which
    comprises a perfection, which cannot be enhanced or diminished by such extrinsic
    changes as could never increase its dignity or worth, only its beatitude.
    We might, therefore, introduce a distinction between more perfect redemptions &
    salvations (as Scotus introduced for the Immaculate Conception, which I, then,
    analogously applied to post-mortem, eschatological anthropology) and more perfect
    creatures, in and of themselves, ontologically. The former apply, beatitudinally, while
    the latter would apply, essentially & existentially, except for the fact that it does not,
    since the intrinsic value of persons is already & ever absolute.
    Transformation, therefore, refers to sanctification & glorification, growing as holy as He
    would desire & passing from glory to glory in eternal beatitude, as one’s will might self-
    determine vis a vis its desired aesthetic scope.
    Does this trivialize mortal sin? Does it sanction quietism? Does it amount to an
    insidious indifferentism? Does it obviate soteriological discourse?
    Let’s foreground the distinctions I’ve introduced above.
    As St John of the Cross pointed out, God’s creatio continua holds the soul in existence
    even in mortal sin. What’s placed in jeopardy is never the absolute intrinsic value of the
    person’s existence, only its own extrinsic realizations of other values (that are also of
    absolute intrinsic value, in and of themselves, i.e. Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Love &
    Freedom, the pursuits of which are their own rewards).
    Here, the quest, itself, becomes one’s grail, the journey – one’s destination, the
    sitting – one’s consolation.
    This is because, naked personal existence, itself, only ever pursues any values, via
    transformative value pursuits, because, in and of itself, it already constitutively &
    necessarily possesses them in goodly measure, precisely by already abundantly
    participating in that & Whom it would to possess, but is already possessed by. Thus it's
    really only aspiring to be (and do) who it abundantly is already, only ever more fully, i.e.
    superabundantly.
    A person, eternally being, could never be annihilated through self-determination &
    wouldn’t so be since the divine fiat, which has deemed it intrinsically good, has already
    deemed its existence fitting per divine esse intentionale. In so doing, such a personal act
    of existence was limited by divine logoi, one of which mirrors, via its determinate esse
    intentionale, a radical freedom – not of ontological density or aesthetic depth or
    intensity, but – of aesthetic breadth or scope.
    Whether or not, after having crossed a sufficient (or even closed an essential) epistemic
    distance, this aesthetic scope remains irrevocably intact (a Maximian hypothesis) or
    irreversibly frozen (a Thomist hypothesis), the naked personal existent nevertheless
    “enjoys” its constitutive & abundant possession of and participation in Truth, Beauty,
    Goodness, Love & Freedom, by virtue of an essential (naturale) participation, always
    journeying (intentionale) in Being, itself, beyond all being, because it's never self-
    determined in its esse naturale, whether or not it happens to also be self-determined in
    its intentionale (via irrevocability or irreversibility).
    It would seem exceptional, when anyone would forego (or appear, somehow, indifferent
    to) superabundance, settling into a quietistic stance. At the same time, a nevertheless
    abundant life would be sustained precisely by the soteriological efficacies that reach all,
    for all have been redeemed. Some do enjoy, via a self-determined aesthetic scope
    (limited in potency only by divine logoi) a superabundant beatitude.
    What, then, of mortal sin? Even if that state somehow irreversibly freezes one’s
    determinate esse intentionale (foreclosing the possibility of any expansion of an
    essential, minimalist aesthetic scope), such as via an epistemic closure in a particular
    judgment, it cannot annihilate one’s essential existence or its absolute
    intrinsic value, personal dignity & extrinsic worth, as eternally loved by God &
    others, all expecting absolutely nothing in return.
    Primal ur-kenosis, ad extra kenosis and the kenotic self-emptying of parents & lovers
    has always been this way?
    We even recoil at every insidious form of ableism, which would value our children
    based on developmental milestones or setbacks, whether due to genetic, perinatal or
    accidental dis-ease, whether from deformative influences or the pangs of addiction,
    whether due simply to age or through their unfathomable dispositions & puzzling
    personality differences.
    Who values a child at 20 more than one at 2?
    Who loves a child, who’s a model of social grace, athletic grace or academic grace, more
    than one who’s on some spectrum, physically awkward or mentally struggling?
    It’s all grace!
    Who tells a child, if you don’t come to Thanksgiving Dinner, I will hire a hit man to
    take you out? Well, yeah, right. I guess that has been done, in so many ways, but it was
    with the best of intentions and highly nuanced.
    No, I can buy that some will be votive candles in eternity, on fire with the same flame,
    ontologically, as others, who’ll outshine the sun. After all, life seems very much like that
    here and now. A lot of us quite rather be votive candles, truth be told. And I imagine that
    some earthly luminaries, who compete with the stars, themselves, may well be but votive
    candles in eternity, once their dross burns off.
    What I can’t imagine is that any fire, whomsoever, will be extinguished, by one’s self or
    Another’s determination.
    See ya on the other side.
    Exploring the Other Side (well, one part, anyway)
    Scotus locates the will in efficient causation. For many, this represents a conceptual
    relocation from the formal.
    Conceiving the free will as efficient cause (in limited potency to material) implicates a
    volition that determines only WHETHER one exercises (or refrains therefrom) one’s will
    but not to WHAT it chooses, i.e. it must not refer to why this or that is chosen but only
    to why the will wills at all, because it does remain free not to act.
    As such, the will refers to the sole rational potency, never acting without the intellect,
    which is co-causally operative (in bringing the Maximian logoi to bear) even though not
    finally determinative.
    The will determines neither the act of existence in potency to essence nor the formal
    generically determinative act in potency to one’s final cause, which makes a human
    existent what one truly is, e.g. a human person, the symbolic species, an imago Dei, a
    beloved child of God, a sister of Jesus, a brother of the Cosmos.
    Taken seriously, this has enormous soteriological and sophiological implications, which
    is to say, regarding redemption, justification & sanctification, i.e. intiation into
    communion, adoption into the Kingdom, on one hand, and, on the other, beatitude &
    glorification, i.e. ascetically & mystically or theotically, further establishing the Kingdom
    via communal collaboration.
    In my view, Scotus would worry about the risk of any full blown liberty of indifference
    [1], i.e. including not just one’s aesthetic scope or efficient acts in limited potency to
    divine logoi, materially, but also, vis a vis aesthetic intensity (ontological density),
    existential acts (self-annihilation) in limited potency to divine logoi, essentially, as well
    as formal acts (generic self-determination) in limited potency to divine logoi, finally (as
    if we could become other than what we already are, what C.S. Lewis might call a
    “dismantling of humanity”). This amounts to what M. M. Adams would call a low
    doctrine of human agency [2], although I am not wholly familiar with her precise
    formulation and how it might comport with my own, above.
    Any such exercise and actualization of rationality makes one’s efficient acts good and
    increases the being of the Kingdom, ecclesiologically, both proleptically &
    eschatologically. But does that also increase one’s own being, intrinsically, as per a
    Thomistic metaethic, per se changing one’s esse naturale per a generic determination?
    [3]
    Or does it only change, per an agential extrinsic denomination, one’s esse intentionale?
    Does moral evil frustrate an increase in the being of one’s esse naturale, even to the
    point of its full diminishment, so to speak undoing one’s intiation into communion and
    adoption into the Kingdom, denying one’s very aesthetic intensity & ontological density?
    Rather, might it frustrate an increase in being only vis a vis one’s esse intentionale,
    foregoing further communal collaboration in the Kingdom, restricting one’s aesthetic
    scope, limiting one’s ecclesiological participation, as one neglects spiritual exercises and
    practices of presence? [4]
    I’m not suggesting my anthropological categories & applications measure up with
    anthropological rigor or even capture the points of disagreement between, for example,
    Eleonore Stump & Marilyn M. Adams. Even if they amount to an ahistorical, eisegetic
    account of Aquinas & Scotus, though, perhaps they still have some normative integrity
    all their own?
    If stable dispositions, derived from habitual spiritual exercices and practices of
    presence, to act in accordance with or contrary to one’s nature, i.e. virtues or vice, do
    produce second natures, whether virtuous or vicious, do those ontologically negate or
    just phenomenologically mask our primal human nature, hide the imago Dei?
    In my view, our primal being and goodness is both unalienable, due to divine esse
    intentionale, & inalienable, not a capacity of determinate esse intentionale.
    Eternally, are we dealt with in accordance with both or either of our natures, primary
    &/or secondary, however one conceives these volitional loci, as esse naturale or
    intentionale?
    If the goodness of our being is thus light, will our existence in Hell thereby
    be unbearable?

    Let’s consider Hart:


    [T]he wrathful soul experiences the transfiguring and deifying fire of love not as
    bliss but as chastisement and despair. [5]
    Does not this refer to the transformative & theotic dynamisms that I addressed, above.
    Will not those dynamisms cease post-mortem or in some eschatological closure of
    epistemic distance, such as in a particular judgment & life review? Hart doesn’t take this
    into account, when describing the tortures of hell, but only because he otherwise
    ultimately rejects an infernalist stance, not inconsistent with Bulgakov’s surmise that
    those dynamisms might continue post-mortem, finally rejecting eternal torment as a
    moral absurdity.
    So, if those dynamisms terminate post-mortem, wouldn’t we necessarily only be dealt
    with in accordance with our primary nature, which would comport with Maximian
    being, eternal being and well-being?
    Might ill-being only ever be a transitory, purgative state? Or even a misconstrual of an
    eternal esse intentionale, which remains volitionally indifferent to any aesthetic scope,
    beyond its original endowment, not inconsistent with a Scotistic free will, located in
    efficient not telic causes?
    Bishop Barron [6] writes: If there are any people in Hell (and the church has never
    obliged us to believe that any human is in that state), they are there, not because God
    capriciously “sent” them, but because they absolutely insist on not joining in the party.
    This isn’t wholly inconsistent with the view of volitional indifference to a self-
    constrained aesthetic scope, but, again, what of my point that human volition is not
    otherwise constituted by self-constraints regarding aesthetic intensity (ontological
    density), existentially or generically, regarding THAT one is or WHAT one primally is
    (whatever one believes regarding self-constructed secondary natures)?
    How, then, would we psychologize that eternal disposition? I’m asking for a friend,
    who’s a social wallflower, who prefers to watch the mirrorball & swirling dervishes
    beneath, who doesn’t mind others coming over to sit in silent presence (90% is showing
    up, only 10% is dancing, perichoretically or otherwise?), while they keep the finger
    sandwiches & beers coming. One person’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens?
    As John O’Brien observers: Concerning the detailed specific nature of hell ... the
    Catholic Church has defined nothing. ... It is useless to speculate about its true nature,
    and more sensible to confess our ignorance in a question that evidently exceeds human
    understanding. [7]

    Fr Richard Rohr writes: To be frank, I think that perhaps no single belief has done more to
    undercut the spiritual journey of more Western people than the belief that God could be an
    eternal torturer of people who do not like him or disobey him. And this after Jesus exemplified
    and taught us to love our enemies and forgive offenses 70 x 7 times! The very idea of Hell (with a
    capital ‘H’), as Jon Sweeney explains in this magnificent book, constructs a very toxic and fear-
    based universe, starting at its very center and ground. Hatred, exclusion, and mistreatment of
    enemies is legitimated all the way down the chain of command.” [8]
    Jon Sweeney writes: "Ultimately, I choose not Dante's vengeful, predatory God who is anxious to
    tally faults, to reward and to punish. Instead I choose the God who creates and sustains us, who
    is incarnate and wants to be among us, and the God who inspires and comforts us. That God is
    the real one, the one I have come to know and understand, and that God has nothing to do with
    the medieval Hell." [9]

    Conclusions
    Following Scotus, I intuit that no eternally self-constrained aesthetic intensity is
    possible, neither existentially (THAT) nor generically (WHAT).
    And with Rohr & Sweeney, I’ll simply insist, apophatically, on what an eternally self-
    constrained aesthetic scope simply must NOT be like.
    Then, with O’Brien, I’ll confess ignorance, kataphatically.
    Notes:
     [1] MM Adams re Scotus’ concerns re liberty of indifference, as she cites Duns Scotus,
    God and Creatures: The Quodlibetal Questions, translated with introduction, notes and
    glossary by Felix Alluntis, O.F.M., and Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M. (Washington, D.C.: The
    Catholic University of America Press, 1975), q.16, art. Il, 377-79·
     [2] ibid The Problem of Hell by Marilyn M. Adams
     [3] Dante's Hell, Aquinas's Moral Theory, and Love of God, Eleonore Stump,
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 16 (2):181-198 (1986)
     [4] When God created us in the divine image, God intended us to be cocreators and
    participate in God’s plan. Hell may not be a literal burning fire, but does that mean it
    doesn’t exist?by Kevin P. Considine
     [5] The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? By David B. Hart
     [6] Bishop Barron
     [7] John Anthony O'Brien, The Faith of Millions: The Credentials of the Catholic
    Religion, pp. 19–20
     [8] from the Foreward to Dante, The Bible, and Eternal Torment by Jon M. Sweeney
     [9] Sweeney ibid

    From divine energeia (vestigia & oikonomia), effects proper to no other known causes,
    we can indeed refer (via semantical univocity, ontological analogy & apophatic
    predication) to the divine esse naturale/intentionale
    a) determinatively, denotatively & indexically, in 1 existential, 2 numeric, 3 quantitative
    & 4 locative senses,
    i.e. 1 THAT 2 One 3 Infinite 4 Eternal cause did create & incarnate, as well as
    b) denominatively, connotatively & iconically, in 1 qualitative, 2 implicitly metaphorical
    & theopoetic, & 3 explicitly analogical & theological senses,
    i.e. WHO & HOW of idiomata & propria.
    But we cannot describe, in
    c) denotative-connotative pragmatic sense, either 1 generically or 2 contextually,
    1 WHAT (naturale) created & incarnated or 2 WHY (intentionale).
    We can know the creation & incarnation are nonarbitrary, denominatively &
    connotatively, because of WHO gifted the divine vestigia & oikonomia and HOW it all
    donatively presents in such a profound aesthetic harmony, but not because we know
    WHAT or WHY, generically or determinatively.
    WHY did we come home to a locked house? I don’t know the reason but my Father
    always has loving purposes, so He locked it lovingly. Perhaps he had set off a poisonous
    pesticide bomb? Was that necessary? No, for he's obscenely wealthy. We could’ve just
    moved to another house with no roaches. Or any number of other choices available on a
    Pareto Frontier of otherwise equal optimalities.
    We could say we know THAT an act was purposeful & nonarbitrary because we know
    WHO authored it and HOW they always act (a defense), even as we insist we don’t know
    WHY (a theodicy).
    While we don’t eschew vague answers (defenses) to the logical problem of evil, we resist
    specific answers (theodicies) to evidential problems of evil.
    Deeper into the logic:
    For determinate syllogistics, think 3 modes of being: essential, personal & formal; 1 of
    identity: formal.
    For semantics of this modal ontology, think possibilities, actualities & probabilities,
    where, respectively: NC folds, EM holds; NC/EM hold; NC holds, EM folds.
    Actualities/Persons in potency to Possibilities/Essences; Efficient in potency to Material
    for actualities; Formal in potency to Final for probabilities. Respectively, Acts of Being
    (naturale) & Willing/Becoming (intentionale).
    For divine syllogistics, think 3 modes of identity: essential, personal & formal, as w/o
    modal ontology or potency, but w/immanent universal, i.e. pure act of being, self-
    subsisting esse naturale, essentially - like a primary substance & personally - an
    exemplification, semantically referenced, respectively, by propria & idiomata.
    How would we analogically differentiate, though, divine from determinate esse
    intentionale?
    For determinate rational beings, willing (intentionale) always entails becoming, either
    more or less, what the divine will intends them to be (naturale), as we freely (willingly)
    participate or not (willfully) in acts of being & willing per potencies or limitations as
    divinely willed.
    Human persons are thus adequately but not fully determined, free to become or not, in
    degrees, only who we were intended, to participate or not, per divinely willed limitations
    or potencies, in being. We are free to be & to will to become walking self-contradictions.
    For divine being, intrinsically, noncontradiction obtains essentially, personally &
    formally for esse naturale, as nondeterminate being.
    For kenotic divine being, when self-determinate in extrinsic relations to determinate
    being via divine esse intentionale, excluded middle folds in that (noncoercive) space,
    where rational determinate beings participate or not in gratuitous divine acts, whether
    of creation or of grace.
    What’s the difference between so called weak (Scotist) vs strong (Thomist) conceptions
    of DDS?
    The “weak” DDS employs univocity with a formal distinction, semantically.
    The “strong” DDS employs apophasis with analogia, ontologically.
    The weak version chastens radical apophaticism, the strong – radical kataphaticism.
    There are distinctions between the divine essence, energy & operations, the nature &
    will, formally & semantically, that gift a modicum of intelligibility, denominatively
    & connotatively, via revelation.
    Ontologically, though, we predicate the DDS apophatically & analogically, gaining a
    modicum of intelligibility, determinatively & denotatively, i.e. locatively eternal,
    quantitatively infinite, numerically One & existentially necessary, although nothing
    can be known generically (what?).
    Taken together, these versions aren’t in opposition but, indeed, emulate different steps
    in Dionysian logic:
    God is | x | is true kataphatically & trans-analogically; as a simile, whether analogically
    & literally or metaphorically & nonliterally;
    God is | not x | is true apophatically & literally; and
    God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true relationally & really.
    Those who affirm these types of distinctions will be able to reconcile Thomist, Scotist &
    Palamite approaches, Latin & Byzantine logics.
    Some refer to extrinsic denominations & Cambridge properties in the context of categorial
    discourse, as they make connotative & denominative semantic claims about realities that are
    signified in terms of their relation to other realities, such as in a analogies of attribution, e.g.
    First Cause or Creator.

    Even when considered semantically, such extrinsic denominations of contingent


    relations would still have metaphysical implications, for, as long as one hasn’t otherwise
    reduced any such reference to metaphor, as analogies, they’re predicated literally of
    their subjects.
    Such predicates don’t describe a subject’s real properties, but are appropriate, i.e.
    make their subject intelligible, by virtue of the real properties of any realities to which
    the subject’s in relation.
    As such, the extrinsic denominations & Cambridge properties of God discourse ad extra,
    e.g. creation, redemption & theosis, naming God’s contingent relations (gratuities of
    creation & grace), don’t compromise DDS or Actus Purus.
    Layers of Analogia in Eschatological Anthropology

    The musing, below, was evoked by Resurrection Prolegomena at Fr Kimel's Eclectic


    Orthodoxy.
    I post it here so as to avoid being inapposite to others' more pressing concerns (as I tend
    to digress) and to avoid sucking the participatory oxygen out of another's forum (as
    what I usually lack in general accessibility is too often only made up for by my long-
    windedness).
    When I (most vaguely) consider the possibility of a post-mortem discarnate soul, even
    as somehow embodied, even with an identity as somehow constituted of different types
    of form, including unitary, plural & partial …
    it occurs to me that Bonaventure may have well been correct in that “every act of
    cognition must be theology’s slave” …
    because such a metaphysical anthropological account as that above, which eclectically
    incorporates Thomist (unitary), Bonaventuran (plural) & Scotist (partial) conceptions
    of forms …
    even if does not necessarily presuppose an eschatological, theological anthropology …
    does implicitly recognize that Aristotelian syllogistics, alone, cannot metaphysically
    account for anthropological realities to the same extent or with the same facility that it
    does regarding other finite determinate realities.
    When we (e.g. Abelard) bridge the modal ontology of our Aristotelian syllogistics with
    the modal identities of our divine syllogistics, we unavoidably must employ an epistemic
    approach that integrally intertwines univocal semantic, analogical ontic & apophatic
    conceptual strategies.
    The alert metaphysician, especially emergentist, semiotic realists (whether Augustinian,
    Bonaventuran, Scotist, Neo-platonist, Thomist, classical or process, even naturalist but,
    sorry, not Cartesian) recognizes that …
    For finite determinate realities, we unavoidably must bridge the logics of end-stated
    and end-purposed realities (the merely teleomatic & teleonomic) with those of end-
    intended realities (the clearly teleo-logic), similarly, employing an epistemic approach
    that integrally intertwines univocal semantic, analogical ontic & apophatic conceptual
    strategies.
    As epistemology models ontology, there are, unavoidably, layers of analogia required
    to model reality’s layers of complexity, all characters in search of their Author, all
    complexities in search of the Simplicity, all determinacies in search of the Ens
    Necessarium, as “omnes cognitiones theologiae famulantur” (every act of cognition is
    theology’s slave).
    So, when braver (incarnate) souls than I, e.g. Paul J. Griffiths, speculate regarding
    eschatological anthropology, I adopt a posture of charitable interpretation that
    presupposes their recognition of & attendance to those requisite analogical intervals &
    apophatic predications that will integrally relate to & qualify their otherwise univocal
    semantic references.
    And I expect those, who employ robustly personalist stances, both divine & human, to
    draw such distinctions as between esse naturale & intentionale.
    Then, regarding the natures, energies & wills of divine hypostases, when incarnated,
    due to those analogical intervals, ontologically, they’ll necessarily refer to them only in
    terms of, respectively, dyophysitism, dyenergism & dyothelitism, or, at least, a properly
    nuanced miaphysitism.
    I would expect them to apply the same degree of nuance & same deliberate parsings to
    the plural & partial forms that constitute human hypostases, respecting the analogical
    intervals & employing suitable apophatic predications between those aspects of our
    identities as they variously correspond to our teleomatic physicality, teleonomic
    physiology & teleologic intentionality.
    Specifically, then, when philosopher-theologians like Griffiths speculatively refer,
    denotatively & putatively, to finite, determinate human realities in terms of physical
    primitives, i.e. mass, energy, gravity & space-time, it seems to me that he’s
    certainly employing the necessary parsings & nuances. For example, implicitly, his use
    of prefixes like im-, non-, dis- , ir- and in-, and suffixes like -less introduce the requisite
    apophatic bracketing. Explicitly, his citing of dis/continuities and drawing of eternal-
    temporal distinctions properly advert to reality’s unavoidable analogical intervals.
    So, that’s all to say that I don’t see anything, a priori, logically inconsistent or internally
    incoherent, metaphysically.
    Theologically, his eschatological anthropology remains within traditional contours,
    historically & exegetically, dogmatically & liturgically, pastorally & theotically, although
    I see a workaround in the distinctions between esse naturale & intentionale vis a vis our
    eternal realizations of aesthetic intensities vs scopes, where he could affirm rather than
    deny Greogory’s epektasis.
    Systematically, though, Griffith’s work is very highly speculative, because he’s
    boldly conjectured beyond the vague categories of hylomorphism using a scientific
    idiom that remains very much a moving target, e.g. the nature of space-time or his
    timespace, as we’re nowhere near articulating a Theory of Everything.
    As I’ve written, previously, our minimalist transcendent methodology would interrogate
    physical reality, for example, asking such questions as whether it’s NECESSARILY
     volumetrically in/finite,
     geometrically un/bounded or un/closed,
     topologically un/re/curved,
     spatialized temporally,
     temporalized spatially,
     essentially or emergently spatio-temporal,
     a/symmetric,
     essentially non/inflationary,
     quasi/exponentially expansionary
     dimensionally 2/3/4/more-D,
     homo/hetero/genous,
     an/isotropic,
     uni/multi/versial,
     with dimension/less physical constancy,
     with non/universal constancy,
     nomologically im/mutable
    and on and on and on.
    Answers to certain of these questions will necessarily implicate answers to certain
    others.
    Suggested Reading:
    I resonate more with much in the following accounts, all consistent with my Scotistic
    sensibilities articulated above, than with Griffith's, but certainly consider his
    equiplausible versus them, metaphysically.
    Thomas M. Ward, John Duns Scotus on Parts, Wholes, and Hylomorphism, Brill, 2014,
    Review by Robert Pasnau
    Why I – rather naturally – Have No Metaphysic
    B.P. Prusak, Bodily Resurrection in Catholic Perspectives, Theological Studies 61, 64-
    105.
    Relevant Twitter Thread by John Sobert Sylvest

    The Trinity, Monarchy & Filioque Implicate Scotistic Free Will

    To say or not of G_d?


    1philosophically
    a that
    b when-where
    c how
    d why
    e what
    2 theologically
    a economic
    b immanent
    3 semantically who
    4 cardinally & 5 ordinally
    a hypostatic being
    b essential being
    MOF says there is (2b) a sole personal (4a) source (5a), Who (3) is the original (5a)
    freely-loving-willing One (4a).
    In the MOF, the name, Father, names (3) neither the essential being (4 or 5 b) nor the
    economy (2a) but a relationship (5a).
    The (in obliquo) unity of the essence (4b) can be deduced (in recto) from the
    relationships (2b) initiated (5a) by the willing One (4a).
    Did Augustine, from that unity (4 & 5 a) & unicity (4b), deduce the plurality of
    relationships (2b), & even conceptually relate the economic (temporal missions - 2a) to
    the immanent (eternal processions - 2b)?
    Yes.
    Indeed, Augustine conceived the Spirit's eternal procession (5a & 2b) as gift, love itself,
    economically (2a), & seems to infer the filioque from the homoousion, all with an aim of
    further emphasizing both the personal unity (4 & 5 a) & essential unicity (4b) of the
    Trinity.
    What Augustine did NOT do was deduce from the unicity (4b), alone, the plurality of
    relationships (2b), e.g. ignoring the hypostatic unity (4 & 5 a).
    Nor did Augustine logically derive the immanent (eternal processions - 2b) from the
    economic (temporal missions - 2a).
    Augustine was, instead, constructing, as a supplement, a theophanic pneumatology to
    further illuminate the Spirit's procession.
    Did it threaten the MOF or subordinate the HS?
    No.
    Does it constitute the S as aition?
    No.
    Does it necessarily methodologically invoke a strict correspondence between the
    immanent & economic?
    If received as theologoumenon, no.
    However, hermeneutical questions regarding whether a Scriptural term or text applies
    to God’s economic activity ad extra or to His inner life, ad intra - absolutely to God’s
    being, in a dogmatically normative way, that best be discerned ecumenically &
    formulated conciliarly?
    Yes.
    Now, insofar as we are imago Dei of the freely-loving-willing One, wherein absolute
    freedom & love are inseparable aspects of the pure act of willing, would not our own
    freedom be similarly constitued, as it grows in that likeness?
    Our freedom would thus not be constituted of that license to do merely what we want
    (Lord Acton) via a libertarian capitulation to the passive inclinations of our natural will
    (Scotus) with its necessary affections to our own advantage (albeit epistemically &
    axiologically distanced).
    Our freedom would be constituted of that authentic liberty to do what we clearly must
    (Acton), as a volition that, while so free it can abstain from willing, when it does choose
    to will, cannot not will the highest good per its free appetite, which is actively inclined by
    affections toward justice, as always driven, in friendship & love, by desire of something
    for the sake of another (Scotus).
    This Scotistic conception of free will (radically) relocates it from a telic (per Thomistic
    naturalism) to an efficient cause.
    Scotus views moral goodness aesthetically, as a beauty of the soul, in line with sources in
    Platonic & Neoplatonic traditions, further evident in later Middle Ages thanks to
    Augustine, Dionysius, etc
    Not arbitrary, but beyond the rational, divinely legislated moral laws harmonize with
    aesthetic patterns pleasing to God.
    See: Bychkov, Oleg. (2014). “In Harmony with Reason”: John Duns Scotus’s Theo-
    aesth/ethics. Open Theology. 1. 10.2478/opth-2014-0005.
    Human moral & theotic realizations embody aesthetic patterns pleasing to a God, Who
    "is truly, `really', personally related to the world by relations of knowledge & mutual
    love." And, because of this, through such embodiments of those aesthetic patterns,
    God's "affected in consciousness, but not in abiding intrinsic perfection of nature," that
    is in aesthetic scope, but not intensity.
    [passibility phraseology borrowed from Norris Clarke ]
    Definitions
    The coherence of any conceptions of divine freedom, human liberty and evil
    (ontological privation) are at stake.
    Regarding human liberty, terms like voluntarist, intellectualist, compatibilist,
    determinist & libertarian have become so fraught as to be unhelpful.
    The free will, generically speaking, inheres in human nature, formally, and is expressed
    as an efficient cause via active potency. As such, it’s a phylogenetically emergent reality.
    It represents a teleologic, sapient intentionality that’s distinct from and transcends our
    teleo-qualic sentience, teleo-nomic biological processes & teleo-matic physico-chemical
    constitution, all which contribute to what we refer to as our natural will.
    The free (teleologic) will grows the strength of its inherent autonomous nature through
    habitual virtuous exercise. This growth in volitional virtue is enhanced as intellectual,
    affective, moral & social conversions transform our natural will, taming its teleo-matic,
    -nomic & -qualic passive potencies, formatively & developmentally, harnessing, then
    redirecting, their energies, in the service of ongoing religious conversion, as expressed
    in the love of God, others, cosmos, even self. With Bulgakov, there’s no reason this
    dynamic must necessarily cease post mortem.
    In some sense, then, the ontogenetic development of the free will, analogously,
    recapitulates its phylogenetic emergence. It’s constitutive of, not added on to, human
    nature via the gratuity of creation and can be superabundantly elevated via the gratuity
    of grace, in both cases animated by the presence of the Spirit.
    The free will also resembles God’s will, growing from image to likeness.
    If we conceive God’s choices in terms of those that, on one hand, are logically necessary
    1) as strict natural laws via 2) per se nota propositions 3) exercised in perfect goodness
    & 4) chosen with superabundant efficiency, on the other hand, represent choices on a
    multiversal Pareto frontier, allowing for diverse, harmonious aesthetic patterns to be
    realized, then no arbitrariness obtains. So, too, then for the human will, which can be
    either logically constrained, volitionally, or aesthetically equipoised, although any
    superabundant sufficiency is manifestly inferior in finite beings. Intelligent creatures
    remain always volitionally positioned with not choosing as an option.
    To avoid a collapse into determinism & problems of evil, a proper tehomic panentheism
    can be invoked, which I have introduced elsewhere previously, a creatio ex profundis,
    where an ex nihilo conception still obtains via the invitation to novel teloi. Also, a
    neglected divine omnipathy of how creatures will have felt, given the illumination of
    final beatitude in the balance with lifetime sufferings, plays a role.
    To imagine an exercise of the free will as independent of existential telic orientations is
    nonsense.
    Volition involves the intellect & will. Any “libertarian” aspect of the will must not
    refer to why this or that is chosen but only to why the will wills at all, because it does
    remain free not to act. The will refers to the sole rational potency, never acting
    without the intellect. So any “voluntarist” aspect of the will must refer to such a
    primacy of the will that presupposes the intellect. Scotus meets these criteria, so could
    only be characterized, at most, as moderately libertarian and moderately voluntarist and
    most definitely not determinist.

    Excerpts From:

    Medieval Philosophy and Theology 10 (2001), 173–216. Letting Scotus Speak for
    Himself, MARY BETH INGHAM
    The intellect always functions in tandem with the will as partial co-cause for volition.
    We have to look not at why the will wills this or that, but rather why the will wills at all.
    In Scotist terminology, this means looking at the act of velle/non velle, not the act of
    velle/nolle, where Scotus holds that the non velle is indeed an act: it is an act of self-
    restraint within the will. This act reveals the will’s relationship to itself and, ultimately,
    why, when all conditions are present, the will is free not to act. One cannot, then,
    make the libertarian connection between the divine and human wills on the basis of the
    choice between “this or that” (in other words, the velle/nolle distinction). Any
    libertarian claim to be made from this sort of analysis would have to be moderate.
    For Scotus, the divine nature is simple and the will is the sole rational potency.
    Therefore, any interpretation that either denies the will’s access to reason or attempts to
    defend a notion of freedom that does not entail rationality cannot be faithful to Scotus.
    For him, the will (whether human or divine) enjoys a freedom that is undetermined by
    external factors precisely because it is rational.
    In the Lectura, Scotus presents this solution of partial cocausality as moderate, rejecting
    both the extreme voluntarism of Henry of Ghent and the extreme intellectualism of
    Godfrey of Fontaines. In this way, he attempts to save free will from the blindness of
    Henry’s position and the intellectual determinism of Godfrey. It is important to note
    that Scotus’s understanding of the will as sole rational potency is key to the sort of
    voluntarist he is.
    Not Mutually Exclusive Conceptions for my Tehomic Pan-semio-entheism
    Essential Elements:
    Griffin’s creatio ex chaos (uncreated & prevenient)
    Bracken’s divine matrix [a Peircean corrective to nominalism Whiteheadian (thick) or
    Hartshornean (thin)]
    Clarke’s thin passibility of esse intentionale
    Neville’s creatio ex nihilo & Tillich’s ground for nondeterminate divine being
    Orthodoxy’s Monarchy of the Father for – Unoriginate Indeterminate Divine Being
    Classical Theism’s Immanent Trinity – Indeterminate Being or Peirce’s Ens
    Necessarium
    Peirce’s Being > Reality > Existence
    Classical Theism’s Economic Trinity – Self-determinate Being
    Meta-nomological Reality & Meta-ontological Existence
    In/Determinate Reality – Peircean Thirdness
    In/Determinate Existence – Peircean Secondness
    Peircean Firstness – of both an Extreme Scotistic Realism for immanent universals &
    Moderate Scotistic Realism for universals
    Keller’s creatio ex profundis (created chaos) which can exist along side Griffin’s
    uncreated prevenient chaos
    Oord’s creatio ex amore, which as creatio continua (consistent w/conceivable cyclic
    cosmogonies) interacts with prevenient chaos (created & uncreated)
    Scotistic Volition – moderately libertarian & moderately voluntarist free will
    Scotism generally - cf Nielsen, Ingham, Cross, Wolster, Horan, Kappes
    Theological Anthropology of Lonergan as corrected by Donald Gelpi replacing
    Transcendental Thomist approach with Peirce’s pragmatic semiotic realism
    All as generally set out:
    https://independent.academia.edu/SylvestJohn
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2019/04/13/to-say-or-not-of-g_d/
    https://www.scribd.com/document/264943358/Systematic-Theology-of-John-Sobert-Sylvest

    https://wp.me/pZJmO-76L
    Because comments are closed, above, to wit:
    It recent reading regarding free will, both temporally & in the eschaton, a thought
    occurred to me.
    Temporally, the issue of being equipoised deliberatively arises, raising a concern of
    arbitrariness.
    Eschatologically, the nature of deliberation, itself, is questioned, presumably, because of
    a lack of dispositional potencies.
    Now, in my view, our freedom necessarily derives precisely from both epistemic AND
    axiological distancing, both temporally & eternally.
    Therefore, even when one realizes a given divine telos, precisely attaining its divinely
    specified epistemic-axiological intensity, whether that value-realization has gifted one a
    temporal equi-positioning (chocolate or vanilla?) or even an eternal dis-positioning
    (God or God?), that need neither, in the former case, implicate arbitrariness, nor, in the
    latter, obviate deliberative willing.
    Why?
    Because aesthetic intensity, alone, needn't exhaust our notions of intentionality,
    whether temporally or eternally, whether of human volition or of the divine esse
    intentionale.
    Integral to any coherent notion of intentionality, one must include the conception of an
    aesthetic scope, even if a relatively thin notion of post-mortem human enrichment, as
    one has thus happily moved from image to likeness (vis a vis our thin notion of divine
    passibility, as has been well articulated & defended by folks like Norris Clarke & Greg
    Boyd).
    The human will thus perdures deliberatively, temporally & eternally, epistemically &
    axiologically distanced, varying aesthetically in scope even when not in intensity,
    appropriating novelty & enjoying diversity, moving from glory to glory to glory (hence
    nonarbitrarily choosing now vanilla, now chocolate, unless C.S. Lewis was correct
    regarding our heavenly desires for sex and ice cream).
    Regarding those post-mortem, who've not thus closed their epistemic-axiological
    distance, haven't been glorified, they, too, remain irrevocably deliberatively engaged,
    so to speak, on purgative & illuminative paths toward unitive beatitude.
    Not to adopt Pastor Tom Belt's irrevocability thesis but to embrace various irreversibility
    theses does violence to our common sense & sensibilities regarding personhood.

    Cardinal Dulles describes Balthasar’s stance toward universalism as leaving the question
    speculatively open, which has different practical implications than altogether refusing
    the question?
    The former creates a right, conceivably a duty, to hope for universal salvation.
    It seems Balthasar's positive theology & pastoral strategy conspired to defend hope from
    either despair or presumption, either of which he considered a type of hope-less-ness.
    Does that conclude our inquiry?
    Hardly, for one must next argue whether a given proclamation of apocatastasis meets
    the criteria of presumption.
    Our duty to hope & pray that all may be saved implicates the prohibition against
    proclaiming whether any or which are damned.
    Indeed, after Balthasar’s exercise in positive theology, historically & exegetically, he
    reasonably inferred that the evidence for God’s desire to save all clearly outweighed any
    suggesting the factual damnation of some.
    If one thereby chooses to either merely stipulate to or even clearly affirm apocatastasis
    as theologoumenon vis a vis belief, what adiaphora of praxis might that implicate?
    Here we next encounter a question of theological anthropology:
    How might we account for the way temporal human beings know &
    embrace the eternal order?
    While there can be a fragility to any given hope that remains poised between despair &
    presumption, if we’ve successfully obviated presumption vis a vis apocatastasis, in
    particular, as mysterium, next we’ll encounter a polar relationship between tupos
    (figure, type) and aletheia (truth).
    Semiotically, what figures or signs could make present any putative truth of
    a universal salvation?
    How might such a sign participate in the efficacy of such a truth as it shapes – not only
    how we tell the story (cf Kimel), but – moves beyond a mere eschatological
    proclamation regarding what the future holds to a question of present praxis regarding
    how that future will necessarily shape our worship & theosis, i.e. liturgically &
    devotionally, formatively & pastorally.
    What semiotic reality could make such a mystery, apocatastasis,
    proleptically present, thereby mediating a confident assurance in the
    object of our hope & via what form of temporal participation in our
    eschatological consummation?
    Here, we recall the tripartite trinitological dynamism (ad intra processional & ad extra
    cosmic) of emanation, exemplarity & consummation, as well as the tripartite
    exemplars of vestige, image & likeness, as we present Origen’s tripartite division of
    shadow, image & truth as all signs of the Good News point to individual, ecclesial &
    cosmic conversions, transformatively (theotically), and a final consummation,
    apocatastatically.
    I have borrowed the terminology of de Lubac’s “Corpus Mysticum” to frame up the
    questions above, wherein de Lubac explicated the underlying anagogy of his
    sacramental theology. For him, any knowledge of the Christian mystery requires a
    participatory approach, which transforms the believer by subjectively uniting her with
    the mystery’s objective content. Thus de Lubac provides an anthropological heuristic for
    spiritual understanding.
    But, for a truly coherent accounting of an apocatastatic anagogy, we still need a
    more robustly detailed account of how we enjoy such proleptic tastes of any
    future perfections?
    For that, we can turn to the Syrian, Isaac.
    Unable to comprehend such mysteries through mere temporal reasoning & logic,
    according to Isaac, it’s a mind standing on eschatological thresholds in the state of
    astonishment, who’s further graced with wonder, who can embrace the ecstatic
    experience of the future world in the present, in a now moment.
    For an account of Isaac’s sources, see Jason Scully’s Isaac of Nineveh's Contribution
    to Syriac Theology: An Eschatological Reworking of Greek Anthropology
    For an account of de Lubac’s anthropological heuristic for spiritual understanding, see
    Joseph Flipper’s Sacrament and Eschatological Fulfillment in Henri de Lubac's
    Theology of History
    Oh, did I forget to mention that de Lubac articulated his account of spiritual
    understanding and anagogy vis a vis the sacraments using Origen’s
    eschatological account and anagogia, i.e. how we might taste & see the
    truths regarding apocatastasis? Cf. Flipper
    Prologue as Afterward
    We must set aside the indefensible notion that the human will is either absolutely free or
    positively determined, whether scientifically, philosophically or theologically.
    We can then ask “which aspects of human volition need to be free to what degree?” in
    order to be consistent with both our moral instincts & intuitions and common sense &
    sensibilities.
    The answers to that question, by its very construction, will not be strictly formal &
    propositional (neither descriptively nor normatively deductive), but will be
    propositionally informal (abductively & inductively) and evaluatively dispositional.
    Put more concretely, any answer to “which aspects of human volition need to be free to
    what degree?” will, in large measure, boil down to “how much constraint on
    human volition are you willing to acknowledge & accept?” before you
    would declare human moral obligations a dead letter?
    Certainly, there’s an acceptable range & not just a jumping off point regarding what
    degree of human autonomy must be enjoyed if we are to be bound by moral obligation?
    And the propositional views and evaluative dispositions of most of us, due to our shared
    moral instincts & intuitions and common sense & sensibilities, will fall safely within
    such a range.
    However, some seem evaluatively disposed to assert the highest degree of autonomy
    conceivable (and in near absolutist libertarian terms) as being necessary in order to
    morally bind a human person to any meaningful degree.
    BUT this begins to sound like something that would come from one who’s far more
    invested in his own WILLFULness than in growing her WILLINGness, for ...

    as Chris Green points out: Speaking of our freedom as absolute and supreme means (a) that
    freedom-from-God is itself the greatest good God can give us and/or (b) that our
    freedom is ultimately self-grounded and our destiny self- determined.

    The Problem of Hell and Free Will


    by Chris Green, Ph.D
    Recent Musings:

    Below are excerpts from "The Population of Hell," First Things 133 (May 2003): 36-41.
    In a reverie circulated among friends but not published until after he died, Maritain included
    what he called a conjectural essay on eschatology, in which he contemplates the possibility that
    the damned, though eternally in hell, may be able at some point to escape pain.
    Karl Rahner held for the possibility that no one ever goes to hell. We have no clear revelation, he
    says, to the effect that some are actually lost. ... Rahner therefore believed that universal
    salvation is a possibility.
    The most sophisticated theological argument against the conviction that some human beings in
    fact go to hell was proposed by von Balthasar, who said we have a right & even a duty to hope for
    the salvation of all.
    Edith Stein , now Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, defends a position very like Balthasar's &
    finds it possible to hope that God's omnipotent love finds ways of, so to speak, outwitting human
    resistance. Balthasar says that he agrees with Stein.
    Avery Dulles : This position of Balthasar seems to me to be orthodox. It does not contradict any
    ecumenical councils or definitions of the faith.
    ------------------------------------------------
    Video of a 45 min lecture by Dulles in NY given Nov 20, 2002 & entitled The Population of Hell
    Excellent responses to Dulles' Population of Hell lecture / article.
    From science & philosophy we know humans aren't absolutely free but "adequately
    determined." What about theologically? Freedom's not absolute there either.

    A single will to raise up the image, but two to make the image into a likeness. ~ Lossky

    See: The Problem of Hell and Free Will at afkimel.wordpress.com


    The practical takeaway is that modern categories (libertarianism & compatabilism)
    don't measure up to Thomistic & Scotistic accounts. A human freedom constrained in
    some ways & degrees won't obviate moral responsibility. Only absolutist
    conceptions need, in principle, reject universalism?
    While I haven't moved from my long & steadfast practical (Balthasarian) - to an in
    principle or necessary theoretic - universalism, I've been persuaded, by the collective
    cogency of many Orthodox approaches, that it can't be a priori or in principle or
    necessarily ruled out.
    The Thin Passibility of the Eternally Deliberative Human Will
    https://wp.me/pZJmO-76L
    Because comments are closed, above, to wit:
    It recent reading regarding free will, both temporally & in the eschaton, a thought
    occurred to me.
    Temporally, the issue of being equipoised deliberatively arises, raising a concern of
    arbitrariness.
    Eschatologically, the nature of deliberation, itself, is questioned, presumably, because of
    a lack of dispositional potencies.
    Now, in my view, our freedom necessarily derives precisely from both epistemic AND
    axiological distancing, both temporally & eternally.
    Therefore, even when one realizes a given divine telos, precisely attaining its divinely
    specified epistemic-axiological intensity, whether that value-realization has gifted one a
    temporal equi-positioning (chocolate or vanilla?) or even an eternal dis-positioning
    (God or God?), that need neither, in the former case, implicate arbitrariness, nor, in the
    latter, obviate deliberative willing.
    Why?
    Because aesthetic intensity, alone, needn't exhaust our notions of intentionality,
    whether temporally or eternally, whether of human volition or of the divine esse
    intentionale.
    Integral to any coherent notion of intentionality, one must include the conception of an
    aesthetic scope, even if a relatively thin notion of post-mortem human enrichment, as
    one has thus happily moved from image to likeness (vis a vis our thin notion of divine
    passibility, as has been well articulated & defended by folks like Norris Clarke & Greg
    Boyd).
    The human will thus perdures deliberatively, temporally & eternally, epistemically &
    axiologically distanced, varying aesthetically in scope even when not in intensity,
    appropriating novelty & enjoying diversity, moving from glory to glory to glory (hence
    nonarbitrarily choosing now vanilla, now chocolate, unless C.S. Lewis was correct
    regarding our heavenly desires for sex and ice cream).
    Regarding those post-mortem, who’ve not thus closed their epistemic-axiological
    distance, haven’t been glorified, they, too, remain irrevocably deliberatively engaged,
    so to speak, on purgative & illuminative paths toward unitive beatitude.
    Not to adopt Pastor Tom Belt’s irrevocability thesis but to instead embrace various
    irreversibility theses does violence to our common sense & sensibilities regarding
    personhood.
    The Critical Importance of a Normative Account of Affective Conversion in
    the Authentication of any Doctrine of Apocatastasis
    While pastoral concerns, as communications, do emerge last in the functional
    specialties (per their progressive nature), the theological task is not complete without a
    proper authentication of doctrines, which is where I locate Fr Kimel's concerns.
    In that context, a normative account of affective conversion matters greatly! All the
    more if his stance is a theolougemon in his tradition.
    Don Gelpi, The Authentication of Doctrines: Hints from C. S. Peirce, Theological Studies
    60:261-293 (1999)
    The Trinity is a Mystery to be Lived & Not a Problem to be Solved

    Something tells me that, if the Trinitarian accounts of Origen, Maximus, the Cappadocians,
    Thomists, Scotists & Palamites reconcile using the rubrics, below, as I’m confident they do, one
    shouldn’t approach the Mystery of the Trinity as a problem to be solved but as a divine reality to
    be lived, participatorily, via prayer & theosis.

    If that approach does not suffice for one, existentially & speculatively, they could find
    themselves in real existential jeopardy of suffering the practical consequences of gravity,
    because they could very likely be among those withholding prudential judgments
    regarding same, while awaiting the speculative resolution of its mysterious relationship
    to quantum mechanics!
    Here’s where the Trinitological Hullabaloo begins:
    In a meta/ontology concerned with non/determinate realities, the equivocal
    predications of “is” must be disambiguated, because they can refer to logics of
    predication (properties), identity (objects) or temporality (relations).
    Certain relational meanings of “is” specify realities as present (now), atemporal
    (timeless), omnitemporal (always), transtemporal (persistent in present period),
    nontemporal (now potentially temporal) or eternal (meta-temporal).
    A couple of examples:
    In physics, spatialized time could refer to a nontemporal reality, for example, if a given
    symmetric equation would suggest a potential temporalization of space (from 2-D to 3-
    D).
    In personal identity theory, explanatory principles must ground both synchronic &
    diachronic individuation, often mapping the identities of non/determinate persons both
    eternally and temporally (including a-, omni-, trans- & presently), for example,
    regarding divine persons, in trinitology, human persons, in eschatology.
    Neither reductionist (somatic or psychological) nor dualist (Cartesian) approaches can
    provide such principles without doing violence to our common sense & sensibilities and
    sacrificing narrative coherence & moral intuitions.
    Why surrender those intelligibilities, sensibilities, coherencies & intuitions to such
    speculative ontologies, when more modest meta-heuristics can sustain them, while, at
    the same time, robustly fostering ongoing metaphysical explorations?
    Such meta-heuristics include a variety of scholastic, pragmatic & analytical realisms,
    mostly consistent with Aristotelian-like syllogistics, which work rather well with
    determinate modes of being & formal modes of identity.
    Those syllogistics can be derived from that logic of modal identity, which applies to
    nondeterminate realities (e.g. necessities, singularities, boundary & limit conditions,
    and other meta-nomicities).
    While successful references to nondeterminate realities, in addition to formal modes of
    identity, include those of essences (e.g. properties) & existents (e.g. persons), those
    latter modes of identity are only analogous to essential & personal modes of being.
    The exemplarist accounts of Scotus (e.g. immanent universal) & Origen (e.g. Platonic
    reversal), as well as the substantialist accounts, where the Godhead & persons relate like
    secondary & primary substances, function as meta-heuristics, which meta-ontologically
    gift us semantical & analogical intelligibility for realities, which cannot, in principle, be
    generically specified, ontologically.
    Some label such approaches radically apophatic or mysterian. Others fail to note the
    analogical interval between essential & personal modes of identity & being, then
    mistakenly characterize them as modalist, tritheist, subordinationist, univocist,
    equivocist and so on. Either way, they’re critiquing caricatures.
    The Mystery of the Trinity does not present a logical problem vis a vis consistency, as
    long as we properly attend to the equivocal predications of “is” and avoid conflations of
    determinate & nondeterminate realities, as they employ distinct, but related, syllogistics
    regarding their modes of being & identity.
    The Mystery of the Trinity presents, rather, an ontological problem in that we cannot, in
    principle, successfully describe (via connotative-denotative generic specification) ---
    WHAT so loved the world THAT … … John 3:16 et cetera etc etc
    Deo gratias, we do know Who!

    A Glossary of Predications for Determinate & Nondeterminate Realities (not


    necessarily pertaining to divine realities but even pertaining to, for example,
    materially monist conceptions & other non/reductive metaphysical accounts)
    An essential nature or esse naturale can be a non/composite nature w/ or w/o formal
    distinctions, where the 3 meanings of “Is” include:
     Properties
     Objects
     Temporalities
    Other predications made for realities concurrent with but not identical to a nature (esse
    naturale), which necessarily inhere, characterizing but not defining it, naming but not
    describing it, include univocal semantic references & analogical predications of meta-
    ontological & meta-nomological realities:
     Propria – predicated essentially re: attributes
     Idiomata – predicated personally re: exemplifications, hypostases
     Epinoia - predicated relationally of kenoses, oikonomia, operations, energies, actions &
    apophatic attributes as non- & self-determinate sources (e.g. internal paterological ur-
    kenosis, external christological kenosis of incarnation & pneumatological kenosis of
    creating and trinitological transforming economy, whereby each creature's resplendently
    transfigured & persons theotically so)
    An esse intentionale via accidental properties can include volitional & intellectual
    relations to external realities, i.e. Cambridge properties that represent real but
    contingent relational changes, both:
     External – via creation
     Internal – via a thin passibility in aesthetic scope
    as determinate effects (creative & theotic, i.e. vestigia, images & likenesses) ensue from
    transcendently non- & self-determinate sources

    More Trinitarian Reflections:

    DDS, MOF & Filioque


    The filioque doesn’t, per se, implicate simplicity. It reconciles with the MOF & the
    formulation that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.
    For irenic accounts, see:
    from a Catholic take:
    Mark J. Bonocore
    from an Orthodox stance:
    Peter Gilbert
    For what's at stake, see:
    Cardinal Dulles
    Maximus acknowledged the Latin introduction of the filioque was done “in order to
    manifest the Spirit’s coming-forth (προϊέναι) through him and, in this way, to make
    clear the unity and identity of the essence.”
    Some worried, however, that, when coupled w/an emanationist interpretation (precisely
    imputed to an Augustinian DDS), the filioque’s logic of processions would yield an
    infinite causal chain of persons (it doesn’t due to distinctions like mutually opposed
    relations, active & passive spiration, principium/aition & causa, etc) and would
    compromise divine freedom. They were further concerned that natural rather revealed
    theology grounded its conceptions of nature & persons.
    The DDS turns out to be a much stickier theological widget than the MOF, which I
    receive as dogmatic, or the filioque, which I accept as theolougemon.
    A good DDS could accomplish a great deal of heavy lifting, idiomatically, while a bad
    one would be a dead weight. What we need, therefore, is a Goldilocks DDS, a
    metaphysical gruel that’s not so thick that it nullifies divine freedom or trivializes divine
    personhood & love, but, not so thin that necessary distinctions between determinate &
    nondeterminate realities disappear.
    I would insist w/ D. B. Hart that we need some DDS & w/Norris Clarke that a thin
    divine passibility’s defensible, agree w/W. L. Craig that Clarke’s approach threatens
    many commonly understood Thomistic notions of same, disagree w/Perry Robinson
    that Thomist approaches are as incompatible w/some Eastern approaches as he
    imagines but agree w/his depiction of the coherency of those Eastern approaches, and
    have especially enjoyed reading the online irenics/polemics re: DDS of Michael
    Liccione, Edward Feser & Thomas Hopko.
    In the end, surely we'll need distinctions like un/conditional necessity, esse
    naturale/intentionale, inentionale as aspect of naturale, change in intentionale as thin
    passibility.

    Norris Clarke actually contends that, in order to make intelligible the belief that what happens in
    the world does make a significant, conscious difference to God, the Thomistic metaphysical
    doctrine of no real relations in God to the world should be quietly shelved because it is no longer
    illuminating. Norris Clarke explains that the term `real relations' carries a narrow technical
    meaning for Aquinas, one implying intrinsic change in the real intrinsic, nonrelative perfection
    of the subject of relation and the independent existence of the other term. Since neither of these
    requirements can be applied to God, Aquinas allows 'intentionality relations', in the purely
    relational order of knowledge and love in God towards the world, but technically refuses to call
    these `real relations'. Whilst defensible on technical grounds, Norris Clarke believes this
    perspective to be so narrow and incomplete, so difficult to convey, that this point of conflict with
    Process thought should be dropped. Norris Clarke affirms that it should be unambiguously
    stated that God is truly, `really', personally related to the world by relations of knowledge and
    mutual love and affected in consciousness, but not in abiding intrinsic perfection of nature, by
    what happens in the world. ~ Robert Connor

    Below, in no particular order, are some of my favorite online reads re: DDS, MOF &
    Filioque:
    https://web.archive.org/web/20041021103955/
    http://www.ctsfw.edu/library/files/pb/1232
    http://catholicbridge.com/orthodox/catholic-orthodox-filioque-father-son.php
    https://www.apostolicpilgrimage.org/dialogue-
    documents/-/asset_publisher/8wpOCc78agHw/content/the-filioque-a-church-
    dividing-issue-an-agreed-statement-of-the-north-american-orthodox-catholic-
    theological-consultation-saint-paul-s-college-october
    https://bekkos.wordpress.com/2008/01/21/st-maximus-on-the-filioque/
    http://robertaconnor.blogspot.com/2005/05/fr-clarke-sj-and-i-on-person-as.html?
    m=1
    https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/divine-simplicity
    https://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/category/divine-simplicity/
    https://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/saint-cyril-on-divine-
    simplicity/
    http://mliccione.blogspot.com/2005/06/robinson-blosser-debate-on-divine.html?m=1
    http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2010/05/divine_simplicity_and_divine_f.ht
    ml
    http://www.anthonyflood.com/clarkedivineideas.htm
    http://catholicbridge.com/downloads/response-on-the-filioque.pdf
    https://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/hopko/the_filioque
    https://web.archive.org/web/20041021103955/
    http://www.ctsfw.edu/library/files/pb/1232
    http://lonergan.org/2008/08/12/st-thomas-on-why-there-are-only-three-persons-
    when-there-are-four-mutually-opposed-relations-in-the-trinity/
    https://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI3201137/
    https://easterncatholic.wordpress.com/

    The Monarchy never entailed subordination

    Nor Simplicity modalism


    And a new filioque collaboration
    Could end a thousand year schism!
    What's Athens to do with Jerusalem?
    Or Rome with Constantinople?
    Whether one reads Hart or Avery Dulles
    She can be apokatastatically hopeful!
    Theory of Everything: Successful References, Definitions & Descriptions as criteria
    for degrees of Explanatory Adequacy

    Outline to be fleshed out later:


    Distinguish between
    Exploration
    Reference
    Definition of Terms & Concepts
    Dogmatic, heuristic, theoretic & semiotic
    Indeterminacies

     Overdetermined possibilities from vague to precise


     Determined actualities from ambiguous to clear
     Underdetermined probabilities from general to specific & regularities vs necessities
    Classify the extent indeterminacy is epistemic and/or ontic, in/determinable and/or
    in/determined
    Description
    Explanation
    Scholastic Notation
     Un/certain
     Im/probable
     Im/plausible
     Im/possible
    Ir/rationality refers to sapient realities in degrees of epistemic virtue re metanomological
    heuristic
    Adsurdity refers to metaphysical realities in degrees of un/friendliness to rational creatures in
    terms of excess of meaning re truth (sufficient nomicity) & surplus of beauty & goodness or
    suffering & pain, abundance & superabundance (existential sufficiency)
    Occam’s Razor in terms of abductive facility plus multiplication of ontologies only
    adjudicating between models that enjoy explanatory adequacy
    Evidentiary standards
    Normative justifications
    Practical reasoning under speculative uncertainty
    Equiplausibility & equiprobability principles
    What about a Theory of Everything?
    Presently, it seems that a TOE is most generally understood to involve the construction of a
    model that describes both quantum mechanics and gravity. It remains quite the challenge but
    the research is driving remarkable technological advances. Perhaps such a TOE would
    1) describe the origins of
    2) all quantum and thermodynamic realities,
    3) accounting for all of the initial, boundary, limit, intermediate & final conditions of
    4) all of their properties, existents and relations, using the
    5) same concepts & terms for them all.
    One might imagine that, theoretically, “everything” could refer to more of reality than just
    quantum mechanics & thermodynamics. Perhaps such a TOE would
    1) describe the origins (inductively & statistically) and predict the behaviors (deductively &
    probabilistically) of
    2) all quantum and thermodynamic realities as well as all living, sentient and rational beings,
    3) accounting for all of the initial, boundary, limit, intermediate & final conditions of
    4) all of their properties, existents and relations,
    5) using the same concepts & terms for them all.
    While conceivable in theory, I don’t see that happening for all sorts of reasons, due mostly to
    practical constraints but some theoretic as well.
    In my view, there will never (strong philosophical claim, n'est pas?) come a time when any given
    observer would not be epistemically entitled to posit vis a vis reality's furnishings (being or
    meta-ontological heuristic), an Analogia Entis, and/or their arrangement (necessity or meta-
    nomological heuristic), an Analogia Axiomata.
    An observer could, in principle, always further probe reality and holistically ask descriptive,
    evaluative, normative, interpretive, transcendent and explanatory questions, while respectively
    positing various cosmological, axiological, teleological, ontological, existential (soteriological)
    and epistemological proofs and arguments.
    What would keep one within their epistemic rights, in addition to humanity's requisite shared
    epistemic virtues, would be any significant and unique personal experiences with respect to
    which many others may not be similarly situated. Thus it is that accepting one's reasonableness,
    as they articulate some reasonable stance regarding reality writ large within their given
    epistemic rights, must be distinguished from imagining that such a stance would necessarily
    move others with any general normative impetus.
    Humanity's relationship to God, as a meaningful philosophical concept, hypothetically, and as a
    leap of faith, existentially, can never be demonstrated as unreasonable, neither a priori, in
    principle or theoretically, nor a posteriori or for all practical purposes.

    So, even as we heed the methodological admonition to not place God in our
    metaphysical gaps, that doesn't mean that Nietzsche gets to stand guard at reality's
    perimeter.
    Note: Proofs are derivable from the primal causes (reality's primitives).
    An observer could, in principle, always further probe reality and holistically ask descriptive,
    evaluative, normative, interpretive, transcendent and explanatory questions, while respectively
    positing various cosmological (primal support & efficient), axiological (primal order & formal),
    teleological (primal goal & final), ontological (primal being & material), existential (primal
    source & existential in potency to essential & soteriological) and epistemological (primal ground
    & semantic/proportionate metaphysical ground plus PSR or metanomological heuristic) proofs
    and arguments.

    Notes regarding Semi-formal heuristics & syllogistics for nondeterminate &


    determinate realities

    One couldn't a priori say whether, ontologically, there's a single formal system. If there were, it
    seems that a single semi-formal heuristic could model it.
    That single semi-formal heuristic, which would relate the distinct nondeterminate &
    determinate syllogistics of a given system, could, in principle, model a single formal system.
    Concretely, it seems, for example, that in a materialist monist ontology, nondeterminate static
    relations, whether in/finite, un/bounded, un/curved +/- and so on, could constrain otherwise
    determinate, dynamical activities of an energy plenum. We could only model the
    nondeterminate relations but not explain them, other than to say they're necessarily like that,
    noncausally, by the very axiomatic nature of that given formal system.
    Can a TOE be formalized?
    I would hold that a TOE most certainly can be delimited formally.
    Even within given layers of complexity, we can not only successfully reference but even robustly
    describe properties, entities & relations. With such descriptions, we are not only able to
    abductively hypothesize & inductively test but can complete a virtuous cycle of triadic inference,
    deductively using univocal terms, both semantically & ontologically, achieving a certain
    explanatory adequacy.
    It is when we are methodologically thwarted & ontologically befuddled by the emergence of
    novel properties, entities, states & systems, confronted by reality's various aporia, that we are
    forced to fallback on mere exploratory heuristics in order to make vague, overdetermined
    possibilities more precise; general, underdetermined probabilities more specific; and ambiguous
    actualities better defined.
    When we are seriously thus thwarted, we can engage in a rather nonvirtuous cycle of abductive
    hypothesizing & deductive clarifying, unable to interrupt it by inductive testing. That dyadic
    inferential cycling can be efficacious and hypothetically fecund, if done rigorously, opening our
    minds to new avenues of exploration. It can also become rationalistically vicious, if we imagine
    we're thereby achieving explanatory adequacy, as it instead forecloses on research programs.
    At the margins of aporia or horizons of knowledge or interface of novelty, we must engage in
    semi-formal heuristics because we're relying on analogies of proportion & attribution, e.g. the
    quantum and the gravitational have these similarities, but those are outnumbered by these
    dissimilarities.
    There is another sense in which nondeductive processes come into play. We inductively &
    abductively infer 1st principles and such, but call them self-evident, so must rely on refutation
    by reductio to convince others they're wrong about, for example, this or that version of a
    principle of sufficient reason and, yes, even common sense notions of causation. But the semi-
    formal in play in this discussion pertains to how we relate nondeterminate & determinate
    syllogistics, respectively, in their modes of identity & being.
    Specifically, the identity relations that I am using refer to the formalization of otherwise
    ambiguous natural language sentences, with their various meta-logics, predicate logics,
    propositional logics and term logics. Aristotelian syllogistics employ a term logic. In modeling a
    syllogistic theory, the “axioms” are just the rules employed for moving from premises to
    conclusions.
    Otherwise, the validity we’re seeking in our nondeterminate and determinate syllogistics applies
    to arguments. Some arguments regarding non/determinate realities that sound
    counterintuitive, causing interlocutors to come out of the woodwork with reductios & charges of
    absurdity, can more easily be demonstrated as sound by disambiguating to which modal
    category they refer, i.e. a reality’s properties, existents or relations and whether
    non/determinate, and can thereby be made more intuitive.
    We do end up with a single formal system that handles propositions about nondeterminate &
    determinate realities equally well. When we say semi-formal in this sense, it refers to the theory
    of predication and syllogistic reasoning that’s being applied to nondeterminate and determinate
    realities but not to the specific syllogisms employed.
    Presumably, where mathematical language is being employed for a putative Theory of
    Everything , we could run into trouble if such a closed formal symbol system is vulnerable to
    Godel-like constraints, forced to choose between consistency or completeness.
    Hawking believed a TOE would thus be vulnerable. See:
    http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/events/strings02/dirac/hawking/
    While there are analogous logical phenomena like undecidability, the halting problem,
    unfalsifiability, circular referentiality and others, they shouldn’t be facilely conflated and/or
    applied, such as with Godel’s Theorems, to every attempt at formalization.
    In the first place, Godel was talking meta-mathematically, and this is analogous to how I was
    talking about the semi-formal nature of a theory of predication and syllogistic reasoning for
    what would otherwise be ambiguous natural language sentences. In the same way that the semi-
    formal nature of our natural language meta-theory of predication & reasoning would not change
    the formal nature of the syllogisms under that meta-theory with respect to their ability to deliver
    formally sound deductive conclusions, Godelian meta-mathematical constraints don’t change
    the reliability of our mathematical formulas, though they may be variously axiomatized. At least,
    I have little interest in proceeding through the hundreds of pages of the Principia Mathematica,
    wherein the axioms required for the arithmetic system that proves 2+2=4 are formulated and
    proved.
    Secondly, Hawking was not abusing Godelian theorems, facilely conflating and applying them to
    a TOE. He was just giving us an interpretive assist by invoking it as an analogy. The proper take-
    away may have been, therefore, not that we couldn’t formalize a consistent & complete TOE, but
    that it would necessarily entail fundamental limit conditions. And he didn’t mean only black
    hole limits on information concentrations or putative volumetric, geometric, topological or
    in/finite limits we’re still trying to define. What he was suggesting, some say, is that the TOE’s
    modeling power would be constrained predictively, since, as occupants within the system, we’d
    have to self-referentially model ourselves. This is not a constraint, however, on any theoretic
    ability to formally state a TOE’s axioms or reality's fundamental principles, even if we remain
    forever constrained in that regard in terms of practical feasibility.
    Finally, even if the Godelian analogy further extended to suggest that our TOE will inescapably
    express some true statements that could not be deduced from its root axioms, in addition to any
    phenomena its modeling power could not predict, it would only mean that we couldn’t derive
    our formal theory from those axioms, thus proving it. That wouldn’t make the formalized TOE,
    in and of itself, semi-formal or informal, or mean that it couldn’t, in principle, be written out. It
    only means we wouldn’t know if it’s the authentic TOE, except by tasting & seeing its truths and
    inductively-abductively inferring the truth of its axioms and their reliability, e.g. in much the
    same way we overcome solipsism.
    Now, maybe we’ve come full circle back to an inherently heuristical nature of our knowledge
    approaches, but we can distinguish those from our theoretic formulations, in and of themselves,
    as they formalize our models, even those of Everything. And maybe we’ve discovered that
    primitive axioms are in a category of givens, where deductive proofs simply do not apply
    because it’s a category error to treat noncaused, nondeterminate relational aspects of reality as
    explicable other than in terms of their own nature, simply stated. If that makes all complete
    descriptions semi-formal and not wholly deducible, that’s just one of their intrinsic features but
    in no way a defect.
    We can’t a priori say whether or not, some day, when an authentic, formal TOE just happens to
    get written down, whether its truths & reliability will be so patently obvious that – not only will
    we employ its axioms with all the confidence we now place in those formulated & proved in the
    Principia, but – we’ll be as disinterested in that TOE’s axioms as most of us are, now, in those
    that undergird the logic of 2+2=4.
    About those Modes of Identity & Being
    As an epistemic heuristic, where ontological primitives are bracketed, one might conceive of 3
    categories to refer to nondeterminate realities, let's say, properties, entities & relations, and use
    the same 3 categories to refer to determinate realities. Those references would be univocal,
    semantically, but, metaphysically, would be analogical, because we're distinguishing between
    nondeterminate & determinate realities. Some would say we're employing 2 syllogistics, modes
    of identity for nondeterminate & of being for determinate realities.
    For nondeterminate realities, from properties, alone, we can identify the reality, essentially (it
    acts or does); from exemplifications of an entity, alone, we can identify the reality, existentially
    (it is); from the nature of its relationality, alone, we can identify the reality, formally (it effects).
    That's because a nondeterminate reality always IS what it DOES as known by its EFFECTS. To
    know something from any of those categories of such a reality is sufficient to identify it.
    For determinate realities, however, the only mode of identity is formal identity. To identify a
    determinate reality, it's not enough to know that a reality is actual, existentially (that it is), or to
    know its properties, essentially (how it behaves), we need to know its relations, formally, such as
    genus & species (what it is). The identification of a determinate reality is irreducibly triadic,
    requiring us to know something from each of these categories in order to identify it.
    These 2 syllogistic modes, together, would comprise a single semi-formal heuristic,
    epistemically.
    When we "unbracket" the primitives, there's nothing that would a priori commit one, in
    principle, to applying this heuristic to a monist, dualist or pluralist ontology vis a vis distinct
    modes of being, each with different primitives & axioms, wholly related or unrelated one to the
    next.
    A monist ontology, though, could represent a single formal system (of nondeterminate &
    determinate characteristics) modeled by a single semi-formal heuristic.
    A pluralist ontology would seem to indicate multiple formal systems (determinate formalities),
    which may or not indicate singular or multiple nondeterminate nomicities, which may or not
    indicate singular or multiple semi-formal heuristics. There could be many worlds, variously
    overlapping, field-like, envisioned by venn diagrams & modeled in part by set theories.
    A/theological Conceptions of the Ens Necessarium and the Actus Purus
    Among those with various a/theological Peircean stances, some have argued that the
    architectonic is either inherently atheistic or theistic. For example, certain theists may point to
    Peirce’s “Neglected Argument for the Reality of God,” wherein he abducted the Ens
    Necessarium, as evidence that it’s theistic.
    As an informal, inductive-abductive inference, to me, Peirce’s Ens Necessarium could justifiably
    be conceived as closely related to or perhaps even derived from the First Principles. As such, it
    would intuitively draw a distinction between determinate and nondeterminate realities.
    What the abduction of the Ens Necessarium wouldn’t a priori implicate, however, is whether or
    not the nature of such necessity would merely nomological or also clearly ontological. We could
    say that the former implicates an Analogia Axiomata, while the latter further intuits an
    Analogia Entis.
    So, the Ens Necessarium conception presents a metaphysical a la carte menu – not only to
    diverse monist, dualist, pluralist & dipolarist meta-ontologies, but also – to various idealist,
    materialist, physicalist, naturalist & supernaturalist ontologies.
    In other words, conceptually, it’s a bring your own ontology heuristic.
    For example, a materialist monist intuition of being, which might locate an Actus Purus
    in a physical dynamical energy plenum, ontologically & immanently, would conceive any
    transcendent Ens Necessarium in strictly nomological terms. Such a minimalist conception of
    transcendence would, therefore, further employ the Peircean methodology solely in terms of a
    search for reality’s necessary boundary & limit conditions, essentially probing physical reality’s
    manifold & multiform generalities, probabilities & regularities to specify which might be
    necessitarian in nature.
    A minimalist transcendent methodology would interrogate physical reality, for example, asking
    such questions as whether it’s NECESSARILY

     volumetrically in/finite,
     geometrically un/bounded or un/closed,
     topologically un/re/curved, spatialized temporally,
     temporalized spatially,
     essentially or emergently spatio-temporal,
     a/symmetric,
    1. essentially non/inflationary,
    1. quasi/exponentially expansionary,
    1. dimensionally 2/3/4/more-D,
    1. homo/hetero/genous,
    1. an/isotropic,
    1. uni/multi/versial,
    1. with dimension/less physical constancy,
    1. with non/universal constancy,
    1. nomologically im/mutable
    1. and on and on and on.
    Answers to certain of these questions will necessarily implicate answers to certain others.
    Methodological stipulations of putative answers generate interpretive models, variously testable,
    empirically, and variously falsifiable, theoretically and/or practically.
    Such an approach to an Actus Purus would necessarily conceive all existents and most
    regularities nominalistically. The Ens Necessarium, alone, would be conceived essentially per
    an Analogia Axiomata, accounting for regularity-like necessities.
    Or, for example, a supernaturalist intuition of being, conceiving both an Analogia
    Axiomata, nomologically, and Analogia Entis, ontologically, would conceptually locate an Actus
    Purus in a robustly transcendent way. There are as many competing interpretive models of this
    Ens Necessarium conception as there are, well, just for one example, inflationary models of the
    cosmos:

    Is The Inflationary Universe A Scientific Theory? Not Anymore


    The problem with inflation isn’t the idea per se, but the overproduction of useless inflationary
    models. There are literally hundreds of these models, and they are – as the philosophers say –
    severely underdetermined. This means if one extrapolates the models that fit current data to
    regimes which are still untested, the result is ambiguous. Different models lead to very different
    predictions for not-yet made observations. Presently, it is therefore utterly pointless to twiddle
    with the details of inflation because there are literally infinitely many models that one can think
    up, giving rise to infinitely many different “predictions.” ~ Sabine Hossenfelder
    Regarding, then, those putative Analogia Axiomata & the Analogia Entis
    So much turns on whether nature's contingent existents are mute, brute or fruit vis a vis their
    primal being (materially), primal support (efficiently), primal ground (formally) & primal goal
    (finally).
    They, thus far, appear mute regarding same, at least, in terms of our modeling attempts, which
    remain referential & descriptive, exploratorily, but not finally interpreted, explanatorily.
    Whether they are brute or fruit turns on whether or not a final mereological interpretation of
    nature explains a model of reality as a whole as the mere brute sum of its parts, or as either
    greater than the sum of its parts or even hierarchically transcended by some supernatural
    reality, of which both the whole of nature and its parts, would be the clear fruit.
    Whether nature's brute or fruit, there must be some necessary aspect transcending any mere
    regularities. If brute, its models must still specify some nomological necessities. If fruit, its
    models must specify additional ontological as well as nomological necessities. The vigilant
    observer will note an implicit explanatory tension that presents, here, in terms of which model
    properly avoids any fallacy of composition. That cannot be known a priori. While we wouldn't
    deny the in principle knowability of the fallacy's applicability, a posteriori, practically, it could
    remain extremely problematic indefinitely.
    Once stipulating to specific, static, essentialist nomological necessities, if nature as a whole is
    defined in terms of an eternal dynamical plenum, whether of physical energy and/or energy plus
    consciousness (as primitives), then its remaining properties, existents & relations will admit
    only of nominalist characterizations and all of nature's efficient, material, formal & final causes
    will be emergently closed, i.e. both epistemologically & ontologically reducible, solely in terms of
    that plenum's fundamental nature.
    For example, if a physical energy plenum, its forms & ends would be, ultimately, wholly
    determined & capturable, in principle, in their mathematical formulations, i.e. physical
    equations, even if not wholly predictive due to intrinsic observer constraints, as the model
    couldn't escape the self-referentiality that would inhere due to its modeler being modeled
    therein.
    The physical energy plenum's dynamical properties & existents would, via a nonstrict identity,
    functionally & structurally perdure, i.e. efficiently & materially, solely in terms of their relations
    to sources of energy, i.e. formally appropriating energy & finally dissipating it, entropically.
    Even in an idealist model, which would take consciousness as a primitive, a nonstrict identity
    would apply to the practical (not essentialist) self, efficiently & ideally, solely in terms of its
    relations to the primal source of consciousness, i.e. formally appropriating it via participatory
    dynamics & finally dissipating it, entropically, as it substratively & creatively diffuses.
    I will not further explicate, for example, Thomist supernaturalist accounts, for example, with
    their appropriations of Aristotelian hylomorphism. (Other accounts can be semiotic, analytic,
    process and so forth). Those hardly require the explication that I provided in the causal account,
    above, providing analogues for efficient, material, formal & final causation for physical & idealist
    monist conceptions, because many more are already, at least somewhat, familiar with those
    Thomist approaches.
    We mustn't pretend, however, that the entropic accounts take us any further toward ultimate
    explanatory adequacy than competing models of nature. They, too, remain mere exploratory
    heuristics, for, in the very same way that analogous telic realities present vis a vis new qualities
    of existence, so, too, the concept, entropy, is way too vague to accomplish the explanatory heavy-
    lifting that some naively imagine they've accomplished employing it.
    Thermodynamic systems entropy, information systems entropy & evolutionary entropy (rate of
    organismal environmental energy appropriations & reinvestments in survival & reproduction)
    are indeed formally homologous & certainly hierarchically interdependent entropieS. We can
    describe that interdependency but that doesn't EXPLAIN it!
    Actually, I need to edit this one & will do so explicitly to better reinforce the point:
    THIS: We can describe that interdependency but that doesn't EXPLAIN it!
    S/H/B: We can successfully REFER to that interdependency but that doesn't mean we have even
    successfully DESCRIBED it, yet, much less EXPLAINED it!
    And, when we do proffer explanations, that doesn't mean they can't be LAYERED (as Jack
    Haught has accessibly explained for decades). They may even need to be layered in order to
    make proper contextual sense of it all. (And no, we don't employ Occam's Razor to adjudicate
    competing accounts that don't already enjoy explanatory adequacy.)

    A Reply to "First Mover is also the Universal Governor"


    https://strangenotions.com/how-aquinass-first-mover-is-also-universal-
    governor/
    Perhaps the problem with merely "emergent phenomena" is the "merely"?
    It's certainly not with the emergentist account, itself. It's when one further characterizes the
    phenomena in terms of variously weak & strong emergence and strong & weak supervenience.
    Otherwise, emergentism is "merely" a heuristic device, which bookmarks determinate reality's
    most intractable aporia, locating various origins of novelty in terms of "aboutness." The most
    familiar include quantum, cosmic & biogenetic origins as well as those for consciousness
    (sentience) and symbolic language (sapience).
    At each level of increasing complexity or ontological density, novel nomicities present, which
    suggest, in my view, analogous teloi & not some univocal telos. This is to say that not all of
    reality appears telic in a robustly teleological sense, which implicates end-intendedness.
    Nomologically, we also encounter realities that are variously end-unbounded, at quantum
    origins, let's say teleopotent; end-stated, at cosmic origins, or teleomatic; end-directed, at
    biogenetic origins, or teleonomic; and end-purposed, when sentience emerges, or teleoqualic.
    Now, these are just phenomenological denominative connotations that don't imply anything
    robustly denotative in a determinative sense. They aspire to successfully refer, semantically, to
    some rather distinct aboutnesses that we've encountered along our way, but without pretending
    to successfully describe, ontologically, those same realities in terms of various primitives, givens,
    axioms & such. They're only vague nomological categories, where different law-like properties
    emerge, none of which completely lend themselves to either epistemic or ontological reduction.
    Now, if those vaguely referenced teloi serve as a mere exploratory heuristic rather than a
    robustly explanatory account, how much more vague is our Aristotelian telos & how much less
    should anyone pretend it's an explanatory system?

    As CS Peirce noted, it's easy to be certain; all one has to do is to remain sufficiently
    vague!

    Now, I'm personally drawn to an hylomorphic heuristic with its formal causal acts in potency to
    final causes. But I use it to help me keep my modal ontological categories straight, not to
    adjudicate competing quantum interpretations, cosmogonic accounts, biogenetic hypotheses,
    philosophies of mind or language origin theories. For sure, it doesn't tell me which of reality's
    generalities & nomicities are merely regularist or clearly necessitarian, which indeterminacies
    are epistemic or ontic, in/determinable or in/determined. Sure, some are ontologically
    suggestive but none are metaphysically decisive.
    Bottomline, we mustn't be too quick to charge other heuristic accounts with all manner of
    irrationalities, as long as they employ, in my view, a weak principle of sufficient reason in the
    form - not of the epistemic equivalent of a 1st Principle, but - of a "mere" metanomological
    heuristic, which honors both the laws of nature and of logic and not, instead, some inflated
    sense of rationality, which flirts with a metaphysical rationalism & naive realism.
    Any coherent metanomological heuristic or PSRmn would not deny that there must, in
    principle, necessarily be some noncausal ultimate explanations that would refer, denominatively
    & determinatively, in different ways and to various extents, to some primal-ultimate reality,
    which, lacking a causal explanation, must be explained in terms of its own nature. Who, though,
    is to a priori specify whether that nondeterminate nomicity would govern, bound & condition
    divine energeia versus some dynamical energy plenum?
    I appreciate that certain philosophies of mind & cosmologies & philosophical anthropologies
    prove too much. But they all seem to deny too much, too, sometimes. Those flaky accounts,
    whether deflationarily ignostic & eliminative of various true aporia or inflationarily gnostic &
    apodictic with their expansive use of self-evidentials, deserve cursory dismissals. But there are
    other highly nuanced & self-critical competing a/theological accounts that are, in my view,
    equiplausible, which can serve us all as much better foils to tighten up our competing
    tautologies?
    This approach is further developed here:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2019/03/04/how-the-principle-of-
    sufficient-reason-bolsters-theism-and-not/

    How the Principle of Sufficient Reason bolsters Theism (and not)


    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.
    While I resonate more with a Scotistic/Peircean approach, properly understood, it reconciles
    well enough with an Aristotelian hylomorphism. I wonder, though, how many would agree that
    its strength does not present as much in terms of any explanatory adequacy but, instead, as an
    exploratory heuristic device?
    And it properly guides one via analogia from determinate modes of being to the threshold of
    nondeterminate modes of identity, at which point, claims would not yet be distinctly
    a/theological? That particular step gets rather tacitly imported into one's implicit or explicit
    PSR, which can embed one's a/theological conclusions in its very definitions, which then rather
    sneakily implicate non/intentional realities. And this happens, perhaps, when one imports some
    un/reflectively preconceived philosophy of mind stance, as if they've some gnostic access to a
    Consciousness Explained?
    Effectively, such a philosophy of mind takes hold as soon as one presupposes either a univocity
    of telos or an equivocity of teloi or even an analogia of teloi, which I take as an Analogia
    Axiomata in order to recognize reality's plurality of aboutnesses.
    Because it's rather inescapable that a novel and robust teleo-logic presents in the emergence of
    Homo sapiens, there should be nothing terribly controversial, semantically, in referencing that
    phenomenon of symbolic consciousness by predicating it in terms of formal & final causes.
    The problem comes, instead, when one metaphysically grounds this telos as if it were necessarily
    an ontological primitive, essentially placing consciousness along side space, time, mass &
    energy, for example. Whether this gets accomplished via some Cartesian dualism, idealist
    monism or even an Aristotelian hylomorphism that would further hypothesize the reality of
    disembodiable souls matters little. One has thereby invoked a univocity of telos in a reality
    where causes are pervasively intentional in origin.
    Alternatively, one could metaphysically ground this telos as if it were necessarily
    epiphenomenally emergent, hypostasizing reality's plurality of aboutnesses as if they
    ontologically derive, unidirectionally, from only upwardly causal material primitives. Whether
    this gets accomplished via some eliminative materialism, reductive physicalism, strongly
    supervenient emergentism or materialist monism matters little. One has thereby invoked an
    equivocity of teloi in a reality where causes are pervasively mechanistic in origin.
    Finally, one could invoke an analogy of teloi, which semantically (grounds) employs a univocity
    to refer to reality's plurality of aboutnesses using sufficiently vague causal references but which
    metaphysically grounds telos using analogies of proportion & attribution to properly distinguish
    determinate causal nomicities from putative nondeterminate noncausal nomicities. Whether
    this gets accomplished via some Aristotelian hylomorphism, weakly supervenient nonreductive
    physicalism or pragmatic semiotic realism matters little. One will have prescinded from any
    robust ontological account to a vague phenomenological heuristic.
    At this point, in an Analogia Axiomata, due to a proper metaphysical bracketing, all ontological
    bets are still on vis a vis monisms, dualisms & pluralisms, im/materialisms, non/reductive
    physicalisms, idealisms, agnosticisms, atheisms, any of which, when properly articulated with
    logical consistency, external congruence, internal coherence, hypothetical consonance &
    interdisciplinary consilience, can compete equiplausibly with the others.
    How, then, does anyone epistemically bust a move past an essential metaphysical agnosticism?
    Speculatively, we all end up employing - not deductively conclusive, but - inductively &
    abductively suggestive cumulative case-like approaches. Logically, first principles, common
    sense notions of causality & principles of sufficient reason nondeductively ground our
    rationality. Ontologically, laws of nature & other regularities nomologically ground reality's
    intelligibility, ampliatively guided by analogical heuristics. A problem regarding the nature of
    universals presents, including which nomicities are non/determinate, non/causal, in/finite,
    eternal or ephemeral, or real, conceptual or nominal. Here it is that we must start leaping,
    existentially, reasoning practically under speculative uncertainty regarding options that William
    James recognized as forced & vital. Here we turn over our bucket of epistemic frogs to see them
    leaping at various heights & distances and in every metaphysical direction.
    How do we justify our leaps?
    We all, in essence, appeal pragmatically to basic pre-propositional stances, which some refer to
    as self-evident but which turn out to be methodologically indispensable inductive-abductive
    inferences, which beg no deductive proofs & serve our episteme axiomatically. While it is one
    thing to evade deductive demonstration, it's a wholly different matter to survive a reductio ad
    absurdum or parody of one's particular stance regarding the nomological reliability of one's
    "epistemically privileged" inductions & abductions.
    More concretely, when eliminative materialists deny the exploratory necessity & explanatory
    adequacy of formal & final causes, at the same time, they are not denying the relations that
    obtain between various physical entities. They are, rather, suggesting that both the laws of
    nature & of logic, metanomologically, are nondeductive equations that model reality while, in
    principle, not delivering explanations, because they are, unavoidably, inductive-abductive
    deliverances, just like first principles, common sense causality, belief in other minds and
    principles of sufficient reason. For them, the Analogia Axiomata terminate in these noncaused
    nondeterminate axioms, dying an explanatory Godelian death in the energy plenum, itself,
    where its nomic realities lack a causal explanation but are otherwise "explained" in terms of
    their own nature, i.e. noncaused, nondeterminate & axiomatic. Necessary Axiomata.
    I know what you're thinking: "Explained? Really?"
    Now you know how question begging appeals to Necessary Being come across to many?
    Still, faced with forced & vital options in our practical reasoning under uncertainty, how do we
    otherwise adjudicate, before leaping, between epistemic & ontological options that,
    speculatively, all remain live?
    Well, beyond further plausibilistic, cumulative case-like reasoning, evidentially, inductively
    testing our competing hermeneutics, pragmatically, we all employ, aware or unawares, an
    equiplausibility principle, which is not inconsistent with either evolution's biological,
    sociological & anthropological imperatives or religion's transcendental imperatives: Do the
    most life-giving & relationship-enhancing thing you can do in each present
    moment.
    Thus, with Reason as our guide & Love as our imperative, when faced with Kant's
    interrogatories: What can I know? What may I hope for? What must I do? ---
    We can reasonably hope to know what we must do, which is to love!
    As we each aspire to the most eminently actionable existential leap, let us patiently forbear with
    one another's existential orientations. In my worldview, not only has special revelation gifted a
    gratuity of grace, which others may not have doxastically appropriated and others may have
    mystically encountered, I believe the Spirit processed forth in a gratuity of creation, which has
    underwritten all human reason & values, which most have indeed appropriated, if formatively
    fortunate. Others, whose worldviews differ from my own, even if greatly, who display reason and
    proceed in love, have something to offer me. And, I believe, they deserve in kind reciprocation.

    A wise man, Dan Fogelberg, once sang:


    I have these moments
    All steady and strong
    I'm feeling so holy and humble
    The next thing I know
    I'm all worried and weak
    And I feel myself starting to crumble

    The meanings get lost


    And the teachings get tossed
    And you don't know what
    You're going to do next
    You wait for the sun
    But it never quite comes
    Some kind of message
    Comes through to you
    Some kind of message comes through

    And it says to you. . .

    Love when you can


    Cry when you have to
    Be who you must
    That's a part of the plan
    Await your arrival
    With simple survival
    And one day we'll all understand
    Meanwhile - 
    What makes some theistic formulations controversial, i.e. not universally compelling, is that
    they implicitly invoke some principle of sufficient reason but without specifying which version.
    Stronger versions are untenable such as regarding free will & determinism. Propositional
    versions can conflict with our conceptions regarding the divine will and often reify propositions
    and then treat them as we do subsistent substances. Existential or causal versions must refer to
    more than materio-energetic causations. All versions will typically be argued variously
    employing formal syllogisms, semi-formal heuristics or even quasi-formal possible world
    semantics in conjunction with premises that are variously un/controversial, some representing
    supposedly self-evident abductive-inductive inferences refutable only by reductio appeals.
    Even when such arguments are logically valid and employ relatively noncontroversial premises,
    however, too often, their conclusions don't so much follow from their fallacy-free logic or
    uncontroversial premises but moreso lie rather tacitly embedded in the definitions of their
    terms, which craftily (or maybe, sometimes, even unreflectively) will variously employ either
    overly broad or overly narrow conceptions, which then, to the more vigilant, will come off as
    variously incoherent, mutually incompatible or downright dubious, leading to the conclusion
    that the argument is unsound. And this applies to such conceptions as "basic propositions" or
    "necessary entity" or even "sufficient reason," itself.
    Weaker metaphysical or metanomological versions seem indispensable & eminently defensible!
    Still, it would be highly controversial to elevate same from a common sense, provisional,
    methodological stipulation to an ontological, first principle & metaphysical verity (something
    we dare not do with, for example, our commitment to methodological naturalism).
    Maritain accepts the PSR as among the first principles (applying to all being, created &
    uncreated) , but Gilson, properly in my view, sees the formula as leading back to
    noncontradiction (applying to things both necessary & contingent).
    Even as a first principle, we can distinguish between denying whether such as noncontradiction
    or a PSR is true and denying whether or not it's applicable or limited in scope, e.g. modally
    (noncontradiction holds for probabilities & necessities but folds for possibilities).
    So, we must be thoughtful regarding which common sense intuitions we imagine to be (or
    elevate to) explanatory primitives or absolute first principles, after which we must properly
    restrict the scope of their application, such as when, modally, we aspire to move from the vague
    to the precise (Peircean firstness), from the conceptually possible to the existentially actual
    (secondness), from the general to the specific (thirdness), where both noncontradiction &
    excluded middle may variously hold or fold and we may have to metaphysically prescind from
    necessity to probability.
    We must not reify “nothing,” as “from nothing” (“ex nihilo”) means, rather, "not from
    anything."
    A contrastive account of the PSR fits well with Peirce's description of abductive inference,
    which addresses: why this state of affairs & not otherwise? Hence, the PSR indicates that
    contrastive questions always have answers (an approach not adequately justified by Della
    Rocca's & Pruss's arguments). On its own terms, the PSR requires contrastive explanations
    (sometimes in terms of sets of reasons). And, if expanded to include explanations of a thing in
    terms of its own nature, such existential properties will require synthetic exploration beyond
    mere analytic explication.
    As such, the PSR best be understood as a metanomological heuristic, which guides our causal
    explanations of variously indeterminate modal realities, whether overdetermined or vague
    possibilities, underdetermined or generalized probabilities or wholly determined necessities, not
    a priori taking any given indeterminacy as epistemic and/or ontic, i.e. merely methodologically
    constrained vs ontologically occulted, in principle.
    Nomic determinism entails that events & states change - not in isolation, but - always via
    relations but doesn't entail causal determinism, for not all events are causally related and not all
    processes are causally originated by, for example, new materio-energetic conversions or
    expenditures, even though they may well otherwise be influenced, nomically, by a variety of
    teloi, e.g. including previously embedded material formal causes.
    A suitably restricted PSR will not raise objections from considerations of the divine will,
    quantum mechanics, Godelian incompleteness and objective randomness (and of course needn't
    counter nonsensical objections like the modal quandaries of "grand conjunctive propositions").
    Further, when any given PSR version algorithmically maps to theism, then that PSR, itself, can
    in turn be undermined by any charges of incoherence in various theistic conceptions. Of course,
    if a given PSR maps only to a necessary entity, it wouldn't necessarily also lead to a personal
    being (at least not uncontroversially).
    It's best to receive the PSR - not as an indubitable metaphysical theorem, but - as
    an indispensable metanomological heuristic.
    The more generalized we make such a principle, the less work it can actually accomplish,
    epistemologically, and the more antinomies it will occasion ontologically, as it gets
    misappropriated to prove too much & say way more than we could possibly know.
    Weaker claims vis a vis the PSR will be more universally compelling. For example, Scotus
    modally restricts it to "real possibilities," i.e. those consistent with the basic laws (nomicities)
    and structures (forms) of the physical world. And he primarily applies it - not to accidentally,
    but - essentially ordered series.
    As with Scotus' argument, the real work to be accomplished by any PSR version vis a vis theism
    will not result in a conclusive demonstration (e.g. of an absolutely first efficient cause associated
    with any essentially ordered series), but instead will provide compelling intuitive support for
    theism's possibility.

    Few accept the strong Principle of Sufficient Reason - that there's indeed a sufficient
    explanation for any fact in the world, but most embrace a weak version of PSR, e.g. as a
    metanomological heuristic, which entails that POSSIBLY such facts have an explanation. (e.g.
    Pruss employs a weak version like Scotus, but Pruss' version might still entail a strong PSR.)
    While this weak version can't sustain the deductive cosmological argument (as it doesn't finally
    require an explanation for the contingent), it does demonstrate that, if the contingent does have
    an explanation, its best version would be based on God-like activity, certainly consistent with
    classical theism but requiring further arguments to get there and even more to conclude to the
    requisite attributes.
    This weak PSR locates its justification in both the pragmatics of explanation & metaphysics of
    contingency (for me, Peirce's modal ontology & semiotic realism).
    As long as one doesn't deny the reality of eternal necessities, a priori, and of temporal
    nomicities, a posteriori, they will be affirming reality's intelligibility & demonstrating their own
    rationality, implicitly subscribing to a principle of sufficient reason by the fact of their explicit
    employment of just such an indispensable metanomological heuristic. And they wouldn't
    surrender their own rationality if, after the affirming the necessities & nomicities of a weak (e.g.
    Scotistic-Peircean more so than Gale-Pruss) version of the PSR, they don't otherwise find
    subsequent cosmological arguments & divine attributions to be sufficiently compelling.
    A fine little encyclopedia entry:
    https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-
    almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/sufficient-reason-principle
    Afterward - Who's Irrational and Whose Irrationalism?

    Atheism is implicitly irrationalist insofar as it must deny PSR so as to avoid theism. Ed Feser
    I’m certain Feser would follow in a manner like DBH, who, himself, does not see philosophical
    atheism as an intellectually valid or cogent position but as fundamentally irrational?
    Certainly, like DBH he would qualify it as a much more limited assertion than it appears on the
    surface, for example, acknowledging that atheism’s neither intellectually contemptible nor
    suffers any deep logical inconsistency in its embrace of an ultimate absurdity. He’d also say that
    naturalism simply entails that nature equipped our brains for survival but not for access to
    abstract truths about the totality of things, but that none of this makes atheism untenable in any
    final sense and that it may be perfectly rational to embrace absurdity. (Cf. David Bentley Hart,
    The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (2013) Yale University Press)
    Now, others might counter that God similarly equipped our brains regarding the totality of
    things, which is why the lexicon of believers necessarily includes words like faith, hope and
    dogma?
    And the astute philosophical observer might suggest that Feser and Hart’s chief complaint is not
    really that it's epistemically irrational but that atheism’s realist philosophy is (unacceptably to
    them) implicitly pragmatic and nonfoundational, that, rather than proceeding from
    indubitably self-evident premises, instead, it plausibilistically but fallibilistically employs
    inductive-abductive inferences, both prior and subsequent to its deductive clarifications, in an
    ongoing irreducibly triadic inferential cycling, which progressively enhances the modeling
    power of reality for both individuals and earnest communities of inquiry. And that it even
    aspires to a plausible articulation of more nearly ultimate truths but in a more informal
    cumulative case-like approach rather than one that gifts them with the apodictic certainty,
    which some seem to embrace. Regarding such certainties, while I would hesitate to rob anyone
    of certain consolations that might flow from such attitudes (yes, essentially dispositions not
    propositions), at the same time, the existential dangers some can pose for societies or even
    ultimately our species compel me to dispossess any and all of such notions.
    They may further object that some forms of pragmatism are vulgar in the Rortyian sense, but
    that’s a separate concern and not exhaustive of other nonfoundational or even weak
    foundational critical realisms, none of which elevate the postmodern critique into a system but
    most of which incorporate responses to same, responses which essentially jettisoned any
    remnants of metaphysical rationalisms and naïve realisms.
    And, I’m quite certain that philosophers as astute as Feser and Hart have epistemologically
    followed suit even though, perhaps due to a rare combination of erudite eloquence and
    pugnacious polemics, their charges of epistemic vice are often intended to be more limited and
    less offensive than they can initially appear to us metaphysical luddites, who, by the way, have a
    very difficult time distinguishing the foundationalists’ self-evident truths from the
    nonfoundationalists’ pragmatically justified inductive-abductive inferences, which makes it
    really difficult to further distinguish their manifold and multiform rational proofs from
    pragmatically motivated cumulative case-like arguments.
    Thus, they’ll forgive those who struggle to discern the very fine nuances involved in how it is
    they distinguish the rational and irrational, effectively very narrowly conceiving the former,
    expansively so – the latter?
    Notes on Situating Meta-Nomological Heuristics
    Below are emergentist categories that are agnostic to ontological primitives, in other words,
    neither invoking supervenience nor distinguishing weak & strong emergence, hence, consistent
    w/panpsychism, non/reductive physicalism, etc. Where one stops, explanatorily, will associate
    one with various causally non/reductive stances, for example, regarding a philosophy of mind.

    Quantum Origins are Teleopotent – end-unbounded: materio-energetic & quantumly


    causal
     Cosmic Origins are Teleomatic – end-stated: spatio-temporal & materially-efficiently
    causal
     Biogenetic Origins are Teleonomic – end-directed: sensori-perceptive & instinctually
    abductive w/experience = mereological sum of parts functioning per meta-
    nomological heuristics
     Sentient Origins are Teleoqualic – end-purposed: instinctually abductive & formally
    causal (downward) w/experience > mereological sum of functioning parts but still
    computational
     Sapient Origins are Teleologic – end-intended: symbolically inferential & finally
    causal w/ experience > mereological sum of functioning parts & non-computational
    Metaphysical Stances for Sorting
    methodological stipulations
    metaphysical presuppositions
    modal identities
    modal ontologies
    semantic & metaphysical grammars & groundings (roles of first principles)
    epistemological justifications (roles of PSRs, common sense, noninferentials & other axiomata)
    ontological primitives
    mereological efficacies
    nomological realities
    axiological origins
    moral realisms
    philosophies of mind
    an entity's intelligence (degrees)
    reality's intelligibility (degrees)
    absolutist, necessitarian & infallibilist vs in/determinate, probabilistic & fallibilistic (role of
    principle of excluded middle)
    conceptions of freedom
    a/theological
    One simply can not a priori pretend to know to which metaphysical stances another subscribes
    solely from, for example, which worldview they hold regarding putative primal origins and
    ultimate realities, as if, for example, a particular philosophy of mind would necessarily be
    entailed by a given a/theological stance. At the same time, where one chooses to stop,
    explanatorily, for example, invoking various ignosticisms, will indeed logically foreclose on
    certain worldviews, for example, an eliminative materialism forecloses on all theistic stances
    (pantheism, panentheisms, classical theisms).
    It's best to categorize Naturalism > Physicalism > Materialism - because
    Naturalism needn't a priori define ontological primitives, e.g. consciousness could be a
    primitive.
    Physicalism needn't a priori entail causal reductionism, e.g. Nancey Murphy's conception of the
    soul.
    Materialism does a priori exclude metaphysical teloi, e.g. metaphysical ignosticism.
    Also, one must be clear whether these categories are being applied strictly in a modal ontology
    of being, e.g. anthropologically, or for all metaphysical modes of identity, e.g. for reality writ
    large, primally & ultimately.
    THEREFORE:
    It may be more coherent to apply degrees of ir/rationality (variously adequate or sufficient) to
    only one type of reality, the personal, while describing reality writ large in terms of degrees of
    nomicity (variously adequate or sufficient) and perhaps of absurdism.
    There simply are no Necessary Mutual Entailments for Atheism and any particular
    Anthropological Heuristic but there are some unilateral entailments where a given heuristic will
    entail atheism and/or absurdism/irrationalism.
    Eliminative materialism entails atheism but does not entail irrationalism (a rejection of
    metanomological heuristics as a weak PSR) unless one uses a rather narrow conception of
    reason and expansive one of irrationality. Metanomological heuristics don’t require an
    epistemic resolution of whether laws of natures & logics are necessitarian or regularist, eternal
    or temporal, perduring or ephemeral.
    Anthropological (Personal) Frame
    Descriptive Heuristics – Epistemological: Radical Skepticism, Solipsism, Foundationalism
    (strong, weak) Nonfoundationalism (coherentist, radically deconstructivist), Evolutionary
    Epistemology
    Interpretive Heuristics - Metaphysical Nominalism, Essentialism, Conceptualism, Pragmatism
    (vulgar, semiotic, etc)
    Ontological Heuristics - Realism (naturalist, physicalist, materialist), Idealism (panpsychist),
    Hylomorphism
    Evaluative Heuristics - Voluntarism, Intellectualism, Intellectualist Voluntarism (Scotist) or
    Voluntarist Intellectualism (Thomist), Sociobiological, Evolutionary Axiology
    Normative Heuristics - Moral Relativism, Moral Realism, Moral Absolutism, Moral Probabilism
    Transcendental Frame - Existentialism, Nihilism, Absurdism, A/theisms, Agnosticisms,
    Ignosticism
    Im/Personal Heuristics - a/theological & anthropological
    Modes of Identity Heuristics
    Modes of Being Heuristics
    Concerning Modes of Identity for Nondeterminate Realities
    Ultimate Explanations are noncausal.
    A reality lacking a causal explanation would be explained in terms of its own nature.
    First principles & PSR are nondeductive but are intelligible in the context of inductive &
    abductive processes.

    Feser writes:
    When philosophers employ inductive reasoning they are essentially rejecting the claim that the
    future will not be relevantly like the past nor the unobserved like the observed, on the grounds
    that this would make future and otherwise unobserved phenomena inexplicable.
    Perhaps some do, but most are essentially relying on the possibility that the future will be
    relevantly like the past, on the grounds that, if it is, the future and otherwise unobserved
    phenomena will be explicable, while, if it is not, it will be inexplicable in terms of past inductive
    & abductive processes.
    But, this would not be to claim that future realities would be, in principle, inexplicable, only to
    recognize that our inductive-abductive processes may not be equipped to reliably explain
    unobserved phenomena from either the distant future or past, much less atemporal regularities
    and/or necessities.
    This is also to recognize that we can’t a priori say which present nomological realities are by
    their very nature merely regularist or robustly necessitarian, but that it’s unreasonable to deny
    that, at least, some formal realities are necessary.
    Applying Abelardian-like modes of identity & being, as we do, for example, in divine
    (nondeterminate) & determinate syllogistics, any such necessary reality that lacks a causal
    explanation and is to be explained in terms of its own nature would be explicable using – not
    determinate, but – nondeterminate syllogistics (semi-formal heuristics), where modes of
    identity (not being) apply, including the essential, exemplificatory and formal.
    Essential identity, a semantic connotation or ground, refers to an immanent universal (not a
    Platonist standard form), a numerically singular or individual reality that is communicable to—
    predicable of— any exemplificatory (nonsubstantial & nondeterminate) supposita, which refer
    to metaphysical denotations or grounds, that fall under it.
    Formal identity refers to connotative-denotative realities, i.e. real relations, e.g. regularities,
    generalities & neccesities.
    Any coherent metanomological heuristic or PSR would not deny that there must, in principle,
    necessarily be some noncausal ultimate explanations that would refer, denominatively &
    determinatively, in different ways and to various extents, to some primal-ultimate reality, which,
    lacking a causal explanation, must be explained in terms of its own nature.
    At the same time, that would not necessarily implicate, 1) essentially & connotatively, propria
    that are divine attributes; 2) exemplificatorily & denotatively, idiomata that are divine persons
    or, in any other way, personal; or 3) formally & nomologically, energeia that implicate divine
    vestigia & oikonomia. While such implications are undeniably rational, consistent & coherent
    and would flow, even necessarily, from some strong PSR versions, from less controversial PSRs
    a cosmological argument would not entail a personal first cause. That would require further
    argumentation, after which attributes would require additional derivations.
    One would not want to deny that primal energeia must necessarily be conditioned by noncausal
    realities that could, in principle, be explained in nondeterminate terms of modal identity:
    essential propria, exemplificatory idiomata & formal energeia (energy in relationship). And
    such an explication would model whether or not such a dynamical energy plenum is necessarily
    volumetrically in/finite, manifoldly un/bounded, geometrically un/curved, topologically
    simple/complex and so on and locate any putative noncausal conditions, which we could
    hypothesize through abduction, hypothetically, and test through induction, experimentally, but
    not prove via deduction, formally, as such noncausal realities would be explained merely in
    terms of their own nature.
    If such a noncaused reality were, however, personal & self-determinate, then such a divine esse
    naturale & intentionale would invite further reflection regarding PSR implications.
    Closing Remarks

    My late friend, Jim Arraj, explicated Maritain's degrees of knowledge. He


    explored philosophical contemplation, objective intuition of being, subjective intuition of being,
    mysticism of self & mystical contemplation --- none set over against the other, all furnishings of
    our holistic epistemic suite, all consonant with Lonergan's theological anthropology.
    Whatever our discursive or nondiscursive experience, prerational, nonrational, rational,
    suprarational or irrational, in order to best realize its fruits as well as to avoid any value-
    frustrations, human rationality must engage it in post-experiential processing and must do so in
    a community of earnest inquiry, wherein communal discernment can apply normative criteria to
    our descriptions, interpretations, evaluations, norms & transformations, justifying them in
    terms of - not only right believing, but - right belonging, right desiring, right behaving and right
    becoming.
    Down thru millenia, even whole communities have gone astray, when they've traded any
    earnestness of inquiry for the expediencies of tribal exigencies. One hallmark of such epistemic-
    axiological perversity will typically involve both excessive broadenings & narrowings of criteria
    for epistemic & moral virtues & vices, excluding as many others from all manner of virtues,
    which must be reserved to one's tribe, including as many others in all manner of vices, which
    just never afflict one's tribe.
    It has been a long considered opinion of mine that we simply cannot use a/theological criteria,
    alone, to a priori sort individuals from various worldviews into either epistemic or moral
    categories of either vice or virtue, including charges of irrationality, however absurd the ultimate
    consequences of their particular stances, which are seldom monolithic & often highly nuanced.
    This is not to deny that, for most every hermeneutic, there are cases of doxastic disaster & moral
    catastrophe, but those must be teased out, point by point, person by person & school by school,
    and not by categorical dismissal.
    As a case in point, consider:

    https://strangenotions.com/how-aquinass-first-mover-is-also-
    universal-governor/
    Perhaps the problem with merely "emergent phenomena" is the "merely"?
    It's certainly not with the emergentist account, itself. It's when one further characterizes the
    phenomena in terms of variously weak & strong emergence and strong & weak supervenience.
    Otherwise, emergentism is "merely" a heuristic device, which bookmarks determinate reality's
    most intractable aporia, locating various origins of novelty in terms of "aboutness." The most
    familiar include quantum, cosmic & biogenetic origins as well as those for consciousness
    (sentience) and symbolic language (sapience).
    At each level of increasing complexity or ontological density, novel nomicities present, which
    suggest, in my view, analogous teloi & not some univocal telos. This is to say that not all of
    reality appears telic in a robustly teleological sense, which implicates end-intendedness.
    Nomologically, we also encounter realities that are variously end-unbounded, at quantum
    origins, let's say teleopotent; end-stated, at cosmic origins, or teleomatic; end-directed, at
    biogenetic origins, or teleonomic; and end-purposed, when sentience emerges, or teleoqualic.
    Now, these are just phenomenological denominative connotations that don't imply anything
    robustly denotative in a determinative sense. They aspire to successfully refer, semantically, to
    some rather distinct aboutnesses that we've encountered along our way, but without pretending
    to successfully describe, ontologically, those same realities in terms of various primitives, givens,
    axioms & such. They're only vague nomological categories, where different law-like properties
    emerge, none of which completely lend themselves to either epistemic or ontological reduction.
    Now, if those vaguely referenced teloi serve as a mere exploratory heuristic rather than a
    robustly explanatory account, how much more vague is our Aristotelian telos & how much less
    should anyone pretend it's an explanatory system?
    As CS Peirce noted, it's easy to be certain; all one has to do is to remain sufficiently vague!
    Now, I'm personally drawn to an hylomorphic heuristic with its formal causal acts in potency to
    final causes. But I use it to help me keep my modal ontological categories straight, not to
    adjudicate competing quantum interpretations, cosmogonic accounts, biogenetic hypotheses,
    philosophies of mind or language origin theories. For sure, it doesn't tell me which of reality's
    generalities & nomicities are merely regularist or clearly necessitarian, which indeterminacies
    are epistemic or ontic, in/determinable or in/determined. Sure, some are ontologically
    suggestive but none are metaphysically decisive.
    Bottomline, we mustn't be too quick to charge other heuristic accounts with all manner of
    irrationalities, as long as they employ, in my view, a weak principle of sufficient reason in the
    form - not of the epistemic equivalent of a 1st Principle, but - of a "mere" metanomological
    heuristic, which honors both the laws of nature and of logic and not, instead, some inflated
    sense of rationality, which flirts with a metaphysical rationalism & naive realism.
    Any coherent metanomological heuristic or PSRmn would not deny that there must, in
    principle, necessarily be some noncausal ultimate explanations that would refer, denominatively
    & determinatively, in different ways and to various extents, to some primal-ultimate reality,
    which, lacking a causal explanation, must be explained in terms of its own nature. Who, though,
    is to a priori specify whether that nondeterminate nomicity would govern, bound & condition
    divine energeia versus some dynamical energy plenum?
    I appreciate that certain philosophies of mind & cosmologies & philosophical anthropologies
    prove too much. But they all seem to deny too much, too, sometimes. Those flaky accounts,
    whether deflationarily ignostic & eliminative of various true aporia or inflationarily gnostic &
    apodictic with their expansive use of self-evidentials, deserve cursory dismissals. But there are
    other highly nuanced & self-critical competing a/theological accounts that are, in my view,
    equiplausible, which can serve us all as much better foils to tighten up our competing
    tautologies?

    Univocity & Analogy of divine propria, idiomata & qualia vs determinate essences,
    hypostases & quiddities

    Propria (denominative in quale predications) of divine essence are metaphysically grounded as


    primary substance with no act of existence in potency to any essence, unlike the quiddities of a
    determinate essence, which as secondary substances instantiate in otherwise modally distinct
    primary substances.
    Personal modes of being refer to primary substances, while personal modes of identity refer to
    exemplifications, which are nonsubstantial realities. Personal modes of being & identity are both
    determinatively denotative, the latter referring to the nonsubstantial idiomata of
    exemplifications, the former to substantial individual essences of hypostases.
    Formal modes of being & identity both include contextually determinative denotations, but only
    formal modes of being include generically determinative denotations (the what? of genus &
    species or in quid predications).
    Heuristic for Univocal & Analogical God-Talk
    I. connotative or iconic
    A. qualitatively denominative (differentiae)
    1) quale – how
    2) qui – who
    3) quem – whom
    B. vaguely denominative 1) indeterminacy
    vague or precise (distinct) or overdetermined realities
    C. metaphorically & theo-poetically denominative (e.g. certain implicit similarities of divine
    idiomata & individual essences)
    D. analogically & theo-logically denominative (e.g. certain explicit similarities of divine propria
    & ousia)
    II. denotative or indexic
    A. locatively determinative
    spatio-temporal causes & effects & transcendental effects
    1) quando – when
    2) ubi – where
    3) qua – as
    4) unde – whence
    5) quo – whither or existing state
    B. transcendentally determinative determined effects of transcendental causes – putatively &
    abductively inferred from effects proper to no known spatio-temporal causes
    quo – whither or existing state
    no spatio-temporal where or when, atemporality
    C. existentially determinative – implicit ontological argument (Anselmian presuppositions) or
    quo as existing state or that
    D. numerally determinative
    quot – how many
    E. quantitatively determinative
    quantum – how much
    III. connotative-denotative or symbolic
    A. generically determinative
    quid – what
    generic & specific
    B. contextually determinative (generally determinative) including pragmatic semiotic quare –
    why (principle of sufficient reason) including various underdetermined realities or generic
    in/determinacies (generality – general or specific)
    Modes of Being
    Essential or Connotative - denominative & refers to secondary substance or essence
    denominatively connotative
    Personal or Denotative – determinative partially (but sufficiently) contracts denominative &
    refers to primary substance or individual essence or hypostasis or existence
    determinatively denotative
    Formal or Connotative-Denotative Contraction – determinative fully contracts connotative &
    denotative & refers to generically determinative or general essence or genus & species as well as
    to contextually determinative (or generally determinative of various underdetermined realities)
    Modes of Identity
    Essential – primary substance with no existence-essence or act-potency contractions
    denominatively connotative
    Personal – nonsubstantial exemplifications or hypostases
    determinatively denotative
    Formal – contextually but not generically determinative in allowing successful references to
    nondeterminate & self-determinate causes abducted from putatively divine determinate effects
    of vestigia, energeia & oikonomia via both denominatively connotative & determinatively
    denotative references with both univocal semantical & analogical metaphysical groundings
    Propria of divine essence are metaphysically grounded as primary substance with no act of
    existence in potency to any essence, unlike the quiddities of a determinate essence, which as
    secondary substances instantiate in otherwise modally distinct primary substances.
    Personal modes of being refer to primary substances, while personal modes of identity refer to
    exemplifications, which are nonsubstantial realities. Personal modes of being & identity are both
    determinatively denotative, the latter referring to the nonsubstantial idiomata of
    exemplifications, the former to substantial individual essences of hypostases.
    Formal modes of being & identity both include contextually determinative denotations, but only
    formal modes of being include generically determinative denotations (the what? of genus &
    species or in quid predications).

    Parsing Theories of Everything in Terms of Modal Identities & Being  (essential,


    hypostatic & formal)
    I've often reflected on how the manner in which one approaches the notion of formal
    causation, alone, can hold the key to which metaphysical door one chooses to walk through. I
    don't have the time or interest to explicate it all, presently, but some may capture where I'm
    headed from this skeletal outline, below.
    I will suggest this - no serious scientist or philosopher would, nowadays, consider human
    symbolic consciousness as anything other than immaterial. This is to further suggest that no
    physicalist approach can be coherently advanced without an openness to the reality of formal
    causation.
    Finally, metaphysics remains alive & kicking. Those who, in their anxiety to annihilate
    metaphysics, deny formal causation, will also do away with our highly speculative theoretic
    sciences, for formal causation is the epistemic fulcrum by which all moderate realisms
    accomplish their metaphysical heavy lifting, heuristically.

    Aristotelian Hylomorphism - robustly conceives formal causes

     1) affirms modes of identity

     2) derives modes of being from modes of identity

     3) employs formal identity for both nondeterminate & determinate realities

    Consequences: as exploratory heuristic, fosters research programs, eminently actionable -


    existentially, consistent with humanity's common sense & sensibilities and with its great &
    indigenous religious traditions

    Agnostic Physicalism - open to formal causation

     1) consistent with modes of identity

     2) derives modes of being from modes of identity

     3) ephemeral entities, hypostatically, are essentially physical

     4) employs formal identity & being for realities, bracketing in/determinacies

     5) ontologically reductive physicalism devolves into materialism

     6) nonreductive physicalism could reconcile with hylomorphism

    Consequences: forecloses on research programs

    Materialist Monism - denies formal causation

     1) consistent with essential & hypostatic modes of identity

     2) ephemeral exemplifications, hypostatically, are essentially material

    3) considers formal realities, whether modes of identity or of being, nonsensical


    Consequences: reduces to ultimate nihilism & makes free will wholly illusory

    Idealist Monism - affirms formal causation practically & ephemerally not essentially &
    eternally
     1) consistent with essential & hypostatic modes of identity & qualified formal identity

     2) ephemeral exemplifications, hypostatically, are essentially intentional

     3) considers formal realities, whether modes of identity or of being, epiphenomenal

    Consequences: principle of sufficient reason on steroids, wreaks havoc with free will, reduces
    to pantheism

    In some sense, naturalism is a more expansive concept than physicalism which is more
    expansive than materialism. Furthermore, these concepts must be further parsed to specify
    whether they are being employed methodologically (i.e. epistemologically) and/or
    philosophically (i.e. ontologically) as well as ephemerally & determinately and/or eternally &
    nondeterminately (e.g. axiomata).
    For its part, naturalism doesn't a priori specify its primitives (e.g. spatio-tempero-materio-
    energetic, i.e. physicalism and/or consciousness), while physicalism doesn't deny formal
    realities, whereas materialism does (both ephemerally & eternally).

    David Bentley Hart & Duns Scotus Walk Into a Bar, See Radical Orthodoxy & Ask:
    Why the Long Face?
    Prologue - Conciliar trinitarian doctrines define the theological contours of worship & theosis,
    norming our responses to the Trinity, Who participatorily enfolds the essences, substances &
    relations of determinate being.

    Our creeds do not ontologically define the theological concepts of Trinitarian essences (e.g
    ousia, nature), substances (e.g. hypostases, persons) or relations (e.g. ad intra/extra).

    They do meta-ontologically implicate the semantical & metaphysical grounds of the Analogia,
    trans-essentially, trans-substantially, trans-personally, trans-relationally & trans-causally.

    The semantical grounds are merely connotative, such that names, titles, appellations,
    attributions & propria successfully refer, denominatively as icons, to HOW God acts.

     
    The denotative metaphysical grounds are clearly such that existential, numeric, quantitative &
    locative determinations successfully refer (with many apophatic predications), respectively as
    indexes, to THAT God acts, tri-trans-personally, trans-finitely & trans-spatio-temporally.

    The connotative-denotative contexts metaphysically ground WHY determinate being, an effect


    proper to no known causes (there are NO generic determinations of WHAT acts as God),
    necessarily participates existentially in primal origin or source, materially in primal being,
    efficiently in primal support, formally in primal order, finally in primal destiny & intentionally
    in primal ground.

    Determinate being’s telic participations respond to divine promptings (often symbolic, semiotic
    & pragmatic) toward human authenticity (freedom) via ortho-communal, ortho-pathic, ortho-
    praxic, ortho-doxic & ortho-theotic invitations, which are gifted by divine initiatives (divine
    energeia) in both the gratuities of creation (divine vestigia) & of grace (divine oikonomia).

    Summary -

    Trinitarian Analogia are grounded, semantically, by connotations, & metaphysically, by


    participations, but w/no generic determinations, ontologically, only apophatic references to a
    wholly transcendent telos.

    The MOF has apophatic meta-ontological implications, i.e. NOT made. Per that distinction it
    avoids ontological subordinationism.

     
     

    But, again, there’s no ontology implicated – not substantial, not personal, not relational, such as
    in modes of determinate being. At the same time, Trinitarian Analogia meta-ontologically
    connote trans-substantial, trans-personal & trans-relational icons, the semantical meaning of
    which get grounded metaphysically through theotic creaturely participations in the divine telos.

    In What Manner & In What Degrees Might DBH's Theological Vision Resonate
    with that of Duns Scotus?

    DBH takes Deleuze to task more so than Scotus, perhaps:

    “While he is aware of and cites with approval the doctrine of univocity usually ascribed (largely
    inaccurately) to Duns Scotus, it is Spinoza who asserts the most immediate influence over
    Deleuze’s use of the term.”

    I haven't located precisely where or by whom or how DBH has found the the doctrine of
    univocity usually ascribed to Duns Scotus to be largely inaccurate. I do know that Hart
    commends Scotus' holistic theological anthropology for how Scotus recognizes the integral
    role desire plays in our holistic human acts of belonging, knowing, norming, willing, doing &
    becoming, that he affirms Scotus' view that the Incarnation would've happened even without
    some felix culpa and that DBH critiques the excesses of RO's Scotus Story.

    At some level I suspect that DBH would generally agree with my normative application of
    Scotist-like nuances, below, even though he and others might find it descriptively suspect,
    historically & interpretively. That is, I can't really say that I'm not really proposing what
    Scotus should have said rather than comfortably reposing in what Scotus actually did say &
    mean. I can say that I otherwise resonate with so much of DBH's theological thrust.

    DBH points out that Deleuze caricatures the Analogia tradition as an equivocity of being &
    univocity of attributes. Of course, DBH properly characterizes the Analogia as taking neither
    being nor attributes as either univocal or equivocal, but, instead, both as analogical.

    Per Deleuze, says Hart, the Scotist version of univocity was intended to make intelligible the
    analogical attribution of like qualities between God and creatures, while the Spinozan version
    would altogether do away with analogy.
    My summation, above, was paraphrased from DBH, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics
    of Christian Truth, pp 61-62.

    Implicit in such considerations, at the very least, are general characterizations of stances toward
    being qua being. To wit, per Lee Faber:

    “With the emerge of Ockham, the basic positions of the scholastic discussion are set until the
    dissolution of scholasaticism itself: equivocity of being, univocity of being with analogy,
    univocity alone, analogy of being alone.”

    Observations:

    My account has rejected equivocity alone, univocity alone & analogy alone. Instead, I have
    articulated a univocity of being with analogy.

    Specifically, I accept Deleuze’s characterization of Scotus’ univocity as an attempt to show how


    the Analogia’s intelligible. I would further parse my account, however, by saying that:

    Scotus does not univocally predicate all essences of being between God & creatures, only
    attributions in quale (as denominative modifiers or participles). Attributions in quid (as
    determinative nouns, genera & species, quid est?) are predicated analogically.

    Realities predicated in quid could include nouns like the truth & the life, or truth, beauty &
    goodness, or whiteness, whereas, when predicated in quale, could include participles like true,
    living, beautiful & good or white.

    Love, itself, & Being Itself, would be predicated in quid, hence only ever analogically, while
    loving & being would be predicated in quale, ergo univocally.

    Scotus thus proposes a Univocity of Predication “In Quale” & Analogy of


    Predication “In Quid” ?

    Because this reduces to a denominative theological nomination, eliminating any determinative


    philosophical attributions, consistent with what DBH has insisted, I find it semantically &
    ontologically indistinguishable from Hart’s Analogia account?

    I would only further distinguish between the rhetorical, theo-poetic, implicit denominations of
    our icons, images, diagrams & metaphors, on one hand, and philosophical, theo-logical, explicit
    denominations of our analogies, on the other. And further observe that, when invoking the
    in/finite disjunction, we must not multiply quiddities by infinity to arrive at a quantitative
    differentiation of Being & beings (certain theistic personalisms?). Instead, we multiply qualia by
    infinity, recognizing the qualitative differentiation of divine & determinate realities, fostering
    otherness & intimacy, participation & donativity-receptivity, immanence in transcendence
    rather than alienation from some Wholly Other.

    But is univocity of being with analogy to be identified with all “analogy alone” stances?

    I think that may be a fair assessment, if, by analogy alone, one refers to ontological descriptions
    of being as predicated in quid, as being among beings, generically.

    Does anyone, however, suggest that, semantically, even regarding predications in quale, those
    must not be made univocally either, only analogically?

    That would seem to risk the fallacy of equivocation and lead one into a radical apophaticism,
    obviating the empirical grounding of our God-conceptions, denying any intelligibility of the
    Actus Purus vis a vis our reasoning from determinate effects back to putative divine causes?

    Heuristic for Univocal & Analogical God-Talk


    I. iconic or qualitatively denominative (differentiae)
    A. quale – how
    B. qui – who
    C. quem – whom
    D. vague indeterminacy
    1) vague or distinct
    E. metaphorical & theo-poetic (e.g. certain implicit similarities of divine idiomata & individual
    essences)
    F. analogical & theo-logical (e.g. certain explicit similarities of divine propria & ousia)
    II. indexic & locativelydeterminative
    A. spatio-temporal causes & effects & transcendental effects
    1) quando – when
    2) ubi - where
    3) qua - as
    4) unde – whence
    5) quo – whither or existing state
    B. transcendental causes – putatively & abductively inferred from effects proper to no known
    spatio-temporal causes
    1) quo – whither or existing state
    2) no spatio-temporal where or when, atemporality
    3) existentially determinative – quo -- implicit ontological argument (Anselmian
    presuppositions)
    C. indexic & numeric or numerally determinative 
    1) quot – how many
    D. indexic & quantitatively determinative
    1) quantum – how much
    III. symbolic & generically determinative 
    1) quid – generic & specific
    IV. contextual & pragmatic semiotic
    A. telic or quare – why
    1) principle of sufficient reason
    2) generic in/determinacy (generality - general or specific)

    Perhaps we can say that there can be a univocity of predication - not just
    denominatively (quale, qui & quem) including the iconic metaphors & analogies
    (whether of our theopoetics and/or theologies, whether of the idiomata and/or
    propria), but also - determinatively, including the locative (determinate effects of
    putative transcendental causes or quando, ubi & unde), numeral (three persons or
    quot), quantitative (in/finite disjunction or quantum) & existential (implicit
    ontological argument in pure perfections or quo) references to divine realities,
    while generically determinative descriptions (quid) require analogical
    predication?

    Whether our discourse is denominative or determinative and/or employs a


    univocity or similarity and/or is explicit and/or implicit and/or refers generically
    and/or nongenerially and/or transfinitely and/or in/finitely --- and so on, can
    make all the difference?

    This grammar would eliminate the paralogisms that result from treating divine modes of
    identity (the denominative & nongenerically determinative predications of ousia & hypostases,
    essence & persons, primary substance & exemplifications) as if they were the generically
    determinative predications of modes of being (preserving, for example, both the consistency &
    intelligibility of our classic trinitology & creedal dogma). Furthermore, it would preserve
    important distinctions such as between a nondeterminate esse naturale & self-determinate esse
    intentionale, between intrinsic aesthetic intensity & extrinsic aesthetic scope of expression, or
    between an existentially determinative divine simplicity (quo) & qualitatively denominative
    divine aseity (quale).

    This would all be toward the end of more highly nuancing our divine conceptions of
    immutability & impassibility and of the divinely omnipresent, omnipathic, omnibenevolent,
    omniscient & omnipotent, which, respectively, invite our participatory belonging, desiring,
    behaving, believing & becoming, i.e. orthocommunally, orthopathically, orthopraxically,
    orthodoxically & orthotheotically.

    How Scotus' Univocity of BeingGrounds a Metaphysics of Participation

    Scotus’ univocity somewhat entails Anselm’s ontological proof, where “pure perfections,” which
    are predicable of God alone, refer to being none greater than which can be conceived. Thus,
    from aspects of determinate being, which self-evidently make creatures better, we can devise
    composite concepts that apply only to God. Such aspects are transcendentals, because they are
    coextensive with being, transcending this finite and infinite division of being.

    Scotus’ proper attributes (one, good & true) are also transcendentals. The supercategory
    of disjunctive transcendentals, like finite & infinite and contingent & necessary, for Scotus,
    prove God’s existence.

    The less perfect member of each disjunction are possibilities that may or may not be actualized,
    creation being contingent and dependent on the divine will and not a necessary & inevitable
    emanation. The pure perfections, which don’t presuppose some limitation, are transcendentals
    but, of course, not coextensive.
    The above conceptions of being, for Scotus, are predicable in quale and not in quid, hence are
    predicable denominatively (essential difference or nonessential property)
    not determinatively (what is it? genus? species?).

    In Peircean terms, qualia correspond to possibilities (firstness or 1ns) and not genera-lities


    (thirdness or 3ns) and can refer to properties (qualia not quiddities) we may conceptually
    abstract from actualities (secondness or 2ns). This distinction is crucial, for it distinguishes
    between a semanticalunivocity, which follows a grammar of naming, and what would
    otherwise be an ontological univocity, which follows a grammar of categories of existence, i.e.
    regarding features or properties possessed as formal acts in potency to a final telos. While every
    quiddity is an essence, not every essence is a quiddity. Scotus’ univocity refers to qualia not
    quiddities.

    Scotus’ univocity still supports a distinction, however, between theo-poetic nomination & theo-
    logical attribution, but not the vicious form of attribution DBH laments in a univocal ontology.
    The distinction lies, instead, in that between icons, images, diagrams & metaphors, on one
    hand, and similes & analogies, on the other, the latter as explicit & literal, the former as implicit,
    all as possibilities, not generalities.

    The reason these subtle distinctions of the Subtle Doctor are crucial, in my view, is that they set
    forth how both theo-poetic nomination (e.g. of certain idiomata) & theo-
    logical attribution (e.g. of certain propria), more modestly conceived, are consonant with
    our metaphysics of participation.

    Indeed, triadically and semiotically, participatively, we are drawn beyond our


    iconic (peircean 1ns) & indexical (2ns) SIGN-ifications of divine names &
    locations, and thereby led to our robustly relational symbolic (3ns) engagements,
    spanning the infinite interval - not just theopoetically & theologically, but
    -doxologically & theotically!

    No, the Divine Economy is Not Trickle Down! --- The Flipping of the Divine
    Donative Script

    What’s the nature of our participation in the divine oikonomia?

    The trinitarian paterological ur-kenosis, via the divine nature, opens up the eternal distance
    (economically & intimately) that the Son & Spirit may truly be. (Bathasarian)
    The pneumatological kenosis, via the divine will, opens up the infinite analogical interval
    between God and the gratuity of creation that determinate creatures could truly be. (Hartian)

    The Christological kenosis, via the divine will, opens up the infinite possibilities that
    determinate persons could truly be-come love via the gratuity of grace. The Trinity
    thereby flipped the divine donative script, when, via the hypostatic union, Jesus participated in
    human nature. And He did this as a real personhood (enhypostasis), which belonged to Him,
    alone (anhypostasis).

    These divine kenoses, via epektasis, open up an infinite human desire (aesthetically), and
    via ekstasis, open up the space for one to stand outside one’s self (relationally & personally).
    (Bulgakov, Balthasar, Hart & Zizioulas?)

    I explain later, below, that human persons traverse these distances theopoetically, theologically
    and relationally. DBH would say rhetorically (via theological nomination)
    and epistemologically(via philosophical attribution).

    And we might all agree that, by relationally, we mean Eucharistically (liturgically &


    sacramentally, doxologically & theotically).

    In the personal and relational sense, in all forms of kenoses, including the paterological,
    pneumatological, Christological and our Eucharistic participations, we might see, in sharp relief,
    Zizioulas’ conception of person playing out, i.e. that of other & communion, economy &
    intimacy, epektasis & ekstasis.

    If our analogia gift us, semantically, icons & indexes (signs & locations) of divine


    encounters (knowledge aboutGod), it is finally a Eucharistic participation that
    will symbolically & efficaciously (semiotic pragmatism) gift
    us divine Communion (knowledge ofGod).

    Our determinate oikonomia are the divine oikonomia & the economic trinity is the


    immanent trinity, just not vice versa, as the Trinity perpetually opens eternal distances
    (ad intra) and infinite intervals (ad extra), precisely that we might be, might become &
    might commune, forever & ever! Amen?

    Now, has this not opened up the eternal space & infinite interval where we may all reasonably
    hope for ἀποκατάστασις ?
    The Semiotic Eucharistic Cycle

    Liturgy of the Word

    Iconic theo-poetic nomination of divine names

    Indexic theo-logic attribution of divine locations

    Liturgy of the Eucharist

     Symbolic doxological & theotic engagement of divine participations


    Offertory - Ecstasis & Proodos as self-transcendence

    Communion - Enstasis & Mone as union

    Post Communion - Epecstasis & Epistrophe as self-reception

    Dismissal (Ecstasis & Proodos)

    Unitive Living (Enstasis & Mone)


    Return - Introibo ad Altare Dei(Epecstasis & Epistrophe)
    Liturgy of the Word - repeat the cycle

    There's Nothing Ontological About Scotus' Univocity of Being

    Because Scotus’ univocity of being refers to a semantic not ontologicalthesis, it’s - not only not
    over against analogy, but -tacitly relied upon on by, thereby integral to, analogy. It’s a thesis
    about language or how we think & talk about God and not about ontology or what God is.

    So, does analogy with its implicit univocity still take back all the meaning it ostensibly gives?

    It takes back a LOT but not ALL because our God-concepts are, at least, grounded empirically.
    Like icons, images, similes & metaphors, both our univocal & analogical terms are likenesses
    or similarities of the realities they SIGN-ify or bring to mind, prior to conveying any complete
    meaning, which may or not be “fixed.”

    For example, whiteness (Scotus’ example, in fact) is such a concept as can signify more than one
    reality irrespective of their generic ontological differences. And it can do so with a fixed
    meaning, too, even though it conveys nothing, in and of itself, ontologically, about different
    white things, i.e. neither what they are nor how they came to be white. (Scotus is
    not nominalist but moderately realistregarding universals, but that's another conversation.) It’s
    thus a mental construct that’s been abstractedaway from the things it variously signifies, while
    otherwise “proper” to none of them.

    Once modalized as a white sheep or white Corvette, we have two new “composite” concepts.

    Substitute “loving” for whiteness, “finitely” for sheep & “infinitely” for Corvette and one can see
    that the meaning of loving is fixed and so has some empirical bearing on our understanding of
    God, but the composite concept “infinitely loving” is qualitatively different & refers only to God.

    Such an understanding remains rather meager, to be sure, but nevertheless sufficient to avoid
    wholesale equivocation, thereby rescuing the syllogisms of natural theology’s Analogia
    Entis from fallacy. It gifts us an imperfect knowledge and a small amount at that, but it’s an
    empirical – not just semantic & conceptual – knowledge of a very BIG & ULTIMATE reality, so,
    can have profound existential import, doxologically & theotically.

    It’s only an ontological univocity of being, as a generic category, that should draw anyone’s
    metaphysical fire or raise anyone’s theological ire.

    There's Nothing Esoteric About Apophasis

    One afternoon, one notices that the glass vase, which normally rests on an outdoor table in their
    backyard, has been shattered into so many pieces & that one of the bricks on the house’s rear
    wall has been cracked. One immediately infers that a projectile from over the back fence did the
    damage, then tries to muse to the best explanation, unable to find the offending object.

    Taking out one’s compass, protractor & sliderule, estimating the projectile’s velocity, angle of
    trajectory, distance travelled, putative weight & such, the resident rules out the object having
    been thrown, fired from a potato cannon, tossed by a pitching machine, flung by a lawnmower
    and so on. For now, the determinable effects remain proper to no known causes.

    Those effects were not entirely dissimilar to those one might expect from zinged marbles, fired
    potatoes, thrown baseballs or flung rocks, but, at bottom, were inconsistent with such acts even
    though, in certain other ways, very much like them.

    The resident cleans up the mess & replaces the vase. It happens again! The resident, again, does
    forensic measurements, cleans up the mess & replaces the vase. It happens a third time! Still,
    the effects remain proper to no known causes. But, now, the resident starts to take the cause
    “personally.”

    What kind of person is doing this and how? Well, it can’t be the sweet little old childless widow,
    who lives there. Of course, then, not any grandchild. And it’s positively not her yardkeeper,
    house-cleaner or physical therapist. It must be a neighborhood prankster, but one without a
    name or motive.

    We’ve talked very intelligibly about this unknown personal cause, only able to make
    successful semantic referencesbut unable to make good ontological descriptions of the actor or
    the actor’s specific machinations. We have employed analogies that apply literally, qualifying
    them with all manner of apophatic negations.

    You see, there’s nothing occult or gnostic about apophasis. It’s quite quotidian in application,
    with a positive epistemic valence, even, as a supplemental way of increasing descriptive accuracy
    by saying what something is not or is not like.
    Pip did this in Great Expectations, searching for – not a malefactor, but – benefactor. Ralph
    McInerny has described us as Characters in Search of Their Author.

    Not just the fast & frugal heuristics of common sense employ such abductive inference,
    ananoetics & apophasis, as this has long been the tradecraft of our highly speculative theoretic
    sciences, of quantum interpretations & philosophies of mind, of undiscovered elements on the
    Periodic Table & putative genes carrying the traits of Mendel’s peas.

    Yes, our God-talk traffics only in successful references not ontological descriptions and takes
    back, apophatically, more than what it gifts, analogically. But that’s just the philosophical part
    of our human episteme. It, at least, renders our beliefs reasonable, partly intelligible even if not
    wholly comprehensible.

    For some, that serves as the praeambula fidei to making the existential leap in responding to


    special revelation, musing that, if Jesus of Nazareth & his People Gathered are
    that loving, that beautiful, that good, that liberative, then, maybe just maybe, I
    can reasonably hope He & They are also that True!
    That’s what this entire blog is really all about, reconciling Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, Palamas &
    Peirce, Bulgakov & Bracken, Zizioulas & Scotus.

    When I say "successful reference" to God, I mean that literally in a robustly ontological sense.

    From divine vestigia of the gratuity of creation via general revelation & energeia-oikonomia of


    the gratuity of grace via special revelation, I say we can infer from those divine effects, which
    are proper to no known causes, a putative Actus Purus.

    Because the nondeterminate divine ousia & hypostases involve Act sans potency, similarities to
    the acts of determinate beings are far outnumbered by dissimilarities.

    From a separate conversation, I'd written:

    A practical take-away from Neville (following Peirce's semantics):

    Modally, if one takes an analogy to be a type of possibility (e.g. along w/ icons, images,


    diagrams, similes & metaphors, which are similarity-invoking), then, as a form
    of indeterminacy, it might be treated as a case of vagueness, where noncontradiction [PNC]
    wouldn’t apply?

    We’d thus distinguish it from that form of indeterminacy, modal generality, where excluded


    middle wouldn’t apply but a continuum of probabilities could (scalar).

    Without PNC, a great deal of epistemic humility's warranted in all analogy-discourse!

    Dissimilarities abound!

    Apophasis thus redounds!

    When DB Hart gets outdone with some neo-scholastics, it’s because they apparently give more
    weight to the Analogia than it can epistemically bear. <<<

    We believe, then, that nondeterminate divine realities cause determinate effects - vestigia,
    energeia & oikonomia & invite our participation. But what is the "nature" of our participation,
    considering divine acts are nondeterminate and/or self-determinate & ours determinate? Is
    there anything univocal going on?
    It seems to me that when we cooperate with the divine gratuities of creation & grace, we as
    creatures foster the very same doxological & theotic effects as the Trinitological Synergy,
    soteriologically, sophiologically, ecclesiologically, eschatologically & sacramentally. We do
    this imitatively & instrumentally, by actively surrendering, kenotically, thereby becoming
    passive conduits, pneumatologically.

    Correcting Bulgakov w/Bracken, I imagine a panentheistic, divine matrix, which,


    participatorily, not only involves us creatively & imitatively, but, which neo-platonic-like, also
    influences us diffusively & substratively, as the divine telos gently coaxes us toward the
    fulfillment of our human nature (sustained authenticity).
    I guess I'm suggesting that there's a participatory univocity of loving effects via our
    determinate kenosis, imitating Jesus' self-determinate kenosis, unleashing the Spirit's gifts,
    charisms & universal salvation.

    Flipping the Semantic Script for Determinate & Divine Being

    Turning this thing on its head has been precisely how I've come to approach this all. The more
    jargonistic way of condensing my above contributions is to wit:

    Determinate syllosistics are derivedfrom divine syllogistics.
    If one begins with the Athanasian Creed, then formalizes it, one gets Abelard's 3 modes of
    identity: essential, personal & formal.

    The first 2 modes do not apply to determinate being, precisely due to radical dissimilarities in
    predications of ousia & exemplifications of hypostases.

    For determinate realities, the only mode of identity is formal & we can consider it a derivation of
    divine syllogistics (rather than taking them to be an ad hoc strategy of our Aristotelian-like
    syllogistics).

    Of course, for determinate realities, essence, hypostases & forms (the last = generalities, laws,
    regularities) reflect modes of being.

    This doesn't gift us a formal systematic accounting but it very much entails a rather robust semi-
    formal heuristic. This is the intersection where determinate effects interact, inter-
    participatively, as they variously ensue from divine nondeterminate or self-determinate realities
    or from creaturely determinate realities, either which can, variously, generate "effects proper to
    no known causes" whether putatively theological, metaphysical, scientific or common sensical.

    It's from the synergistic divine vestigia, energeia & oikonomia that we abductively infer a
    putative divine cause, Actus. We can thus affirm Rahner's axiom that the economic trinity is the
    immanent trinity, even though many of us would hesitate regarding any vice versa. At least, I
    can't go there.

    Rahner spoke of a divine quasi-formalcause. Inverting the script, though, perhaps it's better
    said that it's our Aristotelian-like categories that are quasi, not the divine categories:

     quasi-formal in potency to quasic-telic,

     quasi-actus (efficient) in potency to quasi-substantial (material),

     quasi-existential in potency to quasi-essential,


    whereby, imitatively, we realize our authentic human nature as we grow from
    mere image (quasi) to clear likeness (REAL-ly), co-creatively fulfilling our created potential.

    Not sure I've connected any dots or successfully unpacked my divine imaginary, but those are
    my categories, their semantic rules & implications for intelligible god-talk.

    Further Nuancing Apophasis

    Some Orthodox theologians point out that both the via positiva and via negativa are
    RATIONAL approaches, both sharing the same trajectory of increasing descriptive accuracy,
    whether through affirmation of what something is, ontologically, or is like, analogically, or
    through negation of what something is not or is not like. That’s how kataphasis and apophasis
    are largely conceived in the West, often through radically logo-centric lenses.

    When Lossky employed an apophatic, perichoretic strategy, though, he referenced


    a transrational mystical experience moreso in terms of ineffability. He aspires merely to a
    successful relational reference but does not ambition a successful metaphysical description.
    (This distinction applies, by the way, to so much of nondual teaching in Buddhist & Hindu
    traditions, as they aren’t doing metaphysics as much as they are leading us into experiences
    or real-izations).
    The Orthodox priest, Dumitru Staniloae, according to some, was more rigorous and nuanced
    than Lossky. He would refer to our ineffable experiences as transrational and trans-apophatic.

    Such distinctions ground others, for example, a trinito-logy vs a trinito-phany.

    An Afterward Regarding Univocity, Analogy & Apophasis

    Our irreducibly triadic inferential cycling of abductive hypothesizing, deductive clarifying &
    inductive testing can fall into a sterile, nonvirtuous dyadic cycling of abduction & deduction,
    never gaining the realist traction that can only come from, at least, some inductive rubber
    hitting the epistemic road.

    To be sure, sometimes, despite our mindful exploratory excursions, this happens because we’ve
    encountered a genuine explanatory aporia. In such cases, our alternating univocity, analogy &
    apophasis can make a salutary contribution to enhanced intelligibility by presenting then
    discarding one heuristic device after another in the form of more icons, images, diagrams,
    similes, metaphors & analogies.

    This is analogous to our Popperian alternation of conjecture & criticism in the falsification of
    our abductive hypotheses via inductive testing, but unlike falsification in that, unable to
    critically engage inductively, it simply generates more hypotheses, more potential pathways to
    serve as candidates for testing, sometimes via rather weak forms of inference &, if lucky,
    sometimes using more robust methods.

    So, the role of univocity, analogy & apophasis might best be conceived as an inference
    generator, souping up the abductive engine we already have. It can be thought of, too, as
    a meta-heuristic device, which keeps churning out heuristics.

     When it does this using icons, images, diagrams & metaphors, our heuristics are poetic
    (e.g. theopoetic).

     When using univocity, apophasis, similes & analogies, our heuristics are logocentric (e.g.
    theological).
     When actively engaged by our participatory imaginations (e.g. liturgically, doxologically,
    theotically), such heuristics can foster interpersonal relations, trans-rationally,
    trans-apophatically & axiologically.

    In my view, then, we best engage our Scotist, Thomist, Palamist, Aristotelian & Peircean
    approaches – not as explanatory metaphysics, but – as exploratory heuristics, setting forth
    metaphysical contours in the same way that our creeds define the theological boundaries of
    essential dogma.

    Here’s a concrete application as an example:

    An Aristotelian hylomorphism, properly conceived in a triadic semiotic sense, doesn’t compete


    as an explanatory metaphysic (i.e. aspiring to explain consciousness in competition
    with eliminativism, nonreductive physicalism, cartesian dualism, etc) but, instead, serves as an
    exploratory heuristic, which can guide empirical research, keeping relevant questions alive &
    foregrounded. It might suggest, for example, that one mustn’t
    conflate materialism with physicalist accounts. Instead, we best distinguish that conception of
    consciousness, which we properly take to be immaterial (i.e. for materialist approaches are
    prima facie absurd) from that of any physicalist conception of same, which needn’t necessarily
    be absurd (e.g. inconsistent with freedom).

    Note re Thomist-Scotist "Impasse"

    It seems that an analogy certainly needs nonanalogical grounds (positive & negative,
    dis/similarities) as a univocal foundation. And it further seems that, semiotically, there can be
    inconic & indexic signs and syntactic & semantic logics in play that can involve direct
    experience, existential significance & immediacy, via Scotus’ cognitive intuitions — all apart
    from & prior to conceptualizations. Signs & images can evoke analogous realities, including
    causes, effects, events & activities — again, without words, apart from discursive reasonings (per
    Peircean categorizations). Such signs would provide univocal foundations when “having one
    meaning,” but need not be conceptual, semantically. The semiotic logic of such intuitions would
    be intact & implicit, subject to eventual explication. Scotus’ semantical univocal predication of
    concepts would thus be a special case of a more general univocal grounding, which could be
    either intuitive or conceptual. Analogy could certainly be subverted by equivocation without any
    univocal grounding, whatsoever, but it would only require univocal conceptions for our
    discursive reasonings & not our quotidian participatory imaginings? I’m trying to locate &
    articulate the impasses.

    What I mean to suggest, then, is that the Scotistic semantical-conceptual univocity does
    differentiate itself as a deductive approach. At the same time, the Thomistic approach does not
    differentiate itself vis a vis a univocal grounding. What both approaches, unavoidably, have in
    common is an irreducibly triadic inferential process of abduction, induction & deduction, each
    presupposing the others.

    In higher animals, abduction is hardwired as an instinct, an adaptation gifting more behavioral


    plasticity than available from mere stimulus-response algorithms (lower lifeforms). In humans,
    we have the same teleo-nomic S–>R reflexes & abductive instincts plus the teleo-logical triadic
    inferential capacity, which is unleashed by our symbolic language capabilities. Whether
    implicitly & instinctively or explicitly & inferentially, the same syntactic & semantic logics are in
    play, and, for the symbolic species, Homo sapiens, pragmatic, contextual logics are added.

    There’s no secret formulae kept in Scotistic, Thomistic or Palamitic vaults. There are only the
    fast & frugal, semi-formal heuristics of our biosemiotic legacy.

    Taken semiotically, Scotus also distinguishes between immediate significates and mediate
    significates. In the former, an intelligible species is immediately signified, an extramental,
    existing physical thing. In the latter, a thing may be signified not as it physically exists, but as an
    object of the intellect, insofar as it is known or understood, what Scotus called objective being.

    Signs as univocal ontological relations can refer to existent or nonexistent objects with equal
    facility, an important distinction if abduction is to work – hypothesizing, for example, putative
    unknown causes from determinate effects. (This distinction doesn’t straddle idealist vs realist
    accounts, but is strictly constructivist.)

    Such a Scotistic semiotic account of mediate significates, objective being, univocal conceptions &
    formal distinctions, operates semantically — but not over against Thomistic metaphysical
    accounts of either univocity or analogy.

    As for Aquinas’ metaphysical approach, some might imagine that he was denying univocism &
    equivocism prior to, apparently, affirming their amalgamated version in an ad hoc manner, i.e.
    not defending that leap or deriving its
    logic?

    But Aquinas needn’t be interpreted as denying Scotus’ univocal predication of God (via mode of
    conceiving), so, in that sense, also wouldn’t need to be interpreted as objecting to taking same
    (univocal predication) as defined per its successful use as a middle term in a syllogism. i.e. a
    univocal grounding, semantically.

    However, there’s another grounding, metaphysically, which goes beyond mere intelligibility &
    avoidance of fallacy (equivocation) to make the predication true, i.e. not just consistent & valid
    but in a truth-making sense regarding how any given attribution is true.

    There not only can be but there must be a heterogeneity, here, in how the attribution is
    metaphysically grounded, because the same claim will be true but for different reasons when, on
    one hand, talking about divine realities in their modes of identity, versus, on the other hand,
    determinate realities in their modes of being.

    For a concrete example, see Pruss’ discussion regarding Wisdom:

    http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2010/09/do-aquinas-and-scotus-disagree-on.html?m=1

    Coming full circle back to DBH, while he retrieved & affirmed the Analogia (I think to counter
    some radical aphophaticism in certain Palamitic cohorts), my impression is that he doesn’t
    countenance its being deployed in a naively realist manner that, in turn, overemphasizes the
    speculative & kataphatic, i.e. rationalism. We must continue to strike a careful balance between
    overemphases of either the affective or speculative as well as the apophatic or kataphatic, thus
    navigating past the shoals of rationalism, encratism, fideism, pietism & quietism. A modicum of
    epistemic humility is called for.

    We mustn’t imagine that either our syllogisms or heuristics have proved anything. What I refer
    to as divine syllogistics (modes of identity) & determinate syllogistics (modes of being), which I
    won’t explicate here but which are consonant with the general consensus of neo-platonist,
    scotist & thomist classical theisms, should not be employed to say way more than can possibly
    be said or to tell untellable stories.
    Those very same modes of identity can similarly be used to properly predicate and to
    consistently & intelligibly formulate other “Theories of Everything.” Different a priori
    mereological presuppositions can articulate, for example, either a pantheism or materialist
    monism, the latter which is nihilistically corrosive of ultimate meaning. Other dualist & pluralist
    ontologies similarly compete, speculatively.

    What the Analogia gifts us is the speculative reasonableness of our faith. And the modes of
    identity gift us a demonstration of the consistency & intelligibility of even the Trinity. They
    don’t, however, eliminate nihilism or other approaches via speculative reason — at least, not in a
    manner as is repeated way too often by “apologists” engaged with atheists in cyberforums &
    chatrooms.

    What vaults the believer past nihilism is, instead, a form of practical reasoning under
    speculative uncertainty, employing what I like to call an equiplausibility principle, which then
    guides us toward the most eminently actionable live options, existentially. There’s an existential
    disjunction or “living as if” that takes hold of our participatory imaginations as we choose to
    pursue, in each uncertainty, the most life-giving & relationship-enhancing response available.

    Such is the calculus that leaves a materialist monism in the dustbins of history, whether
    philosophically or existentially, along with its corrollary skepticism, solipsism, nominalism,
    voluntarism, relativism & ultimate nihilism. As a matter of practical reasoning, it’s not
    existentially actionable and, however uncertain one may be speculatively regarding 1) What can
    we know? 2) What can we hope for? & 3) What must we do? —- we can be practically certain in a
    most eminent manner: We can “hope” to “know” what we “must do,” which is to love!

    And this is not just logically consistent, internally coherent, existentionally actionable &
    philosophically intelligible, but is externally congruent, inductively & probabilistically, with a
    great deal of historical evidence, whether historically (N.T. Wright re: Resurrection),
    ecclesiologically (Luke Timothy Johnson re: our living witness) or pneumatologically (Amos
    Yong re: Spirit in the great traditions) and notwithstanding marginal voices like John Dominic
    Crossan (Jesus Seminar).

    I think DBH would rightly extoll the rolls of both our metaphorical theopoetics & participatory
    doxologies & theotics, while deemphasizing what the Analogia contributes (as necessary but
    woefully insufficient).
    I’m also deeply sympathetic with DBH’s critique of what Natural Law reasoning might truly
    contribute beyond the most general of precepts; only the most rationalistic approaches (devoid
    of an authentic personalism) would imagine that it can deliver concrete norms for virtually every
    conceivable circumstance.

    If I’m reading DBH correctly, at least his general thrust, it seems he’s asking us to cast off both
    an epistemic hubris & an excessive epistemic humility vis a vis speculative reasonings, but to put
    on a confident assurance in things hoped for & always eschew living as those who have no hope!

    Coming full circle back to DBH, while he retrieved & affirmed the Analogia (I think to counter
    some radical aphophaticism in certain Palamitic cohorts), my impression is that he doesn’t
    countenance its being deployed in a naively realist manner that, in turn, overemphasizes the
    speculative & kataphatic, i.e. rationalism. We must continue to strike a careful balance between
    overemphases of either the affective or speculative as well as the apophatic or kataphatic, thus
    navigating past the shoals of rationalism, encratism, fideism, pietism & quietism. A modicum of
    epistemic humility is called for.

    We mustn’t imagine that either our syllogisms or heuristics have proved anything. What I refer
    to as divine syllogistics (modes of identity) & determinate syllogistics (modes of being), which I
    won’t explicate here but which are consonant with the general consensus of neo-platonist,
    scotist & thomist classical theisms, should not be employed to say way more than can possibly
    be said or to tell untellable stories.

    Those very same modes of identity can similarly be used to properly predicate and to
    consistently & intelligibly formulate other “Theories of Everything.” Different a priori
    mereological presuppositions can articulate, for example, either a pantheism or materialist
    monism, the latter which is nihilistically corrosive of ultimate meaning. Other dualist & pluralist
    ontologies similarly compete, speculatively.

    What the Analogia gifts us is the speculative reasonableness of our faith. And the modes of
    identity gift us a demonstration of the consistency & intelligibility of even the Trinity. They
    don’t, however, eliminate nihilism or other approaches via speculative reason — at least, not in a
    manner as is repeated way too often by “apologists” engaged with atheists in cyberforums &
    chatrooms.
    What vaults the believer past nihilism is, instead, a form of practical reasoning under
    speculative uncertainty, employing what I like to call an equiplausibility principle, which then
    guides us toward the most eminently actionable live options, existentially. There’s an existential
    disjunction or “living as if” that takes hold of our participatory imaginations as we choose to
    pursue, in each uncertainty, the most life-giving & relationship-enhancing response available.

    Such is the calculus that leaves a materialist monism in the dustbins of history, whether
    philosophically or existentially, along with its corrollary skepticism, solipsism, nominalism,
    voluntarism, relativism & ultimate nihilism. As a matter of practical reasoning, it’s not
    existentially actionable and, however uncertain one may be speculatively regarding 1) What can
    we know? 2) What can we hope for? & 3) What must we do? —- we can be practically certain in a
    most eminent manner: We can “hope” to “know” what we “must do,” which is to love!

    And this is not just logically consistent, internally coherent, existentionally actionable &
    philosophically intelligible, but is externally congruent, inductively & probabilistically, with a
    great deal of historical evidence, whether historically (N.T. Wright re: Resurrection),
    ecclesiologically (Luke Timothy Johnson re: our living witness) or pneumatologically (Amos
    Yong re: Spirit in the great traditions) and notwithstanding marginal voices like John Dominic
    Crossan (Jesus Seminar).

    I think DBH would rightly extoll the rolls of both our metaphorical theopoetics & participatory
    doxologies & theotics, while deemphasizing what the Analogia contributes (as necessary but
    woefully insufficient).

    I’m also deeply sympathetic with DBH’s critique of what Natural Law reasoning might truly
    contribute beyond the most general of precepts; only the most rationalistic approaches (devoid
    of an authentic personalism) would imagine that it can deliver concrete norms for virtually every
    conceivable circumstance.

    If I’m reading DBH correctly, at least his general thrust, it seems he’s asking us to cast off both
    an epistemic hubris & an excessive epistemic humility vis a vis speculative reasonings, but to put
    on a confident assurance in things hoped for & always eschew living as those who have no hope!

    Note on Moderate Realism:


    I distinguish between THAT an objective being has “the same” meaning regarding two different
    realities, univocally & semantically, and HOW it can be “the same” for (more so “true of”) those
    two realities, analogically & metaphysically.

    Even for those of us who stipulate (not uncontroversially? or, at least, “it’s complicated!”) that
    neither a semantical nor metaphysical grounding is sufficient and that both are necessary in the
    Analogia, the HOW of the analogical sameness is far more interesting, philosophically, and way
    more compelling, existentially, because its truth-making speaks directly to & literally of the
    Reality of God, while the THAT of a univocal sameness, alone, wouldn’t convey whether we’re
    even talking about existents or nonexistents, divine or determinate realities.

    Scotus’ account of the transcendentals, including univocal & coextensive qualia, seems to be,
    itself, pre-suppositionally grounded analogically, implicitly articulating an Anselmian-like
    ontological proof of noncomposite Being (in a disjunctive relationship to modal beings).

    I get the legitimately equivocal references to both types of sameness.

    I even more so get why there’s a much stronger emphasis on analogy’s metaphysical import,
    which must be argued with rigor, philosophically, than on univocity’s semantic logic, which can
    almost be taken for granted, intuitively?

    Robert Fortuin wrote: “Yes if we remain on a purely horizontal level then indeed univocal,
    ordinary semantics is quite proper, self evident, and intuitive. However the theological task
    doesn’t remain on the horizontal level, we are concerning ourselves with a cause of an altogether
    different and higher mode of being then creaturely being. Ipso facto likeness and difference is
    analogous: the resemblance in the lower effect of the higher cause is not univocal but
    analogical.”

    https://anopenorthodoxy.wordpress.com/2019/02/08/lost-in-translation/#comment-3105

    My response:

    Yes, and, as we reason from determinate effects as would be proper to no known causes, our
    abductive task necessarily begins on this horizontal level. And it doesn’t a priori presuppose
    whether it will remain there or not. And, further, once we find it heuristically fruitful to explore
    the possibilities of additional vertical levels (of aboutness), we wouldn’t a priori presuppose
    whether we’ll be moving beyond a metaphysical to a theological task.

    This is all to suggest, then, that the resemblances in lower effects of higher causes, for example,
    in an emergentist frame (Let me say that I’m not not invoking supervenience, here), may
    become analogical long before we commence a theological task.

    Concretely, we encounter metaphysical tasks at different aporia, even in our scientific


    explorations, e.g. in the emergence of symbolic language, consciousness, life itself, the cosmos &
    quantum fluctuations.

    The explanatory interpretations of various exploratory heuristics invoke novel realities that can,
    putatively, exhibit both univocal & analogical resemblances (here some invoke supervenience),
    raising both quantitative & qualitative questions.

    More specifically, even, human symbolic language does not just surpass sentience or animal
    consciousness quantitatively but does so qualitatively. Animals already exhibit abductive
    instincts and syntactical & semantical sign usages, employing iconic & indexic signs BUT human
    consciousness, which exhibits not only abductive instincts but inferences, with its contextual &
    pragmatic sign usage, employing arbitrary symbol conventions, is qualitatively distinct,
    semiotically.

    We thus anthropomorphize certain animal behaviors, when we univocally project onto them
    what are otherwise only analogous behaviors or, even, a mixture of univocal, analogical or even
    equivocal realities. We can sumilarly anthropomorphize divine hypostases, ousia & energeia.

    So, it’s helpful, heuristically, to distinguish reality’s causes in terms of “aboutness,” recognizing
    that not all causes can be explained in univocal terms, that the concept of telos, itself, can be
    analogically differentiated into various teloi, as we move through the great chain of being from
    the robustly end-intended to the end-purposed to the end-directed to the merely end-stated to,
    perhaps even, the end-unbounded, respectively what I would refer to as teleologic, teleoqualic,
    teleonomic, teleomatic & teleopotent “aboutnesses.”

    The arguments begin as various schools of, for example, quantum interpretation or philosophy
    of mind, will a priori presuppose which aporia are epistemic and/or ontic and/or both in nature,
    which novelties demonstrate weak or strong emergence or supervenience. I resist such
    distinctions as, on one end, they can remain question begging, while, on the other, they can
    seem trivial. In many cases, such presuppositions can mistake what are merely exploratory
    heuristics for explanatory accomplishments (e.g. Dennett’s consciousness “explained” or, more
    appropriately, eliminated, having the deleterious effect of prematurely shutting down critically
    important research programs.

    It is immensely gratifying to me that, whether as Scotists, Thomists, Neo-Platonists or such, we


    enjoy a great deal of normative consensus regarding how different realities are predicated and
    properly grounded, metaphysically. That's where my interests lie in this conversation. And, it's
    further satisfying that we all, of course, eschew the corrosive axiological effects that necessarily
    ensue from nominalism, voluntarism, relativism, etc that all decay into an ultimate nihilism. As
    if ever there was (or could be) a disagreement ...

    Which Scotus narratives are eisegetic or exegetic, descriptively, is above my paygrade (and I
    work for free, SO ... ) & of no consequence to my normative approach.

    Of course, the principle of meaning refers to judgment. That's why I continuously invoke jargon
    like icon, index & symbol - not b/c others find it informative, but b/c it helps me think straight,
    for any robust conception of meaning requires both denotation & connotation. Denotation
    merely references things. A sign representation that only denotes but does not connote is only
    an index. A sign representation that only connotes but does not denote is only an icon. As usual,
    each is necessary, neither sufficient.

    The trick is not to move toward or away from nominalism, on one hand, or toward or away from
    essentialism, on the other, for these are but the obverse sides of the same bankrupt coinage of
    our epistemic realm. Instead, we must approach reality as moderate realists, precisely by
    perceiving, understanding, judging, deciding & acting in a complete hermeneutical spiraling of
    descriptive, interpretive, evaluative, normative & relational approaches to reality.

    For the most part (not necessarily mapping perfectly), Aquinas met this moderate criterion with
    his "metaphysically real" distinction & Scotus with his "formal distinction." Peirce met it with
    his category of Thirdness (regularities & real generalities), which was inspired by but not
    developed directly from Scotus. Moderate realisms vis a vis approaches to universals, as far as
    nominalism goes, have no need of that hypothesis.

    The musing, above, dialogues with this conversation at Pastor Tom Belt's Open Orthodoxy blog.
     

    Divine Names

    No argument w/analytic approach, generally, BUT too many analytics imagine they're providing
    solutions to problems in classical trinitarianism that exist in neither Latin nor East, e.g.
    modalism/tritheism, b/c they engage (ontological) caricatures of (meta-ontological) creeds.

    A communicated essence (not divisible) coinheres in three persons (not communicable), the Son
    (eternally begotten) & Spirit (eternally spirated) proceeding from the Father (eternally
    originating).

    The Cappadocians & fathers derived various names/propria Biblically, not philosophically, from
    prayers & practices, traditions & transformations.

    Because names usually reify or indicate the form or intrinsic characteristics of the thing (entity
    or existent) named, since (the reality of) God (no thing) has no form, He has no name in that
    sense ..
    so divine names refer to divine propria of the essence (intrinsically) & idiomata of the persons as
    revealed by energeia, vestigia, oikonomia. One could take simplicity as a name, where God is
    both simplicity itself (as pure act) & beyond simplicity (as its source).

    Simplicity as such wouldn't prevent such divine distinctions as between a singularity of source &
    multiplicity of expression, an aesthetic intensity & scope, or the divine nature & will (e.g. John
    Damascene doesn't identify the esse naturale with the esse intentionale).

     
    Mary-Jane Rubenstein: The bottom line for Hart is that whether the fathers claim that
    illuminated souls see the divine essence or participate in God’s energies, or whether they call
    God “Being” or “beyond being,” they are saying the same thing, which is … that God is “the
    transcendent source & end of all things,” who “reveals ever more of himself & yet always
    infinitely exceeds what he reveals." review - Orthodox Readings of Augustine, ed. Aristotle
    Papanikolaou & George E. Demacopoulos (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008).

    It's not in our geographic positions but our humble dispositions the Holy Spirit works - even
    beyond a seminary or cloister wall, a workaday world or homelife of masked contemplation, the
    visible frontiers of the church - in all people of goodwill.
    https://t.co/iIXMUWDnfu

    How Scotus Might Gift Zizioulas Coherence

    Zizioulas' musings evoke images for me that work really well, metaphorically & theopoetically.

    And any rhetorical & liturgical approach, which is that existentially persuasive & intuitively
    appealing, just has to implicate some coherent ontological account?

    For example,

     1) Leading w/hypostases rather than ousia,

     2) recognizing, in the order of intelligibility, the essential dependencies of individual


    essences,

     3) interpreting each as personal &


     4) trinitarian dynamics as relational –

    How might we best conceive such modes of identity?

    Scotus, too, eschews substantial references to hypostases (e.g. primary substances &
    subsistences), recategorizing them as exemplifications!

    He doesn't altogether abandon substance-talk, but relocates primary substance to ousia


    (Thomist analogue being secondary substance), thus avoiding causal dynamics (act-potency
    ascriptions).

    Zizioulas' critics point out that, at some point, he must retrieve substantial distinctions into his
    relational ontology to avoid conundra of the one & the many & metaphysically differentiate
    un/created realities and I suspect Scotus could gift the coherence, which some opinions (nod to
    the Dude) hold, his account lacks!?

    A Scotus Glossary

    divine realities
     extreme realism

     numerically singular essence

     immanent universal

     communicability or predicability = exemplifiability

     persons = exemplification

     individuality is not nonexemplifiability but indivisibility

     communicable essence (like secondary substance)

     indivisible essence (like primary substance)

     persons = exemplifications not individuals or substances (b/c incommunicable)

    determinate realities

    2. moderate realism

    3. numerically many essence

    4. created universal
    5. divisibility = instantiability

    6. individuality = noninstantiability

    7. persons = individuals or substances (communicable)

    The Scotist approach to divine syllogistics is not over against, for example, the Thomist, but
    addresses divine realities on its own terms. Both Scotistic & Thomistic trinitarian approaches
    well conform to our classical creedal formulations.

    There are theological contours implicit in our creeds, which, when explicated, metaphysically,
    can only employ meta-ontological, semantic references, not ontological descriptions. The
    Scotistic glossary makes more explicit how this is the case, when differentiating divine &
    determinate realities by using neologisms. Of course, the definition of such coinages still must
    make explicit the extensive nuancing required in distinguishing divine & aristotelian syllogistics.

    For example, such nuancing as set forth in a Dionysian-type logic, where:

    God is | x | is true kataphatically & trans-analogically; as a simile, analogically & literally or


    metaphorically & nonliterally;

    God is | not x | is true apophatically & literally; and

    God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true relationally & really.

    Put another way, consider DBH's admonition from The Hidden & the Manifest:

    This donation of being is so utterly beyond any species of causality we can conceive that the very
    word cause has only the most remotely analogous value in regard to it. And, whatever warrant
    Thomists might find in Thomas for speaking of God as the first efficient cause of creation (which
    I believe to be in principle wrong), such language is misleading unless the analogical
    scope of the concept of efficiency has been extended almost to the point of
    apophasis.
    I'm sympathetic to Zizioulas' eschewal of substance-talk in trinitarian logistics. However, I
    receive it as more of a rhetorical than substantial (double entendre intended) critique, because,
    point of fact, properly parsed & nuanced, neither Latin nor Greek Fathers, Augustinians nor
    Cappadocians, Chalcedonians nor Alexandrians, Thomists nor Scotists, when speaking of the
    Trinity, however much they may have implicitly relied on a univocity and/or analogy of being,
    ever really employed ontologicalcategories, such as in terms of modes of being. Rather, properly
    understood, they spoke semantically using meta-ontological categories, such as in terms
    of modes of identity.

    See:

    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2019/01/11/godel-the-end-of-physics-and-abelard-
    et-al-the-end-of-trinitology/

    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/how-to-re-conceive-substance-for-
    divine-modes-of-identity-scotus-the-greek-fathers/

    This category error should be avoided when critiquing other trinitologies or we'll end up
    caricaturizing them.

    If Zizioulas wanted to advance our trinitarian conceptions, idiomatically, perhaps he could've


    followed in Scotus' footsteps, updating Scotus' neologisms? And perhaps he should've begun his
    project meta-ontologically using vague semantical references rather than ontologically with
    robust metaphysical descriptions?

    How might one commence such a project?

    A Proposed Relational Meta-ontology Glossary

    Personhood - a cluster concept including communion & otherness

    Essence or ousia - primary not secondary substance for divine realities

    Divine person - exemplification of relational personhood & incommunicable

    Human person - individual self-consciousness, communicable or predicable


    Person - cluster concept including ekstasis (moving toward communion or unitive striving) &
    hypostasis (particularity or haecceity via idiomata)

    The Father - not personal cause but unoriginate originator in order of intelligibility (essential


    dependencies) & eternally generating (donatively & eucharistically) communion & otherness
    (persons via ur-kenosis)

    Essential Dependencies - donatively gift not what one is, essentially, but how one


    is, economically, in the order of intelligibility not ontologically, not a substantial subordination

    Divine Other - person or hypostasis, neither an individual (i.e. not an indivisible essence
    or primary substance) nor an essential nature (i.e. not a communicable essence
    or secondary substance)

    Human Other - person or hypostasis as self with both individual & essential natures

    The One or monas - Begetter and Emitter, of whom the others are the one begotten and the
    other the emission

    Necessity - refers to ousia or nature but only applies to instantiations of secondary substances
    (hence not predicated of divine primary substance)

    Divine Nature or Essence or Ousia - refers to primary substance as


    numerically singularessence, which, as an immanentuniversal exhibits communicability
    or predicability or exemplifiability (hence not predicated of human primary substances, which
    instantiate only created universals or secondary substances)

    Necessary Being - Borrowing Hartian phraseology, this language is misleading unless the
    analogical scope of the concepts of necessity & being have both been extended almost to the
    point of apophasis, for divine ousia refers to primarysubstances & created ousia refers
    to secondary substances, where necessary or contingent ordinarily would refer to the hypostatic
    instantiations of same.

    Divine Necessary Being - could only refer to personal hypostatic exemplifications of the
    divine ousia as the numerically singular, communicable primary substance, which entails
    eternally communicating communion (ekstasis) & otherness (hypostasis). As such, in a
    dynamical, relational ontology, necessity would refer not to an essential whatness but the
    economical howness of divine realities, which does not involve causal, substantial transmissions
    but unitive strivings, loving relationalities or perichoresis, which, semantically, are logicallynot
    ontologically necessary. Hence, beyond the primally gratuitous paterological ur-kenosis, ad
    intra, a pneumatological kenosis ad extradonates the gratuity of creation & a Christological
    kenosis gifts the gratuity of grace. And by gratuitous, we mean radically free.

    Divine Oneness - can be expressed

    2. 1) essentially (singular, communicable, primary substance, whatness or propria of


    esse naturale), an Augustinian conception

    3. 2) hypostatically (ad intrapaterological ur-kenosis & Christological & pneumatological


    ad intra communing and ad extrakenoses, howness or idiomata) and

    4. 3) dynamically (synergeia of trinitarian will, of


    the esseintentionale via energeia & oikonomia).

    After Thoughts

    To me, this would all still entail, it seems, only an “analogy of universals,” which would
    implicate an extreme realism for the immanent divine universals but only a moderate realism
    for instantiable created universals.

    If, by universals, one refers to shared properties like HOW one acts & as WHAT one acts,

    Then, even unable to genericallyspecify WHAT thus acts divinely, i.e. only able to apophatically
    say what one is not & only able to analogically imagine what one is connotatively like,

    One could apophatically distinguish divine & creaturely realities by defining the latter’s shared
    essences as divisible, the former’s as NOT so & the latter’s persons (substances or individuals)
    as communicable, the former’s persons (nonsubstantial exemplifications) as NOT so.
    Such apophatic predications of the divine essence would guarantee more conceptual
    compatibility & logical consistency than related, but still very much distinct, kataphatic
    affirmations.

    For example, to be more clear that I wouldn’t mean to say that the divine essence is one per
    some strictly numeric determination, I’d want to say, instead, that it includes, rather, Oneness,
    itself (per a verbally iconic denomination.) And I’d emphatically not want to refer to divine being
    per any strictly generic determination but, instead, refer, rather, to Being itself, again, strictly
    denominatively.

    Orthodox Dialogue on the Trinity

    The Father is the primordial source (arch‘) & ultimate cause (aitia) of the divine being. ~ 1992
    Orthodox-Reformed dialogue

    https://t.co/8rK9l8PCMf?amp=1

    in ineffable ways that are beyond all time (achronos), beyond all origin (anarchos), & beyond all
    cause (anaitios). Orthodox-R. Catholic dialogue 2003

    https://t.co/0WqgRkqHmv?amp=1

    http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/ecumenical-and-
    interreligious/ecumenical/orthodox/filioque-church-dividing-issue-english.cfm

    Not everything Torrance had to say is acceptable to the Orthodox. The disagreements are real &
    not trifling. But the affinities also are significant, & the mutual respect is profound.

    https://t.co/VMMmjDKDOp?amp=1

    https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/orthodoxbridge/tf-torrance-and-reformed-orthodox-dialogue/

    Such language is misleading unless the analogical scope of the concept of efficiency has been
    extended almost to the point of apophasis. ~ DBH, The Hidden & the Manifest 4/
    What's instructive about the trinitarian dialogue cited above, beyond the significant descriptive
    & normative agreements expressed in those joint statements, is the manner in which it was
    conducted with such prayerful, respectful, charitable dispositions of all participants. 5/5
    In recent years, with much dialogue & many joint declarations among Anglican, Roman,
    Orthodox & even Reformed traditions, even interpretations of such as the MOF & Filioque
    present fewer conceptual stumbling blocks to a rather BROAD creedal consensus re Trinitarian
    doctrine?

    A Brief Defense of Common Sense

    Our “participatory imagination” engages “common sense.”

    Our common sense derives from events encountered, first, nondiscursively & preconceptually, &
    is, next, articulated by our stories, & finally, organized by our conceptual mapmaking.

    I have chosen to interpret Aquinas, Scotus & Peirce as providing meta-ontological heuristics
    that, more than almost anything else, amount to a robust defense of common sense & insistence
    on the epistemic indispensability of our participatory imagination.

    Why, then, all the subtlety, nuance & neologisms? Why a Summa, for goshsakes? How, then, do
    such peripatetic wanderings arrive at anything more than a metaphysical haystack of
    philosophical straw, if all we’re talking about is common sense?

    That irony comes about precisely because, as we employ our common sense & participatory
    imagination, we’ll often discover, nondiscursively, more than we can say, discursively, and we’ll
    often know, preconceptually, more than we can map, conceptually.
     

    Many have variously described distinct aspects of this “knowing” such as in terms of
    connaturality (Maritain), an illative sense (Cardinal Newman), a tacit dimension (Polyani) &
    abduction (Peirce), all which are prior to robustly inferential understandings, for example, of
    creedal & moral realities. Such a knowing can be existential, confessional, performative &
    participatory, though always certainly anticipating, albeit inchoately, sapiential, theoretical,
    informative & conceptual formulations.

    There’s undeniably a sensus fidei (of laity, theologians & bishops) that might be conceived as a
    charism of discernment & graced via nondiscursive instinct, intuition, empathy, heart
    knowledge, innate inclinations or synderesis. And it’s going to be obscure & unsystematic before
    it gets discursively appropriated with any degree of conceptual clarity. We must not forget that
    this sensus, as grace, pertains to all the faithful, and that we can learn something of God even
    from the ordinary, distracted, confused, ill-informed, sinful, & ecclesially marginalized. This is
    also why a written tradition presupposes an oral tradition, wherein the stories once told &
    prayers once prayed will indispensably contribute to any proper theological interpretation
    beyond mere texts.

    So, there’s a LOT going on of a logical nature, tacitly & implicitly, in our common sense &
    participatory imagination. And they’re so fearfully & wonderfully made that it’s systematic
    explication does require no small effort that yields no simple schema. Their elaboration yields
    such as the first principles & the various causations, entails realism & fallibilism, eschews
    nominalism & essentialism and norms practical reasoning even under speculative uncertainty.

    For a good grasp of how our participatory imagination works, think of how one’s “hometown
    knowledge” works. To give a stranger directions, one needs determinative descriptions like how
    many blocks (numerically), which direction (locatively), which street signs (indexically) and,
    perhaps, a map. To give a fellow inhabitant directions, one who participates in the same
    imaginary, one might only require a denominative connotation: “You’re looking for directions to
    the local IGA store? Ha ha, silly! That’s just Mr. Gower’s Grocery!”

    The chief problem with dismissing our concrete participatory imagination & common sense,
    esteeming only conceptual map-making, is that we can inadvertently jettison first principles,
    causations & realism, things we’ll want to go beyond but never without. We’ll end up subverting
    science, itself, along with our common sense, embracing epistemic dead-ends like logical
    positivism, radical empiricism, metaphysical ignosticism, theological noncognitivism &
    scientism.

    What I personally discovered in examining the defense of common sense as inheres in Aristotle,
    Aquinas, Scotus, Peirce, Maritain, Newman, Polyani et al is a type of second naiveté, a re-
    enchantment, the realization that, everything I felt & believed, when making my joyous First
    Communion, when learning my Latin responses as an altar boy, when baptized in the Spirit &
    first prayed in tongues, is ultimately eminently defensible, philosophically, and still rationally
    actionable, existentially. The proper use of my common sense & participatory imagination in a
    community of earnest inquiry & value-realization very well epistemically entitled me long before
    I had a more precise understanding of how. I’ve told my loved ones that, if they trust their
    common sense & participate in an earnest community of value-realizers, they don’t have to
    follow my path, where I happily discovered thru various means that my common sense was
    justified by that grace we experience as common sense, itself. The rest is --- so much straw!

    Yes to Radical Orthodoxy, BUT

    Over the years, it's taken me a great deal of parsing to differentiate DBHart from Milbank at
    times, not rhetorically, of course, but philosophically.
    Hart has critiqued certain strands of Thomism, humorously to me, arrogantly to some, in a way
    that makes me suspect he grounds his epistemology in a weakened foundationalism, i.e. a
    suitable response to a postmodernist chastisement.
    Milbank, on the other hand, seems to be suspicious of all metanarratives ... ahem ... with the
    exception of his own. And he seems to urge it by only resorting to a distinct existential panache
    & rhetorical magnetism, which will invite others in to his ecclesial participatory imagination.
    And, honestly, I do believe that, soteriologically, that can indeed be necessary & sufficient for
    many.
    It's foundational in the sense that, in my view, philosophy is best articulated by a life well-lived
    as progressively conforms, orthotheotically, to that divine telos, which is embodied in our
    human nature & will and manifest in humanity's common sense & sensibilities. And his
    approach realizes this telos orthopathically, orthopraxically & orthocommunally in a radically
    orthodox manner.
    But, here's the rub.
    Any authentically human anthropology will be holistic and will integrate our participatory
    imaginations with our discursive cognitive map-making, which, for some, may provide a
    necessary
    praeambula fidei, and, for others, a richer life of prayer & worship.
    And I say this knowing that explicit philosophical articulations, including syllogistic arguments,
    of faith's implicit existential interpretations have contributed to my own life of faith in both
    ways.
    I don't begrudge RO its harsh critiques of vulgar modernistic & postmodernistic depredations of
    meaning, manifest in all manner of encroachments such as skepticism, voluntarism, relativism,
    nominalism & nihilism (although, they've manifestly caricatured Scotus beyond recognition).
    BUT there's a certain McCarthyesque strain in their interrogations of other stances, which
    results in R.O. seeing nihilists behind every modernist tree and under every philosophical rock?
    See:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/12/natural-theology-natural-
    law-however-otherwise-weak-at-least-defeat-nihilism/

    A Logo-centric Account of Apophasis with a quick nod to Lossky & Staniloae


    How Scotus' Univocity of Being Grounds a Metaphysics of Participation
    Scotus’ univocity somewhat entails Anselm’s ontological proof, where “pure perfections,” which
    are predicable of God alone, refer to being none greater than which can be conceived. Thus,
    from aspects of determinate being, which self-evidently make creatures better, we can devise
    composite concepts that apply only to God. Such aspects are transcendentals, because they are
    coextensive with being, transcending this finite and infinite division of being.
    Scotus’ proper attributes (one, good & true) are also transcendentals. The supercategory of
    disjunctive transcendentals, like finite & infinite and contingent & necessary, for Scotus, prove
    God’s existence.
    The less perfect member of each disjunction are possibilities that may or may not be actualized,
    creation being contingent and dependent on the divine will and not a necessary & inevitable
    emanation. The pure perfections, which don’t presuppose some limitation, are transcendentals
    but, of course, not coextensive.
    The above conceptions of being, for Scotus, are predicable in quale and not in quid, hence are
    predicable denominatively (essential difference or nonessential property) not
    determinatively (what is it? genus? species?).
    In Peircean terms, qualia correspond to possibilities (firstness or 1ns) and not genera-lities
    (thirdness or 3ns) and can refer to properties (qualia not quiddities) we may conceptually
    abstract from actualities (secondness or 2ns). This distinction is crucial, for it distinguishes
    between a semantical univocity, which follows a grammar of naming, and what would
    otherwise be an ontological univocity, which follows a grammar of categories of existence, i.e.
    regarding features or properties possessed as formal acts in potency to a final telos. While every
    quiddity is an essence, not every essence is a quiddity. Scotus’ univocity refers to qualia not
    quiddities.
    Scotus’ univocity still supports a distinction, however, between theo-poetic nomination & theo-
    logical attribution, but not the vicious form of attribution DBH laments in a univocal ontology.
    The distinction lies, instead, in that between icons, images, diagrams & metaphors, on one
    hand, and similes & analogies, on the other, the latter as explicit & literal, the former as implicit,
    all as possibilities, not generalities.
    The reason these subtle distinctions of the Subtle Doctor are crucial, in my view, is that they set
    forth how both theo-poetic nomination (idiomata) & theo-logical attribution
    (propria), more modestly conceived, are consonant with our metaphysics of
    participation.
    Indeed, triadically and semiotically, participatively, we are drawn beyond our
    iconic (peircean 1ns) & indexical (2ns) SIGN-ifications of divine names &
    locations, and thereby led to our robustly relational symbolic (3ns) engagements,
    spanning the infinite interval - not just theopoetically & theologically, but
    -doxologically & theotically!
    No, the Divine Economy is Not Trickle Down! --- The Flipping of the Divine
    Donative Script
    What’s the nature of our participation in the divine oikonomia?
    The trinitarian paterological ur-kenosis, via the divine nature, opens up the eternal distance
    (economically & intimately) that the Son & Spirit may truly be. (Bathasarian)
    The pneumatological kenosis, via the divine will, opens up the infinite analogical interval
    between God and the gratuity of creation that determinate creatures could truly be. (Hartian)
    The Christological kenosis, via the divine will, opens up the infinite possibilities that
    determinate persons could truly be-come love via the gratuity of grace. The Trinity thereby
    flipped the divine donative script, when, via the hypostatic union, Jesus participated in human
    nature. And He did this as a real personhood (enhypostasis), which belonged to Him, alone
    (anhypostasis).
    These divine kenoses, via epektasis, open up an infinite human desire (aesthetically), and via
    ekstasis, open up the space for one to stand outside one’s self (relationally & personally).
    (Bulgakov, Balthasar, Hart & Zizioulas?)
    I explain later, below, that human persons traverse these distances theopoetically, theologically
    and relationally. DBH would say rhetorically (via theological nomination) and
    epistemologically (via philosophical attribution).
    And we might all agree that, by relationally, we mean Eucharistically (liturgically &
    sacramentally, doxologically & theotically).
    In the personal and relational sense, in all forms of kenoses, including the paterological,
    pneumatological, Christological and our Eucharistic participations, we might see, in sharp relief,
    Zizioulas’ conception of person playing out, i.e. that of other & communion, economy &
    intimacy, epektasis & ekstasis.
    If our analogia gift us, semantically, icons & indexes (signs & locations) of divine encounters
    (knowledge about God), it is finally a Eucharistic participation that will symbolically &
    efficaciously (semiotic pragmatism) gift us divine Communion (knowledge of God).
    Our determinate oikonomia are the divine oikonomia & the economic trinity is the
    immanent trinity, just not vice versa, as the Trinity perpetually opens eternal distances
    (ad intra) and infinite intervals (ad extra), precisely that we might be, might become & might
    commune, forever & ever! Amen?
    Now, has this not opened up the eternal space & infinite interval where we may all reasonably
    hope for ἀποκατάστασις ?
    The Semiotic Eucharistic Cycle
    Liturgy of the Word

     Iconic theo-poetic nomination of divine names

     Indexic theo-logic attribution of divine locations


    Liturgy of the Eucharist
     Symbolic doxological & theotic engagement of divine participations
    Offertory - Ecstasis & Proodos as self-transcendence
    Communion - Enstasis & Mone as union
    Post Communion - Epecstasis & Epistrophe as self-reception
    Dismissal (Ecstasis & Proodos)
    Unitive Living (Enstasis & Mone)
    Return - Introibo ad Altare Dei (Epecstasis & Epistrophe)
    Liturgy of the Word - repeat the cycle
     
     
     
     
    There's Nothing Ontological About Scotus' Univocity of Being
    Because Scotus’ univocity of being refers to a semantic not ontological thesis, it’s - not only not
    over against analogy, but -tacitly relied upon on by, thereby integral to, analogy. It’s a thesis
    about language or how we think & talk about God and not about ontology or what God is.
    So, does analogy with its implicit univocity still take back all the meaning it ostensibly gives?
    It takes back a LOT but not ALL because our God-concepts are, at least, grounded empirically.
    Like icons, images, similes & metaphors, both our univocal & analogical terms are likenesses or
    similarities of the realities they SIGN-ify or bring to mind, prior to conveying any complete
    meaning, which may or not be “fixed.”
    For example, whiteness (Scotus’ example, in fact) is such a concept as can signify more than one
    reality irrespective of their generic ontological differences. And it can do so with a fixed
    meaning, too, even though it conveys nothing, in and of itself, ontologically, about different
    white things, i.e. neither what they are nor how they came to be white. (Scotus is not nominalist
    but moderately realist regarding universals, but that's another conversation.) It’s thus a mental
    construct that’s been abstracted away from the things it variously signifies, while otherwise
    “proper” to none of them.
    Once modalized as a white sheep or white Corvette, we have two new “composite” concepts.
    Substitute “loving” for whiteness, “finitely” for sheep & “infinitely” for Corvette and one can see
    that the meaning of loving is fixed and so has some empirical bearing on our understanding of
    God, but the composite concept “infinitely loving” is qualitatively different & refers only to God.
    Such an understanding remains rather meager, to be sure, but nevertheless sufficient to avoid
    wholesale equivocation, thereby rescuing the syllogisms of natural theology’s Analogia Entis
    from fallacy. It gifts us an imperfect knowledge and a small amount at that, but it’s an empirical
    – not just semantic & conceptual – knowledge of a very BIG & ULTIMATE reality, so, can have
    profound existential import, doxologically & theotically.
    It’s only an ontological univocity of being, as a generic category, that should draw anyone’s
    metaphysical fire or raise anyone’s theological ire.
    There's Nothing Esoteric About Apophasis
    One afternoon, one notices that the glass vase, which normally rests on an outdoor table in their
    backyard, has been shattered into so many pieces & that one of the bricks on the house’s rear
    wall has been cracked. One immediately infers that a projectile from over the back fence did the
    damage, then tries to muse to the best explanation, unable to find the offending object.
    Taking out one’s compass, protractor & sliderule, estimating the projectile’s velocity, angle of
    trajectory, distance travelled, putative weight & such, the resident rules out the object having
    been thrown, fired from a potato cannon, tossed by a pitching machine, flung by a lawnmower
    and so on. For now, the determinable effects remain proper to no known causes.
    Those effects were not entirely dissimilar to those one might expect from zinged marbles, fired
    potatoes, thrown baseballs or flung rocks, but, at bottom, were inconsistent with such acts even
    though, in certain other ways, very much like them.
    The resident cleans up the mess & replaces the vase. It happens again! The resident, again, does
    forensic measurements, cleans up the mess & replaces the vase. It happens a third time! Still,
    the effects remain proper to no known causes. But, now, the resident starts to take the cause
    “personally.”
    What kind of person is doing this and how? Well, it can’t be the sweet little old childless widow,
    who lives there. Of course, then, not any grandchild. And it’s positively not her yardkeeper,
    house-cleaner or physical therapist. It must be a neighborhood prankster, but one without a
    name or motive.
    We’ve talked very intelligibly about this unknown personal cause, only able to make successful
    semantic references but unable to make good ontological descriptions of the actor or the actor’s
    specific machinations. We have employed analogies that apply literally, qualifying them with all
    manner of apophatic negations.
    You see, there’s nothing occult or gnostic about apophasis. It’s quite quotidian in application,
    with a positive epistemic valence, even, as a supplemental way of increasing descriptive accuracy
    by saying what something is not or is not like.

    Pip did this in Great Expectations, searching for – not a malefactor, but – benefactor. Ralph
    McInerny has described us as Characters in Search of Their Author.
    Not just the fast & frugal heuristics of common sense employ such abductive inference,
    ananoetics & apophasis, as this has long been the tradecraft of our highly speculative theoretic
    sciences, of quantum interpretations & philosophies of mind, of undiscovered elements on the
    Periodic Table & putative genes carrying the traits of Mendel’s peas.
    Yes, our God-talk traffics only in successful references not ontological descriptions and takes
    back, apophatically, more than what it gifts, analogically. But that’s just the philosophical part
    of our human episteme. It, at least, renders our beliefs reasonable, partly intelligible even if not
    wholly comprehensible.
    For some, that serves as the praeambula fidei to making the existential leap in responding to
    special revelation, musing that, if Jesus of Nazareth & his People Gathered are that
    loving, that beautiful, that good, that liberative, then, maybe just maybe, I can
    reasonably hope He & They are also that True!
    That’s what this entire blog is really all about, reconciling Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, Palamas &
    Peirce, Bulgakov & Bracken, Zizioulas & Scotus.
    When I say "successful reference" to God, I mean that literally in a robustly ontological sense.
    From divine vestigia of the gratuity of creation via general revelation & energeia-oikonomia of
    the gratuity of grace via special revelation, I say we can infer from those divine effects, which
    are proper to no known causes, a putative Actus Purus.
    Because the nondeterminate divine ousia & hypostases involve Act sans potency, similarities to
    the acts of determinate beings are far outnumbered by dissimilarities.
    From a separate conversation, I'd written:
    A practical take-away from Neville (following Peirce's semantics):
    Modally, if one takes an analogy to be a type of possibility (e.g. along w/ icons, images,
    diagrams, similes & metaphors, which are similarity-invoking), then, as a form of
    indeterminacy, it might be treated as a case of vagueness, where noncontradiction [PNC]
    wouldn’t apply?
    We’d thus distinguish it from that form of indeterminacy, modal generality, where excluded
    middle wouldn’t apply but a continuum of probabilities could (scalar).
    Without PNC, a great deal of epistemic humility's warranted in all analogy-discourse!
    Dissimilarities abound!
    Apophasis thus redounds!
    When DB Hart gets outdone with some neo-scholastics, it’s because they apparently give more
    weight to the Analogia than it can epistemically bear. <<<
    We believe, then, that nondeterminate divine realities cause determinate effects - vestigia,
    energeia & oikonomia & invite our participation. But what is the "nature" of our participation,
    considering divine acts are nondeterminate and/or self-determinate & ours determinate? Is
    there anything univocal going on?
    It seems to me that when we cooperate with the divine gratuities of creation & grace, we as
    creatures foster the very same doxological & theotic effects as the Trinitological Synergy,
    soteriologically, sophiologically, ecclesiologically, eschatologically & sacramentally. We do this
    imitatively & instrumentally, by actively surrendering, kenotically, thereby becoming passive
    conduits, pneumatologically.
    Correcting Bulgakov w/Bracken, I imagine a panentheistic, divine matrix, which,
    participatorily, not only involves us creatively & imitatively, but, which neo-platonic-like, also
    influences us diffusively & substratively, as the divine telos gently coaxes us toward the
    fulfillment of our human nature (sustained authenticity).
    I guess I'm suggesting that there's a participatory univocity of loving effects via our
    determinate kenosis, imitating Jesus' self-determinate kenosis, unleashing the Spirit's gifts,
    charisms & universal salvation.
    Flipping the Semantic Script for Determinate & Divine Being
    Turning this thing on its head has been precisely how I've come to approach this all. The more
    jargonistic way of condensing my above contributions is to wit:
    Determinate syllosistics are derived from divine syllogistics.
    If one begins with the Athanasian Creed, then formalizes it, one gets Abelard's 3 modes of
    identity: essential, personal & formal.
    The first 2 modes do not apply to determinate being, precisely due to radical dissimilarities in
    predications of ousia & exemplifications of hypostases.
    For determinate realities, the only mode of identity is formal & we can consider it a derivation of
    divine syllogistics (rather than taking them to be an ad hoc strategy of our Aristotelian-like
    syllogistics).
    Of course, for determinate realities, essence, hypostases & forms (the last = generalities, laws,
    regularities) reflect modes of being.
    This doesn't gift us a formal systematic accounting but it very much entails a rather robust semi-
    formal heuristic. This is the intersection where determinate effects interact, inter-
    participatively, as they variously ensue from divine nondeterminate or self-determinate realities
    or from creaturely determinate realities, either which can, variously, generate "effects proper to
    no known causes" whether putatively theological, metaphysical, scientific or common sensical.
    It's from the synergistic divine vestigia, energeia & oikonomia that we abductively infer a
    putative divine cause, Actus. We can thus affirm Rahner's axiom that the economic trinity is the
    immanent trinity, even though many of us would hesitate regarding any vice versa. At least, I
    can't go there.
    Rahner spoke of a divine quasi-formal cause. Inverting the script, though, perhaps it's better
    said that it's our Aristotelian-like categories that are quasi, not the divine categories:
     quasi-formal in potency to quasic-telic,
     quasi-actus (efficient) in potency to quasi-substantial (material),
     quasi-existential in potency to quasi-essential,
    whereby, imitatively, we realize our authentic human nature as we grow from mere image
    (quasi) to clear likeness (REAL-ly), co-creatively fulfilling our created potential.
    Not sure I've connected any dots or successfully unpacked my divine imaginary, but those are
    my categories, their semantic rules & implications for intelligible god-talk.
    Further Nuancing Apophasis
    Some Orthodox theologians point out that both the via positiva and via negativa are
    RATIONAL approaches, both sharing the same trajectory of increasing descriptive accuracy,
    whether through affirmation of what something is, ontologically, or is like, analogically, or
    through negation of what something is not or is not like. That’s how kataphasis and apophasis
    are largely conceived in the West, often through radically logo-centric lenses.
    When Lossky employed an apophatic, perichoretic strategy, though, he referenced a
    transrational mystical experience moreso in terms of ineffability. He aspires merely to a
    successful relational reference but does not ambition a successful metaphysical description.
    (This distinction applies, by the way, to so much of nondual teaching in Buddhist & Hindu
    traditions, as they aren’t doing metaphysics as much as they are leading us into experiences or
    real-izations).
    The Orthodox priest, Dumitru Staniloae, according to some, was more rigorous and nuanced
    than Lossky. He would refer to our ineffable experiences as transrational and trans-apophatic.
    Such distinctions ground others, for example, a trinito-logy vs a trinito-phany.
    An Afterward Regarding Univocity, Analogy & Apophasis
    Our irreducibly triadic inferential cycling of abductive hypothesizing, deductive clarifying &
    inductive testing can fall into a sterile, nonvirtuous dyadic cycling of abduction & deduction,
    never gaining the realist traction that can only come from, at least, some inductive rubber
    hitting the epistemic road.
    To be sure, sometimes, despite our mindful exploratory excursions, this happens because we’ve
    encountered a genuine explanatory aporia. In such cases, our alternating univocity, analogy &
    apophasis can make a salutary contribution to enhanced intelligibility by presenting then
    discarding one heuristic device after another in the form of more icons, images, diagrams,
    similes, metaphors & analogies.
    This is analogous to our Popperian alternation of conjecture & criticism in the falsification of
    our abductive hypotheses via inductive testing, but unlike falsification in that, unable to
    critically engage inductively, it simply generates more hypotheses, more potential pathways to
    serve as candidates for testing, sometimes via rather weak forms of inference &, if lucky,
    sometimes using more robust methods.
    So, the role of univocity, analogy & apophasis might best be conceived as an inference
    generator, souping up the abductive engine we already have. It can be thought of, too, as a
    meta-heuristic device, which keeps churning out heuristics.
     When it does this using icons, images, diagrams & metaphors, our heuristics are poetic
    (e.g. theopoetic).
     When using univocity, apophasis, similes & analogies, our heuristics are logocentric (e.g.
    theological).
     When actively engaged by our participatory imaginations (e.g. liturgically, doxologically,
    theotically), such heuristics can foster interpersonal relations, trans-rationally,
    trans-apophatically & axiologically.
    In my view, then, we best engage our Scotist, Thomist, Palamist, Aristotelian & Peircean
    approaches – not as explanatory metaphysics, but – as exploratory heuristics, setting forth
    metaphysical contours in the same way that our creeds define the theological boundaries of
    essential dogma.
    Here’s a concrete application as an example:
    An Aristotelian hylomorphism, properly conceived in a triadic semiotic sense, doesn’t compete
    as an explanatory metaphysic (i.e. aspiring to explain consciousness in competition with
    eliminativism, nonreductive physicalism, cartesian dualism, etc) but, instead, serves as an
    exploratory heuristic, which can guide empirical research, keeping relevant questions alive &
    foregrounded. It might suggest, for example, that one mustn’t conflate materialism with
    physicalist accounts. Instead, we best distinguish that conception of consciousness, which we
    properly take to be immaterial (i.e. for materialist approaches are prima facie absurd) from that
    of any physicalist conception of same, which needn’t necessarily be absurd (e.g. inconsistent
    with freedom).
    The musing, above, dialogues with this conversation at Pastor Tom Belt's Open Orthodoxy blog.

    How Scotus Might Gift Zizioulas Coherence

    Zizioulas' musings evoke images for me that work really well, metaphorically & theopoetically.
    And any rhetorical & liturgical approach, which is that existentially persuasive & intuitively
    appealing, just has to implicate some coherent ontological account?
    For example,

     1) Leading w/hypostases rather than ousia,


     2) recognizing, in the order of intelligibility, the essential dependencies of individual
    essences,
     3) interpreting each as personal &
     4) trinitarian dynamics as relational –
    How might we best conceive such modes of identity?
    Scotus, too, eschews substantial references to hypostases (e.g. primary substances &
    subsistences), recategorizing them as exemplifications!
    He doesn't altogether abandon substance-talk, but relocates primary substance to ousia
    (Thomist analogue being secondary substance), thus avoiding causal dynamics (act-potency
    ascriptions).
    Zizioulas' critics point out that, at some point, he must retrieve substantial distinctions into his
    relational ontology to avoid conundra of the one & the many & metaphysically differentiate
    un/created realities and I suspect Scotus could gift the coherence, which some opinions (nod to
    the Dude) hold, his account lacks!?

    A Scotus Glossary
    divine realities
     extreme realism
     numerically singular essence
     immanent universal
     communicability or predicability = exemplifiability
     persons = exemplification
     individuality is not nonexemplifiability but indivisibility
     communicable essence (like secondary substance)
     indivisible essence (like primary substance)
     persons = exemplifications not individuals or substances (b/c incommunicable)
    determinate realities
     moderate realism
     numerically many essence
     created universal
     divisibility = instantiability
     individuality = noninstantiability
     persons = individuals or substances (communicable)
    The Scotist approach to divine syllogistics is not over against, for example, the Thomist, but
    addresses divine realities on its own terms. Both Scotistic & Thomistic trinitarian approaches
    well conform to our classical creedal formulations.
    There are theological contours implicit in our creeds, which, when explicated, metaphysically,
    can only employ meta-ontological, semantic references, not ontological descriptions. The
    Scotistic glossary makes more explicit how this is the case, when differentiating divine &
    determinate realities by using neologisms. Of course, the definition of such coinages still must
    make explicit the extensive nuancing required in distinguishing divine & aristotelian syllogistics.
    For example, such nuancing as set forth in a Dionysian-type logic, where:
    God is | x | is true kataphatically & trans-analogically; as a simile, analogically & literally or
    metaphorically & nonliterally;
    God is | not x | is true apophatically & literally; and
    God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true relationally & really.
    Put another way, consider DBH's admonition from The Hidden & the Manifest:
    This donation of being is so utterly beyond any species of causality we can conceive that the very
    word cause has only the most remotely analogous value in regard to it. And, whatever warrant
    Thomists might find in Thomas for speaking of God as the first efficient cause of creation (which
    I believe to be in principle wrong), such language is misleading unless the analogical
    scope of the concept of efficiency has been extended almost to the point of
    apophasis.
    I'm sympathetic to Zizioulas' eschewal of substance-talk in trinitarian logistics. However, I
    receive it as more of a rhetorical than substantial (double entendre intended) critique, because,
    point of fact, properly parsed & nuanced, neither Latin nor Greek Fathers, Augustinians nor
    Cappadocians, Chalcedonians nor Alexandrians, Thomists nor Scotists, when speaking of the
    Trinity, however much they may have implicitly relied on a univocity and/or analogy of being,
    ever really employed ontological categories, such as in terms of modes of being. Rather,
    properly understood, they spoke semantically using meta-ontological categories, such as in
    terms of modes of identity.
    See:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2019/01/11/godel-the-end-of-physics-and-abelard-
    et-al-the-end-of-trinitology/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/how-to-re-conceive-substance-for-
    divine-modes-of-identity-scotus-the-greek-fathers/
    This category error should be avoided when critiquing other trinitologies or we'll end up
    caricaturizing them.
    If Zizioulas wanted to advance our trinitarian conceptions, idiomatically, perhaps he could've
    followed in Scotus' footsteps, updating Scotus' neologisms? And perhaps he should've begun his
    project meta-ontologically using vague semantical references rather than ontologically with
    robust metaphysical descriptions?
    How might one commence such a project?
    A Proposed Relational Meta-ontology Glossary
    Personhood - a cluster concept including communion & otherness
    Essence or ousia - primary not secondary substance for divine realities
    Divine person - exemplification of relational personhood & incommunicable
    Human person - individual self-consciousness, communicable or predicable
    Person - cluster concept including ekstasis (moving toward communion or unitive striving) &
    hypostasis (particularity or haecceity via idiomata)
    The Father - not personal cause but unoriginate originator in order of intelligibility (essential
    dependencies) & eternally generating (donatively & eucharistically) communion & otherness
    (persons via ur-kenosis)
    Essential Dependencies - donatively gift not what one is, essentially, but how one is,
    economically, in the order of intelligibility not ontologically, not a substantial subordination
    Divine Other - person or hypostasis, neither an individual (i.e. not an indivisible essence or
    primary substance) nor an essential nature (i.e. not a communicable essence or secondary
    substance)
    Human Other - person or hypostasis as self with both individual & essential natures
    The One or monas - Begetter and Emitter, of whom the others are the one begotten and the
    other the emission
    Necessity - refers to ousia or nature but only applies to instantiations of secondary substances
    (hence not predicated of divine primary substance)
    Divine Nature or Essence or Ousia - refers to primary substance as numerically singular
    essence, which, as an immanent universal exhibits communicability or predicability or
    exemplifiability (hence not predicated of human primary substances, which instantiate only
    created universals or secondary substances)
    Necessary Being - Borrowing Hartian phraseology, this language is misleading unless the
    analogical scope of the concepts of necessity & being have both been extended almost to the
    point of apophasis, for divine ousia refers to primary substances & created ousia refers to
    secondary substances, where necessary or contingent ordinarily would refer to the hypostatic
    instantiations of same.
    Divine Necessary Being - could only refer to personal hypostatic exemplifications of the
    divine ousia as the numerically singular, communicable primary substance, which entails
    eternally communicating communion (ekstasis) & otherness (hypostasis). As such, in a
    dynamical, relational ontology, necessity would refer not to an essential whatness but the
    economical howness of divine realities, which does not involve causal, substantial transmissions
    but unitive strivings, loving relationalities or perichoresis, which, semantically, are logically not
    ontologically necessary. Hence, beyond the primally gratuitous paterological ur-kenosis, ad
    intra, a pneumatological kenosis ad extra donates the gratuity of creation & a Christological
    kenosis gifts the gratuity of grace. And by gratuitous, we mean radically free.
    Divine Oneness - can be expressed
     1) essentially (singular, communicable, primary substance, whatness or propria of esse
    naturale), an Augustinian conception
     2) hypostatically (ad intra paterological ur-kenosis & Christological & pneumatological
    ad intra communing and ad extra kenoses, howness or idiomata) and
     3) dynamically (synergeia of trinitarian will, of the esse intentionale via energeia &
    oikonomia).
    After Thoughts
    To me, this would all still entail, it seems, only an “analogy of universals,” which would
    implicate an extreme realism for the immanent divine universals but only a moderate realism
    for instantiable created universals.
    If, by universals, one refers to shared properties like HOW one acts & as WHAT one acts,
    Then, even unable to generically specify WHAT thus acts divinely, i.e. only able to apophatically
    say what one is not & only able to analogically imagine what one is connotatively like,
    One could apophatically distinguish divine & creaturely realities by defining the latter’s shared
    essences as divisible, the former’s as NOT so & the latter’s persons (substances or individuals) as
    communicable, the former’s persons (nonsubstantial exemplifications) as NOT so.
    Such apophatic predications of the divine essence would guarantee more conceptual
    compatibility & logical consistency than related, but still very much distinct, kataphatic
    affirmations.
    For example, to be more clear that I wouldn’t mean to say that the divine essence is one per
    some strictly numeric determination, I’d want to say, instead, that it includes, rather, Oneness,
    itself (per a verbally iconic denomination.) And I’d emphatically not want to refer to divine being
    per any strictly generic determination but, instead, refer, rather, to Being itself, again, strictly
    denominatively.
    Orthodox Dialogue on the Trinity
    The Father is the primordial source (arch‘) & ultimate cause (aitia) of the divine being. ~ 1992
    Orthodox-Reformed dialogue
    https://t.co/8rK9l8PCMf?amp=1
    in ineffable ways that are beyond all time (achronos), beyond all origin (anarchos), & beyond all
    cause (anaitios). Orthodox-R. Catholic dialogue 2003
    https://t.co/0WqgRkqHmv?amp=1
    http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/ecumenical-and-
    interreligious/ecumenical/orthodox/filioque-church-dividing-issue-english.cfm
    Not everything Torrance had to say is acceptable to the Orthodox. The disagreements are real &
    not trifling. But the affinities also are significant, & the mutual respect is profound.
    https://t.co/VMMmjDKDOp?amp=1
    https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/orthodoxbridge/tf-torrance-and-reformed-orthodox-dialogue/
    Such language is misleading unless the analogical scope of the concept of efficiency has been
    extended almost to the point of apophasis. ~ DBH, The Hidden & the Manifest 4/
    What's instructive about the trinitarian dialogue cited above, beyond the significant descriptive
    & normative agreements expressed in those joint statements, is the manner in which it was
    conducted with such prayerful, respectful, charitable dispositions of all participants. 5/5
    In recent years, with much dialogue & many joint declarations among Anglican, Roman,
    Orthodox & even Reformed traditions, even interpretations of such as the MOF & Filioque
    present fewer conceptual stumbling blocks to a rather BROAD creedal consensus re Trinitarian
    doctrine?
     
    A Brief Defense of Common Sense
    Our “participatory imagination” engages “common sense.”
     
    Our common sense derives from events encountered, first, nondiscursively & preconceptually, &
    is, next, articulated by our stories, & finally, organized by our conceptual mapmaking.
     
    I have chosen to interpret Aquinas, Scotus & Peirce as providing meta-ontological heuristics
    that, more than almost anything else, amount to a robust defense of common sense & insistence
    on the epistemic indispensability of our participatory imagination.
     
    Why, then, all the subtlety, nuance & neologisms? Why a Summa, for goshsakes? How, then, do
    such peripatetic wanderings arrive at anything more than a metaphysical haystack of
    philosophical straw, if all we’re talking about is common sense?
     
    That irony comes about precisely because, as we employ our common sense & participatory
    imagination, we’ll often discover, nondiscursively, more than we can say, discursively, and we’ll
    often know, preconceptually, more than we can map, conceptually.
     
    Many have variously described distinct aspects of this “knowing” such as in terms of
    connaturality (Maritain), an illative sense (Cardinal Newman), a tacit dimension (Polyani) &
    abduction (Peirce), all which are prior to robustly inferential understandings, for example, of
    creedal & moral realities. Such a knowing can be existential, confessional, performative &
    participatory, though always certainly anticipating, albeit inchoately, sapiential, theoretical,
    informative & conceptual formulations.
     
    There’s undeniably a sensus fidei (of laity, theologians & bishops) that might be conceived as a
    charism of discernment & graced via nondiscursive instinct, intuition, empathy, heart
    knowledge, innate inclinations or synderesis. And it’s going to be obscure & unsystematic before
    it gets discursively appropriated with any degree of conceptual clarity. We must not forget that
    this sensus, as grace, pertains to all the faithful, and that we can learn something of God even
    from the ordinary, distracted, confused, ill-informed, sinful, & ecclesially marginalized. This is
    also why a written tradition presupposes an oral tradition, wherein the stories once told &
    prayers once prayed will indispensably contribute to any proper theological interpretation
    beyond mere texts.
     
    So, there’s a LOT going on of a logical nature, tacitly & implicitly, in our common sense &
    participatory imagination. And they’re so fearfully & wonderfully made that it’s systematic
    explication does require no small effort that yields no simple schema. Their elaboration yields
    such as the first principles & the various causations, entails realism & fallibilism, eschews
    nominalism & essentialism and norms practical reasoning even under speculative uncertainty.
     
    For a good grasp of how our participatory imagination works, think of how one’s “hometown
    knowledge” works. To give a stranger directions, one needs determinative descriptions like how
    many blocks (numerically), which direction (locatively), which street signs (indexically) and,
    perhaps, a map. To give a fellow inhabitant directions, one who participates in the same
    imaginary, one might only require a denominative connotation: “You’re looking for directions to
    the local IGA store? Ha ha, silly! That’s just Mr. Gower’s Grocery!”
     
    The chief problem with dismissing our concrete participatory imagination & common sense,
    esteeming only conceptual map-making, is that we can inadvertently jettison first principles,
    causations & realism, things we’ll want to go beyond but never without. We’ll end up subverting
    science, itself, along with our common sense, embracing epistemic dead-ends like logical
    positivism, radical empiricism, metaphysical ignosticism, theological noncognitivism &
    scientism.
     
    What I personally discovered in examining the defense of common sense as inheres in Aristotle,
    Aquinas, Scotus, Peirce, Maritain, Newman, Polyani et al is a type of second naiveté, a re-
    enchantment, the realization that, everything I felt & believed, when making my joyous First
    Communion, when learning my Latin responses as an altar boy, when baptized in the Spirit &
    first prayed in tongues, is ultimately eminently defensible, philosophically, and still rationally
    actionable, existentially. The proper use of my common sense & participatory imagination in a
    community of earnest inquiry & value-realization very well epistemically entitled me long before
    I had a more precise understanding of how. I’ve told my loved ones that, if they trust their
    common sense & participate in an earnest community of value-realizers, they don’t have to
    follow my path, where I happily discovered thru various means that my common sense was
    justified by that grace we experience as common sense, itself. The rest is --- so much straw!
    properly locating impasses in theological stances
    A suggestion for properly locating impasses in theological stances, e.g. trinitological disputes:
    It makes sense to me to associate Lonergan’s secular conversions –

     1) intellectual,
     2) social,
     3) affective &
     4) moral –
    w/his imperatives & functional specialties, respectively,
     1) experiential awareness & research,
     2) intelligent understanding & interpretation,
     3) reasonable judging – deciding & history and
     4) responsible acting & dialectics.
    This anthropological account thus cycles thru
     1) descriptive
     2) interpretive
     3) evaluative &
     4) normative
    value-pursuits to realize human authenticity.
    Religious conversion would then proceed in a reverse succession thru the normative, evaluative,
    interpretive & descriptive functional specialties to realize a sustained authenticity via self-
    transcendence (being in love):
     1) normative – foundations (exegetical, liturgical, historical & philosophical)
     2) evaluative – doctrines (creedal)
     3) interpretive – systematics (theopoetic & metaphysical idioms)
     4) descriptive -communications (pastoral, homiletics, missiology).
    I set this forth to suggest that, for example, scholarly trinitological impasses can thus be
    variously located in differences regarding:
     1) anthropology
     2) foundations
     3) doctrines
     4) systematics and/or
     5) communications.
    This is to suggest that if two theologians disagree regarding a more fundamental level, e.g.
    anthropological or exegetical, then, it will derivatively produce doctrinal disputes.
    And it makes little sense to engage in systematic polemics, e.g. trinitarian syllogistics, with
    those whose who disagree with us at a more fundamental level, e.g. doctrinally or
    foundationally, much less anthropologically.
    Some impasses between classical & analytical approaches, in fact, result from conclusions
    embedded - not only in one's axioms, premises or logic, but - in the very definitions of one's
    terms (e.g. philosophically: what is God? or anthropologically, what's a person?).

    Skip to content
    PARTICIPATING IN THE DIVINE DANCE
    Divine Modes of Identity – Bulgakov, Balthasar &
    Bracken with Scotus & the Greek Fathers
    JANUARY 17, 2019JOHN SOBERT SYLVESTEDIT"DIVINE MODES OF
    IDENTITY – BULGAKOV, BALTHASAR & BRACKEN WITH SCOTUS & THE
    GREEK FATHERS"
    Some analytic theologians would charge all trinitarian defenses with ad hocphilosophizing?

    Nyet!

    I intuit a general amenability of Abelardian-like syllogistics to reality writ large, i.e. beyond


    trinitarian logic.

    It seems to me that essential, hypostatic & formal modes of identity could be applied in any
    noncomposite, monist ontology, e.g. materialist monism, pantheism or even
    a mereological panen-theism.

    Aristotelian syllogistic logic can be recovered from the Abelardian-like approach precisely
    because the distinction between modes of identity & modes of predication collapse for
    composite realities, where all predications are of formal identity.
    The more widely embraced pan-entheism, like classical theism, employs an ontological
    distinction between humans & God, where God donates & communicates creatively as we
    participate & are liberated imitatively.

    The panen-theistic parsing employs a mereological distinction between humans & God, where


    God donates & communicates diffusively as we participate & are liberated substratively.

    My own pan-semio-entheism, in bracketing ontology, conceives divine donation &


    communication both creatively & diffusively and creaturely participation & liberation
    both imitatively & substratively.
    Because I precisely nurtured such intuitions in dialogue with Bulgakov, Balthasar &
    Bracken (due to my own sophiological, aesthetic & Peirceansensibilities), I was delighted to
    encounter Brandon Gallaher’s reflection:

    The Problem of Pantheism in the Sophiology of Sergii Bulgakov: A Panentheistic Solution in


    the Process Trinitarianism of Joseph A. Bracken?’ in Seeking Common Ground: Evaluation
    and Critique of Joseph Bracken’s Comprehensive Worldview (A Festschrift for Joseph A.
    Bracken, S. J.), eds. Gloria Schaab and Marc Pugliese (Milwaukee: Marquette University
    Press, 2012), 147-167.

    ######################

    In a divine syllogistic of modes of identity, we’ve conceived the individual essences of the divine
    hypostases as originating in the Father and interrelating – not causally, but – as essentially
    dependent, hence, not subordinationist.

    [re: not causally, arche, when regarded as an hypostatic idioma of the Father, in my view, can


    felicitously be conceived in a causal sense; it would refer to a personalcause, paternally, i.e. ad
    intra, a person via nature causing persons & ad extra, persons via will causing energeia &
    oikonomia? To be avoided would be any misconception of an impersonal and/or abstracted
    essence as variously causal, as well as any conceptions of either cause or person that aren’t
    suitably nuanced, apophatically, analogically, etc, eg I like supremelypersonal, trans-causal
    & trans-formal! I shy away from qualifying divine causalities with “quasi,” e.g. quasi-formal. I
    prefer, instead, to imagine that it’s we contingent, determinate beings & realities who act “quasi”
    on the way to becoming authentic & eternal!

    For, you see, the essential, personal & formal modes of identity of divine syllogistics reflect three
    integrally related types of divine unity – substantial, hypostatic & dynamical – each correlatively
    presupposing the others. And yet, it’s the Father, as absolute unoriginate, Who secures the
    Trinity’s unity?

    For, is it not this very monarchy that, in principle, precedes (not temporally, but in the order of
    intelligibility) & makes meaningful perichoresis, in the first place (pun intended)? Over against
    any subordinationist charges, I would simply suggest that, if there is anything like that, it’s
    nothing personal & isn’t substantial(puns, again, intended!).]

    We have acknowledged THAT this account has ontological implications without suggesting
    HOW.

    In Abelard’s first two modes of identity, the essential & personal, paralogisms (modalism &
    tritheism) present if we conceive the hypostases & ousia, respectively, as primary & secondary
    substances in the same Aristotelian sense that we apply to determinate being.

    Happily, in the third mode, formal identity, we do have an epistemic bridge between the
    syllogistics of divine & determinate being.

    This has all been addressed here:


    Gödel & the End of Physics and Abelard et al & the End of Trinitology

    Having acknowledged that there must be ontological implications for the first two modes of
    identity, the essential & personal, can we similarly build a bridge between the syllogistics of
    divine & determinate being?

    Scotus has already constructed that bridge & it rather uncannily accommodates the thought of
    the Greek Fathers!

    I have previously addressed other resonances between, for example, Scotus & Palamas.

    See:

    How Gelpi’s Inculturated North American Theology “Graced” my encounter with Eastern
    Orthodoxy

    My Mon-Arche-I-tectonic Shift

    I’ve been through the Desert Fathers on an Ousia with No Name — It felt good to get out of the
    Reign (of Rationalism) with the help of the Cappadocians.

    Simply Divine or a Divinity Fudge? Cooking with Dionysius, Scotus, Peirce, Aquinas &
    Palamas

    But how might Scotus further resonate with the approach of the Greek Fathers, beyond my
    previous preoccupations with divine energeia & formal modes of identity?
    How might Scotus demonstrate a resonance with the Greek Fathers for the first two modes of
    identity, also?

    How, exactly, has Scotus bridged the syllogistics of divine & determinate being?

    No one more elegantly answers that question than does Richard Cross:

    Duns Scotus on Divine Substance and the Trinity

    Cross asserts that, by employing a conception of the immanent universal, Scotus constructs an


    account of the doctrine of the Trinity that is conceptually compelling, philosophically coherent &
    closer to that found in the later Greek Fathers, from Gregory of Nyssa onward, than the
    Augustinian approach (predominant in Aquinas’ own) to the divine essence.

    Per Cross, Scotus flips the metaphysical script in considering – not the divine persons, but –
    the essence as – not a secondary, but – a first substance.

    In fact, Scotus doesn’t consider the divine persons substances at all, whether primary or
    secondary, because they are incommunicable.

    The relations between the persons are nonetheless real – as exemplifications of the divine
    nature.
    Thus, apart from the Scotistic insights into the divine energeia, economy & formal identities,
    which I’d focused on previously (the links above), Cross well articulates how Scotus’ doctrines
    also have intrinsicvalue & address the divine nature & persons.

    #############################

    To me, the most interesting meta-metaphysical questions posed to any given metaphysic include
    –

    Is reality, writ large,

     1) non|un/composite?
     2) non|in/determinate?
     3) non|in/finite?
     4) non|im/personal?
    We can, a priori, envision (abductively) competing answers that are logically consistent &
    internally coherent, but, unavoidably incomplete, both axiomatically (deductively) & evidentially
    (inductively). Ergo, there’s an inevitable leap of faith involved in any existential opting for one or
    the other of these options.

    What both religious & Enlightenment (e.g. Dawkins, Dennett) fundamentalists have in common
    is that they all fail to look over their epistemic shoulders to recognize their own leaps.

    More concretely, then –

    Some (e.g. materialist monists) view reality writ large as uncomposite & indeterminate, in the
    sense that, as a whole, the One’s simply brute & the Many dynamical causes just infinitely
    regress.

    Others (e.g. idealist monist pantheists) view reality writ large as uncomposite & wholly
    determinate, in the sense that, as a whole, it’s sufficiently caused in a most thoroughgoing way.
    They answer the riddle of the One & the Many with The One “is” The Many.
    Finally, there are various ontological dualists & pluralists, who are all over the map w/their,
    mostly both-and, answers to those questions & generally theistic. A lot of them are on Twitter &
    politely advocating all sorts of unitarian & trinitarian hypotheses!

    My purpose in setting forth those meta-metaphysical questions in rather sharp relief was not
    just philosophical.

    For sure, many “leap” existentially past materialist & pantheist construals because the first does
    violence to our innate aspirations to enduring values, the latter – to our universal volitional
    experience, each nihilistic (but in a various senses).

    I want to further suggest that our philosophical categories of non|un/composite & non|
    in/determinate remain very much in play, theologically, for the trinitarian tensions that
    present, as we strive to defensibly thread the needle between tritheism & modalism.

    Tritheism presents obvious problems as, exegetically & historically, we’re precommitted to
    the One (noncomposite deity). The more stringent a strategy for avoiding tritheism, however,
    the more a spectre of modalism will threaten one’s trinitology.

    It is less obvious how a modalist(determinate) deity would necessarily do violence to our


    notions of divine & human volition, however, especially granting that the deity, modally, would
    still be self-determinate, humans contingently so. But, again, exegetical & historical contours
    circumscribe for us a much more eminentconception of the divine will, which is to say, with an
    intrinsically nondeterminateaspect to the divine nature that, certainly, constitutively entails
    self- determinate attributes, but in a way that’s essentially kenotic.

    That kenotic aspect affords us a much more robust notion of freedom vis a vis the divine will & a
    much more eminent conception of the divine nature?

    At stake in each metaphysic, then, whether philosophically or theologically, are conceptions with
    practical implications for the logical consistency (exegetical & historical), internal coherence &
    external congruence of our creedal stances toward the One & the Many (divine & determinate)
    and of all authentic conceptions of Freedom(divine & human).
    Pneumatological kenosis: the Spirit immanentized in the gratuity of creation & Christological
    kenosis: the Son incarnated in the gratuity of grace, both, implicate a Paterological ur-
    kenosis of the Father in the generation of the Son & procession of the Spirit.
    ur-kenosis entails an unoriginate, nondeterminate, principium, an idioma of the Father,
    eternally self-emptying in (self)determinate relating thru eternal generation of Son & procession
    of Spirit. Nothing modal. Hypostatic & personal in gratuitous ad intra & ad extra dynamism.

    Father-Son-Holy Spirit [FSH]


    FSH denotations, while epistemic denotations, have ontic not modalconnotations (neither
    phenomenal nor noumenal).
    A concurrent noumenal modalism suggests that the Persons are “three ways that God really
    is.”
    Rahner’s “distinct manners of subsisting” derives from the Summae’s “each of them subsists
    distinctly from the others in the divine nature” and in continuity with Gregory of Nyssa.
    Hence, there are three subsistences, lacking the same formal identity, not one formal identity
    taking on three different manners of subsisting, i.e. ‘three ways that God really is.”

    FSH denotations refer to divine hypostaticrealities or idiomata like nondeterminate persons


    (EO), exemplifications (Scotist) or subsistences (Thomist) that are analogous to determinate
    persons (psychological), haecceities (Scotist) or instantiations & primary substances (Thomist).
    FSH denotations do not refer to divine substantial realities or propria like nondeterminate
    ousia, essence or primary substances (Scotist) that are analogous to determinate essence, form,
    quiddity (Scotist) or secondary substances (Thomist).
    As the most fecund metaphysics have rejected this phenomenal-noumenaldistinction, the best
    systematic theologies have, too.
    Such classical, disjunctive, dyadic conceptions as the phenomenal vs noumenal, epistemic vs
    ontic, essentialism vs nominalism, idealism vs realism, logical vs efficient causes, etc all
    represent two sides of the same bankrupt coinage of our metaphysical realm. If it has no
    metaphysical currency, that’s precisely because it presupposes the impossibility of metaphysics.

    In the most robust metaphysical systems (classical realisms), the structures of objective
    knowledge remain – not dyadic, but – irreducibly triadic, introducing a third category –
    mediation (variously, but indispensably, accounted for & articulated). I’ve no space to explicate
    that here, but, classically, we encounter this triadicity in Aristotelian-Thomist & Scotist accounts
    and, more recently, in Peirce’s semiotic realism. Various triadic thought systems have indeed
    presented ubiquitously across cultures & throughout history.

    The chief problem with any radically apophatic, trinitarian ignosticism is that it’s epistemically
    corrosive. It inevitably & successively will reduce to theological & metaphysical ignosticisms,
    which, in turn, will, necessarily & correlatively, also annihilate our highly speculative theoretical
    sciences.

    #############################
    Metaphysical Account of Substantial (Being or Esse) & Hypostatic (Existant or Subject) Modes
    of Determinate Being
    Modal temporality categories include possible, actual, probable & necessary.
    Modal adequacy categories include mereological (whole/part/noncomposite) & non|in/finite.
    Modal ontology categories include descriptions & references to specific hypostatic realities
    (determinate persons, instantiations or haecceities or primary substances) with attributions to
    their precise properties (determinate essence, form, quiddity or secondary substance).
    Semantic Univocity & Ontic Analogy of Being
    logical categories for dogma e.g. ‘distinct manner of subsisting’ (subsistenzweisen)
    ontic categories for systematics
    Metaphysical Account of Substantial (Being or Esse) & Hypostatic Modes of Identity of
    Nondeterminate Being
    Modal indentity categories include apophatic references (idiomata) to specific hypostatic
    realities (nondeterminate persons, exemplifications or subsistences) with apophatic attributions
    (propria) to their precise properties (nondeterminate ousia, essence or primary substance)
    Formal Modes of Identity of Nondeterminate & Determinate Being
    Theopoetic Account of Substantial (Being or Esse) & Hypostatic Modes of Nondeterminate
    Identity
    Theopoetic Norms – Do they subversively overturn or
    conversively overcome metaphysics?

    If, in our foundational (exegetical & historical, dogmatic & philosophical) creedal trinitologies,
    we establish theological contours within which our systematic trinitologies & theopoetic
    trinitophanies are to navigate …
    Where those contours are comprised by a given consensus regarding the relevant vague,
    dogmatic & metaphysical categories that are in play, each with its rules of predication & terms of
    art …
    Where those systematic trinitologies are comprised by a given metaphysic (root metaphor &
    formal ontology) with a given idiom with further rules of predication & terms of art for the
    inferential propositions of our cognitive map-making …
    Where those theopoetic trinitophanies are comprised, mostly informally, often with beautiful
    cascading metaphors, engaging interrelational drama & believable sacramental-poetic images,
    all gifting an excess of communal meaning to our embodied evaluative dispositions &
    transformed participatory imaginations …
    And, further, if our systematic trinitologies can largely be normed by their external congruence
    & logical consistency with those creedal trinitologies, as well as by their own internal coherence
    …
    Then, by what methods & metrics are we to otherwise norm our theopoetic trinitophanies?
    Do they aspire to subversively overturn or conversively overcome metaphysics?
    Broadly speaking, we might suggest that, generally, right behaving (orthopraxic - good)
    mediates between right believing (orthodoxic - true) & right belonging (orthocommunal -
    unitive) to realize right desiring (orthopathic - beautiful), all transformatively fostering a
    sustained human authenticity (orthotheotic – liberative).
    Each such probe (true? beautiful? good? unitive? liberative?) of reality’s values remains
    methodologically autonomous & necessary. However, none, alone, is sufficient as they remain,
    together, axiologically integral.
    An authentic theopoetics, orthopathically, will integratively contribute to our ongoing
    transformation & sustained authenticity to the extent it helps foster a community of the true,
    beautiful & good, liberating its members to partake of the divine nature & incorporating them
    into Christ.
    More concretely, see:
    Perichoresis as Vehicle Negativa in Rohr’s Divine Dance – a polydoxic trinito-phany in
    continuity with an orthodoxic trinito-logy
    Gödel & the End of Physics and Abelard et al & the End of
    Trinitology

    In my trinity-talk, I try to mindfully inhabit one mode of discourse at a time.


    I approach creedal trinitology as a rather formal subject, where there seems to be a great deal
    of consensus, phenomenologically, regarding the requisite vague categories and their rules of
    predication (e.g. essence, existence, hypostasis, person, relation, energeia, oikonomia, univocal,
    analogical, distinctions: real, conceptual, formal; causes: formal, final, efficient, material;
    determinacies & necessities, etc). This consensus sets our theological contours, metaphysically,
    without specifying a given metaphysic.
    In a systematic trinitology, staying with those contours, many specify a given metaphysic
    employing an apt root metaphor: substance, process, experience, social, relational, etc All such
    metaphors eventually collapse & paradoxes ensue. This is no less unavoidable in trinitology than
    it is in quantum interpretations or philosophies of mind. Alas, we press on in search of that
    meta-idiom.
    Most of us, beyond our essential creedal formulae, engaged liturgically & explicated
    catechetically, are otherwise familiar with what I call trinitophany or trinity-talk in various
    common sense idioms, which are largely informal. In our local idioms, we employ metaphors
    but not as root metaphors and not in any formal syllogistic sense. Here our metaphors cascade &
    collapse and usually, but not always, change from one to the next. Here our discourse is poetic,
    celebratory, prayerful. Trinitophanies don’t aspire to universal models, only believable imgages.
    In the consideration below, I’m trying to focus on a creedal trinitology.
    Some of my favorite thinkers wonderfully integrate dogmatic, philosophical & sacramental-
    poetic discourse and/or creedal & systematic trinitological and theophanic approaches, e.g.
    Bulgakov & von Balthasar.
    When we use concepts like consubstantial to refer to determinate secondary substances or
    essences, all 3 modes of being are in play, temporal acts in potency - of existence to essence
    and efficient to material & formal to final causations. There's a LOT going on!
     
    But we must check ALL of that conceptual baggage at the epistemic door, as we board the divine
    essence sleeper car, meta-ontologically, or we'll derail our trinitarian train of thought, for NONE
    of that is going on!
     
    None of that needs to go on for divine realities b/c they ALREADY ARE whatever they're willed
    to be, while we are, instead, BECOMING what we're willed to be.
     
    We can thus identify & refer to an object as God if we know either its essence OR its person OR
    its energeia-oikonomia.
     
    To completely identify & describe a determinate creature, we must know its essence AND its
    haecceity AND its relations (e.g. generalities, regularities, in/determinacies).
     
     
     
    Note: Both determinate modes of being & meta-ontological modes of identity remain irreducibly
    triadic, the former an ontological subcategory of the formal mode of identity, which applies to
    both divine & determinate realities.
    ###############
    The meta-ontological modes of identity in divine syllogistics merely assert (analytically) THAT
    there’s 1 ousia & 3 hypostases.
    Unlike the modes of being in Aristotelian syllogistics, neither the essential propria nor the
    hypostatic idiomata of the divine modes of identity intimate (ontologically) HOW divine
    realities are variously nondeterminate, self-determinate, noncomposite, unoriginate, begotten,
    etc.
    Tritheism, subordinationism, modalism & various paralogisms can appear as valid conclusions
    when ontological rather than meta-ontological categories are applied to classical trinitarian
    discourse. They thus amount to category errors.
    A separate concern typically arises regarding the degree of intelligibility conveyed by modes of
    identity & it must be conceded that they gift us far more dispositionally than propositionally.
    Such gifts, however, remain eminently actionable, existentially, and particularly indispensable,
    theopoetically & theo-poi-etically.
    **************
    Consider 5 major aporia of determinate reality re types of origins: quantum, cosmic, life,
    consciousness & language. Not only do they defy explanatory adequacy, physically, they resist
    any adjudicatory attempts between competing metaphysical heuristics.
    Still, even without a specific ontology or metaphysic, meta-ontologically, we can reasonably infer
    & successfully refer to such realities in terms of putative unknown causes.
    From definitive determinate effects, which are proper to no known causes, we can identify such
    putative causes even though we’re unable to comprehensively describe them.
    We vaguely refer to quantum gravity, dark matter, hidden variables, qualia & such, not
    unreasonably speculating that, like the long-hypothetical Higgs boson, those or related
    hypotheses could be experimentally confirmed (or not).
    Such inferential, metaphysical reasoning from known effects to unknown causes (via relational
    reality) refers to a meta-ontological mode of – not being, but – identity, specifically, the mode of
    formal identity.
    Formal identity thus includes both robust descriptions & vague references. Some such
    references (e.g. quantum gravity) have perennially resisted, while others (Higgs boson & field)
    have eventually yielded to, comprehensive description in terms of meta/physical properties (e.g.
    precise quiddities & specific regularities).
    This meta-ontological, formal mode of identity maps to that relational, ontological subcategory,
    which, in a modal ontology, would include those laws, regularities & in/determinacies that
    mediate between quiddities & haecceities, possibilities & actualities, essences & substances.
    This formal mode of identity applies, meta-ontologically, to both the divine syllogistics of
    nondeterminate & self-determinate realities as well as the Aristotelian syllogistics of
    determinate realities. Its ontological subcategory applies to all determinate effects, whether
    their putative causes are, themselves, determinate, or otherwise non- or self- determinate.
    In addition to formal identity, nondeterminate & self-determinate divine realities exhibit two
    other modes of identity: the essential (re ousia) & personal (re hypostases). These apply ONLY
    in the syllogistics of divine realities, meta-ontologically, but do not map, for example, to such
    ontological subcategories of determinate realities, where, per Aristotelian syllogistics --- re:
    essences, the act of existence remains in potency to essence; re: hypostases, efficient acts in
    potency to material causes; & re: relations, formal acts in potency to final causes --- all such
    temporal dynamics are totally foreign to divine ousia & hypostases, which are eternal.
    So, while there’s a semantical univocity & minimalist analogy of the meta-ontological categories
    of being, realities & relations, which apply in both created & Uncreated spheres, the modes of
    identity for the Uncreated categories of being (ousia) & realities (hypostases) not only do not
    map to any ontological subcategories in the sphere of creation but also remain silent,
    ontologically, in the Uncreated sphere.
    Any univocity and/or analogy of beings & realities, created vs Uncreated, remain strictly meta-
    ontological in both essential & hypostatic/personal modes of identity.
    A univocity and/or analogy of relations, however, can map, ontologically, the determinate
    effects within a modal ontology to putative causes, both created & Uncreated, and do so, meta-
    ontologically, via the formal mode of identity.
    Thus natural theology reasons from the divine vestigia in the gratuity of creation back to
    certain attributes or propria of a divine essence and/or idiomata of, for example, a
    pneumatological hypostasis.
    Thus special revelation reasons from divine theotic effects in the gratuity of grace, from the
    energeia back to the propria of divine ousia & from the oikonomia back to the idiomata of
    trinitological hypostases.
    While such divine propria & idiomata successfully refer to putative causes of Uncreated realities,
    non- & self-determinate, those realities remain, at once, utterly incomprehensible & infinitely
    intelligible.
    This is not unrelated to the constraints we encounter for determinate realities:
    Some people will be very disappointed if there is not an ultimate theory that can be formulated
    as a finite number of principles. I used to belong to that camp, but I have changed my mind. I'm
    now glad that our search for understanding will never come to an end, and that we will always
    have the challenge of new discovery. ~ Stephen Hawking
    See:
    http://www.hawking.org.uk/godel-and-the-end-of-physics.html
    A more concrete take on the practical upshots of divine essence-talk might unpack these dense
    theoretical abstractions.
    In our temporal reality, however it may be that we conceive essences, universals, properties, ie
    as nominalists, conceptualists, realists, etc, we can still manage to successfully describe realities
    & reason formally about them with terms, sentences & propositions. One mustn’t imagine that -
    by invoking a univocity & analogy of being, even mindfully tending to apophatic vs kataphatic
    predications – we can similarly reason about the Trinity.
    We aspire, then, not to robustly ontological, theoretical descriptions w/propositional
    significance for divine-discourse, but to merely semantical, heuristical references
    w/dispositional impetus for divine-intercourse.
    So, even without fully comprehending what it could possibly entail to be infinite, unoriginate,
    nondeterminate, noncomposite, etc vis a vis being, truth, beauty, goodness, freedom, etc, these
    otherwise meager conceptions can help properly dispose us - theopoetically, in our life of
    prayer, liturgies & devotions, also theo-poi-etically, fostering our ongoing theotic
    transformations.
    ##################
    For starters, one mustn't confuse meta-ontological phenomenologies and metaphysical
    ontologies, or quite simply that which is beyond being & being.
    For another, one mustn't confuse epistemic attributes and ontic properties.
    Importantly, one must also not confuse nondeterminate, self-determinate, kenotically
    determinate & contingently determinate realities. In that regard, it might be best to engage
    Divine syllogistics by speaking in terms of essences, hypostases & formalities, while,
    analogically, employing quiddities, haecceities & quasi-formalities, when engaging Aristotelian
    syllogistics.
    That's pretty much it.
    One can dig deeper, though.
    To wit:
    Meta-ontological categories of modal identity apply to nondeterminate, self-determinate &
    kenotically-determinate objects and include the essences, hypostases & telicities of such
    necessary realities.
    This could include the ens necessaria of any meta-architectonic (e.g. materialist, pantheist,
    panentheist, classical theist, etc).
    Such a necessary object can be identified either essentially or hypostatically or telically
    (formally) as attributes of any of those categories are, alone, sufficient to successfully identify
    such objects.
    For determinate realities, only the meta-ontological category of telic (formal) modal identity
    applies. To successfully identify such contingent objects, essential, hypostatic & telic properties
    are all necessary, none – alone – sufficient.
    For nondeterminate, self-determinate & kenotically-determinate objects, essential & hypostatic
    properties are epistemically unavailable, ontically occulted, in principle.
    Hence, only vague attributes can be applied, such as, for example, divine propria, essentially, or
    divine idiomata, hypostatically.
    For nondeterminate, self-determinate, kenotically-determinate & contingently determinate
    objects, telic (formal) attributes & properties afford, respectively, successful references &
    descriptions.
    Hence, vague attributes can be applied, such as, for example, divine energeia, essentially, or
    divine oikonomia, hypostatically, in order to successfully refer to divine realities.
    Also, for contingently determinate objects, precise essences & specific telicities can be applied in
    order to properly identify the (meta)physical properties that are necessary to successfully
    describe individual hypostases.
    For such objects, beyond their modal identity & description, a dynamical modal ontology can be
    applied as various ontological categories represent different temporal acts in potency, for
    example, 1) hypostatic act of existence in potency to essence; 2) hypostatic efficient causation in
    potency to material causation; 3) telic formal causation in potency to final causation.
    For nondeterminate, self-determinate & kenotically-determinate objects, beyond their modal
    identity & reference, their determinate effects ensue - not from acts in potency, temporally, but
    – from eternal acts.
    Because of these distinctions, I prefer to distinguish eternal necessities from temporal
    contingencies by referring to the former in terms of essences, hypostases & telicities or
    formalities, the latter in terms of quiddities, haecceities & quasi- telicities or quasi-
    formalities. This approach flips that script which refers to divine telicities as quasi-formal (e.g.
    Rahner). It renders our metaphysical-talk metaphorical & our meta-ontological references as
    primally real. The path to authenticity thus involves eternalization or the transformation of
    quasi-telic temporal ends to the eternal ends of Divine Telos.
    Amplification:
    I think of modal identity in primarily epistemic terms, but it certainly also entails at least some
    vague ontological specifications (even when only via apophasis) & imparts some dispositional
    axiological implications.
    This is to say that I believe that divine syllogistics regarding essential propria (e.g. truth, beauty
    & goodness) & hypostatic idiomata (e.g. Father, Son & Spirit) very much matter for our worship,
    our transformation & such.
    Meta-ontologically, I conceive divine being as nondeterminate and/or self determinate, while
    contingent being presents as variously (in terms of degrees) in/determinate. I categorize
    in/determinate realities per a modal ontology, which recognizes its radical temporality.
    Divine syllogistics & Aristotelian syllogistics intersect determinately, only in the category of
    formal modal identity. Otherwise, regarding modal identities, it's a clear category error to
    equate divine essences & hypostases, for example, with contingent quiddities & haecceities,
    because they are otherwise distinguished as eternal vs temporal, as non- & self-determinate vs
    variously in/determinate, and so on.
    In the category of formal modal identities, however, we can consider determinate effects,
    whether their causes are nondeterminate, self-determinate or in/determinate. Even allowing for
    divine determinate causes, still, those would be distinguishable from ordinary contingent
    determinate causes by their kenotic natures.
    Divine determinate causes would include incarnational realities.
    Divine determinate effects would originate from divine realities, including nondeterminate, self-
    determinate & kenotically determinate and would include, for example, vestigial effects in the
    gratuity of creation & theotic effects in the gratuity of grace, such effects as would otherwise be
    proper to no known contingent, determinate causes & which would be communicated via
    general & special divine revelations.
    The Word remained what he was when he became flesh so that he who is over all & yet came
    among all through his humanity should keep in himself his transcendence & remain above the
    limitations of creation...he was alive even when his flesh was tasting death. (Cyril of Alexandria)
    In the -
    paterological ur-kenosis, the Father remained what He was in the generation of the Son &
    procession of the Spirit;
    pneumatological kenosis, the Spirit remained the Holy Breath, when immanentized/presented
    in the gratuity of creation;
    Christological kenosis, the Son remained divine, when incarnated/presented (via dyo/mia-
    physitism) in the gratuity of grace.
    So kenosis has only ever entailed a qualified self-limitation or tzimtzum (not self-annihilation
    but self-contraction).
    Formal identities of divine determinate realities (e.g. oikonomia & energeia) present via kenotic
    & synergistic trinitarian acts of the divine hypostases (personal identities), whether
    unoriginately nondeterminate, eternally self-determinate &/or kenotically determinate.
    Essence, Hypostasis, Person, Relation, Energy & Economy
    Many New Testament statements by Jesus are interpreted by some in terms that are - not just
    ontological and/or economical, but, also - relational (e.g. mutual interabiding or indwelling). In
    my tradition (informed by the Pontifical Biblical Commission), when in doubt, even re John 10,
    for example, they assume no one in the NT is talking metaphysics, in general, much less a
    substance ontology, in particular. Rather, they say such verses refer to economic mission &
    relational indwelling, i.e. w/implications for us. Even conceding that, all such verses when taken
    together in their NT context as well as in early liturgical traditions will certainly have
    metaphysical implications, theologically. Most Fathers thought they were ontologically
    suggestive (&, I'd add, meta-ontologically decisive)?
    Hypostatic Asymmetries & Subordinationism
    There’s an asymmetry of the homoousion imputed to Athanasius that, seems to me could,
    involve the distinction between individual vs general essences, qualities that identify hypostases
    vs properties that identify ousia, any asymmetry applying only hypostatically. Athanasius didn't
    employ Cappadocian-like nuances, so, if we plausibly interpret him as talking about individual
    essences, hypostatically, that asymmetry isn't truly subordinationist, because such an essential
    dependence is - not causal, but - merely definitional.
    It seems that hypostatic order or taxis, for some, won't involve originations &/or causes but -
    ways of self-revealing. For example, maybe active/passive revelatory "images," while unique for
    each hypostasis, needn't entail unique "ways of relating" to the essence. Whatever the case,
    hypostatic idiomata, whether originationist or revelatory, might best be interpreted in
    definitional terms of essential dependence & individual essence, not without ontological
    implications but merely metaphysically (meta-ontologically), bracketing any specific metaphysic
    (ontologically).
    One practical upshot of trinitarian modes of identity seems to me to be that hypostatic
    asymmetries needn't imply subordinationism because essential dependencies aren't causal (not
    saying they don't have other ontological implications).
    Preserving analogy does seem indispensable to any theotic approach that suggests we can
    participate in or partake of the divine nature? And, of course, it implies, also, dissimilarities,
    since divine realities "be what they are" & we "become" what we are. What about dissimilarities
    between hypostases in relating to essence?
    Hypostatic Kenoses
    For Bulgakov & Balthasar's kenotic models, the same activity engaged by each hypostasis would
    be possession through dispossession. That hypostatic activity can otherwise be uniquely
    identified as we consider whether a given relation is active, passive, mediated, inverted, etc?
    Such essential dependencies & interdependencies could still be expressed in terms of individual
    not general essence.
    We have to distinguish between ontological attempts to describe how the hypostases might
    variously relate to the divine nature & meta-ontological references to same.
    The former employ root metaphors of substance, process, social experience or other relations &
    are less interesting to me because they aspire to say more, in principle, than we can prove. But I
    affirm those who strive to formulate better idioms.
    The latter are “merely metaphysical” and more “vaguely phenomenological.”
    I can’t always readily tell which approach people are taking.
    For example, Neville’s hypothetical neo-Whiteheadian process approach seems clearly
    ontological; it would interpret the divine nature, itself, as a product of the Father’s creatio ex
    nihilo - a rather radical conception of principium sine principio?
    In a merely metaphysical approach (perhaps), von Balthasar would kenotically differentiate the
    hypostatic relations to the divine nature in terms of 1) stripped of 2) thankful for and 3) bridged
    by, respectively, Father, Son & Spirit.
    See: https://mobile.twitter.com/John_S_Sylvest/status/1084862911758168064
    #############################
    In what amounts to my pan-semio-entheistic theory of truth, I conceive five transcendentals
    per terms of an Ens Necessarium as Necessary Truth, Necessary Beauty, Necessary Goodness,
    Necessary Unity (Love) & Necessary Freedom. These five categories map to my conceptions of
    Lonergan’s conversions & imperatives as well as to a fivefold missiology, both pneumatological
    & Christological.
    This is neither a Kantian nor transcendental Thomist approach, however, but grounded in a
    semiotic realism and advanced abductively from that naturalized epistemology, deriving from
    those participatory engagements with reality that rely on an axiological epistemology (per my
    Peircean-like theory of knowledge).
    There’s a leap of faith required, to be sure, at an existential disjunction where nihilism,
    pantheism & classical theism present.
    see Note Below
    See: https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/12/04/classical-theism-doesnt-really-
    compete-tautologically/
    Can one take my pan-semio-entheistic leap, within the contours of a classical theism, employing
    a logic that wouldn’t be considered adhocery & unamenable to normal syllogistic logic?
    I believe so.
    Conceiving my approach as a fallibilist abduction, then formalizing its phenomenology via a
    consistent predicate & propositional logic, employing modes of identity, we could establish that
    its reasoning regarding existents (creatures) would be a special case or reduction of the
    phenomenological syllogizing of my putative transcendentals.
    Put more simply, creature-talk would employ metaphors of our normative Creator-talk, not vice
    versa.
    My five transcendentals, then, will be imported into a classical trinitology. The conceptual
    bridges between it and Aristotelian logic have already been built by Sara Uckelman.
    See: Uckelman, Sara L. (2010). Reasoning About the Trinity: A Modern Formalization of a
    Medieval System of Trinitarian Logic. In Logic in Religious Discourse. Schumann, Andrew
    Ontos. 216-239.
    I will try to summarize her discourse below & apply it to my heuristics.
    In avoiding both modalism & tritheism, while remaining consistent in trinitarian predication,
    one must recognize three modes of identity. Unlike modalism, which refers to a single object
    existing in one of these modes, a modal identity entails one object as being the same as another
    object in one of the modes of identity.

     Essentially identical objects share the same essence (extensional identity).


     Personally identical objects share the same properties & definitions (intentional
    identity).
     Formally identical objects share a genus, sufficiently similar to be placed therein.
    (Abelard originally distinguished extensional from intentional identity.)
    The above modes of identity can be applied to the trinitarian logic of the Athanasian Creed, but
    this divine syllogistics collapses when applied to existents, where Aristotelian syllogistics,
    instead, apply.
    My modal schema, influenced by Peircean categories, where
    Being > Reality > Relations > Existents
    roughly & analogously maps to these modes of identity
    Essential | Personal | Formal | Creatures
    employing a predicate or propositional logic, which is meta-logical (while Aristotelian
    syllogistics employ a term logic).
    See:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/simply-divine-or-a-divinity-fudge-
    cooking-with-dionysius-scotus-peirce-aquinas-palamas/
    Also see:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/mapping-metaphysical-distinctions-
    aristotelian-thomist-peircean/
    So, Trinitarian discourse can be affirmed as formally consistent and roughly maps, heuristically,
    to our meta-logical categories.
    Still, that affords us only analytical conceivability, a rather minimalist intelligibility?
    Can a bridge be constructed to Aristotelian syllogistics? that we might gain some additional
    modicum of intelligibility?
    Yes.
    First, we would recognize that, for existents (creatures), only the formal mode of identity obtains
    and essential & personal predications do not (i.e. in Aristotelian syllogistics).
    So, can Aristotelian syllogistics yet be extracted from the mode of identity framework mindful of
    where such predications obtain or not?
    If so, our trinitarian logic needn’t be considered adhocery & unamenable to normal syllogistic
    logic. Instead, our reasoning regarding existents (creatures) would be a special case as a
    reduction of trinitarian syllogizing.
    We should remain mindful that, in relating propria of the essence, idioma of the hypostases &
    energeia of the Trinity, per Abelardian modes of identity (essentially, personally & formally),
    even if we suitably predicate these realities using apophasis, analogy, gerundives & such and
    remain otherwise consistent ----
    still, because we only ever use partial references and not exhaustively complete definitions, a
    radical incompleteness will still afflict our trinitarian discourse.
    For example, even when we've managed to avoid paralogisms by properly attending to our
    modes of identity, in order to disambiguate our categorical predications of divine terms (thereby
    making explicit identity types essencialiter vs personaliter vs formaliter), while we will
    have saved some of our most meaningful intuitions, still, mystery will perdure.
    While our Peircean-like categories analogously map to our Aristotelian, Scotist & Thomist
    categories (like quiddity, haecceity, ousia, hypostasis and such), it’s not counterintuitive that the
    dissimilarities --- between all of our approaches to temporal being (Peirce, Scotus, Thomist, etc)
    and our approach to nondeterminate & self-determinate being (with three modes of identity) ---
    will be located essentially & hypostatically vis a vis the modes of identity.
    The categories of essential-hypostatic nondeterminate being (ad intra), where an act-potency
    distinction will not obtain, simply will not, by definition, correspond to temporally modal
    categories of essential-hypostatic determinate being.
    It makes perfect sense, otherwise, to draw on the formal mode of identity to locate the
    similarities between, on one hand, the determinate effects of the divine energeia (essentially or
    substantially of ousia) & economy (personally or hypostatically of haecceities), and, on the other,
    those of created, determinate beings.
    Is that not precisely what we find in the Palamitic distinction between essence & energies,
    Thomist distinction between esse naturale & intentionale, Scotus’ formal distinction and Peirce’s
    thirdness?
    There’s a divine-creaturely nexus, a semiotic locus, where we can reason, abductively, from
    effects that are proper to no known causes, to putative causes, whether the Actus Purus of
    nondeterminate & self-determinate divine causes, or the acts in potency of in/determinate
    creaturely causes, both physical & metaphysical.
    While we are often epistemically constrained, methodologically, unable to exhaustively define
    such putative causes, whether divine, metaphysical or even physical, this moderate realism
    affords us the prospect of nevertheless, really, making successful references – per a univocal
    mode of identity vis a vis effects.
    That’s what my project has been about --- establishing that our God-talk, including a classical
    trinitology, remains robustly intelligible & coherent:
    See:
    https://independent.academia.edu/SylvestJohn
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/meaningful-god-talk/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/11/27/ive-been-through-the-desert-fathers-on-
    an-ousia-with-no-name-it-felt-good-to-get-out-of-the-reign-of-rationalism-with-the-help-of-
    the-cappadocians/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/11/28/much-ado-about-nihil-a-taxonomy-of-
    in-determinacies/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/my-mon-arche-i-tectonic-shift/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/12/02/in-dialogue-with-boyd-on-hartshorne-
    neville-on-divine-freedom/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/12/03/how-gelpis-inculturated-north-
    american-theology-graced-my-encounter-with-eastern-orthodoxy/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/12/04/classical-theism-doesnt-really-compete-
    tautologically/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/09/17/why-i-have-no-metaphysic/
    Note re: leaps of faith
    Monist
    nihilism
    pantheism
    Dualist
    panen-theism (dipolar or whole-part relation)
    classical theism (created tehom – staged vs lapsarian)
    Pluralist
    pan-entheism (uncreated tehom)
    Appendix – application to physical systems
    1ns, 2ns, 3ns applies to particles & to systems, or to particles as triadic systems, and to systems
    of systems or meta-systems
    As isolated quanta variously rest & interact, isolated systems variously rest & interact,
    formatively (1ns - entropic), trans-formatively (3ns - telic) & in-formatively (2ns - equilibric).
    1ns or the virtual or intrinsic characteristics of an energy system = system energies’ “forming” =
    system energies’ intrinsic spontaneous changes of placement and/or of time = spatio-temporal
    waveform-ing or self-visualization or self-potentialities; approaching & realizing massless
    energy
    2ns or the actual or characteristics of an energy system = system energies “resting” or existing
    or being or instant-aneously at an “instant” in time & place in space or materio-energetic
    characteristics (efficient/material) or self-actualization or self-actualities of authenticity of Here
    I Am, Lord or nonstrict identity; approaching nonenergetic mass but there is no energyless mass
    (asymmetry there, converse or transitivity not in play as energy is THE fundamental)
    https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_the_worse_yet_enduring_misconceptions_abo
    ut_mass_and_energy_in_special_relativity
    3ns or the real or extrinsic characteristics of an energy system = system energies “interacting”
    or “trans-forming” or be-coming or system energies’ extrinsic con-temp-oraneous changes of
    placement and/or of time or relating or the invitatory-participatory or spatio-temporal
    characteristics (formal/final) or “hold on, I’m coming!” or “I be coming!) as the I = true self or
    self-real-ization or self-realities of sustained authenticity of “I will go, Lord” or ultimate
    eternalization; approaching unique or designated mass-energy specifications
    energy system = wave-particles
    isolated, resting together, interacting
    massless/massive particles
    1ns isolated = no signal, only carrier or baseband-ing or pure potentiality or epistemically
    unmanifest &/or ontically isolated; approaching massless energy (e.g photon) – no frame in
    which an isolated photon has mass, i.e. no rest mass & no rest energy
    2ns resting = signal or decoding or demodulation or epistemically manifest & ontically actual or
    acting/efficacious or approaching nonenergetic mass (e.g. rest mass or invariant mass) --- all
    relative to an observer
    3ns interacting = signal + noise or disturbance or modulation, or codes & errors, encoding or
    epistemic-ontic omelet of in/determinacy; eternalized as near-pure act or quasi- actus purus vis
    a vis approaching unique or designated materio-energetic specifications (e.g. )

    How Classical Theism Avoids certain Sylly Syllogisms &


    Category Errors of some analytic & process theologians
    (& nihilists, too)
    For starters, one mustn't confuse meta-ontological phenomenologies and metaphysical
    ontologies, or quite simply that which is beyond being & being.
    For another, one mustn't confuse epistemic attributes and ontic properties.
    Importantly, one must also not confuse nondeterminate, self-determinate, kenotically
    determinate & contingently determinate realities. In that regard, it might be best to engage
    Divine syllogistics by speaking in terms of essences, hypostases & formalities, while,
    analogically, employing quiddities, haecceities & quasi-formalities, when engaging Aristotelian
    syllogistics.
    That's pretty much it.
    One can dig deeper, though.
    To wit:
    Meta-ontological categories of modal identity apply to nondeterminate, self-determinate &
    kenotically-determinate objects and include the essences, hypostases & telicities of such
    necessary realities.
    This could include the ens necessaria of any meta-architectonic (e.g. materialist, pantheist,
    panentheist, classical theist, etc).
    Such a necessary object can be identified either essentially or hypostatically or telically
    (formally) as attributes of any of those categories are, alone, sufficient to successfully identify
    such objects.
    For determinate realities, only the meta-ontological category of telic (formal) modal identity
    applies. To successfully identify such contingent objects, essential, hypostatic & telic properties
    are all necessary, none – alone – sufficient.
    For nondeterminate, self-determinate & kenotically-determinate objects, essential & hypostatic
    properties are epistemically unavailable, ontically occulted, in principle.
    Hence, only vague attributes can be applied, such as, for example, divine propria, essentially, or
    divine idiomata, hypostatically.
    For nondeterminate, self-determinate, kenotically-determinate & contingently determinate
    objects, telic (formal) attributes & properties afford, respectively, successful references &
    descriptions.
    Hence, vague attributes can be applied, such as, for example, divine energeia, essentially, or
    divine oikonomia, hypostatically, in order to successfully refer to divine realities.
    Also, for contingently determinate objects, precise essences & specific telicities can be applied in
    order to properly identify the (meta)physical properties that are necessary to successfully
    describe individual hypostases.
    For such objects, beyond their modal identity & description, a dynamical modal ontology can be
    applied as various ontological categories represent different temporal acts in potency, for
    example, 1) hypostatic act of existence in potency to essence; 2) hypostatic efficient causation in
    potency to material causation; 3) telic formal causation in potency to final causation.
    For nondeterminate, self-determinate & kenotically-determinate objects, beyond their modal
    identity & reference, their determinate effects ensue - not from acts in potency, temporally, but
    – from eternal acts.
    Because of these distinctions, I prefer to distinguish eternal necessities from temporal
    contingencies by referring to the former in terms of essences, hypostases & telicities or
    formalities, the latter in terms of quiddities, haecceities & quasi- telicities or quasi-
    formalities. This approach flips that script which refers to divine telicities as quasi-formal (e.g.
    Rahner). It renders our metaphysical-talk metaphorical & our meta-ontological references as
    primally real. The path to authenticity thus involves eternalization or the transformation of
    quasi-telic temporal ends to the eternal ends of Divine Telos.
    Amplification:
    I think of modal identity in primarily epistemic terms, but it certainly also entails at least some
    vague ontological specifications (even when only via apophasis) & imparts some dispositional
    axiological implications.
    This is to say that I believe that divine syllogistics regarding essential propria (e.g. truth, beauty
    & goodness) & hypostatic idiomata (e.g. Father, Son & Spirit) very much matter for our worship,
    our transformation & such.
    Meta-ontologically, I conceive divine being as nondeterminate and/or self determinate, while
    contingent being presents as variously (in terms of degrees) in/determinate. I categorize
    in/determinate realities per a modal ontology, which recognizes its radical temporality.
    Divine syllogistics & Aristotelian syllogistics intersect determinately, only in the category of
    formal modal identity. Otherwise, regarding modal identities, it's a clear category error to
    equate divine essences & hypostases, for example, with contingent quiddities & haecceities,
    because they are otherwise distinguished as eternal vs temporal, as non- & self-determinate vs
    variously in/determinate, and so on.
    In the category of formal modal identities, however, we can consider determinate effects,
    whether their causes are nondeterminate, self-determinate or in/determinate. Even allowing for
    divine determinate causes, still, those would be distinguishable from ordinary contingent
    determinate causes by their kenotic natures.
    Divine determinate causes would include incarnational realities.
    Divine determinate effects would originate from divine realities, including nondeterminate, self-
    determinate & kenotically determinate and would include, for example, vestigial effects in the
    gratuity of creation & theotic effects in the gratuity of grace, such effects as would otherwise be
    proper to no known contingent, determinate causes & which would be communicated via
    general & special divine revelations.
    The Word remained what he was when he became flesh so that he who is over all & yet came
    among all through his humanity should keep in himself his transcendence & remain above the
    limitations of creation...he was alive even when his flesh was tasting death. (Cyril of Alexandria)
    In the -
    paterological ur-kenosis, the Father remained what He was in the generation of the Son &
    procession of the Spirit;
    pneumatological kenosis, the Spirit remained the Holy Breath, when immanentized/presented
    in the gratuity of creation;
    Christological kenosis, the Son remained divine, when incarnated/presented (via dyo/mia-
    physitism) in the gratuity of grace.
    So kenosis has only ever entailed a qualified self-limitation or tzimtzum (not self-annihilation
    but self-contraction).
    Formal identities of divine determinate realities (e.g. oikonomia & energeia) present via kenotic
    & synergistic trinitarian acts of the divine hypostases (personal identities), whether
    unoriginately nondeterminate, eternally self-determinate &/or kenotically determinate.
    #############################
    In what amounts to my pan-semio-entheistic theory of truth, I conceive five transcendentals
    per terms of an Ens Necessarium as Necessary Truth, Necessary Beauty, Necessary Goodness,
    Necessary Unity (Love) & Necessary Freedom. These five categories map to my conceptions of
    Lonergan’s conversions & imperatives as well as to a fivefold missiology, both pneumatological
    & Christological.
    This is neither a Kantian nor transcendental Thomist approach, however, but grounded in a
    semiotic realism and advanced abductively from that naturalized epistemology, deriving from
    those participatory engagements with reality that rely on an axiological epistemology (per my
    Peircean-like theory of knowledge).
    There’s a leap of faith required, to be sure, at an existential disjunction where nihilism,
    pantheism & classical theism present.
    see Note Below
    See: https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/12/04/classical-theism-doesnt-really-
    compete-tautologically/
    Can one take my pan-semio-entheistic leap, within the contours of a classical theism, employing
    a logic that wouldn’t be considered adhocery & unamenable to normal syllogistic logic?
    I believe so.
    Conceiving my approach as a fallibilist abduction, then formalizing its phenomenology via a
    consistent predicate & propositional logic, employing modes of identity, we could establish that
    its reasoning regarding existents (creatures) would be a special case or reduction of the
    phenomenological syllogizing of my putative transcendentals.
    Put more simply, creature-talk would employ metaphors of our normative Creator-talk, not vice
    versa.
    My five transcendentals, then, will be imported into a classical trinitology. The conceptual
    bridges between it and Aristotelian logic have already been built by Sara Uckelman.
    See: Uckelman, Sara L. (2010). Reasoning About the Trinity: A Modern Formalization of a
    Medieval System of Trinitarian Logic. In Logic in Religious Discourse. Schumann, Andrew
    Ontos. 216-239.
    I will try to summarize her discourse below & apply it to my heuristics.
    In avoiding both modalism & tritheism, while remaining consistent in trinitarian predication,
    one must recognize three modes of identity. Unlike modalism, which refers to a single object
    existing in one of these modes, a modal identity entails one object as being the same as another
    object in one of the modes of identity.

     Essentially identical objects share the same essence (extensional identity).


     Personally identical objects share the same properties & definitions (intentional
    identity).
     Formally identical objects share a genus, sufficiently similar to be placed therein.
    (Abelard originally distinguished extensional from intentional identity.)
    The above modes of identity can be applied to the trinitarian logic of the Athanasian Creed, but
    this divine syllogistics collapses when applied to existents, where Aristotelian syllogistics,
    instead, apply.
    My modal schema, influenced by Peircean categories, where
    Being > Reality > Relations > Existents
    roughly & analogously maps to these modes of identity
    Essential | Personal | Formal | Creatures
    employing a predicate or propositional logic, which is meta-logical (while Aristotelian
    syllogistics employ a term logic).
    See:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/simply-divine-or-a-divinity-fudge-
    cooking-with-dionysius-scotus-peirce-aquinas-palamas/
    Also see:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/mapping-metaphysical-distinctions-
    aristotelian-thomist-peircean/
    So, Trinitarian discourse can be affirmed as formally consistent and roughly maps, heuristically,
    to our meta-logical categories.
    Still, that affords us only analytical conceivability, a rather minimalist intelligibility?
    Can a bridge be constructed to Aristotelian syllogistics? that we might gain some additional
    modicum of intelligibility?
    Yes.
    First, we would recognize that, for existents (creatures), only the formal mode of identity obtains
    and essential & personal predications do not (i.e. in Aristotelian syllogistics).
    So, can Aristotelian syllogistics yet be extracted from the mode of identity framework mindful of
    where such predications obtain or not?
    If so, our trinitarian logic needn’t be considered adhocery & unamenable to normal syllogistic
    logic. Instead, our reasoning regarding existents (creatures) would be a special case as a
    reduction of trinitarian syllogizing.
    We should remain mindful that, in relating propria of the essence, idioma of the hypostases &
    energeia of the Trinity, per Abelardian modes of identity (essentially, personally & formally),
    even if we suitably predicate these realities using apophasis, analogy, gerundives & such and
    remain otherwise consistent ----
    still, because we only ever use partial references and not exhaustively complete definitions, a
    radical incompleteness will still afflict our trinitarian discourse.
    For example, even when we've managed to avoid paralogisms by properly attending to our
    modes of identity, in order to disambiguate our categorical predications of divine terms (thereby
    making explicit identity types essencialiter vs personaliter vs formaliter), while we will
    have saved some of our most meaningful intuitions, still, mystery will perdure.
    While our Peircean-like categories analogously map to our Aristotelian, Scotist & Thomist
    categories (like quiddity, haecceity, ousia, hypostasis and such), it’s not counterintuitive that the
    dissimilarities --- between all of our approaches to temporal being (Peirce, Scotus, Thomist, etc)
    and our approach to nondeterminate & self-determinate being (with three modes of identity) ---
    will be located essentially & hypostatically vis a vis the modes of identity.
    The categories of essential-hypostatic nondeterminate being (ad intra), where an act-potency
    distinction will not obtain, simply will not, by definition, correspond to temporally modal
    categories of essential-hypostatic determinate being.
    It makes perfect sense, otherwise, to draw on the formal mode of identity to locate the
    similarities between, on one hand, the determinate effects of the divine energeia (essentially or
    substantially of ousia) & economy (personally or hypostatically of haecceities), and, on the other,
    those of created, determinate beings.
    Is that not precisely what we find in the Palamitic distinction between essence & energies,
    Thomist distinction between esse naturale & intentionale, Scotus’ formal distinction and Peirce’s
    thirdness?
    There’s a divine-creaturely nexus, a semiotic locus, where we can reason, abductively, from
    effects that are proper to no known causes, to putative causes, whether the Actus Purus of
    nondeterminate & self-determinate divine causes, or the acts in potency of in/determinate
    creaturely causes, both physical & metaphysical.
    While we are often epistemically constrained, methodologically, unable to exhaustively define
    such putative causes, whether divine, metaphysical or even physical, this moderate realism
    affords us the prospect of nevertheless, really, making successful references – per a univocal
    mode of identity vis a vis effects.
    That’s what my project has been about --- establishing that our God-talk, including a classical
    trinitology, remains robustly intelligible & coherent:
    See:
    https://independent.academia.edu/SylvestJohn
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/meaningful-god-talk/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/11/27/ive-been-through-the-desert-fathers-on-
    an-ousia-with-no-name-it-felt-good-to-get-out-of-the-reign-of-rationalism-with-the-help-of-
    the-cappadocians/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/11/28/much-ado-about-nihil-a-taxonomy-of-
    in-determinacies/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/my-mon-arche-i-tectonic-shift/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/12/02/in-dialogue-with-boyd-on-hartshorne-
    neville-on-divine-freedom/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/12/03/how-gelpis-inculturated-north-
    american-theology-graced-my-encounter-with-eastern-orthodoxy/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/12/04/classical-theism-doesnt-really-compete-
    tautologically/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/09/17/why-i-have-no-metaphysic/
    Note re: leaps of faith
    Monist
    nihilism
    pantheism
    Dualist
    panen-theism (dipolar or whole-part relation)
    classical theism (created tehom – staged vs lapsarian)
    Pluralist
    pan-entheism (uncreated tehom)
    Appendix – application to physical systems
    1ns, 2ns, 3ns applies to particles & to systems, or to particles as triadic systems, and to systems
    of systems or meta-systems
    As isolated quanta variously rest & interact, isolated systems variously rest & interact,
    formatively (1ns - entropic), trans-formatively (3ns - telic) & in-formatively (2ns - equilibric).
    1ns or the virtual or intrinsic characteristics of an energy system = system energies’ “forming” =
    system energies’ intrinsic spontaneous changes of placement and/or of time = spatio-temporal
    waveform-ing or self-visualization or self-potentialities; approaching & realizing massless
    energy
    2ns or the actual or characteristics of an energy system = system energies “resting” or existing
    or being or instant-aneously at an “instant” in time & place in space or materio-energetic
    characteristics (efficient/material) or self-actualization or self-actualities of authenticity of Here
    I Am, Lord or nonstrict identity; approaching nonenergetic mass but there is no energyless mass
    (asymmetry there, converse or transitivity not in play as energy is THE fundamental)
    https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_the_worse_yet_enduring_misconceptions_abo
    ut_mass_and_energy_in_special_relativity
    3ns or the real or extrinsic characteristics of an energy system = system energies “interacting”
    or “trans-forming” or be-coming or system energies’ extrinsic con-temp-oraneous changes of
    placement and/or of time or relating or the invitatory-participatory or spatio-temporal
    characteristics (formal/final) or “hold on, I’m coming!” or “I be coming!) as the I = true self or
    self-real-ization or self-realities of sustained authenticity of “I will go, Lord” or ultimate
    eternalization; approaching unique or designated mass-energy specifications
    energy system = wave-particles
    isolated, resting together, interacting
    massless/massive particles
    1ns isolated = no signal, only carrier or baseband-ing or pure potentiality or epistemically
    unmanifest &/or ontically isolated; approaching massless energy (e.g photon) – no frame in
    which an isolated photon has mass, i.e. no rest mass & no rest energy
    2ns resting = signal or decoding or demodulation or epistemically manifest & ontically actual or
    acting/efficacious or approaching nonenergetic mass (e.g. rest mass or invariant mass) --- all
    relative to an observer
    3ns interacting = signal + noise or disturbance or modulation, or codes & errors, encoding or
    epistemic-ontic omelet of in/determinacy; eternalized as near-pure act or quasi- actus purus vis
    a vis approaching unique or designated materio-energetic specifications (e.g. )

    The Eminent Intelligibility of Classical Theism


    Prologue to what was previously published below.
    Below are rather cryptic notes to myself, addressing how I would incorporate a modal identity
    metaontology into my modal ontological conceptions. To unpack this project a tad more &
    hopefully decrypt some of the jargon below, consider:
    I think of modal identity in primarily epistemic terms, but it certainly also entails at least some
    vague ontological specifications (even when only via apophasis) & imparts some dispositional
    axiological implications. This is to say that I believe that divine syllogistics regarding essential
    propria (e.g. truth, beauty & goodness) & hypostatic idiomata (e.g. Father, Son & Spirit) very
    much matter for our worship, our transformation & such.
    Meta-ontologically, I conceive divine being as nondeterminate and/or self determinate, while
    contingent being presents as variously (in terms of degrees) in/determinate. I categorize
    in/determinate realities per a modal ontology, which recognizes its radical temporality.
    Divine syllogistics & Aristotelian syllogistics intersect determinately, only in the category of
    formal modal identity. Otherwise, regarding modal identities, it's a clear category error to
    equate divine essences & hypostases, for example, with contingent quiddities & haecceities,
    because they are otherwise distinguished as eternal vs temporal, as non- & self-determinate vs
    variously in/determinate, and so on.
    In the category of formal modal identities, however, we can consider determinate effects,
    whether their causes are nondeterminate, self-determinate or in/determinate. Even allowing for
    divine determinate causes, still, those would be distinguishable from ordinary contingent
    determinate causes by their kenotic natures.
    Divine determinate causes would include incarnational realities.
    Divine determinate effects would originate from divine realities, including nondeterminate, self-
    determinate & kenotically determinate and would include, for example, vestigial effects in the
    gratuity of creation & theotic effects in the gratuity of grace, such effects as would otherwise be
    proper to no known contingent, determinate causes & which would be communicated via
    general & special divine revelations.
    The Word remained what he was when he became flesh so that he who is over all & yet came
    among all through his humanity should keep in himself his transcendence & remain above the
    limitations of creation...he was alive even when his flesh was tasting death. (Cyril of Alexandria)
    In the -
    paterological ur-kenosis, the Father remained what He was in the generation of the Son &
    procession of the Spirit;
    pneumatological kenosis, the Spirit remained the Holy Breath, when immanentized/presented
    in the gratuity of creation;
    Christological kenosis, the Son remained divine, when incarnated/presented (via dyo/mia-
    physitism) in the gratuity of grace.
    So kenosis has only ever entailed a qualified self-limitation or tzimtzum (not self-annihilation
    but self-contraction).
    Formal identities of divine determinate realities (e.g. oikonomia & energeia) present via kenotic
    & synergistic trinitarian acts of the divine hypostases (personal identities), whether
    unoriginately nondeterminate, eternally self-determinate &/or kenotically determinate.
    #############################
    In what amounts to my pan-semio-entheistic theory of truth, I conceive five transcendentals
    per terms of an Ens Necessarium as Necessary Truth, Necessary Beauty, Necessary
    Goodness, Necessary Unity (Love) & Necessary Freedom. These five categories map to my
    conceptions of Lonergan’s conversions & imperatives as well as to a fivefold missiology, both
    pneumatological & Christological.
    This is neither a Kantian nor transcendental Thomist approach, however, but grounded in a
    semiotic realism and advanced abductively from that naturalized epistemology, deriving from
    those participatory engagements with reality that rely on an axiological epistemology (per my
    Peircean-like theory of knowledge).
    There’s a leap of faith required, to be sure, at an existential disjunction where nihilism,
    pantheism & classical theism present. see Note Below
    See: https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/12/04/classical-theism-doesnt-really-
    compete-tautologically/
    Can one take my pan-semio-entheistic leap, within the contours of a classical theism, employing
    a logic that wouldn’t be considered adhocery & unamenable to normal syllogistic logic?
    I believe so.
    Conceiving my approach as a fallibilist abduction, then formalizing its phenomenology via a
    consistent predicate & propositional logic, employing modes of identity, we could establish that
    its reasoning regarding existents (creatures) would be a special case or reduction of the
    phenomenological syllogizing of my putative transcendentals.
    Put more simply, creature-talk would employ metaphors of our normative Creator-talk, not vice
    versa.
    My five transcendentals, then, will be imported into a classical trinitology. The conceptual
    bridges between it and Aristotelian logic have already been built by Sara Uckelman.
    See: Uckelman, Sara L. (2010). Reasoning About the Trinity: A Modern Formalization of a
    Medieval System of Trinitarian Logic. In Logic in Religious Discourse. Schumann, Andrew
    Ontos. 216-239.
    I will try to summarize her discourse below & apply it to my heuristics.
    In avoiding both modalism & tritheism, while remaining consistent in trinitarian predication,
    one must recognize three modes of identity. Unlike modalism, which refers to a single object
    existing in one of these modes, a modal identity entails one object as being the same as another
    object in one of the modes of identity.

     Essentially identical objects share the same essence (extensional identity).


     Personally identical objects share the same properties & definitions (intentional
    identity).
     Formally identical objects share a genus, sufficiently similar to be placed therein.
    (Abelard originally distinguished extensional from intentional identity.)
    The above modes of identity can be applied to the trinitarian logic of the Athanasian Creed,
    but this divine syllogistics collapses when applied to existents, where Aristotelian syllogistics,
    instead, apply.
    My modal schema, influenced by Peircean categories, where
    Being > Reality > Relations > Existents
    roughly & analogously maps to these modes of identity
    Essential | Personal | Formal | Creatures
    employing a predicate or propositional logic, which is meta-logical (while Aristotelian
    syllogistics employ a term logic).
    See:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/simply-divine-or-a-divinity-fudge-
    cooking-with-dionysius-scotus-peirce-aquinas-palamas/
    Also see:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/mapping-metaphysical-distinctions-
    aristotelian-thomist-peircean/
    So, Trinitarian discourse can be affirmed as formally consistent and roughly maps, heuristically,
    to our meta-logical categories. Still, that affords us only analytical conceivability, a rather
    minimalist intelligibility?
    Can a bridge be constructed to Aristotelian syllogistics? that we might gain some additional
    modicum of intelligibility?
    Yes.
    First, we would recognize that, for existents (creatures), only the formal mode of identity obtains
    and essential & personal predications do not (i.e. in Aristotelian syllogistics).
    So, can Aristotelian syllogistics yet be extracted from the mode of identity framework mindful of
    where such predications obtain or not?
    If so, our trinitarian logic needn’t be considered adhocery & unamenable to normal syllogistic
    logic. Instead, our reasoning regarding existents (creatures) would be a special case as a
    reduction of trinitarian syllogizing.
    We should remain mindful that, in relating propria of the essence, idioma of the hypostases &
    energeia of the Trinity, per Abelardian modes of identity (essentially, personally & formally),
    even if we suitably predicate these realities using apophasis, analogy, gerundives & such and
    remain otherwise consistent ----
    still, because we only ever use partial references and not exhaustively complete definitions, a
    radical incompleteness will still afflict our trinitarian discourse.
    For example, even when we've managed to avoid paralogisms by properly attending to our
    modes of identity, in order to disambiguate our categorical predications of divine terms
    (thereby making explicit identity types essencialiter vs personaliter vs formaliter), while we will
    have saved some of our most meaningful intuitions, still, mystery will perdure.
    While our Peircean-like categories analogously map to our Aristotelian, Scotist & Thomist
    categories (like quiddity, haecceity, ousia, hypostasis and such), it’s not counterintuitive that the
    dissimilarities --- between all of our approaches to temporal being (Peirce, Scotus, Thomist, etc)
    and our approach to nondeterminate & self-determinate being (with three modes of identity) ---
    will be located essentially & hypostatically vis a vis the modes of identity. The categories of
    essential-hypostatic nondeterminate being (ad intra), where an act-potency distinction will not
    obtain, simply will not, by definition, correspond to temporally modal categories of essential-
    hypostatic determinate being.
    It makes perfect sense, otherwise, to draw on the formal mode of identity to locate the
    similarities between, on one hand, the determinate effects of the divine energeia (essentially or
    substantially of ousia) & economy (personally or hypostatically of haecceities), and, on the
    other, those of created, determinate beings.
    Is that not precisely what we find in the Palamitic distinction between essence & energies,
    Thomist distinction between esse naturale & intentionale, Scotus’ formal distinction and Peirce’s
    thirdness?
    There’s a divine-creaturely nexus, a semiotic locus, where we can reason, abductively, from
    effects that are proper to no known causes, to putative causes, whether the Actus Purus of
    nondeterminate & self-determinate divine causes, or the acts in potency of in/determinate
    creaturely causes, both physical & metaphysical.
    While we are often epistemically constrained, methodologically, unable to exhaustively define
    such putative causes, whether divine, metaphysical or even physical, this moderate realism
    affords us the prospect of nevertheless, really, making successful references – per a univocal
    mode of identity vis a vis effects.
    That’s what my project has been about --- establishing that our God-talk, including a classical
    trinitology, remains robustly intelligible & coherent:
    See:
     https://independent.academia.edu/SylvestJohn
      
     https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/meaningful-god-talk/
      
     https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/11/27/ive-been-through-the-desert-
    fathers-on-an-ousia-with-no-name-it-felt-good-to-get-out-of-the-reign-of-rationalism-
    with-the-help-of-the-cappadocians/
      
     https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/11/28/much-ado-about-nihil-a-
    taxonomy-of-in-determinacies/
      
     https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/my-mon-arche-i-tectonic-shift/
      
     https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/12/02/in-dialogue-with-boyd-on-
    hartshorne-neville-on-divine-freedom/
      
     https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/12/03/how-gelpis-inculturated-north-
    american-theology-graced-my-encounter-with-eastern-orthodoxy/
     https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/12/04/classical-theism-doesnt-really-
    compete-tautologically/
      
     https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/09/17/why-i-have-no-metaphysic/
    Note re: leaps of faith
    Monist
     nihilism
     pantheism
    Dualist
     panen-theism (dipolar or whole-part relation)
     classical theism (created tehom – staged vs lapsarian)
    Pluralist
     pan-entheism (uncreated tehom)
    Classical Theism Doesn’t Really Compete (tautologically)
     Chance or necessity?
     Chaos or order?
     Paradox or pattern?
     Random or systematic?
     Asymmetric or symmetric?
     Discontinuity or continuity?
    We approach reality’s in/determinacies with no final analytical adjudication of how many &
    which of them arise from methodological or epistemic in/determinabilities versus various in-
    principle occultings of certain in/determined ontic realities.
    Some tautologies imagine a wholesale indeterminedness, a thoroughgoing realm of merely
    ephemeral forms, a tehomic abyss of nominalistic turtles all the way across. Others, a
    pervasively determined reality of only eternal forms, a pantheon of essentialistic turtles all the
    way down.
    Neither of these monistic tautologies requires mereological whole-part distinctions, although,
    ontologically, the former type usually admits materialist presuppositions, the latter – idealist.
    Explanatorily & causally, the former takes reality to be brute, the latter conceives it as ultimately
    explicable & absolutely caused.
    Might there be more than turtles?
    Could they be arranged with more than horizontal & vertical directionality, perhaps both?
    without
     dichotomizing them into matter or mind, perhaps both?
     imagining that turtlehood’s at least partly intelligible even if at bottom still wholly
    incomprehensible?
     conceiving it as adequately determined & sufficiently reasoned rather than either
    absolutely so or pervasively indetermined?
    What alternative tautology could accommodate that cluster of presuppositions?
    None has presented.
    Rather than formal, syllogistic arguments that employ root metaphors & metaphysical
    dichotomies between chance & necessity or advancing pure deductions, humankind has long
    taken refuge in common sense abductions, informal reasonings that rely heavily on
    reductiones ad absurdum.
    Without root metaphors & exhaustive definitions, instead employing only vague & general
    phenomenological categories of meta-ontological significance, our reasoning must resort to a
    fallibilist triadic cycling of abductive hypothesizing, deductive clarifying & inductive testing,
    which will converge on the truth, even when we can only make successful references to
    reality.
    Classical theism, Thomism, Scotism, Neo-platonism, Palamism, Augustinianism and such do
    not compete on tautological terms with either a materialist monism or pantheism, either a
    thoroughgoing nominalism or essentialism, both which take rather naïve a prioristic
    approaches with a pretense of comprehensively accounting for reality, mereologically,
    exhaustively defining its objects, epistemologically, neatly arranging its turtles, ontologically.
    Rather, distinctions like being, reality & relations; essence, existent, act-potency; quiddity,
    haecceity, formal distinction; ousia, hypostasis, energeia; and so on, suffice to “meaningfully”
    relate realities via successful references & abductive inferences, even when successful definitions
    otherwise elude us.
    As Christians encounter paradox, we don’t rush to closure, imagining a priori that it must
    necessarily be
     resolved, dialectically in synthesis;
     dissolved, paradigmatically via perspectival shift;
     maintained, creatively in tension; or
     evaded, practically, via reductiones.
    Our abductive hypotheses regarding a putative Ens Necessarium tend to evade radically
    nominalistic & essentialistic tautologies, which devolve into atheological & pantheological
    stances that wreak conceptual havoc on our
     common sense experience of a human free will,
     common sense notions of causality,
     common sense presuppositions of metaphysical reality & first principles of reasoning.
    Our abductions regarding reality’s ultimates & reductiones regarding its proximates don’t a
    priori recommend themselves as metaphysical verities without having first proved themselves,
    a posteriori, as indispensable methodological stipulations.
    A Dionysian-like approach gets to the point:
     God is | x | is true analogically and kataphatically.
     God is | not x | is true literally and apophatically.
     God's neither | x | nor | not x | is true unitively.
    When we approach classical theisms without this logic, we fall into confusion because we project
    onto them our own implicit nominalisms & essentialisms and materialisms & idealisms. We
    imagine we can
     synthesize them in an Hegelian-like dialectic (like some dipolar theisms),
     dissolve them paradigmatically through some Kuhnian-like shift (like some
    panentheisms), or
     maintain their creative tensions (methodological principle of sufficient reason but a
    metaphysical materialism).
    That’s not what classical theism does!
    Instead, it evades such tensions altogether, refrains from proving too much, from saying more
    than can possibly be known, from telling untellable stories.
    Some pejoratively caricature as an ad hoc mysterianism
    8. such apophasis,
    9. such reliance on successful references,
    10. such bracketing of root metaphors,
    11. such an inescapably fallibilist approach,
    12. such a practical reasoning under speculative uncertainty.
    Our defense, though, is robust.
    This is no dissolvent mysterianism, but the exuberantly hopeful epistemic optimism of a
    nuanced, negative mysterianism, which posits that –
    5. if our indispensable methodological stipulations derive from timeless metaphysical
    truths,
    6. then, our acting as if these propositions, however tentative, are true,
    7. will more likely provide us more beautiful, good, unitive & liberative value-realizations
    than alternative stances can.
    Now, it may well be that, too many of us aren’t always the best exemplars of such transcendental
    imperatives, piously voicing firm beliefs, while practically responding to life with nihilistic
    tendencies. Mea maxima culpa!But that’s why we so fulsomely celebrate our hagiographic
    traditions, taking account of how other persons, once similarly situated and as flawed as us,
    have nevertheless plumbed the depths of solidarity & scaled the heights of compassion,
    miraculously so, both in virtue and in visible signs like sanctifications, spectacular healings,
    unitive realizations & transformative liberations - all that remain otherwise inexplicable, both
    physically & psychologically.
    The practical takeaway is that what can often seem rather meager, propositionally, can still
    impart enormous significance, dispositionally, normatively justifying an eminently actionable
    way of living, existentially.
    As we reflect on the
    2. primal emptiness at the Father’s origination of the Trinity,
    3. empty manger of the Advent at the Incarnation,
    4. empty tomb of the Resurrection,
    5. empty space of the Ascension
    6. all now filled with the utter fullness of Pentecost …
    Let us hope that, whenever we encounter that much beauty, that much goodness, that much
    unity & love, that much freedom, the Truth will, more likely than otherwise, at least, be nearby.
    The kerygma doesn’t finally lend itself, propositionally & with complete definitions, to a
    competing tautology. It’s a category error to approach our Creeds, Scriptures & Traditions that
    way. It accommodates itself, rather, to a practical reasoning under speculative uncertainties,
    where successful references must suffice, commensurate with the Subjects on both Hands of the
    Father.
    If we open ourselves, dispositionally, follow through, existentially, then our abductive
    propositional apprehensions will grow ever more comprehensive until our vision is Beatific.
    How Gelpi’s Inculturated North American Theology
    “Graced” my encounter with Eastern Orthodoxy

    My old acquaintance (45 years) & fellow yat (New Orleanian), the late Jesuit, Don Gelpi,
    articulated a normative theology of conversion.
    His account integrated

     Edwards’ aesthetic object (i.e. Christology),


     Royce’s ethical dynamism &
     Peirce’s logical semiotic, while reframing
     Lonergan’s conversions in terms of experience.
    Palamas’ energies, Stăniloae’s affirmation of direct contemplative experience & Bulgakov’s
    created Sophia seemed to me to fit just such a view & so did von Balthasar’s outlook.
    This all squares with an account of faith that’s neither arational nor rationalistic, but defensibly
    & coherently trans-rational.
    Many others are running with Gelpi’s account in other fruitful directions. For example, see Mark
    Grave’s "Gracing Neuroscientific Tendencies of the Embodied Soul,"
    __Philosophy and Theology 26 (1):97-129 (2014) __, wherein he models the brain’s biology
    using the dispositional tendencies of nature—characterized by Jonathan Edwards, C. S. Peirce &
    the Jesuit philosophical theologian Donald Gelpi.

    Also, see my own project, a tehomic pan-semio-entheism, which affirms a creatio ex


    profundis within mostly classical theistic contours:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/12/02/in-dialogue-with-boyd-on-hartshorne-
    neville-on-divine-freedom/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/my-mon-arche-i-tectonic-shift/
    https://www.academia.edu/26023098/Reasons_and_Values_of_the_Heart_in_a_Pluralistic_
    World_Toward_a_Contemplative_Phenomenology_for_Interreligious_Dialogue
    In Dialogue with Boyd on Hartshorne & Neville on
    Divine Freedom
    Re: The true role of deduction in metaphysics is not to bring out the content of the initially
    certain, but to bring out the meaning of tentative descriptions of the metaphysically ultimate in
    experience so that we shall be better able to judge if they do generally describe this ultimate.
    <<<
    Reminds me of Newman’s illative sense, Polyani’s tacit dimension, Maritain’s connaturality,
    Fries’ nonintuitive immediate knowledge & Peirce’s abduction.
    Boyd succeeds at threading the nominalism-essentialism needle with his affirmation of
    Jonathan Edwards' dynamical category of disposition, consistent with Peirce's category of
    thirdness, where probabilities mediate between possibilities & actualities.
    Hartshorne's emphasis on beauty resonates with Peirce's aesthetic primacy, but his doctrine of
    God seems to deflate God’s self-determinate nature, failing to make a sufficient distinction
    between a nondeterminate esse naturale & determinate esse intentionale. In the end
    Hartshorne will fall prey, unnecessarily, to the same peril as the Whiteheadian approach – it's
    too nominalistic. Without a PSR, a category of dispositions and a Peircean-like abduction of an
    Ens Necessarium, he badly misconceives freedom, as Lord Acton might say, in terms of a
    volitional license to do what one, wholly indeterminately, wants, rather than in terms of the true
    volitional liberty to do what one --- not extrinsically determinately, but --- self-determinately
    must (per one’s esse naturale, which self-realizes freedom precisely in eternally be-ing all
    that’s true, beautiful, good & unitive).
    See my own recent twitter thread re freedom, in/determinacy & telos:
    https://mobile.twitter.com/John_S_Sylvest/status/1068640591376982017
    re: We shall, in short, utilize the modification of Hartshorne’s foundational statements,
    combined with his theistic arguments, to arrive at a view of God which accomplishes what the
    classical view of God as actus purus accomplished—seeing God as self-sufficient, and thus
    creation and salvation as acts of grace—while yet avoiding the logical fallacies of the classical
    view and articulating a view of God which is, like the Process view, in accord with the dynamic
    categories of modernity. <<<
    C’est bon
    Re: And finally, while we have defended Hartshorne’s view that aesthetic value is a priori
    (III.vi.1), we have argued that his correlation of aesthetic intensity with synthesized multiplicity
    is not necessary (III.vi.2). One can, rather, distinguish between the subjective intensity of an
    experience, and the expression of that experience: the former admits of an acme point, the latter
    does not (III.vi.3). <<<
    This all sounds consonant, still, with Peirce’s aesthetic primacy, i.e. how it avoids hedonism,
    and Scotus’ primacy of the will, i.e. how it avoids voluntarism. And, having considered Boyd’s
    project before, I’m reminded how his aesthetic distinctions between intensity & scope,
    experience & expression, were consonant with those between esse naturale & intentionale,
    reminiscent of that old formulation, albeit anthropomorphic, “appropriation of novelty &
    shedding of monotony.”
    Re: This view is somewhat paradoxical in the context of Neville’s own system, for central to his
    entire ontology is the claim that the events of the world must “reveal” God’s character. See ibid.,
    p. 11, “…God’s moral character is revealed in events….” But clearly, if God is genuinely wholly
    “indeterminate” ad intra, there can be nothing, literally “no-thing,” to reveal. A determinate
    revelation presupposes a determinate “something” to be revealed. Neville, however, is consistent
    in admitting that because God’s character is indeterminate, “the divine character” can be said to
    be “only as good as experience shows it to be as creator of just this world, and no more.” <<<
    Yes, when I appropriated Neville on my own terms, I was not satisfied with a kataphatic
    predication of indeterminacy, ad intra. I appreciate the sentiment to cast God’s freedom more
    robustly, i.e. ontologically as well as morally. But I also felt that God ad intra must be predicated
    apophatically, beyond both in/determinacy & non/existents of being, e.g. no-thing-ness.
    Essential propria like freedom would not be justified metaphysically but exegetically from both
    the gratuity of creation & the gratuity of grace, from both general & special revelation.
    So, my taxonomy of determinacies looks like this:
    Nondeterminate Emptiness (e.g. ground of Tillich & Neville, Ens Necessarium of Peirce)
    Nondeterminate Nothingness (e.g. nihilum, ex nihilo)
    Indeterminate Being (e.g. tehom)
    • uncreated
    • created
    • lapsarian
    Determinate Being (e.g. probabilistic in/determinacies as variously in/determinable and/or
    in/determined in degrees; as absolutely and/or relatively self-determinate)
    God’s freedom –
    ad intra predicated

     apophatically & essentially by a proprium of nondeterminacy,


     apophatically & hypostatically by an idioma of unoriginacy, then,
    ad extra – predicated kataphatically & hypostatically by
     an idioma of absolute self-determinacy as the sole source of the Trinity
     the pneumatological & Christological hypostases as relatively self-determinate
     the Trinity, as Actus Purus, essentially & hypostatically, dynamical, determinable by
    substantial energies & hypostatical economies via the vestigial realities in the gratuity of
    creation & theotic realities in gratuity of grace, all as effected by the Trinitological
    synergy & revealed in special revelation
    I recently observed:
    It seems to me that many arguments – regarding what precisely was and remains at stake in
    those tensions still playing out between our patristic, scholastic & modern schools – turn on
    whether or not we imagine the Fathers & Medievals were mostly trying to solve, on one hand,
    the One & the Many, or, on the other, the Mystery of Freedom, both divine & creaturely, as all
    we most deeply cherish derives from its putatively coinherent gratuities, what we celebrate in
    our lives as Love. I hope I have unpacked enough to hint that such a tension represents a false
    dichotomy.
    See:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/my-mon-arche-i-tectonic-shift/
    Re: God’s being is, in our view, determinate, at least with regard to God’s necessary God-
    defining characteristics. <<<
    I think I suggested above – d’accord.
    There are fundamental issues for me in univocally predicating in/determinacy of both God ad
    intra and creation. Even ad extra, I maintain, above, an apophatic predication of God’s
    determinacy by negating any coinherence of extrinsic determinacy with God’s self-determinacy.
    Divine self-determinacy further distinguishes itself as Actus Purus, while creaturely self-
    determinacy entails formative actualization of telic potencies in a dynamical theotic be-
    coming.
    The question left begging, of course, is the causal nexus of creaturely participation in the divine
    economy & incorporation into the divine nature. Of course, it must be located
     in our responses to special revelation,
     in our responses to all that is true, unitive, beautiful, good & liberative in the vestigia of
    general revelation,
     in our responses to our spontaneous abductions of the Ens Necessarium as we muse
    about effects we encounter as would be proper to no known creaturely causes,
    specifically vestigial & theotic effects that full body blow us with an excess of meaning,
    and
     as those responses erupt in worship, foster conversions, instill a solidarity & unity from
    which compassion directly ensues in spiritual & corporal works of mercy.
    Not to be coy, I imagine the nexus is semiotic.
    And, when I tweet such things as I did earlier today ---
    What's intrigues me about certain telic realities, including both formal & final causes, is that
    they can be lurking in such incredibly latent, implicate, tacit & unobtrusive ways, while, at the
    same time, so ineluctably & utterly efficacious. ---
    I very much have in mind both created & Uncreated grace, sacraments & symbols, vestigial &
    theotic signs.
    My meta-ontological categorizing does not need a specific metaphysic but I intend it to be
    normative for any approach, whether creatio ex nihilo, amore or profundis, whether classical,
    neo-classical or process. And I do think panentheism & creatio ex profundis can be consistently
    conceived within rather classical contours. I first outlined same in a prologue to my project
    called pan-semio-entheism:
    https://www.academia.edu/26023098/Reasons_and_Values_of_the_Heart_in_a_Pluralistic_
    World_Toward_a_Contemplative_Phenomenology_for_Interreligious_Dialogue
    As for the Trinity, I think I subscribe to a negative mysterianism, combined with an ananoetic
    approach that serves only as an exploratory heuristic device & not as an explanatory model. This
    heuristic locates trinitarian unity substantially in one ousia; hypostatically in one source, the
    Father, as principium; dynamically, in the Trinity, as synergy.
    I’m not a priori suggesting there’s no ontological root metaphor that could be had in principle,
    but am dang sure observing that I’ve never see a sufficient one in practice.
    See:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/09/17/why-i-have-no-metaphysic/
    Re: link between a diversified harmony and the intensity of an aesthetic experience is not
    necessarily proportional
    Important
    Re: view of God wherein the self-sufficient actuality of God could be conceived of as necessary,
    while yet allowing for a contingent “expressive” actual aspect to God’s being
    Important
    Re: And the benevolence of the Trinity consists in the fact that God appreciates, and eternally
    remembers, the goodness acquired in the world along this journey, transforming it in a way that
    “feeds back into the world” to further its progress.
    My own sophianic vision!
    Where in the World is Sophia? ---a Sophiological footnote
    The created grace Gelpi refers to would be constituted by reality's actualized potencies,
    eternalized teloi (both temporal & ultimate teloi) of Peircean thirdness, efficient materialities of
    secondness, connaturalized indeterminacies of firstness, existentialized essences, formalized
    finalities, participatory intimacizations eternalized, all temporal realities coaxed forth
    Pneumatologically, Christologically & Paterologically via Divine Energies as would account for
    effects as would be proper to no known causes.
    Every trace of human goodness, for example, eternalized; along with every
    beginning of a smile & all wholesome trivialities.
    Whether interpreted in Platonic, Neoplatonic, Aristotelian, Thomist, Scotist, Palamitic or
    Peircean categories --- (and I cross hermeneutical bridges between them all:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/mapping-metaphysical-distinctions-
    aristotelian-thomist-peircean/ ), --- collectively & dynamically, these cumulative actualized
    potencies or eternally realized divine teloi may represent Sophia, who participates in the Divine
    Energies in a perichoretic
    Divine Dance.
    In The Wisdom of God, Bulgakov spoke of two Sophias, one created and the other uncreated.
    She to whom I refer above would be the created Sophia in her participatedness. While I affirm
    the Divine Energies per a quasi- or trans-formal distinction, I must defer to others regarding the
    manner of viewing Sophia in
    Orthodoxy. And still wonder just how we might best account for ecstatic visions of Sophia.
    Re: Hence, God enjoys the world—the world “means something” to God—not as an essential
    element in God’s necessary self-constitution, but as an expression of God’s self-constitution. The
    world provides a new occasion for the unsurpassable beauty of God, defined in terms of divine
    intensity, to be expressed and in a sense “repeated” in a novel form. <<<
    Important & defensible, again w/esse naturale vs intentionale distinction.
    Re: dispositionality
    Peircean Thirdness, the category of telic realities, formal acts in various degrees of final
    potencies, the loci of semiotic symbols, nexus of the divine & human, the dispositional,
    Christological & pneumatological.
    Tom Belt, I can see why Robinson & Southgate appealed to you. You must’ve well intuited that
    you & Boyd (erstwhile?) would capture my imagination.

    My Mon-Arche-I-tectonic Shift
    The reflection, below, is in dialogue with Eclectic Thoughts on Holy Trinity: Person,
    Essence, Energy, and Stuff Like That .
    Thanks for generously sharing, Robert, and Father for providing this forum for all, including us
    nonacademic anawim. I love grappling with this stuff as hard as it is for, on my daily walks, it
    feels very much like prayer.
    Your essay evokes analogies to the way I have appropriated Charles Sanders Peirce. I say
    analogy because his modal ontology applies to finite, determinate being. His category of
    firstness or possibilities roughly maps to essence or ousia or quiddity. He’s no essentialist but
    neither does he countenance nominalism. As a moderate realist, that essence would only ever be
    encountered in his category of secondness or actualities, roughly mapping to existents or
    hypostases or haecceities (think act = efficient & potency = material cause). His realism comes
    in via thirdness, a category of generalities, which maps roughly to probabilities or relations,
    which actually mediate (think teloi, where act = formal & potency = final cause) between
    firstness & secondness. One can see from those act|potency dynamics why this only applies
    analogically to Actus Purus.
    No divine ousia could be abstracted, as it’s only ever eternally instantiated in divine hypostases,
    where the act|potency analog is pure act.
    Of course, the determinate being of creation, as a whole & even in rational creatures’ theotic
    realizations, would, as vestigia & imago Dei, present as effects proper to no other known
    causes, leading us to our abductions of the Ens Necessarium, to Whom, aided by both
    general & special revelation, we could only make successful references but could not fashion
    definitions (think idioma of hypostases & propria of ousia). Our essential references would be
    strictly apophatic negations: nondeterminate, noncomposite, nonfinite, etc, predications we
    casually toss around as if we comprehend them, when their intelligibility, propositionally, barely
    leads to an analytic conceivability. But GOD is such a LARGE reality (Peirce says we should
    avoid the fetish of saying He “exists”), that a meager informative intelligibility can go a long way
    performatively & dispositionally (like on my prayerful walks or when I first prayed the Credo in
    Latin as an altar boy). Discussions like these, even disagreements within dogmatic contours, to
    me, aren’t arguments but prayers. Think pragmatic semiotic realism.

    Whether the unity is substantial via ousia, hypostatic in the Father via principium or
    dynamical in the Trinity via synergy or all of the above, our logical analytics, which manipulate
    propria & idiomata, energeia & economies, remain strictly epinoetic & ananoetic,
    propositionally, but our metanoetic & theotic encounters in Word & Sacrament & Creation lead
    us to partake of the divine synergy & to be incorporated in the divine nature, where trinitology
    yields to trinitophany, evoking psalms, hymns, prayers, creeds, all manner of worship & all
    types of ongoing conversions.
    But good worship & good conversion, good fellowship & good behavior, will only ever best be
    fostered if we get good Trinity-talk right. That’s why I defer & demur. (Think of a fugue of
    orthodoxic, orthocommunal, orthopathic, orthopraxic & orthotheotic dispositions. Oremus!
    Another evocative analog to me between Peircean approaches & trinitology comes from his
    speculative grammar, wherein, for his modal ontology, one can map - not only the act-potency
    dynamics, but – at least, insofar as this grammar is applied to determinate being, to our
    applications of first principles (noncontradiction & excluded middle or PNC & PEM).
    For possibilities, PNC folds & PEM holds; actualities, PNC & PEM both hold; probabilities, PNC
    holds & PEM folds.
    This all prescinds from a metaphysic of necessity to a more vague-general phenomenology or
    meta-ontology to guide syntax, semantics & contextual realities that present indeterminately
    (viz. in an epistemic-ontic omelet, where we can’t always say, a priori, whether our
    ignorance derives from the methodological advances & constraints of in/determinability or
    ontological revelations & occultings of in/determinedness.)
    Anyone, who’s ever toyed with alternate cosmogonies, quantum interpretations or philosophies
    of mind, will recognize these epistemic-ontic omelet phenomena and how those competing
    interpretations represent our analytic-semiotic attempts to technologically unscramble those
    phenomenological eggs.
    What of necessity as a modal category? Wherein all of the first principles would hold, including
    identity, with variously weak or strong versions of the principle of sufficient being [PSR]?

    Here we reach the threshold of the abduction of the Ens Necessarium? Here we see
    Russell & Copleston debating primordial mereology viz. fallacy of composition? Here we
    encounter Leibniz and a pantheism that derives from a PSR on steroids?
    Next we see Hawking taking the square root of imaginary numbers (axiomatized by taking the
    square root of negative one) to predicate a finite but unbounded universe, as well as others, who
    propose a plurality of worlds, a multiverse or even an ultimately thoroughgoing formless abyss?

    But we also find Anselm, Augustine & Aquinas, Basil,


    Bonaventure & von Balthasar, Cappadocians, Chalcedonians &
    Christmas!
    How we axiomatically predicate putatively non/determinate realities, hopefully looking over our
    epistemic shoulders at Godel-like constraints, Agrippa’s trilemma & a robustly aporetic
    intuition, will algorithmically steer us away from either, on one hand, an unmitigated nihilism,
    which “grounds” an ultimate epistemic idealism, ontic nominalism, evaluative voluntarism,
    vulgar pragmatism & moral relativism (you recognize the litany of bogeymen of a radically
    deconstructive postmodernism), or, on the other hand, a thoroughgoing pantheism, with its
    mindboggling implications for all notions of – not only divine, but -creaturely freedom.
    What’s most at stake, then, for those who properly thread the needles of non/determinate &
    in/determinate realities, are precisely our notions of freedom.
    And how we ground them primordially & ultimately, as well as dispose ourselves to them,
    contingently, will profoundly impact our quotidian existence.
    It seems to me that many arguments - regarding what precisely was and remains at stake in
    those tensions still playing out between our patristic, scholastic & modern schools – turn on
    whether or not we imagine the Fathers & Medievals were mostly trying to solve, on one hand,
    the One & the Many, or, on the other, the Mystery of Freedom, both divine & creaturely, as all
    we most deeply cherish derives from its putatively coinherent gratuities, what we celebrate in
    our lives as Love.

    I hope I have unpacked enough to hint that such a tension represents a false dichotomy.
    Let me unpack a few more trinitological implications of my Peircean architectonic.

    Numerically, if not ontologically, I suggest that (where > indicates a conceptual greater than vis
    a vis a sheer number of putative concepts to be limned existentially)

     Being (possibilities, essence, ousia, quiddity, epistemic vagueness) >


     Reality (actualities, existents, hypostases, haecceities) >
     Relations (probabilities, necessities, teloi, ontic generalities, non/determinacies &
    in/determinacies) >
     Existence (determinate & composite beings)
    If we reify a sphere of pure being, we might predicate its ontic extremes either in terms of a
    formless void or tehomic abyss or in terms of a platonic plenitude of forms, neither “essentially”
    a no-thing-ness but, instead, a realm of infinite possibilia or potentialities not otherwise
    in potency to act.
    “Potentialities not in potency” makes for a great analytic conception until one recognizes it’s
    inherently self-contradictory, unsurprisingly though if, per one’s speculative grammar,
    noncontradiction has folded, leaving only the implicit ontological imperatives of the excluded
    middle: Choose! Determine! Act!
    “To Be or Not To Be,” that is the question!
    Here we, the Many, are faced with the Existential Disjunctive, but only proximately &
    derivatively.

    Ultimately & primordially, there must be some One, a Who, a Person, a Pure Act,
    existentially & hypostatically, to freely answer that call, then, to donatively gift being to One-
    self, pivoting from nondeterminate emptiness as the unoriginate Source of – not being, itself,
    but - relationality, itself, as self-determinate, which is one’s relationship to one’s self,
    one’s very existence, One’s hypostasis choosing One’s essence.
    Alternatively, I suppose a tehomic realm of dynamical nondeterminate material is certainly
    conceivable. It would perdure in an eternal flux of ever-emergent but merely ephemeral teloi,
    for example, presently in a radically entropic, materio-energetic, spatio-temporal configuration,
    as might just so brutely happen. (See unmitigated nihilism, above).
    Or, of course, there’s pantheism.
    That’s the Existential Trilemma of our three mereological-metaphysical-sufficient reason
    tautologies: nihilism, pantheism & all manner of needle-threading theistic conceptions,
    switching metaphors, trying to navigate the radically nondeterministic nihilistic or radically
    deterministic pantheistic existential shoals, trying to adjudicate, with some modicum of
    epistemic warrant, between those equiplausible worldviews and various competing theistic
    stances.
    At least, some suggest they’re equiplausible, but those, in my view, seem to subscribe to either a
    thoroughgoing nominalism or a radically naïve realism, both which, per my pragmatic semiotic
    realism, caricature our otherwise inherently axiological epistemology.
    I address, elsewhere, how such forced, vital existential options become “live” through a
    combination of epistemic warrant & normative justification. And it doesn’t involve epistemic
    adhocery, just the ordinary furnishings of our epistemic suite: perinoetic, ananoetic, epinoetic,
    metanoetic, etc
    Confronted with “Why is there not rather nothing?” or “Whither the One & Many?” or “Of
    whom & how can we predicate ‘freedom’ or even define it?” --- I’ve suggested they reduce to a
    single question, even though there are many putative answers.

    Wise guys know that, for The Answer, all roads lead to Bethlehem, prior to
    Cappadocian & Roman excursions. And our responses begin, dispositionally, in a gnosis
    discovered on our knees, before the post-experiential processing of our episteme of
    participatory imaginations, long before the cognitive map-making of our doxastic propositions.

    What flows algorithmically from such a Mon-Arche-itectonic as I hinted at above?

    We set aside both a nondeterminate nihilum of ultimate nothingness & a wholly determinate
    one-thing-ness of necessary being or being-itself and consider – not a nondeterminate ground
    of nothingness, but – a nondeterminate ground of emptiness (a Christological intuition from
    The Tomb), freely choosing (in absolute ontological freedom) to Supremely Be (a
    Paterological intuition from both general & special revelation, onto-theologically & theo-
    ontologically), freely or Self-determinately (substantially unoriginated) originating &
    spirating, on One hand a generated Son & on One hand a processing Spirit, as Trinity
    donatively gifting both the gratuity of creation and, to rational creatures, the gratuity of grace
    (Pneumatological intuitions from both the coeternal via vestigia & our theotic realizations and
    sans filioque).
    Elsewhere, I address grace as transmuted experience, following my late Jesuit friend, Don
    Gelpi.
    All of our theophanic & trinitophanic sensibilities & intuitions, taken together, would reflect how
    our theotic transformations, while they are not patterned after Ascensions, are exemplified in
    the Assumption (a Mariological intuition).
    As I begin to close, now, I would summarize by suggesting that the substantial, hypostatic &
    relational unity of the One --- known, however imperfectly, in divine propria, idiomata &
    synergies, experienced as divine energy & economy as we partake in One Mission & are
    incorporated into One Bread, One Body, One Lord of the Many --- is
    communicated to us via a quintessential semiosis – what Peirce would call icons,
    indexes & symbols. But others, like Andrew Robinson & Christopher Southgate, have
    told that story.
    What I have set forth are my Peircean Trinitophanic Preambulae, which remain meta-
    ontological, bracketing any root metaphors du jour, as I remain, substantially, in search of a
    metaphysic, just like the rest of Christianity, at least, those who bring an aporetic sense and
    apophatic sensibility to the Divine Essence, because, really, it’s no-thing.

    Much Ado About Nihil – a taxonomy of in/determinacies


    Nondeterminate Emptiness (e.g. ground of Tillich & Neville, Ens Necessarium of Peirce)
    Nondeterminate Nothingness (e.g. nihilum, ex nihilo)
    Indeterminate Being (e.g. tehom)
    • uncreated
    • created
    • lapsarian
    Determinate Being (e.g. probabilistic in/determinacies as variously in/determinable and/or
    in/determined in degrees; as absolutely and/or relatively self-determinate)

    A Cajun Credeaux - as believed consistent with any number of theo-cosmogonies,


    metaphysics & trinitologies
    Hypostasis of the Father = idioma of the unoriginate originator (principium)
    necessarily (per esse naturale) or, alternatively, freely (cf Eclectic Orthodoxy),
    originating (as self-determinate dynamis-actus),
    possessing divine ousia as referenced, not defined (via negativa), via apophatically
    predicated propria &

    gratuitously (per esse intentionale) creating determinate being, thereby

    revealing Himself as Creator, including both pneumatologically (idioma of Spirit


    proceeding) from the via vestigia in the divine gratuity of creation (per general revelation) &
    Christologically (idioma of Son begotten) from the via positiva in the divine gratuity of grace
    (per special revelation), thereby

    communicating with determinate being via the Godhead’s singular trinitarian


    synergy and
    offering special intimacy (Abba) to rational beings via theotic participation in that divine
    economy & incorporation into that divine nature, illuminated by divine energeia.
    More is fleshed out here in my collaboration with Amos Yong.
    Note:
    USCCB
    A new phase in the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church began formally with the
    Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the Pan-Orthodox Conferences (1961-1968), which renewed contacts and
    dialogue. From that time, a number of theological issues and historical events contributing to the schism between the
    churches have begun to receive new attention. In this context, our own North American Orthodox-Catholic
    Consultation was established in 1965, and the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the
    Orthodox and Catholic Churches was established in 1979. Although a committee of theologians from many different
    Churches, sponsored by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, studied the Filioque
    question in depth in 1978 and 1979, and concluded by issuing the “Klingenthal Memorandum” (1979), no thorough
    new joint discussion of the issue has been undertaken by representatives of our two Churches until our own study.
    The first statement of the Joint International Commission (1982), entitled “The Mystery of the Church and of the
    Eucharist in the Light of the Mystery of the Trinity,” does briefly address the issue of the Filioque, within the context
    of an extensive discussion of the relationship of the persons of the Holy Trinity. The Statement says: “Without wishing
    to resolve yet the difficulties which have arisen between the East and the West concerning the relationship between
    the Son and the Spirit, we can already say together that this Spirit, which proceeds from the Father (Jn. 15:26) as the
    sole source of the Trinity, and which has become the Spirit of our sonship (Rom. 8:15) since he is already the Spirit of
    the Son (Gal.4:6), is communicated to us, particularly in the Eucharist, by this Son upon whom he reposes in time and
    eternity (Jn. 1:32).” (No. 6).
    Trinity & Metaphysics
    McInerny sees us as Characters in Search of Their Author. Like Pip in Great
    Expectations, we are beneficiaries in search of a Benefactor. Like the Empty Tomb, our
    Empty Mangers during Advent instill -- not lost meaning or unintelligible references, but - Great
    Expectations!
    Practical upshot is that neither revelation nor metaphysics gift us with an exhaustive, descriptive
    definition of the divine hypostases. But the former gifts us w/adequate character references,
    while the latter aspires to adequate phenomenological references w/categories that - even if only
    intelligible to a modest degree, propositionally, are profoundly impactful, dispositionally, &
    eminently actionable, existentially.
    Apophatic references to divine esse, metaphysically, only ever clear the epistemic stage of half-
    gods that God may appear.
    Noncomposite esse or simplicity tells us, ergo, what God is not as well as not like. Such
    attributes, even taken together in a cluster concept, increase descriptive accuracy, only by
    eliminating impostors & idols, not by providing terms to be used in sylly syllogisms.
    Our successful references, then, both metaphysical & revelational, allow us to distinguish
    relations, ad intra & ad extra, impersonal & personal, re both propria & energies of ousia as well
    as idioma & economies of hypostases, as the causes of otherwise inexplicable vestigial & theotic
    effects, respectively, in the divine gratuity of creation, generally, & gratuity of grace, specially.
    Like the Empty Tomb of Triduum & Empty Manger of Advent, as unoriginate originator & sole
    source of the Trinity, the Godhead - the Father has a freedom grounded in - not an
    indeterminate nothingness, but - a nondeterminate emptiness, that eternally implicates the Son
    & Spirit.
    The Metaphysics of Authentic Freedom
    Probabilities refer to formal causes as acts in potency to final causes, where, modally,
    noncontradiction [PNC] holds & excluded middle folds [PEM], while actualities refer to efficient
    in potency to material, where PNC & PEM both hold.
    Via probabilities, we prescind from both logical & ontological necessities & take a fallibilist
    stance to each indeterminacy we encounter, not a priori casting it as an epistemic
    in/determinable or ontic in/determinedness, recognizing each may contribute in terms of
    degree.
    Emergent complexities confront this moderate realism, presenting it w/novel properties &
    indeterminacies. We then disambiguate any vague conceptions of telos into teloi, recognizing
    that different forms may be variously im/potent re the actualization of their associated ends.
    Formal actualizations of various ends or finalities might be conceived in terms of traveling
    epistemic distances to overcome ontic privations, the latter conceived in terms of an entity's
    freedom "to be" what it "ought" via a real-ization of ought-henticity, no longer deprived.
    Conceptions of teleonomy thus needn't be taken as deflationary of teleology, but neither are they
    sufficient to distinguish the more robustly telic realities from the weaker forms (double
    entendre) & less complex ends, e.g. end-stated "whereby"s vs end-intended "in order to"s.
    Somewhat paradoxically, then, authenticity cast as freedom translates - not into auto-nomy of
    being, but - into the oughts of being, which, for a human, who aspires to real-ly be, will then get
    actualized only if one heeds certain imperatives of be-coming.
    Habitual practices, often counterintuitively, gift freedom. Good habits "form" virtues, which may
    take on the outward appearance of enslavements, but otherwise truly indicate the fullest
    realization of an inner freedom that allows one to effortlessly & self-forgetfully be _____.
    Habits marked by such an effortlessness & self-forgetfulness distinguish the robustly teleo-
    logical from the merely teleo-nomic & teleo-matic habits, which, divorced from divine logics of
    transcendental imperatives, will devolve into those self-indulgent efforts known as vices.
    Thoroughgoing nominalists remain ignostic re teleology, having no need for that hypothesis, a
    stance ultimately dissolving into nihilism. Essentialistic naive realists, w/a fully deterministic
    telos & no epistemic distance to travel, in their own way, deny authentic freedom, too.
    re PNC & PEM in the "actualizing condition" of generality
    cf Bradley, James (2009) Beyond Hermeneutics: Peirce’s Semiology as a Trinitarian
    Metaphysics of Communication. Analecta Hermeneutica, 1. pp. 56-72. ISSN 1918-7351
    Much Ado About Nihil – a taxonomy of in/determinacies
    Nondeterminate Emptiness (e.g. ground of Tillich & Neville, Ens Necessarium of Peirce)
    Nondeterminate Nothingness (e.g. nihilum, ex nihilo)
    Indeterminate Being (e.g. tehom)

     uncreated
     created
     lapsarian
    Determinate Being (e.g. probabilistic in/determinacies as variously in/determinable and/or
    in/determined in degrees; as absolutely and/or relatively self-determinate)
    A Cajun Credeaux - as believed consistent with any number of theo-cosmogonies,
    metaphysics & trinitologies
    Hypostasis of the Father = idioma of the unoriginate originator (principium)
    necessarily (per esse naturale) or, alternatively, freely (cf Eclectic Orthodoxy), originating (as
    self-determinate dynamis-actus),
    possessing divine ousia as referenced, not defined (via negativa), via apophatically predicated
    propria) &
    gratuitously (per esse intentionale) creating determinate being, thereby
    revealing Himself as Creator, including both pneumatologically (idioma of Spirit proceeding)
    from the via vestigia in the divine gratuity of creation (per general revelation) &
    Christologically (idioma of Son begotten) from the via positiva in the divine gratuity of grace
    (per special revelation), thereby
    communicating with determinate being via the Godhead’s singular trinitarian synergy and
    offering special intimacy (Abba) to rational beings via theotic participation in that divine
    economy & incorporation into that divine nature, illuminated by divine energeia.

    I’ve been through the Desert Fathers on an Ousia with


    No Name — It felt good to get out of the Reign (of
    Rationalism) with the help of the Cappadocians.
    Many concepts, taken ahistorically, to me, have often seemed to converge syntactically,
    semantically & contextually. But, I slowly came to realize that, unless studied historically, it’s
    seldom going to be readily discernible which such concepts authors have
    • clearly derived from others,
    • formulated after being merely influenced by others, or
    • otherwise developed quite independently of others.
    It was back when I was trying to unscramble epistemic-ontic omelets (puzzles such as presented
    when I was casually reading about quantum interpretations, cosmogonies, philosophies of mind,
    or life & language origins) that I got introduced to the essentialism-nominalism conundrum.
    And my first exposure to a solution was Peirce’s semiotic, pragmatic realism. I didn’t use it as a
    metaphysic to unscramble any epistemic-ontic omelets or to disabuse me of my metaphysical
    agnosticism (although I certainly have sneaking suspicions that variously incline me,
    ontologically).
    I did, however, find that Peirce’s categories provided a helpful architectonic heuristic, a vague
    meta-ontological phenomenology, within which I could bracket ontological root metaphors (e.g.
    substance, process, relations, experience, persons), while framing up questions via
    • linguistics (e.g. icon, index, symbol & syntactical, semantical, contextual),
    • speculative grammar (e.g. per first principles, PNC, PEM),
    • probability theory (e.g. in/determinacies),
    • critical logic (abductive, inductive, deductive) and
    • speculative rhetoric (pragmatic principle & modality of 1ns, 2ns, 3ns).
    Questions regarding a/historical conceptual convergences have most often presented regarding
    the essentialist-nominalist & realist-idealist conundra, unity-multiplicity & necessity-
    contingency distinctions, the natures of divine & human freedom, all which especially arose in
    various forms, for example, when I began reading about the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity.
    Using my Peircean lenses, every trinitological problem and/or solution that I’d encounter,
    suspiciously, would look like a question and/or answer that had been framed in terms of a
    pragmatic semiotic realism. That obviously not being the case, explicitly, suggested to me that,
    nevertheless, implicitly, as long as various schools of thought were realist, i.e. moderately not
    naively, both their epistemes as well as their theotics would tend to largely converge. It has
    certainly seemed that way to me when considering Neoplatonic, Dionysian, Augustinian,
    Cappadocian, Palamitic, Bonaventurean, Scotistic, Thomist & Peircean approaches to various
    conceptual distinctions pertaining to essences, existents & relations, whether nondeterminate,
    self-determinate or determinate.
    Prominent examples include distinctions like created grace, habitus, Peirce’s thirdness, Scotus’
    formal distinction, real metaphysical (vs physical) distinction of some Thomists, Palamas’
    energies, Rahner’s quasi-formal cause, Basil’s hypostatic idiomata & essential propria and such.
    Diverse in many ways, then, most theological schools that have remained moderately realist,
    historically, have naturally tended to otherwise converge in both their epistemic & theotic
    approaches.
    Many who’ve exaggerated the differences between Neoplatonists, Cappadocians, Augustinians,
    Scotists, Thomists & Palamites, or have charged them w/incoherence re the Trinity, have often
    eisegetically projected onto those schools either their own naive realism or nominalism.
    Such fundamentalists have ignored the metaphysical subtlety & theological nuance of those
    schools (e.g. such as in their predications of essences, existents & relations - nondeterminate vs
    self-determinate vs determinate).
    From revelation, contextually, we can take away certain essential meta-ontological implications
    from the non-metaphysical, quidditative God-talk of its Scriptural narratives & liturgical
    Traditions.
    We can even argue those take-aways syllogistically, employing vague phenomenological
    categories, which articulate a rough syntactical mapping of divine & human beings, realities &
    relations (ad intra & ad extra) and which employ a modicum of semantical univocity.
    This meta-ontological mapping of syntactical, semantical & contextual categories is precisely
    what renders our analogical God-talk meaningful.
    We can also argue syllogistically when engaging in ontological God-talk, whether onto-
    theologically or theo-ontologically, but can only employ apophatic predications, which afford us
    successful references but not robust descriptions.
    Most of our God-talk is otherwise kataphatic, analogical, metaphorical, non-metaphysical,
    common-sensical, dispositional, theopoetic & theopoietic, as found in the forms of our
    Scriptures & Traditions, our dogma, doctrines & disciplines, the theotic efficacies of all which
    supply the norms by which we can gauge the degrees of meaningfulness that we aspire to derive
    from any novel distinctions that we put forth in our speculative systematic theology, meta-
    ontologically or ontologically.
    In other words, how might any given distinction better foster our ongoing participation in divine
    activities & incorporation into the Body of Christ?
    For example, if one might suggest:
    Hypostatical identities are derived relationally (from status & activity/passivity) and not
    ontologically (from being), thus not mereologically (as parts). e.g. Father's unbegotten, an
    identity derived from no cause; Son's id derived from generation & Spirit's from procession.
    We can draw a distinction between the Trinity's unoriginate, noncomposite being (what) & its
    un/originate persons (un/begotten hypostases or who).
    Mereological distinctions don't apply to noncomposite being, so questions re fallacies of
    composition and/or division don't arise.
    Then, how might we evaluate that?
    See:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/do-we-have-norms-to-
    evaluate-trinitological-distinctions-like-fatherhood/
    To avoid category errors of God-talk, for any given discussion, one must clarify precisely what's
    under consideration:
    1) normatively & syntactically - incl modal phenomenological categories (e.g. first principles)

     being
     reality
     relations (ad intra & extra)
    2) descriptively & referentially - incl predications (e.g. semantically & methodologically)
     kataphatic
     apophatic
     metaphorical
     analogical
     informal & common-sensical
     formal & syllogistic
     (root analog or metaphor?)
    3) interpretively - incl meta-ontological aporia
     non/determinate
     physical
     metaphysical
     theological - incl theopoetic, theo-ontological & onto-theological
    4) evaluatively & liberatively -theopoietic
     worship
     conversions
    Analytical Theology?
    I'm all for analytical theology as long as it properly attends to all of Lonergan's methodological
    categories, including Biblical, exegetical, historical, dogmatic & systematic approaches.
    And as long as it tends to all distinctions that make a difference before employing its syllogisms,
    which can otherwise devolve into facile, sylly argumentation that engages mere caricatures of
    classical theology.
    For example:
    How do we distinguish those attributions we predicate of determinate acts & relations from
    those we predicate
    • of determinate being (existents)?
    • or of nondeterminate acts & relations?
    • or of nondeterminate and/or self-determinate being?
    • much less acts w/nondeterminate and/or self-determinate being as source but w/a temporal or
    determinate terminus?
    • aspiring to successful referentiality vs description
    • or to intelligibility vs comprehensibility?
    For example, Robert Neville’s ontology specifies how God can be referred to both as unchanging,
    as in the eternal act of creating, as well as dynamic, as inclusive of the life of creation. The divine
    includes the nondeterminate source of the creative act, its determinate terminus & the creative
    activity that mediates the source-terminus relation. God’s intelligibility resides in our knowledge
    of these determinate effects. That a metaphysical model might captures only those determinate
    dynamics & termini but not their nondeterminate source displays epistemic virtue not vice.
    For the hypostases of the Trinity, a person refers to a subsisting relation, as they are constituted
    by a relation. Ad intra relations are thus attributed "of" the divine persons not "between" them,
    hence, as a pure act of relating. For nondeterminate and/or self-determinate divine persons,
    divine simplicity thus entails no constitutive distinction between -not only essence & subsistence
    as self-subsisting esse, or quiddity & haecceity, or ousia & hypostases, but - the acts of being &
    relating.
    For Peircean accounts, nondeterminate analogs of firstness, secondness & thirdness would lack
    temporal modality. For Aristotelian accounts, they would lack act-potency relations such as
    between efficient & material causations or formal & final causations.
    These are strictly meta-ontological implications, apophatically predicated of divine being, reality
    & relations to increase referential accuracy, employing an heuristic that logically models divinity
    without metaphysically explaining it (i.e. increasing descriptive accuracy). Such heuristics are
    employed for other metaphysical aporia of emergent realities, e.g. quantum origins, cosmic
    origins, life origins, sentience origins, language origins. Such aporetic approaches don't reflect
    mysterian sensibilities, only a suitable metaphysical fallibilism grounded in a proper epistemic
    humility.
    Over against, on one hand, any radical apophaticism (e.g. an excessively speculative encratism
    or affective quietism), or, otoh, radical kataphaticism (e.g. excessively speculative rationalism or
    affective pietism), all which too narrowly conceive knowledge in terms of either successful
    descriptions, speculatively, or relational encounters, affectively ---
    A great many human values of deep meaning & profound existential significance are realized
    from a knowledge grounded in successful references, speculatively, mediated by our shared
    aesthetic, ethical & logical norms and experiences.
    For example, I conceive of epinoia in terms of an epinoetic epistemic method, which employs
    propria, substantially, and idiomata, hypostatically, to successfully refer to nondeterminate
    divine relations ad intra, while an ananoetic epistemic method employs the energies,
    substantially, and the economy, hypostatically, to successfully refer to determinate divine
    relations ad extra.
    Epinoia vs propria or idiômata are discussed in Andrew Radde-Gallwitz's _Basil of Caesarea,
    Gregory of Nyssa and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity_ (Oxford University Press, 2009)
    as reviewed by David Bradshaw and by Joseph O’Leary.
    The best trinitological articulations of classical theism exemplify all of the epistemic virtues of
    both our best metaphysics & best speculative sciences. So a trinitarian ignosticism’s main
    methodological objections to these trinitologies can’t reasonably be such as adhocery,
    mysterianism & doxastic irresponsibility or it will self-subvert from parody as, in it’s anxiety to
    annihilate trinitarianism, it will also vanquish – not only metaphysics, but – our theoretical
    sciences.
    Those who object to trinitarianism must ground their objections elsewhere, e.g. history, Biblical
    exegesis, systematics. Good luck with that.

    Integral Human Episteme


    descriptive & exploratory
    • perinoetic|empirical,
    • epinoetic|apophatic
    normative & evaluative
    • dianoetic|aesthetical, ethical & logical
    interpretive & explanatory
    • diastemic|aporetic
    • ananoetic |metaphysical
    liberative & transformative
    • kinetic|dynamical (strivings for actualization)
    • metanoetic|transformative

    For future development:


    Trinitarian Distinctions of Systematic Theology for Interreligious Dialogue
    • Ousia signify common nouns, propria
    • Hypostases indicate proper nouns, idiomata
    • Dynamis & God refer via idiomata hypostatically not substantially
    • Dynameis include Energeia (ad extra) of the Ousia (ad intra) and Economy (ad extra) of the
    Hypostases (ad intra)
    • Epinoia as epinoetic process, abductive inference, wherein propria & idiomata descriptively
    constitute - not definitions of, but - successful references to, respectively, ousia & hypostases
    (ergo, not nominalist but fallibilist realist re both propria & idiomata, normed by infallible
    special revelation).
    • • being, reality & relations
    • • substantial, hypostatic & energetic-economic
    • • ad intra & extra relations
    • • esse naturale & intentionale
    • • essential & relational
    • • singular energies & economy
    • • logical (e.g. dogma) & ontic (latitude) explanations
    • • gratuity of creation & grace
    • • universalized & particularized hypostatic presence
    • • creative-imitative & diffusive-substrative
    • • efficient causality, e.g. creation & trans-formal causality, e.g. grace
    • • temporal & eternal authenticity
    • • status (relations of origin) & proper roles (e.g. missions)
    • • Paterological - Cappadocian monarchia & Augustinian principium
    • • inseparable operations, appropriations & missions
    • • Inseparable in what they are, the divine persons are also inseparable in what they do. But
    within the single divine operation each shows forth what is proper to him in the Trinity,
    especially in the divine missions of the Son's Incarnation and the gift of the Holy Spirit
    • • Economy w/activities or roles (temporal)
    • • missions of Word & Spirit (mutually related & nonsubordinate)
    • • appropriated via theophanic, theopoetic mediations, discerned by exegetical-historical
    encounters of general (vestigia) & special revelations (scriptures, traditions, prayers, liturgies)
    • • obediential potencies of secular conversions & prevenient union of religious conversion
    • • created & uncreated grace
    • • participation & incorporation
    • • analogical claims of systematic theology must be sufficiently demonstrable
    • • the economic trinity, epistemologically, models the immanent trinity (no vice versa of the
    grundaxiom)
    • • Yong examines the act of creation from a Trinitarian perspective using a metaphor developed
    by the 3rd century theologian Irenaeus who described the Trinitarian missions of the divine
    Word and Spirit as the “Two hands of the Father”
    • • vestigia Trinitatis of general revelation
    • • real-hypostatic distinctions (that aren’t otherwise substantial) afford successful references
    not descriptions
    • • appropriation, an epistemic method, selectively employs references to various essential
    attributes, otherwise substantially common to all hypostases, only to help distinguish the
    hypostatic roles, missions or activities of each in the divine operation & economy
    • • To imagine we can make relational distinctions between hypostases, successfully describing
    them (in some ontological sense), i.e. non-appropriated or proper attributions, rather than
    merely successfully (real-ly) referring to them & their ontic implications (in only an epistemic
    sense), i.e. appropriated attributions, seems to be proving too much, saying more than we could
    possibly know.
    • • ground - nondeterminate
    • • ad intra relationality
    • • eternal creative act production
    • • ad extra relationality
    • • temporal creative act terminus 1
    • • determinate being
    • • temporal creative act production
    • • temporal creative act terminus 2
    • • economic trinity - the HOW of the nondeterminate ground as it becomes determinate
    • • father = source
    • • son = product or end point or terminus
    • • spirit = creative act
    • • nondeterminate
    • • self-determinate - necessary
    • • determinate - contingent
    Draw on these Thinkers:
    • Dionysius
    • Augustine
    • Hugh of St Victor
    • Richard of St Victor
    • Bonaventure
    • Ruusbroec
    • Julian of Norwich
    • Scotus
    • Charles Sanders Peirce
    • von Balthasar
    • Cappadocians
    • St Basil
    • Palamas
    • Vladimir Lossky
    • Robert C. Neville
    • Amos Yong

    For further study:


    St Gregory of Nyssa and the Power of God by Fr Aidan
    Kimel
    Also see:
    Beau Branson
    The Logical Problem of the Trinity
    Metaphysically, synergy predicates hypostases.
    Semantically, “is God” predicates actus & dynamis, e.g. divine power, energies & economy or
    act-ivity (not ousia or nature) and the number of token energeia done numerically predicate God
    (not the number of hypostases, i.e. as source, terminus & mediating activity).
    Apart from creation, divine energeia tokens have no individuating idiomata.
    Divine Mutualities – ad intra: substantial (purus as singular type – weaker Cappadocian claim-
    dynamis-actus) & relational-dynamical (singular token – stronger Nyssen claim - power) & ad
    extra: energies & economy (singular token – stronger Nyssen claim - action), where singular
    token invokes synergy of hypostatic source, terminus & activity

    Meaningful God-talk
    I’ve been through the Desert Fathers on an Ousia with No Name. It felt good to get out of the
    Reign (of Rationalism) with the help of the Cappadocians.
    Many concepts, taken ahistorically, to me, have often seemed to converge syntactically,
    semantically & contextually. But, I slowly came to realize that, unless studied historically, it’s
    seldom going to be readily discernible which such concepts authors have
    • clearly derived from others,
    • formulated after being merely influenced by others, or
    • otherwise developed quite independently of others.
    It was back when I was trying to unscramble epistemic-ontic omelets (puzzles such as presented
    when I was casually reading about quantum interpretations, cosmogonies, philosophies of mind,
    or life & language origins) that I got introduced to the essentialism-nominalism conundrum.
    And my first exposure to a solution was Peirce’s semiotic, pragmatic realism. I didn’t use it as a
    metaphysic to unscramble any epistemic-ontic omelets or to disabuse me of my metaphysical
    agnosticismJoseph O’Leary. (although I certainly have sneaking suspicions that variously incline
    me, ontologically). I did, however, find that Peirce’s categories provided a helpful architectonic
    heuristic, a vague meta-ontological phenomenology, within which I could bracket ontological
    root metaphors (e.g. substance, process, relations, experience, persons), while framing up
    questions via
    • linguistics (e.g. icon, index, symbol & syntactical, semantical, contextual),
    • speculative grammar (e.g. per first principles, PNC, PEM),
    • probability theory (e.g. in/determinacies),
    • critical logic (abductive, inductive, deductive) and
    • speculative rhetoric (pragmatic principle & modality of 1ns, 2ns, 3ns).
    Questions regarding a/historical conceptual convergences have most often presented regarding
    the essentialist-nominalist & realist-idealist conundra, unity-multiplicity & necessity-
    contingency distinctions, the natures of divine & human freedom, all which especially arose in
    various forms, for example, when I began reading about the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity.
    Using my Peircean lenses, every trinitological problem and/or solution that I’d encounter,
    suspiciously, would look like a question and/or answer that had been framed in terms of a
    pragmatic semiotic realism. That obviously not being the case, explicitly, suggested to me that,
    nevertheless, implicitly, as long as various schools of thought were realist, i.e. moderately not
    naively, both their epistemes as well as their theotics would tend to largely converge. It has
    certainly seemed that way to me when considering Neoplatonic, Dionysian, Augustinian,
    Cappadocian, Palamitic, Bonaventurean, Scotistic, Thomist & Peircean approaches to various
    conceptual distinctions pertaining to essences, existents & relations, whether nondeterminate,
    self-determinate or determinate. Prominent examples include distinctions like created grace,
    habitus, Peirce’s thirdness, Scotus’ formal distinction, real metaphysical (vs physical)
    distinction of some Thomists, Palamas’ energies, Rahner’s quasi-formal cause, Basil’s
    hypostatic idiomata & essential propria and such.
    Diverse in many ways, then, most theological schools that have remained moderately realist,
    historically, have naturally tended to otherwise converge in both their epistemic & theotic
    approaches.
    Many who’ve exaggerated the differences between Neoplatonists, Cappadocians, Augustinians,
    Scotists, Thomists & Palamites, or have charged them w/incoherence re the Trinity, have often
    eisegetically projected onto those schools either their own naive realism or nominalism. Such
    fundamentalists have ignored the metaphysical subtlety & theological nuance of those schools
    (e.g. such as in their predications of essences, existents & relations - nondeterminate vs self-
    determinate vs determinate).
    From revelation, contextually, we can take away certain essential meta-ontological implications
    from the non-metaphysical, quidditative God-talk of its Scriptural narratives & liturgical
    Traditions.
    We can even argue those take-aways syllogistically, employing vague phenomenological
    categories, which articulate a rough syntactical mapping of divine & human beings, realities &
    relations (ad intra & ad extra) and which employ a modicum of semantical univocity.
    This meta-ontological mapping of syntactical, semantical & contextual categories is precisely
    what renders our analogical God-talk meaningful.
    We can also argue syllogistically when engaging in ontological God-talk, whether onto-
    theologically or theo-ontologically, but can only employ apophatic predications, which afford us
    successful references but not robust descriptions.
    Most of our God-talk is otherwise kataphatic, analogical, metaphorical, non-metaphysical,
    common-sensical, dispositional, theopoetic & theopoietic, as found in the forms of our
    Scriptures & Traditions, our dogma, doctrines & disciplines, the theotic efficacies of all which
    supply the norms by which we can gauge the degrees of meaningfulness that we aspire to derive
    from any novel distinctions that we put forth in our speculative systematic theology, meta-
    ontologically or ontologically.
    In other words, how might any given distinction better foster our ongoing participation in divine
    activities & incorporation into the Body of Christ?
    For example, if one might suggest:
    Hypostatical identities are derived relationally (from status & activity/passivity) and not
    ontologically (from being), thus not mereologically (as parts). e.g. Father's unbegotten, an
    identity derived from no cause; Son's id derived from generation & Spirit's from procession.
    We can draw a distinction between the Trinity's unoriginate, noncomposite being (what) & its
    un/originate persons (un/begotten hypostases or who).
    Mereological distinctions don't apply to noncomposite being, so questions re fallacies of
    composition and/or division don't arise.
    Then, how might we evaluate that?
    See:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/do-we-have-norms-to-evaluate-
    trinitological-distinctions-like-fatherhood/
    To avoid category errors of God-talk, for any given discussion, one must clarify precisely what's
    under consideration:
    1) normatively & syntactically - incl modal phenomenological categories (e.g. first principles)
    being
    reality
    relations (ad intra & extra)
    2) descriptively & referentially - incl predications (e.g. semantically & methodologically)
    kataphatic
    apophatic
    metaphorical
    analogical
    informal & common-sensical
    formal & syllogistic
    (root analog or metaphor?)
    3) interpretively - incl meta-ontological aporia
    non/determinate
    physical
    metaphysical
    theological - incl theopoetic, theo-ontological & onto-theological
    4) evaluatively & liberatively -theopoietic
    worship
    conversions
    Analytical Theology?
    I'm all for analytical theology as long as it properly attends to all of Lonergan's methodological
    categories, including Biblical, exegetical, historical, dogmatic & systematic approaches.
    And as long as it tends to all distinctions that make a difference before employing its syllogisms,
    which can otherwise devolve into facile, sylly argumentation that engages mere caricatures of
    classical theology.
    For example:
    How do we distinguish those attributions we predicate of determinate acts & relations from
    those we predicate
    • of determinate being (existents)?
    • or of nondeterminate acts & relations?
    • or of nondeterminate and/or self-determinate being?
    • much less acts w/nondeterminate and/or self-determinate being as source but w/a temporal or
    determinate terminus?
    • aspiring to successful referentiality vs description
    • or to intelligibility vs comprehensibility?
    For example, Robert Neville’s ontology specifies how God can be referred to both as unchanging,
    as in the eternal act of creating, as well as dynamic, as inclusive of the life of creation. The divine
    includes the nondeterminate source of the creative act, its determinate terminus & the creative
    activity that mediates the source-terminus relation. God’s intelligibility resides in our knowledge
    of these determinate effects. That a metaphysical model might captures only those determinate
    dynamics & termini but not their nondeterminate source displays epistemic virtue not vice.
    For the hypostases of the Trinity, a person refers to a subsisting relation, as they are constituted
    by a relation. Ad intra relations are thus attributed "of" the divine persons not "between" them,
    hence, as a pure act of relating. For nondeterminate and/or self-determinate divine persons,
    divine simplicity thus entails no constitutive distinction between -not only essence & subsistence
    as self-subsisting esse, or quiddity & haecceity, or ousia & hypostases, but - the acts of being &
    relating.
    For Peircean accounts, nondeterminate analogs of firstness, secondness & thirdness would lack
    temporal modality. For Aristotelian accounts, they would lack act-potency relations such as
    between efficient & material causations or formal & final causations.
    These are strictly meta-ontological implications, apophatically predicated of divine being, reality
    & relations to increase referential accuracy, employing an heuristic that logically models divinity
    without metaphysically explaining it (i.e. increasing descriptive accuracy). Such heuristics are
    employed for other metaphysical aporia of emergent realities, e.g. quantum origins, cosmic
    origins, life origins, sentience origins, language origins. Such aporetic approaches don't reflect
    mysterian sensibilities, only a suitable metaphysical fallibilism grounded in a proper epistemic
    humility.
    Over against, on one hand, any radical apophaticism (e.g. an excessively speculative encratism
    or affective quietism), or, otoh, radical kataphaticism (e.g. excessively speculative rationalism or
    affective pietism), all which too narrowly conceive knowledge in terms of either successful
    descriptions, speculatively, or relational encounters, affectively ---
    A great many human values of deep meaning & profound existential significance are realized
    from a knowledge grounded in successful references, speculatively, mediated by our shared
    aesthetic, ethical & logical norms and experiences.
    For example, I conceive of epinoia in terms of an epinoetic epistemic method, which employs
    propria, substantially, and idiomata, hypostatically, to successfully refer to nondeterminate
    divine relations ad intra, while an ananoetic epistemic method employs the energies,
    substantially, and the economy, hypostatically, to successfully refer to determinate divine
    relations ad extra.
    Epinoia vs propria or idiômata are discussed in Andrew Radde-Gallwitz's _Basil of Caesarea,
    Gregory of Nyssa and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity_ (Oxford University Press, 2009)
    as reviewed by David Bradshaw and by Joseph O’Leary.
    The best trinitological articulations of classical theism exemplify all of the epistemic virtues of
    both our best metaphysics & best speculative sciences. So a trinitarian ignosticism’s main
    methodological objections to these trinitologies can’t reasonably be such as adhocery,
    mysterianism & doxastic irresponsibility or it will self-subvert from parody as, in it’s anxiety to
    annihilate trinitarianism, it will also vanquish – not only metaphysics, but – our theoretical
    sciences.
    Those who object to trinitarianism must ground their objections elsewhere, e.g. history, Biblical
    exegesis, systematics. Good luck with that.
    Integral Human Episteme
    descriptive & exploratory
    • perinoetic|empirical,
    • epinoetic|apophatic
    normative & evaluative
    • dianoetic|aesthetical, ethical & logical
    interpretive & explanatory
    • diastemic|aporetic
    • ananoetic |metaphysical
    liberative & transformative
    • kinetic|dynamical (strivings for actualization)
    • metanoetic|transformative
    For future development:
    Trinitarian Distinctions of Systematic Theology for Interreligious Dialogue

     Ousia signify common nouns, propria


     Hypostases indicate proper nouns, idiomat
     Dynamis & God refer via idiomata hypostatically not substantially
     Dynameis include Energeia (ad extra) of the Ousia (ad intra) and Economy (ad extra) of
    the Hypostases (ad intra)
     Epinoia as epinoetic process, abductive inference, wherein propria & idiomata
    descriptively constitute - not definitions of, but - successful references to, respectively,
    ousia & hypostases (ergo, not nominalist but fallibilist realist re both propria & idiomata,
    normed by infallible special revelation).
     • being, reality & relations
     • substantial, hypostatic & energetic-economic
     • ad intra & extra relations
     • esse naturale & intentionale
     • essential & relational
     • singular energies & economy
     • logical (e.g. dogma) & ontic (latitude) explanations
     • gratuity of creation & grace
     • universalized & particularized hypostatic presence
     • creative-imitative & diffusive-substrative
     • efficient causality, e.g. creation & trans-formal causality, e.g. grace
     • temporal & eternal authenticity
     • status (relations of origin) & proper roles (e.g. missions)
     • Paterological - Cappadocian monarchia & Augustinian principium
     • inseparable operations, appropriations & missions
     • Inseparable in what they are, the divine persons are also inseparable in what they do.
    But within the single divine operation each shows forth what is proper to him in the
    Trinity, especially in the divine missions of the Son's Incarnation and the gift of the Holy
    Spirit
     • Economy w/activities or roles (temporal)
     • missions of Word & Spirit (mutually related & nonsubordinate)
     • appropriated via theophanic, theopoetic mediations, discerned by exegetical-historical
    encounters of general (vestigia) & special revelations (scriptures, traditions, prayers,
    liturgies)
     • obediential potencies of secular conversions & prevenient union of religious conversion
     • created & uncreated grace
     • participation & incorporation
     • analogical claims of systematic theology must be sufficiently demonstrable
     • the economic trinity, epistemologically, models the immanent trinity (no vice versa of
    the grundaxiom)
     • Yong examines the act of creation from a Trinitarian perspective using a metaphor
    developed by the 3rd century theologian Irenaeus who described the Trinitarian
    missions of the divine Word and Spirit as the “Two hands of the Father”
     • vestigia Trinitatis of general revelation
     • real-hypostatic distinctions (that aren’t otherwise substantial) afford successful
    references not descriptions
     • appropriation, an epistemic method, selectively employs references to various essential
    attributes, otherwise substantially common to all hypostases, only to help distinguish the
    hypostatic roles, missions or activities of each in the divine operation & economy
     • To imagine we can make relational distinctions between hypostases, successfully
    describing them (in some ontological sense), i.e. non-appropriated or proper
    attributions, rather than merely successfully (real-ly) referring to them & their ontic
    implications (in only an epistemic sense), i.e. appropriated attributions, seems to be
    proving too much, saying more than we could possibly know.
     • ground - nondeterminate
     • ad intra relationality
     • eternal creative act production
     • ad extra relationality
     • temporal creative act terminus 1
     • determinate being
     • temporal creative act production
     • temporal creative act terminus 2
     • economic trinity - the HOW of the nondeterminate ground as it becomes determinate
     • father = source
     • son = product or end point or terminus
     • spirit = creative act
     • nondeterminate
     • self-determinate - necessary
     • determinate - contingent
    Draw on these Thinkers:
    • Dionysius
    • Augustine
    • Hugh of St Victor
    • Richard of St Victor
    • Bonaventure
    • Ruusbroec
    • Julian of Norwich
    • Scotus
    • Charles Sanders Peirce
    • von Balthasar
    • Cappadocians
    • St Basil
    • Palamas
    • Vladimir Lossky
    • Robert C. Neville
    • Amos Yong
    For further study:
    http://beaubranson.academia.edu/research#papers
    https://www.academia.edu/11608438/Ahistoricity_in_Analytic_Theology
    The Logical Problem of the Trinity
    http://www.academia.edu/attachments/35874452/download_file?s=portfolio
    Metaphysically, synergy predicates hypostases. Semantically, “is God” predicates actus &
    dynamis, e.g. divine power, energies & economy or act-ivity (not ousia or nature) and the
    number of token energeia done numerically predicate God (not the number of hypostases, i.e. as
    source, terminus & mediating activity).
    Apart from creation, divine energeia tokens have no individuating idiomata.
    Divine Mutualities – ad intra: substantial (purus as singular type – weaker Cappadocian claim-
    dynamis-actus) & relational-dynamical (singular token – stronger Nyssen claim - power) & ad
    extra: energies & economy (singular token – stronger Nyssen claim - action), where singular
    token invokes synergy of hypostatic source, terminus & activity

    Do we have Norms to Evaluate Trinitological


    Distinctions – like Fatherhood?
    Syntactical References to Nondeterminate Being, meta-ontologically (neither physical
    nor metaphysical) --- include
    • Being, Esse Naturale, Ousia & Quiddity, some say substantial or secondary substance
    • Reality, Esse, Hypostasis & Haecceity, some say primary substance or personal
    • Relations, Esse Intentionale, Energeia of Ousia-Economy of Hypostases & Trans-
    Formal Distinction, some say ad extra relational
    And they roughly map, syntactically, via references to Determinate Being, ontologically
    (physical and/or metaphysical).
    See:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/10/31/oremus-the-who-what-how-of-
    god-talk-or-let-us-pray/
    We can refer to the substantial (abstract), personal (concrete) or relational distinctions
    of determinate beings, but we distinguish divine hypostases not substantially (as they’re
    nondeterminate) but relationally.
    For example, ad extra & relationally, theosis implies a twofold theopoietic distinction,
    whereby energeia foster our creaturely participation in divine activities and the
    divine economy fosters our creaturely incorporation into Christ by nature?
    And as we turn from a consideration of ad extra relations per Esse Intentionale,
    Energeia of Ousia-Economy of Hypostases & Trans-Formal Distinctions, what about
    trinitarian ad intra relations?
    What can we meaningfully say of divine immanence, hypostatical plurality & character,
    personal distinctions, eternal generation & procession (necessarily & via esse naturale
    not intentionale), etc, as we next turn to such a question as:
    What is distinctive of the Fatherhood?
    We realize this how – through
    • doxastic belief of what?
    • epistemic understanding of what?
    • gnostic participation & incorporation in what?
    Of what regarding -
    • Being? that’s nondeterminate, nontemporal, noncausal, nonoriginate, noncomposite?
    • Hypostatic & Personal Properties? Derived – not being, but - identity?
    • Relations ad extra & ad intra? energies of ousia? economic activities of hypostases?
    Whatever relational distinctions (ad extra and/or ad intra) we aspire to articulate,
    meta-ontologically, whether onto-theologically or theo-ontologically, their
    meaningfulness should be evaluated by how well those distinctions foster the above
    mentioned theopoietic dynamics?
    And we should employ norms that will gauge the degrees of effectiveness of those
    dynamics in terms of the very same secular & religious conversions that have been
    fostered by our Scriptural narratives & Liturgical traditions?
    Haven’t those narratives & traditions, from of old, long oriented,
    empowered, consecrated, saved, healed & sanctified God’s People?
    So, when we engage in speculative, systematic trinitology, in addition to our syntactical,
    semantical & syllogistic methods, we must also reason, contextually, from the
    trinitophanic encounters and theopoietic participations & incorporations
    gifted us by our time-honored theopoetic narratives & prayers?
    Otherwise, we risk reducing our theology to sterile exercises in abstract logic, mere
    puzzles for intellectual musement?
    Indeed, we aspire to pastorally elevate systematic theology, reaching for its mystical
    fruits, precisely by concretely grounding it in its mystical roots, or what William
    Johnston called the Science of Love?
    Some prayers, hymns & readings do articulate, sometimes more or less explicitly or
    implicitly, meta-ontological arguments, trinitologically (or paterologically,
    christologically or pneumatologically), but those vague & general theological contours
    often leave a great deal of space for theological opinions?
    To the extent such opinions aspire to offer meaningful (e.g. theotic) distinctions, we
    can ask of their authors what difference their distinctions might make in the life of
    prayer & dynamics of conversion, fostering believers’ participation in divine
    activities & incorporation into the Body of Christ?

    Apocatastasis, Apokatastasis, the Eternalization of All


    Wholesome Trivialities – where there’s a will (divine
    Telos) there’s a way (to Heaven)
    I’m committed to no particular theo-cosmogony and no cosmo-metaphysic, either, but
    it’s always seemed plausible to me that there could have been an uncreated, co-eternal
    formless void (in no sense some dualistic co-equal of divine forces, e.g. Manichean or
    otherwise).
    There are ongoing scholarly debates (linguistic, etymological & exegetical) regarding
    cognates like tohu wa bohu and tehom, so, I don’t mean to specifically invoke them, but
    those debates have certainly evoked some of my thoughts, so, when I employ such
    concepts, I only intend to co-opt them as helpful metaphors.
    To wit, then, we might well imagine neither a classical creatio ex nihilo nor a neo-
    classical creatio ex profundis, where the tehom refers to a primary creation (early
    exegesis of Augustine). And, under any circumstances, we best elide the exegetical
    debates, receiving Biblical accounts theopoetically not metaphysically, anyway.
    But, certainly, our theopoetic narratives, theophanic encounters & theopoietic
    participations gift us some onto-theological & theo-ontological contours?
    One such speculative take-away, I’d propose, is that our references to divine Telos must
    be predicated apophatically, whenever we engage in onto-theo- or theo-onto-speak.
    While there may indeed be a modicum of univocity, semantically, between a divine
    Telos, theopoetically, and our cosmic teloi, metaphysically, still, ontologically, like
    divine Simplicity, divine Telos “essentially” must remain a negative concept, an
    apophatic reference, a metaphysical placeholder for categories of Being, Reality &
    Relations that correspond only syntactically (i.e. not ontologically) to categories of
    determinate being, reality & relations.
    So, while believing THAT determinate beings, realities & relations, with their cosmic
    teloi, participate in divine Telos, we can’t begin to proffer HOW this could be so!
    Cosmic teloi might include various emergent “about-nesses” regarding the multiform
    “ends” of determinate realities:
    end-unbounded via teleopotent veldo-poiesis (e.g. quantum fields);
    end-stated via teleomatic cosmopoiesis (e.g. thermodynamics, gravity, etc);
    end-directed via teleonomic biopoiesis (e.g life origins);
    end-purposed via teleoqualic sentio-poiesis (e.g. what is it like to be a bat?)
    and
    end-intended via teleologic sapio-poiesis (e.g. origins of symbolic language).
    Many recognize these multiform teloi within a strictly materialist monist account of
    determinate reality, accepting the inescapable nominalist, voluntarist &, ultimately,
    nihilist consequences.
    Other monists recognize them within an idealist framework, accepting the pantheistic
    consequences, which include a principle of sufficient reason on deterministic steroids.
    Ignoring the manifold & multiform aporia and question begging bruteness that
    unavoidably will afflict such emergentist accounts of determinate beings, realities &
    relations, such an infinite regression of dynamical efficient-material causes as
    determined by only the most ephemeral of teloi, in my view, might precisely describe a
    formless void, an eternal abyss wherein no formal or final causes “necessarily”
    perdure, otherwise merely probabilistically presenting in various degrees of
    in/determinacy, in an epistemic-ontic omelet never to be unscrambled.
    What if, however, the divine Telos of the Ens Necessarium, substratively, super-
    stratively & circum-stratively, via a divine matrix, was diffused into this tehomic,
    formless abyss of determinate being, reality & relations, somehow inviting a creative
    & imitative participation in its eternal forms & finalities, its activities & works, its
    Love? (think divine energeia)
    Might there ensue an Incarnation?
    Might not every trace of human goodness, every beginning of a smile, all
    wholesome trivialities be eternalized?
    Might we all not, apokatastatically, variously populate the firmament, whether as a tiny
    votive candle (e.g. that altar boy, Hitler) or as blazing helios (e.g Mother Teresa)?
    Overflowing our capacity, growing per eternal teloi, moving from glory to glory,
    beatitude to beatitude?
    For every eternal Telic potency actualized would thus pierce the heavenly
    veil as a perfect participatory prayer or oblation, even as every merely
    ephemeral, tehomic teloi otherwise self-annihilates, not participating in the
    authentically True, Unitive, Beautiful, Good & Liberative.
    A dog shaped by a trace of human goodness & desired by a human person, who’s in turn
    shaped by Divine Goodness, might well go to heaven, thus eternalized?
    All traces of true sin (not mere finitude) might otherwise be washed white as snow,
    every tear wiped away?
    Such a panentheistic account could square nicely with classical theism, even a neo-
    Platonist approach, with no need for Whiteheadian accounts that, themselves, flirt with
    nominalism.
    Or not.
    Just thinking aloud with no metaphysical horse in the theistic race.
    Oremus – The Who, What & How of God-talk or Let Us
    Pray!
    Our scriptures, sacraments, sacramentals, psalmody, hymns, liturgies, devotionals,
    oblations, works of spiritual & corporal mercy, when all embodied, dispositionally, in
    the unitive strivings of our sophiological trajectories, will grow our loving intimacy with
    God, others, the cosmos and even each in our relationship to one-self!
    Little of that growth requires a depthful propositional grasp, onto-theologically or theo-
    ontologically, beyond the barest common sense understandings of our creeds, dogmas &
    general precepts, which certainly impart some meta-ontological implications per their
    general contours, though nothing requiring a specific ontology or given metaphysic.
    Meta-ontologically, for those who do like to “go there,” while I could not begin to relate
    what Scotus, Palamas, Aquinas & Peirce ever really said or intended, for me these
    definitions will apply:
    Freedom as authenticity, infinitely realized or progressively actualized
    Univocity as semantic, applied to Peircean 1ns, possibilities (not real actualities), where
    noncontradiction folds but excluded middle holds in an indeterminacy of vagueness.
    Formal distinction as applied to Peircean 3ns, probabilities, a final cause (potency) &
    formal cause (act), where noncontradiction holds but excluded middle folds in an
    indeterminacy of generalities.
    Actualities as Peircean 2ns, a material cause (potency) & efficient cause (act), where
    noncontradiction & excluded middle hold
    This modal ontology with its grammar applies to determinate realities that participate
    in being, reality & existence, where freedom & authenticity are temporally &
    progressively realized and potencies actualized.
    Freedom & authenticity are infinitely realized only in the reality of the Ens
    Necessarium to which only a trans-formal distinction would successfully refer (as
    neither an act of existence nor other act-potency dynamics would apply).
    Syntactical categories of essence (ousia or what?), esse (hypostases or who?) and
    activities (e.g. divine energies or how?) could successfully refer to both the Ens
    Necessarium & determinate realities and a semantic univocity even applied to their
    essence-talk, allowing for a modicum of meaningful, theopoetic God-talk (an infinite
    intelligibility), while otherwise precluding all but apophatic references (not only vis a vis
    who? & what? but also how? in an utter incomprehensibility) both onto-theologically &
    theo-ontologically, especially given our lack of a successful root metaphor,
    metaphysically (e.g. whether substantialist, personalist or relationalist).
    It does seem that there’s a wealth of things we can meaningfully say metaphorically &
    theo-PO-etically, especially as we attend to the works & activities of God (esse
    intentionale) theo-POI-etically, as we participate in the manifold ways & means
    fostered by the activities of Uncreated Grace (esse naturale), observing how they
    transmute our experiences by infusing created grace, all ordered to theotic ends.
    Primarily, then, what we can meaningfully say … are our prayers!
    For those who do like to "go there," seldom will you come across blog discussions better
    than these:
    https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2016/06/27/the-essenceenergies-distinction-and-the-
    myth-of-byzantine-illogic/
    https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2017/10/02/theosis-and-the-palamite-distinction-
    questions-concerns/#comments
    An “Axiological” Epistemology is a Redundancy
    Per an axiological epistemology, each value-realization movement requires several
    epistemic moments, each necessary & none, alone, sufficient. Each epistemic moment is
    methodologically autonomous in its distinct probe of reality, but, together, they're all
    axiologically integral.
    For example, one might say that love happens when what's good frees us to unitively
    recognize the true and realize the beautiful.
    Recapitulated more technically, we could say that unitive goals are met when the
    normative liberatively mediates between the descriptive & interpretive to effect the
    evaluative, all of this in our crossing of epistemic distances & overcoming of ontic
    privations as our speculative & practical reasonings remain integrally intertwined.
    In each of these methods, there have been long-standing formalistic tensions. To wit:
    Unitive goals (agapic vs erotic, rationalism vs fideism vs ignosticism) are met when the
    normative (absolutist vs relativist) liberatively mediates between the descriptive
    (essentialist vs nominalist) & interpretive (realist vs idealist) to effect the evaluative
    (intellectualist vs voluntarist).
    Those dyadic tensions, however, represent a caricature of human epistemology, as if we
    must somehow consider ourselves either infallibilistic, naive realists, on one hand, or
    radically deconstructive postmodernists, on the other.
    What seems to otherwise be going on with our shared common sense & sensibilities,
    instead, suggests that our unitive goals (Bernardian love per fides et ratio) are met when
    the normative (moral realism & probabilism) liberatively mediates between the
    descriptive (semiotic & critical realism) & interpretive (fallibilist realism) to effect the
    evaluative (intellectualist voluntarism).
    We reject, too, therefore, any epistemology that overemphasizes the logical & ethical,
    while underemphasizing the aesthetic. Indeed, I subscribe to both Scotus’ primacy of
    the will and Peirce’s aesthetic primacy, wherein aesthetics precede ethics which precede
    logic. I also buy into Jack Haught’s aesthetic teleology, wherein novelty plays an integral
    role in amplifying beauty (although I don’t employ his metaphysic). Especially see
    chapters 8 thru 10 in Haught’s Cosmic Adventure.
    Neither Scotus nor Peirce nor Haught flirt with a mere voluntarist approach. They’d all
    affirm an intellectualist moment even in a spontaneous, human co-creative
    appropriation of novelty in the pursuit of beauty, as they’d all recognize & affirm how an
    aesthetic teleology harmonically orders the true, the unitive, the good & the liberative.
    In Sympathy with many of Scotus’ Detractors if not with
    all of their Detractions
    In a symposium on Daniel Horan's Postmodernity and Univocity, John Milbank
    contributes:
    To the contrary, to read the univocity of being as “semantic” (a description never given
    by Scotus himself) must in Scotist terms imply that it occupies a kind of middle ground,
    exactly that of the formal or transcendental. It is on the middle ground that Scotus has
    indeed logicised and conceptualised metaphysics, in a revolutionary fashion, but that
    does not mean that he has replaced it with logic, far less with grammar.
    I can't presume to speak for Scotus. Many others in that symposium and elsewhere offer
    respectable interpretations. Precisely what's at stake, though, involves the clarification
    of whether or not the univocity of being refers to a logical, semantic, conceptual or
    grammatical term rather than an ontological, metaphysical, ontotheological or actual
    reality.
    It does seem to me, however, that one could say that, in terms of Peircean firstness, non-
    actual possibilia, which have no reality, a univocity of being would indeed apply - not
    ontologically, but - grammatically or semantically to our concepts.
    Therefore, the univocity of being, as Peircean firstness, would not, in this sense, occupy
    a metaphysical middle ground. And formal distinction would otherwise refer to
    Peircean thirdness, what some Thomists might refer to as a metaphysically real
    distinction.
    Wherever they come out on the debate regarding the Scotus Story, it does seem that
    most interlocutors want to affirm a metaphysics of participation. For Jesus' part, in his
    essay, The Vates Christ Jesus and the Struggle to Say Amen, Brian C. Moore, Ph.D. cites
    my late friend, Jim Arraj:
    When Jesus takes our human nature, it does not become less, but more human, and it is
    made more by its contact with God, the very source of all being, and this intensification
    of Jesus’ human nature must be understood not only in a personal sense, but in a social
    one, as well.
    And, for our part, Moore emphasizes:
    You have to discover yourself as gift. It is not just a question of an isolated will
    defending its autonomy. Indeed, that is a lie most pernicious. This event is outside time,
    perpendicular to all temporal happening. It is metaphysically prior and coincident with
    the gift that is passio essendi. Thus, there is always mystery to identity because identity
    is a participation in divinity and entails infinite depths.
    Moore's essay reminds me why I resonate with all sorts of tendencies:
    Existential Thomism,
    neo-platonic thought,
    Russian Sophiology,
    overcoming - not overturning - metaphysics,
    creedal formulae as - not primarily arguments, but - prayers,
    theology as - not primarily a science, but - a dance (David Burrell) and, when as science,
    the science of love (William Johnston),
    the integral relationship of science, philosophy & theology,
    and such.
    I remain, however, agnostic regarding who may be practicing eisegesis or exegesis of
    either Aquinas or Scotus - not because I believe such can't be known, in principle, only -
    because I'm not equipped to discern same, in practice.
    I am heartened that so many, who are otherwise in disagreement regarding what
    Aquinas & Scotus said or really meant to say, seem to resonate in favor of participatory
    accounts, proper notions of freedom & theosis, etc and over against an artificial
    extrinsicism (grace vs "pure" nature), voluntarism & neutral secularism (nihilism), etc.
    I would like to add the voice of Benedict XVI with his take on Scotus:
    Lastly, Duns Scotus has developed a point to which modernity is very sensitive. It is the
    topic of freedom and its relationship with the will and with the intellect. Our author
    underlines freedom as a fundamental quality of the will, introducing an approach that
    lays greater emphasis on the will. Unfortunately, in later authors, this line of thinking
    turned into a voluntarism, in contrast to the so-called "Augustinian and Thomist
    intellectualism". For St Thomas Aquinas, who follows St Augustine, freedom cannot be
    considered an innate quality of the will, but, the fruit of the collaboration of the will and
    the mind. Indeed, an idea of innate and absolute freedom - as it evolved, precisely, after
    Duns Scotus - placed in the will that precedes the intellect, both in God and in man,
    risks leading to the idea of a God who would not even be bound to truth and good. The
    wish to save God's absolute transcendence and diversity with such a radical and
    impenetrable accentuation of his will does not take into account that the God who
    revealed himself in Christ is the God "Logos", who acted and acts full of love for us. Of
    course, as Duns Scotus affirms, love transcends knowledge and is capable of perceiving
    ever better than thought, but it is always the love of the God who is "Logos" (cf. Benedict
    XVI, Address at the University of Regensburg, 12 September 2006). In the human being
    too, the idea of absolute freedom, placed in the will, forgetting the connection with the
    truth, does not know that freedom itself must be liberated from the limits imposed on it
    by sin. All the same, the Scotist vision does not fall into these extremes: for Duns Scotus
    a free act is the result of the concourse of intellect and will, and if he speaks of a
    “primacy” of the will, he argues this precisely because the will always follows the
    intellect.
    Whether or not Scotus was the ontological villain & epistemological culprit as some
    insist, I can't say. Respectable voices differ. It does seem that suitably appropriated in
    Peircean terms, neither a univocity of being nor a formal distinction would threaten an
    ontology of participation. And, Scotus' primacy of the will need no more devolve,
    necessarily, into voluntarism than Peirce's aesthetic primacy ushers in hedonism, if
    suitably (re-?)framed. Happily, though, I can give my assent to many of the tendencies
    that some of his biggest detractors affirm!
    A Theistic Religious Naturalism: Why I – rather
    naturally – Have No Metaphysic
    My adolescent fascinations and undergraduate & graduate preoccupations were rather
    narrowly focused on the behavioral sciences. And not just at the macro-levels of
    ethology, ecology & comparative psychology, but at the nuts & bolts level of brain
    biochemistry.
    One year, in high school, I advanced to and participated in the International Science &
    Engineering Fair, having constructed a rather colossal, rube-goldbergian perfusion
    apparatus, designed to keep rat livers alive, in vitro, while conducting biochemical
    experiments on them.
    That same year, I had also worked with a friend on memory transfer experiments. She
    had already accomplished primitive memory transfers between classically conditioned &
    naïve recipient planaria (flatworms), so, I suggested we take that behavioral
    investigation to another phylogenetic level. You see, in what were to me the Disney-like
    stacks of the dark aisles of the LSU library, I had previously encountered the wondrous
    mysterium fascinans of mammalian memory transfer research.
    So, we acquired the requisite hamsters, trained some in mazes, extracted their brain
    RNA and injected it into their untrained siblings. A half-century later, when I pass that
    little pine grove where we buried them all, I rather wistfully recall their sacrifice, less
    sure now than then whether it was truly for the sake of science.
    Let’s just leave it at that.
    In college, hyper-motivated to get out of the classroom and back into the boundless
    tremendum of those library stacks and the endless fascinans of the laboratory, I hardly
    knew where to focus degree-wise. No particular curriculum fully accommodated my
    feverish interest in being able to better account for animal and human behaviors, so to
    speak, reductively. I therefore accelerated my graduate school entrance by craftily
    employing a general studies degree program. Such programs “generally” foster a rather
    lax approach that allows one to optimally navigate past difficult subject matters, but I
    exploited its flexibility to pull off the informal equivalent of a triple major with roughly
    30+ hours each in chemistry and psychology coupled with even more coursework in
    zoology, much of that in independent research. So, it was thereby that I had thus ended
    up spending more than three years of undergraduate & graduate work in a
    neuroendocrinology lab that had previously, for example, figured out certain of the
    physiological mechanisms of bird migration. Oversimplifying things, we could get these
    critters to fly north versus south with specifically timed hormonal injections!
    It was also thereby that I had thus advanced my education with a veritable dearth of arts
    and humanities coursework.
    “Advanced my education,” of course, if employed as a true term of art, would not really
    apply to one who, fifty years hence, has yet to take a single philosophy or theology
    course, although I did take a single course in literature, another perhaps in history, for
    what that’s worth.
    No, for me, any employment of that phrase more so resembles the meaning behind the
    Bonnie & Clyde lyric, “advanced their reputation and made their graduation into the
    banking business.” Turns out, I retired from banking, having served on various venues
    as chairman, president & chief executive officer. I won’t suffer you that digression even
    though it would have deep spiritual implications, more than tangential to … what’s our
    topic? … oh, yeah, metaphysics.
    I suffered neither existential angst about nor epistemic incongruities from my heavily
    reductionist behavioral bent. I'll reveal more below why that inclination didn't become
    reductionistic.
    Throughout all of my coursework and research, especially when engaging the most
    highly speculative theoretical aspects of each scientific discipline that I had studied, I
    rather subconsciously and implicitly cultivated what I’ve now come to appreciate as a
    healthy aporetic sense. I became very aware that, in most every discipline, empirical
    research would inevitably be encountered by descriptive aporia, which, in turn,
    developed into various interpretive schools, each subscribing to an approach that
    variously over- and/or under- emphasized distinct aspects of phenomena, whether
    focused on specific entities, in and of themselves, or on their properties, or on their
    relations, inner or outer.
    By distinct, I’d later come to appreciate, I mean to suggest that they were aspiring to
    develop speculative conceptions that make a practical difference.
    The practical differences implied by various theoretical conceptions can take a long time
    in coming, empirically. I began to notice this pattern in college.
    In physics, I saw how, while empirical quantum mechanics was indisputable, different
    schools of quantum interpretation proliferated. In cosmology, different cosmogonal
    models competed. In biology, different accounts of life’s origins grappled with the
    inexplicable leap from physics and chemistry to biology. In cognitive psychology,
    different philosophies of mind modeled the origins of animal sentience. In
    anthropology, semioticians devised conceptual distinctions in explanatory attempts to
    understand how symbolic language could arise from mere icons and indexes, taking us
    beyond a mere sentience to a robust sapience.
    I never bothered to invest very much in one or the other interpretation. I was content,
    rather, to try to more so understand what their particular questions were ABOUT, less
    so what their proposed answers, sometimes pretentiously, suggested. That early almost
    pre-reflective aporetic sense later evolved into more sophisticated intuitions, inchoate
    early on to be sure, but, later articulated in such heuristics as Gödel’s theorems,
    Agrippa’s trilemma, Peter Suber’s “problems of beginning” and other safeguards
    against epistemic hubris.
    I had implicitly rejected any tidy epistemic compartmentalizations of supposedly non-
    overlapping magisteria and approached reality with a single, fallibilist epistemology.
    That’s to say that, to me, epistemology is epistemology is epistemology.
    There are no such things as strictly metaphysical or scientific epistemologies. My
    youthful reductive tendencies have not been shaken, but neither have they devolved into
    any unmitigated positivisms or vulgar pragmatisms.
    None of this is to deny that certain ontologies, quantum interpretations, cosmogonal
    models, biogenetic theories, philosophies of mind or language origin anthropologies
    wouldn’t have even profound implications, existentially, regarding, for example, free
    will. Those interpretations do introduce conceptual distinctions that can have profound
    practical implications. I just never got terribly engaged by arguments for or against such
    as solipsism or free will, much less first principles. Common sense abductions, reductio
    ad absurdums and methodological stipulations remain – not only necessary, but –
    sufficient for those types of realities without the further “benefit” of tautological
    deductions, formal proofs or metaphysical excursions.
    I thus abide not only reality’s metaphysical gaps and inter-theoretic aporia, but – marvel
    at the possibilities regarding its perimeters, its initial, boundary & limit conditions, its
    axiomatic contours as defended by such epistemic bulwarks as, again, Gödel-like
    implications, Agrippa’s trilemma and Suber’s “problems of beginning.” I do very much
    appreciate that not all tautologies regarding same are equally taut vis a vis embracing
    epistemic virtue and avoiding epistemic vice. But even the best interpretations of our
    highly speculative theoretical sciences have not yet yielded a normalization of gravity
    and quantum mechanics, a biopoietic account of life origins, a sentiopoietic account of
    qualia, a sapiopoietic account of symbolic language. So, I content myself by simply
    bookmarking these diverse aporia in terms of their ABOUTNESS that I can better
    inventory the nature of the questions they are asking in their methodological probes
    without overinvesting in the nature of the answers they pretend to proffer with their
    metaphysical conclusions. Such conclusions are too often not merely embedded in the
    premises and presuppositions of such metaphysical argumentation but in their very
    definitions.
    The aboutnesses most often under consideration include (using some personal,
    idiosyncratic neologisms) the following aporia:
    1) veldo-poietic regarding field origins that appear teleo-potent or end-unbounded;
    2) cosmo-poietic regarding physical realities that appear teleo-matic or end-stated;
    3) bio-poietic regarding life origins that appear teleo-nomic or end-directed;
    4) sentio-poietic regarding sentience origins that appear teleo-qualic or end-purposed;
    and
    5) sapio-poietic regarding language origins that appear robustly teleo-logic or end-
    intended.
    In terms of aboutness, different interpretations at each emergent level employ
    metaphorical languages that are largely incommunicative in the other levels. This is to
    recognize, for example, that, if we reconciled quantum mechanics with gravity today,
    we’d be no closer, tomorrow, to delivering an adequate account of biogenesis, much less
    a philosophy of mind with a sufficient explanatory adequacy, much much less solve the
    riddles of indeterminacy that inhere in any account of free will.
    Above, I referenced entities, properties and their inner & outer relations. In my
    encounters with different accounts of reality’s various emergent levels of aboutness, I
    noticed that, whichever chosen root metaphor, whether of substances, relations,
    processes, experiences or otherwise, each account variously dealt with those
    phenomenal categories as well as addressed the temporality of past, present & future, or
    possibilities, actualities, probabilities & necessities. Transcending the various root
    metaphors were vague conceptions like act & potency, which seemed to me like helpful
    placeholders for any ontology.
    Because my passion had always been focused on the epistemic reduction of behavior, I
    was especially drawn to semiotic emergentist accounts that addressed human language
    origins. It was in my reading regarding same that I encountered for the first time, in a
    meaningful way, how indispensable were Aristotelian conceptions of formal & final
    causes, in addition to such as efficient, material, instrumental, exemplary & imaginal
    causes.
    Nothing advanced my grasp of such teleodynamics more than my corresponding-
    friendship with & generous tutelage by Ursula Goodenough, who’s long collaborated
    with her good friend Terrence Deacon regarding all things biologically emergent for
    decades. Introduced by a mutual friend, Michael Cavanaugh, I recognized in their work
    the very same Peircean themes I had first grappled with when reading the Peircean
    philosophy & anthropology of an old (five decade) acquaintence & fellow yat (New
    Orleans native) Don Gelpi. *** see note below
    So, there I was, outfitted with a triadic heuristic that approached vague phenomena,
    from the quantum through the mental, not with any metaphysic or root metaphor, but
    using placeholders like entities, properties & relations; possibilities, actualities &
    probabilities; past, present & future; act & potency; being, reality & existence;
    in/determined & in/determinable; and the full suite of Aristotelian causes, which was
    proving to be a useful epistemic heuristic for folks of otherwise diverse ontological
    persuasions, including nonreductive physicalists.
    I should say this, however, as an emergentist, I do not subscribe to such distinctions as
    others often draw between strong & weak emergence, weak & strong supervenience. (I
    travel light, sans metaphysic & sans supervenience.) Thus it was that my early biological
    interests had begun to intersect philosophy of mind (e.g. Deacon versus Dennett &
    Dawkins) and Aristotelian emergentist accounts made for a great heuristic. So, I only
    ever employed such heuristics, as I mentioned above, to bookmark aporia, different
    types of aboutness, inventory the relevant questions & map concepts across competing
    interpretations. I otherwise remained and remain a metaphysical agnostic, a realist, to
    be sure, but with no interest in inhabiting any given system. I suppose you could say that
    I’m putting off any serious metaphysical excitement and over-the-top ontological
    enthusiasm for any given account of nature's causal joints until I see how the ontology
    that underwrites same has normalized gravity & quantum mechanics, or proved
    empirically fruitful with its biogenetic stance or philosophy of mind deliverances.
    So, my modest emergentist heuristic doesn’t really do much, propositionally &
    speculatively, but dispositionally it has had much transformative impetus for the ways I
    approach all communal, aesthetic, ethical & liberative human realities & concerns.
    Any task of musing about reality's perimeters can be done with a Peircean-like
    abduction of the Ens Necessarium in a single afternoon’s parlor sitting, not explicitly
    employing Peirce, mind you, just competently engaging one’s common sense. We will
    typically bring three musements into play, whether inchoately or reflectively:
    1) a mereological intuition regarding the relations between reality's parts & wholes;
    2) a metaphysical intuition reflecting some particular root metaphor for reality's entities
    & their properties; and
    3) an epistemic intuition (usually involving some version of the principle of sufficient
    reason) as to whether, regarding reality's primitives & axioms, those are merely brute or
    clearly fruit about which reality, in principle or not, remains mute.
    My own intuition suggests that, whichever stances one presupposes, mereologically,
    metaphysically or epistemically, will lead to an abduction of some Ens Necessarium,
    propositionally. Various quidditative attributes then get intuitively assigned, which can
    (presupposing an epistemic virtue not all attain) lead to competing equiplausible
    interpretations of reality writ large, which then get adjudicated mostly dispositionally
    by- not a vulgar, but - a semiotic realist pragmatism, wherein a plurality of defensible
    stances (metaphysical, even moral) can reasonably, hopefully peacably, coexist due to -
    not any relativism, emotivism or voluntarism, but - a metaphysical fallibilism. My
    heuristic thus only provides me some conceptual placeholders to map whatever it seems
    to me to be that competing stances happen to be talking about in terms of aboutness.
    In other words, I’m rather content to say that something like Scotus’ formal distinction
    appears at stake, here; something like Thomas’ analogy of being, there; something like
    Peirce’s distinctions between Being, Reality & existence, here.
    And I want to affirm, over against any silly ignosticism, that such talk is meaningful,
    existentially & transformatively, even while insisting it has serious limits, speculatively.
    I do rather believe that serious formal argumentation can take place, ontologically &
    modally, even syllogistically, as long as one guarantees the conceptual compatibility of
    one’s quidditative Ens Necessarium-conceptions employing only apophatic
    predications. I think one can see, however, how that type of argumentation crosses only
    a very limited epistemic distance, rationally?
    What about positive conceptions? Can they similarly be meaningful?
    Well, semantically & univocally, I believe so. But with the caveat that, for dang sure,
    absent a robust root metaphor that travels up & down the great chain of being gifting us
    robustly empirical deliverances regarding our quotidian, finite, determinate & temporal
    realities, why in the world, much less out of this world, would we over-invest in their
    speculative conclusions regarding ethereal, infinite, indeterminate & eternal realities?
    The same epistemic critique applies to any ontological analogy or semantical univocity
    of being. Such metaphors will collapse at pretty much the same velocity as they cascade.
    Not only that, even within a given metaphysic, manifold interpretations can compete.
    Further complicating translation efforts, the metaphysical idioms under consideration
    may be appropriated within any given culture more so implicitly and inchoately, less so
    explicitly and reflectively, all of this coming into play even in the etymological roots of
    each language's concepts. Why even expect our metaphysics to overcome the aporia of
    reality's perimeters before we've even see what Scotism & Thomism, Whitehead &
    Hartshorne, or, for that matter, Aristotle or Plato, have done with gravity & quantum
    mechanics or biogenesis?
    When, at last, I did consciously engage other philosophies of science, I had come from
    the world of the highly speculative, theoretical sciences, where I had learned of the time-
    honored efficacies of the long-banished Aristotelian formal & final causations and had
    become aware of the epistemic cul de sacs of logical positivisms & radical empiricisms. I
    had also learned of the tremendous heuristic value of the very vague categories of act &
    potency, determinacies & indeterminacies, vagueness & generality. I came to it all
    already bearing the gift of my epistemic heuristic and discovered that, in the many
    different types of philosophy of science discourse, some of the vary same aboutnesses
    and causations and phenomenological categories were in play! However, I also brought
    with me the same degree of epistemic humility that inhered in a fallibilist approach. But
    I had, still have, little interest in becoming a Scotist or Whiteheadian. And my
    introduction to Thomism was Maritain’s existential approach because it was the vehicle
    with which I first delved into quantum interpretations. Thereafter, I soon learned there
    were Aristotelian, Transcendental, Analytic, Phenomenological, Process, Neo-Scholastic
    and Semiotic schools of Thomism, among others. I haven’t inhabited any of those either.
    Neither do I buy into Peirce’s metaphysical musings, only finding his phenomenological
    categories to be great conceptual placeholders.
    I remain, therefore, for the most part, a thoroughgoing metaphysical agnostic.
    Don't get me wrong, though.
    I do applaud those who engage fully any given school with its onto-logical enterprises, or
    even regarding certain natural law-like de-ontologies.
    I only ever insist, however, that ...
    any given metaphysic not be delivered with a confidence level that outruns its heuristic
    value in physics ...
    that our deontologies should be delivered at least as modestly as our ontologies are
    tentative ...
    that the normative impetus imparted to any epistemic stance be commensurate with the
    evidentiary standards it’s already met.
    Many remain in search of a metaphysic?
    So do I.
    *** Note: Emergentism, as an umbrella concept, refers to a rather wide variety of
    evolutionary approaches, both reductive & nonreductive as well as a radical
    emergentism, which doesn't invoke supervenience. What I describe above specifies none
    of those, as I'm agnostic regarding whether or not a particular supervenience obtains for
    all teloi & entropies, at least, not in the sense we could a priori specify whether the
    emergence of any given aboutness refers to an epistemic and/or ontic reality and/or to
    what extent, and, also, not in a manner that clearly specifies the precise nature of any
    corresponding subvenient realities.
    So, I'm articulating generic or plain vanilla emergentism. What's definitely at stake is
    the indispensable & indisputable role of evolutionary processes. Therefore, even those
    who don't invoke an explicitly emergentist idiom may fall under my generic description,
    for example, Dawkins & Dennett on the reductionist end of the spectrum and Jack
    Haught on the radical end. Clustered with the nonreductionists who'd invoke
    supervenience would be folks like Nancey Murphy & Joe Bracken, the latter who
    employs a field process metaphor.
    I would interpret Peirce as sympathetic to that supervenient stance but as rigorously
    interested in avoiding both the essentialism of Aristotelian substance approaches & the
    nominalism that can afflict Whiteheadian process approaches. Deacon & Goodenough's
    something more (or else) from nothing but approach, if I grasp it correctly, adheres to
    that Peircean rigor & thereby threads the essentialism-nominalism needle, or, more
    accurately, rejects the dyadic subject-object paradigm that gives rise to those
    "solutions." Essentialism is rejected because it's not dynamical. Nominalism is avoided
    as nature's regularities play a real role as generalities, like laws, patterns & habits,
    irreducibly & triadically, mediate all interactivity between & among all entities,
    properties & relations.
    Deacon's concept, absentials, evokes for me the key Aristotelian insight of potency. The
    teloi involved rather precisely point to creaturely deficiencies or privations or biological
    imperatives. This is to recognize, in my take, that, beyond a mere supervenience, where
    mereological relationships exhibit causal efficacies, contextual relationships matter
    (pun intended, i.e. are informationally embodied). However, beyond generic Aristotelian
    conceptions of telos vis a vis formal (act) & final (potency) causes, which are way too
    general to add heuristic value, much less any new information, to one's system, a
    Peircean emergentism recognizes novelty in - not only entities, properties & relations,
    but - reality's regularities. Any talk of formal & final causes or of entropy up & down the
    great chain of being will inescapably invoke teloi & entropies that are merely analogous
    & clearly emergent. Of all the emergentist perspectives, the Peircean-like leanings of
    Deacon & Goodenough seem the best nuanced.
    I can abide most all of the nonreductive & radical emergentist approaches. I just haven't
    had the time or knowledge to invest in one or the other. If I ever do, it will likely
    combine Bracken's field concept & the Deacon-Goodenough triadicity. Theologically, it
    would eschew any classical creatio ex nihilo for something closer to Catherine Keller's
    creatio ex profundis. (Preliminarily, I have referred to this project as a polydoxic,
    tehomic pan-SEMIO-entheism).
    In my view, there can be no question, then, that questions are left begging, explanatory
    adequacy is left lacking, regarding the precise nature of any putative supervenience's
    subvenient substrates. There are sufficient regularities to render reality almost infinitely
    intelligible, enough discontinuities to keep it eminently incomprehensible (not
    necessarily permanently occulted in principle, but, intractably so in practice). It thus
    remains problematic as to how & when regularities will connote a reality as regulated
    and/or as a regulator, which in/determinacies connote a transient methodological
    in/determinability and/or an ontological in/determinedness, whether an apparent
    chaos reveals clear chance in nature or mere epistemic distancing & axiological
    privations.
    And where up & down the great chain of being do such regularities introduce exactly
    what kind of chance or arbitrariness? It seems clear that, whatever the nature of their
    extrinsic constraints (chance vs necessity, chaos vs order, paradox vs pattern, random vs
    systematic), semiotic agents, by perpetuating, maintaining & replicating their own
    dynamical constraints (as ordered toward closing epistemic distances & overcoming
    ontic privations), can leverage (direct, purpose or intend, respectively, teleo -nomically,
    -qualically or -logically) even arbitrary signs, autopoietically, in life-giving &
    relationship-enhancing ways that foster an integral communal flourishing. Partly
    regulated & determined, such agents are obviously regulators that, themselves,
    determine outcomes.
    Regarding the symbolic species, how much freedom of agency such personal entities-in-
    process can dynamically engage, ironically & paradoxically, derives from how successful
    they are at being true to their self-constraining imperatives, biologically & socially, via
    disciplines we might call the practice of auto-poietic authenticity. Hence the saliency of
    practices of all great as well as indigenous traditions, whether asceticisms & disciplines,
    normatively, or rituals & celebrations, evaluatively.
    Finally, it's my intention hereinabove, to defend a radically pluralistic openness to all
    manner of pluralisms - metaphysical, cultural, religious, moral, ethical &
    anthropological - speculatively speaking (not via relativism & nihilism but fallibilism &
    probabilism). It's my contention that humankind, largely, otherwise remains sufficiently
    similarly situated, ecologically & ethologically, to substantively share enough in the way
    of the evaluatively dispositional to be able to abstract from same a normatively
    propositional consensus, as reflected in such general precepts as were, for example,
    articulated in the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights. These precepts remain both
    necessary & sufficient to underwrite the most salient aspects of public order, public
    peace, public justice & public morality. And, although more problematical, they lend
    themselves to reasoned discourse regarding the formulation of specific concrete norms
    to guide humankind in its quest for bioethical, ecological, economic & other important
    value-realizations.
    My radically pluralistic outlook regarding plausibilistic (not probabilistic) speculative
    stances, and sufficiently consensual approach regarding public norms, is deeply
    sympathetic to the principles of free exercise & nonestablishment regarding all such
    matters of conscience, both the plausibilist speculative & creedal matters and regarding
    probabilist practical & moral realities. No conscience should be unnecessarily or unduly
    burdened by public law unless there is a morally defensible (sufficiently consensual)
    compelling government interest spelled out in a generally applicable law that so burdens
    any consciences in the least restrictive manner practicable.
    Essentially, this hereinabove has all amounted to a plaintive appeal by me to
    humankind:
    Why can't we all just get along?
    Why not impute - not the most cynical, but - the most charitable interpretation
    conceivable to others' motives, properly imagining that they probably share our most
    urgent public values & insistent human concerns & only likely differ, prudentially,
    regarding the best way to go about enjoying value-realizations & avoiding value-
    frustrations?
    Why shouldn't all foresake the militant proselytizing - not just within & among creeds,
    ecumenically & interreligiously, but - including those who'd annihilate supernaturalism
    or de-nihil-ate philosophical naturalism?
    Have we learned nothing from the logical positivists, radical empiricists & metaphysical
    ignostics, who, naively wielding Occam's Razor as if it were a self-evident first principle,
    in their hege-monist-ic anxiety to annihilate supernaturalism, would collaterally
    epistemically extinguish the illuminative interpretive heuristics of our theoretical
    sciences? That is just so mid-20th Century!
    And what's with those who, upon encountering any growth in cultural diversities or
    trend in globalist harmonies, advocate isolationistic retreats or nationalistic advances?
    Why do they tend to be the very same people who, so reflexively, recoil from any degree
    of pluralism - metaphysical, religious, aesthetical, ethical, etc - spooked, as they always
    facilely suggest, by the twin spectres of relativism & nihilism, never once imagining that
    such diversities & harmonies might otherwise arise from the hermeneutically fertile
    grounds of epistemic humility, metaphysical fallibilism & moral probabilism? These
    tend to be the same folks who, while decrying any move from a methodological to a
    philosophical naturalism as illicit, turn around and treat any methodological stipulation
    to a principle of sufficient reason as if it were some metaphysical verity.
    Enough, then, with the tired age-old attempts to, sometimes comedically but always
    cynically, craftily narrow all conceptions of epistemic virtue & broaden those of
    epistemic vice in such a way as to philosophically shoehorn only one's own ontological
    footings, while denying others their normative fitness. Inevitably, such attempts will
    cripple our triadically inferential common sense, itself, which already labors under
    necessary & sufficient fallibilist rubrics of alternating conjecture & criticism as our
    practical reasonings navigate under speculative uncertainties. Any sufficiency of
    evidence, both of quantum & quality, vis a vis normative justifications, has never been
    an all or nothing - either/or reality, but, in a long-established & time-honored way, has
    common sensically been proportioned by evidentiary standards, whereby one's
    epistemic rights get suitably extended or abridged by a rubric which norms: Show me
    your evidence and I'll tell you what you can justifiably do with it.
    Those, who have imagined that such norms could be tweaked to arrogate all epistemic
    virtue to themselves & attribute all vice to others, are not as bright as they suspect, for
    such philosophical shoehorning has always inevitably inferentially hobbled - not only
    our highly speculative theoretic sciences, but - common sense, itself. Such
    hermeneutical cobblings render such interpretive footings susceptible to a self-
    subverting parody, as they inescapably step forward into the epistemic quicksands of
    naive realisms or radical skepticisms. Enough already!
    The Most Common Deficiencies in Moral Philosophy &
    Theology -especially when applied to Politics
    These are notes for a preliminary draft that will address some of the most common &
    egregious deficiencies that persist in moral philosophy, as often demonstrated by
    common folk & so-called experts alike.
    1) Methodologically, the same old sterile scholasticism remains stuck in a nonvirtuous
    cycle of abductive moral hypothesizing & deductive moral clarifying, employing too
    many physicalistic, biologistic terms. This natural law approach needs to be
    complemented (its inferential cycling completed) by the inductive testing of a more
    robustly personalist approach. While some have made a personalist turn, eg JPII & New
    Natural Law school, they remain a prioristic, hence rather arbitrary, not having made a
    more robustly inductive turn. It is one thing to take one’s old natural law arguments and
    translate them into a personalist idiom, quite another to actually adopt an inductive,
    personalist method, which actually inquires into the putative value-realizations &
    value-frustrations it suggests will present in the concrete circumstances of person’s
    lives.
    2) Too many reflexively charge differently minded others with moral relativism,
    nihilism, emotivism, voluntarism, vulgar pragmatism & a host of other philosophical
    pejoratives, as if a defensible ethical pluralism might not otherwise be grounded in the
    epistemic humility, metaphysical fallibilism & moral probabilism of our quotidian
    human common sense & sensibilities.
    3) re: moral probabilism, too few draw a suitable distinction between empirical &
    theoretic doubts, between “is that?” & “what is?”
    4) too few avoid category errors & logical missteps in navigating a hierarchy of truths &
    values along w/principles of cooperation & double effect, for example, re: act of voting,
    too much discourse moves too quickly from a ranking of causes to a double effect
    calculus, skipping or giving short shrift to a critical principle of cooperation analysis,
    which is to say that, as they proceed, for example, with a political cause ranking through
    a cooperation calculus (principle of cooperation) to calculate the effects (principle of
    double effect) of a vote or policy, they often ignore how very highly tenuous a given
    causal chain is - as would be in play regarding what are very highly contingent acts - …
    in other words, they adopt a moral & prudential calculus susceptible to the parody of
    rendering most remote material cooperation illicit in our public lives
    5) re: evaluation of moral acts, re: moral objects (cluster concepts w/specifications
    beyond physical act), intentions & circumstances, too few recognize that moral objects
    are cluster concepts that have already specified the circumstances of physical acts, often
    further defining them enough to consider such as virtually exceptionless, but not with
    enough knowledge to justify considering them absolutely so, as we reason from general
    precepts to concrete norms
    6) too few distinguish ontic from moral evil
    7) too few distinguish formal from material innocence or harm
    8) too few distinguish prudential from moral judgments
    Regarding theological anthropology, then:
    9) too many fail to recognize the Spirit's presence in the secular, in the natural & in our
    temporal ends via the gratuity of creation, wrongly imagining that the Spirit is only
    ever present in the sacred, in the supernatural & in our eternal ends via the gratuity
    of grace
    10) too many confuse the law of graduality with a gradualism of the law
    11) too many give a primacy to coercive measures rather than, per subsidiarity
    principles, soft powers
    See: https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/19/a-goldilocks-theological-
    anthropology-between-pessimism-optimism-natural-supernatural-nature-grace/
    Afterward:
    After I'd written the above, in general, I came across a reminder of where I'd so often
    seen such lapses, in particular:
    +Chaput has always seemed sincere to me & his logic clear, but awash in category
    errors. As I think about this, his approach & writings over the years may well provide the
    best concrete example of so much that's been wrong in Catholic moral theology &
    theological anthropology. Indeed, he often provides the perfect foil for how to otherwise
    philosophize & theologize properly in the secular age.
    https://disqus.com/home/discussion/firstthingsmag/thoughts_on_the_instrumentum
    _laboris_charles_j_chaput_ofm_cap_first_things/#comment-4125474133
    And I would imagine that the words of Michael Sean Winters, below, generally reflect
    what I more particularly specified above:
    I admit that I find it tiresome to have to continually criticize Archbishop Chaput. I do so
    in sadness not in anger. But, it must be said: If I were writing a work of fiction and I
    wanted to create a caricature of a culture warrior bishop, I do not think I would have the
    courage to create one so reckless, so uncomplicated in his moral sensibilities (and not in
    a good way), and so quick to render judgment against others, so willing to ignore the
    pope, or to cite him, as it suits his own purposes, so intellectually thin and so edgily
    partisan, as Archbishop Chaput's columns show him to be.
    https://www.ncronline.org/print/blogs/distinctly-catholic/archbishop-chaputs-
    regrettable-column
    [Michael Sean Winters is NCR Washington columnist and a visiting fellow at Catholic
    University's Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies.]
    Why I Have No Metaphysic
    My adolescent fascinations and undergraduate & graduate preoccupations were rather
    narrowly focused on the behavioral sciences. And not just at the macro-levels of
    ethology, ecology & comparative psychology, but at the nuts & bolts level of brain
    biochemistry.
    One year, in high school, I advanced to and participated in the International Science &
    Engineering Fair, having constructed a rather colossal, rube-goldbergian perfusion
    apparatus, designed to keep rat livers alive, in vitro, while conducting biochemical
    experiments on them.
    That same year, I had also worked with a friend on memory transfer experiments. She
    had already accomplished primitive memory transfers between classically conditioned &
    naïve recipient planaria (flatworms), so, I suggested we take that behavioral
    investigation to another phylogenetic level. You see, in what were to me the Disney-like
    stacks of the dark aisles of the LSU library, I had previously encountered the wondrous
    mysterium fascinans of mammalian memory transfer research.
    So, we acquired the requisite hamsters, trained some in mazes, extracted their brain
    RNA and injected it into their untrained siblings. A half-century later, when I pass that
    little pine grove where we buried them all, I rather wistfully recall their sacrifice, less
    sure now than then whether it was truly for the sake of science.
    Let’s just leave it at that.
    In college, hyper-motivated to get out of the classroom and back into the boundless
    tremendum of those library stacks and the endless fascinans of the laboratory, I hardly
    knew where to focus degree-wise. No particular curriculum fully accommodated my
    feverish interest in being able to better account for animal and human behaviors, so to
    speak, reductively. I therefore accelerated my graduate school entrance by craftily
    employing a general studies degree program. Such programs “generally” foster a rather
    lax approach that allows one to optimally navigate past difficult subject matters, but I
    exploited its flexibility to pull off the informal equivalent of a triple major with roughly
    30+ hours each in chemistry and psychology coupled with even more coursework in
    zoology, much of that in independent research. So, it was thereby that I had thus ended
    up spending more than three years of undergraduate & graduate work in a
    neuroendocrinology lab that had previously, for example, figured out certain of the
    physiological mechanisms of bird migration. Oversimplifying things, we could get these
    critters to fly north versus south with specifically timed hormonal injections!
    It was also thereby that I had thus advanced my education with a veritable dearth of arts
    and humanities coursework.
    “Advanced my education,” of course, if employed as a true term of art, would not really
    apply to one who, fifty years hence, has yet to take a single philosophy or theology
    course, although I did take a single course in literature, another perhaps in history, for
    what that’s worth.
    No, for me, any employment of that phrase more so resembles the meaning behind the
    Bonnie & Clyde lyric, “advanced their reputation and made their graduation into the
    banking business.” Turns out, I retired from banking, having served on various venues
    as chairman, president & chief executive officer. I won’t suffer you that digression even
    though it would have deep spiritual implications, more than tangential to … what’s our
    topic? … oh, yeah, metaphysics.
    Throughout these very same time periods, my other youthful preoccupations had me
    actively engaged with the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, youth retreat movements and
    liturgical music ministries, all great places, by the way, to meet nice girls, which was yet
    another major and mesmerizing preoccupation of mine. I mention my religious
    orientation only by way of emphasizing why I suffered neither existential angst about
    nor epistemic incongruities from my heavily reductionist behavioral bent. It wasn’t
    reductionistic by virtue of the fact that a Loyola Jesuit had already introduced me to the
    distinction between primary and secondary causality. That was the only metaphysics I
    needed to continue gleefully on my way while my more fundamentalistic friends were
    suffering crises of faith over little things such as … oh, let me think … evolution.
    Throughout all of my coursework and research, especially when engaging the most
    highly speculative theoretical aspects of each scientific discipline that I had studied, I
    rather subconsciously and implicitly cultivated what I’ve now come to appreciate as a
    healthy aporetic sense. I became very aware that, in most every discipline, empirical
    research would inevitably be encountered by descriptive aporia, which, in turn,
    developed into various interpretive schools, each subscribing to an approach that
    variously over- and/or under- emphasized distinct aspects of phenomena, whether
    focused on specific entities, in and of themselves, or on their properties, or on their
    relations, inner or outer.
    By distinct, I’d later come to appreciate, I mean to suggest that they were aspiring to
    develop speculative conceptions that make a practical difference.
    The practical differences implied by various theoretical conceptions can take a long time
    in coming, empirically. I began to notice this pattern in college.
    In physics, I saw how, while empirical quantum mechanics was indisputable, different
    schools of quantum interpretation proliferated. In cosmology, different cosmogonal
    models competed. In biology, different accounts of life’s origins grappled with the
    inexplicable leap from physics and chemistry to biology. In cognitive psychology,
    different philosophies of mind modeled the origins of animal sentience. In
    anthropology, semioticians devised conceptual distinctions in explanatory attempts to
    understand how symbolic language could arise from mere icons and indexes, taking us
    beyond a mere sentience to a robust sapience.
    I never bothered to invest very much in one or the other interpretation. I was content,
    rather, to try to more so understand what their particular questions were ABOUT, less
    so what their proposed answers, sometimes pretentiously, suggested. My early grasp of
    the rudimentary distinction between primary and secondary causation, as conveyed by
    those happy charismatic Jesuits, who, to me, embodied both the epitome of erudition
    and pinnacle of evangelical joy, later evolved into more sophisticated intuitions,
    inchoate early on to be sure, but, later articulated in such heuristics as Gödel’s theorems,
    Agrippa’s trilemma, Peter Suber’s “problems of beginning” and other safeguards
    against epistemic hubris.
    I had implicitly rejected any tidy epistemic compartmentalizations of supposedly non-
    overlapping magisteria and approached reality with a single, fallibilist epistemology.
    That’s to say that, to me, epistemology is epistemology is epistemology.
    There are no such things as strictly religious or metaphysical or scientific
    epistemologies. My youthful reductive tendencies have not been shaken, but neither
    have they devolved into any unmitigated positivisms or vulgar pragmatisms.
    None of this is to deny that certain ontologies, quantum interpretations, cosmogonal
    models, biogenetic theories, philosophies of mind or language origin anthropologies
    wouldn’t have even profound implications, existentially, regarding, for example, free
    will, or theologically regarding, the reality of God.
    Those interpretations do introduce conceptual distinctions that can have profound
    practical implications. I just never got terribly engaged by arguments for or against such
    as solipsism or free will, much less first principles. Common sense abductions, reductio
    ad absurdums and methodological stipulations remain – not only necessary, but –
    sufficient for those types of realities without the further “benefit” of tautological
    deductions, formal proofs or metaphysical excursions.
    My vague God-conceptions have always taken refuge – not in reality’s metaphysical gaps
    and theoretic aporia, but – at its perimeters, its initial, boundary & limit conditions, its
    axiomatic contours as defended by such epistemic bulwarks as, again, Gödel-like
    implications, Agrippa’s trilemma and Suber’s “problems of beginning.”
    So, yes, I do rather pragmatically, not just a priori, eschew certain worldviews without
    feeling the need to engage in atheological mud-wrestling.
    And I do very much appreciate that not all tautologies are equally taut vis a vis
    embracing epistemic virtue and avoiding epistemic vice. But even the best
    interpretations of our highly speculative theoretical sciences have not yet yielded a
    normalization of gravity and quantum mechanics, a biopoietic account of life origins, a
    sentiopoietic account of qualia, a sapiopoietic account of symbolic language.
    So, I content myself by simply bookmarking these diverse aporia in terms of their
    ABOUTNESS that I can better inventory the nature of the questions they are asking in
    their methodological probes without overinvesting in the nature of the answers they
    pretend to proffer with their metaphysical conclusions. Such conclusions are too often
    not merely embedded in the premises and presuppositions of such metaphysical
    argumentation but in their very definitions.
    The aboutnesses most often under consideration include (using some personal,
    idiosyncratic neologisms) the following aporia:
    1) veldo-poietic regarding field origins that appear teleo-potent or end-unbounded;
    2) cosmo-poietic regarding physical realities that appear teleo-matic or end-stated;
    3) bio-poietic regarding life origins that appear teleo-nomic or end-directed;
    4) sentio-poietic regarding sentience origins that appear teleo-qualic or end-purposed;
    and
    5) sapio-poietic regarding language origins that appear robustly teleo-logic or end-
    intended.
    In terms of aboutness, different interpretations at each emergent level employ
    metaphorical languages that are largely incommunicative in the other levels. This is to
    recognize, for example, that, if we reconciled quantum mechanics with gravity today,
    we’d be no closer, tomorrow, to delivering an adequate account of biogenesis, much less
    a philosophy of mind with a sufficient explanatory adequacy, much much less solve the
    riddles of indeterminacy that inhere in any account of free will.
    Above, I referenced entities, properties and their inner & outer relations. In my
    encounters with different accounts of reality’s various emergent levels of aboutness, I
    noticed that, whichever chosen root metaphor, whether of substances, relations,
    processes, experiences or otherwise, each account variously dealt with those
    phenomenal categories as well as addressed the temporality of past, present & future, or
    possibilities, actualities, probabilities & necessities. Transcending the various root
    metaphors were vague conceptions like act & potency, which seemed to me like helpful
    placeholders for any ontology.
    Because my passion had always been focused on the epistemic reduction of behavior, I
    was especially drawn to semiotic emergentist accounts that addressed human language
    origins. It was in my reading regarding same that I encountered for the first time, in a
    meaningful way, how indispensable were Aristotelian conceptions of formal & final
    causes, in addition to such as efficient, material, instrumental, exemplary & imaginal
    causes.
    Nothing advanced my grasp of such teleodynamics more than my friendship with &
    generous tutelage by Ursula Goodenough, who’s long collaborated with her good friend
    Terrence Deacon regarding all things biologically emergent for decades. Introduced by a
    mutual friend, I recognized in their work the very same Peircean themes I had first
    grappled with when reading the philosophy & theology of the late Jesuit, Don Gelpi.
    Why was I reading him? Only because, fifty years ago, he was one of those crazy smart &
    crazy happy Jesuits, whom I saw every Friday night at Loyola prayer meetings.
    So, there I was, outfitted with a triadic heuristic that approached vague phenomena,
    from the quantum through the mental, not with any metaphysic or root metaphor, but
    using placeholders like entities, properties & relations; possibilities, actualities &
    probabilities; past, present & future; act & potency; being, reality & existence;
    in/determined & in/determinable; and the full suite of Aristotelian causes, which was
    proving to be a useful epistemic heuristic for folks of otherwise diverse ontological
    persuasions, including physicalists. (I know that raises some questions for many but I’ve
    addressed it elsewhere at length and it’s not my purpose to flesh that out here). I will say
    this, however, as an emergentist, I do not subscribe to such distinctions as others often
    draw between strong & weak emergence, weak & strong supervenience. (I travel light,
    sans metaphysic, sans supervenience & sans filioque. It’s all of one fabric. Ha ha!)
    Keep in mind, very little of the meta-metaphysical discussion consideration above had
    anything to do with my approach to theology, which, in my life, otherwise had focused
    on formative spirituality, the ascetical & mystical and interreligious dialogue. Instead,
    my biological interests had begun to intersect philosophy of mind (e.g. Deacon versus
    Dennett & Dawkins) and Aristotelian emergentist accounts made for a great heuristic.
    I only ever employed such heuristics, as I mentioned above, to bookmark aporia,
    different types of aboutness, inventory the relevant questions & map concepts across
    competing interpretations. I otherwise remained and remain a metaphysical agnostic, a
    realist, to be sure, but with no interest in inhabiting any given system.
    I suppose you could say that I’m putting off any serious metaphysical excitement and
    over-the-top ontological enthusiasm for any given theology of nature until I see how the
    ontology that underwrites same has normalized gravity & quantum mechanics, or
    proved empirically fruitful with its biogenetic stance or philosophy of mind
    deliverances.
    So, my modest emergentist heuristic doesn’t really do natural theology. That task can
    be done with a Peircean-like abduction of the Ens Necessarium in a single afternoon’s
    parlor sitting, not explicitly employing Peirce, mind you, just competently engaging
    one’s common sense. We will typically bring three musements into play, whether
    inchoately or reflectively:
    1) a mereological intuition regarding the relations between reality's parts & wholes;
    2) a metaphysical intuition reflecting some particular root metaphor for reality's entities
    & their properties; and
    3) an epistemic intuition (usually involving some version of the principle of sufficient
    reason) as to whether, regarding reality's primitives & axioms, those are merely brute or
    clearly fruit about which reality, in principle or not, remains mute.
    My own intuition suggests that, whichever stances one presupposes, mereologically,
    metaphysically or epistemically, will lead to an abduction of some Ens Necessarium,
    propositionally. Various quidditative attributes then get intuitively assigned, which can
    (presupposing an epistemic virtue not all attain) lead to competing equiplausible
    interpretations of reality writ large, which then get adjudicated mostly dispositionally
    by- not a vulgar, but - a semiotic realist pragmatism, wherein a plurality of defensible
    stances (metaphysical, even moral) can reasonably, hopefully peacably, coexist due to -
    not any relativism, emotivism or voluntarism, but - a metaphysical fallibilism.
    Neither does my heuristic do theologies of nature. It only provides me some conceptual
    placeholders to map whatever it seems to me to be that competing stances happen to be
    talking about in terms of aboutness.
    In other words, I’m rather content to say that something like Scotus’ formal distinction
    appears at stake, here; something like Thomas’ analogy of being, there; something like
    Peirce’s distinctions between Being, Reality & existence, here.
    And I want to affirm, over against any silly ignosticism, that such talk is meaningful,
    existentially & theotically, even while insisting it has serious limits, speculatively.
    I do rather believe that serious formal argumentation can take place, ontologically &
    modally, even syllogistically, as long as one guarantees the conceptual compatibility of
    one’s quidditative God-conceptions employing only apophatic predications. I think one
    can see, however, how that type of argumentation crosses only a very limited epistemic
    distance, rationally?
    What about other positive God-conceptions? Can they be meaningful?
    Well, semantically & univocally, I believe so. But with the caveat that, for dang sure,
    absent a robust root metaphor that travels up & down the great chain of being gifting us
    robustly empirical deliverances regarding our quotidian, finite, determinate & temporal
    realities, why in the world, much less out of this world, would we over-invest in their
    speculative conclusions regarding ethereal, infinite, indeterminate & eternal realities?
    The same epistemic critique applies to any ontological analogy or semantical univocity
    of being. Our metaphors will collapse at pretty much the same velocity as they cascade.
    I’ve addressed elsewhere why, beyond our onto-theological natural theologies & theo-
    ontological theologies of nature, which do aspire to systematic & syllogistic
    argumentation via root metaphors, most of our employment of analogies & metaphors
    otherwise more so amounts to the informal theophanic God-talk of our common sense &
    sensibilities.
    And I’ve defended it as eminently actionable, existentially, and as soulfully
    dispositional, communally, aesthetically, normatively & liberatively, all which, integrally
    & confluently, can, over time, reasonably raise our confidence in all things hoped for,
    our convictions of things unseen and certainties regarding our practical & moral
    responses, relationally, to God, others, cosmos & even oneself.
    Many seem to lose track, even in the very same conversations, of how they segue from
    onto-theology to theo-ontology to theophanic discourse and back, leading to all manner
    of category errors. Are we talking about God’s being, here? His ousia? And, there, a
    particular hypostatic thatness? Or, now, the divine energies? Or, then, the Reality of the
    Ens Necessarium? His will or intellect? Essential attributes or Cambridge properties?
    Determinate or indeterminate reality? Divine simplicity or freedom?
    The categories in which we traffic, non-metaphysically via revelation, shouldn’t be
    facilely mapped to the theo-ontological categories of our metaphysics presupposing they
    can syllogistically overcome our theologically speculative aporia. These mapping
    exercises, rather, serve the missiological imperatives of Gospel inculturation, which
    presuppose a comprehensive epistemic journey, from start to finish, through Lonergan's
    theological methods: research, interpretation, history, dialectics, foundations, doctrines,
    systematics and communications. The communication of an inculturated Gospel will
    often involve a translation between different metaphysical idioms. Not only that, as
    addressed above, even within a given metaphysic, manifold interpretations can
    compete. Further complicating translation efforts, the metaphysical idioms under
    consideration may be appropriated within any given culture more so implicitly and
    inchoately, less so explicitly and reflectively, all of this coming into play even in the
    etymological roots of each language's concepts.
    Why even expect our onto-theologies and theo-ontologies to overcome the aporia of our
    speculative, systematic theologies, before we've even see what Scotism & Thomism,
    Whitehead & Hartshorne, or, for that matter, Aristotle or Plato, have done with gravity
    & quantum mechanics or biogenesis?
    So, when, at last, I did consciously engage natural theologies & theologies of nature, I
    had come from the world of the highly speculative, theoretical sciences, where I had
    learned of the time-honored efficacies of the long-banished Aristotelian formal & final
    causations and had become aware of the epistemic cul de sacs of logical positivisms &
    radical empiricisms. I had also learned of the tremendous heuristic value of the very
    vague categories of act & potency, determinacies & indeterminacies, vagueness &
    generality.
    I came to theology already bearing the gift of my epistemic heuristic and discovered in
    its onto-theological & theo-ontological discourse that some of the vary same
    aboutnesses and causations and phenomenological categories were in play!
    However, I also brought with me the same degree of epistemic humility that inhered in a
    fallibilist approach.
    And, in theology, as in science, I encountered, in no too few theologians, the very same
    levels of unjustified epistemic hubris that I had witnessed among certain scientists.
    But I had, still have, little interest in becoming a Scotist or Whiteheadian. And my
    introduction to Thomism was Maritain’s existential approach because it was the vehicle
    which had first taken me into serious interreligious dialogue. Thereafter, I soon learned
    there were Aristotelian, Transcendental, Analytic, Phenomenological, Process, Neo-
    Scholastic and Semiotic schools of Thomism, among others. I haven’t inhabited any of
    those either. Neither do I buy into Peirce’s metaphysical musings, only finding his
    phenomenological categories to be great conceptual placeholders.
    I remain, therefore, for the most part, a thoroughgoing metaphysical agnostic.
    Don't get me wrong, though.
    I do applaud those who engage fully any given school within onto-theological & theo-
    ontological enterprises, as well as regarding natural law deontologies.
    I only ever insist, however, that ...
    any given metaphysic not be delivered with a confidence level that outruns its heuristic
    value in physics ...
    that our deontologies should be delivered at least as modestly as our ontologies are
    tentative ...
    that the normative impetus imparted to any epistemic stance be commensurate with the
    evidentiary standards it’s already met.
    Christianity remains in search of a metaphysic?
    So do I.
    Over-coming not Over-turning Metaphysics: A Peircean
    Trinitophany of Divine THATness, WHATness &
    HOWness
    For Peirce,
    Being > Reality > Existence
    We can successfully reference the
    Being of God
    Reality of God
    Will of God
    But the Peircean category of Existence does not refer to God, only to creation.
    Peircean categories can help us avoid the category errors that can easily arise in our
    references to distinctly different types of trinitarian properties, haecceities & relations,
    e.g. what we attempt to predicate of ousia, hypostases & energeia.
    Philosophically ...
    from the HOWness (primary & secondary relations) of certain effects as would be
    proper to no known causes ...
    we reason to the THATness (primary substance) of the Reality of God, as such
    effects ...
    evoke the WHATness (secondary substance) of the Being of God - as another “kind” of
    being, an Ens Necessarium (Peirce), which only special revelation can qualify.
    Divine aseity, kataphatically & quidditatively, describes the Being of God as a
    secondary substance or essence (Aristotelian) or quiddity (Scotistic WHATness), i.e. the
    Father’s revealed, concrete unoriginateness (e.g. Rahner), all corresponding to Peircean
    firstness.
    Divine simplicity, apophatically & nondescriptively, references the Reality of God as a
    primary substance (Aristotelian) or haecceity (Scotistic THATness), i.e. God’s
    philosophically knowable unoriginateness (e.g. Rahner), all corresponding to Peircean
    secondness.
    Ergo, the divine hypostases of revelation refer to the trinitarian relations of three
    primary substances, while the divine ousia refers to the trinitarian relations in one
    secondary substance or essence.
    Divine energeia, participatably & experientially, diffuse the Will of God as esse
    intentionale (Thomist) or relationality (Cappadocian HOWness), i.e. the personhood of
    the Eucharistic divine-human communion (e.g. Zizioulas), all corresponding to Peircean
    thirdness.
    Of course, all of this presents over against Arianism, modalism, tritheism, etc
    How do we understand the content of special revelation, as our analogical & doxological
    predications of God, employing ever-cascading but always-collapsing metaphors, seem
    to challenge Thomas’ doctrine of analogy?
    Aquinas denies univocism & equivocism prior to, apparently, affirming their
    amalgamated version, some might suggest, in an ad hoc manner, i.e. not defending that
    leap or deriving its logic?
    It seems to me, however, that his trans-analogical, amalgamated analogia, derives in the
    same way that Christopher McHugh derives his God argument. McHugh improves
    Anselm, Gödel & Hartshorne’s ontological proofs by employing only apophatic
    predications, while otherwise still following formal modal logic. Any logical
    inconsistencies are thereby guaranteed not to derive from conceptual incompatibilities,
    thereby immunizing the argument from any susceptibility to a subversion by parody.
    So, properly predicated, our quidditative probes do employ a complete cycling of triadic
    inference, abductively hypothesizing, deductively clarifying & inductively testing our
    knowledge of God.
    But they accomplish only so much.
    Onto-theologically, regarding God’s primary substance, we abduct the Reality of
    God’s THATness.
    Theo-ontologically, regarding God’s secondary substance, we deduct the Being of
    God’s WHATness, our kataphasis necessarily translated into apophasis.
    Avoiding a sterile, nonvirtuous cycle of dyadic inference, i.e. of rationalistic hypotheses
    & syllogisms …
    In other words, not over-turning but over-coming metaphysics ...
    Theopoetically, beyond our abductive onto-theologizing regarding the Reality of
    God’s primary substance or THATness, and deductive theo-ontologizing regarding the
    Being of God’s secondary substance or WHATness ...
    regarding the Will of God’s HOWness, then, we inductively participate in the
    theophanic Divine Energies.
    We existentially engage their connatural, eudaimonistic invitations ever-aspiring to
    embody their entelechies.
    While often inchoately & confusedly, these participations via engagements &
    embodiments can serve to implicitly authenticate the ortho-doxic formulations of our
    onto-theologies & theo-ontologies ...
    through their ongoing transformative realizations of manifold & multiform ortho-
    communal, ortho-aesthetic, ortho-pathic, ortho-praxic & ortho-theotic efficacies.
    Another parsing:
    Presupposing 1) a root metaphor (substantial &/or relational) 2) reasoning formally &
    3) predicating apophatically (albeit constrained by indeterminacies of vagueness &
    generality)
    Propositionally, then -
    Onto-theologically, we abduct the Ens Necessarium w/a successful reference to the
    Reality of God’s divine esse via philosophy, i.e. THATness or hypostasis.
    Theo-ontologically, we increase the accuracy of our theological references to the Reality
    of God’s divine essence, apophatically, saying what God is not (univocally &/or
    literally) &/or not like (equivocally &/or analogically), i.e. WHATness or essence or
    ousia.
    Dispositionally, then –
    Theo-poetically, we increase the accuracy of our theological descriptions of the Reality
    of God’s divine energies, kataphatically & apophatically, via myth, storytelling &
    liturgy w/ever-cascading, always-collapsing metaphors, norming our responses to
    divine relationality, i.e. its HOWness or teloi, as they re-positionally transform us
    (fostering what Peirce might call a quietus vis a vis admirability via the primacy of the
    aesthetic, what the mystics might call sweet repose).
    See also:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/24/the-apparent-tension-between-
    divine-simplicity-divine-freedom/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/simply-divine-or-a-divinity-
    fudge-cooking-with-dionysius-scotus-peirce-aquinas-palamas/
    The Re-Enchantment of a never, truly disenchanted
    Reality
    It's not so much choices of root metaphor, metaphysically, or whole-part stances,
    mereologically, that will logically force an a/theological conclusion or foreclose divine
    aseity & human freedom.
    Rather, it's facile conceptions of telos - not predicated equivocally as teloi.
    Metaphysical & mereological choices merely leave different questions begging, eg "Why
    not rather nothing?" changes to "Why not rather something else?"
    Causal realities require more nuance than generally employed, not only differentiating
    ultimate & temporal teloi, but even within the created order of determinate realities,
    recognizing the plurality of teloi presenting as different kinds of "aboutness."
    These telic realities will reflect various degrees of indeterminacy, which, while
    ontologically suggestive, remain epistemically undecidable.
    Couple a much too facile & univocal conception of telos to the Principle of Sufficient
    Reason [PSR] with any metaphysic cum mereology du jour --- and
    that naive realism will morph mere methodological stipulations into full blown
    metaphysical philosophies, e.g. Spinozan (PSR on steroids), Denettian-Dawkinsian
    materialism & rationalistic theisms, which, being sylly, rely - not on faith, but -
    syllogisms.
    A rigorous emergentism has now rehabilitated, semiotically, the never truly disabled
    formal-final causes, re-enchanting our never truly dis-enchanted reality.
    These telic causal joints don't present as metaphysical gaps into which we'd fideistically
    place our gods, but neither can the neo-Nietzscheans guard the metaphysical
    perimeters, where reality's initial, boundary & limit conditions can't a priori be declared
    brute rather than a donative fruit.
    Is reality thus brute, fruit or mute?
    For most persons & most of history, reality has been interpreted as - not at all mute, but
    - having spoken.
    A robust existential actionability has been cashed out of that interpretation &
    normatively justified in terms of augmented unity, beauty, goodness & freedom.
    Conceptions of divine interactivity have ranged between the remotest of deisms & most
    intimate of spousal mysticisms.
    Such conceptions aren't urged or constrained by our metaphysics, though, only by our
    theodicy-free theophanies!
    Trinitarian Asymmetries: Ad Extra & Ad Intra
    In the eternal generation of the Son & procession of the Spirit, the economic trinity
    manifests the immanent trinity.
    The non-determinate Creator gifts (originates or speaks) ...
    the uncreated, transcendent, trans-determinate Logos (norms) mediated by ...
    the empowering Spirit to ...
    the determinate creation, the order of which thus presents as an harmonious, telic
    configuration of pluralities.
    This manifestation of the economic trinity exhausts what can be said of the immanent
    trinity.
    Apart from the creative act & divine energeia, which reveal an extrinsic, relational,
    trinitarian divine esse intentionale ...
    we can attribute nothing determinate, intrinsically or essentially, to the trinitarian
    divine esse naturale in its aseity.
    While being, reality & existence refer to creatures, only being & reality refer to the
    Creator, a non-existent.
    The divine esse naturale (intrinsic, essential being of God) remains trans-formally
    distinct from the divine esse intentionale (extrinsic, relational reality of God).
    I thus eisegetically adapt Neville's creatio ex nihilo & Yong's pneumatology in my own
    meta-heuristic.
    Robert Cummings Neville's __God the Creator: On the Transcendence and
    Presence of God__ & Amos Yong's __Discerning the Spirit(s): A Pentecostal-
    Charismatic Contribution to Christian Theology of Religions__
    Truly Apophatic Negations of Divine Being
    I prefer the prefix non- for apophatic negations that refer to divine being, essence or
    esse naturale, & trans- to refer to divine reality, energies or esse intentionale, eg. non- vs
    trans-in/determinate, modal, analogical, formal, etc b/c non-
    better conveys that I have no idea!
    The above refer, respectively, to the Peircean, Palamitic & Neo-Classical distinctions.
    An Equiplausibility Principle to Adjudicate the
    Existential Actionability of a Practical Reasoning Under
    Uncertainty
    Regarding being, reality & existence, interpretations (mostly emergentist) of everything,
    TOE’s, turn on various presuppositions or priors:
    Mereological – whole/part relations
    Methodological – principle of reason
    Metaphysical – root metaphor
    From those presuppositions, we can formulate all sorts of equiplausible interpretations.
    Generally, those compete favorably with each other to compel our attention & persuade
    our intellect.
    Not all are equally inviting, transformatively, or inspiring, morally, because some just
    aren’t at all engaging, evaluatively, to most people.
    Beyond an equiplausible epistemic warrant, the existential actionability of such
    interpretations will turn on normative justifications for practical reasoning under
    uncertainty ...
    employing equiplausibility principles like choosing to act as if the most life-giving &
    relationship-enhancing response will best lead us to – not only the best way & life, but -
    the truth.
    We choose like this in our quotidian affairs regarding our proximate concerns & can
    defensibly justify doing so regarding our ultimate concerns.
    Reconciling Origen & Bulgakov’s Eternal Creation with
    Athanasius & Lossky’s Creation In Time
    Bulgakov seems to echo Origen regarding eternal creation, but Lossky - Athanasius,
    who deemed creation in time from God's will rather than nature.
    Related to distinctions of Norris Clarke: esse naturale v intentionale & Palamas: essence
    v energies.
    Catherine Keller's tehomic panentheism via creatio ex profundis makes sense to me as
    an eternal act, where the order of existence was the formless void of Genesis.
    CS Peirce affirms the atemporal Reality of God, where Being > Reality > Existence,
    denying God's an existent. To that being:reality distinction, I impute
    naturale:intentionale & essence:energy distinctions.
    The Reality of God would freely proceed as energeia, per divine will, diffusing the
    tehom's substrative forms w/divinizing finalities, that they may participate imitatively.
    Eternal creatio ex profundis & an in-time creatio continua preserve divine
    transcendence without sacrificing an intimate relationality, integral to a more robustly
    personalistic theology. (I'm trying to reconcile these approaches in resonance w/some
    of Staniloae's intuitions.)
    Notes:
    Re: exemplary or imaginal causes, debates arise as to whether they reduce to formal,
    final or even efficient causes. Some even include them as a 5th cause (material causation
    the only one not already mentioned here). In determinate reality, w/a an irreducibly
    triadic modal ontology, where existence, efficient & formal causes are acts, & essence,
    material & final causes are potencies, & where modal probabilities map to formal
    distinctions, this integral irreducibility of properties, haecceities & relations might
    account for such confusion? I point out such confusion b/c, for some theologians,
    exemplars, exemplarity & exemplarism in God are central. And if confusion reigns re
    same in created realities ... Once adopted, though, a symphonic harmony of integrally
    related, inseparable dynamics ensue, like, for example, generation, creation, emanation,
    communication, incarnation, manifestation, participation, consummation, etc, which
    similarly will evoke various notions of causation (e.g. efficient, final & exemplary). The
    identity of manifold uncreated exemplars w/ the divine essence preserves simplicity as
    they're non-beings, known but not real. As for created beings, they're cognized by God's
    cognizing Himself as their Cause. His creating the cosmos, as an accidental Cambridge
    property, is compatible w/simplicity. It's also compatible w/an infinitely non-compelled
    act, i.e. w/freedom as apophatically predicated, guaranteeing its logical consistency
    w/other God-conceptions, ergo, a trans-freedom (non-anthropomorphic quality). I lean
    toward the stance of Bulgakov, who seems to echo Origen regarding eternal creation,
    though sympathetic to Lossky, too, who followed Athanasius in deeming creation in
    time as from God’s will rather than nature. But, where was I when the morning stars
    sang together?
    A Systematic Theology of the Contemplative Stance –
    toward a Polydoxic, Pneumatological Missiology
    A contemplative posture orients one's disposition toward reality more than it offers
    propositions about reality. It more so norms "how" we see and less so describes "what"
    we see.
    Contemplation effects metanoia, which includes intellectual, affective, moral, social and
    religious conversions. While these conversion dynamics are distinct from developmental
    growth mechanisms (for example, as described by Piaget, Maslow , Kohlberg, Erikson
    and Fowler, et al), they are not unrelated as they do foster those processes.
    The conversions gift us horizon-situated dispositions, which
    1) open our perceptions via an awareness that there's more to any given reality than our
    own thoughts can suggest; via logos;
    2) open our minds to recognize the intelligence on display in other interpretations of any
    given reality outside of our own social and political circles; via topos;
    3) open our souls by expanding what's reasonable to expect regarding any given reality
    beyond what our own feelings might suggest; via pathos;
    4) open our hands by enlarging our sense of responsibility toward any given reality
    beyond our own moral and practical concerns; via ethos;
    and
    5) open our hearts to being in love with and beloved by God, others, the cosmos and
    even one's self; via mythos.
    See: Contemplative Being, Believing, Belonging, Desiring, Behaving & Becoming
    These conversions gift us with what Lonergan described as human authenticity, when
    he articulated his transcendental imperatives: be aware, be reasonable, be responsible
    and be intelligent.
    Still, what theorists like Lonergan, Maslow, Gerald May, Viktor Frankl and others all
    eventually came to understand was that self-actualization was in fact a by-product of
    self-transcendence (not the end-product of self-interested strivings). Any pursuits of
    self-actualization, authenticity, Enlightenment and such for their own sakes, i.e. as
    sought after end-products, would be self-defeating, frustrating their own realizations.
    Any who would aspire to be aware, reasonable, responsible and intelligent --- would best
    realize those values by, first, being in love!
    Without following the imperative to be in love, one could not realize sustained
    authenticity. Without seeking Enlightenment out of solidarity and compassion, rather
    than for one's own sake, Enlightenment would forever elude one.
    The contemplative stance, then, while mostly dispositional, does entail one universal,
    even if vague, propositional posit, which is that reality's origin and end, being and
    essence, value and appeal, meaning and purpose, is love.
    Thus contemplation, as entailed in the spiritual practices, asceticisms and disciplines
    across traditions, expresses a singular, orthodoxic, soteriological trajectory. This
    orientation goes beyond the norms of authenticity or of a suitable epistemic humility,
    dis-positionally, to also include, pro-positionally, a belief that reality is robustly
    relational. It warrants an existentially actionable interpretation that, wholly and
    thoroughly beloved, we simply must be loving. (As the children sing why they love
    Jesus ... because He first loved me).
    In many cases, through interreligious dialogue, we are discovering that, beyond this
    singular, shared, orthodoxic, soteriological trajectory, the great traditions and
    indigenous religions will otherwise diverge with pluralist, diverse, polydoxic,
    sophiological trajectories, which, more simply put, correspond to different ways of
    being in love with different aspects of reality, including God, others, self and cosmos.
    This is to recognize that, in many ways, as we move beyond the vaguely spiritual to
    embrace more specific religious paths, it will not necessarily entail competing
    interpretations of reality but only complementary approaches to reality, which can be
    variously more inchoate or developed, more or less inclusive, variously emphasizing our
    unitary being or our unitive strivings, more or less suited to foster conversions and to
    sustain authenticity, more or less perfectly articulating truth, enjoying comm-unity,
    celebrating beauty, preserving goodness and growing freedom & love. I mean to say all
    of that in full consonance with Pope Paul VI's proclamation, Nostra Aetate.
    When institutionalized religions fail in fostering conversions and in sustaining
    authenticity, many followers will, understandably, retreat into a spiritual but not
    religious stance. When religions are at their best, though, well, we "see how they love
    one another" as they foster open minds, open hearts and open hands!
    And we see where the quest, itself, becomes our grail; the risks of faith, hope and love,
    themselves, become our rewards; the journey, itself, becomes our destination; the
    spiritual process, itself, becomes our transformational product; the next good step
    becomes the entire recovery program; the commitment, itself, becomes our outcome;
    the prayer and sitting, themselves, become our consolation.
    Life's highest goods, alone, can thus be enjoyed without moderation, as the pursuits of
    truth, unity, beauty, goodness and freedom are, intrinsically, their own rewards. The
    contemplative stance embodies that real-ization. Good religion enhances it.
    In science, faith & quotidian life, epistemic virtues should first vault our speculative
    claims over the threshold of equiplausibility, where we can normatively adjudicate any
    competing responses using the principles of reasoning under uncertainty.
    The hermeneutical spiral, above, recapitulates Lonergan's transcendental imperatives &
    functional specialties.
    See: https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/contemplative-being-
    behaving-believing-belonging-desiring-becoming-an-outline-of-foundations/
    To wit:
    De-liberatively, regarding our references, descriptively & interpretively, epistemic
    virtues should first vault our speculative claims over the threshold of equiplausibility,
    where we can adjudicate, normatively, any competing responses, using the principles of
    reasoning under uncertainty, evaluatively.
    De-liberatively (cosmos & mythos – be free, be loving, be-loved per both temporal &
    ultimate teloi) …
    regarding our references …
    descriptively (logos or perception - be aware in research & communications) & …
    interpretively (topos or understanding – be intelligent in interpretation & systematics)
    …
    epistemic virtues should first vault our speculative claims over the threshold of
    equiplausibility, where we can adjudicate …
    normatively (ethos or acting - be responsible in dialectics & foundations), any
    competing responses, using the principles of reasoning under uncertainty …
    evaluatively,(pathos or judging & deciding – be reasonable in history & doctrines).
    I must stipulate with Hart & Milbank that any rivalry between ultimate worldviews, say
    nihilist vs theological, cannot be logically coerced. Reality remains far too ambiguous for
    us & way too ambivalent toward us to compel belief through speculative reason, alone.
    With the Thomists, I would insist that, even stipulating that nihilism has not thus been
    refuted, philosophy well demonstrates the reasonableness of natural theology as an
    equiplausible competing worldview.

    For me, Thomism’s reasonableness remains indispensable over against any


    thoroughgoing fideism, much less, nominalism, idealism, voluntarism or relativism.
    I do not receive Milbank as coming from some Thoroughly [Post]Modern Millie, but,
    instead, take (eisegetically) his postmodern critique as an admonition to avoid the
    temptations of dueling hyper-formalisms in countering those insidious -isms.
    This is to recognize that ---
    no essentialistic framing will finally foreclose nominalism, descriptively;
    no naïve realism will convincingly defeat idealism, interpretively;
    no intellectualistic speculation will logically overcome voluntarism, evaluatively;
    no absolutistic insistence will compellingly obviate relativism, normatively; and
    no rationalistic appeals will definitively refute fideism, existentially.
    But what amount to epistemic misfires for some are but caricatures for others, whose
    1) descriptive probes include semiotic & moderate critical realisms;
    2) interpretive heuristics employ a metaphysical fallibilism;
    3) evaluative dispositions engage an irreducible triad of logos-pathos-ethos, e.g.
    Aristotelian eudaimonia, Augustinian beatitudo or Thomist summum bonum;
    4) normative propositions allow some degree of ethical pluralism grounded – not in an
    insidious relativism or vulgar pragmatism, but --- suitable epistemic humility,
    metaphysical fallibilism & moral probabilism ; and
    5) philosophical preambula vault fidei past the threshold of equiplausibility.
    Thomism’s reasonableness thus gets vaulted philosophically past the threshold of
    equiplausibility by the valid & coherent arguments of natural theology & natural law.
    (And its deontological conclusions should be considered at least as modest as its
    ontological commitments are tentative). There, philosophy culminates in either the
    theological preambula fidei & its general precepts or a nihilistic cosmogony.
    Any "competing" theological or nihilistic mythos would come after a normatively
    justified existential leap.
    Past this threshold of epistemic warrant, speculative reason yields to practical
    reasoning under uncertainty. The speculative arguments between essentialism &
    nominalism, realism & idealism, intellectualism & voluntarism, absolutism & relativism
    and fideism & rationalism have previously been transcended by a fallibilist, critical
    realism.
    Normative justifications commence and can lead either to the fideistic, voluntaristic
    dichotomy of a theological versus nihilistic mythos or to an existential disjunction,
    where rational equiplausibility principles, albeit often implicit, adjudicate a decision to
    “live as if” that which is (more so, perhaps, they who are) the most life-giving &
    relationship-enhancing, the most beautiful & good, the most unitive & liberative, will ---
    first & proleptically, i.e. proximately & temporally, as well as eventually &
    eschatologically, i.e. ultimately & eternally --- also happen to be the most true.
    This constitutes meta-discourse, however inchoate or implicit, whether
    variously held provisionally or confidently, yes, prior to special
    revelations, and yes, on tradition-transcendent grounds. Importantly,
    this needn't be formal discourse or what can sometimes devolve into sylly
    syllogisms, but more often, via our participatory imaginations, comes from
    our common sense & common sensibilities, from connaturality, an illative
    sense, a tacit dimension, intuitions & informal abductions.
    The most problematical arguments of natural theology are rationalistically grounded in
    naïve rather than critical realisms. The most problematical arguments of the natural law
    are a prioristic, rationalistic, deductivistic, biologistic, physicalistic & infallibilistic,
    especially as they move from general precepts to specific concrete norms, particularly
    because of epistemic hubris and the lack of a more inductive, personalist relationality-
    responsibility approach. But the abuse of natural theology & natural law is no argument
    against their proper use.
    The questions that beg?
    What constitutes the most life-giving, existentially?
    How do we define & measure the most relationship-enhancing? The most unitive,
    interpretively & orthocommunally?
    Where's the most beautiful instantiated, evaluatively & orthopathically?
    And the most good realized, normatively & orthopraxically?
    And the most liberative, metanoetically & orthotheotically?
    These are not questions that yield to an armchair cognitive map-making but which
    must actively engage participative imaginations that are naturally embodied,
    historically situated, socially embedded, culturally bound, politically immersed &
    transcendentally horizoned.
    Of course it's incredibly problematical to apply our ortho-metrics to competing
    worldviews, precisely because their instantiations are so very particular & traditioned.
    But I wouldn't want to defend the notion that nihilism remains in that
    competition?
    Finally, Between an overly pessimistic Augustinian interpretation & overly optimistic
    transcendental Thomism, perhaps a Goldilocks theological anthropology can be
    articulated:
    /https://opcentral.org/resources/2015/01/12/donald-l-gelpi-two-spiritual-paths-
    thematic-grace-vs-transmuting-grace-part-1/
    https://opcentral.org/resources/2015/01/12/donald-l-gelpi-two-spiritual-paths-
    thematic-grace-vs-transmuting-grace-part-ii/
    Gelpi recognized both as donative realities - a gratuity of creation & gratuity of
    grace, the Spirit's universal presence (e.g. nomicities) & particular presence, where
    Grace is mediated via transmuted experience, where, for example, Kerygma matter
    immensely.
    This discussion continues here:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/15/augustinians-
    thomists-nature-grace-politics-religion/
    Where in the World is Sophia? ---a Sophiological footnoteThe
    created grace Gelpi refers to would be constituted by reality's actualized
    potencies, eternalized teloi (both temporal & ultimate teloi) of Peircean
    thirdness, efficient materialities of secondness, connaturalized
    indeterminacies of firstness, existentialized essences, formalized finalities,
    participatory intimacizations eternalized, all temporal realities coaxed
    forth Pneumatologically, Christologically & Paterologically via Divine
    Energies as would account for effects as would be proper to no known
    causes.
    Every trace of human goodness, for example, eternalized, i.e.
    every beginning of a smile & all wholesome trivialities!
    Whether interpreted in Platonic, Neoplatonic, Aristotelian, Thomist,
    Scotist, Palamitic or Peircean categories (and I cross hermeneutical
    bridges between them all), collectively & dynamically, these cumulative
    actualized potencies or eternally realized divine teloi may represent
    Sophia, who participates in the Divine Energies in a perichoretic Divine
    Dance.
    In The Wisdom of God, Bulgakov spoke of two Sophias, one created and
    the other uncreated. She to whom I refer above would be the created
    Sophia in her participatedness. While I affirm the Divine Energies per a
    formal distinction, I must defer to others regarding the manner of viewing
    Sophia in Orthodoxy. And still wonder just how we might best account for
    ecstatic visions of Sophia.
    See more re this theophany:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/14/essential-
    theophanic-putative-theo-ontological-aspects-of-human-divine-relations/
    FINAL NOTE:
    This body of work largely comprises my project, which I refer to as Pan-
    semio-entheism, because, as a systematic theology, while it is
    metaphysically realist, it prescinds from any given metaphysical root
    metaphor (substance, relational, process, experience, etc) to a
    phenomenological meta-heuristic.
    See: Amos Yong With John Sobert Sylvest, “Reasons and Values of the Heart in a
    Pluralistic World: Toward a Contemplative Phenomenology for Interreligious
    Dialogue,” Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 20:2 (2010): 170-93
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/contemplative-being-behaving-
    believing-belonging-desiring-becoming-an-outline-of-foundations/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/mapping-metaphysical-
    distinctions-aristotelian-thomist-peircean/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2016/12/09/morrells-4-d-imax-rohrian-
    perichoretic-adventure/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/divine-dance-rohr-morrell-
    panikkar-oh-my/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/%e2%80%8bfrom-
    ontotheological-trinito-logical-is-ness-to-theopoetic-trinito-phanic-dance-ness-yes/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/perichoresis-as-vehicle-
    negativa-in-rohrs-divine-dance-a-trinito-phany-in-continuity-with-orthodox-trinito-
    logy/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/the-trans-formal-distinction-
    between-the-divine-essence-energies/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/epistemic-distance-the-greatest-
    good-as-divinely-willed-ends-in-an-anti-theodicy/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/maritain-murray-macintyre-
    milbank-a-medieval-integralist-walk-into-a-bar/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/07/10/a-semiotic-phenomenology-
    toward-a-more-ecumenical-trinitology-and-trinitophany/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/freedom-from-aquinas-to-
    modern-emergentist-semiotics/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/04/a-defense-of-metaphysics-to-
    be-or-not-to-be-or-to-e-prime-or-not/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/07/truth-broadly-conceived/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/the-pre-political-grounding-of-
    both-liberal-illiberal-regimes/
    The architectonic set forth herein suggests philosophical norms & theological heuristics,
    the contours within which I methodologically approach systematic theology,
    comparative theology & Gospel inculturation.
    With this pan-semio-entheism, I aspire to develop a polydoxic, pneumatological
    missiology for the planting of ecclesial gatherings that will invite, orient, unify, sanctify,
    heal, nurture, liberate & send forth dual-practitioners & even multiple-belongers.
    Anthropos
    We must resist an under-estimation of the significance of special revelation in growing
    humanity's orientation to God, as it allows persons to move more swiftly & with less
    hindrance on their journeys, realizing both temporal & ultimate teloi.
    We must also resist either an over- or under-estimation (of an extreme intrinsicism or
    extrinsicism) of humanity's dynamic orientation to God & moral reality via natural
    theology & natural law.
    Even among the intrinsicists of the Nouvelle Theologie, the blurring of distinctions
    between nature & grace didn't remove anthropological tensions regarding the realities of
    sin & ecclesial accommodations to the world.
    While the intrinsicists all agree in principle that we can discern what's “common and
    accessible to all” and gradually move forward to the “highest data of theology,” some
    Thomists & Augustinians otherwise diverged precisely along the grounds for
    anthropological optimism & pessimism vis a vis both sin & worldly accommodations.
    See:
    Brandon Peterson, Critical Voices: The Reactions of Rahner and Ratzinger to 'Schema
    XIII' (Gaudium et Spes)
    Peterson quotes a post-conciliar interview of Rahner: I would say that the
    dangers of a false adaptation of the Church to the modern world, or of
    falling into a purely secular humanism —which are real dangers in the
    Church’s attempt to open itself outwards to the modern world can invite as
    a defensive reaction the opposite danger, namely, to turn inwards and to
    make the Church a closed sect. Theology must help the preacher preach
    the gospel in such a way that it can really be understood and assimilated
    today; and theology also has a critical function in preventing the Church in
    its preaching or in its practice from becoming a ghetto or a sect within the
    contemporary world.
    Peterson concludes: Christocentrism, anthropological methodology, and
    critical openness to the world stand in a creative tension which marks
    Gaudium et Spes itself, a tension which we must not relax if we are to be
    faithful heirs to this landmark council. For such a tension is an essential
    part of a theological approach which, executed properly, can proclaim the
    Gospel to a world that not only needs it, but needs to understand it.
    How might we best exploit these creative tensions?
    Reality emerges & gifts entities that present with different kinds of “aboutness” that
    suggest degrees of ontological density but which don't definitively reveal metaphysical
    natures.
    An emergentist heuristic might refer to these “aboutnesses” in terms of different degrees
    of telic influence.
    • 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.
    In this profusely pneumatological reality, divine interactivity gifts the Spirit's
    universalized presence via creatio continua, consistent with the Thomistic aphorism -
    “Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur.” This means that “whatever is
    received, is received according to the mode of the receiver.”
    All reality participates, constitutively & relationally, responding to various formal &
    formative divine promptings of divine esse intentionale & energies, each entity
    according to its given telic modes.
    Human persons interact with the Spirit's universalized presence, constituted by &
    engaging in all of the above-listed modes of aboutness, but uniquely, as reality's only
    sapiopoietic creature, via a teleological mode, in a robustly intentional way.
    The sapiopoietic nature of human persons equips them to also interact with the Spirit's
    particularized presence in special revelation.
    Per Aquinas in the ST: It is befitting Holy Writ to put forward divine and
    spiritual truths by means of comparisons with material things. For God
    provides for everything according to the capacity of its nature. Now it is
    natural to man to attain to intellectual truths through sensible objects,
    because all our knowledge originates from sense. Hence in Holy Writ,
    spiritual truths are fittingly taught under the likeness of material things.
    This is what Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. i): "We cannot be enlightened by
    the divine rays except they be hidden within the covering of many sacred
    veils." It is also befitting Holy Writ, which is proposed to all without
    distinction of persons — "To the wise and to the unwise I am a debtor"
    (Romans 1:14) — that spiritual truths be expounded by means of figures
    taken from corporeal things, in order that thereby even the simple who are
    unable by themselves to grasp intellectual things may be able to
    understand it.
    Per Don Gelpi S.J.’s anthropology:
    In an “experiential approach to human nature, any given human mind
    may or may not be oriented dynamically to God. Rather, each self must
    acquire such an orientation, either by fixing its personal beliefs on purely
    rational motives concerning the reality and nature of God, or by
    responding positively and graciously in faith to some event of divine self-
    revelation.”
    The gratuity of creation, experienced by human persons as they interact with the Spirit's
    universalized presence, can foster a rationally acquired dynamical orientation to God,
    gifting an awareness of & cultivating an aretaical disposition toward both temporal &
    ultimate teloi. It can thus foster – not only the secular conversions (intellectual,
    affective, moral & sociopolitical), but – an authentic theocentric religious conversion,
    which, while variously implicit & inchoate, cooperates with the obediential potencies
    formed by secular conversions.
    The gratuity of grace, experienced by human persons as they interact with the Spirit's
    particularized presence, can foster a dynamic reorientation of the self to God, if it
    responds positively and graciously in faith to some event of divine self-revelation.
    If this dynamic reorientation of the self results from a response in faith to a particular
    divine self-disclosure, whether initially or subsequent to a previous reorientation
    fostered by the gratuity of creation, it constitutes an infusion of supernatural grace via
    the gratuity of grace.
    Per Gelpi, supernatural grace “transmutes experience by endowing it with a new
    capacity to relate to God both correlative to God’s free act of self-disclosure and
    impossible apart from that self-revelation.”
    A theocentric religious conversion orients a person via Lonergan's transcendental
    imperatives as – beyond, temporally, being aware, intelligent, reasonable, responsible &
    in love with others, cosmos & even self – it also invites one into a relationship with a
    donative ultimate reality, much like Pip in Great Expectations as he related to his
    unknown benefactor or, perhaps, as Ralph McInerny put it, like characters in search of
    their Author. This represents the essential, orthodoxic, soteriological trajectory of the
    world's great traditions & indigenous religions.
    Consistent with Nostra Aetate, concerning the relationship of the church to non-
    Christian religions, in addition to that essential soteriological trajectory, various
    traditions & religions may otherwise diverge to various degrees in their polydoxic,
    sophiological trajectories, whereby persons grow in intimacy (theosis) with God.
    See:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/%e2%80%8bwhat-the-
    contemplative-stance-means-to-me/
    This is the Goldilocks anthropology that best exploits the creative tensions of the
    Nouvelle Theologie, which, when properly engaged, successfully sidesteps any sterile
    Neo-Scholasticism, transcendental Thomism or Augustinian radicalism.
    Special Revelation clarifies what would otherwise remain indistinct in the logos of
    General Revelation.
    First, in the order of logos:
    Determinacies
    We disambiguate ambiguities & define in/definite actualities, which are determinacies
    (in/definitive) that correspond to referenced or defined entities.
    Indeterminacies
    In/determinacies (in/determinable & in/determined) refer to generalities (probabilities
    & necessities) and vagueness (possibilities).
    We determine in/determinacies by delimiting vague possibilities & specifying
    generalities, i.e. probabilities & necessities.
    Beyond a mere propositional translation process (via our cognitive map-making)
    between noetic aspects of general & special revelations, as we move from natural to
    revealed theology or even between revealed traditions ...
    We must also engage in
    dispositional interpretations (via the inhabitations of our participatory imaginations) of
    culturally embodied unitive, aesthetic, ethical & liberative norms, if we are to adequately
    appropriate the theological idioms required for our Gospel inculturation.
    Then, beyond logos:
    Beyond a creedal logos, we need participatory immersion in revelation's other integral
    aspects: communal (topos), liturgical & devotional (pathos), moral (ethos) and ascetical
    & mystical (mythos).
    Natural Theology shouldn't be conceived in strictly logocentric terms, for even a
    theocentric religious conversion in the gratuity of creation, however inchoate, indistinct
    or implicit, propositionally, will dispositionally gift, both personally & culturally,
    embodied relationships to truth, unity, beauty, goodness & freedom.
    As one cooperates with prevenient graces & obediential potencies via General
    Revelation, while these propositional & dispositional embodiments remain confused,
    imperfect & indistinct, due to the indirect nature of one's knowledge of God, they reflect
    authentic existential orientations to the transcendental imperatives directly known via
    Special Revelation in the gratuity of grace.
    To wit: https://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles3a.htm#25
    Since all creatures, even those devoid of understanding, are ordered to
    God as to an ultimate end, all achieve this end to the extent that they
    participate somewhat in His likeness. Intellectual creatures attain it in a
    more special way, that is, through their proper operation of understanding
    Him. Hence, this must be the end of the intellectual creature, namely, to
    understand God.
    Below are accounts of secular & religious conversions.
    The architectonic, below, represents a hermenetical spiral, which proceeds successively
    & transformatively (via a divine gratuity of creation) through a cosmic, temporal
    chronos of logos, topos, pathos & ethos to a divine encounter with a mythic, eternal,
    kairos, whereupon, given a prevenient, obediential potency, a novel, foundational meta-
    ethos will donatively (via a divine gratuity of grace) emerge to thereafter norm, in
    reverse succession, the transformative dynamics of a doctrinal meta-pathos, systematic
    meta-topos & pastoral meta-logos.
    This spiral presents, wholistically, in the overall soteriological trajectories of each
    transformative journey. It is also recapitulated, holonically, in every discrete axiological
    trajectory of each individual value-realization.
    RIGHT BEING - PRESENCE
    COSMOS of PENTAPARTITE ANTHROPOLOGY
    GIFTED – authentic value-realizers - kairos of imago dei & chronos of cosmic evolution;
    an interpreting subject of a micro-cosmic mereological reality
     Intellectual – be aware
     Social – be intelligent
     Affective – be reasonable
     Moral & Practical – be responsible
     Religious – be in love
    RIGHT BELIEVING - WORD BROKEN OPEN
    LOGOS of PENTADIC METAPHYSICS & ONTOLOGY (WORD)
    GIVENS – orthodoxic phenomenology of objects of interpretation, sacred kairos &
    secular chronos; secondness
     Unitary Being as Intraobjective Identity
     Unitive Striving as Intersubjective Intimacy
     Unified Self as Intrasubjective Integrity
     Ultimate Unicity as Interobjective Indeterminacy
     Ens Necessarium as Transjective Necessity
    RIGHT BELONGING - COVENANT & PEOPLE GATHERED IN THANKSGIVING
    TOPOS of PENTAPRAGMATIC COMMUNITY & MISSIOLOGY
    THANKSGIVING – orthocommunal contexts & Eucharistic communities of
    interpretation (sacred kairos & secular chronos)
     Eschatological - historical & scientific as ordered by & to truth; Spirit-oriented
     Ecclesiological – sociological as ordered by & to unity; Spirit-empowered
     Soteriological - arts, humanities & cultural as ordered by & to beauty; Spirit-sanctified or
    dedicated
     Sacramental - economical & philosophical as ordered by & to goodness; Spirit-healed &
    nurtured
     Sophiological – political as ordered by & to freedom; Spirit-saved
    Beyond the mere propositional translations (via cognitive map-making), engaged
    dispositional interpretations (via inhabitations of participatory imaginations) of
    culturally embodied noetic, aesthetic, ethical, unitive & liberative norms will reveal the
    theological idioms necessary for Gospel inculturation.
    RIGHT DESIRING - ANAMNESIS & MEMORIAL
    PATHOS of PENTALECTICAL AXIOLOGY
    GIFTS – orthopathic value-realizations of proleptic kairos & evolutionary chronos;
    firstness & the primacy of esthetic interpretion
     Truth
     Unity
     Beauty
     Goodness
     Freedom
    RIGHT BEHAVING - ITE, MISSA EST
    ETHOS of PENTALOGICAL EPISTEMOLOGY (SPIRIT)
    RECEIVING – orthopraxic value-pursuits through acts of interpretation, sacred &
    secular, pneumatological (kairos) & participatory imagination (chronos); thirdness
     Descriptive
     Interpretive
     Evaluative
     Normative
     Contemplative
    RIGHT BECOMING - MEAL - You are what you eat!
    MYTHOS of PENTATARIAN THEOLOGY
    GIVER - orthotheotic participations - theological manifestations as invitations from
    image to likeness for we are the Body of Christ indwelled by the Trinity & participating
    in the Divine Dance; interpreting subjects of a macro-cosmic mereological reality
     Jesusology & Epiphany
     Trinitology & Trinitophany
     Paterology & Theophany
     Pneumatology & Pneumatophany
     Christology & Christophany
    DIVINE PROVISIONINGS & GRATUITIES
    Gratuity of Creation – the divine provisioning of co/operative connaturality, where
    humanization & socialization lead to authenticity via 1) secular conversions (w/inchoate
    grasp of natural law) and intimacization leads to sustained authenticity via 2) kenotic
    conversions (w/kenotic relational dynamics of temporal ends).
    Gratuity of Grace - divine provisioning of co/operative grace, where deification leads to
    transformative realizations via 3) religious conversions (w/polydoxic relational
    dynamics & inchoate grasp of natural theology) and christianization leads to
    transformative fruition of eternal ends via 4) theotic conversions (w/beatitudinal &
    beatific realizations).
    There’s a progressive realization of virtues, as one’s experiences are transmuted by
    cooperation w/the Holy Breath, w/decreasing risks of perverted ends, whether temporal
    or eternal.
    Sophia effected by Divine Energies will express immanent & divine entelechies (via
    various teloi) in the gratuities of creation & grace, in universal & particularized
    instances.
    CONVERSIONS
    I. Natural Conversions – intellectual, social, affective & moral
    A. descriptive - research/experiential perception – logos
    B. interpretive - interpretation/intelligent understanding - topos
    C. evaluative - history/judging – deciding - pathos
    vital options
    D. normative - dialectics/responsible acting - ethos
    forced options –
    II. Authenticity & Self-Transcendence - cosmos (self, others & world) via Spirit's
    universal ordinary presence in the gratuity of creation (obediential potencies;
    prevenient/operative & cooperative connaturality). This gratuity involves the divine
    provisioning of temporal ends proportionate to Aristotle's virtues of truth, beauty,
    goodness & unity (via humility) through operative (prevenient) & cooperative
    connaturality.
    normative - foundations
    live options - polydoxy
    existential leaps
    III. Religious Conversion – mythos (meta-cosmos or ultimate reality) via Spirit's
    particularity & extraordinary presence in the gratuity of grace (response to special
    revelations via prevenient/operative & cooperative graces). This gratuity involves the
    divine provisioning of eternal ends (meta-ethos) proportionate to Aquinas' theological
    virtues of faith, hope, love & unity (via communal oneness ) through operative
    (prevenient) & cooperative grace.
    A. evaluative - doctrines (meta-pathos)
    existential landings
    B. interpretive - systematics (meta-topos)
    theology of nature
    C. descriptive - communications (meta-logos)
    Gospel inculturation & moral enculturation
    Regarding Philosophical & Theological Distinctions
    A distinction is not truly philosophical if it hasn't been discerned to make a difference,
    existentially, helping one realize one's true temporal ends. And it's not truly theological
    if it hasn't been discerned to make an existential difference, helping one realize one's
    true eternal ends.
    One can only authentically become fully human by realizing our divinely ordained
    temporal & eternal ends.
    An anthropology may properly relate the perinoetic|empirical, dianoetic|logical,
    diastemic|aporetic, ananoetic|metaphysical, epinoetic|apophatic & kinetic|dynamical
    aspects of our human episteme, yet, without an holistic integration with the
    METANOETIC|transformative reality of human BECOMING, it's not robustly
    philosophical, much less theological.
    Note:
    If taken beyond methodological stipulations to metaphysical presuppositions, beliefs in
    sufficient reason/causation & reality's intelligibility will ontologically reduce to theism.
    Beyond that, dynamical questions re reality's immanent & transcendent entelechies may
    beg.
    One's metaphysical stances, sometimes implicit, toward any of a wide variety of
    interpretations of various origins (e.g. field, cosmic, quantum, life, sentience, language)
    may often then implicate: pan-, panen-, pan-en-, open or classical theism, deism or
    theistic personalism.
    Architectonic of Divine Gratuity
    Orthodoxic Path: Gratuity of Creation
    Polydoxic Path: Gratuity of Grace
    Theotic Path: Gratuity of Grace
    Architectonic of Participatory Divine Gratuities
    The apparent tension between divine simplicity & divine freedom results from the
    conflation of two distinct categories, the metaphysical & existential with the
    nonmetaphysical & quidditative.
    Especially Cf. The Formulation of Thomistic Simplicity: Mapping Aquinas’s Method for
    Configuring God’s Essence, JETS 57/2 (June 2014): 371–403.
    Other aporia remain but are located elsewhere.
    We successfully reference God, metaphysically, only apophatically, e.g. divine simplicity
    & ousia, abducting THAT God is, existentially.
    We successfully reference God, personally, per special revelation, variously employing
    kataphasis, apophasis, doxology, etc, inductively experiencing WHO God is,
    quidditatively, e.g. divine aseity & energeiai.
    Revelatory references employ common sense rhetoric with ontological implications but
    not always strict metaphysical categories & predications, which, at any rate, wouldn’t, in
    principle, lend themselves to anything but apophatic, existential – not quidditative,
    essential – metaphysics. Logical consistency not subject to parody in modal ontological
    arguments requires apophatic predication.
    That’s why I insist, for example, on labeling the essence-energies distinction as trans-
    formal.
    Analogical predications of God exert much more normative leverage on our embodied
    dispositions – aesthetically, morally & relationally – as we participate in reality’s excess
    of meaning, making appropriate (e.g. Eucharistic) responses to ultimate reality via myth
    & storytelling, which aren’t always completely true, literally, or robustly effective,
    analogically, i.e. they exert little descriptive leverage on our abstract propositions or
    deductive argumentations.
    I would thus urge any reference to a putative analogical god-talk to be restated as trans-
    analogical.
    We judge that the Reality of God will somehow, ultimately, make existence far less
    ambiguous for, & ambivalent toward, us in ways we can neither prove nor fully express,
    because …
    proleptically, we have participated through, with & in One, Who has loved us, Whose
    Spirit has gifted us first fruits, an earnest, a guarantee, a down payment, a seal, a
    promise, a confident assurance in things hoped for & conviction of glories unseen.
    How, precisely, might we avoid a Spinozan modal collapse?
    In my own Peirce-like modal ontology, first, we distinguish determinacies &
    indeterminacies. [1]
    For determinacies, we must disambiguate any ambiguities (univocal, equivocal,
    analogical, apophatic, etc) & define any in/definite actualities, which are determinacies
    (in/definitive) that can correspond to vaguely referenced or robustly described entities.
    In/determinacies (in/determinable & in/determined) refer to generalities(probabilities
    & necessities) and vagueness (possibilities). We determine in/determinacies by
    delimiting vague possibilities & specifying generalities, i.e. probabilities & necessities.
    Next, we distinguish possibilities, actualities & probabilities in terms of Aristotelian
    causation.
    A distinction may be real vs conceptual (re logical or virtual). Real distinctions can
    include modal distinctions (re temporality or adequacy).
    Modal temporality can include a formal or metaphysically real distinction. This maps,
    somewhat, to both Scotus’ formal distinction & Peirce’s category of thirdness or 3ns.
    Modal temporality as applied to Peircean categories can variously map to causes, where
    for:
    2ns or actualities, where noncontradiction [PNC] & excluded middle [PEM] hold and
    act maps to efficient & potency to material causes;
    3ns or regularities, where PNC holds but PEM folds and act maps to formal & potency
    to final causes;
    1ns or possibilities, where PNC folds & PEM holds and act maps to our embodied
    connaturalities and potency to their indeterminacies.
    Other real distinctions would include:
    Existential
    act – existence
    potency – essence
    Modal Adequacy
    in/finite
    whole/part or mereological
    Real vs Conceptual (re logical or virtual).
    Real distinctions include modal distinctions re temporality (above) or adequacy
    (in/finite or whole/part = mereological). Modal temporality includes a formal or
    metaphysically real distinction (PNC holds, PEM folds).
    It could map like this:
    Modal temporality can be applied to Peircean categories as mapped to causes, where for:
    actualities, act –> efficient & potency –> material;
    regularities, act -> formal; potency –> final.
    existentially, act -> existence; potency -> essence.
    Finally, we distinguish with Peirce, reality from existence. Gary E. Kessler describes
    Peirce’s distinction:
    Reality is a broader term that encompasses what exists but is not
    synonymous with it. For something to be real it must have properties
    sufficient to identify it whether anyone attributes those properties to it or
    not. The existent, strictly speaking, is what interacts with things in a
    spatio-temporal environment.
    Applying this distinction to God, then, in his excursus on Peirce’s Neglected Argument,
    [2] Kessler continues:
    Since God is not another spatio-temporal object, it amounts to fetishism,
    Peirce remarks, to say that God exists. Hence his argument, strictly
    speaking, is not an argument for God’s existence, but for God’s reality.
    Aaron Bruce Wilso writes, in Peirce’s Empiricism: Its Roots and Its
    Originality, Lexington Books, Oct 19, 2016
    If the above- described distinctions refer to categories for spatio-temporal realities, how
    must they be modified to successfully reference the Reality of God, even if not
    successfully describe some putative Being of God?
    Regarding the Reality of God:
    Modal temporality would not successfully refer, much less describe God, because God’s
    a) pure trans-actuality (actus purus or trans-efficient primal cause) lacks material
    potency as Ipsum Esse Subsistens.
    b) God’s pure trans-formal act (primal telos) of Ens Necessarium lacks final potency;
    and
    c) God’s pure trans-possibility lacks indeterminate potency.
    Existentially, God’s pure act of existence lacks essential potency.
    In terms of Modal Adequacy, the trans-infinite Reality of God lacks finitude.
    Prior to theo-ontology, our theophany would define essential donative, communicative,
    participative & liberative aspects of human-divine relations. It would preclude all
    fatalism & determinism, include a robust conception of agency & proper conception of
    freedom.
    Our dogmatic, relational essentials provide the theological contours within which we
    should remain as we aspire to our classical, neo-classical & other approaches.
    The question of modal adequacy raises further whole/part or mereological
    considerations:
    Would any of those dogmatic essentials necessarily be threatened in a theo-ontology
    that, for example:
    pan-entheistically employs an ontological distinction between humans & God, where
    God donates & communicates creatively as we participate & are liberated imitatively?
    panen-theistically employs a mereological distinction between humans & God, where
    God donates & communicates diffusively as we participate & are liberated
    substratively?
    My Pan-semio-entheism
    Bulgakov seems to echo Origen re: eternal creation, but Lossky -
    Athanaius, who deemed creation in time from God's will rather than
    nature. Related to distinctions of Norris Clarke: esse naturale v
    intentionale & Palamas: essence v energies. Keller's tehomic panentheism
    via creatio ex profundis makes sense to me as an eternal act, where the
    order of existence was the formless void of Genesis. CS Peirce affirms the
    atemporal Reality of God, where Being > Reality > Existence, denying
    God's an existent. To that being:reality distinction, I impute
    naturale:intentionale & essence:energy distinctions. The Reality of God
    would freely proceed as energeia, per divine will, diffusing the tehom's
    substrative forms w/divinizing finalities, that they may participate
    imitatively. Eternal creatio ex profundis & an in-time creatio continua
    preserve divine transcendence w/o sacrificing an intimate relationality,
    integral to a more robustly personalistic theology. (I'm trying to reconcile
    these approaches in resonance w/some of Staniloae's intuitions.)
    In the eternal generation of the Son & procession of the Spirit, the
    economic trinity manifests the immanent trinity.
    The non-determinate Creator gifts (originates or speaks) ...
    the uncreated, transcendent, trans-determinate Logos (norms) mediated
    by ...
    the empowering Spirit to ...
    the determinate creation, the order of which thus presents as an
    harmonious, telic configuration of pluralities.
    This manifestation of the economic trinity exhausts what can be said of the
    immanent trinity.
    Apart from the creative act & divine energeia, which reveal an extrinsic,
    relational, trinitarian divine esse intentionale ...
    we can attribute nothing determinate, intrinsically or essentially, to the
    trinitarian divine esse naturale in its aseity.
    While being, reality & existence refer to creatures, only being & reality
    refer to the Creator, a non-existent.
    The divine esse naturale (intrinsic, essential being of God) remains trans-
    formally distinct from the divine esse intentionale (extrinsic, relational
    reality of God).
    I thus eisegetically adapt Neville's creatio ex nihilo & Yong's
    pneumatology in my own meta-heuristic.
    Robert Cummings Neville's __God the Creator: On the
    Transcendence and Presence of God__ & Amos Yong's __Discerning
    the Spirit(s): A Pentecostal-Charismatic Contribution to Christian
    Theology of Religions__
    See Addendum below regarding a "dispositional" metaphysic.
    I argue that, in both cases, the answer is no.
    ALL of the Reality of God metaphysical formulations above set forth apophatic
    predications, where both PNC & PEM hold. Apophatic predications in modal ontological
    arguments preserve a logical consistency not subvertible by parody.
    HOWEVER, it is one thing to set forth such distinctions syntactically & grammatically
    following semantic rules (e.g. univocity of being) that foster successful references,
    allowing us to formulate logically consistent modal ontological arguments that can be
    rather compelling philosophically & metaphysically, as we abduct the Reality of God or
    THAT God really effected this or that effect as would be proper to no known causes —
    And quite another thing altogether to imagine that this great accomplishment of
    Natural Theology has also gifted us quidditative knowledge regarding to WHOM that
    Reality of God-concept refers in any robustly semantical or contextual (pragmatic)
    sense. It’s at this juncture we can begin telling untellable metaphysical stories, saying
    way more, metaphysically, than what can reasonably be known, proving too much
    metaphysically, abandoning all prudent aporetic sensibilities!
    It’s at this juncture where, happily, having evaded a fideistic leap, we must next turn to
    special revelation, not so much propositionally at first but dispositionally, inhabiting &
    embodying its belongingness, its desirings, its participations — tasting & seeing the
    beauty & goodness imparted by the Divine Energies, prudently imagining that the
    Reality of Natural Theology’s God must be true!
    Because the Reality of God successfully refers to the Ens Necessarium, not only God’s
    trans-actuality (essence) but also God’s trans-formal distinctions (energies) require a
    modal ontological grammar, where both PNC & PEM hold for the Creator.
    For the created spatio-temporal order, whether in the formal distinctions of generalities
    or in the vagueness of possibilities, indeterminacies must be admitted to avoid falling
    into the hopeless paradoxes of essentialism vs nominalism, idealism vs naïve realism,
    asymmetric temporality, logical vs efficient causation, and so on.
    PNC thus folds for temporal possibilities & PEM folds for temporal probabilities. This
    sharply distinguishes the modal grammars of metaphysical, apophatic, existential God-
    talk from those of spatio-temporal metaphysics?
    Enough theological aporia present on their own without our generating more by
    conflating metaphysical grammars.
    What sets Spinoza apart is his Principle of Sufficient Reason on steroids combined with
    an idealist monism, where an Ens Necessarium obviates all indeterminacies, where only
    one modal grammar operates.
    What distinguishes some atheological conceptions is a mereological distinction, where
    the fallacy of composition is presupposed and the whole does not beg questions for its
    necessary being, a materialist monist approach to a brute reality. Here the PSR is
    methodologically provisional & a philosophical naturalism essential, but not necessarily
    inconsistent with libertarian freedom, consistent with a number of philosophies of
    mind.
    Theological conceptions employ a nuanced PSR, essentially, with a methodological
    naturalism, provisionally. Conceiving God in classical or neoclassical, pan-entheist or
    panen-theist, conceptions, the Reality of God begs questions, either ontologically as
    asking “why not rather nothing?” or mereologically as asking “why not rather
    something else?”. The response to either question evokes an abduction of the Reality of
    the Ens Necessarium, which sharply distinguishes the Creator from the created order,
    metaphysically, but emphatically invokes participatory interactivity, whether creatively
    & imitatively or diffusively & substratively or perhaps even both. It could well be both,
    especially if the nihilo of creatio is, metaphysically, trans-existentiale & no-thing, thus
    avoiding the fetishism of saying that God exists.
    In an irreducibly triadic reality, perhaps our entitial states or actualities entail creative
    & imitative interactions, while our relational states or telic matrices entail diffusive &
    substrative interactions (think deep & dynamic fields).
    The move from the Ens Necessarium to donative participatory interactivity takes us
    from a natural (onto-theological) to a revealed (theophanic) theological methodology. A
    philosophical move to a theology of nature (theo-ontological) seeks embodied
    understandings & theological idioms as that method proposes distinctions like creative
    & imitative and/or diffusive & substrative.
    Logos
    experiential perception or research
    Human Existence – entitial, esse actuale as 2ns
    Topos
    interpretation or intelligent understanding
    “God is | not x | is true apophatically & literally” refers to Existence,
    onto-theologically & metaphysically.
    From Natural Theology or Onto-theology:
    Divine Being – actus purus (divine esse)
    Pathos
    history & judging – deciding
    Human Being – Imago Dei, created-imitative esse essentiale as 1ns,
    connaturality
    From Theophany & Theopoietics:
    The statement “God is | x | is true kataphatically & trans-analogically”
    refers to Being, quidditatively, theophanically & theopoietically.
    From Theology of Nature or Theo-ontology:
    “God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true relationally & really” refers to
    Reality, theo-ontologically & intimately.
    Divine Reality – relational, creative-diffusive essentiale (divine esse
    naturale) & uncreated substrative energeia (divine esse intentionale)
    Ethos
    dialectics & responsible acting
    Human Reality – uncreated substrative energeia, created, relational, esse
    intentionale as 3ns
    Theological Foundations - philosophical, historical & exegetical -
    explore a polydoxy of live options for our existential leaps
    Meta-Pathos
    Theological Doctrines as existential landings
    Meta-Topos
    Theological Systematics with further refined theology of nature
    Meta-Logos
    Theological Communications pastoral, homiletics, catechesis,
    evangelization, missiology, apologetics, Gospel inculturation & moral
    enculturation
    Let’s unpack a Dionysian-like Logic, where:
    God is | x | is true kataphatically & trans-analogically;
    God is | not x | is true apophatically & literally; and
    God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true relationally & really.
    Compare that to a Scotist- Peircean abduction of the Reality of God, where:
    Being > Reality > Existence
    The apophatic & literal statements work by metaphysically identifying God via such
    effects as would be proper to no known causes.
    Because kataphatic & trans-analogical statements refer to God existentially, they must
    employ theophanic & theopoietic idioms, which don’t reduce to formal philosophical &
    metaphysical categories, as existence can’t be predicated of God, but which do express
    reality's excess meaning in our stories & myths, liturgies & devotions.
    While such statements offer no onto-theological, metaphysical leverage for our natural
    theology, descriptively & propositionally, they can still do theo-ontology, accomplishing
    a great deal of heavy lifting, normatively & dispositionally, discovering & crafting the
    idioms for our theologies of nature, whereby we affirm that our stories & myths, liturgies
    & devotions, “really relate” to God.
    Therefore, we best formulate our real relational idioms of God in E-Prime (employing
    no verb forms of ‘to be’ or their equivalents), because, existentially, relational predicates
    will not successfully refer. With a Palamitic turn, real statements thus require the active
    voice as we refer to the manifold & multiform works done by God, energeia.
    The statement “God is | x | is true kataphatically & trans-analogically” refers to Being,
    theophanically & theopoietically.
    “God is | not x | is true apophatically & literally” refers to Existence, onto-
    theologically & metaphysically.
    "God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true relationally & really” refers to Reality, theo-
    ontologically & intimately.
    For moderate realists like Aquinas, Scotus & Peirce, the categories of Existence &
    Reality include, respectively, both entitial & relational created realities, i.e. the efficient
    acts & material potencies of entities and the formal acts & final potencies of teloi.
    The category of Reality would also include the uncreated relational reality of Primal
    Telos, which, as Pure Act, sources created reality’s polydoxic teloi …
    energetically diffusing divinizing finalities into divine substrative forms …
    thereby synergistically harmonizing the instrumental, efficient acts & material
    potencies of created, entitial existents that they might imitate the divine esse
    intentionale, growing dispositionally in an ever-deepening relational intimacy.
    Divine Simplicity, metaphysically, refers to the apophatic, metaphysical abduction of
    the Reality of God as Ens Necessarium, esse naturale.
    Divine Freedom, theophanically, refers to the uncreated energies of the Reality of God,
    which invite transformative effects (dis-positions) as would be proper to no known
    causes, hence from putative theotic participations, both entitial, creative & imitative,
    and relational, diffusive & substrative.
    Any tension between Divine Simplicity & Divine Freedom does not arise onto-
    theologically in natural theology, for freedom refers to Divine Esse Intentionale trans-
    analogically (descriptively weak, propositionally, but normatively strong,
    dispositionally).
    While denying a strictly metaphysical impasse between divine simplicity & freedom and
    while suggesting we've thus avoided any logical inconsistencies (e.g. due to parodies
    grounded in conceptual incompatabilities), it’s not to suggest we’ve also thereby
    eliminated the aporetic confrontations that inescapably attend to all theo-kataphasis. At
    the same time, it’s just no small victory to dismiss the facile caricatures & snarky
    parodies of “devastating” neo-atheological critiques?
    A theology of nature, following these speculative grammars, can affirm divine simplicitly
    as a natural theological argument, philosophically, going beyond it, theo-ontologically -
    not only invoking Thomistic distinctions between efficient & instrumental causes,
    primary & secondary causations, to preserve creaturely agencies & avoid modal collapse,
    but - to affirm a real & robust divine-nature interactivity, pneumatologically, thereby
    also going, coherently, beyond a mere deism.
    Theophanies & theopoietics aspire to successfully reference entitial realities,
    existentially, employing the ever-cascading & collapsing metaphors of our stories &
    myth, signs & symbols, liturgies & devotions, alternately revealing the concealed, then
    concealing the revealed, Who remains always timid but ever coy.
    Theo-ontologies & theologies of nature aspire to successfully reference relational
    realities, personally, relating the uncreated Primal Telos of divine esse intentionale &
    the polydoxic teloi of creation (note below), which culminate in human intentionality.
    The seductions of divine intentionale remain ineluctably unobtrusive but so utterly
    efficacious in the wooing of Sophia (created).
    Cf. regarding methodological distinctions of God-talk, see:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/24/the-apparent-tension-between-
    divine-simplicity-divine-freedom/
    the Spirit woos creation forth•
    makes this way south & that way north•
    invites each blade of grass to green!horizons, boundaries, limits, origins•
    perimeters, parameters, centers, margins•
    we're given freedom in between!
    thus truth & beauty & goodness grow•
    thus lizards leap & roosters crow•
    and dawns break with each new day!
    good news is ours to be believed•
    love freely given if received•
    the Spirit in our heart will stay!
    very old poem of mine
    N.B. regarding polydoxic teloi
    • 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
    Cf. https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/contemplative-being-
    behaving-believing-belonging-desiring-becoming-an-outline-of-foundations/
    Addendum:
    What I have set forth above is a meta-heuristic, what I feel is an essential (pun intended)
    phenomenological grammar that is preambular to any metaphysic, substance or
    process, any natural theology, or any theology of nature, whether classical or
    neoclassical, pan-entheistic or panen-theistic, or even pantheistic or atheological. This
    represents the foundations of most of my musings.
    After posting this, I happily discovered the work of Dr. Mariusz Tabaczek O.P., who has
    articulated a "dispositional" metaphysic. I commend his writings to all.
    Please see:
    https://ndias.nd.edu/fellows/tabaczek-mariusz/
    https://mariopblog.wordpress.com/
    Below is an excerpt from his dissertation. It is the best example of a theology of nature
    as would be consistent with what I am struggling to articulate.
    https://mariopblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/1234.pdf
    "A theory of emergence based on dispositional metaphysics would show a new
    explanatory potential as well. It would not only reconcile Aristotelianism with
    emergentism, but also have a significant impact on the view of divine action developed
    in reference to the theory of emergence. God’s action would no longer be conceived
    panentheistically as an influence on the totality of the world, which metaphysically
    assumes that the causation of God and creatures is of the same kind (univocal
    predication) and so runs the risk of collapsing into pantheism. The recovery of the plural
    notion of causation allows for a recapturing of the classical understanding of divine
    action as proposed by Aquinas. God is regarded as the ultimate source of forms, and the
    ultimate aim of all teleology in nature. With regard to efficient causation, God’s
    transcendence is protected by Aquinas’ distinction between the primary and principal
    causation of the Creator and the secondary and instrumental character of the causation
    of creatures. Therefore, God’s immutability, omniscience, omnipotence, infinity,
    eternity, and impassibility are not challenged, while his immanent and constant
    presence in all worldly events is by no means undermined."
    Notes:
    1) I say Peirce-like because I am not a thoroughgoing Peircean, metaphysically. I adapt,
    herein, his implicit modal grammar, importing Aristotelian, Thomistic & Palamitic
    distinctions.
    2) A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God (1908) by Charles Sanders Peirce
    Regarding the Neglected Argument, Gary E. Kessler writes:
    I begin with some distinctions. First, Peirce distinguishes between an
    argument and argumentation. An argument is “any process of thought
    reasonably tending to produce a definite belief” while argumentation
    refers to an argument that proceeds “upon definitely formulated
    premisses” (6.456). We must note that Peirce’s Neglected Argument
    (hereafter referred to as NA) is an argument, but not argumentation.
    Second, we must distinguish between reality and existence. Reality is a
    broader term that encompasses what exists but is not synonymous with it.
    For something to be real it must have properties sufficient to identify it
    whether anyone attributes those properties to it or not. The existent,
    strictly speaking, is what interacts with things in a spatio-temporal
    environment. Since God is not another spatio-temporal object, it amounts
    to fetishism, Peirce remarks, to say that God exists. Hence his argument,
    strictly speaking, is not an argument for God’s existence, but for God’s
    reality.
    Conversations that touch upon my take above:
    Mapping Metaphysical Distinctions: Aristotelian, Thomist, Scotist, Peircean & Palamitic
    The “Trans-Formal Distinction” between the Divine Essence & Energies
    Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse
    The Krueger-McHugh Debate: Theism or Atheism (2003)
    The Formulation of Thomistic Simplicity: Mapping Aquinas’s Method for Configuring
    God’s Essence, JETS 57/2 (June 2014): 371–403.
    Divine Simplicity and the Formal Distinction, Part 2

    Simply Divine or a Divinity Fudge? Cooking with


    Dionysius, Scotus, Peirce, Aquinas & Palamas
    Let’s unpack a Dionysian-like Logic, where:
    God is | x | is true kataphatically & trans-analogically;
    God is | not x | is true apophatically & literally; and
    God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true relationally & really.
    Compare that to a Scotist- Peircean abduction of the Reality of God, where:
    Being > Reality > Existence
    The apophatic & literal statements work by metaphysically identifying God via such
    effects as would be proper to no known causes.
    Because kataphatic & trans-analogical statements refer to God existentially, they must
    employ theophanic & theopoietic idioms, which don’t reduce to formal philosophical &
    metaphysical categories, as existence can’t be predicated of God, but which do express
    reality's excess meaning in our stories & myths, liturgies & devotions.
    While such statements offer no onto-theological, metaphysical leverage for our natural
    theology, descriptively & propositionally, they can still do theo-ontology, accomplishing
    a great deal of heavy lifting, normatively & dispositionally, discovering & crafting the
    idioms for our theologies of nature, whereby we affirm that our stories & myths, liturgies
    & devotions, “really relate” to God.
    Therefore, we best formulate our real relational idioms of God in E-Prime (employing
    no verb forms of ‘to be’ or their equivalents), because, existentially, relational predicates
    will not successfully refer. With a Palamitic turn, real statements thus require the active
    voice as we refer to the manifold & multiform works done by God, energeia.
    The statement “God is | x | is true kataphatically & trans-analogically” refers to Being,
    theophanically & theopoietically.
    “God is | not x | is true apophatically & literally” refers to Existence, onto-
    theologically & metaphysically.
    "God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true relationally & really” refers to Reality, theo-
    ontologically & intimately.
    For moderate realists like Aquinas, Scotus & Peirce, the categories of Existence &
    Reality include, respectively, both entitial & relational created realities, i.e. the efficient
    acts & material potencies of entities and the formal acts & final potencies of teloi.
    The category of Reality would also include the uncreated relational reality of Primal
    Telos, which, as Pure Act, sources created reality’s polydoxic teloi …
    energetically diffusing divinizing finalities into divine substrative forms …
    thereby synergistically harmonizing the instrumental, efficient acts & material
    potencies of created, entitial existents that they might imitate the divine esse
    intentionale, growing dispositionally in an ever-deepening relational intimacy.
    Divine Simplicity, metaphysically, refers to the apophatic, metaphysical abduction of
    the Reality of God as Ens Necessarium, esse naturale.
    Divine Freedom, theophanically, refers to the uncreated energies of the Reality of God,
    which invite transformative effects (dis-positions) as would be proper to no known
    causes, hence from putative theotic participations, both entitial, creative & imitative,
    and relational, diffusive & substrative.
    Any tension between Divine Simplicity & Divine Freedom does not arise onto-
    theologically in natural theology, for freedom refers to Divine Esse Intentionale trans-
    analogically (descriptively weak, propositionally, but normatively strong,
    dispositionally).
    While denying a strictly metaphysical impasse between divine simplicity & freedom and
    while suggesting we've thus avoided any logical inconsistencies (e.g. due to parodies
    grounded in conceptual incompatabilities), it’s not to suggest we’ve also thereby
    eliminated the aporetic confrontations that inescapably attend to all theo-kataphasis. At
    the same time, it’s just no small victory to dismiss the facile caricatures & snarky
    parodies of “devastating” neo-atheological critiques?
    A theology of nature, following these speculative grammars, can affirm divine simplicitly
    as a natural theological argument, philosophically, going beyond it, theo-ontologically -
    not only invoking Thomistic distinctions between efficient & instrumental causes,
    primary & secondary causations, to preserve creaturely agencies & avoid modal collapse,
    but - to affirm a real & robust divine-nature interactivity, pneumatologically, thereby
    also going, coherently, beyond a mere deism.
    Theophanies & theopoetics aspire to successfully reference entitial realities,
    existentially, employing the ever-cascading & collapsing metaphors of our stories &
    myth, signs & symbols, liturgies & devotions, alternately revealing the concealed, then
    concealing the revealed, Who remains always timid but ever coy.
    Theo-ontologies & theologies of nature aspire to successfully reference relational
    realities, personally, relating the uncreated Primal Telos of divine esse intentionale &
    the polydoxic teloi of creation (note below), which culminate in human intentionality.
    The seductions of divine intentionale remain ineluctably unobtrusive but so utterly
    efficacious in the wooing of Sophia (created).
    Cf. regarding methodological distinctions of God-talk, see:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/24/the-apparent-tension-between-
    divine-simplicity-divine-freedom/
    the Spirit woos creation forth•
    makes this way south & that way north•
    invites each blade of grass to green!
    horizons, boundaries, limits, origins•
    perimeters, parameters, centers, margins•
    we're given freedom in between!
    thus truth & beauty & goodness grow•
    thus lizards leap & roosters crow•
    and dawns break with each new day!
    good news is ours to be believed•
    love freely given if received•
    the Spirit in our heart will stay!
    very old poem of mine
    N.B. regarding polydoxic teloi
    • 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
    Cf.
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/09/05/over-coming-not-over-turning-
    metaphysics-a-peircean-trinitophany-of-divine-thatness-whatness-howness/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/contemplative-being-behaving-
    believing-belonging-desiring-becoming-an-outline-of-foundations/
    The “Apparent” Tension Between Divine Simplicity &
    Divine Freedom
    The apparent tension between divine simplicity & divine freedom results from
    the conflation of two distinct categories, the metaphysical & existential with
    the nonmetaphysical & quidditative.

    Especially Cf. The Formulation of Thomistic Simplicity: Mapping Aquinas’s


    Method for Configuring God’s Essence, JETS 57/2 (June 2014): 371–403.

    Other aporia remain but are located elsewhere.

    We successfully reference God, metaphysically, only apophatically, e.g. divine


    simplicity & ousia, abducting THAT God is, existentially.

    We successfully reference God, personally, per special revelation, variously


    employing kataphasis, apophasis, doxology, etc, inductively experiencing
    WHO God is, quidditatively, e.g. divine aseity & energeiai.

    Revelatory references employ common sense rhetoric with ontological


    implications but not always strict metaphysical categories & predications,
    which, at any rate, wouldn’t, in principle, lend themselves to anything but
    apophatic, existential – not quidditative, essential – metaphysics. Logical
    consistency not subject to parody in modal ontological arguments requires
    apophatic predication.

    That’s why I insist, for example, on labeling the essence-energies distinction


    as trans-formal.

    Analogical predications of God exert much more normative leverage on our


    embodied dispositions – aesthetically, morally & relationally – as we
    participate in reality’s excess of meaning, making appropriate (e.g.
    Eucharistic) responses to ultimate reality via myth & storytelling, which aren’t
    always completely true, literally, or robustly effective, analogically, i.e. they
    exert little descriptive leverage on our abstract propositions or deductive
    argumentations.
    I would thus urge any reference to a putative analogical god-talk to be restated
    as trans-analogical.

    We judge that the Reality of God will somehow, ultimately, make existence far
    less ambiguous for, & ambivalent toward, us in ways we can neither prove nor
    fully express, because …

    proleptically, we have participated through, with & in One, Who has loved us,
    Whose Spirit has gifted us first fruits, an earnest, a guarantee, a down
    payment, a seal, a promise, a confident assurance in things hoped for &
    conviction of glories unseen.

    How, precisely, might we avoid a Spinozan modal collapse?

    In my own Peirce-like modal ontology, first, we distinguish determinacies &


    indeterminacies. [1]

    For determinacies, we must disambiguate any ambiguities (univocal,


    equivocal, analogical, apophatic, etc) & define any in/definite actualities,
    which are determinacies (in/definitive) that can correspond to vaguely
    referenced or robustly described entities.

    In/determinacies (in/determinable & in/determined) refer to


    generalities(probabilities & necessities) and vagueness (possibilities). We
    determine in/determinacies by delimiting vague possibilities & specifying
    generalities, i.e. probabilities & necessities.

    Next, we distinguish possibilities, actualities & probabilities in terms of


    Aristotelian causation.

    A distinction may be real vs conceptual (re logical or virtual). Real distinctions


    can include modal distinctions (re temporality or adequacy).

    Modal temporality can include a formal or metaphysically real distinction.


    This maps, somewhat, to both Scotus’ formal distinction & Peirce’s category of
    thirdness or 3ns.
    Modal temporality as applied to Peircean categories can variously map to
    causes, where for:

    2ns or actualities, where noncontradiction [PNC] & excluded middle [PEM]


    hold and act maps to efficient & potency to material causes;

    3ns or regularities, where PNC holds but PEM folds and act maps to formal &
    potency to final causes;

    1ns or possibilities, where PNC folds & PEM holds and act maps to our
    embodied connaturalities and potency to their indeterminacies.

    Other real distinctions would include:

    Existential
    act – existence
    potency – essence

    Modal Adequacy
    in/finite
    whole/part or mereological

    Real vs Conceptual (re logical or virtual).

    Real distinctions include modal distinctions re temporality (above) or


    adequacy (in/finite or whole/part = mereological). Modal temporality includes
    a formal or metaphysically real distinction (PNC holds, PEM folds).

    It could map like this:

    Modal temporality can be applied to Peircean categories as mapped to causes,


    where for:

    actualities, act –> efficient & potency –> material;

    regularities, act -> formal; potency –> final.

    existentially, act -> existence; potency -> essence.


    Finally, we distinguish with Peirce, reality from existence. Gary E. Kessler
    describes Peirce’s distinction:

    Reality is a broader term that encompasses what exists but is not synonymous
    with it. For something to be real it must have properties sufficient to identify it
    whether anyone attributes those properties to it or not. The existent, strictly
    speaking, is what interacts with things in a spatio-temporal environment.

    Applying this distinction to God, then, in his excursus on Peirce’s Neglected


    Argument, [2] Kessler continues:

    Since God is not another spatio-temporal object, it amounts to fetishism, Peirce


    remarks, to say that God exists. Hence his argument, strictly speaking, is not an
    argument for God’s existence, but for God’s reality.

    Aaron Bruce Wilso writes, in Peirce’s Empiricism: Its Roots and Its
    Originality, Lexington Books, Oct 19, 2016
    If the above- described distinctions refer to categories for spatio-temporal
    realities, how must they be modified to successfully reference the Reality of
    God, even if not successfully describe some putative Being of God?

    Regarding the Reality of God:

    Modal temporality would not successfully refer, much less describe God,
    because God’s

    a) pure trans-actuality (actus purus or trans-efficient primal cause) lacks


    material potency as Ipsum Esse Subsistens.

    b) God’s pure trans-formal act (primal telos) of Ens Necessarium lacks final
    potency; and

    c) God’s pure trans-possibility lacks indeterminate potency.

    Existentially, God’s pure act of existence lacks essential potency.

    In terms of Modal Adequacy, the trans-infinite Reality of God lacks finitude.

    Prior to theo-ontology, our theophany would define essential donative,


    communicative, participative & liberative aspects of human-divine relations.
    It would preclude all fatalism & determinism, include a robust conception of
    agency & proper conception of freedom.

    Our dogmatic, relational essentials provide the theological contours within


    which we should remain as we aspire to our classical, neo-classical & other
    approaches.

    The question of modal adequacy raises further whole/part or mereological


    considerations:

    Would any of those dogmatic essentials necessarily be threatened in a theo-


    ontology that, for example:
    pan-entheistically employs an ontological distinction between humans &
    God, where God donates & communicates creatively as we participate & are
    liberated imitatively?

    panen-theistically employs a mereological distinction between humans &


    God, where God donates & communicates diffusively as we participate & are
    liberated substratively?
    See Addendum below regarding a "dispositional" metaphysic.

    I argue that, in both cases, the answer is no.

    ALL of the Reality of God metaphysical formulations above set forth apophatic
    predications, where both PNC & PEM hold. Apophatic predications in modal
    ontological arguments preserve a logical consistency not subvertible by
    parody.

    HOWEVER, it is one thing to set forth such distinctions syntactically &


    grammatically following semantic rules (e.g. univocity of being) that foster
    successful references, allowing us to formulate logically consistent modal
    ontological arguments that can be rather compelling philosophically &
    metaphysically, as we abduct the Reality of God or THAT God really effected
    this or that effect as would be proper to no known causes —

    And quite another thing altogether to imagine that this great accomplishment
    of Natural Theology has also gifted us quidditative knowledge regarding to
    WHOM that Reality of God-concept refers in any robustly semantical or
    contextual (pragmatic) sense. It’s at this juncture we can begin telling
    untellable metaphysical stories, saying way more, metaphysically, than what
    can reasonably be known, proving too much metaphysically, abandoning all
    prudent aporetic sensibilities!

    It’s at this juncture where, happily, having evaded a fideistic leap, we must
    next turn to special revelation, not so much propositionally at first but
    dispositionally, inhabiting & embodying its belongingness, its desirings, its
    participations — tasting & seeing the beauty & goodness imparted by the
    Divine Energies, prudently imagining that the Reality of Natural Theology’s
    God must be true!

    Because the Reality of God successfully refers to the Ens Necessarium, not
    only God’s trans-actuality (essence) but also God’s trans-formal distinctions
    (energies) require a modal ontological grammar, where both PNC & PEM hold
    for the Creator.

    For the created spatio-temporal order, whether in the formal distinctions of


    generalities or in the vagueness of possibilities, indeterminacies must be
    admitted to avoid falling into the hopeless paradoxes of essentialism vs
    nominalism, idealism vs naïve realism, asymmetric temporality, logical vs
    efficient causation, and so on.

    PNC thus folds for temporal possibilities & PEM folds for temporal
    probabilities. This sharply distinguishes the modal grammars of metaphysical,
    apophatic, existential God-talk from those of spatio-temporal metaphysics?

    Enough theological aporia present on their own without our generating more
    by conflating metaphysical grammars.

    What sets Spinoza apart is his Principle of Sufficient Reason on steroids


    combined with an idealist monism, where an Ens Necessarium obviates all
    indeterminacies, where only one modal grammar operates.

    What distinguishes some atheological conceptions is a mereological


    distinction, where the fallacy of composition is presupposed and the whole
    does not beg questions for its necessary being, a materialist monist approach
    to a brute reality. Here the PSR is methodologically provisional & a
    philosophical naturalism essential, but not necessarily inconsistent with
    libertarian freedom, consistent with a number of philosophies of mind.

    Theological conceptions employ a nuanced PSR, essentially, with a


    methodological naturalism, provisionally. Conceiving God in classical or
    neoclassical, pan-entheist or panen-theist, conceptions, the Reality of God
    begs questions, either ontologically as asking “why not rather nothing?” or
    mereologically as asking “why not rather something else?”. The response to
    either question evokes an abduction of the Reality of the Ens Necessarium,
    which sharply distinguishes the Creator from the created order,
    metaphysically, but emphatically invokes participatory interactivity, whether
    creatively & imitatively or diffusively & substratively or perhaps even both. It
    could well be both, especially if the nihilo of creatio is, metaphysically, trans-
    existentiale & no-thing, thus avoiding the fetishism of saying that God exists.

    In an irreducibly triadic reality, perhaps our entitial states or actualities entail


    creative & imitative interactions, while our relational states or telic matrices
    entail diffusive & substrative interactions (think deep & dynamic fields).

    The move from the Ens Necessarium to donative participatory interactivity


    takes us from a natural (onto-theological) to a revealed (theophanic)
    theological methodology. A philosophical move to a theology of nature (theo-
    ontological) seeks embodied understandings & theological idioms as that
    method proposes distinctions like creative & imitative and/or diffusive &
    substrative.
    Logos
    experiential perception or research
    Human Existence – entitial, esse actuale as 2ns
    Topos
    interpretation or intelligent understanding
    “God is | not x | is true apophatically & literally” refers to Existence, onto-
    theologically & metaphysically.
    From Natural Theology or Onto-theology:
    Divine Being – actus purus (divine esse)
    Pathos
    history & judging – deciding
    Human Being – Imago Dei, created-imitative esse essentiale as 1ns, connaturality
    From Theophany & Theopoietics:
    The statement “God is | x | is true kataphatically & trans-analogically” refers to Being,
    quidditatively, theophanically & theopoietically.
    From Theology of Nature or Theo-ontology:
    “God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true relationally & really” refers to Reality, theo-
    ontologically & intimately.
    Divine Reality – relational, creative-diffusive essentiale (divine esse naturale) &
    uncreated substrative energeia (divine esse intentionale)
    Ethos
    dialectics & responsible acting
    Human Reality – uncreated substrative energeia, created, relational, esse
    intentionale as 3ns
    Theological Foundations - philosophical, historical & exegetical - explore a polydoxy
    of live options for our existential leaps

    Meta-Pathos
    Theological Doctrines as existential landings
    Meta-Topos
    Theological Systematics with further refined theology of nature
    Meta-Logos
    Theological Communications
    pastoral, homiletics, catechesis, evangelization, missiology, apologetics, Gospel
    inculturation & moral enculturation
    Let’s unpack a Dionysian-like Logic, where:
    God is | x | is true kataphatically & trans-analogically;
    God is | not x | is true apophatically & literally; and
    God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true relationally & really.
    Compare that to a Scotist- Peircean abduction of the Reality of God, where:
    Being > Reality > Existence
    The apophatic & literal statements work by metaphysically identifying God via such
    effects as would be proper to no known causes.
    Because kataphatic & trans-analogical statements refer to God existentially, they must
    employ theophanic & theopoietic idioms, which don’t reduce to formal philosophical &
    metaphysical categories, as existence can’t be predicated of God, but which do express
    reality's excess meaning in our stories & myths, liturgies & devotions.
    While such statements offer no onto-theological, metaphysical leverage for our natural
    theology, descriptively & propositionally, they can still do theo-ontology, accomplishing
    a great deal of heavy lifting, normatively & dispositionally, discovering & crafting the
    idioms for our theologies of nature, whereby we affirm that our stories & myths, liturgies
    & devotions, “really relate” to God.
    Therefore, we best formulate our real relational idioms of God in E-Prime (employing
    no verb forms of ‘to be’ or their equivalents), because, existentially, relational predicates
    will not successfully refer. With a Palamitic turn, real statements thus require the active
    voice as we refer to the manifold & multiform works done by God, energeia.
    The statement “God is | x | is true kataphatically & trans-analogically” refers to Being,
    theophanically & theopoietically.
    “God is | not x | is true apophatically & literally” refers to Existence, onto-
    theologically & metaphysically.
    "God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true relationally & really” refers to Reality, theo-
    ontologically & intimately.
    For moderate realists like Aquinas, Scotus & Peirce, the categories of Existence &
    Reality include, respectively, both entitial & relational created realities, i.e. the efficient
    acts & material potencies of entities and the formal acts & final potencies of teloi.
    The category of Reality would also include the uncreated relational reality of Primal
    Telos, which, as Pure Act, sources created reality’s polydoxic teloi …
    energetically diffusing divinizing finalities into divine substrative forms …
    thereby synergistically harmonizing the instrumental, efficient acts & material
    potencies of created, entitial existents that they might imitate the divine esse
    intentionale, growing dispositionally in an ever-deepening relational intimacy.
    Divine Simplicity, metaphysically, refers to the apophatic, metaphysical abduction of
    the Reality of God as Ens Necessarium, esse naturale.
    Divine Freedom, theophanically, refers to the uncreated energies of the Reality of God,
    which invite transformative effects (dis-positions) as would be proper to no known
    causes, hence from putative theotic participations, both entitial, creative & imitative,
    and relational, diffusive & substrative.
    Any tension between Divine Simplicity & Divine Freedom does not arise onto-
    theologically in natural theology, for freedom refers to Divine Esse Intentionale trans-
    analogically (descriptively weak, propositionally, but normatively strong,
    dispositionally).
    While denying a strictly metaphysical impasse between divine simplicity & freedom and
    while suggesting we've thus avoided any logical inconsistencies (e.g. due to parodies
    grounded in conceptual incompatabilities), it’s not to suggest we’ve also thereby
    eliminated the aporetic confrontations that inescapably attend to all theo-kataphasis. At
    the same time, it’s just no small victory to dismiss the facile caricatures & snarky
    parodies of “devastating” neo-atheological critiques?
    A theology of nature, following these speculative grammars, can affirm divine simplicitly
    as a natural theological argument, philosophically, going beyond it, theo-ontologically -
    not only invoking Thomistic distinctions between efficient & instrumental causes,
    primary & secondary causations, to preserve creaturely agencies & avoid modal collapse,
    but - to affirm a real & robust divine-nature interactivity, pneumatologically, thereby
    also going, coherently, beyond a mere deism.
    Theophanies & theopoetics aspire to successfully reference entitial realities,
    existentially, employing the ever-cascading & collapsing metaphors of our stories &
    myth, signs & symbols, liturgies & devotions, alternately revealing the concealed, then
    concealing the revealed, Who remains always timid but ever coy.
    Theo-ontologies & theologies of nature aspire to successfully reference relational
    realities, personally, relating the uncreated Primal Telos of divine esse intentionale &
    the polydoxic teloi of creation (note below), which culminate in human intentionality.
    The seductions of divine intentionale remain ineluctably unobtrusive but so utterly
    efficacious in the wooing of Sophia (created).
    Cf. regarding methodological distinctions of God-talk, see:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/24/the-apparent-tension-between-
    divine-simplicity-divine-freedom/
    the Spirit woos creation forth•
    makes this way south & that way north•
    invites each blade of grass to green!
    horizons, boundaries, limits, origins•
    perimeters, parameters, centers, margins•
    we're given freedom in between!
    thus truth & beauty & goodness grow•
    thus lizards leap & roosters crow•
    and dawns break with each new day!
    good news is ours to be believed•
    love freely given if received•
    the Spirit in our heart will stay!
    very old poem of mine
    N.B. regarding polydoxic teloi
    • 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
    Cf. https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/contemplative-being-
    behaving-believing-belonging-desiring-becoming-an-outline-of-foundations/
    Over-coming not Over-turning Metaphysics: A Peircean Trinitophany of
    Divine THATness, WHATness & HOWness
    For Peirce,
    Being > Reality > Existence
    We can successfully reference the
    Being of God
    Reality of God
    Will of God
    But the Peircean category of Existence does not refer to God, only to creation.
    Peircean categories can help us avoid the category errors that can easily arise in our
    references to distinctly different types of trinitarian properties, haecceities & relations,
    e.g. what we attempt to predicate of ousia, hypostases & energeia.
    Philosophically ...
    from the HOWness (primary & secondary relations) of certain effects as would be
    proper to no known causes ...
    we reason to the THATness (primary substance) of the Reality of God, as such
    effects ...
    evoke the WHATness (secondary substance) of the Being of God - as another “kind” of
    being, an Ens Necessarium (Peirce), which only special revelation can qualify.
    Divine aseity, kataphatically & quidditatively, describes the Being of God as a
    secondary substance or essence (Aristotelian) or quiddity (Scotistic WHATness), i.e. the
    Father’s revealed, concrete unoriginateness (e.g. Rahner), all corresponding to Peircean
    firstness.
    Divine simplicity, apophatically & nondescriptively, references the Reality of God as a
    primary substance (Aristotelian) or haecceity (Scotistic THATness), i.e. God’s
    philosophically knowable unoriginateness (e.g. Rahner), all corresponding to Peircean
    secondness.
    Ergo, the divine hypostases of revelation refer to the trinitarian relations of three
    primary substances, while the divine ousia refers to the trinitarian relations in one
    secondary substance or essence.
    Divine energeia, participatably & experientially, diffuse the Will of God as esse
    intentionale (Thomist) or relationality (Cappadocian HOWness), i.e. the personhood of
    the Eucharistic divine-human communion (e.g. Zizioulas), all corresponding to Peircean
    thirdness.
    Of course, all of this presents over against Arianism, modalism, tritheism, etc
    How do we understand the content of special revelation, as our analogical & doxological
    predications of God, employing ever-cascading but always-collapsing metaphors, seem
    to challenge Thomas’ doctrine of analogy?
    Aquinas denies univocism & equivocism prior to, apparently, affirming their
    amalgamated version, some might suggest, in an ad hoc manner, i.e. not defending that
    leap or deriving its logic?
    It seems to me, however, that his trans-analogical, amalgamated analogia, derives in the
    same way that Christopher McHugh derives his God argument. McHugh improves
    Anselm, Gödel & Hartshorne’s ontological proofs by employing only apophatic
    predications, while otherwise still following formal modal logic. Any logical
    inconsistencies are thereby guaranteed not to derive from conceptual incompatibilities,
    thereby immunizing the argument from any susceptibility to a subversion by parody.
    So, properly predicated, our quidditative probes do employ a complete cycling of triadic
    inference, abductively hypothesizing, deductively clarifying & inductively testing our
    knowledge of God.
    But they accomplish only so much.
    Onto-theologically, regarding God’s primary substance, we abduct the Reality of
    God’s THATness.
    Theo-ontologically, regarding God’s secondary substance, we deduct the Being of
    God’s WHATness, our kataphasis necessarily translated into apophasis.
    Avoiding a sterile, nonvirtuous cycle of dyadic inference, i.e. of rationalistic hypotheses
    & syllogisms …
    In other words, not over-turning but over-coming metaphysics ...
    Theopoetically, beyond our abductive onto-theologizing regarding the Reality of
    God’s primary substance or THATness, and deductive theo-ontologizing regarding the
    Being of God’s secondary substance or WHATness ...
    regarding the Will of God’s HOWness, then, we inductively participate in the
    theophanic Divine Energies.
    We existentially engage their connatural, eudaimonistic invitations ever-aspiring to
    embody their entelechies.
    While often inchoately & confusedly, these participations via engagements &
    embodiments can serve to implicitly authenticate the ortho-doxic formulations of our
    onto-theologies & theo-ontologies ...
    through their ongoing transformative realizations of manifold & multiform ortho-
    communal, ortho-aesthetic, ortho-pathic, ortho-praxic & ortho-theotic efficacies.
    Another parsing:
    Presupposing 1) a root metaphor (substantial &/or relational) 2) reasoning formally &
    3) predicating apophatically (albeit constrained by indeterminacies of vagueness &
    generality)
    Propositionally, then -
    Onto-theologically, we abduct the Ens Necessarium w/a successful reference to the
    Reality of God’s divine esse via philosophy, i.e. THATness or hypostasis.
    Theo-ontologically, we increase the accuracy of our theological references to the Reality
    of God’s divine essence, apophatically, saying what God is not (univocally &/or
    literally) &/or not like (equivocally &/or analogically), i.e. WHATness or essence or
    ousia.
    Dispositionally, then –
    Theo-poetically, we increase the accuracy of our theological descriptions of the Reality
    of God’s divine energies, kataphatically & apophatically, via myth, storytelling &
    liturgy w/ever-cascading, always-collapsing metaphors, norming our responses to
    divine relationality, i.e. its HOWness or teloi, as they re-positionally transform us
    (fostering what Peirce might call a quietus vis a vis admirability via the primacy of the
    aesthetic, what the mystics might call sweet repose).
    See also:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/24/the-apparent-tension-between-
    divine-simplicity-divine-freedom/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/simply-divine-or-a-divinity-
    fudge-cooking-with-dionysius-scotus-peirce-aquinas-palamas/
    Addendum:
    What I have set forth above is a meta-heuristic, what I feel is an essential (pun intended)
    phenomenological grammar that is preambular to any metaphysic, substance or
    process, any natural theology, or any theology of nature, whether classical or
    neoclassical, pan-entheistic or panen-theistic, or even pantheistic or atheological. This
    represents the foundations of most of my musings.
    After posting this, I happily discovered the work of Dr. Mariusz Tabaczek O.P., who has
    articulated a "dispositional" metaphysic. I commend his writings to all.
    Please see:
    https://ndias.nd.edu/fellows/tabaczek-mariusz/
    https://mariopblog.wordpress.com/
    Below is an excerpt from his dissertation. It is the best example of a theology of nature
    as would be consistent with what I am struggling to articulate.
    https://mariopblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/1234.pdf
    "A theory of emergence based on dispositional metaphysics would show a new
    explanatory potential as well. It would not only reconcile Aristotelianism with
    emergentism, but also have a significant impact on the view of divine action developed
    in reference to the theory of emergence. God’s action would no longer be conceived
    panentheistically as an influence on the totality of the world, which metaphysically
    assumes that the causation of God and creatures is of the same kind (univocal
    predication) and so runs the risk of collapsing into pantheism. The recovery of the plural
    notion of causation allows for a recapturing of the classical understanding of divine
    action as proposed by Aquinas. God is regarded as the ultimate source of forms, and the
    ultimate aim of all teleology in nature. With regard to efficient causation, God’s
    transcendence is protected by Aquinas’ distinction between the primary and principal
    causation of the Creator and the secondary and instrumental character of the causation
    of creatures. Therefore, God’s immutability, omniscience, omnipotence, infinity,
    eternity, and impassibility are not challenged, while his immanent and constant
    presence in all worldly events is by no means undermined."

    Notes:

    1) I say Peirce-like because I am not a thoroughgoing Peircean,


    metaphysically. I adapt, herein, his implicit modal grammar, importing
    Aristotelian, Thomistic & Palamitic distinctions.

    2) A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God (1908) by Charles Sanders


    Peirce

    Regarding the Neglected Argument, Gary E. Kessler writes:

    I begin with some distinctions. First, Peirce distinguishes between an argument


    and argumentation. An argument is “any process of thought reasonably tending
    to produce a definite belief” while argumentation refers to an argument that
    proceeds “upon definitely formulated premisses” (6.456). We must note that
    Peirce’s Neglected Argument (hereafter referred to as NA) is an argument, but
    not argumentation.

    Second, we must distinguish between reality and existence. Reality is a broader


    term that encompasses what exists but is not synonymous with it. For something
    to be real it must have properties sufficient to identify it whether anyone
    attributes those properties to it or not. The existent, strictly speaking, is what
    interacts with things in a spatio-temporal environment. Since God is not another
    spatio-temporal object, it amounts to fetishism, Peirce remarks, to say that God
    exists. Hence his argument, strictly speaking, is not an argument for God’s
    existence, but for God’s reality.

    Conversations that touch upon my take above:

    Mapping Metaphysical Distinctions: Aristotelian, Thomist, Scotist, Peircean &


    Palamitic

    The “Trans-Formal Distinction” between the Divine Essence & Energies

    Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse

    The Krueger-McHugh Debate: Theism or Atheism (2003)

    The Formulation of Thomistic Simplicity: Mapping Aquinas’s Method for


    Configuring God’s Essence, JETS 57/2 (June 2014): 371–403.

    Divine Simplicity and the Formal Distinction, Part 2


    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/09/05/over-coming-not-over-turning-
    metaphysics-a-peircean-trinitophany-of-divine-thatness-whatness-howness/
    Peirce’s semiotics lend philosophical credibility to Hans
    Urs von Balthasar’s idea of “seeing the form” of Divine
    Beauty
    Examples of how Peirce's semiotics lend philosophical credibility to Hans Urs von
    Balthasar's idea of “seeing the form” of Divine Beauty.
    I. Joshua Brown: Benefits of Reading Balthasar for Comparative Theology
    Strange Companions? The Possibility of Hans Urs von Balthasar and
    Comparative Theology by Joshua Brown
    At this point we have reached a position from which we may suggest three main benefits
    Balthasar’s theological aesthetic offers comparative theology. First, Balthasar’s
    theological aesthetics offers an extremely helpful avenue for thinking about non-
    Christian texts, especially those of South and East Asian lineage.
    There is no need here to rehearse the various criticisms about the concept of “religion”
    and how it effects the study of non-Christian traditions; we can here simply point out
    that viewing traditions such as Islam, Confucianism, and Hinduism as “religions” can
    easily draw attention to propositional differences with Christianity, or make one so keen
    to avoid conflict that the propositional content of Christian proclamation is diminished.
    The theological aesthetic imagination cultivated in reading Balthasar shifts focus toward
    the cultural embodiment of religious doctrine and commitment as the idiom
    of the encounter with God.
    This is an instinct developed throughout Balthasar’s corpus, which as often commends a
    Cervantes or Claudel as it does St. Irenaeus or St. Bonaventure. For the comparative
    theologian, this sort of focus on aesthetics, cultural embodiment, and practice can allow
    fuller insight into what aspects of non-Christian religious traditions can be incorporated
    into the Gospel.
    The comparative theologian is able to give the same answer as St. Thomas to the crucifix
    as San Domenico: “Lord, I want nothing but yourself.” Such a dispositional foundation
    enriches comparative theology, as can be seen in Clooney’s book His Hiding Place is
    Darkness and indeed his theology in general. This book does not issue a challenge to
    Christianity that it has failed in a certain notional or practical aspect that must now be
    corrected by a heretofore-untested comparative reading. Rather, Clooney speaks of the
    experience of the grieved lover striving for the beloved, and seeks to explore this
    experience in greater fullness. Whereas a deficiency model of comparative theology
    would draw its power from limiting and critiquing its own tradition, Clooney’s model
    can explore the depths of both Christianity and Hinduism, all in the language of love.
    Hence, Clooney grounds his expansive comparative work “in the specificity and
    particularity” of his own enduring love for Jesus Christ. The foundation of love allows
    to delve deeply into the particularity of his Christian eros and draw Hindu wisdom
    within this eros, rather, than set it aside for the sake of a totalizing theological
    intellectual grammar.
    I have simply endeavored to show how Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theology is full of
    promise for the comparative theologian. Even though Balthasar himself was not trained
    in any comparative method and shows little ability to have done so, his theological
    perspective is such that it inspires deep, rich, and meaningful theological readings of
    non-Christian traditions. Because Balthasar sees revelation not in terms of propositions,
    but in terms of the divine Gestalt that approaches us, the form is itself infinite, and able
    to accept configurations that seem alien to it at first. Because Balthasar sees the Gestalt
    as founded in and testifying to Christ, it allows the comparative theological task that
    invaluable central anchor, informing us at all times about what sort of portrait we are
    composing, and allowing us a way to perceive what gives life to our reading of non-
    Christian texts. And, because Balthasar sees the encounter with revelation in terms of
    ecstatic aesthetic experience, it makes room for the loving heart to take up non-
    Christian testimony in understanding, perceiving, and describing the Gestalt of God.
    II. The Community of the Beautiful: A Theological Aesthetics by Alejandro R. Garcia-
    Rivera
    The Community of the Beautiful is not simply an analysis of Balthasar's theology; there
    exists a more personal and concrete reason for a reconsideration of the connection
    between God and the beautiful. The experience of a particular living ecclesial tradition,
    the Latin Church of the Americas, may be a guide to a world that lost its confidence in
    the religious dimensions of the beautiful.
    Garcia-Rivera recasts the question of theological aesthetics posed above in light of the
    religious experience of the Latin Church of the Americas so that the question becomes:
    What moves the human heart?
    To answer that question, Garcia-Rivera draws on along-ignored philosophical tradition.
    The philosophical semiotics of Charles Peirce and Josiah Royce enter into dialogue
    with the theological aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar to describe the traditional
    transcendentals, the True and the Good, as communities. The final transcendental,
    the beautiful, enters into conversation with the semiotic aesthetics of Jan Mukarovsky
    and the religious experience of the Latin American Church to become the dazzling
    Vision of the community of the beautiful, God's community.
    III. Reasons and Values of the Heart in a Pluralistic World: Toward a Contemplative
    Phenomenology for Interreligious Dialogue,” Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 20:2
    (2010): 170-93
    If we adopt a contemplative phenomenology that more broadly conceives religious
    epistemology beyond the traditional philosophical categories of epistemic justification
    (empirical and logical) and normative praxes (ethical, moral and practical) to include
    other indispensable human values as well, such as the esthetic, affective, aspirational,
    relational, and other embodied aspects of all that humans experience as true, good,
    beautiful, unitive & liberative, then these additional perspectives will contribute to a
    more holistic (hence, authentic) anthropology.
    In a reality that is radically graced, pervasively incarnational, profusely
    pneumatological, we are perhaps guided more so by Beauty and Goodness to hold these
    types of beliefs as Truth and not so much by metaphysical proofs.
    Nowhere in our argument do we presume the doctrine of soteriological universalism. As
    with Balthasar (1988) and Barth (see Colwell 1992), we might even hope for such, but in
    the end, given the creaturely freedom to resist even divine grace— as incomprehensible
    as such resistance might be—it remains possible that some might not be finally saved.
    A Goldilocks Theological Anthropology – between
    pessimism & optimism, natural & supernatural, nature
    & grace
    We must resist an under-estimation of the significance of special revelation in growing
    humanity's orientation to God, as it allows persons to move more swiftly & with less
    hindrance on their journeys, realizing both temporal & ultimate teloi.
    We must also resist either an over- or under-estimation (of an extreme intrinsicism or
    extrinsicism) of humanity's dynamic orientation to God & moral reality via natural
    theology & natural law.
    Even among the intrinsicists of the Nouvelle Theologie, the blurring of distinctions
    between nature & grace didn't remove anthropological tensions regarding the realities of
    sin & ecclesial accommodations to the world.

    While the intrinsicists all agree in principle that we can discern what's “common and
    accessible to all” and gradually move forward to the “highest data of theology,” some
    Thomists & Augustinians otherwise diverged precisely along the grounds for
    anthropological optimism & pessimism vis a vis both sin & worldly accommodations.
    See:
    Brandon Peterson, Critical Voices: The Reactions of Rahner and Ratzinger to 'Schema
    XIII' (Gaudium et Spes)
    Peterson quotes a post-conciliar interview of Rahner: I would say that the dangers of a
    false adaptation of the Church to the modern world, or of falling into a purely secular
    humanism —which are real dangers in the Church’s attempt to open itself outwards to
    the modern world can invite as a defensive reaction the opposite danger, namely, to turn
    inwards and to make the Church a closed sect. Theology must help the preacher preach
    the gospel in such a way that it can really be understood and assimilated today; and
    theology also has a critical function in preventing the Church in its preaching or in its
    practice from becoming a ghetto or a sect within the contemporary world.
    Peterson concludes: Christocentrism, anthropological methodology, and critical
    openness to the world stand in a creative tension which marks Gaudium et Spes itself, a
    tension which we must not relax if we are to be faithful heirs to this landmark council.
    For such a tension is an essential part of a theological approach which, executed
    properly, can proclaim the Gospel to a world that not only needs it, but needs to
    understand it.
    How might we best exploit these creative tensions?
    Reality emerges & gifts entities that present with different kinds of “aboutness” that
    suggest degrees of ontological density but which don't definitively reveal metaphysical
    natures.
    An emergentist heuristic might refer to these “aboutnesses” in terms of different
    degrees of telic influence.
     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.
    In this profusely pneumatological reality, divine interactivity gifts the Spirit's
    universalized presence via creatio continua, consistent with the Thomistic aphorism -
    “Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur.” This means that “whatever is
    received, is received according to the mode of the receiver.”
    All reality participates, constitutively & relationally, responding to various formal &
    formative divine promptings of divine esse intentionale & energies, each entity
    according to its given telic modes.
    Human persons interact with the Spirit's universalized presence, constituted by &
    engaging in all of the above-listed modes of aboutness, but uniquely, as reality's only
    sapiopoietic creature, via a teleological mode, in a robustly intentional way.
    The sapiopoietic nature of human persons equips them to also interact with the Spirit's
    particularized presence in special revelation.
    Per Aquinas in the ST: It is befitting Holy Writ to put forward divine and spiritual truths
    by means of comparisons with material things. For God provides for everything
    according to the capacity of its nature. Now it is natural to man to attain to intellectual
    truths through sensible objects, because all our knowledge originates from sense. Hence
    in Holy Writ, spiritual truths are fittingly taught under the likeness of material things.
    This is what Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. i): "We cannot be enlightened by the divine rays
    except they be hidden within the covering of many sacred veils." It is also befitting Holy
    Writ, which is proposed to all without distinction of persons — "To the wise and to the
    unwise I am a debtor" (Romans 1:14) — that spiritual truths be expounded by means of
    figures taken from corporeal things, in order that thereby even the simple who are
    unable by themselves to grasp intellectual things may be able to understand it.
    Per Don Gelpi S.J.’s anthropology:
    In an “experiential approach to human nature, any given human mind may or may not
    be oriented dynamically to God. Rather, each self must acquire such an orientation,
    either by fixing its personal beliefs on purely rational motives concerning the reality and
    nature of God, or by responding positively and graciously in faith to some event of
    divine self-revelation.”
    The gratuity of creation, experienced by human persons as they interact with the
    Spirit's universalized presence, can foster a rationally acquired dynamical orientation to
    God, gifting an awareness of & cultivating an aretaical disposition toward both temporal
    & ultimate teloi. It can thus foster – not only the secular conversions (intellectual,
    affective, moral & sociopolitical), but – an authentic theocentric religious conversion,
    which, while variously implicit & inchoate, cooperates with the obediential potencies
    formed by secular conversions.

    The gratuity of grace, experienced by human persons as they interact with the Spirit's
    particularized presence, can foster a dynamic reorientation of the self to God, if it
    responds positively and graciously in faith to some event of divine self-revelation.
    If this dynamic reorientation of the self results from a response in faith to a particular
    divine self-disclosure, whether initially or subsequent to a previous reorientation
    fostered by the gratuity of creation, it constitutes an infusion of supernatural grace via
    the gratuity of grace.
    Per Gelpi, supernatural grace “transmutes experience by endowing it with a new
    capacity to relate to God both correlative to God’s free act of self-disclosure and
    impossible apart from that self-revelation.”
    A theocentric religious conversion orients a person via Lonergan's transcendental
    imperatives as – beyond, temporally, being aware, intelligent, reasonable, responsible &
    in love with others, cosmos & even self – it also invites one into a relationship with a
    donative ultimate reality, much like Pip in Great Expectations as he related to his
    unknown benefactor or, perhaps, as Ralph McInerny put it, like characters in search of
    their Author. This represents the essential, orthodoxic, soteriological trajectory of the
    world's great traditions & indigenous religions.
    Consistent with Nostra Aetate, concerning the relationship of the church to non-
    Christian religions, in addition to that essential soteriological trajectory, various
    traditions & religions may otherwise diverge to various degrees in their polydoxic,
    sophiological trajectories, whereby persons grow in intimacy (theosis) with God.

    See:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/%e2%80%8bwhat-the-
    contemplative-stance-means-to-me/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2016/12/23/democratizing-theosis-for-jesus-
    is-a-truly-cosmic-christ/
    This is the Goldilocks anthropology that best exploits the creative tensions of the
    Nouvelle Theologie, which, when properly engaged, successfully sidesteps any sterile
    Neo-Scholasticism, transcendental Thomism or Augustinian radicalism.

    Special Revelation clarifies what would otherwise remain indistinct in the logos of
    General Revelation.
    First, in the order of logos:
    Determinacies
    We disambiguate ambiguities & define in/definite actualities, which are determinacies
    (in/definitive) that correspond to referenced or defined entities.
    Indeterminacies
    In/determinacies (in/determinable & in/determined) refer to generalities (probabilities
    & necessities) and vagueness (possibilities).
    We determine in/determinacies by delimiting vague possibilities & specifying
    generalities, i.e. probabilities & necessities.
    Beyond a mere propositional translation process (via our cognitive map-making)
    between noetic aspects of general & special revelations, as we move from natural to
    revealed theology or even between revealed traditions ...
    We must also engage in
    dispositional interpretations (via the inhabitations of our participatory imaginations) of
    culturally embodied unitive, aesthetic, ethical & liberative norms, if we are to adequately
    appropriate the theological idioms required for our Gospel inculturation.
    Then, beyond logos:
    Beyond a creedal logos, we need participatory immersion in revelation's other integral
    aspects: communal (topos), liturgical & devotional (pathos), moral (ethos) and ascetical
    & mystical (mythos).
    Natural Theology shouldn't be conceived in strictly logocentric terms, for even a
    theocentric religious conversion in the gratuity of creation, however inchoate, indistinct
    or implicit, propositionally, will dispositionally gift, both personally & culturally,
    embodied relationships to truth, unity, beauty, goodness & freedom.
    As one cooperates with prevenient graces & obediential potencies via General
    Revelation, while these propositional & dispositional embodiments remain confused,
    imperfect & indistinct, due to the indirect nature of one's knowledge of God, they reflect
    authentic existential orientations to the transcendental imperatives directly known via
    Special Revelation in the gratuity of grace.
    To wit: https://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles3a.htm#25
    Since all creatures, even those devoid of understanding, are ordered to God as to an
    ultimate end, all achieve this end to the extent that they participate somewhat in His
    likeness. Intellectual creatures attain it in a more special way, that is, through their
    proper operation of understanding Him. Hence, this must be the end of the intellectual
    creature, namely, to understand God.
    Further, see:
    Amos Yong With John Sobert Sylvest, “Reasons and Values of the Heart in a Pluralistic
    World: Toward a Contemplative Phenomenology for Interreligious Dialogue,” Studies in
    Interreligious Dialogue 20:2 (2010): 170-93
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/15/ augustinians-thomists-nature-
    grace-politics-religion/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/12/03/how-gelpis-inculturated-north-
    american-theology-graced-my-encounter-with-eastern-orthodoxy/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2019/02/14/david-bentley-hart-duns-scotus-
    walk-into-a-bar-see-radical-orthodoxy-ask-why-the-long-face/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/20/peirces-semiotics-lend-
    philosophical-credibility-to-hans-urs-von-balthasars-idea-of-seeing-the-form-of-divine-
    beauty/
    Humanity’s Growth is No Myth & its Declines are Greatly
    Exaggerated
    Neither theocentric traditions, generally, nor Christianity, particularly, birthed any
    -isms of human economic & political orders, despite contrary claims. Their robustly &
    pervasively telic conceptions in every sphere of human concern have nurtured the
    growth of human reason, both speculative & practical, that has gifted the undeniable
    advance of human flourishing, both spiritual & material, as well as more refined
    conceptions of human dignity, itself.

    The late Jesuit, Stanley Jaki, chronicled the growth of science, itself, from theocentric &
    Christian roots. Thomism, when properly & wholly appropriated, gives an
    anthropological account of the natural law as operative in all human virtues ordered to
    both temporal & ultimate teloi, even when its implicit theoretic principles are only
    inchoately explicated in various theocentric sociocultural milieu.

     Jaki argued persuasively and profoundly that Enlightenment philosophes, thinkers and
    writers (on down to the present) have been mistaken about Christianity and science. For
    them, Christianity supposedly inhibited, and even oppressed, science. But Jaki, along
    with his great mentor Pierre Duhem, knew that the opposite had occurred. In The Savior
    of Science (2000), Jaki revealed the Christian foundations of modern science. He
    examined the failed attempts at a sustained science on the part of the ancient cultures of
    Greece, China, India, and the early Muslim empire. Christian monotheism alone
    provided epistemological underpinnings for scientific endeavour. In another booklet,
    Christ and Science, Jaki provided four reasons for the unique birth of modern science in
    Christian Western Europe. First, the Christian belief in the Creator provided a
    foundation-stone for thinking about nature. Only a truly transcendental Creator could be
    powerful enough to create a nature that incorporated autonomous laws without the
    Creator’s power over nature being diminished. Second, it put all material beings on the
    same level. There could be no divine bodies in the Christian cosmos (unlike the Greek
    cosmos). Third, humankind was created in the image of God, with a rationality that
    somehow shared in God’s own rationality. Fourth, humankind, created by God, cannot
    dictate to nature what it should be. Indeed, the rise of the experimental method owes
    much to this Christian matrix. The noted conservative thinker Russell Kirk stated,
    “Modern science, Father Jaki points humanity, generally, has progressed materially - not
    in spite of, but – precisely because of its overall moral & spiritual trajectories.out, rose
    from the natural theology of medieval Christian learning—a fact that philosophes and
    positivists sedulously ignore.” Father Jaki worked hard to refute those who asserted that
    Catholicism has been an enemy of science—has thwarted science. The opposite is the
    case, and Father Jaki worked boldly and strongly in order that the truth about this
    should come out and be known, as it must.
    Various prudential approaches to human dignity, as proper to times & places, but not
    otherwise universally prescriptive, have allowed some sociological & ideological weeds
    to crop up among the spiritual wheat of the world's otherwise pervasively theocentric
    societies & anthropologies.
    Among those weeds are an Enlightenment fundamentalism, ideological liberalisms,
    practical nihilisms (even among so-called believers), militant secularisms &
    misconceptions of freedom. But to focus on the weeds when so much wheat has been
    harvested is wrong.
    Neither various secularisms nor liberalisms, for example, logically follow as required
    ideologies for human flourishing. Rather, the essential philosophical takeaways are the
    principles of human dignity & conceptions of human freedom & its aretaically liberative
    dynamics. Secularity remains one of our tools, while secularism is for fools.
    Over-against the apocalyptic doomsaying that we're now living “after virtue,” advanced
    primarily by culture warriors, who are preoccupied with sex & gender issues, and by
    institutionalistic mindsets, who overidealize ecclesiocentric realities with an empirically
    unjustified nostalgia, the world has grown, materially & morally.
    Christianity will be fine, especially if we don't too narrowly construe it in institutional,
    hierarchical terms, just as the USA will be fine, especially if we don't too narrowly
    conceive of it as a merely political reality.
    Like the myth of the Post-Christian West, the decline of the Church and fall of the USA
    are as fanciful as the notion that God is Dead.
    While I deemphasize institutional metrics, more broadly conceiving the Church in
    mystical, sacramental, herald & servant conceptions, still, even mere institutional
    metrics don't reveal Christianity to be in decline per Gallup, Pew and other researchers.
    See:
     https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/02/world-christianity-by-the-
    numbers
     https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_population_growth
     http://www.gallup.com/poll/159050/seven-americans-moderately-religious.aspx
     http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2013/january/post-christian-era-the-future-of-faith-
    in-america/
     https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2013/03/29/frank-newport-
    religion-in-america-is-not-dying
    US polling switches from denominations to unaffiliated reflect decreased
    stigmatization per Gallup:
    "Now, it is normatively much easier for a person who doesn’t attend religious services to
    simply tell interviewer 'none' when asked his or her religion. In other words, no change
    underneath, but a big change in reporting."
    None of this is to deny the threat of asymmetric warfare, but the fact - that there could
    some day be a technological unleashing of unprecedented destructive potentials by
    crazed, demented groups – is not dispositive of the question regarding whether or not
    humanity, generally, has grown & advanced materially - not in spite of, but –
    precisely because of its overall moral & spiritual trajectories.
    Steven Pinker (TED2018) describes this undeniable trajectory: Is the world getting
    better or worse? A look at the numbers

    Pinker (TED2007) earlier described the surprising decline in world violence.


    As with others, Pinker goes on to make incredibly facile interpretations of his otherwise
    indisputable facts. It's not secularism or an abstracted Enlightenment that accounts for
    such material & moral advances. After all, the world's peoples remain decisively
    theocentric in their concrete practices of daily living & dying, working & playing, loving
    & learning & leaving of legacies. Furthermore, there's nothing inevitable about these
    advances.
    Growth is no myth. Decline has been greatly exaggerated. And few have properly come
    to grips with the real reasons for either, offering, instead, facile tautological apologetics
    to proselytize their exclusivistic ecclesiocentrisms & arrogant naturalisms.
    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.”
    Pascal's Wager has normative impetus even for universalists. At the existential
    disjunction between nihilism & theism, where one reasonably opts to live as if the
    pursuit of life's most beautiful, good, unitive & liberative realities will, more likely than
    other approaches, thereby gift the most true (as truth often has flown in on the wings of
    beauty & goodness, lifted by love), those pursuits are not merely instrumental but also
    happen to be their own rewards! As compelling as the spectre of eternal fire & brimstone
    may be, life's Higher Goods, life's Higher Loves, life's Finer Things, which can be
    pursued without moderation, remain both necessary & sufficient to compel their own
    pursuits & celebrate their realizations, all quite apart from even temporal, much less,
    eternal rewards. Virtue truly is its own reward. It, alone, leads to the High Life.
    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

    Of interest:
    Amos Yong explores sanctification as deification in Eastern Orthodoxy, in general, & in
    the desert tradition of Orthodox spirituality, more specifically, proceeding in the hope
    that its “technology of liberation” will provide a bridge for dialogue with the Buddhist
    tradition.
    Pneumatology and the Christian-Buddhist Dialogue: Does the Spirit Blow
    through the Middle Way?
    Amos Yong, BRILL, 2012
    Augustinians & Thomists, Nature & Grace, Politics &
    Religion
    The following notes are in continuity with & supplemental to:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/maritain-murray-macintyre-
    milbank-a-medieval-integralist-walk-into-a-bar/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/the-pre-political-grounding-of-
    both-liberal-illiberal-regimes/
    For responses to Nouvelle Theologie, Feser lists:
    1) Lawrence Feingold’s The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas
    Aquinas & His Interpreters
    2) Steven Long’s Natura Pura
    3) Ralph McInerny’s Praeambula Fidei
    4) Bernard Mulcahy’s Aquinas’s Notion of Pure Nature and the Christian Integralism
    of Henri de Lubac
    5) Serge-Thomas Bonino’s edited volume Surnaturel: A Controversy at the Heart of
    Twentieth-Century Thomistic Thought
    I would add as a meta-critique of all the schools:
    Don Gelpi's The Gracing of Human Experience: Rethinking the Relationship between
    Nature & Grace
    He names fallacies of Christian thinkers that have in the past skewed theological
    understandings.

    In The Gracing of Human Experience: Rethinking the Relationship between Nature and
    Grace, Gelpi argues that Charles Sanders Peirce's philosophy avoided those fallacies &
    provides a novel frame of reference for rethinking the theology of grace. While he
    eschews any artificial extrinsicism, he doesn't underestimate secular conversions in the
    gratuity of creation.
    In my (eisegetic?) take, Gelpi's view is consonant w/both a faithful Augustinianism, the
    best of Existential Thomism & sympathetic to Nouvelle's Communio, rejecting
    transcendentalist anthropologies (e.g. Whig Thomism) or those flirting w/depravist
    tendencies, as do some integralists (e.g. Political Augustinianism) & Augustinian
    radicalisms (Radical Orthodoxy & Benedict Option).
    Per Thaddeus Kozinski: Both classical & new traditions neglect four realities:
    1) mutually dependent relation of speculative & practical reason
    2) subjectivity-shaping role of social practices
    3) tradition-constituted-&-constitutive character of practical rationality
    4) indispensability of divine revelation in ethical inquiry & practice. <<< end of Kozinski
    critique from Brandon Watson
    While some may be justly criticized re 1-3, many feel caricatured.
    Regarding #4, it mustn't be coupled w/an ecclesiocentric exclusivism at odds with
    Nostra Aetate.
    Elsewhere, Kozinski presses his critique vis a vis #4 against Maritain (& Rawls).
    Among those claiming caricaturization, Feser responded to Kozinski.

    Re: Macintyre's criticism of Maritain, Ralph McInerny well notes that, even inadequate
    & false justifications have embedded in them an implicit recognition of the true ends of
    human nature & thus of the true basis for practical precepts.

    We can thus distinguish between the natural law as operative in a plurality of largely
    theocentric societies (functionally personalist & communalist) & its theoretic grounding,
    both implicit & explicit. The operative is ontological, the theoretic --- gnoseological.
    Over against Alasdair MacIntyre’s social philosophy, Bryan Turner suggests its
    pessimistic view of the collapse of a common moral vocabulary is unfounded.
    For one thing, MacIntyre creates a nostalgic picture of the coherence of past
    communities, & for another, MacIntyre neglects the growth of human rights &
    international law as instances of a shared moral system that is not based on emotivism.
    Alasdair MacIntyre on morality, community & natural law, Journal of Classical
    Sociology 13(2) 239–253, 2013
    We mustn't overestimate natural law accessibility as we descend from the more general
    precepts to increasingly specific concrete norms, or underestimate its operative
    efficacies in, at least, provisioning a modicum of public peace, order, justice & morality.
    So, there's no reason that our world's largely theocentric vision can't explicitly, even if
    sometimes inchoately, affirm that freedom’s inherent duties are objectively &
    communally ordered to realize the aretaic & deontological ends (teloi) of eternal &
    natural laws.
    Or that we grow in freedom through a formative & liberative process of learning, which
    will necessarily include the increasingly habitual practice of these duties.
    While I am sympathetic to the rhetorical strategy regarding exaggerated "rights talk,”
    in & of itself, it's not philosophically bankrupt as some suggest, for freedom's rights
    remain correlative with & inseparable from its duties to be/come who & do what we
    ought. They are, therefore, rather precisely implicated.
    The Problems of Beginning & Justification – are hardly
    fatal
    One can read Godel & the End of the Universe by Professor S.W.Hawking here.

    I first listened to Professor Hawking's lecture as differently entitled: "Gödel and the end
    of physics"
    Audio available here.

    When listening to Hawking, it seemed I'd encountered his conclusion, many years
    before, in Jesuit Father Stanley Jaki's 1966 "The Relevance of Physics."
    Fr Jaki responded to Hawking in an article rather snarkily called "A Late Awakening"
    Alon Amit wrote an ANGRY rebuttal. Ironically, it included: It's possible we won't find
    one because the theory will inevitably contain a plethora of hand-tuned parameters that
    "can't be explained from first principles."
    If Amit's right regarding "nonsensical conclusions from Gödel's Theorems," it seems he
    was nevertheless missing the obvious point regarding those first principles that both
    Jaki & Hawking properly intuited: Münchhausen trilemma

    But Sextus Empiricus c.160 had already beat'em all to that insight!
    Peter Suber has written the best & most accessible discussion of this whole "Problem of
    Beginning"
    It's a lesson every aspiring (or world-renowned) physicist or metaphysician must learn.
    Still, neither Tarski nor Gödel should be facilely applied.

    The take-away is NOT that the radical skeptics win the day or that postmodernism
    offers a system rather than a mere critique. Instead, justification requires both
    speculative & practical reason, a robustly participatory taste & see approach to
    Truth!
    See: Natural Theology & Natural Law -however otherwise weak, at least- defeat Nihilism
    Essential Theophanic & Putative Theo-ontological
    Aspects of Human & Divine Relations
    A theophany might define essential donative, communicative, participative & liberative
    aspects of human-divine relations. It would preclude all fatalism & determinism, include
    a robust conception of agency & proper conception of freedom.

    Would any of those dogmatic essentials necessarily be threatened in a theo-ontology


    that
    pan-entheistically employs an ontological distinction between humans & God, where
    God donates & communicates creatively as we participate & are liberated imitatively?
    panen-theistically employs a mereological distinction between humans & God, where
    God donates & communicates diffusively as we participate & are liberated
    substratively?
    From lengthy, depthful discussions with a friend who followed Aurobindo & a limited
    study of Rāmānuja, all which evoked anew my own resonances with Pseudo-Dionysius,
    I would answer --- no.

    Of special interest, see:


    Clayton, Philip. (2010). Panentheisms East and West. Sophia. 49. 183-191.
    10.1007/s11841-010-0181-9.
    After writing this, I came across this: Dionysian Ponderings: The God Who is
    Theophany by Fr Aidan Kimel
    I heartily commend that whole series.
    tags: creatio ex nihilo, creatio ex deo, creatio ex profundis, creatio ex amore, efficient &
    exemplary causes,
    Natural Theology & Natural Law -however otherwise
    weak, at least- defeat Nihilism
    In science, faith & quotidian life, epistemic virtues should first vault our speculative
    claims over the threshold of equiplausibility, where we can normatively adjudicate any
    competing responses using the principles of reasoning under uncertainty.
    The hermeneutical spiral, above, recapitulates Lonergan's transcendental imperatives &
    functional specialties.
    See: https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/contemplative-being-
    behaving-believing-belonging-desiring-becoming-an-outline-of-foundations/
    To wit:
    De-liberatively, regarding our references, descriptively & interpretively, epistemic
    virtues should first vault our speculative claims over the threshold of equiplausibility,
    where we can adjudicate, normatively, any competing responses, using the principles of
    reasoning under uncertainty, evaluatively.
    De-liberatively (cosmos & mythos – be free, be loving, be-loved per both temporal &
    ultimate teloi) …
    regarding our references …
    descriptively (logos or perception - be aware in research & communications) & …
    interpretively (topos or understanding – be intelligent in interpretation & systematics)
    …
    epistemic virtues should first vault our speculative claims over the threshold of
    equiplausibility, where we can adjudicate …
    normatively (ethos or acting - be responsible in dialectics & foundations), any
    competing responses, using the principles of reasoning under uncertainty …
    evaluatively,(pathos or judging & deciding – be reasonable in history & doctrines).
    I must stipulate with Hart & Milbank that any rivalry between ultimate worldviews, say
    nihilist vs theological, cannot be logically coerced. Reality remains far too ambiguous for
    us & way too ambivalent toward us to compel belief through speculative reason, alone.
    With the Thomists, I would insist that, even stipulating that nihilism has not thus been
    refuted, philosophy well demonstrates the reasonableness of natural theology as an
    equiplausible competing worldview.
    For me, Thomism’s reasonableness remains indispensable over against any
    thoroughgoing fideism, much less, nominalism, idealism, voluntarism or relativism.
    I do not receive Milbank as coming from some Thoroughly [Post]Modern Millie, but,
    instead, take (eisegetically) his postmodern critique as an admonition to avoid the
    temptations of dueling hyper-formalisms in countering those insidious -isms.
    This is to recognize that ---
    no essentialistic framing will finally foreclose nominalism, descriptively;
    no naïve realism will convincingly defeat idealism, interpretively;
    no intellectualistic speculation will logically overcome voluntarism, evaluatively;
    no absolutistic insistence will compellingly obviate relativism, normatively; and
    no rationalistic appeals will definitively refute fideism, existentially.
    But what amount to epistemic misfires for some are but caricatures for others, whose
    1) descriptive probes include semiotic & moderate critical realisms;
    2) interpretive heuristics employ a metaphysical fallibilism;
    3) evaluative dispositions engage an irreducible triad of logos-pathos-ethos, e.g.
    Aristotelian eudaimonia, Augustinian beatitudo or Thomist summum bonum;
    4) normative propositions allow some degree of ethical pluralism grounded – not in an
    insidious relativism or vulgar pragmatism, but --- suitable epistemic humility,
    metaphysical fallibilism & moral probabilism ; and
    5) philosophical preambula vault fidei past the threshold of equiplausibility.
    Thomism’s reasonableness thus gets vaulted philosophically past the threshold of
    equiplausibility by the valid & coherent arguments of natural theology & natural law.
    (And its deontological conclusions should be considered at least as modest as its
    ontological commitments are tentative). There, philosophy culminates in either the
    theological preambula fidei & its general precepts or a nihilistic cosmogony.

    Any "competing" theological or nihilistic mythos would come after a normatively


    justified existential leap.
    Past this threshold of epistemic warrant, speculative reason yields to practical
    reasoning under uncertainty. The speculative arguments between essentialism &
    nominalism, realism & idealism, intellectualism & voluntarism, absolutism & relativism
    and fideism & rationalism have previously been transcended by a fallibilist, critical
    realism.
    Normative justifications commence and can lead either to the fideistic, voluntaristic
    dichotomy of a theological versus nihilistic mythos or to an existential disjunction,
    where rational equiplausibility principles, albeit often implicit, adjudicate a decision to
    “live as if” that which is (more so, perhaps, they who are) the most life-giving &
    relationship-enhancing, the most beautiful & good, the most unitive & liberative, will ---
    first & proleptically, i.e. proximately & temporally, as well as eventually &
    eschatologically, i.e. ultimately & eternally --- also happen to be the most true.
    This constitutes meta-discourse, however inchoate or implicit, whether variously held
    provisionally or confidently, yes, prior to special revelations, and yes, on tradition-
    transcendent grounds. Importantly, this needn't be formal discourse or what can
    sometimes devolve into sylly syllogisms, but more often, via our participatory
    imaginations, comes from our common sense & common sensibilities, from
    connaturality, an illative sense, a tacit dimension, intuitions & informal abductions.
    The most problematical arguments of natural theology are rationalistically grounded in
    naïve rather than critical realisms. The most problematical arguments of the natural law
    are a prioristic, rationalistic, deductivistic, biologistic, physicalistic & infallibilistic,
    especially as they move from general precepts to specific concrete norms, particularly
    because of epistemic hubris and the lack of a more inductive, personalist relationality-
    responsibility approach. But the abuse of natural theology & natural law is no argument
    against their proper use.
    The questions that beg?
    What constitutes the most life-giving, existentially?
    How do we define & measure the most relationship-enhancing? The most unitive,
    interpretively & orthocommunally?
    Where's the most beautiful instantiated, evaluatively & orthopathically?
    And the most good realized, normatively & orthopraxically?
    And the most liberative, metanoetically & orthotheotically?
    These are not questions that yield to an armchair cognitive map-making but which
    must actively engage participative imaginations that are naturally embodied,
    historically situated, socially embedded, culturally bound, politically immersed &
    transcendentally horizoned.
    Of course it's incredibly problematical to apply our ortho-metrics to competing
    worldviews, precisely because their instantiations are so very particular & traditioned.
    But I wouldn't want to defend the notion that nihilism remains in that competition?
    Finally, Between an overly pessimistic Augustinian interpretation & overly optimistic
    transcendental Thomism, perhaps a Goldilocks theological anthropology can be
    articulated:
    /https://opcentral.org/resources/2015/01/12/donald-l-gelpi-two-spiritual-paths-
    thematic-grace-vs-transmuting-grace-part-1/
    https://opcentral.org/resources/2015/01/12/donald-l-gelpi-two-spiritual-paths-
    thematic-grace-vs-transmuting-grace-part-ii/
    Gelpi recognized both as donative realities - a gratuity of creation & gratuity of
    grace, the Spirit's universal presence (e.g. nomicities) & particular presence, where
    Grace is mediated via transmuted experience, where, for example, Kerygma matter
    immensely.
    This discussion continues here:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/15/augustinians-
    thomists-nature-grace-politics-religion/
    Where in the World is Sophia? ---a Sophiological footnote
    The created grace Gelpi refers to would be constituted by reality's actualized potencies,
    eternalized teloi (both temporal & ultimate teloi) of Peircean thirdness, efficient
    materialities of secondness, connaturalized indeterminacies of firstness, existentialized
    essences, formalized finalities, participatory intimacizations eternalized, all temporal
    realities coaxed forth Pneumatologically, Christologically & Paterologically via Divine
    Energies as would account for effects as would be proper to no known causes.
    Every trace of human goodness, for example, eternalized, i.e. every
    beginning of a smile & all wholesome trivialities!
    Whether interpreted in Platonic, Neoplatonic, Aristotelian, Thomist, Scotist, Palamitic
    or Peircean categories (and I cross hermeneutical bridges between them all), collectively
    & dynamically, these cumulative actualized potencies or eternally realized divine teloi
    may represent Sophia, who participates in the Divine Energies in a perichoretic
    Divine Dance.
    In The Wisdom of God, Bulgakov spoke of two Sophias, one created and the other
    uncreated. She to whom I refer above would be the created Sophia in her
    participatedness. While I affirm the Divine Energies per a formal distinction, I must
    defer to others regarding the manner of viewing Sophia in Orthodoxy. And still wonder
    just how we might best account for ecstatic visions of Sophia.
    See more re this theophany:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/14/essential-theophanic-putative-
    theo-ontological-aspects-of-human-divine-relations/
    FINAL NOTE:
    This body of work largely comprises my project, which I refer to as Pan-semio-
    entheism, because, as a systematic theology, while it is metaphysically realist, it
    prescinds from any given metaphysical root metaphor (substance, relational, process,
    experience, etc) to a phenomenological meta-heuristic.
    See: Amos Yong With John Sobert Sylvest, “Reasons and Values of the Heart in a
    Pluralistic World: Toward a Contemplative Phenomenology for Interreligious
    Dialogue,” Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 20:2 (2010): 170-93
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/contemplative-being-behaving-
    believing-belonging-desiring-becoming-an-outline-of-foundations/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/mapping-metaphysical-
    distinctions-aristotelian-thomist-peircean/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2016/12/09/morrells-4-d-imax-rohrian-
    perichoretic-adventure/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/divine-dance-rohr-morrell-
    panikkar-oh-my/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/%e2%80%8bfrom-
    ontotheological-trinito-logical-is-ness-to-theopoetic-trinito-phanic-dance-ness-yes/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/perichoresis-as-vehicle-
    negativa-in-rohrs-divine-dance-a-trinito-phany-in-continuity-with-orthodox-trinito-
    logy/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/the-trans-formal-distinction-
    between-the-divine-essence-energies/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/epistemic-distance-the-greatest-
    good-as-divinely-willed-ends-in-an-anti-theodicy/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/maritain-murray-macintyre-
    milbank-a-medieval-integralist-walk-into-a-bar/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/07/10/a-semiotic-phenomenology-
    toward-a-more-ecumenical-trinitology-and-trinitophany/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/freedom-from-aquinas-to-
    modern-emergentist-semiotics/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/04/a-defense-of-metaphysics-to-
    be-or-not-to-be-or-to-e-prime-or-not/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/07/truth-broadly-conceived/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/the-pre-political-grounding-of-
    both-liberal-illiberal-regimes/
    Integralism as a Pre-political Anthropology & Meta-
    political Norm Grounded Philosophically in Natural
    Theology – The Pre-political Grounding of both Liberal
    & Illiberal Regimes
    Liberal & illiberal regimes may all have their times & places.
    Licit regimes will share certain theoretical foundations, hence, criteria of liceity.
    Consistent with such foundations, then, consider the following criteria:
    Public laws serve as one of many means toward just ends.
    We critique political strategies, diagnosis their deficits & prescribe their optimality by
    prudentially judging them per criteria defined by just ends.
    Sufficient strategies will attain a modicum of justice as realized in public virtue, order &
    peace.
    Confluent with other just ends, we exercise the end of freedom by being who & doing
    what we ought, i.e. properly forming & duti-fully exercising our consciences to flourish
    in & as community, where the necessary goods of a sufficient material progress serve as
    a means to higher moral & spiritual ends.
    Freedom’s inherent duties, thus objectively & communally ordered, realize the aretaic &
    deontological ends (teloi) of eternal & natural laws.
    We grow in freedom through a formative & liberative process of learning, which will
    necessarily include the increasingly habitual practice of these duties.
    Freedom's rights remain correlative with & inseparable from its duties to be/come who
    & do what we ought.
    Radically finite, the concrete states of both individual & communal realities constantly
    evolve, so, continuously, we must prudently discern the means of their flourishing and
    adapt our public laws & political strategies to those states.
    Laws & policies must variously prioritize & subordinate agreed upon (at least practically
    if not substantively) rights & interests and, when those rights unavoidably & truly
    compete, adjudicate them, balancing & reconciling them through accommodations that,
    foremost, preserve & foster the common good, but only ever limiting the rights &
    interests - or burdening the consciences - of individuals in the least restrictive manner
    practicable.
    The abovementioned criteria obviously share certain theoretical foundations.
    Even if only implicitly & inchoately, we can anthropologically & philosophically ground
    rather substantive (suboptimal but satisficing) agreements regarding theories of
    humanity & of the cosmos, of truth & of knowledge, of goodness & of beauty.
    We thus abide some degree of ethical pluralism derived - not from an insidious
    relativism or vulgar pragmatism, but – from a moral probabilism consistent with an
    appropriate epistemic humility & suitable metaphysical fallibilism. Our de-ontologies
    should therefore be as modest as our ontologies are tentative.
    A given community may well move beyond such an implicit & inchoate philosophical
    grounding, e.g. natural theology, to an explicit & definitive revealed theology. In that
    case, any agreed upon rights & interests may more optimally reflect humanity's ultimate
    telos, condiligentes, i.e. as co-lovers with God.

    In such a community, religious conversion can further foster, even trans-value, its
    members’ realizations of humanity’s proximate, erotic-agapeistic-eudaimonistic teloi.
    Beyond a given community's vision of ultimate teloi, transcultural realities & religious
    pluralism invite further excursus, e.g. regarding shared orthocommunal (topos),
    orthodoxic (or polydoxic logos ), orthopathic (pathos), orthopraxic (ethos) criteria.
    Moral Choices – locating our impasses
    On this 73rd anniversary of Hiroshima, visit the @PublicDiscourse archives for debates
    exploring the ramifications of Truman's decision.
    Tollefsen, calling it "utterly wrong"
    Miscamble, dubbing it the "least evil option"
    When another's ethical approach seems ambiguous, we should charitably presuppose its
    most orthodox interpretation.
    For example, some defenders of the 1945 atomic bombings refer to a “psychotic
    Japanese civilian resistance” or a kind of “national kamikaze campaign.”
    They thereby propose, even if implicitly, that we best reconceive multitudes of ostensible
    noncombatants as material non-innocents, i.e. not immune from direct targeting.
    Such a reconception might well betray an implicit deontological calculus, which, even if
    inchoate, could rescue their proportionate reasoning from the encroachment of an
    insidious & vulgar consequentialism.
    And this could properly relocate a moral impasse from meta-ethical to other concerns,
    e.g. evidential, prudential & semantical.
    For example, how might we make sometimes facile criteria for distinguishing material
    [non]innocents much more robust, i.e. semantically coherent, empirically discernable,
    anthropologically defensible?
    These are relevant questions – not only for nuclear, but- modern conventional war &
    asymmetric terrorism. They extend beyond warfare to all life issues (regarding
    legitimate self-defense).
    So, I offer here no critique or answers to the various stances - only a few of my own
    questions regarding the proper location of various impasses.
    Truth Broadly Conceived
    Truth refers - not only to the investigatory, semantical & epistemological "conformity
    of" one's thoughts to reality, but - to a reality's participatory, ontological & axiological
    "conformity to" adequate thoughts (re various teloi). We know this philosophically &
    theologically.
    Those teloi include:
    proximate erotic-agapeistic-eudaimonistic teloi
    ultimate telos of condiligentes
    The more eros & agape - ascending love & descending love - find a proper unity in the
    one reality of love, the more the true nature of love in general is realized. BXVI Deus
    Caritas Est
    “gratitude for, & the desire to share w/others, the love that we ourselves have received ...
    In the words of the 14th Century theologian Duns Scotus - Deus vult condiligentes - God
    wants persons who love together w/him." BXVI Address at Wiener Konzerthaus,
    Vienna 2007
    In addition to virtue dynamics, Scotus employs deontological elements.
    The "free will" (voluntas libera) can select in conformity w/the affection of justice
    (affectio justitiae) & the good in itself (bonum in se).
    The "natural will" (voluntas naturalis) necessarily moves by natural affection (affectio
    commodi) & seeks one's own good (bonum sibi). ~ Anselm via Scotus
    Our common sense, evaluative dispositions, moral sensibilities & ethical intuitions may
    be inchoately deontological.
    Morally, when our analytical decisions seem to violate our deepest connatural
    inclinations, we can inartfully express such choices. e.g. The implicit proportionate
    reasoning calculus of our inchoate deontology could mistakenly come across as
    otherwise explicitly consequentialist.
    If we encounter an ethical reductio ad absurdum, where we suspect otherwise valid
    syllogistic conclusions are somehow unsound, we best check our concepts, which may
    not successfully refer, maybe because we've too broadly or narrowly conceived a reality,
    e.g. material non/innocent.
    A Defense of Metaphysics: “To Be or Not To Be?” or “To
    E-Prime or Not?”
    Some use E-Prime to eliminate the passive voice but, in so doing, will then write even
    more passive sentences.
    Some nominalists might prescribe the exclusive use of E-prime in an attempt to do
    away with metaphysics, but that strategy sacrifices – not only common sense, but –
    probabilistic approaches like, ahem, natural science!
    For example, when discussing modal realities, forms of the verb “to be” might better
    (sometimes even indispensably) express degrees of vagueness & convey meanings about
    various states of an entity & its dynamical causes (even apart from predication or
    identity), i.e. continuous & progressive aspects.
    For modal realities, then, in both physics & metaphysics, successful references remain
    indispensable even when successful descriptions elude us. For example, effects as
    remain proper to no known causes (variously over/under-determined) can refer to
    putative entities.
    Some essentialists might thus proscribe E-Prime.
    Not so fast!
    Those same indispensable aspects, which they aspire to preserve (continuous,
    progressive & vague) in their Aristotelian sense, can implicate some forms, entities &
    identities that are - not just static, but - dynamical, emergent & nonstrict.

    If, as moderate realists, we properly evade the tensions as present between nominalism
    & essentialism, we can discover some deep resonances between Platonic, Aristotelian,
    Thomist, Scotist, Palamitic & Peircean approaches, particularly in the subtle distinctions
    they apply to formal realities.

    For starters, they all recognize & affirm the formal as real ( even if variously). At a
    deeper level, they emphasize the centrality of becoming, whether metaphysically or
    theologically. Those stances, when taken together, will inevitably lead to other salient
    convergences, which I’ve addressed elsewhere.
    This consideration of the rhetorical virtues & vices of E-Prime is not wholly unrelated to
    the old Kantian saw that one can't take existence as a predicate of being. Of course we
    can, only it’s tautological. That doesn’t mean our proposition is necessarily untrue, only
    that we haven’t added new information to our system.
    Tautologies, however, can have tremendous heuristic value, especially when associated
    with a host of other epistemic virtues, thereby enhancing our modeling power of reality.
    This is to say, too, that not all tautologies are equally taut. When further associated with
    axiological virtues, even when not providing new information, they can foster deeper
    meanings.
    When we thus prescind from the necessary to the probable in our phenomenology,
    bracketing the root metaphors of competing metaphysics, we resist a prioristic rushes to
    closure regarding reality’s indeterminacies.
    Specifically, we refrain from a priori categorizing in/determinacies as necessarily
    derived from either a methodologically in/determinable reality, epistemologically, or a
    metaphysically in/determined reality, ontologically.
    Also, in a plain vanilla emergentism, we eschew the distinctions between weak & strong
    emergence, strong & weak supervenience, because, on one extreme, they’re question
    begging, on the other, trivial.
    So, rather than prove too much, say way more than we could possibly know, tell
    untellable stories, yet without ignoring ontological implications, we traffic in – not the
    metaphysically decisive, but – the ontologically suggestive.
    One take-away is that any deontologies should be at least as modest as our ontologies
    are tentative.
    Anti-discrimination & Religious Freedom – easing the
    tensions
    We might see less tension between religious freedom & anti-discrimination goals if we
    view neither as absolute & both as forms of equal protection (where the establishment
    clause forbids government prescription & the exercise clause - proscription).
    We should remain mindful that today's majority could well be tomorrow's protected
    minority. Also, charitable accommodations & hospitable accompaniments don't, a
    priori or in & of themselves, necessarily amount to formal agreement, material
    cooperation or compromised principles.
    Public lawmakers should aspire to accommodate consciences to an extent that allows
    persons to avoid - not only formal, but - all material cooperation with evil, however
    im/mediate, non/necessary, proximate or remote.
    This isn't to say that neutral & generally applicable laws advancing a compelling
    government interest should never burden consciences, only that they should always
    employ the least restrictive means practicable (including even the avoidance of a licit
    remote cooperation).
    In the application of ecclesiastical laws that govern various forms of participation, the
    pastoral has primacy over the legal; episcopal discernment jumps evidential &
    prudential hurdles, aspiring to foster conversion and to avoid scandal & sacrilege.
    Various relationships have been described as public, objective situations of sin - not
    because those relationship per se are inherently sinful, but - because they,
    presumptively, have objectively sinful aspects. Those presumptions are rebuttable per
    certain evidential criteria & those subjective situations can be variously ex/culpable.
    Conscience accommodations can include one’s desire to avoid formal expressions,
    explicit or implicit, of approval of such relationships as well as any type or degree of
    material cooperation that would be tantamount to same.

    Sometimes, when conscience accommodations are placed in competition with


    antidiscrimination goals, there may be no practicable means to avoid discrimination
    without burdening certain consciences with material cooperation. Even then, lawmakers
    can generally ensure that such cooperation remains as remote as possible.
    In discerning a given degree of material cooperation, one must assess how definite or
    tentative is the causal chain between it and the objective situation and/or its allegedly
    sinful aspect. This is to ask just how necessary or contingent that objective situation
    and/or its sinful aspect is as a result of such cooperation (thereby, for example,
    increasing or decreasing scandal).
    Since, in the USA, there are sufficient examples of the kinds & degrees of remote
    material cooperation that make one’s participation in a pluralistic society defensible &
    licit, those can be used to calibrate the sincerity of one’s participatory objections.
    The more tentative the causal chain & the more highly contingent an objective situation
    and/or its sinful aspects vis a vis one’s kind & degree of participatory cooperation with
    same, the greater the risk of exposing one’s cooperation matrix to parody & thereby
    subverting the time-honored moral calculus that is indispensable to norming our
    participation in social, economic & political spheres. Also, the less likely any material
    cooperation could be reasonably considered tantamout to a formal expression.
    This is to suggest that one’s rationale to discriminate in a given circumstance could very
    well be inconsistent with and thereby seriously undercut one’s very own justifications
    (sincerity not reasoning) for participating in other life spheres & circumstances (paying
    taxes, selling goods & services, walking bioethical tightropes, etc).

    The more seriously one thus undercuts one’s very own participatory justifications &
    renders one’s own cooperation with evil matrix susceptible to parody, the more
    presumptively disingenuous (vis a vis sincerity) one’s rationale for discriminating
    (rebuttably so, but I’d certainly like to hear such rebuttals).
    As in other life spheres, political realities can present as prima facie true, prudent or
    virtuous. Such beliefs, of course, employ rebuttable presumptions (evidential,
    prudential or ethical).
    Such stances provide helpful default positions that rely on principled biases. While such
    principles may be grounded in absolute values, those biases should not be taken as
    absolute political norms.
    So, for any given political issue, it’s not one’s stance, per se (e.g. conservative, libertarian
    or progressive), that will indicate that one’s an ideologue. Rather, it’s one imagining that
    one’s presumptions are not open to rebuttal & that one’s biases are necessarily absolute
    norms.
    Because values can compete and political goals can come into conflict, compromises &
    accommodations (political strategies often anathema to ideologues) must often be
    fashioned. In such conflict situations, even our most well justified political
    presumptions & biases will especially invite good faith evidential, prudential & ethical
    deliberations.
    Whether styled proscriptively or prescriptively, the norms reflected in such default
    political stances must be subjected to appropriate levels of scrutiny when rights come
    into conflict. For example, this would include such cherished norms as, generally though
    not exclusively, for conservatives, nonestablishment & free exercise; for libertarians,
    noninterventionism & federalism; and for progressives, nondiscrimination &
    inclusivism.
    When humans apply general precepts (as derived from even absolute values) in various
    concrete norms, because we are finite, seldom will we find such norms to be
    exceptionless. Even for those considered so, whether absolutely or virtually, prudential
    & political strategies to realize such values will still require deliberative processes.
    Only a conservative ideologue would reflexively reject any and all curtailments of free
    exercise or gun restrictions, as if such rights were absolute.
    Only a libertarian ideologue would reflexively reject any and all federal interventions or
    statist solutions, ignoring the rebuttable nature of subsidiarity’s presumptions.
    Only a progressive ideologue would reflexively reject any and all discrimination or
    exclusion, treating inclusivity as an absolute norm.
    Certainly, ideological postures present in a manner of degrees and to various extremes,
    but I’m guessing not nearly as often as we hear the pejorative, ideologue, thrown
    around?

    While the identification and definition of axiological realities (both evaluative & moral)
    involve a different methodology than the political approaches discussed above, such
    stances can also be ideological in other ways and to various degrees, especially to the
    extent they fail to abide any ethical pluralism, whatsoever. Such failures often result
    from a lack of epistemic humility and is often manifested in the eschewals of
    metaphysical fallibilism & moral probabilism.
    Note: I kept this discussion mostly abstract although concrete examples would greatly
    help explicate my points. I just don't want to engage at that level for such a volatile issue,
    presently. I hope one take-away is that the issue is much more nuanced than those
    approaches that reflexively resort to name calling (e.g. shallow inclusivists vs rampant
    bigots).
    Note 2:
    All of the above considerations aside, regarding sincerely held beliefs that are variously
    burdened, when nondiscrimination laws are in tension with religious freedom, the least
    restrictive means standard is not a high hurdle to jump because public accommodations laws do
    not simply guarantee access to goods or services. Instead, they serve a broader societal purpose:
    eradicating barriers to the equal treatment of all citizens in the commercial marketplace. Were
    we to carve out a patchwork of exceptions for ostensibly justified discrimination, that purpose
    would be fatally undermined.

    Contra Ethical Chicken Littles


    Ethical slippery slope arguments deserve serious but not facile engagements. Below is a
    consideration of why some such arguments are oversimplified.
    There is a taxonomy of slippery slope arguments [SSAs]. It distinguishes causal from
    logical arguments and further separates arguments per their results, arbitrary &
    horrible.

    Causal arguments are concerned with domino-like effects. Logical arguments explore
    the in/consistency of rules, whether grounded in casuist, principlist or even consensual
    ethical decision-making approaches.
    An arbitrary result is deemed objectionable by the mere fact that an argument has
    employed some type of slope. A horrible result refers to an argument which would
    permit morally repugnant outcomes.
    Ethical slippery slope arguments are often of the logical-horrible variety.
    Others have well-treated the logical in/consistencies & un/soundness that can
    afflict/bolster all manner of ethical SSAs. I will discuss, below, why we shouldn't
    overstate the influence that formal argumentation has on societal maxims, rules &
    norms, why, for example, various case-holdings won't inexorably unravel the moral
    fabric of society or, switching metaphors, send a rapid succession of taboo-boulders
    rolling down the ethical slopes of a culture's moral highlands. I will also discuss whether
    the introduction of some degree of arbitrariness should a priori deligitimize an ethical
    decision-making approach.

    The degree of consensus regarding humanity’s most general precepts remains largely
    sufficient to norm a modicum of public peace, public order, public justice & public
    morality, extending, for example, even to international declarations regarding human
    rights and to international law & treaties.
    The more specific & concrete application of such precepts become much more
    problematical for thornier issues, e.g. bioethical realities regarding gender, sex & life
    issues.
    A society’s laws & rules reflect a shared public reason & shared evaluative dispositions.
    It’s this overlapping consensus of mid-level principles & these mutual intuitions of
    common sensibilities that, together, constitute a relatively stable, wide, reflective
    equilibrium of moral reasoning.
    Over against any Ethical Chicken Little hysteria, then, an ethical pluralism, grounded in
    a fallibilist epistemology & probabilist deontology, notwithstanding some unavoidable
    degree of inconsistency, need not explode into an ethical incoherence or moral
    relativism, much less trivialism.
    Pluralistic societies can have different cohorts of naïve realists, each which may
    subscribe to its own particular, foundational moral theory with its distinct metaphysical
    commitments. Such cohorts will tend to imagine that a pluralistic society’s moral slopes
    are far more slippery than they actually are because they fail to recognize the limited
    relevance of their own theories & commitments to a given society’s maxims, rules &
    norms. They also tend to ignore the resilience & relative stability of the above-
    referenced reflective equilibrium, grounded as it is – not just in formal logic, but – in
    deeply felt evaluative dispositions, common sensibilities & ethical intuitions, which
    certainly can reflect an inchoate grasp of the natural law, secured by connatural
    inclinations. This remains the case even when such a grasp of the natural law remains
    rather difficult to articulate by formal argument (and not just difficult for the vox populi
    but also for the ethical literati).
    Such a stable reflective equilibrium will generally stand in the way of any cascading of
    consensually, morally repugnant outcomes, when otherwise specific incremental
    changes are effected in societal rules & norms.
    This is to recognize that Ethical Chicken Littles will too often make much ado about
    their own arguments, which are not more universally compelling, sometimes, because
    their logic is simply flawed, if not due to validity, then, by unsoundness; sometimes,
    because certain maxims, rules & norms have established their coherence & resiliency
    less so by formal argumentation, more so by innate connatural inclinations &
    subconscious social formations.
    As with other apparent inconsistencies, dilemmas, aporiae or paradoxes, human
    common sense & sensibilities can often evade ethical conundra, practically, via reductio
    ad absurdum, while patiently abiding either their dissolutions via paradigm shifts or
    resolutions via dialectics.
    We may not be able to formally articulate why a putative outcome would be
    impossible, improbable or absurd using a robustly truth-conducive triadic
    inference, but we can, most certainly, very often employ a veritable
    multitude of weakly truth-indicative abductions, logically, as well as
    evaluative dispositions & ethical intuitions, axio-logically, which, when
    bundled together into a preponderance, evidentially, can sufficiently justify
    a solidly probable moral proposition.
    Over against any notion that slopes afflicted by degrees of arbitrariness must simply be
    avoided, we must recognize that we are ALREADY on such slopes, ubiquitously so. Such
    a notion could not survive the parody of purging all moral discourse of references to
    reality’s manifold & multiform dis/continua.
    Thus, even among those who subscribe to a particular foundational moral theory as well
    as its deeper metaphysical commitments, the more critical (less naïve) realist cohorts
    will not overestimate the slipperiness of various moral slopes, for they recognize:
    that our appropriations of moral realities ALREADY often involve approximations;
    that our fallible grasps of moral realities ALREADY require the use of concepts that are
    not wholly essentialist but variously clustered, vague or fuzzy;
    that human symbols, icons & indexes are ALREADY seldom going to be wholly
    nonarbitrary;
    that the human mind ALREADY must often transcend rational formalities with common
    sense and informal & paraconsistent logics (see note below) in order to avoid absurdity
    & trivialism.
    To the extent that epistemology models ontology, this variety of ethical approximations
    (conceptual, semiotic & logical) implicates various ontological dis/continuities,
    regarding - not only the spatio-temporal, materio-energetic continua of physical
    entities (e.g. age-related, developmental, genetic, non/strict identities), but – the
    causalities of physical events, including various teloi (e.g. teleopotent, teleomatic,
    teleonomic & teleologic).
    For example, whatever one’s paradigm regarding non/strict identities, even an
    essentialist account might best resort to a conception of deep & dynamic formal fields.
    The above taxonomy of SSAs & categories of axiological epistemology can still be rather
    insufficient, relying as they do on an implicit canon of common sense that can't always
    be taken for granted. This is especially true, again, as we move from general precepts to
    their more specific, concrete applications. See, for example: An anthropological
    exploration of contemporary bioethics: the varieties of common sense. Turner L. , J
    Med Ethics. 1998 Apr;24(2):127-33.
    N.B. From: http://www.iep.utm.edu/para-log/
    If the mind is able to reason around contradiction without absurdity, then
    paraconsistent machines may be better able to model the mind.
    Defending consistency, or denying the absurdity of trivialism, is
    ultimately not the job of logic alone. Affirming coherence and denying
    absurdity is an act, a job for human beings.
    Put another way, a paraconsistent logician can say that a theory is inconsistent
    without meaning that the theory is incoherent, or absurd. The former is a structural
    feature of the theory, worth repair or further study; the latter means the theory has
    gone disastrously wrong. Paraconsistency gives us a principled way to resist equating
    contradiction with absurdity.
    How Wide is your Spiritual Moat? – an holistic approach
    to emotional sobriety
    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. I refer to my Litany of Dayenu.

    Dayenu (Hebrew: ‫ )דַּ יֵּנּו‬is a song that is part of the Jewish holiday of Passover. The
    word "Dayenu" means approximately "it would have been enough", "it would have
    been sufficient", or "it would have sufficed" (day in Hebrew is "enough", and -enu the
    first person plural suffix, "to us"). This traditional up-beat Passover song is over one
    thousand years old.
    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.
    For all of my emphasis on remembering, I resonate fully with and heartily commend Fr
    Aidan Kimel's Remembering and Forgetting, Depression, and the Healing of Memories
    @EOrthodoxy
    Ode to Stringbean – a tribute to James Taylor
    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
    he was going home you see
    up on the roof went ole jt

    what a fool I was to leave


    the only happiness i've ever known
    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 would 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
    john s sylvest, 2014, bmi
    lyrics put to melody 2018 - in production
    The Best Systematic Theologians Become Ascetics &
    Mystics!
    The existential leaps entailed in our liturgical & devotional practices and dogmatic &
    doctrinal formulations can be normatively justified by foundational theologies -
    philosophical, historical & exegetical.
    Most believers appropriate such norms w/a subconscious competence.

    Theologians, as practical more so than speculative scientists, first, consciously


    appropriate & explicate those foundational & doctrinal disciplines, then craft systematic
    expositions that might best foster pastoral communications & complement pastoral
    practices.

    At one level, such expositions, while yet vague & commonsensical and trafficking in
    contemporary idioms, can still be eminently efficacious in fostering ongoing conversion
    & in integrally applying a faith outlook to every sphere of human concern.
    I say this because, at another level, systematic expositions properly aspire to go beyond
    our vague & idiomatic expressions, which rely more so on successful "references to"
    than on robust "descriptions of," to more rigorously define reality's entities & precisely
    specify their relations.
    The more speculative a metaphysic, however, the more tentative will be its ontology,
    hence, the more modest one should be in urging its de-ontological implications.
    Metaphysical idioms aid apologetics, deepen understandings & help us locate the
    theological tensions within dogmatic & doctrinal canons.
    We can't expect metaphysics to resolve any tensions, dialectically, but they can help us
    dissolve some, paradigmatically &, when unable, otherwise, can still open new horizons
    for us to exploit them, creatively.
    Christianity remains in search of a metaphysic, as does any philosophy of science (due
    to manifold & multiform aporetic causal joints).
    When theological opinions diverge, eg trinitarian, their impasses might be found at any
    number of methodological loci, but, among coreligionists, presumably not in
    foundational & dogmatic disciplines.
    If impasses are located in such a choice as between substantive & relational ontologies,
    we can too often expect them to prove too much, theologically, especially since such
    idioms have done very little to adjudicate so many other aporiae, whether
    philosophically or commonsensically, eg quantum interpretations, philosophies of
    mind, in/determinist freedom, etc.
    When systematics cum metaphysics do locate tensions we can exploit creatively, beyond
    apologetics & deepened understanding, what forms might such exploitations take?
    It's here that our systematics serve - not only the missiological & epistemic, but - the
    ascetical & mystical!
    Good systematics foster intellectual, affective, moral, sociopolitical & religious
    conversions, instill humility & expand horizons on our journeys to authenticity. They
    integrate with our prayer, mortification & unitive ascents. They transform us from
    otherwise hopelessly & aimlessly wondering wanderers into hope-filled & purpose-filled
    worshipful wonderers!

    The best systematic theologians become ascetics & mystics!

    The existential leaps entailed in our liturgical & devotional practices and dogmatic &
    doctrinal formulations can be normatively justified by foundational theologies -
    philosophical, historical & exegetical.
    Most believers appropriate such norms w/a subconscious competence.

    Theologians, as practical more so than speculative scientists, first, consciously


    appropriate & explicate those foundational & doctrinal disciplines, then craft systematic
    expositions that might best foster pastoral communications & complement pastoral
    practices.

    At one level, such expositions, while yet vague & commonsensical and trafficking in
    contemporary idioms, can still be eminently efficacious in fostering ongoing conversion
    & in integrally applying a faith outlook to every sphere of human concern.
    I say this because, at another level, systematic expositions properly aspire to go beyond
    our vague & idiomatic expressions, which rely more so on successful "references to"
    than on robust "descriptions of," to more rigorously define reality's entities & precisely
    specify their relations.
    The more speculative a metaphysic, however, the more tentative will be its ontology,
    hence, the more modest one should be in urging its de-ontological implications.
    Metaphysical idioms aid apologetics, deepen understandings & help us locate the
    theological tensions within dogmatic & doctrinal canons.
    We can't expect metaphysics to resolve any tensions, dialectically, but they can help us
    dissolve some, paradigmatically &, when unable, otherwise, can still open new horizons
    for us to exploit them, creatively.
    Christianity remains in search of a metaphysic, as does any philosophy of science (due
    to manifold & multiform aporetic causal joints).
    When theological opinions diverge, eg trinitarian, their impasses might be found at any
    number of methodological loci, but, among coreligionists, presumably not in
    foundational & dogmatic disciplines.
    If impasses are located in such a choice as between substantive & relational ontologies,
    we can too often expect them to prove too much, theologically, especially since such
    idioms have done very little to adjudicate so many other aporiae, whether
    philosophically or commonsensically, eg quantum interpretations, philosophies of
    mind, in/determinist freedom, etc.
    When systematics cum metaphysics do locate tensions we can exploit creatively, beyond
    apologetics & deepened understanding, what forms might such exploitations take?
    It's here that our systematics serve - not only the missiological & epistemic, but - the
    ascetical & mystical!
    Good systematics foster intellectual, affective, moral, sociopolitical & religious
    conversions, instill humility & expand horizons on our journeys to authenticity. They
    integrate with our prayer, mortification & unitive ascents. They transform us from
    otherwise hopelessly & aimlessly wondering wanderers into hope-filled & purpose-filled
    worshipful wonderers!

    You May Keep Your Trinitarian Kataphatic Crayons if


    You Color Inside Defensible Dogmatic Lines
    There are many common phenomenological themes that present as we have
    encountered manifold & multiform aporiae throughout the great chain of being,
    beginning with whether or not being, itself, is a useful construct when predicated of
    existence writ large, mereologically, or even of a given existent.
    An emergentist account has proved helpful as a heuristic device, which will strategically
    employ a suite of conceptual placeholders at each of reality’s causal joints in order to
    provide a lingua franca to alternate interpretations, typically, of emergent novel effects
    as will have appeared to have been proper to no previously known causes.
    These aporiae have arisen and been addressed especially in the facts of quantum
    mechanics & the approaches of quantum interpretations, the facts of cosmology and
    interpretations of age-old & modern cosmogonies, the facts of biological realities and
    biogenetic interpretations, the facts of neurobiology and the interpretations of
    philosophies of mind, the facts of human sapience and the interpretations of brain &
    language evolution, the fact of human agency & freedom and the interpretations of free
    will.
    The phenomenological lingua franca will typically be constructed using a familiar set of
    epistemic hygienes. I’m not suggesting this has always been consciously recognized as a
    rather universal epistemic suite, only that, having dabbled in these philosophies of
    science and some metaphysics over the years, although the terminology was different
    from one domain to another, I repeatedly encountered recurring themes.
    A vague phenomenology will often:
    1) prescind from necessities to probabilities
    2) not a priori interpret probabilities as ontological vs epistemic
    3) bracket ontologies, i.e. no root metaphor & no prioritization of entities or of relations
    or of static vs dynamical accounts
    4) implicitly employ Aristotelian causes associated with acts & potencies
    5) implicitly employ modal categories of both temporality & adequacy
    6) navigate the shoals of essentialism & nominalism with a moderate realism
    7) attend to predications (e.g. analogical, univocal, equivocal, apophatic, kataphatic)
    8) attend to a conceptual typology (e.g. essentialist, fuzzy, vague, pluralist, cluster)
    9) attend to philosophical distinctions (e.g. real, logical, conceptual, virtual, formal,
    metaphysical, modal)
    10) attend to evidentiary standards for normative impetus (e.g. scholastic notations)
    11) follow the rubrics of triadic inference (e.g. abductive, retroductive, inductive,
    deductive)
    12) attend to triadic ellipsis (e.g. syntax, semantic, pragmatic, contextual)
    13) confront paradox w/o a priori approach to its dialectical resolution, pragmatic
    evasion, paradigmatic dissolution, exploitation of creative tensions
    14) return to fast & frugal heuristics of common sense (e.g. reductio ad absurdum,
    existential actionability)
    15) consistent with common sense and vital traditions, recognize the value-realizations
    of successful reference even when successful description evades us
    16) attend to the normative significance & existential actionability even of inchoate
    meta-heuristic realities, which impart reasonable ontological implications &
    suggestions, even when meta-physical ontological specifications & definitions otherwise
    elude us (e.g. Whether in a modest moral deontology, grounded in a tentative ontology,
    which invites an ethical pluralism derived from a suitable moral probabilism, or in a
    dogmatic theology, grounded in diligent historical, exegetical & mystical hermeneutics,
    which invite diverse theologoumena & a theological (sometimes even a polydoxic)
    pluralism, this is to recognize that there are still lines within which we must
    color, time-honored, tradition-tested, boundaries within which we best
    remain)
    I just inventoried the above meta-heuristic rubrics without elaborating on examples or
    engaging them in a robustly explanatory way because I don’t have the time and space or
    interest, presently. At the same time, I’ve indeed treated this emergentist approach
    exhaustively over the years, elsewhere. For one thing, most who’d have any interest will
    rather quickly recognize its general themes, anyway.
    My particular purpose, above, is to set forth this rubric to better reveal how it applies to
    trinitarian theology, where I see similar dynamics, tensions, aporiae, antinomies,
    paradoxes presenting and where rigorous parsings and prayerful reflections continue
    even after millennia.
    To the extent that intratrinitarian realities will, definitionally, represent humankind’s
    ultimate aporetic horizon, this is to suggest that the problematics that inhere in the
    rubrics above are of a different order of magnitude (of difficulty!), because the above-
    listed heuristic devices address spatio-temporal, materio-energetic realities, where
    Aristotelian causes, acts & potencies, and semiotic modal ontologies & ellipses, simply
    do not adequately address, for example, the ousia or hypostasis of a putative actus
    purus, where a modal ontology would represent a category error, where kataphatic
    predications are so vague that they more so implicitly entail the inference-blocking
    strategy of a rationally apophatic via negativa (thankfully thereby at least providing
    dogmatic lines within which to color).

    This is not to suggest, however, that there are no legitimate fields of discourse regarding
    the immanent trinity, only to recognize that philosophy is neither their academic
    starting place nor their proper existential landing. Others will have to determine which
    beliefs represent authentic dogma and/or legitimate opinions, which impart normative
    impetus to our moral excursions and/or liturgical celebrations.
    It is to say that there are authentic dogmatic lines within which theologians should color
    in their otherwise diverse theological disciplines ...
    including normative (ethos & mythos) foundations (historical, exegetical &
    philosophical);
    evaluative (pathos) liturgical & devotional doctrines and dispositions;
    interpretive (topos) ecclesiological & systematic expositions; and
    descriptive (logos & cosmos) propositions, which include soteriological & sophiological,
    ascetical & mystical, moral & pastoral, anthropological & eschatological
    communications.
    In my view, they all best follow Lonergan’s trajectory of methods & his imperatives of
    conversion.
    This is also to recognize that the above-bracketing exercise will not issue forth
    deliverances regarding whether a primarily relational or substantive intratrinitarian
    account is more coherent, but that, even left bereft of robust definitions of entities &
    specifications of relations, the church has for millennia, nevertheless, enjoyed the fruits
    of the reasonably presupposed successful dogmatic references, as implicated in its
    celebrations of same liturgically & mystically! And these have sufficed at producing
    spiritual fruits, reaping myriad consolations and fostering authentic conversions!
    Ortho-communal belongings have cult-ivated ortho-pathic desirings
    inculcating ortho-praxic behavings, which have, with varying empirically
    measureable degrees of success from one community of believers to the
    next, authenticated ortho-doxic beliefs, all through a process of becoming,
    i.e. who we are meant to be, thereby realizing the freedom called forth by
    our temporal & eternal ends (telos).
    Much of this is appropriated and validated much more so via our participatory
    imaginations than by our cognitive map-making excurses. Most of us taste & see the
    goodness of our leaps of faith without employing classical or analytical theology.
    Still, those systematic theologians who continue to wrestle with intractable metaphysical
    & theological aporiae, just like the many philosophers of science, can hygienically
    cleanse our epistemic hubris and therapeutically purge our insidious conceptual
    idolatries, many of which can needlessly & scandalously divide our community of
    faithful.
    Done with a suitable metaphysical circumspection and not overinvested with a
    supposedly universal normative impetus, theological opinion-giving, even regarding the
    Divine Essence, needn’t a priori retreat behind a radically apophatic, rational via
    negativa, which can, ironically, reveal a rationalistic bent, albeit inverse. It just had
    better plant its seeds in the existential soil of a prayerful, mystical garden of an
    experiential apophaticism and genuine religious conversion. And the intellectual and
    affective excesses of rationalism, encratism, quietism, pietism, fideism, relativism,
    voluntarism, intellectualism and so on can thereby best be avoided.
    What might we not unreasonably infer from our own telic realizations, both temporal &
    eternal, secular & religious, and the manner through which they progressively gift our
    freedom?
    Realizations that advance our mere agency to a clear liberty?
    That reduce our unrealized potencies through increasingly authentic acts that determine
    them via habitual virtue?
    And through which we receive the beatitudinal & beatific consolations that ensue from
    that sustained authenticity, which has been born of our ever-enlarging circle of loving
    personal relationships?
    If that donative gifting of freedom thus ensues via our telic realizations of our truest
    nature, whereby loving interpersonal acts determine otherwise indeterminate potencies
    of our human relational realities, then, even without being able to definitively
    describe a divine entity or completely specify a divine relation, might we not
    reasonably infer that an Actus Purus (free beyond all freedoms imaginable, love
    beyond all loving conceivable) could be somewhat successfully referred to as having
    gifted such effects as would remain proper to no other known cause?
    And also, at least, be somewhat successfully referred to as somehow & in some way
    (neither wholly describable nor robustly specifiable) a circle of loving personal
    relationships?
    See also:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/07/10/a-semiotic-phenomenology-
    toward-a-more-ecumenical-trinitology-and-trinitophany/
    Freedom – from Aquinas to Modern Emergentist
    Semiotics
    If freedom's a realization of essence, the gratuity of creation already gifts us degrees of
    freedom via co/operative connaturality ordered to temporal ends, e.g. Lonergan's
    secular conversions thereby foster an obediential potency to the gratuity of grace,
    necessary to realize our eternal ends, theological virtues, our fullest essence.
    Co/operative graces don't abrogate but bring freedom to fruition.
    Acting per our temporal ends grows freedom, per our eternal ends IS freedom.
    By analogy, infinite actuality to be His essence = God's freedom.
     
    Tracking Aquinas: Formal causes or habits grow & correspond to increasing freedom, as
    the ratios of acts to potency, formal to final causes, determinations to indeterminates,
    increase (in the direction of Actus Purus).
    Interestingly, in modern emergentist semiotic accounts, final causes (teloi) have been
    parsed per degrees of indeterminate potency that have been progressively actuated &
    determined. Entities & states emerge as teleopotent or end-unbounded; teleomatic or
    end-stated; teleonomic or end-directed & end-purposed; teleologic or end-intended,
    where freedom is realized.
    Whatever one's position re nomicities (act/formal & potency/final), a more robust
    account of reality's emergent, nested nomicities, as Lonergan might say, would provide
    "no end of room for God to work on the free choice without violating it."
    A generic emergentist semiotic heuristic can indeed provide a more robust account
    of creation's nomic realities vis a vis divine interventions.
    Avoiding Political Pseudo-Subsidiarity
    Here’s a good inventory of authentic principles from Catholic Social
    Teaching toward our realization of the common good & community.
    Dutiful critiques of various political ideologies, Left & Right, will uncover in them
    different types of pseudo-subsidiarity, ie revealing persistent patterns of various under-
    & over-emphases of such principles as well as inconsistencies in their application from
    one class of ends to another.
    Here's a look at some things that different party platforms and ideological approaches
    will variously properly emphasize as well as sadly ignore:
    Governments' interventions legitimately include fiscal, monetary, economic, foreign,
    military, rights enforcement & curtailment, moral expressions (both homogenous &
    diverse) & such, all fostering the ends of order, peace, justice & morality.
    While no ends would be a priori removed from or added to deliberations regarding such
    interventions, the burdens of argument lie w/advocates for interventions.
    Presupposed are sufficient solidarity, moral enculturation & public deliberation, which
    foster the formation of a common will (degrees thereof). Also presupposed is ongoing
    interventional accountability.
    Interventions require a proper ongoing assessment of the competencies of persons
    (subsidia) as individuals & at each institutional level to determine comparative
    effectiveness.
    For a given specified end, interventions to advance the common good remain in tension
    w/the preservation of personal dignity, though individual rights & liberties may be
    limited to preserve the common good & interventions must be attenuated by suitable
    majority constraints to protect minority rights.
    A Semiotic Phenomenology toward a more Ecumenical
    Trinitology and Trinitophany
    If one breaks open a new category, semiotically, for an actus purus, such as with Peirce's
    Ens Necessarium, one could, for example, apophatically negate such conceptions as
    temporal priority in trinitarian relations, even while kataphatically affirming that such
    relations are onto-logically fundamental (note below). Similarly, one could negate the
    conception of creativity vis a vis intra-trinitarian entities, while affirming an eternal
    generativity.

    This semiotic move doesn't force one into either a relational or substantive ontology, a
    theistic personalism or classical theism, Palamism or Thomism. It's not trying to
    explain, much less prove, that much!
    Its apophatic negations, metaphysically, would be literally true, saying, in essence
    (wink): "I know you're familiar with conceptions of act & potency, but dis ain't dat!"

    Its kataphatic affirmations would be more trinitophanic, Biblically, than


    trinitological, systematically and/or philosophically.
    Trinitophanic affirmations refer to intra-trinitarian eternality, generativity, relationality,
    koinonia, hypostasis, prosopon, ousia & physis.
    However, prior to (though not without) their rational & intellectual apophatic
    metaphysical implications, they invite a more robustly mystical & experiential
    apophaticism.
    Semantically, while such concepts may be vague & their full meaning elusive, that
    situation is, perhaps, less due to the limitations of our modeling power, epistemically &
    methodologically, and much more so due to the intra-trinitarian nature, ontologically &
    metaphysically.
    We generally don't a priori assume that any reality is necessarily permanently occulted,
    ontologically. Rather we suppose that we are otherwise being only temporarily thwarted,
    methodologically (e.g. principle of sufficient reason).
    Still, the last aporiae we'd ever pass, in principle, due to sheer epistemic distance, will
    not be "what it feels like to be a bat" or "how to reconcile gravity & quantum
    mechanics" and such. If, with all due epistemic humility, we must nurture a healthy
    aporetic sense regarding quantum interpretations, philosophies of mind, and biologic &
    cosmogonic origins, how much more so, then, regarding divine energeia, much less
    divine ousia?

    It often seems that the most we can aspire to rationally with such trinitarian
    affirmations & negations is a demonstration that, taken together, they aren't logically
    contradictory, and that, while incomprehensible, they aren't unintelligible. There's
    sufficient rationality here to avoid fideism and sufficient mystery to avoid rationalism.
    Historical & exegetical foundations (and general revelation) demonstrate the
    reasonableness of our creedal trinitarian affirmations & trinitology vis a vis the
    cognitive map-making of our epistemic modeling power (including our rational via
    negativa & positiva as well as our sustained authenticity via secular & kenotic
    conversions).

    The ascetical, mystical & liturgical experiences (and special revelation) of our
    participatory imaginations foster our trinitophanic human value-realizations (truth,
    beauty, goodness, unity & freedom) via both connaturality & grace (including our
    mystical vehicle negativa or relational apophaticism as well as faith via our religious
    & theotic conversions).
    The best theological anthropologies will primarily model Biblical theophanies not
    trinitarian ontologies.
    Faith and mystical experience - not metaphysical understanding (via either
    philosophical or systematic theology) - ground our understanding of divine unity, which
    is not purely substantive but relational.
    Note:
    Saying that intra-trinitarian relations are onto-logically fundamental is a trinitophanic
    affirmation grounded in historical & exegetical realities of special revelation. As such, it
    invokes only vague, commonsensical (heuristic) conceptions and not robustly
    metaphysical specifications, e.g. re-ordering entities & relations, indicating substantive
    vs relational ontologies. The take-away is that we are somehow dealing with a mystery
    involving loving relationships. That stance has normative significance (ontological
    implications & suggestions of a heuristic) for any subsequent systematic expositions
    (ontological definitions of a theory) of doctrine, which different metaphysics will try to
    further articulate.
    Afternote:
    When I refer to what I (likely idiosyncratically) call my semiotic phenomenology, I am
    talking about the basic categories most often applied to entities & relations, including
    general realities like act & potency, Aristotelian-like causes, modal temporality, modal
    adequacy, various types of concepts, predications & distinctions, various evidentiary
    standards that impart different levels of normative impetus, triadic inference, types of
    triadic ellipsis, a plain vanilla emergentism (e.g. w/o supervenience) and a meta-
    heuristic architectonic with anthropological, epistemological, ontological, axiological
    (evaluative & normative), theological & mythological categories.
    I engage the grammar of those categories & distinctions prior to choosing a root
    metaphor & w/o prioritizing either relations or entities. As such, this phenomenology is
    but a meta-heuristic of meta-metaphysical placeholders, which mostly brackets
    specific metaphysics, epistemologically modeling value-realizations prior to
    elaborating a metaphysic. The premise is that there are many values to be shared &
    realized inter-ideologically, inter-religiously & ecumenically, metaphysically & really,
    even while we all remain in search of a metaphysic. Good thing, huh?
    See also:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/07/16/you-may-keep-your-trinitarian-
    kataphatic-crayons-if-you-color-inside-defensible-dogmatic-lines/
    I commend the article, below, for the best direction to pursue that search.
    Wesley J. Wildman, “An Introduction to Relational Ontology,” in John Polkinghorne
    and John Zizioulas, eds. The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical
    Science and Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010): 55-73
    Voting – a prime example of “reasoning under
    uncertainty”
    I assume that if I accepted your premises, both implicit & explicit, I'd also describe your
    POTUS candidate as the only viable choice.
    But those premises will necessarily involve a great deal of what we call
    "reasoning under uncertainty."
    This is to say that the causal chains between a given POTUS vote & various un/desirable
    outcomes are very tenuous. This is also to recognize that the individual acts of all
    persons involved in effecting those un/desirable outcomes are highly contingent.
    Ergo, very intelligent persons of incredibly profound goodwill, who even
    share identical values vis a vis un/desirable outcomes, can thus differ in
    their POTUS choices, everyone doing so in an eminently reasonable way.

    As for any alleged character-based disqualifying criteria, those are much less
    compelling, generally, to those who are voting pragmatically rather than expressively.
    Increasingly, nowadays, voting expressively, based on a candidate's character (note
    below), seems to be an increasingly rare opportunity?
    Practical Take-Aways:
    Intellectually, we should all better realize that our prudential judgments regarding
    political solutions can be very highly speculative. There are ordinarily so many
    unknowns regarding the probability of un/desired outcomes that a high level of
    confidence in one's political approach is seldom warranted and arrogance is never
    warranted. And if this is true regarding so very many political objectives, which are
    way underdetermined, it's especially the case regarding ultimate policy goals as
    measurable outcomes, which are most often way overdetermined, all of this also subject
    to indeterminable counterfactual analyses.
    Interpersonally, we should primarily focus on the values & love that we
    certainly share with family, friends, co-religionists, neighbors & associates.
    In my view, that thoroughly suffices!
    Precisely because of the hyper-speculative nature of political prudential judgments, it's
    to be expected and should be unsurprising, when, among those very same people, those
    judgments are not uniformly shared.
    None of this is to suggest that our political prudential judgments do not matter or
    cannot make a difference. They indeed contribute to a collective wisdom that, when it
    does go astray, inevitably corrects (depending on the cultural milieu, e.g. modern
    democracy vs tribal, this can be in a single cycle, hopefully not multi-generational
    epochs!).
    It is to observe that, if you find yourself overinvested emotionally or, worse, at risk of
    relationship breaches regarding your political dis/agreements, it could very well be due
    to the fact that you have equally overestimated your intellectual acumen (at least,
    politically).
    Certain candidates may evoke significant emotional responses in us for various reasons,
    as with any other personalities. Because important values are often involved in our
    political assessments, this can add emotional energy to our experience of electoral
    outcomes and to the pols, themselves. We might even marvel at why others don't
    experience the same degree of attraction or revulsion to a given person as we do. That
    mystery can be understood, in part, by the fact that, while certain emotions are cerebral
    and can be rationally accounted for upon self-reflection, some of our emotional
    responses are visceral and don't lend themselves to an intellectual accounting (not
    without deep-dives into our unconscious). The more forceful and immediate our
    response to a given politician, then, the less we should be surprised when many others
    don't share it, because, notwithstanding our inventory of otherwise justifiable cerebral
    emotions, the greater will be the likelihood that much (in various degrees) of our
    attraction or revulsion is visceral, which can leave it no more accountable for itself than
    any other matter of mere taste. And it certainly means we shouldn't expect others to be
    able to give a rational accounting of their own lack of a visceral experience thereof!
    There's a book I intend to procure called Longing and Letting Go: Christian and Hindu
    Practices of Passionate Non-Attachment, written by Holly Hillgardner. In it she
    describes passionate non-attachment. That paradoxical concept sounds to me like a
    great religious prescription for what ails us in life, in general, politics, in particular?
    Hillgardner suggests that authentic practices of longing will always contain the seeds of
    non-attachment, i.e. the letting go of cravings, aversions, fears, and false identities that
    keep the self bound in an illusory self-possession that walls it off from others. Sounds
    relevant, n'est pas?
    Note: Voting expressively can, among many other strategies, also include voicing one's
    prophetic issue-based stance (even independent of a candidate's character).
    Maritain, McInerny, Murray, MacIntyre, Milbank & a
    Medieval Integralist walk into a bar
    Maritain, McInerny, Murray, MacIntyre, Milbank & a Medieval Integralist
    walk into a bar serving optimism & pessimism. Let Maritain & McInerny
    drive you home. The others are inebriated.
    Regarding the following questions –What would Murray, MacIntyre, Milbank &
    Medieval Integralists Say?
    Has a clearly successful civil polity (with articles of peace but not of faith) ever been
    founded in any pluralistic society based on some shared thematized natural law?
    Has a fairly successful civil polity (with articles of peace but not of faith) never been
    founded in any pluralistic society, at least based on shared values, although not on
    shared justifications?

    Has a lack of certain shared moral outlooks always necessarily ensued from some
    subjectivism, emotivism, voluntarism, relativism, utilitarianism, vulgar pragmatism,
    secularism or nihilism that precluded shared metaphysical commitments & axiological
    frameworks? What about Mortimer Adler’s account of humanity’s common sense &
    sensibilities and of certain self-evident prescriptive inferences that derive from our
    being immersed together in a similarly situated human condition, especially regarding
    major precepts?
    Has a lack of certain shared moral outlooks never otherwise ensued from an ethical
    pluralism that included shared metaphysical commitments & axiological frameworks,
    but was derived with a suitable epistemic humility, metaphysical fallibilism & moral
    probabilism?
    Murray, MacIntyre, Milbank or Medieval Integralists would each in their own way
    employ a theological anthropology that’s either excessively optimistic or pessimistic,
    based on (mis)conceptions regarding the relationship between nature & grace, variously
    implicating notions regarding the gratuity of grace.

    A Goldilocks Theological Anthropology, neither too optimistic nor


    pessimistic, would be better reflected in the anthropology of Maritain,
    combined with Gelpi’s adaptation of Lonergan’s approach as modified by Gelpi’s
    account of grace as transmuted experience.
    Per Maritain, humanity’s transcultural apprehension of the natural law is not robustly &
    discursively thematic but more so inchoately & connaturally intuitional. So, we can
    share evaluative dispositions, moral sensibilities & ethical intuitions that presuppose
    varying degrees of moral realism without sharing their justifications via deeper
    metaphysical commitments. Maritain would thus answer the above questions differently
    from his pub buddies.
    If we adopt Gelpi’s Lonerganian adaptation in conjunction with Maritain’s account of
    humanity’s ubiquitous moral sensitivity to the natural law via connaturality, we can
    distinguish between the secular conversions (intellectual, affective, moral &
    sociopolitical) and religious conversion, whereby the former more properly reflect the
    gratuity of creation with its obediential potencies for grace, and the latter relate to the
    gratuity of grace, itself, to which one responds responsibly in faith (to some historical
    act of divine self-revelation & self-communication).
    Certainly, from a pneumatological perspective, the secular conversions reflect the
    ordinary presence of the Holy Spirit in the world via its universality & prevenient
    connaturality. The particularity of the Holy Spirit’s action in the lives of Christian
    believers, however, reflects a radically transformative & extraordinary presence.
    Afterthoughts
    This does seem to be the crux. With Maritain we can't deny that a prevenient
    connaturality hasn't provided humankind's inchoate realization of natural law via
    shared moral sensibilities & ethical intuitions, sufficient for a modicum of public peace,
    order, justice & morality? With Gelpi, we wouldn't deny that humankind journeys more
    swiftly & w/less hindrance when secular conversions (intellectual, affective, moral &
    socio-political) are transvalued by religious conversions (radical & kerygmatic; yes,
    other religions w/degrees of truth & goodness) . So, no, there's never been some edenic
    epoch of either a Whig Thomism (neocon or neoliberal) or an idyllic integralism
    (political Augustinianism). And monastic, anarchic & pacifist approaches have only ever
    been vocational & spirituality "options" not theopolitical norms (as in Augustinian
    radicalisms).
    Too many conceive Catholic social & moral teachings as primarily intended to shape
    politics, reflexively thinking in terms of coercive polity in response to every papal
    utterance or episcopal exhortation, relegating their familial, social, civic &
    nongovernmental implications. They see government as the primary means of
    coordinating the initiatives of our better angels, which it sometimes can be, rather than
    for ameliorating the initiatives of our fallen angels. Gospel inculturation, moral
    enculturation & ministerial accompaniment aren’t coercive.
    _____________________________
    Regarding a Supposed Natural Law Impotence
    Impotent natural law arguments nonvirtuously cycle abductive hypothesizing and
    deductive clarifying without the benefit of inductive testing, unlike the church's highly
    esteemed social teaching with its NL plus personalist approach. Too many NL theorists
    employ abstract, aprioristic, deductivistic, rationalistic, biologistic arguments that bear
    little resemblance to the concrete, lived experiences of people. Church social teachings
    have employed triadic inference w/inductive, personalist approach+NL and are widely
    received. For some, NL hasn't been tried and found wanting but hasn't even been tried.
    When it has been done properly, it has been highly esteemed and widely accepted.
    Flawed methodologies need fixing. Shared inchoate NL sensibilities and intuitions
    suffice for public order, public peace, public justice and public morality in a secular
    governmental polity. More robust NL methods are of course required for thornier moral
    objects (e.g. bioethical). The latter methods can result in an ethical pluralism due -not
    to relativism, but- metaphysical fallibilism and moral probabilism, ie epistemic humility
    not HUBRIS!
    _____________________________________
    Does faith shape our politics or is it too often the other way around?
    From a formative spirituality perspective, “other way around” may happen more often
    among those in earlier stages. If we view progressive & traditionalist sensibilities as
    charisms of pilgrims & settlers, later on our faith journeys, those gifts may well shape
    our political ministries.
    It does also seem that, even within denominations that accommodate a plurality of
    theological opinions regarding nature & grace, where one stands on the optimism-
    pessimism spectrum of theological anthropology (depravist & exclusivist vs inclusivist)
    often seems to shape political approaches.
    ____________________________
    Yes, moral realities are transparent to human reason without reference to special
    revelation. BUT Prudential judgments evaluate conditions of MORAL legitimacy,
    presupposed within an established framework of values and priorities. For example,
    coercive measures mustn’t produce evils & disorders graver than the evil to be
    eliminated!
    ______________________________
    I was heartened when the Religious Freedom Restoration Act here in US bolstered 1st
    Amendment protections regarding federal statutes (states would have to effect their
    own). While a generally applicable law advancing a compelling government interest
    could burden consciences, strict scrutiny requires that be done with the least restrictive
    means practicable.
    The US approach to the Enlightenment employed a secularist political strategy that
    fairly well strengthened the influence of religion in citizens’ lives. On the Continent,
    however, a militant secularism marginalized religion; beyond a mere political strategy, it
    was driven from other spheres – civil, social, economic & cultural.
    ____________________________
    Maritain recognized that prudential judgments must discern which civil polity is
    optimal from one location and concrete set of circumstances to the next, even from one
    epoch to the next. As the degrees of successful Gospel inculturation & moral
    enculturation thus vary, strategies advancing human dignity, common good, justice &
    peace must adapt.
    _________________________________
    Throw tribalistic cultures into the mix, along with recent results regarding
    neoconservative democratization “strategies” (e.g. war) & Arab Springs unsprung, is it
    not clear that no one political shoe will fit all peoples?
    ___________________________________
    Prior to any political theology, one needs a Goldilocks theological anthropology, i.e.
    neither too optimistic (eg transcendentalistic) nor pessimistic (eg dialectical
    imagination or depravity), so, I commend the thoughts of my late fellow Yat
    (N’orleanian). For the convenience of any who may be interested, Don Gelpi on grace
    pt 2
    Finally, I commend Amos Yong’s In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism &
    Political Theology, where he writes: Catholic Social Teaching is important less
    because of specifiable political proposals but because it articulates a theological vision
    of social & economic justice that has broad political implications.
    I commend Yong’s book as in continuity with Gelpi’s theological anthropology and
    Maritain’s political philosophy.
    From an anonymous reviewer:
    Our political interaction, as expressed in our many different modes of public
    interaction, takes on a contextual expression that responds to the particular instances
    in light of the work of Christ. With this in mind, then, a Pentecostal political theology
    does not mandate a specific response that must be applied in all settings, but rather
    builds a framework of values and priorities which give freedom to those in each
    setting. This framework is not a wishy-washy approach, suggesting that whatever is
    done is always baptized in the Spirit, but instead offers freedom within the context of
    responsibility. We who are Christians, who seek to participate in this world in the
    power of the Spirit, do so in light of Christ’s own calling, and it is as such that Yong
    formulates his constructive theology.
    Finally, I commend The Conservative Pragmatism of Charles Peirce by Thomas
    Short.
    ##############################
    Catholic Social & Moral Teaching – provides a framework of values & priorities to
    advance human dignity & the common good. Within that framework citizens apply their
    best prudential judgments to optimally realize those values & priorities. Such liberative
    strategies are not first and foremost coercive or political, but, when they do resort to
    political solutions, those have included most of the following:
    Il-Liberalism
    Integralism & Political Augustinianism
    Augustinian Radicalism
    Classical Liberalism
    Neoconservatism
    Neoliberalism
    Libertarianism
    Paleoconservatism
    Political emphasis on negative rights & free exercise
    Social, Economic, Fiscal, Political & Cultural conservatisms
    Modern Liberalism
    Social Democracy
    Social Liberalism
    Economic Statism & Keynesian Economics
    Political emphasis on positive rights & nonestablishment
    Social, Economic, Fiscal, Political & Cultural progressivisms
    Socialism
    Fascism
    Communism
    Totalitarian
    Nontotalitarian
    Just how could such manifold & varied political strategies, almost all, ever be deemed
    largely compatible with Magisterial teachings from place to place & time to time? That
    will be the subject of my next tweet, which I’ve been working on for the past decade.
    Since I’ve recently been afforded 280 characters, though, it’s going to take me a bit
    longer to compose it. I’ll give you a hint. Each of the above represents an ideology that
    variously over- and/or under-emphasizes one aspect of Church teaching or another.
    Foundationally, they can also be overly optimistic or pessimistic regarding their
    preconceptions of nature & grace vis a vis their implicit theological anthropologies.
    Admonishing the Sinner? Really? Many have responded defensively to Pope Francis'
    "Who am I to judge?" by drawing distinctions between judging and correcting such as
    set forth in USCCB guidelines regarding the Spiritual Works of Mercy, specifically
    addressing admonishing the sinner.
    That distinction between judging & correction is helpful.
    Let me offer another between correcting & instructing.
    When forming the faithful, instructing them through catechetics, homiletics, parenting
    & modeling, it can certainly be sufficient to cite church teachings & authorities,
    especially regarding general precepts.
    However, merely asserting such stances is insufficient, when presuming to correct
    others, especially regarding thornier moral objects, e.g. the bioethical realities of life,
    gender & sexuality.
    When "correcting" coreligionists & others with whom we may disagree, in order not to
    arrogate a level of authority beyond one's theological & philosophical ken, one has the
    further responsibility of journeying with them to a deeper understanding of the faith &
    morals at stake.
    For example, regarding subjective aspects of morality, one should have a better grasp of
    pastoral realities such as the internal forum, gradualism, moral probabilism & the
    prudential application of canons. Regarding the objective aspects, one must be
    adequately equipped to engage the differences in moral methodologies (e.g. historicist &
    personalist approaches to natural law), ethical pluralism & moral epistemology.
    The latest popular discourse is sadly pervaded by "corrections" that reflexively and
    facilely claim moral relativism, situational ethics, disciplinary laxism & even heresy. For
    gosh sakes, there are other grounds for disagreement among moral realists!
    One might argue whether & to what degree such rhetoric is corrective rather than rashly
    judgmental, but it manifestly does not adequately reflect the criteria set out in those
    USCCB guidelines. It arrogantly, sometimes hysterically, talks past its interlocutors with
    only a superficial grasp of both moral & pastoral realities, not to mention no
    appreciation, whatsoever, for how a generally fallibilist moral epistemology operates in
    our pilgrim church as we journey together toward the truth with hope and charity.
    Mapping Metaphysical Distinctions: Aristotelian,
    Thomist, Scotist, Peircean & Palamitic
    If we 1) follow the hermeneutical rubric of presupposing not heretical but orthodox
    interpretations of our ecumenical coreligionists; 2) prescind from the rigorously defined
    entities & highly specified relationalities of any given meta-physic to the vague
    categories of a commonsensical meta-heuristic; 3) avoid the temptation to create canons
    within the Canons by imagining we can prove, systematically & philosophically, more
    than we can already know, liturgically & doctrinally; and 4) recognize that theological
    aporiae are best celebrated, liturgically & devotionally, for the horizons they open,
    humility they inculcate & wonder they inspire, as creative, prayerful tensions, and much
    less so lamented just because they intractably elude our sylly syllogisms, then ... hmm ...
    I forgot where that was supposed to be heading.
    BRIDGING THE SUPPOSED THOMIST-SCOTIST DIVIDE
    Theologically, bridge it this way:
    BENEDICT XVI, GENERAL AUDIENCE, Paul VI Hall, Wednesday, 7 July
    2010
    Epistemologically, like this:
    Ontologically, no bridge required!
    While Scotus' semantical approach certainly has metaphysical implications, it was not
    an ontology.
    THE DISTINCTIONS
    A distinction may be real vs conceptual (re logical or virtual).
    Real distinctions can include modal distinctions (re temporality or adequacy)
    Modal temporality can include a formal or metaphysically real distinction.
    Modal temporality applied to Peircean categories as mapped to causes:
    2ns or actualities
    act - efficient
    potency - material
    3ns or regularities
    act - formal
    potency – final
    1ns or possibilities
    act – connaturality
    potency – indeterminacy
    Other real distinctions:
    Existential
    act - existence
    potency - essence
    modal adequacy
    in/finite
    whole/part or mereological
    1/Mapping: Distinction = real vs conceptual (re logical or virtual). Real distinctions
    include modal distinctions re temporality or adequacy (in/finite or whole/part =
    mereological). Modal temporality includes a formal or metaphysically real distinction
    (PNC holds, PEM folds).
    2/I guess it could map like this: Modal temporality can be applied to Peircean categories
    as mapped to causes, where for actualities, act –> efficient; potency –> material; for
    regularities, act -> formal; potency –> final. Existentially, act -> existence; potency ->
    essence.
    Finally, we cross the bridge between Scotist & Palamitic categories.
    BRIDGING ANY SUPPOSED SCOTIST-PALAMITIC DIVIDE
    Divine Simplicity affirms an imparticipable, incommunicable, inaccessible esse
    naturale & rules out - not plurality in, but - multiplicity of God.
    We can, however, affirm via a trans-formal distinction, the infinity of inseparably
    united formalities that present in the plurality of participable, communicable, accessible
    energies of the esse intentionale as it manifests the infinite choices of the infinitely free
    divine gratuities of creation & grace.
     
    Human cooperation with & participation in the divine gratuities of creation & grace must
    necessarily cross epistemic & axiological distances (as human acts
    determine otherwise indeterminate potencies) in order to realize divine ends, both temporal &
    eternal, thereby growing in love & freedom. However otherwise similar may be human & divine
    agencies, we should remember that divine agency is radically dissimilar in that God needn't
    thusly appropriate or grow in love & freedom!
    Much more detail re G-d Talk here.
     
     
     
     

    Mapping Metaphysical Distinctions: Aristotelian,


    Thomist, Scotist, Peircean & Palamitic
    If we 1) follow the hermeneutical rubric of presupposing not heretical but orthodox
    interpretations of our ecumenical coreligionists; 2) prescind from the rigorously defined
    entities & highly specified relationalities of any given meta-physic to the vague
    categories of a commonsensical meta-heuristic; 3) avoid the temptation to create canons
    within the Canons by imagining we can prove, systematically & philosophically, more
    than we can already know, liturgically & doctrinally; and 4) recognize that theological
    aporiae are best celebrated, liturgically & devotionally, for the horizons they open,
    humility they inculcate & wonder they inspire, as creative, prayerful tensions, and much
    less so lamented just because they intractably elude our sylly syllogisms, then ... hmm ...
    I forgot where that was supposed to be heading.

    BRIDGING THE SUPPOSED THOMIST-SCOTIST DIVIDE


    Theologically, bridge it this way:
    BENEDICT XVI, GENERAL AUDIENCE, Paul VI Hall, Wednesday, 7 July 2010
    Epistemologically, like this:
    Ontologically, no bridge required!
    While Scotus' semantical approach certainly has metaphysical implications, it was not
    an ontology.
    THE DISTINCTIONS
    A distinction may be real vs conceptual (re logical or virtual).
    Real distinctions can include modal distinctions (re temporality or adequacy)
    Modal temporality can include a formal or metaphysically real distinction.
    Modal temporality applied to Peircean categories as mapped to causes:
    2ns or actualities
    act - efficient
    potency - material
    3ns or regularities
    act - formal
    potency – final
    1ns or possibilities
    act – connaturality
    potency – indeterminacy
    Other real distinctions:
    Existential
    act - existence
    potency - essence
    modal adequacy
    in/finite
    whole/part or mereological

    1/Mapping: Distinction = real vs conceptual (re logical or virtual). Real distinctions


    include modal distinctions re temporality or adequacy (in/finite or whole/part =
    mereological). Modal temporality includes a formal or metaphysically real distinction
    (PNC holds, PEM folds).
    2/I guess it could map like this: Modal temporality can be applied to Peircean categories
    as mapped to causes, where for actualities, act –> efficient; potency –> material; for
    regularities, act -> formal; potency –> final. Existentially, act -> existence; potency ->
    essence.
    Finally, we cross the bridge between Scotist & Palamitic categories.
    BRIDGING ANY SUPPOSED SCOTIST-PALAMITIC DIVIDE
    Divine Simplicity affirms an imparticipable, incommunicable, inaccessible esse
    naturale & rules out - not plurality in, but - multiplicity of God.
    We can, however, affirm via a trans-formal distinction, the infinity of inseparably
    united formalities that present in the plurality of participable, communicable, accessible
    energies of the esse intentionale as it manifests the infinite choices of the infinitely free
    divine gratuities of creation & grace.

     
    Human cooperation with & participation in the divine gratuities of creation & grace must
    necessarily cross epistemic & axiological distances (as human acts
    determine otherwise indeterminate potencies) in order to realize divine ends, both temporal &
    eternal, thereby growing in love & freedom. However otherwise similar may be human & divine
    agencies, we should remember that divine agency is radically dissimilar in that God needn't
    thusly appropriate or grow in love & freedom!

    Much more detail re G-d Talk here.


     
     
     
     

    A Polydoxic Pneumatological Missiology for Multiple


    Belongers
    A contemplative posture orients one's disposition toward reality more than it offers
    propositions about reality. It more so norms "how" we see and less so describes "what"
    we see.
    Contemplation effects metanoia, which includes intellectual, affective, moral, social and
    religious conversions. While these conversion dynamics are distinct from developmental
    growth mechanisms (for example, as described by Piaget, Maslow , Kohlberg, Erikson
    and Fowler, et al), they are not unrelated as they do foster those processes.
    The conversions gift us horizon-situated dispositions, which
    1) open our perceptions via an awareness that there's more to any given reality than our
    own thoughts can suggest; via logos;
    2) open our minds to recognize the intelligence on display in other interpretations of any
    given reality outside of our own social and political circles; via topos;
    3) open our souls by expanding what's reasonable to expect regarding any given reality
    beyond what our own feelings might suggest; via pathos;
    4) open our hands by enlarging our sense of responsibility toward any given reality
    beyond our own moral and practical concerns; via ethos;
    and
    5) open our hearts to being in love with and beloved by God, others, the cosmos and
    even one's self; via mythos.
    See: Contemplative Being, Believing, Belonging, Desiring, Behaving &
    Becoming
    These conversions gift us with what Lonergan described as human authenticity, when
    he articulated his transcendental imperatives: be aware, be reasonable, be responsible
    and be intelligent.
    Still, what theorists like Lonergan, Maslow, Gerald May, Viktor Frankl and others all
    eventually came to understand was that self-actualization was in fact a by-product of
    self-transcendence (not the end-product of self-interested strivings). Any pursuits of
    self-actualization, authenticity, Enlightenment and such for their own sakes, i.e. as
    sought after end-products, would be self-defeating, frustrating their own realizations.
    Any who would aspire to be aware, reasonable, responsible and intelligent --- would best
    realize those values by, first, being in love!
    Without following the imperative to be in love, one could not realize sustained
    authenticity. Without seeking Enlightenment out of solidarity and compassion, rather
    than for one's own sake, Enlightenment would forever elude one.
    The contemplative stance, then, while mostly dispositional, does entail one universal,
    even if vague, propositional posit, which is that reality's origin and end, being and
    essence, value and appeal, meaning and purpose, is love.
    Thus contemplation, as entailed in the spiritual practices, asceticisms and disciplines
    across traditions, expresses a singular, orthodoxic, soteriological trajectory. This
    orientation goes beyond the norms of authenticity or of a suitable epistemic humility,
    dis-positionally, to also include, pro-positionally, a belief that reality is robustly
    relational. It warrants an existentially actionable interpretation that, wholly and
    thoroughly beloved, we simply must be loving. (As the children sing why they love
    Jesus ... because He first loved me).
    In many cases, through interreligious dialogue, we are discovering that, beyond this
    singular, shared, orthodoxic, soteriological trajectory, the great traditions and
    indigenous religions will otherwise diverge with pluralist, diverse, polydoxic,
    sophiological trajectories, which, more simply put, correspond to different ways of
    being in love with different aspects of reality, including God, others, self and cosmos.
    This is to recognize that, in many ways, as we move beyond the vaguely spiritual to
    embrace more specific religious paths, it will not necessarily entail competing
    interpretations of reality but only complementary approaches to reality, which can be
    variously more inchoate or developed, more or less inclusive, variously emphasizing our
    unitary being or our unitive strivings, more or less suited to foster conversions and to
    sustain authenticity, more or less perfectly articulating truth, enjoying comm-unity,
    celebrating beauty, preserving goodness and growing freedom & love. I mean to say all
    of that in full consonance with Pope Paul VI's proclamation, Nostra Aetate.
    When institutionalized religions fail in fostering conversions and in sustaining
    authenticity, many followers will, understandably, retreat into a spiritual but not
    religious stance. When religions are at their best, though, well, we "see how they love
    one another" as they foster open minds, open hearts and open hands!
    And we see where the quest, itself, becomes our grail; the risks of faith, hope and love,
    themselves, become our rewards; the journey, itself, becomes our destination; the
    spiritual process, itself, becomes our transformational product; the next good step
    becomes the entire recovery program; the commitment, itself, becomes our outcome;
    the prayer and sitting, themselves, become our consolation.
    Life's highest goods, alone, can thus be enjoyed without moderation, as the pursuits of
    truth, unity, beauty, goodness and freedom are, intrinsically, their own rewards. The
    contemplative stance embodies that real-ization. Good religion enhances it.
    In science, faith & quotidian life, epistemic virtues should first vault our speculative
    claims over the threshold of equiplausibility, where we can normatively adjudicate any
    competing responses using the principles of reasoning under uncertainty.
    The hermeneutical spiral, above, recapitulates Lonergan's transcendental imperatives &
    functional specialties.
    See: https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/contemplative-being-
    behaving-believing-belonging-desiring-becoming-an-outline-of-foundations/
    To wit:
    De-liberatively, regarding our references, descriptively & interpretively, epistemic
    virtues should first vault our speculative claims over the threshold of equiplausibility,
    where we can adjudicate, normatively, any competing responses, using the principles of
    reasoning under uncertainty, evaluatively.
    De-liberatively (cosmos & mythos – be free, be loving, be-loved per both temporal &
    ultimate teloi) …
    regarding our references …
    descriptively (logos or perception - be aware in research & communications) & …
    interpretively (topos or understanding – be intelligent in interpretation & systematics)
    …
    epistemic virtues should first vault our speculative claims over the threshold of
    equiplausibility, where we can adjudicate …
    normatively (ethos or acting - be responsible in dialectics & foundations), any
    competing responses, using the principles of reasoning under uncertainty …
    evaluatively,(pathos or judging & deciding – be reasonable in history & doctrines).
    I must stipulate with Hart & Milbank that any rivalry between ultimate worldviews, say
    nihilist vs theological, cannot be logically coerced. Reality remains far too ambiguous for
    us & way too ambivalent toward us to compel belief through speculative reason, alone.
    With the Thomists, I would insist that, even stipulating that nihilism has not thus been
    refuted, philosophy well demonstrates the reasonableness of natural theology as an
    equiplausible competing worldview.

    For me, Thomism’s reasonableness remains indispensable over against any


    thoroughgoing fideism, much less, nominalism, idealism, voluntarism or relativism.
    I do not receive Milbank as coming from some Thoroughly [Post]Modern Millie, but,
    instead, take (eisegetically) his postmodern critique as an admonition to avoid the
    temptations of dueling hyper-formalisms in countering those insidious -isms.
    This is to recognize that ---
    no essentialistic framing will finally foreclose nominalism, descriptively;
    no naïve realism will convincingly defeat idealism, interpretively;
    no intellectualistic speculation will logically overcome voluntarism, evaluatively;
    no absolutistic insistence will compellingly obviate relativism, normatively; and
    no rationalistic appeals will definitively refute fideism, existentially.
    But what amount to epistemic misfires for some are but caricatures for others, whose
    1) descriptive probes include semiotic & moderate critical realisms;
    2) interpretive heuristics employ a metaphysical fallibilism;
    3) evaluative dispositions engage an irreducible triad of logos-pathos-ethos, e.g.
    Aristotelian eudaimonia, Augustinian beatitudo or Thomist summum bonum;
    4) normative propositions allow some degree of ethical pluralism grounded – not in an
    insidious relativism or vulgar pragmatism, but --- suitable epistemic humility,
    metaphysical fallibilism & moral probabilism ; and
    5) philosophical preambula vault fidei past the threshold of equiplausibility.
    Thomism’s reasonableness thus gets vaulted philosophically past the threshold of
    equiplausibility by the valid & coherent arguments of natural theology & natural law.
    (And its deontological conclusions should be considered at least as modest as its
    ontological commitments are tentative). There, philosophy culminates in either the
    theological preambula fidei & its general precepts or a nihilistic cosmogony.

    Any "competing" theological or nihilistic mythos would come after a normatively


    justified existential leap.
    Past this threshold of epistemic warrant, speculative reason yields to practical
    reasoning under uncertainty. The speculative arguments between essentialism &
    nominalism, realism & idealism, intellectualism & voluntarism, absolutism & relativism
    and fideism & rationalism have previously been transcended by a fallibilist, critical
    realism.
    Normative justifications commence and can lead either to the fideistic, voluntaristic
    dichotomy of a theological versus nihilistic mythos or to an existential disjunction,
    where rational equiplausibility principles, albeit often implicit, adjudicate a decision to
    “live as if” that which is (more so, perhaps, they who are) the most life-giving &
    relationship-enhancing, the most beautiful & good, the most unitive & liberative, will ---
    first & proleptically, i.e. proximately & temporally, as well as eventually &
    eschatologically, i.e. ultimately & eternally --- also happen to be the most true.
    This constitutes meta-discourse, however inchoate or implicit, whether variously held
    provisionally or confidently, yes, prior to special revelations, and yes, on tradition-
    transcendent grounds. Importantly, this needn't be formal discourse or what can
    sometimes devolve into sylly syllogisms, but more often, via our participatory
    imaginations, comes from our common sense & common sensibilities, from
    connaturality, an illative sense, a tacit dimension, intuitions & informal abductions.
    The most problematical arguments of natural theology are rationalistically grounded in
    naïve rather than critical realisms. The most problematical arguments of the natural law
    are a prioristic, rationalistic, deductivistic, biologistic, physicalistic & infallibilistic,
    especially as they move from general precepts to specific concrete norms, particularly
    because of epistemic hubris and the lack of a more inductive, personalist relationality-
    responsibility approach. But the abuse of natural theology & natural law is no argument
    against their proper use.
    The questions that beg?
    What constitutes the most life-giving, existentially?
    How do we define & measure the most relationship-enhancing? The most unitive,
    interpretively & orthocommunally?
    Where's the most beautiful instantiated, evaluatively & orthopathically?
    And the most good realized, normatively & orthopraxically?
    And the most liberative, metanoetically & orthotheotically?
    These are not questions that yield to an armchair cognitive map-making but which
    must actively engage participative imaginations that are naturally embodied,
    historically situated, socially embedded, culturally bound, politically immersed &
    transcendentally horizoned.
    Of course it's incredibly problematical to apply our ortho-metrics to competing
    worldviews, precisely because their instantiations are so very particular & traditioned.
    But I wouldn't want to defend the notion that nihilism remains in that competition?
    Finally, Between an overly pessimistic Augustinian interpretation & overly optimistic
    transcendental Thomism, perhaps a Goldilocks theological anthropology can be
    articulated:
    /https://opcentral.org/resources/2015/01/12/donald-l-gelpi-two-spiritual-paths-
    thematic-grace-vs-transmuting-grace-part-1/
    https://opcentral.org/resources/2015/01/12/donald-l-gelpi-two-spiritual-paths-
    thematic-grace-vs-transmuting-grace-part-ii/
    Gelpi recognized both as donative realities - a gratuity of creation & gratuity of
    grace, the Spirit's universal presence (e.g. nomicities) & particular presence, where
    Grace is mediated via transmuted experience, where, for example, Kerygma matter
    immensely.
    This discussion continues here:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/15/augustinians-
    thomists-nature-grace-politics-religion/
    Where in the World is Sophia? ---a Sophiological footnote
    The created grace Gelpi refers to would be constituted by reality's actualized potencies,
    eternalized teloi (both temporal & ultimate teloi) of Peircean thirdness, efficient
    materialities of secondness, connaturalized indeterminacies of firstness, existentialized
    essences, formalized finalities, participatory intimacizations eternalized, all temporal
    realities coaxed forth Pneumatologically, Christologically & Paterologically via Divine
    Energies as would account for effects as would be proper to no known causes.
    Every trace of human goodness, for example, eternalized, i.e. every
    beginning of a smile & all wholesome trivialities!
    Whether interpreted in Platonic, Neoplatonic, Aristotelian, Thomist, Scotist, Palamitic
    or Peircean categories (and I cross hermeneutical bridges between them all), collectively
    & dynamically, these cumulative actualized potencies or eternally realized divine teloi
    may represent Sophia, who participates in the Divine Energies in a perichoretic
    Divine Dance.
    In The Wisdom of God, Bulgakov spoke of two Sophias, one created and the other
    uncreated. She to whom I refer above would be the created Sophia in her
    participatedness. While I affirm the Divine Energies per a formal distinction, I must
    defer to others regarding the manner of viewing Sophia in Orthodoxy. And still wonder
    just how we might best account for ecstatic visions of Sophia.
    See more re this theophany:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/14/essential-theophanic-putative-
    theo-ontological-aspects-of-human-divine-relations/
    FINAL NOTE:
    This body of work largely comprises my project, which I refer to as Pan-semio-
    entheism, because, as a systematic theology, while it is metaphysically realist, it
    prescinds from any given metaphysical root metaphor (substance, relational, process,
    experience, etc) to a phenomenological meta-heuristic.
    See: Amos Yong With John Sobert Sylvest, “Reasons and Values of the Heart in a
    Pluralistic World: Toward a Contemplative Phenomenology for Interreligious
    Dialogue,” Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 20:2 (2010): 170-93
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/contemplative-being-behaving-
    believing-belonging-desiring-becoming-an-outline-of-foundations/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/mapping-metaphysical-
    distinctions-aristotelian-thomist-peircean/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2016/12/09/morrells-4-d-imax-rohrian-
    perichoretic-adventure/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/divine-dance-rohr-morrell-
    panikkar-oh-my/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/%e2%80%8bfrom-
    ontotheological-trinito-logical-is-ness-to-theopoetic-trinito-phanic-dance-ness-yes/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/perichoresis-as-vehicle-
    negativa-in-rohrs-divine-dance-a-trinito-phany-in-continuity-with-orthodox-trinito-
    logy/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/the-trans-formal-distinction-
    between-the-divine-essence-energies/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/epistemic-distance-the-greatest-
    good-as-divinely-willed-ends-in-an-anti-theodicy/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/maritain-murray-macintyre-
    milbank-a-medieval-integralist-walk-into-a-bar/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/07/10/a-semiotic-phenomenology-
    toward-a-more-ecumenical-trinitology-and-trinitophany/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/freedom-from-aquinas-to-
    modern-emergentist-semiotics/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/04/a-defense-of-metaphysics-to-
    be-or-not-to-be-or-to-e-prime-or-not/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/07/truth-broadly-conceived/
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/the-pre-political-grounding-of-
    both-liberal-illiberal-regimes/
    The architectonic set forth herein suggests philosophical norms & theological heuristics,
    the contours within which I methodologically approach systematic theology,
    comparative theology & Gospel inculturation.
    With this pan-semio-entheism, I aspire to develop a polydoxic, pneumatological
    missiology for the planting of ecclesial gatherings that will invite, orient, unify, sanctify,
    heal, nurture, liberate & send forth dual-practitioners & even multiple-belongers.
    Anthropos
    We must resist an under-estimation of the significance of special revelation in growing
    humanity's orientation to God, as it allows persons to move more swiftly & with less
    hindrance on their journeys, realizing both temporal & ultimate teloi.
    We must also resist either an over- or under-estimation (of an extreme intrinsicism or
    extrinsicism) of humanity's dynamic orientation to God & moral reality via natural
    theology & natural law.
    Even among the intrinsicists of the Nouvelle Theologie, the blurring of distinctions
    between nature & grace didn't remove anthropological tensions regarding the realities of
    sin & ecclesial accommodations to the world.
    While the intrinsicists all agree in principle that we can discern what's “common and
    accessible to all” and gradually move forward to the “highest data of theology,” some
    Thomists & Augustinians otherwise diverged precisely along the grounds for
    anthropological optimism & pessimism vis a vis both sin & worldly accommodations.
    See:
    Brandon Peterson, Critical Voices: The Reactions of Rahner and Ratzinger to 'Schema
    XIII' (Gaudium et Spes)
    Peterson quotes a post-conciliar interview of Rahner: I would say that the dangers of a
    false adaptation of the Church to the modern world, or of falling into a purely secular
    humanism —which are real dangers in the Church’s attempt to open itself outwards to
    the modern world can invite as a defensive reaction the opposite danger, namely, to turn
    inwards and to make the Church a closed sect. Theology must help the preacher preach
    the gospel in such a way that it can really be understood and assimilated today; and
    theology also has a critical function in preventing the Church in its preaching or in its
    practice from becoming a ghetto or a sect within the contemporary world.
    Peterson concludes: Christocentrism, anthropological methodology, and critical
    openness to the world stand in a creative tension which marks Gaudium et Spes itself, a
    tension which we must not relax if we are to be faithful heirs to this landmark council.
    For such a tension is an essential part of a theological approach which, executed
    properly, can proclaim the Gospel to a world that not only needs it, but needs to
    understand it.
    How might we best exploit these creative tensions?
    Reality emerges & gifts entities that present with different kinds of “aboutness” that
    suggest degrees of ontological density but which don't definitively reveal metaphysical
    natures.
    An emergentist heuristic might refer to these “aboutnesses” in terms of different degrees
    of telic influence.
    • 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.
    In this profusely pneumatological reality, divine interactivity gifts the Spirit's
    universalized presence via creatio continua, consistent with the Thomistic aphorism -
    “Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur.” This means that “whatever is
    received, is received according to the mode of the receiver.”
    All reality participates, constitutively & relationally, responding to various formal &
    formative divine promptings of divine esse intentionale & energies, each entity
    according to its given telic modes.
    Human persons interact with the Spirit's universalized presence, constituted by &
    engaging in all of the above-listed modes of aboutness, but uniquely, as reality's only
    sapiopoietic creature, via a teleological mode, in a robustly intentional way.
    The sapiopoietic nature of human persons equips them to also interact with the Spirit's
    particularized presence in special revelation.
    Per Aquinas in the ST: It is befitting Holy Writ to put forward divine and spiritual truths
    by means of comparisons with material things. For God provides for everything
    according to the capacity of its nature. Now it is natural to man to attain to intellectual
    truths through sensible objects, because all our knowledge originates from sense. Hence
    in Holy Writ, spiritual truths are fittingly taught under the likeness of material things.
    This is what Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. i): "We cannot be enlightened by the divine rays
    except they be hidden within the covering of many sacred veils." It is also befitting Holy
    Writ, which is proposed to all without distinction of persons — "To the wise and to the
    unwise I am a debtor" (Romans 1:14) — that spiritual truths be expounded by means of
    figures taken from corporeal things, in order that thereby even the simple who are
    unable by themselves to grasp intellectual things may be able to understand it.
    Per Don Gelpi S.J.’s anthropology:
    In an “experiential approach to human nature, any given human mind may or may not
    be oriented dynamically to God. Rather, each self must acquire such an orientation,
    either by fixing its personal beliefs on purely rational motives concerning the reality and
    nature of God, or by responding positively and graciously in faith to some event of
    divine self-revelation.”
    The gratuity of creation, experienced by human persons as they interact with the Spirit's
    universalized presence, can foster a rationally acquired dynamical orientation to God,
    gifting an awareness of & cultivating an aretaical disposition toward both temporal &
    ultimate teloi. It can thus foster – not only the secular conversions (intellectual,
    affective, moral & sociopolitical), but – an authentic theocentric religious conversion,
    which, while variously implicit & inchoate, cooperates with the obediential potencies
    formed by secular conversions.
    The gratuity of grace, experienced by human persons as they interact with the Spirit's
    particularized presence, can foster a dynamic reorientation of the self to God, if it
    responds positively and graciously in faith to some event of divine self-revelation.
    If this dynamic reorientation of the self results from a response in faith to a particular
    divine self-disclosure, whether initially or subsequent to a previous reorientation
    fostered by the gratuity of creation, it constitutes an infusion of supernatural grace via
    the gratuity of grace.
    Per Gelpi, supernatural grace “transmutes experience by endowing it with a new
    capacity to relate to God both correlative to God’s free act of self-disclosure and
    impossible apart from that self-revelation.”
    A theocentric religious conversion orients a person via Lonergan's transcendental
    imperatives as – beyond, temporally, being aware, intelligent, reasonable, responsible &
    in love with others, cosmos & even self – it also invites one into a relationship with a
    donative ultimate reality, much like Pip in Great Expectations as he related to his
    unknown benefactor or, perhaps, as Ralph McInerny put it, like characters in search of
    their Author. This represents the essential, orthodoxic, soteriological trajectory of the
    world's great traditions & indigenous religions.
    Consistent with Nostra Aetate, concerning the relationship of the church to non-
    Christian religions, in addition to that essential soteriological trajectory, various
    traditions & religions may otherwise diverge to various degrees in their polydoxic,
    sophiological trajectories, whereby persons grow in intimacy (theosis) with God.
    See:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/%e2%80%8bwhat-the-
    contemplative-stance-means-to-me/
    This is the Goldilocks anthropology that best exploits the creative tensions of the
    Nouvelle Theologie, which, when properly engaged, successfully sidesteps any sterile
    Neo-Scholasticism, transcendental Thomism or Augustinian radicalism.
    Special Revelation clarifies what would otherwise remain indistinct in the logos of
    General Revelation.
    First, in the order of logos:
    Determinacies
    We disambiguate ambiguities & define in/definite actualities, which are determinacies
    (in/definitive) that correspond to referenced or defined entities.
    Indeterminacies
    In/determinacies (in/determinable & in/determined) refer to generalities (probabilities
    & necessities) and vagueness (possibilities).
    We determine in/determinacies by delimiting vague possibilities & specifying
    generalities, i.e. probabilities & necessities.
    Beyond a mere propositional translation process (via our cognitive map-making)
    between noetic aspects of general & special revelations, as we move from natural to
    revealed theology or even between revealed traditions ...
    We must also engage in
    dispositional interpretations (via the inhabitations of our participatory imaginations) of
    culturally embodied unitive, aesthetic, ethical & liberative norms, if we are to adequately
    appropriate the theological idioms required for our Gospel inculturation.
    Then, beyond logos:
    Beyond a creedal logos, we need participatory immersion in revelation's other integral
    aspects: communal (topos), liturgical & devotional (pathos), moral (ethos) and ascetical
    & mystical (mythos).
    Natural Theology shouldn't be conceived in strictly logocentric terms, for even a
    theocentric religious conversion in the gratuity of creation, however inchoate, indistinct
    or implicit, propositionally, will dispositionally gift, both personally & culturally,
    embodied relationships to truth, unity, beauty, goodness & freedom.
    As one cooperates with prevenient graces & obediential potencies via General
    Revelation, while these propositional & dispositional embodiments remain confused,
    imperfect & indistinct, due to the indirect nature of one's knowledge of God, they reflect
    authentic existential orientations to the transcendental imperatives directly known via
    Special Revelation in the gratuity of grace.
    To wit: https://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles3a.htm#25
    Since all creatures, even those devoid of understanding, are ordered to God as to an
    ultimate end, all achieve this end to the extent that they participate somewhat in His
    likeness. Intellectual creatures attain it in a more special way, that is, through their
    proper operation of understanding Him. Hence, this must be the end of the intellectual
    creature, namely, to understand God.
    Below are accounts of secular & religious conversions.
    The architectonic, below, represents a hermenetical spiral, which proceeds successively
    & transformatively (via a divine gratuity of creation) through a cosmic, temporal
    chronos of logos, topos, pathos & ethos to a divine encounter with a mythic, eternal,
    kairos, whereupon, given a prevenient, obediential potency, a novel, foundational meta-
    ethos will donatively (via a divine gratuity of grace) emerge to thereafter norm, in
    reverse succession, the transformative dynamics of a doctrinal meta-pathos, systematic
    meta-topos & pastoral meta-logos.
    This spiral presents, wholistically, in the overall soteriological trajectories of each
    transformative journey. It is also recapitulated, holonically, in every discrete axiological
    trajectory of each individual value-realization.
    RIGHT BEING - PRESENCE
    COSMOS of PENTAPARTITE ANTHROPOLOGY
    GIFTED – authentic value-realizers - kairos of imago dei & chronos of cosmic evolution;
    an interpreting subject of a micro-cosmic mereological reality
     Intellectual – be aware
     Social – be intelligent
     Affective – be reasonable
     Moral & Practical – be responsible
     Religious – be in love
    RIGHT BELIEVING - WORD BROKEN OPEN
    LOGOS of PENTADIC METAPHYSICS & ONTOLOGY (WORD)
    GIVENS – orthodoxic phenomenology of objects of interpretation, sacred kairos &
    secular chronos; secondness
     Unitary Being as Intraobjective Identity
     Unitive Striving as Intersubjective Intimacy
     Unified Self as Intrasubjective Integrity
     Ultimate Unicity as Interobjective Indeterminacy
     Ens Necessarium as Transjective Necessity
    RIGHT BELONGING - COVENANT & PEOPLE GATHERED IN THANKSGIVING
    TOPOS of PENTAPRAGMATIC COMMUNITY & MISSIOLOGY
    THANKSGIVING – orthocommunal contexts & Eucharistic communities of
    interpretation (sacred kairos & secular chronos)
     Eschatological - historical & scientific as ordered by & to truth; Spirit-oriented
     Ecclesiological – sociological as ordered by & to unity; Spirit-empowered
     Soteriological - arts, humanities & cultural as ordered by & to beauty; Spirit-sanctified or
    dedicated
     Sacramental - economical & philosophical as ordered by & to goodness; Spirit-healed &
    nurtured
     Sophiological – political as ordered by & to freedom; Spirit-saved
    Beyond the mere propositional translations (via cognitive map-making), engaged
    dispositional interpretations (via inhabitations of participatory imaginations) of
    culturally embodied noetic, aesthetic, ethical, unitive & liberative norms will reveal the
    theological idioms necessary for Gospel inculturation.
    RIGHT DESIRING - ANAMNESIS & MEMORIAL
    PATHOS of PENTALECTICAL AXIOLOGY
    GIFTS – orthopathic value-realizations of proleptic kairos & evolutionary chronos;
    firstness & the primacy of esthetic interpretion
     Truth
     Unity
     Beauty
     Goodness
     Freedom
    RIGHT BEHAVING - ITE, MISSA EST
    ETHOS of PENTALOGICAL EPISTEMOLOGY (SPIRIT)
    RECEIVING – orthopraxic value-pursuits through acts of interpretation, sacred &
    secular, pneumatological (kairos) & participatory imagination (chronos); thirdness
     Descriptive
     Interpretive
     Evaluative
     Normative
     Contemplative
    RIGHT BECOMING - MEAL - You are what you eat!
    MYTHOS of PENTATARIAN THEOLOGY
    GIVER - orthotheotic participations - theological manifestations as invitations from
    image to likeness for we are the Body of Christ indwelled by the Trinity & participating
    in the Divine Dance; interpreting subjects of a macro-cosmic mereological reality
     Jesusology & Epiphany
     Trinitology & Trinitophany
     Paterology & Theophany
     Pneumatology & Pneumatophany
     Christology & Christophany
    DIVINE PROVISIONINGS & GRATUITIES
    Gratuity of Creation – the divine provisioning of co/operative connaturality, where
    humanization & socialization lead to authenticity via 1) secular conversions (w/inchoate
    grasp of natural law) and intimacization leads to sustained authenticity via 2) kenotic
    conversions (w/kenotic relational dynamics of temporal ends).
    Gratuity of Grace - divine provisioning of co/operative grace, where deification leads to
    transformative realizations via 3) religious conversions (w/polydoxic relational
    dynamics & inchoate grasp of natural theology) and christianization leads to
    transformative fruition of eternal ends via 4) theotic conversions (w/beatitudinal &
    beatific realizations).
    There’s a progressive realization of virtues, as one’s experiences are transmuted by
    cooperation w/the Holy Breath, w/decreasing risks of perverted ends, whether temporal
    or eternal.
    Sophia effected by Divine Energies will express immanent & divine entelechies (via
    various teloi) in the gratuities of creation & grace, in universal & particularized
    instances.
    CONVERSIONS
    I. Natural Conversions – intellectual, social, affective & moral
    A. descriptive - research/experiential perception – logos
    B. interpretive - interpretation/intelligent understanding - topos
    C. evaluative - history/judging – deciding - pathos
    vital options
    D. normative - dialectics/responsible acting - ethos
    forced options –
    II. Authenticity & Self-Transcendence - cosmos (self, others & world) via Spirit's
    universal ordinary presence in the gratuity of creation (obediential potencies;
    prevenient/operative & cooperative connaturality). This gratuity involves the divine
    provisioning of temporal ends proportionate to Aristotle's virtues of truth, beauty,
    goodness & unity (via humility) through operative (prevenient) & cooperative
    connaturality.
    normative - foundations
    live options - polydoxy
    existential leaps
    III. Religious Conversion – mythos (meta-cosmos or ultimate reality) via Spirit's
    particularity & extraordinary presence in the gratuity of grace (response to special
    revelations via prevenient/operative & cooperative graces). This gratuity involves the
    divine provisioning of eternal ends (meta-ethos) proportionate to Aquinas' theological
    virtues of faith, hope, love & unity (via communal oneness ) through operative
    (prevenient) & cooperative grace.
    A. evaluative - doctrines (meta-pathos)
    existential landings
    B. interpretive - systematics (meta-topos)
    theology of nature
    C. descriptive - communications (meta-logos)
    Gospel inculturation & moral enculturation
    Regarding Philosophical & Theological Distinctions
    A distinction is not truly philosophical if it hasn't been discerned to make a difference,
    existentially, helping one realize one's true temporal ends. And it's not truly theological
    if it hasn't been discerned to make an existential difference, helping one realize one's
    true eternal ends.
    One can only authentically become fully human by realizing our divinely ordained
    temporal & eternal ends.
    An anthropology may properly relate the perinoetic|empirical, dianoetic|logical,
    diastemic|aporetic, ananoetic|metaphysical, epinoetic|apophatic & kinetic|dynamical
    aspects of our human episteme, yet, without an holistic integration with the
    METANOETIC|transformative reality of human BECOMING, it's not robustly
    philosophical, much less theological.
    Note:
    If taken beyond methodological stipulations to metaphysical presuppositions, beliefs in
    sufficient reason/causation & reality's intelligibility will ontologically reduce to theism.
    Beyond that, dynamical questions re reality's immanent & transcendent entelechies may
    beg.
    One's metaphysical stances, sometimes implicit, toward any of a wide variety of
    interpretations of various origins (e.g. field, cosmic, quantum, life, sentience, language)
    may often then implicate: pan-, panen-, pan-en-, open or classical theism, deism or
    theistic personalism.
    Architectonic of Divine Gratuity
    Orthodoxic Path: Gratuity of Creation
    Polydoxic Path: Gratuity of Grace
    Theotic Path: Gratuity of Grace
    Architectonic of Participatory Divine Gratuities
    The apparent tension between divine simplicity & divine freedom results from
    the conflation of two distinct categories, the metaphysical & existential with
    the nonmetaphysical & quidditative.

    Especially Cf. The Formulation of Thomistic Simplicity: Mapping Aquinas’s


    Method for Configuring God’s Essence, JETS 57/2 (June 2014): 371–403.

    Other aporia remain but are located elsewhere.

    We successfully reference God, metaphysically, only apophatically, e.g. divine


    simplicity & ousia, abducting THAT God is, existentially.

    We successfully reference God, personally, per special revelation, variously


    employing kataphasis, apophasis, doxology, etc, inductively experiencing
    WHO God is, quidditatively, e.g. divine aseity & energeiai.

    Revelatory references employ common sense rhetoric with ontological


    implications but not always strict metaphysical categories & predications,
    which, at any rate, wouldn’t, in principle, lend themselves to anything but
    apophatic, existential – not quidditative, essential – metaphysics. Logical
    consistency not subject to parody in modal ontological arguments requires
    apophatic predication.
    That’s why I insist, for example, on labeling the essence-energies distinction
    as trans-formal.

    Analogical predications of God exert much more normative leverage on our


    embodied dispositions – aesthetically, morally & relationally – as we
    participate in reality’s excess of meaning, making appropriate (e.g.
    Eucharistic) responses to ultimate reality via myth & storytelling, which aren’t
    always completely true, literally, or robustly effective, analogically, i.e. they
    exert little descriptive leverage on our abstract propositions or deductive
    argumentations.

    I would thus urge any reference to a putative analogical god-talk to be restated


    as trans-analogical.

    We judge that the Reality of God will somehow, ultimately, make existence far
    less ambiguous for, & ambivalent toward, us in ways we can neither prove nor
    fully express, because …

    proleptically, we have participated through, with & in One, Who has loved us,
    Whose Spirit has gifted us first fruits, an earnest, a guarantee, a down
    payment, a seal, a promise, a confident assurance in things hoped for &
    conviction of glories unseen.

    How, precisely, might we avoid a Spinozan modal collapse?

    In my own Peirce-like modal ontology, first, we distinguish determinacies &


    indeterminacies. [1]

    For determinacies, we must disambiguate any ambiguities (univocal,


    equivocal, analogical, apophatic, etc) & define any in/definite actualities,
    which are determinacies (in/definitive) that can correspond to vaguely
    referenced or robustly described entities.

    In/determinacies (in/determinable & in/determined) refer to


    generalities(probabilities & necessities) and vagueness (possibilities). We
    determine in/determinacies by delimiting vague possibilities & specifying
    generalities, i.e. probabilities & necessities.

    Next, we distinguish possibilities, actualities & probabilities in terms of


    Aristotelian causation.

    A distinction may be real vs conceptual (re logical or virtual). Real distinctions


    can include modal distinctions (re temporality or adequacy).

    Modal temporality can include a formal or metaphysically real distinction.


    This maps, somewhat, to both Scotus’ formal distinction & Peirce’s category of
    thirdness or 3ns.

    Modal temporality as applied to Peircean categories can variously map to


    causes, where for:

    2ns or actualities, where noncontradiction [PNC] & excluded middle [PEM]


    hold and act maps to efficient & potency to material causes;

    3ns or regularities, where PNC holds but PEM folds and act maps to formal &
    potency to final causes;

    1ns or possibilities, where PNC folds & PEM holds and act maps to our
    embodied connaturalities and potency to their indeterminacies.

    Other real distinctions would include:

    Existential
    act – existence
    potency – essence

    Modal Adequacy
    in/finite
    whole/part or mereological

    Real vs Conceptual (re logical or virtual).


    Real distinctions include modal distinctions re temporality (above) or
    adequacy (in/finite or whole/part = mereological). Modal temporality includes
    a formal or metaphysically real distinction (PNC holds, PEM folds).

    It could map like this:

    Modal temporality can be applied to Peircean categories as mapped to causes,


    where for:

    actualities, act –> efficient & potency –> material;

    regularities, act -> formal; potency –> final.

    existentially, act -> existence; potency -> essence.

    Finally, we distinguish with Peirce, reality from existence. Gary E. Kessler


    describes Peirce’s distinction:

    Reality is a broader term that encompasses what exists but is not synonymous
    with it. For something to be real it must have properties sufficient to identify it
    whether anyone attributes those properties to it or not. The existent, strictly
    speaking, is what interacts with things in a spatio-temporal environment.

    Applying this distinction to God, then, in his excursus on Peirce’s Neglected


    Argument, [2] Kessler continues:

    Since God is not another spatio-temporal object, it amounts to fetishism, Peirce


    remarks, to say that God exists. Hence his argument, strictly speaking, is not an
    argument for God’s existence, but for God’s reality.

    Aaron Bruce Wilso writes, in Peirce’s Empiricism: Its Roots and Its
    Originality, Lexington Books, Oct 19, 2016
    If the above- described distinctions refer to categories for spatio-temporal
    realities, how must they be modified to successfully reference the Reality of
    God, even if not successfully describe some putative Being of God?

    Regarding the Reality of God:

    Modal temporality would not successfully refer, much less describe God,
    because God’s

    a) pure trans-actuality (actus purus or trans-efficient primal cause) lacks


    material potency as Ipsum Esse Subsistens.

    b) God’s pure trans-formal act (primal telos) of Ens Necessarium lacks final
    potency; and

    c) God’s pure trans-possibility lacks indeterminate potency.

    Existentially, God’s pure act of existence lacks essential potency.


    In terms of Modal Adequacy, the trans-infinite Reality of God lacks finitude.

    Prior to theo-ontology, our theophany would define essential donative,


    communicative, participative & liberative aspects of human-divine relations.
    It would preclude all fatalism & determinism, include a robust conception of
    agency & proper conception of freedom.

    Our dogmatic, relational essentials provide the theological contours within


    which we should remain as we aspire to our classical, neo-classical & other
    approaches.

    The question of modal adequacy raises further whole/part or mereological


    considerations:

    Would any of those dogmatic essentials necessarily be threatened in a theo-


    ontology that, for example:

    pan-entheistically employs an ontological distinction between humans &


    God, where God donates & communicates creatively as we participate & are
    liberated imitatively?

    panen-theistically employs a mereological distinction between humans &


    God, where God donates & communicates diffusively as we participate & are
    liberated substratively?
     
    My Pan-semio-entheism
    Bulgakov seems to echo Origen re: eternal creation, but Lossky - Athanaius, who
    deemed creation in time from God's will rather than nature. Related to distinctions of
    Norris Clarke: esse naturale v intentionale & Palamas: essence v energies. Keller's
    tehomic panentheism via creatio ex profundis makes sense to me as an eternal act,
    where the order of existence was the formless void of Genesis. CS Peirce affirms the
    atemporal Reality of God, where Being > Reality > Existence, denying God's an existent.
    To that being:reality distinction, I impute naturale:intentionale & essence:energy
    distinctions. The Reality of God would freely proceed as energeia, per divine will,
    diffusing the tehom's substrative forms w/divinizing finalities, that they may participate
    imitatively. Eternal creatio ex profundis & an in-time creatio continua preserve divine
    transcendence w/o sacrificing an intimate relationality, integral to a more robustly
    personalistic theology. (I'm trying to reconcile these approaches in resonance w/some of
    Staniloae's intuitions.)
    In the eternal generation of the Son & procession of the Spirit, the economic trinity
    manifests the immanent trinity.
    The non-determinate Creator gifts (originates or speaks) ...
    the uncreated, transcendent, trans-determinate Logos (norms) mediated by ...
    the empowering Spirit to ...
    the determinate creation, the order of which thus presents as an harmonious, telic
    configuration of pluralities.
    This manifestation of the economic trinity exhausts what can be said of the immanent
    trinity.
    Apart from the creative act & divine energeia, which reveal an extrinsic, relational,
    trinitarian divine esse intentionale ...
    we can attribute nothing determinate, intrinsically or essentially, to the trinitarian
    divine esse naturale in its aseity.
    While being, reality & existence refer to creatures, only being & reality refer to the
    Creator, a non-existent.
    The divine esse naturale (intrinsic, essential being of God) remains trans-formally
    distinct from the divine esse intentionale (extrinsic, relational reality of God).
    I thus eisegetically adapt Neville's creatio ex nihilo & Yong's pneumatology in my own
    meta-heuristic.
    Robert Cummings Neville's __God the Creator: On the Transcendence and
    Presence of God__ & Amos Yong's __Discerning the Spirit(s): A Pentecostal-
    Charismatic Contribution to Christian Theology of Religions__
     
    See Addendum below regarding a "dispositional" metaphysic.

    I argue that, in both cases, the answer is no.

    ALL of the Reality of God metaphysical formulations above set forth apophatic
    predications, where both PNC & PEM hold. Apophatic predications in modal
    ontological arguments preserve a logical consistency not subvertible by
    parody.

    HOWEVER, it is one thing to set forth such distinctions syntactically &


    grammatically following semantic rules (e.g. univocity of being) that foster
    successful references, allowing us to formulate logically consistent modal
    ontological arguments that can be rather compelling philosophically &
    metaphysically, as we abduct the Reality of God or THAT God really effected
    this or that effect as would be proper to no known causes —
    And quite another thing altogether to imagine that this great accomplishment
    of Natural Theology has also gifted us quidditative knowledge regarding to
    WHOM that Reality of God-concept refers in any robustly semantical or
    contextual (pragmatic) sense. It’s at this juncture we can begin telling
    untellable metaphysical stories, saying way more, metaphysically, than what
    can reasonably be known, proving too much metaphysically, abandoning all
    prudent aporetic sensibilities!

    It’s at this juncture where, happily, having evaded a fideistic leap, we must
    next turn to special revelation, not so much propositionally at first but
    dispositionally, inhabiting & embodying its belongingness, its desirings, its
    participations — tasting & seeing the beauty & goodness imparted by the
    Divine Energies, prudently imagining that the Reality of Natural Theology’s
    God must be true!

    Because the Reality of God successfully refers to the Ens Necessarium, not
    only God’s trans-actuality (essence) but also God’s trans-formal distinctions
    (energies) require a modal ontological grammar, where both PNC & PEM hold
    for the Creator.

    For the created spatio-temporal order, whether in the formal distinctions of


    generalities or in the vagueness of possibilities, indeterminacies must be
    admitted to avoid falling into the hopeless paradoxes of essentialism vs
    nominalism, idealism vs naïve realism, asymmetric temporality, logical vs
    efficient causation, and so on.

    PNC thus folds for temporal possibilities & PEM folds for temporal
    probabilities. This sharply distinguishes the modal grammars of metaphysical,
    apophatic, existential God-talk from those of spatio-temporal metaphysics?

    Enough theological aporia present on their own without our generating more
    by conflating metaphysical grammars.

    What sets Spinoza apart is his Principle of Sufficient Reason on steroids


    combined with an idealist monism, where an Ens Necessarium obviates all
    indeterminacies, where only one modal grammar operates.
    What distinguishes some atheological conceptions is a mereological
    distinction, where the fallacy of composition is presupposed and the whole
    does not beg questions for its necessary being, a materialist monist approach
    to a brute reality. Here the PSR is methodologically provisional & a
    philosophical naturalism essential, but not necessarily inconsistent with
    libertarian freedom, consistent with a number of philosophies of mind.

    Theological conceptions employ a nuanced PSR, essentially, with a


    methodological naturalism, provisionally. Conceiving God in classical or
    neoclassical, pan-entheist or panen-theist, conceptions, the Reality of God
    begs questions, either ontologically as asking “why not rather nothing?” or
    mereologically as asking “why not rather something else?”. The response to
    either question evokes an abduction of the Reality of the Ens Necessarium,
    which sharply distinguishes the Creator from the created order,
    metaphysically, but emphatically invokes participatory interactivity, whether
    creatively & imitatively or diffusively & substratively or perhaps even both. It
    could well be both, especially if the nihilo of creatio is, metaphysically, trans-
    existentiale & no-thing, thus avoiding the fetishism of saying that God exists.

    In an irreducibly triadic reality, perhaps our entitial states or actualities entail


    creative & imitative interactions, while our relational states or telic matrices
    entail diffusive & substrative interactions (think deep & dynamic fields).

    The move from the Ens Necessarium to donative participatory interactivity


    takes us from a natural (onto-theological) to a revealed (theophanic)
    theological methodology. A philosophical move to a theology of nature (theo-
    ontological) seeks embodied understandings & theological idioms as that
    method proposes distinctions like creative & imitative and/or diffusive &
    substrative.
    Logos
    experiential perception or research
    Human Existence – entitial, esse actuale as 2ns
    Topos
    interpretation or intelligent understanding
    “God is | not x | is true apophatically & literally” refers to Existence, onto-
    theologically & metaphysically.
    From Natural Theology or Onto-theology:
    Divine Being – actus purus (divine esse)
    Pathos
    history & judging – deciding
    Human Being – Imago Dei, created-imitative esse essentiale as 1ns, connaturality
    From Theophany & Theopoietics:
    The statement “God is | x | is true kataphatically & trans-analogically” refers to Being,
    quidditatively, theophanically & theopoietically.
    From Theology of Nature or Theo-ontology:
    “God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true relationally & really” refers to Reality, theo-
    ontologically & intimately.

    Divine Reality – relational, creative-diffusive essentiale (divine esse naturale) &


    uncreated substrative energeia (divine esse intentionale)
    Ethos
    dialectics & responsible acting
    Human Reality – uncreated substrative energeia, created, relational, esse
    intentionale as 3ns
    Theological Foundations - philosophical, historical & exegetical - explore a polydoxy
    of live options for our existential leaps

    Meta-Pathos
    Theological Doctrines as existential landings
    Meta-Topos
    Theological Systematics with further refined theology of nature
    Meta-Logos
    Theological Communications
    pastoral, homiletics, catechesis, evangelization, missiology, apologetics, Gospel
    inculturation & moral enculturation
    Let’s unpack a Dionysian-like Logic, where:
    God is | x | is true kataphatically & trans-analogically;
    God is | not x | is true apophatically & literally; and
    God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true relationally & really.
    Compare that to a Scotist- Peircean abduction of the Reality of God, where:
    Being > Reality > Existence
    The apophatic & literal statements work by metaphysically identifying God via such
    effects as would be proper to no known causes.
    Because kataphatic & trans-analogical statements refer to God existentially, they must
    employ theophanic & theopoietic idioms, which don’t reduce to formal philosophical &
    metaphysical categories, as existence can’t be predicated of God, but which do express
    reality's excess meaning in our stories & myths, liturgies & devotions.
    While such statements offer no onto-theological, metaphysical leverage for our natural
    theology, descriptively & propositionally, they can still do theo-ontology, accomplishing
    a great deal of heavy lifting, normatively & dispositionally, discovering & crafting the
    idioms for our theologies of nature, whereby we affirm that our stories & myths, liturgies
    & devotions, “really relate” to God.
    Therefore, we best formulate our real relational idioms of God in E-Prime (employing
    no verb forms of ‘to be’ or their equivalents), because, existentially, relational predicates
    will not successfully refer. With a Palamitic turn, real statements thus require the active
    voice as we refer to the manifold & multiform works done by God, energeia.
    The statement “God is | x | is true kataphatically & trans-analogically” refers to Being,
    theophanically & theopoietically.
    “God is | not x | is true apophatically & literally” refers to Existence, onto-
    theologically & metaphysically.
    "God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true relationally & really” refers to Reality, theo-
    ontologically & intimately.
    For moderate realists like Aquinas, Scotus & Peirce, the categories of Existence &
    Reality include, respectively, both entitial & relational created realities, i.e. the efficient
    acts & material potencies of entities and the formal acts & final potencies of teloi.
    The category of Reality would also include the uncreated relational reality of Primal
    Telos, which, as Pure Act, sources created reality’s polydoxic teloi …
    energetically diffusing divinizing finalities into divine substrative forms …
    thereby synergistically harmonizing the instrumental, efficient acts & material
    potencies of created, entitial existents that they might imitate the divine esse
    intentionale, growing dispositionally in an ever-deepening relational intimacy.
    Divine Simplicity, metaphysically, refers to the apophatic, metaphysical abduction of
    the Reality of God as Ens Necessarium, esse naturale.
    Divine Freedom, theophanically, refers to the uncreated energies of the Reality of God,
    which invite transformative effects (dis-positions) as would be proper to no known
    causes, hence from putative theotic participations, both entitial, creative & imitative,
    and relational, diffusive & substrative.
    Any tension between Divine Simplicity & Divine Freedom does not arise onto-
    theologically in natural theology, for freedom refers to Divine Esse Intentionale trans-
    analogically (descriptively weak, propositionally, but normatively strong,
    dispositionally).
    While denying a strictly metaphysical impasse between divine simplicity & freedom and
    while suggesting we've thus avoided any logical inconsistencies (e.g. due to parodies
    grounded in conceptual incompatabilities), it’s not to suggest we’ve also thereby
    eliminated the aporetic confrontations that inescapably attend to all theo-kataphasis. At
    the same time, it’s just no small victory to dismiss the facile caricatures & snarky
    parodies of “devastating” neo-atheological critiques?
    A theology of nature, following these speculative grammars, can affirm divine simplicitly
    as a natural theological argument, philosophically, going beyond it, theo-ontologically -
    not only invoking Thomistic distinctions between efficient & instrumental causes,
    primary & secondary causations, to preserve creaturely agencies & avoid modal collapse,
    but - to affirm a real & robust divine-nature interactivity, pneumatologically, thereby
    also going, coherently, beyond a mere deism.
    Theophanies & theopoietics aspire to successfully reference entitial realities,
    existentially, employing the ever-cascading & collapsing metaphors of our stories &
    myth, signs & symbols, liturgies & devotions, alternately revealing the concealed, then
    concealing the revealed, Who remains always timid but ever coy.
    Theo-ontologies & theologies of nature aspire to successfully reference relational
    realities, personally, relating the uncreated Primal Telos of divine esse intentionale &
    the polydoxic teloi of creation (note below), which culminate in human intentionality.
    The seductions of divine intentionale remain ineluctably unobtrusive but so utterly
    efficacious in the wooing of Sophia (created).
    Cf. regarding methodological distinctions of God-talk, see:
    https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2018/08/24/the-apparent-tension-between-
    divine-simplicity-divine-freedom/
    the Spirit woos creation forth•
    makes this way south & that way north•
    invites each blade of grass to green!
    horizons, boundaries, limits, origins•
    perimeters, parameters, centers, margins•
    we're given freedom in between!
    thus truth & beauty & goodness grow•
    thus lizards leap & roosters crow•
    and dawns break with each new day!
    good news is ours to be believed•
    love freely given if received•
    the Spirit in our heart will stay!
    very old poem of mine
    N.B. regarding polydoxic teloi
    • 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
    Cf. https://paxamoretbonum.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/contemplative-being-
    behaving-believing-belonging-desiring-becoming-an-outline-of-foundations/
    Addendum:
    What I have set forth above is a meta-heuristic, what I feel is an essential (pun intended)
    phenomenological grammar that is preambular to any metaphysic, substance or
    process, any natural theology, or any theology of nature, whether classical or
    neoclassical, pan-entheistic or panen-theistic, or even pantheistic or atheological. This
    represents the foundations of most of my musings.
    After posting this, I happily discovered the work of Dr. Mariusz Tabaczek O.P., who has
    articulated a "dispositional" metaphysic. I commend his writings to all.
    Please see:
    https://ndias.nd.edu/fellows/tabaczek-mariusz/
    https://mariopblog.wordpress.com/
    Below is an excerpt from his dissertation. It is the best example of a theology of nature
    as would be consistent with what I am struggling to articulate.
    https://mariopblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/1234.pdf
    "A theory of emergence based on dispositional metaphysics would show a new
    explanatory potential as well. It would not only reconcile Aristotelianism with
    emergentism, but also have a significant impact on the view of divine action developed
    in reference to the theory of emergence. God’s action would no longer be conceived
    panentheistically as an influence on the totality of the world, which metaphysically
    assumes that the causation of God and creatures is of the same kind (univocal
    predication) and so runs the risk of collapsing into pantheism. The recovery of the plural
    notion of causation allows for a recapturing of the classical understanding of divine
    action as proposed by Aquinas. God is regarded as the ultimate source of forms, and the
    ultimate aim of all teleology in nature. With regard to efficient causation, God’s
    transcendence is protected by Aquinas’ distinction between the primary and principal
    causation of the Creator and the secondary and instrumental character of the causation
    of creatures. Therefore, God’s immutability, omniscience, omnipotence, infinity,
    eternity, and impassibility are not challenged, while his immanent and constant
    presence in all worldly events is by no means undermined."

    Notes:

    1) I say Peirce-like because I am not a thoroughgoing Peircean,


    metaphysically. I adapt, herein, his implicit modal grammar, importing
    Aristotelian, Thomistic & Palamitic distinctions.

    2) A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God (1908) by Charles Sanders


    Peirce

    Regarding the Neglected Argument, Gary E. Kessler writes:

    I begin with some distinctions. First, Peirce distinguishes between an argument


    and argumentation. An argument is “any process of thought reasonably tending
    to produce a definite belief” while argumentation refers to an argument that
    proceeds “upon definitely formulated premisses” (6.456). We must note that
    Peirce’s Neglected Argument (hereafter referred to as NA) is an argument, but
    not argumentation.
    Second, we must distinguish between reality and existence. Reality is a broader
    term that encompasses what exists but is not synonymous with it. For something
    to be real it must have properties sufficient to identify it whether anyone
    attributes those properties to it or not. The existent, strictly speaking, is what
    interacts with things in a spatio-temporal environment. Since God is not another
    spatio-temporal object, it amounts to fetishism, Peirce remarks, to say that God
    exists. Hence his argument, strictly speaking, is not an argument for God’s
    existence, but for God’s reality.

    Conversations that touch upon my take above:

    Mapping Metaphysical Distinctions: Aristotelian, Thomist, Scotist, Peircean &


    Palamitic

    The “Trans-Formal Distinction” between the Divine Essence & Energies

    Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse

    The Krueger-McHugh Debate: Theism or Atheism (2003)

    The Formulation of Thomistic Simplicity: Mapping Aquinas’s Method for


    Configuring God’s Essence, JETS 57/2 (June 2014): 371–403.

    Divine Simplicity and the Formal Distinction, Part 2

    HUMAN FREEDOM – BYOM (bring your own


    metaphysic)
    An account of the emergence of freedom in particular semiotic terms
    The emergence of symbols will ultimately differentiate the teleonomic from the
    teleologic, the robustly algorithmic instinctual from the weakly algorithmic cognitive
    precursors of behavior.
    Because of its arbitrary nature, symbolic processing can make more mistakes in
    response to stimuli. We can think of similies, analogies & metaphors as nonliteral or as
    mistakes in comparison to the merely iconic & indexic algorithms of instinctual
    abductive processes.
    This ability to make more mistakes in response to stimuli, if they’re not of tremendous
    survival significance, exponentially leverages the mistake-maker’s ability to learn,
    bootstrapping a potential maladaptive “devolution” of a hard-wired abductive instinct to
    a soft-wired abductive inference.
    To a great extent, the emergence of this less algorithmic abduction would have not been
    greatly maladaptive, especially since individual outliers (out-liars) would have been
    protected both socially and instinctually.
    Symbolic language evolution may have been bootstrapped, therefore, from some broken
    hardwiring in the instinctual abductive processors of human phylogenetic ancestors.
    The ability to then symbolically imagine one’s own self in a more robustly inferential
    abductive process accounts for even more bootstrapping, especially of a socially adaptive
    nature. Not only could the symbol-maker advance in the manner of “absenting” various
    teleomatic and teleonomic constraints through enhanced learning and memory, but
    s/he could better out-maneuver any unwelcome, external teleologic constraints, socially,
    further leveraging one’s own internal teleologic processing in service of oneself and
    one’s tribe.
    The increase in the plasticity of abductive behavioral responses with the dawn of
    abductive inference thus represents a novel qualitative emergence, therefore, not a mere
    jump in algorithmic, computational processing capabilities.
    Through enhanced learning and memory, individually and socially, the symbol-maker’s
    growing repertoire of behavioral responses and the increasing plasticity of those
    responses need not be conceived in terms of some nomological escape velocity, whereby
    nomic necessities would no longer objectively hold, but certainly would represent the
    dawn of a more robustly probabilistic cognitive processing in addition to but with no
    marginalization of instinctual abductive capacities, the latter which still play an
    indispensable role in our species’ quotidian existence, even subconsciously. This is to
    suggest that we feel more free in our daily choices than we actually are.
    Any of our mis/perceptions that environmental regularities (both ad extra in our
    interaction with our physical and social environs and ad intra in our symbolic self-
    representation) are, themselves, necessarily less versus more in/determined, may or
    may not really derive from their objective nomic attributes, but, rather, may instead be
    rooted in our own experience of variances in our own abilities and in/determinations of
    those regularities, whatever the reason for their seeming in/determinabilities. Those
    variances would result from our own learning advances.
    As a result of those learning advances, we would, in turn, pragmatically value or disvalue
    various entities, states or events, axiologically privileging the teleologic over the
    teleonomic over the teleomatic. Our experience of a progressive freedom from their
    respective constraints needn’t be conceived as a change in their intrinsic nomic
    necessity. It’s possible that it could instead be understood as an advance in our own
    methodological determinations vis a vis their real determinability.
    We cannot a priori know when it is that we are being thwarted, methodologically, or
    have encountered some in principle permanent occulting, metaphysically, by an
    indeterminable reality, however much it might, itself, be in/determined, whether it's a
    necessity or contingency, finite or infinite. We do know that there's little justification for
    raising a white epistemic flag of surrender or in a priori presupposing that any entity,
    event or state is brute or unconditioned.
    An account of the emergence of freedom in general semiotic terms
    If there exists a variety of telic causes, for example, teleopotent or end-unbounded (e.g.
    certain equilibria), teleomatic or end-stated, teleonomic or end-purposed, and teleologic
    or end-intended, which can be variously nested and networked to effect any particular
    entity, state or event, these could well represent objective, physical, nomic necessities.
    We might perceive such nomicities and respond as if they represent real stochasticities,
    variously over- and/or underdetermined - not because they are not otherwise wholly
    determined, but – because we experience them differentially along an axiological
    continuum of end-relata, which we derive pragmatically from their perceived adaptive
    significance.
    This is all to suggest that we nonarbitrarily value the teleologic over the teleonomic over
    the teleomatic due to their significance for our survival and flourishing.
    Insofar as any given entity, state or event represents a unique causal network wherein
    these variously nested end-relata or teloi contribute in different ways and to varying
    extents, we will tend to value them as more or less beautiful, if they are more or less
    abductively facile or elegant, and as more or less good, if they are existentially
    advantageous or useful. Small wonder that the phrase -- "That's random!" -- is intended
    in the pejorative sense. The unintelligible event threatens us. It has the potential to
    invoke an exhilarating awe, if it doesn't wound or kill us, if we can cultivate a tolerance
    for ambiguity and learn to better abide paradox.
    Our abductions will be valued as more or less true to the extent they afford value-
    realizations of beauty and goodness. It is in our experience of epistemic distancing from
    such axiological value-realizations, in other words, our experience of our radical finitude
    both epistemically and existentially, that we will locate emergent degrees of freedom,
    precisely in terms of our progressive ability to foster value-realizations and avoid value-
    frustrations.
    What we call freedom is thus derived from our developmental experience of learning
    and memory, whereby we experience a progressive diminution of teleomatic, teleonomic
    and external teleologic constraints with a concomitant augmentation of internal
    teleologic effectiveness. What matters, then, for our experience of relative freedom, are
    genuinely perceived differentials in the quantity and quality of nested and networked
    end-relata or teloi and not whether or not they are, in and of themselves, real nomic
    necessities.
    Teloi can be thoroughgoing nomic necessities, while also being limited in their range
    and scope vis a vis any given entity, state or event. It is in our encounter with such
    differentials as the range and scope of various teloi that we will value or disvalue them
    per their adaptive significance, all without concern for whether such differentials
    represent epistemic in/determinables or ontic in/determinedness.
    So, this is all to further suggest that, from within an emergentist heuristic, the
    experience of human freedom would be compatible with ontologies that interpret
    stochasticity and nomicity in epistemic terms only, in meta/physical terms also or in
    various admixtures, where in/determinacies represent epistemic in/determinables
    and/or ontic in/determinedness.
    If we stipulate to a principle of sufficient reason, its logical aspect could reasonably
    expect causal explanations for entities, states and events in the modal category of
    actualities. In the modal category of nomicities, we’d, instead, aspire to formulate
    axioms that are both consistent & complete in a closed, formal, symbol system. Any such
    rendering of ultimate initial, boundary and limit conditions may well, even inescapably,
    have some type and degree of bruteness regarding putative alternative axioms, but,
    ontologically, the causal relata, even if not terminating in some causa sui, needn’t be
    conceived as turtles all the way down, but, instead, in terms of nested, networks all the
    way around.
    If bruteness is in some manner inescapable, perhaps a more restrictive definition might
    suffice, whereby we qualify it in pragmatic terms as interesting or uninteresting?
    If a putative final equation is so elegant and so incredibly useful vis a vis our
    unimaginably complex emergent reality, so beautiful and so good, whether its axioms
    are true or not may or may not be terribly interesting.
    Take, for example, the hundreds of pages of the Principia Mathematica wherein the
    axioms required for the arithmetic system that proves 2+2=4 are therein formulated
    and proved.
    Have you read those pages?
    Do those proofs interest you?
    Would you care if they were otherwise brute, as long as you could taste their goodness
    and see their beauty?
    Might a PSR version admit uninteresting bruteness, logically, for an otherwise elegant
    modal ontological argument that’s been validly formulated?
    If so, such a PSR might well be true, whether grounded in a causa sui, sufficiently
    predicated, or otherwise in a valid alternative eternalist, infinitist account.
    We just cannot a priori say.
    PSR – taking existence as a predicate?
    A rather old and perduring philosophical problem endures. Taking existence as a
    predicate for some causa sui is certainly valid but it requires further demonstration to
    show that the event, state or entity obtains.
    An unrestricted PSR, employing existence as a predicate, does seem to entail monism
    and necessitarianism, culminating in an implicit/explicit ontological argument for some
    god-conception, all taken together, a pantheism. Other PSR versions seem more broadly
    consistent with any number of ontologies.
    The most interesting modal ontological arguments to me are those of Gödel &
    Hartshorne, more recently by Chris McHugh, who employs Richard Gale's strategy to
    guarantee conceptual compatibility vis a vis the logic of the argument's properties. That
    approach describes the properties in negative terms, i.e. non-this and non-that. One
    could limn one's preferred class of conjoined properties in this way to ensure that one's
    argument remains immune to parodies which might otherwise reduce one's god
    conception to yield absurdities. Sounds like good old fashioned apophatic theology!
    The PSR logic seems to me to have similar hurdles in taking existence as a predicate. It
    all boils down to competing plausibilities, convincing ourselves and others of the truth
    of our premises and integrity our terms.
    PSR – it’s essential structure
    If one stipulates (in my view, inescapably) that the PSR remains neither analytically nor
    synthetically a apriori, neither rationally provable nor disprovable, neither empirically
    verifiable nor falsifiable, it will, thereby, conveniently escape the Agrippan trilemma.
    Agrippa can only take down those PSR versions that employ (whether explicitly,
    implicitly or practically) infallibilist, foundational pretensions, the likes of which realism
    needn't entail, only dogmatism.
    PSR with various ontological priors
    Less than any serious objections to the PSR per se, whatever its scope (and we need
    non-question begging, nonarbitrary, principles for its expansion or restriction), my
    biggest concern is what its different proponents put on our ontological plates and expect
    us to swallow after setting our epistemic table with commitments to various PSR
    versions.
    Setting aside our concerns, then, regarding the epistemic character of various PSR
    versions, for argument's sake, any PSR will seem to me to be less problematic than the
    implicit presuppositions one might bring along to its table. I'm thinking mostly about
    those presuppositions regarding different SETS of givens (primitives & laws),
    axioms/self-evidentiality & rules of inference.
    Most formulations of monist, dualist and pluralist ontologies seem to invoke naive set
    theory, which has been proven inconsistent. Many seem to incoherently demand the
    same types of explicability for arguments regarding both finite and infinite sets, most
    often misapplying the axioms of finite sets to infinite sets, whether those set members
    include necessities and/or contingencies.
    Naive set theory brings into play constraints like Godel's Incompleteness, Tarski's
    Undefinability and Russell's Paradox, each or all of which wouldn't necessarily commit
    us to wholesale incoherency. They will often require of us, however, some degree of
    epistemic capitulation to paraconsistent logics, for example. This seems somewhat
    analogous to our often being forced to resort to weaker forms of inference, such as when
    arguing for the PSR, itself.
    So, avoiding the fallacy of abuse, I am not challenging the eminent rationality of various
    PSR versions properly applied. I'm just yet to see it applied in such a way that it could
    move me beyond a vague phenomenology & ontological undecidability and into any
    particular metaphysical system, including those of Peirce or Spinosa, Swinburne or
    Tegmark.
    PSR – causal explanations and causal relata
    I suppose I bifurcate the PSR into subjective causal explanations and objective causal
    relations. I would not bother arguing for the latter, which, for me, begs no justification.
    Our priors might differ in that I do make an intuitive leap, suspecting that entities and
    states (real actualities) are sufficiently (not wholly) determined by nomicities (teloi).
    We are confronted with a demarcation challenge as applied to our indispensable &
    provisional methodological stipulations. Which of those might we justifiably morph into
    para-1st-principles? PSR? Methodological naturalism? There's an obvious consistency in
    doing either both or neither. Some, however, do one or the other. What's their
    nonarbitrary, principled demarcation?
    My concern with Della Rocca's argument is that he couldn't succeed, in principle, in
    formally proving that stance, although that certainly wasn't his ambition. His
    cumulative case ox is gored by the same methodological horn that takes down
    Swinburne's inductive approaches. Neither meets evidentiary standards that rise beyond
    a reasonable suspicion to the level of a probable cause, thus lacking the normative
    impetus both Della Rocca and Swinburne would impart with their bayesian-like
    probabilities.
    The non-question begging, nonarbitrary principle I would apply as urged by Della Rocca
    would draw a distinction between explicatory arguments that refer to putative entities &
    states and those that refer to known entities & states vis a vis existing laws, primitives,
    axioms or rules. This does not correspond to the Popperian demarcation, distinguishing
    the probable (triadic inferential cycling) from the plausible (dyadic inferential cycling of
    deductive clarifying & abductive hypothesizing sans inductive testing). It takes us
    beyond into the domains of the very highly speculative theoretic sciences and
    metaphysics, where equiplausible interpretations compete and where explicability
    arguments about the very existence of an entity are certainly legitimate but would be
    less plausible and therefore impart less normative impetus than those about other
    causal relations regarding known entities or states.
    Neither the PSR nor methodological naturalism warrant elevation to an a priori,
    nonpropositional, self-evidential, axiomatic given and they don't enjoy epistemic parity
    with explicability arguments interpreting known entities or states. Initial, boundary and
    limit conditions beg too many existential or modal questions of states yet known.
    PSR – demarcation considerations
    Della Rocca & Feser properly make plausibilist appeals. That's appropriately modest in
    my view.
    I like his demarcation challenge, requesting non-question begging, nonarbitrary
    principles for rejecting explicability arguments [EA] regarding existence but not for
    some other types of EA. What justifies any a priori rejection of the PSR in the case of
    existence?
    I'm going to try to formulate some non-question begging, nonarbitrary principles for
    when indispensable methodological stipulations should graduate in our systems to the
    status of seeming metaphysical necessities (e.g. with ontological commitments) and
    when they should be considered as merely provisional strategies.
    For example, why elevate the PSR from an epistemic heuristic to the equivalent of a self-
    evident first principle while not similarly moving from an indispensable methodological
    naturalism to a full blown metaphysical naturalism?
    For example, what might be the epistemic & pragmatic costs of denying one or the other
    --- the PSR? Methodological naturalism? Perish the thought!
    And what might be the respective cost-benefits attached to affirming their metaphysical
    necessity?
    Well, with the PSR on steroids version, for many, an untenable downside might be
    necessitarianism? Others might address the consequences that might ensue if
    metaphysical naturalism got enshrined as the only reasonable ontological commitment.
    PSR – epistemic justification?
    As per my theory of knowledge, any PSR proceeds from an induction, gets selected over
    against competing claims abductively, then formulated tautologically. It's an eminently
    rational move, very ontologically suggestive but in no way decisive. As per my theory of
    truth, I am no more interested in justifying it than I am in justifying first principles,
    common sense notions of causation or of other minds.
    Spinoza & Aquinas
    The conceptual overlaps between Spinoza & Aquinas are real and interesting. Where
    they differ makes for a great foil through which we might deeper our understanding of
    each other as well as our self-understanding. Alas, I'm too preoccupied with meta-
    metaphysics to make a leap!
    PSR – normative justification
    It's a riddle to me as I normatively justify the PSR inductively & abductively in intuition,
    common sense & pragmatically. However, it's not a wholly self-subverting notion
    because it's a matter of degree. Peirce would counsel us that on matters of vital concern,
    we trust our intuitions, instincts, common sense, tradition. In matters of highly
    theoretic, speculative concerns, we best hypothesize boldly. Popper says much the same
    thing regarding our formulation of falsifiable hypotheses.
    PSR – modal distinctions & their distinct forms of explanation
    Intuitively, almost appealing to a notion like self-evidently, I'm sympathetic. It may be
    that if we properly distinguish between modal actuality and modal necessity so as to
    properly specify the criteria by which each would be sufficiently explained, you needn't
    sacrifice the PSR to more and more restrictions. Modal actualities are sufficiently
    explained by nomic necessities. Modal necessities might be sufficiently explained by
    axiomatic consistency & completeness, formally & symbolically & systematically &
    closed.
    PSR – Spinosa as Scotist?
    My first blush is that the PSR is not necessarily inconsistent with any plurality
    whatsoever, especially if Spinoza employs something akin to both the univocity of being
    and formal distinction of Scotus. The plurality needn't be one of substance as a modal
    actuality. The attributes would refer to nomological necessities or formal distinctions.
    PSR – Spinoza & Peirce
    I see even more resonances between your appropriation of Spinoza and my own of
    Scotus & Peirce.
    The laws are real but not actual things. They refer to final causes, which I refer to as teloi
    to emphasize the analogical character of different types of laws. This modal category
    evokes for me the formal distinction of Scotus. Some Thomists might refer to it as a
    metaphysically real distinction.
    For Peirce's modal category of laws or generalities or regularities, noncontradiction
    holds but excluded middle folds.
    For actualities, the world of things, where real physical distinctions apply, both
    noncontradiction and excluded middle hold.
    To get to this point of agreement, we have not relied on any particular metaphysic but
    only vague phenomenological categories like modal distinctions and their logic.
    I employ these categories to see how different competing metaphysics can each be
    logically consistent, internally coherent, externally congruent, interdisciplinarily
    consilient, hypothetically consonant and abductively facile. I presuppose that my
    interlocutors' metaphysics meet these criteria of epistemic virtue, whether materialist
    monists or idealist monists, whether employing substance or process approaches,
    whether predicating existence of being or not, whether imagining a chain of infinite teloi
    sufficiently explained by an understanding of each and all links or otherwise grounded
    in some primal Telos. In other words, I presuppose that each proceeds from a live
    option (not saying some don't thereafter disappoint me).
    On this point of what nomological realism and nomic necessity might mean, I see no
    inconsistency between Spinoza and Peirce. There need be no real limit to causal
    explanations and causal relations vis a vis actualities or things.
    What might an unrestricted PSR demand regarding not things but laws? Perhaps the
    consistency & completeness of their axioms? If so, that's not theoretically problematic
    even though our access to them remains inescapably problematic.
    It seems to me that the trilemma applies to our theories of knowledge, to our approach
    toward things or actualities and laws or necessities. It means our approach remains
    fallibilist and probabilist. If you are suggesting it's a category error to aim it at a theory
    of truth, I think I agree.
    Types of Necessity
    This discussion evokes different types of necessity for me, such as epistemic, logical,
    metaphysical and nomological.
    It brings to mind a Peircean interpretation --- that Spinoza's thought was necessitarian
    in the sense of his being a nomological realist and his determinism was a principle of
    individuation for things.
    Neither this necessitarianism nor determinism applied generally to the whole of his
    metaphysic, however.
    Consistent with a nomological realism ...
    wherein nomic necessities govern causal relations & foster the causal explanations per
    your PSR version ...
    Spinoza's metaphysic would not be inconsistent with Peirce's modal ontology & logic nor
    with his formal mind-body distinction nor even with a Peircean tychism, where laws
    (final causes) & regularities, themselves, evolve.
    Properly constructed, a PSR would, at worst, garner a Scottish verdict: not proved. One
    would be disproving too much to claim more for their rebuttal.
    More to the point of this post, though, is that it would gain intuitive common sensical
    appeal if consistent with this Peircean take on Spinozan necessitarianism, being much
    less counterintuitive to many.
    PSR as methodological
    Because we must provisionally and methodologically stipulate to the PSR doesn't make
    it ontologically necessary, it only makes us epistemically unfortunate if it's not.
    Metaphysical presuppositions like the first principles, PSR, PSC and predicating being
    of existence can serve us as methodological stipulations without requiring us to
    necessarily accept them as ontological commitments.
    The regularities we observe could be novel emergent realities, both temporally &
    spatially very local, in an eternally dynamical reality. In a process conception of reality, a
    notion like motion, change or novelty might best serve as our metaphysical root
    metaphor rather than more static ones like being or substance.
    Whether our dynamical account of these causes would fall prey to the fallacy of
    composition or not, we cannot a priori say and may not necessarily be able to a
    posteriori access.
    If indeed the PSR does not hold beyond our local emergent reality, it does not mean that
    reality is wholly unintelligible. Not being comprehensible as a whole would not keep
    reality from being intelligible, in part.
    Aristotelian Causations
    Aristotelian notions of causation have been helpful in modern semiotic science. But in
    the same way that different emergent layers of reality employ analogical notions of
    entropy (e.g. Boltzman, Shannon & Darwin entropies), so, too, instances of final
    causation might or might not represent analogues of various teloi (e.g. teleomatic,
    teleonomic & teleodynamic).
    In our original discussion of first principles, the fallacy of composition may or may not
    come into play vis a vis PSC & PSR. Under one scenario, we can conceive of dynamical,
    emergent, teloi, only. Under the other, we must add primal Telos, about which our
    conceptions must remain very vague, as our metaphorical references get progressively
    weaker.
    I gather that you are merely defending the reasonableness of certain metaphysical
    presuppositions but not that you are denying competing equiplausible interpretations. I
    wouldn't accept the notion that these competitions could be contested in any robustly
    probabilistic way, presently. Too many epistemic hurdles need to be jumped, like
    reconciling gravity & quantum mechanics.
    PSR – a/theological implications?
    Of interest may be what one presupposes, metaphysically, as the object of sufficient
    reason?
    That object often lies hidden - not only in the premises, but - in the definitions of a given
    argument's terms.
    For example, regarding any given whole, one may a priori consider it to be that type that
    can be sufficiently explained by its parts. Another may presuppose that the whole, itself,
    begs an explanation beyond those available by understanding its parts.
    The PSR, it would seem, could have as its object either a whole that is sufficiently
    explicable by its many dynamical causal components or one that requires a transcending
    and preceding cause. That latter whole and its preceding cause may be conceived
    together as yet another whole, itself, either sufficiently comprehensible or not. A
    putative primal cause may or may not ever, necessarily, need to come into play? It might
    arise or not in a static, substance metaphysic, arise or not in a dynamical process
    approach. Often it seems such ontological conclusions are tautologically embedded in
    the definitions and root metaphors of competing metaphysics, before they make their
    way into premises and arguments.
    I guess one implication is that we needn't conflate any PSR & PSC, as ---
    even if reality, in the end, was not explanatorily brute, that doesn't necessarily specify
    the causal natures of the objects under consideration, i.e. what might be required to
    comprehend this or that entity.
    Those objects when taken as a whole, it seems, could be wholly intelligible whether
    understood in terms of 1) the causes of their dynamical parts 2) some preceding &
    transcending cause, which then begs the same analysis or 3) some primal cause?
    None of those scenarios would have strict a/theological implications, i.e. necessarily
    ruling God in or out. They'd have implications for various a/theological conceptions of
    reality in terms of any essential natures or specific attributes, e.g. changing the root
    metaphors of our metaphysical interpretations.
    To make this a tad less abstract, a bit more concrete, some panentheists employ more or
    less classical god-conceptions like creatio ex nihilo, while others imagine a creatio ex
    profundis or creation out of a coeternal formless void, abyss, chaos or "the deep," as
    referenced in Genesis as "tehom." A tehomic panentheism would be consistent with
    both a self-subsisting cosmos and a self-subsisting deity, both possibly explicable
    without reference to transcending causes, intelligible simply by understanding their
    respective components.
    The PSR thus remains an indispensable methodological stipulation. No justification for
    epistemic surrender? What type of causes beg explanation or not,
    we can't always know? Are we dealing with a multiplicity of teloi, both in kind and
    degree, or some primal Telos, vis a vis reality taken as a whole?
    PSR & explanatory gaps
    I very much enjoy reading the popularized accounts of current scientific research,
    especially as they focus on explanatory gaps regarding origins. The empirical facts
    regarding quantum mechanics, cosmogenesis, the origins of life, origins of
    consciousness & origins of symbolic language fascinate me.
    I view it all through an emergence heuristic (although eschewing distinctions like
    supervenience). At each juncture, of course, are manifold interpretations of those facts,
    which I classify, respectively, as veldopoietic (field origins), cosmopoietic, biopoietic,
    sentiopoietic & sapiopoietic. Hence different quantum interpretations, cosmogonies, life
    origins interpretations, philosophies of mind, etc, all with various emergent, novel
    entropies and teloi.
    The new philosophical interpretations can often be as frustrating to me as the new
    scientific facts are fascinating! Some interpretations prove too much and come across
    more ideologically driven than philosophically. I remain a thoroughgoing metaphysical
    agnostic about such explanatory gaps. A physicalist conception of the soul is as tenable
    to me as any other.
    I suppose I'm saying enjoy your science as not much has happened metaphysically
    since ... I'll be politic and let that hang.
    PSR – more on Aquinas & Spinosa
    Your distinctions regarding Aquinas & Spinoza's versions of simplicity remind me of
    various versions of distinctions conceived by Scotists & Thomists. What Scotus called a
    formal distinction might be what some Thomists now call a real metaphysical
    distinction. Then of course they add real, virtual, conceptual and modal distinctions (of
    both adequacy & temporality). Some Thomists now distinguish between an esse
    naturale and an esse intentionale, more highly nuancing simplicity, contingency,
    separability, im/mutability, im/passibility and such.
    Nontheist Interpretations
    I celebrate nontheistic metaphysical interpretations of reality, theistically, conceiving
    them as studies of God's impersonal aspects.
    Nature of Regularities
    That's a major rub --- the nature of regularities. In our empirical sciences, we proceed
    with probabilities, never quite encountering necessities even though reality hints at
    them, all over the place! Are any necessities physically instantiated?
    Is chaos merely epistemic or robustly ontological? Are in/determinacies merely
    in/determinable or clearly in/determined or a combination of both? We don't generally
    need to know these answers to make probabilistic, falsifiable, predictions and fallibly
    advance knowledge.
    CS Peirce formulated what he called the Neglected Argument for the Reality of God,
    which boils down to an abduction of the Ens Necessarium. (Peirce was largely
    influenced by Scotus).
    Does necessity successfully refer to physical reality? Metaphysically? Are there eternal
    laws or only ever-emergent regularities, partly dis/continuous, variously in/determined
    in degrees? It's quite a Quest we're on!
    Suber’s Problem of Beginning
    I enjoy reading this paper every few years: https://dash.harvard.edu/ha...
    Maybe it's a baker's dozen-lema. Although, Peter Suber's list of problematic ways of
    beginning did seem to reduce to Thinker's trilemma is how it first struck me long ago.
    Hawking came to accept Godel-like implications for any theory of everything. In the
    choice between consistency & completeness, he said the good money's on
    incompleteness & consistency.
    Is the cosmos mute, brute or fruit?
    Mute regarding its necessity or contingency? A brute reality? The contingent fruit of
    another reality?
    I have progressive, Evangelical Protestant friends, who, when they mention grabbing a
    beer, often seem to be doing so as a form of social media vice-signaling, almost as if to
    be brandishing some renegade, heterodoxic bona fides. When my Catholic co-
    religionists bring up brewskis, they are assuredly merely sharing a simple faith
    proposition or credo: I believe I'll have another beer.
    Explanations & Justifications
    I take explanations to be descriptive and/or interpretive, while justifications are
    normative, including justification of beliefs (interpretive). So, there's an integral
    relationship and the same problems apply to inductive and causal justifications as well
    as deductive.
    The process of justification can lead to the premises of any trilemma or baker's dozen-
    lemma, however one conceives these problems of skepticism.
    The good news is that we don't have to reject any of those premises, whether 3 or 13, in
    order to dismiss their conclusion --- that knowledge isn't possible. All we have to do is to
    draw the distinction between fallible & infallible knowledge. Human knowledge is
    fallible & probabilistic. That argument only applies to infallible knowledge, which makes
    the trilemma perhaps problematic for the Pope but certainly not for me.
    I agree that radically skeptical arguments fall on the horns of their own trilemma. The
    skeptic, then, must retreat to a moderate skepticism, just as the realist retreats to
    moderate and critical realisms, where we prescind from metaphysical modes of
    necessity to those of probability, employing underdetermined realities & fuzzy logics.
    The skeptic might then argue that, given these premises, one can reasonably expect that
    they'll to some degree find infallible knowledge to be elusive. [tongue in cheek]
    Theories of Truth & Knowledge
    Spinoza, per this account, seems to employ a correspondence theory of truth with a
    fallibilist theory of knowledge.
    He seems to draw a distinction between causal explanations and causal relations, by
    which he locates our mind-body conceptions in the former not the latter. Our minds and
    bodies would be connected explanatorily but would not interact because, substantially,
    they are the same.
    This exemplifies Scotus' formal distinction.
    Peirce was a realist about laws and causal relations, including continuity, efficient &
    final causation.
    It would seem that these interpretive resonances between Spinoza, Scotus & Peirce,
    when taken together, would be consistent with your monist intuitions? Peirce had a
    saying that we must be about "the minding of matter and the mattering of the mind."
    Peirce, however, was also a realist about chance, so would part ways Spinoza's complete
    determinism. Maybe it could be said that if epistemology models ontology and our
    epistemology is inescapably probabilistic, then, so might reality be probabilistic, so
    might reality be largely but not entirely determined rather than governed by
    thoroughgoing necessities. For Peirce, the Ens Necessarium would refer to the reality of
    God.
    Of course, one cannot a priori know whether probabilities are merely epistemic or also
    ontological. So, I'm just describing, not prescribing, another logically live option to you.
    Perhaps Spinoza wouldn't consider an epistemic infinitism fatal, especially for an
    infinite accidentally ordered series, where reality represents a set of contingents. If that
    set, itself, is explicable in terms of its members, our explanations are both complete and
    consistent. Apparently, Spinoza a priori presupposes, however, that this set of
    contingents is, itself, contingent. Maybe it is but maybe it isn't.
    In the case that this set of contingents might indeed beg its own explanation, a circular
    referentiality needn't be logically flawed, only epistemically uninformative. The
    accidental series would represent formal not substantial distinctions in Spinoza's
    monism, causal explanations not relations, all substantial relations presupposed in a
    closed, deterministic system as wholly intelligible necessities.
    The practical upshot may be that the PSR leads to various theories of everything that are
    inescapably tautological, whether monistic, dualistic or pluralistic. The PSR might be
    axiomatically true and one of our tautological TOEs could be true. This is to suggest that
    neither the PSR nor a logically consistent, internally coherent and externally congruent
    metaphysic can be disproved by formal argument. All that can be demonstrated is that,
    if they're indeed true, we can't prove them formally. There's a big difference between
    suggesting that we cannot, in principle, formulate truth, axiomatically, and otherwise
    saying we can't prove that we've done so. The PSR could very well be much more than
    mere heuristic. It's normative justification is pragmatic as we taste and see its goodness.
    As a methodological stipulation it's ontologically suggestive, even though not decisive.
    This is no vulgar pragmatism but a fallibilist realism. The death of the PSR has been
    greatly exaggerated!
    Fallacy of Composition?
    At any rate, under whatever scenario, I certainly wouldn't argue against the premise that
    "an infinite regress of contingent explanations would require a necessary explanation for
    the chain's existence." It certainly isn't irrational and also seems worthy of holding
    beyond a mere stipulation for argument's sake. I don't imagine I could argue for it,
    either, at least not decisively. It seems rather undecidable, formally. Informally, an
    argument against it would seem refutable by a reductio. For one thing, the analogies
    required to traverse putative temporal, nontemporal and atemporal realities get so
    progressively vague and weak as to offer little intelligibility.
    I appreciate the derivation of the trilemma from the PSR. That's pretty tidy. The
    trilemma for sure succeeds against apodictic certainty and chastises those who are
    tempted to prove too much.
    PSR’s essential structure redux
    PSR is Product of Informal Reasoning
    The PSR appears to be a combination of inductive and abductive inferences regarding
    both logical causal explanations and ontological causal relations.
    Inductively, competing intuitions conjecture that reality can either be wholly or only
    partly explained, that some facts are brute or not.
    Abductively, the PSR presupposes the conjecture that reality can be wholly explained,
    accepting the criticisms regarding brute facts.
    This abduction thereby a priori and in principle forecloses on further inferential cycling,
    where deductive clarifying and abductive hypothesizing can be empirically interrupted
    by additional inductive testing.
    PSR thus takes on the Form of a Metaphysical Tautology
    Such a stark and rigid choice between competing explanatory interpretations moves the
    abduction across the epistemic line of demarcation from physics to metaphysics, where
    the PSR gains immunity to falsifiability.
    Any perduring lack of intelligibility or causal explanation will then be necessarily
    considered only ever "provisionally" brute, however much empirical probing or attempts
    at falsification take place for however long.
    The resilience of the PSR, therefore, does not derive from its long survival of the
    repetitive alternating conjectures and criticisms of critical rationalism, inductive
    experimentation or empirical falsification. Instead, it comes from its tautological
    premises, the truth of which remains rationally undecidable and empirically
    unfalsifiable. Those premises may very well be true or could, indeed, be false, but they
    remain ontologically uninformative.
    A metaphysical tautology grounded in inductive and, even weaker, abductive inferences,
    does not make for a good formal argument. It has implicit probabilistic features due to
    its inductive nature and plausibilist appeal which led to its abduction, but nothing
    logically or ontologically necessary.
    PSR is Normatively Justified as Methodological Stipulation
    The PSR remains an indispensable methodological stipulation, but as a metaphysical
    presupposition, while it's most certainly ontologically suggestive, it's hardly decisive. As
    an inherently fallibilist approach, it doesn't get epistemically gored on the horns of
    Agrippa's trilemma like infallibilist and naive realist outlooks.
    Human knowledge employs fast & frugal heuristics, a legacy of the evolutionary
    economy of epistemic satisficing, which corresponds, epistemologically, with something
    perhaps better described as the Principle of Adequate/Satisfactory Reason vis a vis
    causal explanations, whatever may “really” be the case, ontologically, with causal
    relations.
    The PSR is normatively justified even while lacking other robustly epistemic warrants.
    While any formalized versions would be subject to Godel-like constraints, it's best to
    remember that such formulations can be consistent and complete even though we
    cannot prove them formally. Our normative justifications are pragmatic, not a vulgar
    pragmatism, whereby we can quite possibly, indeed, taste and see the goodness of its
    methodological fruits.
    PSR Remains Eminently Rational as a Theory of Truth but inescapably Fallibilist as a
    Theory of Knowledge
    This is all to suggest that we mustn't prove too much, that the PSR has its weaknesses
    but, at the same time, should not be underestimated regarding its strengths. It's in no
    way irrational. Some of its refutations lend themselves to dismissal by reductio.
    How might its logical structure compare to first principles, common sense notions of
    causation and some self-evident beliefs, which we accept nonpropositionally? Is it any
    more problematic than Humean problem of induction, as induction, for all practical
    purposes, works pretty darned well given our immersion in manifold and multiform
    regularities?
    The PSR seems to lend itself only to an informal account, as it appears to me to be
    grounded in probabilistic inductions and plausibilist abductions, then epistemically
    woven into a metaphysical tautology, beyond the reach of empirical falsification.
    Appendix 1 - Sound Logic
    All this really is about is the distinction between logical validity and soundness, although
    the focus at hand more particularly concerns whether or not certain premises are
    justified in suggesting that certain of their terms are self-evident or overwhelmingly
    plausible. And the practical upshot is that if we are confronted with competing
    equiplausible claims, that does not exhaust our arsenal of rationality, which then turns
    to normative justifications for the existential actionability of those claims, the "living as
    if" approach consistent with consensus takes regarding epistemic and moral virtues.
    Ironically, what may have first captured my own interest in competing metaphysics was
    my curiosity at how and why others found it so interesting, while I was in fact
    disinterested. Following Whitehead's notion that Christianity was a religion "in search
    of a metaphysic," I always believed, and still do, that Christian faith is justified with no
    need to resort to a particular metaphysic and that only a vague phenomenology suffices
    for its common sensical intuitions and an ordinary openness to abide with the
    occasional counterintuitions, especially if the character of those spouting such parables
    & paradoxes was impeccable and their love & compassion exemplary.
    So, my project really has more to do with making an appeal not to tell untellable stories,
    not to prove too much, not to say way more about primal and ultimate realities than we
    could possibly know.
    Our phenomenal experience of being sufficiently free, whatever degree of
    determinedness obtains, and of genuine value-realizations, requires no formal
    justification and is threatened by no sophistic formulations, at least no more than, for
    example, our belief in other minds. Solipsism is undecidable, neither provable nor
    refutable. But who cares? Who even finds it interesting? That's how I feel about so much
    of metaphysics. If I enter the ontological fray, it is only to demonstrate its self-
    subversive tendencies.
    Keeping these categories straight, though, does have enormous heuristic power in the
    most highly speculative theoretic sciences, which segue past or occupy the margins of
    that line of demarcation between science & metaphysics. I think here of competing
    accounts of cosmic origins, quantum interpretations, philosophy of mind and life's
    origins, none which necessarily would have much import for putative primal necessities.
    Appendix 2 - Religious Naturalisms
    Varieties of Metaphysical Naturalisms --- all consistent with both epistemological &
    ontological naturalisms
    1) substantival monism - one being & one substance
    a) materialist & physicalist
    b) idealist - Neoplatonists
    c) neutral (dualist attribute) - Spinoza
    d) mereological (dualist substance) - consistent with PANentheism*
    Various Hindus (Aurobindo) & Buddhists (Nagarjuna's Middle Way) can be mapped
    everywhere and nowhere within the above monistic categories. Even Spinoza & Einstein
    have been reinterpreted by some as pan-entheists rather than pantheists.
    2) attributive - one category of being & however many substances
    a) materialist
    b) idealist
    * PANENtheism is ontologically dualist or pluralist, only methodologically naturalist
    Simone Weil – patron saint of the religious Nones?
    A wise nephew once told me that families are often like a fire. At the proper distance,
    we can warm ourselves, while, being too close can get us burned.
    Simone Weil could not bring herself to approach the hearth of the institutional church
    --- not only for the fear of getting burned, herself, but --- out of a genuine fear of others,
    whom the church excluded, getting burned even more. She chose to remain outside,
    beyond the institutional margins, travelling as a pilgrim in a noninstitutional vehicle, an
    unmarked ecclesiological car of the Mystical Body.
    For its part, the institutional vehicle was too often (not to say either exclusively or
    always) being steered (both hierarchically & by many infantilized laity) by those whom I
    would call People of the Lie, those whom Scott Peck generically referred to whenever he
    encountered persons caught up in efforts to preserve sick identity structures, whether of
    themselves or of their institutions.
    It wasn't the mysteries entrusted to the Church but the institutional evils encrusted
    on it that Simone rejected.

    Noninstitutional vehicles are manifold & multiform. Sometimes, they're the only viable
    means of traveling. Returning to the first part of this mixed metaphor, they're the only
    form of community by which some can warm themselves without getting burned or
    possibly burning another.
    Every time that a man has, with a pure heart, called upon Osiris, Dionysus, Buddha,
    the Tao, etc., the Son of God has answered him by sending the Holy Spirit.
    And the Holy Spirit has acted upon his soul, not by inciting him to abandon his
    religious tradition, but by bestowing upon him light — and in the best of cases the
    fullness of light — in the heart of that same religious tradition. … It is, therefore,
    useless to send out missions to prevail upon the peoples of Asia, Africa or Oceania to
    enter the Church. (Simone Weil, Letter to a Priest, 1951)
    I am heartened by some recent papal admonitions against proselytizing.
    The phrase "with a pure heart, called upon," to me speaks of - not just an intentionality,
    but - a profoundly relational intentionality. In reading and encounter, I have come
    across this type of devotional dimension in all of the world's great traditions, as well as
    both indigenous and even nontheist religions.

    Intertwined with (yet largely abstractable from) these devotional intentionalities, which
    are creedal or propositional in the way that they point toward specific "targets" of
    intentionality, e.g. cosmos, others, God or even self, are all manner of practices,
    disciplines, rituals, asceticisms and exercises, which, without being essentially
    propositional, foster our growth in human authenticity (a dispositional reality wherein
    our intellectual, affective, moral, social & relational dimensions take on postures of
    humility).
    Humility presents in other domains beyond the intellectual, including affective, moral,
    social, political and relational. I elaborate on that elsewhere on this site, where I
    distinguish between the dispositional trajectories of Lonergan's conversions and the
    developmental trajectories of the human growth theories of Piaget, Erickson, Kohlberg,
    Fowler and so on.
    In my view, our Spirit-inspired traditions all share the same soteriological trajectory,
    that growth in authenticity that Bernard Lonergan called secular conversions, which I
    like to refer to as the love of wisdom. That's what ortho-doxy or true glory means to
    me.

    That's why we can appropriate certain practices from other traditions and integrate
    them into our own, eg. Christian Zen.
    Our traditions may otherwise diverge to various extents, taking distinct sophiological
    trajectories, growing us as "beings in love" with specific "targets" and dimensions of
    intentionality, e.g. cosmos, others, God or even self. That's what poly-doxy means to
    me, many-gloried, and even nonbelievers can participate.
    Folks like Maslow, Viktor Frankl and Lonergan all, each in their own way and time,
    eventually came to recognize that authenticity, in order to be sustainable, required self-
    transcendence, which I like to refer to as the wisdom of love.
    I don't deny how our getting our creedal propositions right can help us journey more
    swiftly and with less hindrance, enjoying a spiritual superabundance. So, I'm not
    suggesting some insidious indifferentism. But I do believe that these soteriological and
    sophiological trajectories, as I have come to understand them, can be realized
    ubiquitously, yielding human value-realizations in abundance, across traditions. Some
    folks have even co-inhabited traditions, although that's rare because, anthropologically,
    religions' cultural embeddedness present major challenges to converts, often requiring
    deep participatory immersions for both creedal inculturations as well as moral &
    sociological enculturations.
    Simone, I believe, was in touch with such a profound pneumatological (Spirit-inspired)
    optimism and inclusivism as I have tried to describe. That may be why she saw no need
    to proselytize as evangelizing, itself, was sufficient, and why she also felt safe abiding
    beyond the margins, journeying in a noninstitutional vehicle.

    Virtue-signaling in Social Media – cheap grace?


    There's a concept in evolutionary anthropology known as virtue-signaling. It has been picked up as a
    popular meme and facilely mis-applied to refer to behaviors in social media where individuals
    pretentiously signal their moral superiority. It entails a conspicuous expression of moral values done
    primarily with the intent of enhancing standing within a social group. It is especially used
    pejoratively to characterize platitudinous, empty or superficial support of certain political views.
    (paraphrased fr wiki)
    The reason I say misapplied is that virtue-signaling in biology refers to displays of commitments,
    which build social cohesions, that are not only ostentatious but COSTLY.
    I think here of Boenhoffer's "cheap grace," when people signal virtues using likes, retweets, forwards
    and political banter, all cultivated in electronic echo chambers & virally spread but to very little
    evangelical avail.
    I think, too, of Kris Kristofferson's lament: "Everybody's got to have somebody to look down on,
    someone doing something dirty, decent folks can frown on."
    So, others more properly characterize such behavior --- not as costly virtue-signaling, but --- as
    slacktivism or virtue-twerking or something like that.

    There's an irony in that the very facile misapplication of virtue-signaling as a pejorative, in and of
    itself, represents a lazy form of thinking, which can too cursorily dismiss others' moral posturing.
    After all, it's not for us to know who signals virtue from deeply held moral convictions and with
    authentic voices of prophetic protest versus an attempt to maintain and/or repair a fragile persona
    or to preserve a sick identity structure or false self?
    What many of us do know, in an old "if you can spot it, you got it" sort of way is that, in most of us,
    there's some degree of both true and false self dynamics in play?
    Most people I know will (eventually) have been seriously confronted by various life circumstances,
    which require very high cost commitments over extended periods of time, and will have stepped up
    and selflessly delivered. If some of them want to indulge in less costly forms of persuasion, however
    unpersuasive, I'm striving to more consistently consider it all to be none of my business.
    Whither A Christian Political Realism?
    The political thought of two theologians, the Catholic, John Courtney Murray, and the
    Protestant, Reinhold Niebuhr, can be reconciled and contrasted with more idealist, absolutist,
    fundamentalist approaches.
    This is because a shared moral realism and ethical naturalism will be transparent to human
    reason prior to any putative special religious revelations. They are best combined with a
    pragmatic, political realism, which practices the art of the possible.
    Realism, as in moral realism, refers to a metaphysical stance, asserting an objective basis to
    morality.
    Naturalism, as in ethical naturalism, refers to an epistemic approach, asserting that our natural
    sciences (not religious or ideological dogma) should guide our ethical norms to optimally realize
    moral truths, albeit fallibly. Mortimer Adler's Common Sense approach to moral &
    political philosophy shows how humanity shares evaluative dispositions and moral
    prescriptions regarding the most general precepts.
    Realism, as in political realism, refers to ---neither a metaphysical (what is) nor epistemological
    (how we know what is) reality, but --- to any practical realization regarding what's achievable,
    recognizing value in what's suboptimal, eschewing any tendency to let the best become the
    enemy of the good.
    Taken together, these moral, ethical and political stances can be reconciled with both secular
    and religious humanisms. When supplemented by the vocational and relational norms of the
    Gospel, one can, in my view, best practice a Christian realism, politically. Its default bias
    would necessarily be conservative and libertarian (in the classical liberal sense and not as
    malpracticed by many currently).
    For yet another attempt at reconciliation between these theologians, I commend:
    John Courtney Murray and Reinhold Niebuhr: Natural Law and Christian
    Realism
    Journal of Catholic Social Thought, Vol. 3, 2006
    U of St. Thomas Legal Studies Research Paper No. 05-20
    21 Pages
    Thomas C. Berg
    University of St. Thomas, St. Paul/Minneapolis, MN - School of Law
    What the Contemplative Stance Means to Me
    A contemplative posture orients one's disposition toward reality more than it offers
    propositions about reality. It more so norms "how" we see and less so describes "what"
    we see.
    Contemplation effects metanoia, which includes intellectual, affective, moral, social and
    religious conversions. While these conversion dynamics are distinct from developmental
    growth mechanisms (for example, as described by Piaget, Maslow , Kohlberg, Erikson
    and Fowler, et al), they are not unrelated as they do foster those processes.
    The conversions gift us horizon-situated dispositions, which
    1) open our perceptions via an awareness that there's more to any given reality than our
    own thoughts can suggest; via logos;
    2) open our minds to recognize the intelligence on display in other interpretations of any
    given reality outside of our own social and political circles; via topos;
    3) open our souls by expanding what's reasonable to expect regarding any given reality
    beyond what our own feelings might suggest; via pathos;
    4) open our hands by enlarging our sense of responsibility toward any given reality
    beyond our own moral and practical concerns; via ethos;
    and
    5) open our hearts to being in love with and beloved by God, others, the cosmos and
    even one's self; via mythos.
    See: Contemplative Being, Believing, Belonging, Desiring, Behaving &
    Becoming
    These conversions gift us with what Lonergan described as human authenticity, when
    he articulated his transcendental imperatives: be aware, be reasonable, be responsible
    and be intelligent.
    Still, what theorists like Lonergan, Maslow, Gerald May, Viktor Frankl and others all
    eventually came to understand was that self-actualization was in fact a by-product of
    self-transcendence (not the end-product of self-interested strivings). Any pursuits of
    self-actualization, authenticity, Enlightenment and such for their own sakes, i.e. as
    sought after end-products, would be self-defeating, frustrating their own realizations.
    Any who would aspire to be aware, reasonable, responsible and intelligent --- would best
    realize those values by, first, being in love!
    Without following the imperative to be in love, one could not realize sustained
    authenticity. Without seeking Enlightenment out of solidarity and compassion, rather
    than for one's own sake, Enlightenment would forever elude one.
    The contemplative stance, then, while mostly dispositional, does entail one universal,
    even if vague, propositional posit, which is that reality's origin and end, being and
    essence, value and appeal, meaning and purpose, is love.
    Thus contemplation, as entailed in the spiritual practices, asceticisms and disciplines
    across traditions, expresses a singular, orthodoxic, soteriological trajectory. This
    orientation goes beyond the norms of authenticity or of a suitable epistemic humility,
    dis-positionally, to also include, pro-positionally, a belief that reality is robustly
    relational. It warrants an existentially actionable interpretation that, wholly and
    thoroughly beloved, we simply must be loving. (As the children sing why they love
    Jesus ... because He first loved me).
    In many cases, through interreligious dialogue, we are discovering that, beyond this
    singular, shared, orthodoxic, soteriological trajectory, the great traditions and
    indigenous religions will otherwise diverge with pluralist, diverse, polydoxic,
    sophiological trajectories, which, more simply put, correspond to different ways of
    being in love with different aspects of reality, including God, others, self and cosmos.
    This is to recognize that, in many ways, as we move beyond the vaguely spiritual to
    embrace more specific religious paths, it will not necessarily entail competing
    interpretations of reality but only complementary approaches to reality, which can be
    variously more inchoate or developed, more or less inclusive, variously emphasizing our
    unitary being or our unitive strivings, more or less suited to foster conversions and to
    sustain authenticity, more or less perfectly articulating truth, enjoying comm-unity,
    celebrating beauty, preserving goodness and growing freedom & love. I mean to say all
    of that in full consonance with Pope Paul VI's proclamation, Nostra Aetate.
    When institutionalized religions fail in fostering conversions and in sustaining
    authenticity, many followers will, understandably, retreat into a spiritual but not
    religious stance. When religions are at their best, though, well, we "see how they love
    one another" as they foster open minds, open hearts and open hands!
    And we see where the quest, itself, becomes our grail; the risks of faith, hope and love,
    themselves, become our rewards; the journey, itself, becomes our destination; the
    spiritual process, itself, becomes our transformational product; the next good step
    becomes the entire recovery program; the commitment, itself, becomes our outcome;
    the prayer and sitting, themselves, become our consolation.
    Life's highest goods, alone, can thus be enjoyed without moderation, as the pursuits of
    truth, unity, beauty, goodness and freedom are, intrinsically, their own rewards. The
    contemplative stance embodies that real-ization. Good religion enhances it.
    Hugh McCann, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Bertrand
    Russell & the Ens Necessarium
    Hugh McCann writes:
    As Hume pointed out, there is no process by which past events confer existence on
    future ones, nor do we observe any form of "natural" necessitation. Moreover, scientific
    laws — classical ones, at least — do not even purport to describe such a process. In fact,
    they are not even diachronic: they describe simultaneous interactions in which dynamic
    properties such as energy and momentum, which the laws treat as conserved rather than
    created, are transferred from one entity to another. Assuming the world continues to
    exist, future events will then emerge naturally and predictably from those that went
    before. But they will not be produced by them. In that respect, the idea of natural
    causation is on the same footing as agent causation: neither is a process in its own right,
    and neither guarantees the existence of an thing. It turns out, then, that free exercises of
    the will differ from the rest of the world only in being nomically discontinuous with it.
    The problem of their provenance of a piece with that of the provenance of things in
    general.
    Even if the empirical world were deterministic through and through — which the
    evidence indicates it is not — nomic causation cannot explain why we have this
    world rather than some other, or no world at all.
    Derek Parfit writes:
    Why does the Universe exist? There are two questions here. First, why is there a
    Universe at all? It might have been true that nothing ever existed: no living beings, no
    stars, no atoms, not even space or time. When we think about this possibility, it can
    seem astonishing that anything exists. Second, why does this Universe exist? Things
    might have been, in countless ways, different. So why is the Universe as it is?
    Why anything? Why this?
    In the 1948 Copleston-Russell Radio Debate, the question of whether or not the
    universe's existence was brute seemed to turn on a possible fallacy of composition, in
    other words, whether or not the whole begged further questions, transcendently, or
    could be understood merely in terms of its parts, phenomenally.
    All of this seems to beg Heidegger's question: Why not rather nothing?

    And this all seems to invoke Wittgenstein's musing: The mystical is not how the
    world is, but that it is.
    And it brings us back to McCann and Parfit's recognition that, even if we accepted the
    existence of the universe as brute (or refused to predicate existence of being), questions
    would not cease begging.
    Heidegger would, instead, ask: "Why not rather something else?"
    Wittgenstein would instead muse: "The mystical is not that the world is, but why
    this world is."
    In either case, whether the question begging remains "Why anything?" and/or "Why
    this?" ...
    McCann's observation would still obtain in that "free exercises of the will differ from the
    rest of the world only in being nomically discontinuous with it" ...
    And McCann's insistence would still apply regarding both natural causations and non-
    nomic exercises of the human will insofar as the "problem of their provenance [would
    remain] of a piece with that of the provenance of things in general" ...
    For the provenance of things in general would merely transmute from a question of
    Why anything? to one of Why this? ...
    And the question would become Why this nomicity?
    And our Peircean argument would yet infer the Ens Necessarium, if not in terms of
    being, then, in terms of doing.
     
    Philosophical god-talk, Theology of Nature God-talk,
    Dialogical God-Talk & Polemical GOD-TALK
    There's god-talk and then there's God-talk.
    Philosophical (or natural) theology, or god-talk, refers to the hypothetico-deductive
    propositions, which take philosophy as their starting point, then argue to establish the
    reasonableness of various a/theological presuppositions, more generally speaking.
    Beyond conceptual consistency and internal coherence, which help demonstrate
    a/theological possibilities, logically, they also rely on a modicum of external congruence,
    which helps to demonstrate a/theological plausibilities, to generate reasonable
    suspicions, evidentially.
    The propositions of god-talk, then, are essentially tautological in that, while they may or
    may not be true, they add no new information to our systems. Since not all tautologies
    are equally taut (plausibilistically), we do aspire to construct them as congruently as we
    can with the empirical evidence we have available.
    Generally speaking, while not all a/theological propositions are equally virtuous,
    epistemically, we can rest assured that, if we do dig deep enough, we will discover that
    philosophy, which includes common sense, has long ago demonstrated that both
    theological and atheological stances can be eminently defensible and not unreasonably
    held. Most popular a/theological debates engage caricatures of those stances, are not
    philosophically interesting and are a sad waste of time.
    There are other hypothetico-deductive propositions, which take a given creed as their
    starting point, then argue to establish the reasonableness of various theological
    conceptions, more particularly speaking. Rather than a natural theology, starting
    outside the faith, these represent various theologies of nature, which begin within the
    faith and employ the facts of natural science and interpretations of various metaphysics
    to better express how the universe, as a general revelation, is related to the God of one's
    creed, a special revelation.
    In god-talk, philosophy enjoys primacy. God-talk, though, proceeds beyond one's
    presuppositional god-talk, while remaining consistent with its general theological
    priors, to better articulate one's creedal commitments. In a theology of nature, we don't
    appeal to science and philosophy to prove creedal dogma. Instead, we use their concepts
    - along with the ideas, languages, values and interpretations of other cultures - in a
    process of inculturation to better share our faith, which norms our God-talk.
    Another type of God-Talk, the dialogical, includes both interreligious and ecumenical
    dialogue, including apologetics, where we can deepen our self-understanding using
    other stances as a foil, deepen our understanding of others via active listening and
    possibly discover common grounds.
    Finally, we often encounter the polemical GOD-TALK, where others are effectively
    shouting and proselytizing, argumentatively.

    Notes re: philosophical theology to be fleshed out later


     modal contingency refers to 1ns (EM w/o NC or Possibility or Past), 3ns (NC w/o EM or
    Probability or Future)
     modal temporality refers to modal contingency
     modal adequacy refers to in/finitude
     trans-modal necessity refers to brute 4ns (Necessity or Atemporality)
     dependent contingency refers to 2ns (NC + EM or Actuality or Present), where fallacy of
    composition may or may not apply from case to case
    from blog comment:
    I no longer enjoy natural theology as most popular conversations engage only
    caricatures of history’s greatest a/theological thought. As it is, most of its suggestions
    can be evaluated in a single parlor sitting.
    I am really put off by any proselytizing or polemical theology, whether a/theological or
    internecine.
    I have a deep appreciation for dialogical theology, both interreligious and ecumenical.
    It gives me hope — for peace.
    Finally, I really support good theologies of nature, which are mostly about inculturation
    processes and making the Good News more recognizable using the languages, ideas and
    interpretations of different sciences, philosophies and cultures to better express the
    kerygma.
    The Light of Faith: Fideism sets the epistemic bar too
    low, Positivism – too high
    Our common sense weighs various burdens of proof and evidentiary standards,
    which it uses to both morally and practically justify our actions to ensure that they are
    commensurate with the quantity and quality of available evidence.
    A burden of proof tells us who must produce the evidence. Evidentiary standards define
    the level of evidence that must be produced. A given level of evidence, in terms of its
    quantity and quality, thus will establish various degrees of epistemic warrant. The
    higher those degrees of warrant, the wider the range of action that can be normatively
    justified, morally and practically.
    In our everyday endeavors, we often reason with uncertainty (nonmonotonic
    reasoning). This is also true in the life of faith.
    What level of epistemic warrant normatively justifies, more generally, everyday
    reasonings from uncertainty, more specifically, the life of faith?
    Regarding the life of faith, fideists are accused of setting the bar rather low, while
    rationalists and empiricists imagine it to be much higher than most deem necessary.
    How do we resolve this disparity?
    We need only turn to the natural sciences, which not only traffic in falsifiability,
    experimentally, but which, unavoidably, must also engage in highly speculative,
    theoretical interpretations on the various thresholds of nature's causal joints.
    On nature's causal joint thresholds, whether in quantum physics, theoretical cosmology
    or speculative neuroscience, for example, scientists must often reason backwards,
    analogically, from effects and properties as would seem to be proper to no
    known causes or entities.
    Such reasoning employs the weakest form of inference, abduction or retro-duction, in
    conjunction with the strongest, deduction.
    The dyadic cycling of abductive-deductive inference remains a necessary aspect of all
    human inquiry, but, without inductive testing and falsification, it remains, for some
    purposes, insufficient, sometimes unavoidably so.
    Such an insufficiency, alone, may or may not render our hypothetico-deductive
    frameworks inactionable, for sometimes, our reasoning with uncertainty is axiologically
    forced on us by vital existential (especially ultimate) concerns.
    In such cases, we must appraise such alternate interpretations of the facts of existence
    and aspire to base our existential leaps on options that remain truly live in light of
    various criteria for epistemic virtue, epistemic warrant and normative justification.

    This all applies to the analogical-abductive and hypothetico-deductive


    reasoning (sans inductive) of our quotidian existence, of the natural
    sciences, of metaphysics and of theology.
    We thus sometimes resolve questions of epistemic disparity by properly
    recognizing epistemic parity!
    As Karl Popper so aptly observed:
    "We may see from this that Wittgenstein’s criterion of meaningfulness coincides with
    the inductivists’ criterion of demarcation, provided we replace their words ‘scientific’ or
    ‘legitimate’ by ‘meaningful’. And it is precisely over the problem of induction that this
    attempt to solve the problem of demarcation comes to grief: positivists, in their anxiety
    to annihilate metaphysics, annihilate natural science along with it. For scientific laws,
    too, cannot be logically reduced to elementary statements of experience. If consistently
    applied, Wittgenstein’s criterion of meaningfulness rejects as meaningless those natural
    laws the search for which, as Einstein says, is ‘the supreme task of the physicist’: they
    can never be accepted as genuine or legitimate statements."
    In the life of faith, then, which, most people of large intelligence and profound goodwill
    agree, can be sufficiently warranted, epistemically, and eminently justified,
    normatively ...
    it's not enough vis a vis its normative actionability for a given option to be both vital,
    existentially, and forced, axiologically (a value will be decisively frustrated or realized) ...
    an option must be truly live, exceeding fideism's low bar of epistemic warrant, while not
    banging one's head on the high bar of the rationalistic and/or empiricistic positivists,
    who, in their anxiety to extinguish the light of faith, would destroy --- not only the
    beacons of the natural sciences, but --- the brilliant luminosity of good, old-fashioned
    common sense!
    Misconstruals of Classical Theism’s Analogia are often
    located on the anthropological side
    Many misinterpretations of classical theism, and its analogia, are not so much
    grounded in misunderstandings regarding the revealed divine nature, which as
    primarily love seems straightforward enough, but in impoverished conceptions of
    nature, in general, human nature, in particular.
    If we don't begin with a good anthropology of humanity and good phenomenology of
    nature ...our analogical predications between our existential orientations (such as via
    an aesthetical primacy) and the transcendental imperatives --- both suggested in
    nature, metaphysically, and specially revealed in the divine attributes, theologically
    (such as via an aesthetic teleology) --- will be impoverished.
    A theonoetic of divine omniscience gets misinterpreted due to misunderstandings of
    the nature of the future (open?), metaphysically, the nature of the human will
    (in/determined?), anthropologically, and the nature of freedom (libertarian &
    absolute?), itself, phenomenologically.
    A theopathic account of divine omnipathy gets misinterpreted due to
    misunderstandings of the nature of passibility, substantially and accidentally rather
    than relationally, such as vis a vis the esse naturale or esse intentionale, whether divine
    or human, such as between natural formal distinctions and divine trans-formal
    distinctions.
    And so on and so forth, re the theoethics, theo-perichoretics and theopoietics of
    omnibenevolence, omnipresence and omnipotence.
    Below is just An Inventory of Questions.
    It's not an essay, just a punch-list of categories to help identify distinctions that can
    make a difference anthropologically, phenomenologically and theologically.
    are metaphysics moonshine?
    trying to thread the needle between an epistemic humility or hubris, epistemic virtue or
    vice, between apophatic and kataphatic, affective and speculative, or encratism,
    quietism, fideism, pietism, rationalism, evidentialism, as well as univocal, equivocal and
    analogical predications
    but, before these are epistemological issues, theologically, we encounter them
    metaphysically, not just vis a vis divine causal joints but vis a vis emergent layers of
    complexity and their respective teloi or creation's causal joints, hence, e.g. trans-formal
    distinction
    so, metaphysical agnosticism and theological skepticism go hand in hand
    re epistemic warrant, normative justifications, evidentiary standards and burdens of
    proof, all which must attend to the given subject matter at hand in an apposite way
    are evidential, plausibilist arguments im/possible and/or un/necessary vis a vis various
    interpretations, whether quantum or theo-logical?
    if im/possible and/or un/necessary in metaphysics, how so, then, theologically?
    the weaker our arguments (via suitable epistemic humility and warrant) the less
    necessary any evidential, plausibilist argumentation, e.g. peirce's humble argument or
    reformed epistemology's proper basicality and the stronger our metaphysical
    agnosticism and/or theological skepticism, the less possible any evidential, plausibilist
    argumentation
    the stronger our argumentation (via an unsuitable epistemic hubris and imagined
    epistemic warrant) and the stronger our metaphysical rationalism, the more necessary
    our evidential argumentation?
    any perceived need for a plausibilist evidential argumentation is proportional to and
    commensurate with the perceived degree of epistemic warrant (scholastic notations?)
    for any given argument (abductively and deductively, possibly inductively)
    epistemic parity metaphysically extends theologically and both thus require
    equiprobabilist principles and evidentiary standards applied to normative justifications
    cumulative case of abductive-deductive musings like Peirce's neglected argument
    contrasted with the virtually impossible evidential theodicies, which are, in many ways,
    like irreducible complexity arguments
    the reasonableness of faith's leap, an existential disjunction, avoids fideism via
    epistemic parity (equiprobability principle and normative justification), avoids
    rationalism via epistemic humility (e.g. metaphysical agnosticism and theological
    skepticism), avoids quietism via analogical predication and epistemic warrant, avoids
    encratism via analogical predication and liturgical cultivation
    philosophical theology
    reality of God, established via equiprobable epistemic warrant and defensible normative
    justifications
    existential disjunctions at equiplausibility junctions w/axiologically forced, existentially
    vital and equiprobably live options
    logical, abductive-deductive argument akin to argument, not argumentation, for reality,
    not being, of god
    evidential theodicy, plausibilistic argumentation as im/possible and/or un/necessary?
    type of creatio, whether ex nihilo, profundis, tohu bohu?
    mereological relationships vis a vis fallacy of composition, mereological reality as mute,
    brute or fruit?
    Divine Attributes
    attributes of God, variously established
    omniscience
    via kerygma, mystagogy, polydoxic sophiology and not metaphysics, God is love
    analogy of anthropo-noetic vs theo-noetic?
    misunderstandings, phenomenologically re nature of future and anthropologically re
    nature of human will?
    open vs foreknown, but bad phenomenology re nature of future, 3ns, even 4ns?
    compatabilist or incompatabilist? but bad anthropology re libertarian free will which
    involves epistemic distancing of personal agency via formative dynamics, freedom as
    authenticity?
    omnipathy
    via kerygma, mystagogy, polydoxic sophiology and not metaphysics, God is love
    analogy of anthropo-pathic vs theo-pathic?
    misunderstandings of the nature of passibility, substantially and accidentally rather
    than relationally?
    omnibenevolence
    via kerygma, mystagogy, polydoxic sophiology and not metaphysics, God is love
    misunderstandings re nature of evil, hence of goodness, privatio boni
    e.g. moral vs ontic privation, suffering vs pain, intrinsic vs ontic, proportionalist vs
    consequentialist vs deontological?unavoidable double effect, essential instrumental vs
    unavoidable
    instrumental vis a vis human moral calculus, anthropologically?
    and God's relationship to evil, moral and natural?
    analogy of anthropo-ethical vs theo-ethical realities?
    omnipresence
    via kerygma, mystagogy, polydoxic sophiology and not metaphysics, God is love
    and per
    panen- via classical or process, which must be phenomenologically triadic/pentadic and
    theologically penta/trini/tarian?
    misunderstandings re communal and social-relational realities?
    analogy of anthropo-perichoretical vs theo-perichoretical realities?
    misunderstandings regarding essential, modal, conceptual and formal distinctions as
    well as univocal, equivocal and analogical predications
    omnipotence
    via kerygma, mystagogy, polydoxic sophiology and not metaphysics, God is love
    analogy of anthropo-poietical vs theo-poietical realities?
    misunderstandings re nature of evil, e.g. moral vs ontic privation, suffering vs pain,
    intrinsic vs ontic, proportionalist vs consequentialist vs deontological, unavoidable
    double effect, essential instrumental vs unavoidable instrumental vis a vis human moral
    calculus, anthropologically?
    and God's relationship to evil, moral and natural?
    omnipotence compatible or incompatible with evil?
    if incompatible, no genuine evil
    evil genuine or illusory?
    consequentialist or nonconsequentialist?
    essential vs unavoidable?
    irredeemable vs instrumental?
    and in/defensibility of presuppositions re nature of divine constraints (essential,
    metaphysical and/or kenotic) vis a vis sovereignty?
    and in/defensibility of logical arguments vis a vis the integrity of our god-conceptions
    (christopher mchugh) vis a vis compossibilities?
     omnipathic defense
     free will defense
     tehomic defense
     greater good defense
     soul making defense
    and in/defensibility of evidentialist argumentation?
    arguments, logically, not argumentation, plausibly, evidentially?
    anti-theodicy?
    epistemic distance and theosis are necessary and sufficient, so, suffering and evil are not
    necessary or essential, just unavoidable
    epistemic dx as formative & exculpable vs moral & sinful?
    ontic privations (absence of pleasure and/or presence of pain w/o suffering)
    suffering & moral evil not in divine economy, none necessary or essential, not raw
    materials, some unavoidable waste products? recyclable vs irredeemable?
    consequentialist or essential & nonconsequentialist or unavoidable?
    some instrumental and/or recyclable vs irredeemable?
    some essential or unavoidable, pain and ontic privation of epistemic dx?
    epistemic distance via ontic privation w/o essential or necessary suffering or moral evil
    (nonconsequentialist) using epistemic dx and theosis as necessary means, but some
    suffering or evil instrumentally transformative, recyclable, some irredeemable,
    perishable
    plus apokatastasis and constellation of eternalized human goodness: all wholesome
    trivialities, every beginning of a smile, an eternal constellation of luminaries of various
    intensities and diverse multiplicities
    key concepts:
     essential constraints
     metaphysical constraints
     kenotic constraints
     cumulative case
     forced, vital, live options
     pragmatic - but not vulgar
     equiplausibility
     epistemic warrant
     existential disjunction
     normative justification
     too weakly probabilistic
     mere competing plausibilities
     too bayesian, no consensus re priors
     logical defense vs evidential plausibilities or theodicies
     naturalist moral realism
     minimalist aesthetic teleology
     aesthetic Teleology
     pentametric holonic
     metaphysical agnosticism
     theological skepticism
     pneumatological imagination
     panSEMIOentheism
     anti-theodicial
     pluralistic theologoumena
     polydoxic
     diverse sophiological trajectories
     essential soteriological trajectory
     human authenticity
     lonergan's conversions
    Soul-making & the Greatest Good as divinely willed ends
    in an Anti-theodicy
    As I have grappled with the problem of evil, I have been rationally satisfied by different
    logical accounts of the divine economy, all which seem, more or less, consistent with
    special revelation, some seeming not to be necessarily mutually exclusive from others,
    none seeming to necessarily be the case.
    I view soul-making and the greatest good as divinely willed "ends" for which neither
    evil nor suffering are divinely willed "means," which, instead, include, for example,
    epistemic distance and theosis.
    Epistemic distance necessarily introduces finitude and contingency, which, while they
    can constitute failures to cooperate with grace, merely result from "inabilities." While
    moral evil can also constitute such failures, those result, instead, from "refusals" to thus
    cooperate, in a word, sin.
    An anti-theodicy can logically affirm both divinely willed soul-making and the greatest
    good as "ends," while denying evil and suffering as necessary "means" in the divine
    economy? God would never intend evil or suffering but whenever confronted with same
    could work --- not with, but --- providentially against and around them and seemingly,
    perhaps, could even opportunistically exploit every new set of circumstances to bring
    about the greatest good (Romans 8).
    Now, in this scenario, anthropological questions would beg for me about why we
    wouldn't necessarily suffer from mistakes, only from sin (but, oh what a better world it
    would be!) Still, I'd rather remain theologically skeptical, on one hand, about how
    epistemic distance and theosis, alone, might have (even if somewhat implausibly so)
    operated in a possible world without evil and sin than, on the other hand, skeptical
    regarding God's lack of moral intelligibility vis a vis what might exculpate Her from
    employing sin and suffering as necessary means (often seemingly repugnantly so).
    Did Hugh McCann offer a soul-making, greater good evidential theodicy, arguing --- not
    only "that," logically, but --- "how," plausibly, sin and evil were "necessary" divine
    means?
    Or did he otherwise recognize that, logically, the realities of sin and evil, even if
    probable, were definitely not necessary, and could successfully be worked around
    without overwhelming the divine economy with its eschatological, soteriological,
    sacramental, ecclesiological or sophiological ends?
    As for the uninstantiated "possibilities" for moral evil, as logically entailed by freedom,
    they would have no ontological status. Arguably, too, sinful choices would result in
    axiological privations, evil, itself, having no ontological status?
    Also, God, in McCann's acount, appeared to be ontologically authoring, pre-morally,
    only an indispensable ontic evil (via epistemic distance as finitude not sin), which a
    proportionate reason would underwrite with the currency of a greater good, but
    otherwise remained teleologically uninvolved with any intentional agency, who, alone,
    would have directly intended such an evil, hence, alone, committing a morally culpable
    act.
    Perhaps this is all more consistent with Scotus, who believed that the Incarnation was in
    the divine will from the cosmic get-go and not occasioned by some felix culpa.
    God neither needs nor wills sin. Epistemic Distance requires ontic privations, not
    deontic depredations.
    The “Trans-Formal Distinction” between the Divine
    Essence & Energies
    Let's first consider some Analogies of Phenomenological Distinctions:
    essential or real:
     creature: nonstrict, contingent esse naturale
     Creator: strict, self-subsisting esse naturale
    modal temporality:
     creature: asymmetric
     Creator: atemporal
    modal adequacy:
     creature: finite
     Creator: infinite
    modal ontology:
     creature: possibilities, actualities & probabilities (in/determinacies)
     Creator: ens necessarium
    modal epistemology:
     creature: reality variously in/determinable, epistemically distanced
     Creator: reality absolutely determinable, omniscient
    formal or real metaphysical:
     creature: mutability presents from each genus/species/haecceity, which remains
    variously constrained by end-stated (mortal), end-purposed (adequately determined) &
    end-intended (intentional agency) teloi due to the boltzman, shannon & darwin
    entropies of an aesthetic teleology, which is variously realized (adequate freedom)
     Creator: with an immutable aesthetic intensity (absolute freedom) indwells creation via a
    passible esse intentionale, which, per the sovereign divine will (consistent with - logically
    conceivable but evidentially indeterminable - essential, metaphysical and/or kenotic
    constraints) amplifies aesthetic diversity via divine energies, which manifest in the
    glorious multiplicity of creaturely participations
    Speculative Take-aways:
    Creaturely formal distinctions, noninherent but inseparable for each entity, refer to the
    nature of each entity's journey toward its maximum aesthetic realization. Each journey
    might, more or less, be distinguished by its degree of substantial contingency
    (mutability), temporality, modal adequacy (finitude), in/determinedness
    (teleonomicity), epistemic distancing and volitional freedom (aesthetic teleological
    realization).
    The formal distinctions made between divine attributes refer to no substantial or modal
    realities of the divine esse naturale (there simply are none), which remains immutable,
    atemporal, infinite, sovereign, omniscient and absolutely free in the unsurpassable
    aesthetic interrelationality of the divine essence and hypostases of the Ens
    Necessarium, Simplicity, itself. They refer, rather, to the otherwise noninherent but
    inseparable relational passibilities of the divine esse intentionale and to the ineluctably
    unobtrusive yet utterly efficacious responses that are freely gifted by the divine energies
    to creatures. These divine activities are then manifested in the effects that ensue from
    creaturely participations in this sacramental economy, in which evil and suffering enjoy
    no currency whatsoever, the donative nature of which remains profoundly incarnational
    (cf. Scotus) and profusely pneumatological (sans filioque).
    Our distinctions, whether essential, formal or modal (Scotists), whether physically real,
    metaphysically real, virtual or logical (Thomists), cannot be univocally applied to both
    Creator and creatures due to the transcendent nature of divine realities. In the same way
    that it would be a category error to presuppose epistemological and/or ontological
    reduction between the different layers of complexity of cosmic realities, which require
    the analogical --- not univocal --- predication of the various emergent teloi, similarly,
    transcendent divine causalities simply (pun intended) will not reduce to epistemic or
    ontic categories of their subvenient cosmos. Our causal analogies, divine vs cosmic,
    remain vague, hopefully successful, references but in no way can be presupposed as
    successful descriptions.
    Our vague phenomenology remains an exploratory heuristic, out of which a plurality of
    legitimate theologoumena might flourish, not a robustly explanatory metaphysic,
    logically coercing or axiologically compelling one valid opinion over another. Once we
    properly disambiguate the various distinctions analogically predicated of Creator and
    creatures, then, whatever it is that suitably distinguishes between the divine essence and
    energies, it cannot properly be called Scotus' formal distinction or even the real or
    virtual distinction of Aquinas, for those refer to contingent realities with modal
    properties.
    Arguably, the distinction between the divine essence and energies is the one most
    analogous to Scotus' formal distinction. I like to refer to it, then, as the trans-formal
    distinction, both to emphasize its analogical character and to evoke the trans-
    formative Telos that inheres in the energies, coaxing our participation in a perichoretic-
    like dance with the divine. Likewise, the divine esse intentionale would, analogously, be
    supremely passible, transcending our conceptions of creaturely passibility.
    Of course, questions are left begging regarding how the Divine Telos causally interacts
    with our subvenient cosmic teloi. Our abductive inference to the best explanation can
    only suggest that, while otherwise ineluctably unobtrusive, a supervening (aesthetic)
    Telos can be, analogously, just as utterly efficacious as that cosmic telos, which is located
    in human personal intentionality, which, for its part, however tacitly, causally interacts
    with other layers of complexity. In such interactions between these somewhat
    dis/continuous ontological layers, while human telic intentionality clearly transcends
    them, we similarly lack (as with putative divine causal joints) explanatory adequacy for
    the apparent causal closures, among and between them. While we certainly
    methodologically presuppose such closures, for all practical purposes, still, we cannot
    metaphysically describe them to our speculative satisfaction (except, perhaps, for Dan
    Dennett and Richard Dawkins, who seem rather easy targets for a facile
    neuromythology).

    Practical Upshots:
    We best emphasize, then, de fide, kerygma and mystagogy, synergeia and theoria,
    sophiology and theosis, in an orthocommunal, orthopathic and orthopraxic
    authentication of true glory, ortho-doxically. We best deemphasize any so-called logical
    coercions of philosophical theology and should positively (pun intended, again) eschew
    evidential theodicies, otherwise epistemically warranting our leaps of faith abductively
    (as in Peirce's Neglected Argument for the Reality of God), while, at the same time,
    normatively and performatively justifying such existential orientations by their
    formative and transformative progressions toward the transcendental imperatives
     of truth, as preserved in our creeds;
     of unity, as enjoyed in our communities and fellowships;
     of beauty, as celebrated in our devotional and liturgical cult-ivations;
     of goodness, as preserved in our canons and codes; and
     of freedom, as realized in our trustful abandonment to providence, faithful surrender to
    the divine will and in our ongoing attunement to the siren song of that divine
    suitor/seductress, neither threatened by Her virtual irresistability nor fearful of His
    delightful ravishing, precisely because, while we're merely adequately determined,
    monergistically, we enjoy a most robust intentionality, synergistically.
    This musing was evoked by:
    Reflecting the Mystery: Analogy Beyond Negation and Affirmation By Robert F. Fortuin
    Additional notes:
    Simplicity for Scotus wouldn’t entail a simple being having no distinctions, whatsoever,
    only its having no "really" distinct parts?
    We might be tempted to suggest that a Scotistic formal distinction, e.g. esse
    intentionale, wouldn't entail God's nature, e.g. esse naturale, having parts (limitations)?
    Or, in Thomist terms, to refer to that as a "metaphysically" real distinction?
    But would that distinction between the divine will & essence really work with a
    sufficiently robust notion of divine freedom? We might say yes, if it's combined w/the
    Damascene approach to divine infinity?
    But I'm not really comfortable w/all that b/c, while I find the formal distinction very
    useful in parsing in/determinate realities, where act-potency obtains regarding formal-
    final teloi, to be truly consistent w/the Damascene approach, it seems we'd need to
    conceive a "trans"-formal distinction?
    That is, we need more than the classical formal distinction, which works fine for
    creaturely in/determinacies, to distinguish God's indeterminate ousia & hypostases
    from God's energeia, as God’s determinate work?
    Further, taking energeia as freely chosen determinate manifestations (any divine
    determinacy "taken on") doesn’t mean they must necessarily deliver us descriptive
    likenesses of the divine essence, even as they will clearly reveal something truly
    meaningful about God's nature? Like the generation of the Son & procession of the
    Spirit, neither of which must be either willed or necessitated, the energeia would
    originate from God's very nature?
    We might then suggest that something analogous to Scotus’ formal distinction, a trans-
    formal distinction, re: divine energeia, wouldn't entail God's nature having parts
    (limitations).
    Perhaps the trans-formally distinct divine energeia neither originate by necessity nor
    esse intentionale but by esse naturale (as Athanasius suggested re the begotten Son)?
    And the esse intentionale, too, is trans-formally distinct from the esse naturale?
    To me, univocity just means our concepts are sufficient to convey something meaningful
    about the putative cause of various effects as remain proper to no known causes.
    How meaningful?
    A successful reference.
    So, univocity's only semantical, not ontological. Beyond a God-concept or quark-concept
    serving as a mere placeholder for a given putative cause, is there nothing else that can be
    said?
    Well, re a God-concept, can't we also talk, univocally, about the divine essence in terms
    of an all positive conception of divine infinity? Sure & it will also qualify as univocal. But
    it's still not onto-talk, since creatures aren't infinite?
    In that regard, Scotus (& Bonaventure) fall into the Damascene school.
    Such analogies & metaphors can be very meaningful, i.e. existentially actionable &
    soulfully dispositional, even in our syllogisms, but, because we yet remain in search of a
    root metaphor (a metaphysic), we mustn't imagine we've speculatively proved very
    much, i.e. QED.
    Analogical Predication is indispensable cosmo-logically
    & anthropo-logically, especially theo-logically
    Reflecting the Mystery: Analogy Beyond Negation and Affirmation
    via Fr Aidan Kimel
    By Robert F. Fortuin
    by Fr Aidan KBy Robert F. Fortuin
    My reflections evoked by the above:
    I've been musing over the wisdom of this presentation all week, trying to formulate a
    succinct response that doesn't sacrifice either clarity or brevity. I have been relishing
    this blog trying to learn its idiom that I may make more apposite responses as my
    lifelong interest has been biology and not speculative theology (only formative and
    contemplative spirituality, practically considered).
    Here's the source of my delight in this presentation. Due to my own analogogical
    imagination, I extrapolated Robert's insights to cosmology, in general, anthropology, in
    particular. I could take his essay, in other words, and perform a simple syntactical "find
    and replace" that substituted the words "anthropology" or "cosmology" in place of
    theology and his conclusions would equally hold in those speculative disciplines.
    More concretely, up and down the great chain of being, in their cosmo-talk and
    anthropo-talk, certain scientists and philosophers, especially of that cabal whom the late
    Don Gelpi, SJ would refer to as Enlightenment fundamentalists, have rather univocally
    employed concepts like entropy, cause, agency, even telos, so to speak, leveling the
    ontological playing field, giving only a wink to complexity and --- not just a nod, but --- a
    full bow to naturalism. That wink, of course, comes in the form of epistemic openness
    (nonreductively) and the bow reverences ontological closure (reductively). They end up
    "proving too much" precisely because, in nature, beyond our vague conceptions of
    entropy, cause, agent and telos, we must recognize that there are entropies, causes,
    agencies and teloi, each rather rigorously defined, all requiring dutiful disambiguation
    prior to their employment in facile syllogisms, many which can get sylly to the point of
    absurdity.
    These reductionistas have properly gathered one take-away, which is that god must not
    be placed in our metaphysical gaps. At the same time, they have issued epistemic
    promissory notes denominated in a naturalistic fiat currency, which cashes out no value,
    metaphysically, only methodologically.
    I am hard pressed to give examples, such as from philosophies of mind and cosmogonies
    to better illustrate my intuitions without running into those walls of clarity and brevity
    and my idiomatic barriers. Most succinctly, though, as God will arrive when the
    half-gods depart, theologically, so too the Cosmos and the Anthropos will arrive
    when the half-natures and half-humans depart from our cosmological and
    anthropological conceptions, the therapy for which includes suitable analogical
    predications.
    Stephen Hawking expressed some liberation from his realization that there were Godel-
    like implications for any Theory of Everything, that one could choose between the
    consistency of one's axioms or the completeness of one's system. I listened to Hawking's
    speech when it was first made public, marveling only at the fact that he was only of late
    realizing what the Jesuit Stanley Jaki had taught us decades prior, that when wagering
    between being either inconsistent or incomplete vis a vis any TOE, the good money's
    always been on incompleteness. If that's true regarding the cosmos, then how much
    more true that must be for the mysterium tremendum et fascinans?
    Theological skepticism has never been some ad hoc strategem simply to avoid (properly,
    I say) theodicies, but has only ever been inherent in any worthwhile theological
    grammar. In the end, this has enormous import for our practical theology, formative
    spirituality, life of liturgy, prayer life, theopoietics and theotics, whereby our theological
    antinomies much less so will ever resolve, philosophically, but much more so will
    dissolve, existentially, via divine encounters, communions, participations, partakings
    and ... well .. about those Energies?
    contd:
    I don’t have trouble with logical, deductive accounts (which basically cycle abductive
    and deductive inferences), whether a logical defense to the problem of evil or an
    alternate quantum interpretation. Those approaches help establish the reasonableness
    of — not only our questions, but — the external congruence, logical consistency, internal
    coherence, hypothetical consonance, interdisciplinary consilience and a host of other
    epistemic virtues regarding any given account.
    Now, in the normal methodological scheme, such an abductive-deductive inferential
    cycling can fall into epistemic vice if, at some point, it is not also interrupted by
    inductive testing, if you will, falsification and empirical investigation.
    So, beyond our establishment of logical possibilities, we pursue evidential plausibilities.
    However, we must be mindful of our subject matter, even in that metaphysics pertaining
    to the origins of the cosmos, life, sentience and human agency, precisely because of
    transcendence, minimalistically conceived. These problems remain intractable because
    we haven’t been able to reconcile emergent nomicities from one level of complexity to
    the next.
    So, as we encourage a plurality of logical interpretations at various of nature’s causal
    joints, we resist any rush to closure, especially aspiring to
    avail ourselves of falsifiability and empirical probing. We don’t ever presuppose that we
    are, in principle, necessarily ontologically occulted, only imagine, instead, that, for now
    and in this case, we might remain epistemologically thwarted, methodologically.
    Now, to the extent this describes our situation regarding, for example, the origins of life
    and human symbolic language, ontologically and nomically nearby, so to speak, then,
    how much more so will this epistemic distance obtain as our thermodynamic equations
    break down as we approach t=0 near the Big Bang?
    That’s why evidential approaches, such as the attempt to establish irreducible
    complexity by ID proponents, remain seriously misguided. For one thing, some
    anthropic principle approaches confuse the math between chance and coincidence.
    More importantly, though, we simply do not know enough about the cosmos’ initial,
    boundary and limit conditions to say with any confidence what should or should not be
    expected. (I generously grant each person their unique bayesian priors but all might
    properly concede that those are rarely universally held). To boot, irreducible complexity
    is unfalsifiable.
    So, if a healthy degree of metaphysical agnosticism remains defensible, how much more
    so theological skepticism?
    The problem is, as Pascal and William James realized, the matter of God remains
    existentially vital and axiologically forced. So, we evaluate what might be live options.
    Now, by evaluate, I certainly include logical interpretations of primal reality and logical
    defenses of the problem of evil. But our final evaluations simply cannot turn on
    informative necessities, logically, but, instead on the performative significance of our
    leaps, existentially. So, there’s an evidential aspect that, with no little epistemic virtue,
    warrants our leaps of faith, and evaluates them in terms of how much value we can cash
    out of them in terms of what Don Gelpi, SJ (building on Lonergan) would describe as
    intellectual, affective, moral, social and religious conversions or, in short, human
    authenticity.
    Faith, in such an approach, is much less so warranted epistemically vis a vis inductive
    testing of abductive-deductive “best explanations,” and more so normatively justified.
    The leap takes place at an existential disjunction as a “living as if” in the face of
    competing and intractable equiplausibilities, where we wager or choose the most life-
    giving and relationship-enhancing response (is that a rope or a snake coiled up on the
    floor of my cave? i shall leave it alone until i can light the fire and see! meanwhile, i’d
    best jump over it).
    So, while I find evidential theodicies terribly off-putting, some worse than others, more
    fundamentally, they seem epistemically misconceived. We simply don’t know enough
    about — not only the cosmos’ initial conditions, but — G*d’s essential nature to say what
    should or should not be expected vis a vis creatio, metaphysically.
    So, the problem of evil, logically, invites a plurality of defenses, none which must
    necessarily hold, evidentially remains way epistemically distanced but, existentially,
    suggests certain normative responses and requires creative pastoral solutions.
    from a separate post re: divine & human activity
    A lot of philosophical analysis to me seems over-invested in the employment of the
    excluded middle, which ends up in all or nothing & either/or thinking. When Charles
    Sanders Peirce formulated his modal ontology of firstness (roughly possibilities),
    secondness (actualities) and thirdness (roughly probabilities), in that category of
    thirdness vis a vis reality’s regularities, Peirce precisely prescinded from necessity to
    probability, where, while noncontradiction still holds, excluded middle folds. Whether
    regarding epistemic in/determinables or ontological in/determinacies, then, different
    realities are recognized as more vs less determined in varying degrees, on a case by case
    basis. For example, we might say a given entity is “adequately” determined without at all
    implicating “absolute” determinism.
    Thus it may be, I’ve always thought, that, when deliberating over monergisms and
    synergisms, we certainly needn’t treat those dynamics in an absolutist frame. When
    attributing monergism or synergism to entities, we must ask both 1) regarding what
    particular attribute (as well as predicated univocally or analogically) and 2) to what
    extent?
    McCann’s coreligionists would never countenance an absolute monergism and neither
    does he. Neither would it object to an adequate monergism while, at the same time,
    regarding other attributes, emphasizing an indispensable synergistic dynamic, between
    an Agent, Who’s absolutely sovereign (free), and an agent, who’s free-enough to
    aesthetically attain the beatitude of divine participations.
    For my part, I’m not threatened by the image of my being divinely ravished, especially
    by such a courtly Suitor/Seductress, Who so coyly woos but never slav-ishly (double
    entendre intended) coerces my erotic attentions. I’m just desperately trying to better
    attune my tone-deaf self to Her overtures (insert your favorite composer du jour).
    contd:
    As far as any tendency to make divine unknowability the truth value of one’s position, at
    least regarding the problem of evil, what’s not defensible, in my view, are any ad hoc
    retreats into theological skepticism. Generally, though, that’s not what I encounter.
    Disagreements regarding whether or not theodicies are un/necessary or even
    im/possible are, instead, rooted in one’s religious epistemology, systematically. I get
    frustrated trying to figure out what implicit, alternate epistemological approaches might
    be the locus of some impasses. I’m not sure I’ve spoken to your frustration but you did
    remind me of my own. In my approach, for example, I suppose I could say that a
    positive theodicy remains unnecessary, largely because it’s virtually impossible.
    Not sure I was thinking exactly the same thing re: such a “meticulous providential
    control,” but the logical consequences that I was intuiting regarding such a sovereignity
    seemed to lie in the same direction that I’ve called the Baskin Robbins account of the
    divine will, which comes in 31 classic flavors, mostly designed to feed theodicial
    appetites. I can imagine God being exculpable vis a vis sin in a double agency
    framework, but I can’t tell if McCann has succeeded in meeting such criteria (via some
    combination of sub- and super- venience). Where the price of such a sovereignity gets
    uneconomic, for me, comes at the expense of including evil and suffering in one’s divine
    economy, such as in an Irenaean theodicy. I cannot conceive of a “G”od, Who has
    anything whatsoever to do with author-ing evil or needing suffering, including
    annihilationism. The Brothers Karamazov makes more sense to me than metaphysics
    when it comes to those divine attributes. I’m more frightened by the thought that some
    atrocities might ever be made morally intelligible than I am of remaining forever
    befuddled or intractably theologically skeptical.
    contd re: McCann
    As I have grappled with the problem of evil, I have been rationally satisfied by different
    logical accounts of the divine economy, all which seem, more or less, consistent with
    special revelation, some seeming not to be necessarily mutually exclusive from others,
    none seeming to necessarily be the case.
    I view soul-making and the greatest good as divinely willed "ends" for which neither evil
    nor suffering are divinely willed "means," which, instead, include, for example,
    epistemic distance and theosis.
    Epistemic distance necessarily introduces finitude and contingency, which, while they
    can constitute failures to cooperate with grace, merely result from "inabilities." While
    moral evil can also constitute such failures, those result, instead, from "refusals" to thus
    cooperate, in a word, sin.
    An anti-theodicy can logically affirm both divinely willed soul-making and the greatest
    good as "ends," while denying evil and suffering as necessary "means" in the divine
    economy? God would never intend evil or suffering but whenever confronted with same
    could work --- not with, but --- providentially against and around them and seemingly,
    perhaps, could even opportunistically exploit every new set of circumstances to bring
    about the greatest good (Romans 8).
    Now, in this scenario, anthropological questions would beg for me about why we
    wouldn't necessarily suffer from mistakes, only from sin (but, oh what a better world it
    would be!) Still, I'd rather remain theologically skeptical, on one hand, about how
    epistemic distance and theosis, alone, might have (even if somewhat implausibly so)
    operated in a possible world without evil and sin than, on the other hand, skeptical
    regarding God's lack of moral intelligibility vis a vis what might exculpate Her from
    employing sin and suffering as necessary means (often seemingly repugnantly so).
    Is McCann offering a soul-making, greater good evidential theodicy, arguing --- not only
    "that," logically, but --- "how," plausibly, sin and evil were "necessary" divine means?
    Or is he otherwise recognizing that, logically, the realities of sin and evil, even if
    probable, definitely not necessary, could successfully be worked around without
    overwhelming the divine economy with its eschatological, soteriological, sacramental,
    ecclesiological or sophiological ends?
    As for the uninstantiated "possibilities" for moral evil, as logically entailed by freedom,
    they would have no ontological status. Arguably, too, sinful choices would result in
    axiological privations, evil having no ontological status? Also, God, in McCann's acount,
    appears to be ontologically authoring, pre-morally, only an indispensable ontic evil (via
    epistemic distance as finitude not sin), which a proportionate reason would underwrite
    with the currency of a greater good, but otherwise remains teleologically uninvolved
    with any intentional agency, who might directly intend such an evil in a morally culpable
    act.
    Perhaps this is more consistent with Scotus, who believed that the Incarnation was in
    the divine will from the cosmic get-go and not occasioned by some felix culpa.
    Why Double Agency Works for me – an emergentist
    defense
    Reflections evoked by Fr. A. Kimel's:
    The World is a Novel in the Mind of God
    Fr. Al wrote “God’s activity as creator,” notes McCann, “operates in such a way that
    my integrity as an agent is exactly what it would have been if the subject of creation
    had never come up, and we had concluded that, as many libertarians believe, my
    decisions and actions have no determining cause of any kind, primary or secondary”
    (Creation, p. 105).
    The only difference between his construal of human freedom and the typical
    libertarian construal, McCann tells us, is that his account presents our decisions and
    actions as grounded in God as primary cause, “whereas on the standard libertarian
    view their existence is grounded in nothing whatever” (p. 109). <<<<<
    The approach to free will with which I most resonate precisely comes from philosophers
    and scientists who've grappled with a person's "integrity as agent" apart from the
    "subject of creation."
    Some frame the issue less in terms of in/determinism, a reality that presents in degrees
    and better conceived in probabilistic terms like propensities, and more so in terms of
    reductionism and downward causations (e.g. whole-part constraints as well as formal
    and final).
    For these theorists, among whom are believers, unbelievers and nonbelievers, the
    question of free will does not so much turn on the putative reality of neurobiological
    determinism (although some do speculate regarding quantum indeterminacies) but
    much more so on the question of neurobiological reductionism (both epistemic and
    ontological), which, long story short, remains phenomenologically indefensible.
    Of course, I'm talking about those who, primarily informed by modern semiotic science,
    embrace an emergentist stance. I resonate with that perspective in its most generic
    sense, which affirms emergent teloi in nature but which doesn't necessarily invoke
    further distinctions, such as between weak and strong emergence or supervenience. For
    example, even a nonreductive physicalism, in my view, proves too much.
    These emergentists would all affirm --- not only the teleomatic and teleonomic teloi of,
    respectively, inanimate (end-stated-ness) and sentient things (end-purposed-ness), but
    also --- the robustly teleodynamic (end-intended-ness) consciousness of sapient
    persons, who enjoy genuine autopoietic agency or an authentic will or personal
    intentionality.
    This emergentist stance remains a phenomenological, exploratory heuristic. This is
    to say that it does not ambition an explanatory metaphysic. It merely takes an
    inventory of nature's emergent novelties, among which are different teloi, and affirms
    the most robustly downward causation observed as human, personal, intentional
    agency.
    I say intentional agency as distinct from human freedom, which can sometimes more,
    sometimes less, characterize any given person's agency. I draw that distinction partly
    out of sympathy for DB Hart's conception of freedom and, also, from the perspectives of
    both human developmental psychology and formative spirituality, whereby true
    freedom must be grown in a radically social-relational milieu.
    Fr. Al wrote: McCann thus seeks to move philosophical reflection beyond the ever-
    ellusive causal joint that ostensibly binds divine and human agency. Perhaps we
    should not even employ the notion of causality—hence his suggestion that we think of
    the relation between God and creatures as analogous to the relation between intention
    and content. <<<<<
    The emergentist stance, as an exploratory heuristic, does not explain the novelties that
    present as the cosmos emerges from the quantum, as life emerges from stardust, as
    sentience emerges from early life forms, as sapience finally emerges from sentient
    consciousness. Nature's causal joints remain ever-elusive.
    Not only are nature's causal joints for the emergentist ever-elusive, the emergent teloi,
    themselves, ---- from the teleopotent quantum fields (veldo [field]-poietic) to the
    teleomatic thermodynamics and morphodynamics of physics and chemistry (cosmo-
    poietic) to the teleonomic life forms (bio-poietic and sentio-poietic) to the teleo-logical
    (sapio-poietic) person --- remain only weakly analogical, as varieties of formal and final
    causations.
    This is all to suggest that we are asking too much of any given metaphysic, presently, by
    requesting an explanation of nature's causal joints. No root metaphor has yet reconciled
    gravity and quantum mechanics and the latter still admits several interpretations
    (epistemic and/or ontological). How much more so would we be telling untellable
    stories to pretend to describe the causal joints between divine and human agency?
    This is to further suggest that our vague understandings of formal and final causations
    in nature's emergent teloi require a great deal of analogical --- not univocal ---
    predication.
    There are manifestly qualitative --- not just quantitative --- differences between the
    teleonomic sentience, which humans share with other animals, and the teleo-logic
    sapience, which is unique to Homo symbolicus. It's no easy task to imaginatively answer
    the question:
    What is it like to be a bat?
    How much more would we be saying way more than we could ever possibly know by
    facilely imagining:
    What is it like to be omniscient?
    How much more careful we must be in our analogical predications between emergent
    teloi and the primal Telos of a self-subsisting esse?
    All that said, then, absent any neurobiological reductionism, which many scientists and
    philosophers clearly would deny, if some don't even see the threat (to human intentional
    agency and freedom) from a materialist monist determinism, atheologically, then I
    certainly don't see one from a divine determinism, theologically.
    Grounding our emergent teloi, in general, a robustly telic human agency, in particular,
    in God as primary cause, seems a very defensible move, and double agency a very
    reasonable conception.
    God's sovereign control over nature's teloi or regularities would sustain or suspend them
    per the divine will but never to the extent that the emergent and robust telos of the
    human will (the apex of nature's teloi) would be suspended.
    Theologians might argue whether such a divine constraint would be essential (intrinsic),
    metaphysical (in/coherent logically) or kenotic, but, given the grounding of any human
    agency/divine constraint in the Source via creatio continua, who would not
    characterize it, per any of these scenarios, as sovereignly authored?
    See:
    http://www.academia.edu/10205210/Randomness_and_Agency_An_Analysis_of_Kn
    owledge_and_Foreknowledge_from_an_Agent-Centered_Perspective
    http://www.metanexus.net/essay/nonreductive-physicalism-and-free-will
    Univocity Unischmocity
    Scotus is no more scotistic about being in any metaphysical or ontological sense than
    Hume was humean regarding the reality of causes. Both were dealing with
    epistemology.
    Scotus was talking semantically, logically, epistemo-logically about the concept. His
    univocity of being did have ontological implications, that the analogy of being logically
    presupposes relationality, presupposes successful references, presupposes causal
    relations, between, for example, God and creatures, even while denying successful
    descriptions of God, Who remains wholly incomprehensible but eminently intelligible.
    Thus the analogy of being doesn't dissolve into total equivocation or utter
    unintelligibility. Attribution and proportionality never did.
    Scotus was talking about human language. A univocal concept has enough, i.e.
    sufficient, unity in itself such that to both affirm and deny it of the same thing would be
    a contradiction. In my view, sufficient unity implies that it's good enough to do
    analogical work vis a vis predications but does not imply that it has enough unity to
    establish ontological identities. This whole notion of sufficient sameness of meaning,
    itself, implies analogy at work! (although, without specifying the degree of
    dis/similarities in play from one concept to the next). Self-subsisting existence, for
    example, differs qualitatively --- not just quantitatively --- from any contingent
    existence, as would other attributes infinitely rather than finitely instantiated, which can
    differ not only formally but vis a vis modal adequacy and/or temporality. Univocity,
    properly considered, is not an ontotheological proposal. It remains wholly consistent
    with creaturely participation in divine attributes.
    See:
    http://journalofanalytictheology.com/jat/index.php/jat/article/view/jat.2014-
    1.120013000318a/222
    For his part, Scotus returns to the notion that Aristotelian science is a system of
    propositions organized into sound deductive syllogisms. A syllogism--e.g., ‘all A’s are
    B’s; all B’s are C’s; therefore all A’s are C’s’--can be valid only if the middle term ‘B’ is
    taken univocally in both premisses. Otherwise, there is a fallacy of four terms. Scotus
    concludes that metaphysics can furnish sound cosmological arguments from finite
    beings to infinite being, only if there is some concept of being that applies univocally to
    God and creatures.

    As Richard Cross points out, this is for Scotus a semantic thesis. As Stephen D. Dumont
    emphasizes, Scotus’ concept of univocity is very thin, requiring only as much sameness of
    meaning as it would take to avoid the fallacy of four terms.

    https://philpapers.org/rec/CROIAR-3
    Faith and Philosophy 25 (2):190-196 (2008)
    Upholding a univocity theory of religious language does not entail idolatry, because nothing about univoc
    Abstract Upholders and opponents of univocity can agree on the object to which they are ascribing various attribu
    defender of univocity have to maintain that there is anything real really shared by God and creatures. Fur
    hence theology’s scientific status, as accepted by the scholastics—requires univocity.

    From Image to Likeness: how teleologic entities (agents)


    realize teleologic capacities (freedom)
    Our finitude, in general, in terms of epistemic openness or distance, in particular, gifts
    us autopoietic agency. Ontologically, we become choosers, intentional agents,
    teleological entities, persons via imago Dei. (see wonkish note below)
    Theopoietic synergies and theotic transformations, progressively, gift us freedom,
    taking us from image to likeness, realizing teleological capacities.
    Epistemic distance makes a person a teleological entity, an agent. Axiological
    realizations gift a person teleological capacities, free agency --- a reality that only ever
    makes sense in the context of community, and only ever in a community of desires,
    which behaves cooperatively with reality's intrinsic aesthetic teleology.
    Formatively, then, right belonging will ordinarily precede right desiring from which
    right behaving will quite naturally ensue, all leading to a post-experiential reflection
    from which we articulate right believing. This route, in reverse, is not impossible, in
    principle, just improbable, in practice (how many have you converted via combox?).
    Our participatory imaginations (akin to what we call hometown knowledge) enjoy a
    certain formative primacy, then, over our conceptual map-making, as theology
    ensues in the wake of synergia, theopoiesis, theoria, theosis or unitive strivings and
    realizations.
    The compatabilist vs libertarian framing of human intentionality suffers from an
    impoverished anthropology, which
     conflates mere teleologic agencies with capacities (i.e. freedom), ignoring formative
    aspects (including de-formative, in-formative, per-formative & trans-formative),
     wrongfully privileges the conceptual over the participatory, which gifts most human
    value-realizations, and
     ignores the intrinsic aesthetic telos, which operates in our every act of willing.
    Wonkish Note:
    Semiotically, we thus possess a teleonomic consciousness, which reacts, algorithmically,
    to nonarbitrary signs --- icons and indexes, as well as a robustly teleologic
    consciousness, which responds, nonalgorithmically, also to arbitrary signs, i.e. symbols,
    making us, inherently, radically social beings. This is to suggest, also, that a great deal of
    human behavior remains teleonomic, both from instinct and uncritical learning, and
    that human freedom gets progressively realized in degrees.
    Speaking of a Community of Desire:
    Apart from the life of prayer, there can be no talk of
    doing theology.
    We all engage, whether explicitly or implicitly, in a philosophical triad of saying,
    unsaying and weighing.
    We aspire to descriptive accuracy of God in saying what He, analogically, is like, then
    unsaying what He, literally, is not, or analogically, is not like, weighing the cumulative
    evidence presented by tradition, only ever coming up with successful references to ---
    but, not descriptions of --- God.
    This is often called natural theology or philosophical theology but it's, essentially,
    philosophy. It provides no proofs. It frames up questions but gives no conclusive
    answers. It does demonstrate that our existential leaps in faith can be reasonable, a
    reality most seem to know, implicitly, in their very bones and via common sense, but
    which, for others, needs to be worked out, explicitly, in our heads.
    A theological triad, however, engages in saying, unsaying and praying, telling stories
    about our encounters of divine immanence, quieted by our encounters of divine
    transcendence and reflecting on our experiences in prayer:
    how our cooperating with the Spirit in synergia, loving God, others, cosmos and even
    self, has, theopoietically, taken us from image to likeness ...
    how our surrendering in the loving contemplation of theoria has, theotically, gifted us
    unitive experiences of divine communions, partakings and participations in the
    activities, works and energies of God!
    The divine antinomies of theology --- as expressed in scripture, tradition and reason ---
    are not finally resolved philosophically but get dissolved existentially by an Answer that
    arrives in the form of intimacy via a robustly, Personal relationship.
    Apart from the life of prayer, then, there can be no talk of doing theology.
    Now, there can be a philosophy-speak that takes place within the life of faith and after
    the leap of faith, a true theology of nature. But it's much more closely related to
    psalmody and scriptural allegory than it is to philosophy. It's moreso a prayer of the
    heart.
    So much of the impulse for philosophical theology today seems animated by the search
    for a persuasive evidential theodicy, which, for all sorts of reasons, I believe is
    misguided. For one thing, theodicies seem rather cold, hence cruel, responses to many
    of life's victims. For another, theodicies can be so summarily and cursorily dismissive of
    the enormity of human suffering and immensity of human pain. Let us eschew, then,
    specific theodicies in response to the evidential problem of evil and be content, rather,
    with general defenses in response to the logical problem of evil, as have been handed
    down and refined in our traditions.
    The most effective response to a world disoriented, lost, hungry, wounded, marginalized
    and deformed, then, will come from a missiology, wherein we cooperate with the work
    of the Spirit in the fivefold Christological mission that will
     orient us, eschatologically
     save us, soteriologically
     nurture and heal us, sacramentally
     empower us, ecclesiologically, and
     transform us, sophiologically.
    The problem of evil doesn't finally resolve, philosophically, but dissolves, existentially,
    through the realization that we are be-loved. Far more than any conceptual map-
    making, our participatory imaginations will gift us divine communion along with all
    the gifts it entails.
    What return shall I make?
    God knows the “future of nature” but – just what is the
    “nature of the future”? anthropopathic projections or
    theopathic interpretations?
    That God omnisciently knows the future of nature, there should be no doubt. On the
    other hand, the nature of the future must be properly understood.
    Peter Geach held that apart from present trends and tendencies there is no future to be
    known. This squares with a divine omniscience of peircean thirdness.
    See, for example: Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion (vol. III), ed. Jonathan
    Kvanvig (OUP, 2011), pgs 222-251. Geachianism
    A truly Catholic open theism, as would be consistent with many of the thoughts of
    Norris Clarke and Peter Geach (Roman) or John Polkinghorne (Anglican), could make
    for a very generic version.
    In addition to the distinction between esse naturale and esse intentionale ---
    See, for example: William Norris Clarke and Robert A. Connor on Person as Thomistic
    Esse
    http://robertaconnor.blogspot.com/2005/05/fr-clarke-sj-and-i-on-person-as.html?
    m=1
    we can also distinguish between an essential impassibility and affect passibility (and
    certainly affirm both).
    See, for example: Graham A. Cole, The God Who Wept a Human Tear: Some Theological
    Reflections http://ojs.globalmissiology.org/index.php/english/article/view/612/1538
    In light of the imago Dei, one needn't interpret the Biblical depiction of divine suffering
    as some anthropopathic projection, but can interpret human suffering as theopathic or
    God-like.
    See, for example: Graham A. Cole, The Living God: Anthropomorphic or
    Anthropopathic? Reformed Theological Review, 59 (1, 2000), pp. 16-27
    Also, see:
    Marcel Sarot (2001) Does God Suffer?, Ars Disputandi, 1:1, 53-61
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15665399.2001.10819711
    Fr Raniero Cantalamessa, The Gaze of Mercy: A Commentary on Divine and Human
    Mercy, Frederick, Maryland: The Word Among Us Press, 2015
    Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to the Christian Life,
    Paulist Press, 2014
    Divine Attributes per Greg Boyd
    Divine Omniscience
    http://reknew.org/2011/04/if-god-anticipates-each-possibility-perfectly-how-does-he-
    differ-from-the-frozen-god-of-classical-theism/
    Divine Omnipathy
    http://reknew.org/2007/12/what-do-you-think-of-the-classical-view-that-god-is-
    impassible/
    Divine Omnibenevolence
    http://reknew.org/2015/08/god-is-different-than-you-think/
    http://reknew.org/2015/08/how-much-does-the-cross-really-matter/
    http://reknew.org/2015/07/what-does-a-perfect-god-look-like/
    http://reknew.org/2007/12/what-is-omni-resourcefulness/
    http://reknew.org/2014/05/is-god-personal/
    Divine Omnipotence
    http://reknew.org/2016/10/redefining-omnipotence/
    Divine Omnipresence
    http://reknew.org/2008/01/in-light-of-einsteins-conclusion-that-time-is-relative-how-
    can-you-believe-that-god-is-not-above-time/
    Divine Immutability
    http://reknew.org/topic/attributes-and-character/
    http://reknew.org/2014/08/is-god-immutable-part-ii/
    http://reknew.org/2016/10/gods-moral-immutability/
    Divine Necessity & Contingency
    http://reknew.org/2007/12/do-you-believe-god-is-pure-actuality/
    HOWEVER:
    We should take the theological stances, above, as opinions, even better, as questions!
    God knows the future of nature but we don't fully know the nature of the future.
    At bottom, our philosophical theologies, beyond some rather vague phenomenological
    commitments, only frame our questions but should not pretend to have answered them,
    proving too much, telling untellable stories, saying way more than we could possibly
    know. Instead, we abide with paradox, tolerate ambiguity, nurture creative tensions,
    seek out the antinomies, resist rushes to closure and admonish the voices of certitude ...
    but move forward, anyway, in humility, with hospitality, doing what we've discerned we
    must and saying what we believe we should, dialogically, boldly and imaginatively!
    There is, after all, a certain wisdom in distinguishing between a legitimate plurality of
    theologoumena and matters that are de fide?
    Any kataphatic theopoietic, which aspires to articulate our theopoiesis (our divine
    cooperations via kenosis, katharsis & synergia) and theosis (our ineffable, unitive divine
    participations via theurgy & theoria), will necessarily quickly unsay itself,
    apophatically. Above all, suitable analogical predications must be employed.
    What we can say, then, for example, is that ...
    God suffers impassibly.
    Norris Clarke critiques Hartshorne, whose process approach ignores the possibility of a
    rich, inner life of divine plenitude, thereby overemphasizing ad extra divine relations.
    At the same time, in the same way that he employs the esse naturale vs intentionale
    distinction, which seems consistent with open theism, he similarly draws a distinction
    between
    God’s infinitely intense interior joy (never rising higher in intensity of perfection) and its
    relational expressions, which do entail a divine enrichment via novel determinate
    modalities of expression of those joys, such finite modalities being limited participations
    in that infinite Source.
    This reminds me of Boyd’s distinctions between the intensity and scope of aesthetic
    experience as well as between definitional and constitutive (relational) dispositions, all
    consistent with my appreciation of the essence-energies distinctions.
    Note:
    Clarke affirms divine contingency. I interpret his reference to the “eternal now” not so
    much as an argument for or against a/temporality but as his attempt to remain modally
    agnostic, temporally speaking.
    In other words, in affirming the THAT of divine contingency, i.e. openness, at the same
    time (ha ha), he’s saying that that affirmation is nontemporal, that it’s not taking a
    stance on HOW temporally thick or thin God’s now might be.
    For Clarke, the question of divine foreknowledge springs from a category error re: god-
    talk (needs to be decisively analogical). He otherwise certainly seems on board with the
    “open future” conception of the open theists.
    Clarke wouldn’t object to a temporal view of the divine relational consciousness, i.e. God
    as changing, as long as we’re only referring to esse intentionale and as long as God’s only
    affected — not improved — by relations with the world.
    In my view, each such formal distinction (not quibbling with thomistic real-logical
    relations as the logical can refer --- not just to conceptual distinctions, but --- to
    noninherent but inseparable relations) may or may not reflect a divine contingency, for
    example, vis a vis the future (properly conceived!), mutability (of this or that attribute),
    im/passibility, a/temporality, or even enrichment. At least the necessity and/or
    contingency of each attribute or energy would have to be argued separately. One could,
    for example, affirm open theism vis a vis omniscience but still deny passibility.
    Fr Clarke could be interpreted to be, using Boyd’s terms, affirming an enrichment of the
    divine aesthetic scope while denying same regarding intensity, especially given his
    recognition of one Source of value — thus supporting a thin notion of enrichment or a
    thin passibility vis a vis the divine esse intentionale.
    Regarding most theological opinions (vs de fide), I don’t have a dog in such hunts. I’m
    still trying to understand the questions they raise.
    It seems to me that Orthodox approaches to panentheism (as indwelling w/sufficient
    ontological distinctions beyond just mereological distinctions) do not threaten classical
    theistic approaches to divine attributes, immutability, impassibility and so on.
    Because open theism entails no theologic amendments to omniscience and only
    metaphysical reconceptions re: temporality, i.e. the nature of the future, it should be
    compatible with Anglican, Roman & Eastern Catholicisms and Orthodoxy, whether via a
    classical theism or proper panentheism.
    Democratizing Theosis for Jesus is a truly Cosmic Christ

    And in despair I bowed my head


    There is no peace on earth I said
    For hate is strong and mocks the song
    Of peace on earth, good will to men

    How might we conceive the implict faith of nonbelievers?


    If we consider our journey in terms of a formative spirituality that fosters what
    Lonergan called authenticity (secular conversions) and sustained authenticity (being
    in love), and ...
    if we conceive of the Spirit as inviting, coaxing, even wooing each person from image to
    likeness into intimacy ...
    then, at least, in terms of orthopraxy, we might affirm the presence, in any person who'd
    respond, of such theotic realizations as

    kenosis  (e.g.  self-transcendence) and

    katharsis  (e.g.  purgative  way), which foster


    synergia  (cooperating  with  the  spirit  & divine  energies).
    So, in the  domain  of orthopraxis, a person might realize the fruits of a somewhat
    inchoate theosis. Its soteriological trajectory would be abundantly efficacious.
    How would we, then, otherwise conceive (not indifferently) the more robustly theotic as
    realized in the explicit faith of believers?
    The more robustly theotic will necessarily move beyond our ascetical and orthopraxic
    concerns to  the more explicitly mystical, which will also  entail such theotic realizations
    as the

    theurgic  (e.g.  rituals  &  practices  such as the hesychastic way of the heart) and

    illuminative  (including  initiations into community  &  mystagogy), which will


    culminate  in

    theoria  (i.e. loving  contemplation).


    None of this to  suggest  that  an  implicit faith  cannot  realize  truly unitive  goals,
    such  as  through  synergia, but only  to recognize  that,  optimally,  theosis will realize
    the  gnosiological  gifts  of  special revelation.
    In the life of implicit faith, like Pip in Great Expectations, one realizes reality's
    pervasively donative nature and responds appropriately in becoming a true
    gentleperson, even while otherwise remaining ignorant or even positively confused
    regarding the identity of one's benefactor.

    In the life of explicit faith, one learns the identity of humankind's Benefactor and
    one's ascetical soteriological trajectory is supplemented by the superabundant
    realizations of a mystical sophiological trajectory, which further fosters,
    contemplatively, our being in love with God, others, the cosmos and even ourselves.
    When we say contemplative, it can refer to a
    prayer practice or means or method, which is contemplative;
    associated cognitive-affective dispositions or felt contemplative experiences, including
    consolations & desolations requiring discernment; and the
    terminus or ends or ultimate goals in terms of transformation or our love of God and
    neighbor (including even our self and the cosmos) via our increasingly habitual
    cooperation with the gifts of the Spirit.
    Our emphasis, thus, remains on love, which is the goal of transformation.
    Now, surely the question must beg for some regarding the plurality of explicit faiths.
    And that's a reality I've treated elsewhere. In a nutshell, I believe there's an essential
    orthopraxic soteriological trajectory that inheres in all who cooperate with the Spirit,
    whether through implicit or explicit faith. Otherwise, I view the plurality of explicit
    faiths, for the most part, as diverse polydoxic sophiological trajectories, each, more or
    less, properly emphasizing different contingent expressions of the divine
    simplicity to which we respond, thereby sustaining our authenticity, by being in loving
    relationships that, however variously constituted, invariably participate in God's love.
     

    For my part, my soteriologic resonances are distinctly pneumatological and my


    sophiological commitments are profoundly Christological and trinitarian. So, beyond
    any facile syncretism or insidious indifferentism, I do recognize Jesus as both the
    Incarnate Human One and the Eternal Cosmic Christ and commend following Him to
    all who would will to journey to our unitive destiny ever more swiftly and with very less
    hindrance (which is to say with the greatest consolations and most efficient economy i.e.
    sacramental).

    How would I plead to charges of interfaith, interreligious and ecumenical irenicism?


    Guilty.
    Why do I otherwise imagine myself exculpable?
    It's not a false irenicism.
     
    Then rang the bells more loud and deep
    God is not dead, nor does he sleep
    The wrong shall fail, the right prevail 
    With peace on earth, good will to men
     
    Then ringing singing on its way
    The world revolved from night to day
    A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
    Of peace on earth, good will to men 
    A Roundup of Recent Reviews of Rohr & Morrell’s Divine
    Dance
    A Roundup of Recent Reviews of Rohr & Morrell’s Divine
    Dance
    Sanders said: And my long—forgive me—review has one main point: it’s that The Divine
    Dance isn’t about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It’s a book about an alternative
    spirituality of Flow, committed to a metaphysic that refuses to recognize a distinction
    between God and the world. <<<<<
    Shouldn’t somebody on Sanders' team have checked the heterodoxy equivalent of
    Snopes.com before concluding that Rohr's committed to a metaphysic that refuses to
    recognize a distinction between God and the world?
    As Walter Cardinal Kasper suggests: As Christians, we should keep to the rule of St.
    Ignatius of Loyola, and instead of ridiculing each other we should interpret each other in
    the best possible orthodox way. If we don’t, meaningful theological dialogue becomes
    impossible and sacra theologia turns into a political and ideological battlefield.
    Rohr's famously known to be a self-described panentheist, wholly within his Roman
    Catholic tradition, which precisely maintains ontological distinctions between God and
    the world, coupled with robust conceptions of creaturely participations/partakings.
    The best orthodox interpretation, then, would have been that Rohr was not doing
    ontotheology or metaphysical modeling but theopoetics or a metaphorical trinitophany
    (like Panikkar's christophany).
    Sanders wrote: Church Fathers weren’t talking about dancing when they used the word
    “perichoresis,” which isn’t the origin of our word “choreography” (that would be
    choreuo, not choreo). Is it a bit pedantic to point out that Rohr is guilty of spreading
    etymological urban legends? Probably so. <<<<<
    Definitely so, especially since, again, the best orthodox interpretation would be that
    Rohr was not departing from LaCugna, who knowingly employed dance vis a vis
    perichoresis --- precisely not from philological warrant, which she clearly said it lacked,
    but --- due only to metaphorical effectiveness.
    Anticipating the harshness of his critique and the devastating
    pastoral conclusions that would ensue, did Sanders not have a
    greater responsibility to ensure the best orthodox interpretation,
    to consider the possibility that, at worst, Rohr was being inartful
    but certainly does not hold and has not historically taught
    something so egregiously wrong (pantheism, Sanders' MAIN
    POINT) that it would get him into trouble with the Vatican, even?
    Perichoresis as Vehicle Negativa in Rohr’s Divine Dance
    – a polydoxic trinito-phany in continuity with an
    orthodoxic trinito-logy
    RE: And my long—forgive me—review has one main point: it’s that The Divine Dance
    isn’t about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It’s a book about an alternative spirituality
    of Flow, committed to a metaphysic that refuses to recognize a distinction between
    God and the world. <<<<< Fred Sanders
    Well, no. It's not.
    Human perichoretic participation refers to neither the Trinity's essence (ousia) nor its
    persons (hypostaseis) but to the uncreated energies (energeiai), which are loving,
    saving and deifying. Thus our human union with God is neither substantial nor
    hypostatic.

    Classical ontological distinctions between creatures and Creator are


    maintained, as humans don't participate in God's essence!
     
    As per Walter Cardinal Kasper:
    As Christians, we should keep to the rule of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and
    instead of ridiculing each other we should interpret each other in the best
    possible orthodox way. If we don’t, meaningful theological dialogue becomes
    impossible and sacra theologia turns into a political and ideological
    battlefield.

    These distinctions pertain even to eucharistic theology. Apophatic theology doesn't


    convey objective knowledge (episteme) but leads, trans-apophatically and trans-
    rationally, to subjective experience (gnosis) of God as its goal.
    These understandings of theotic (deifying) sanctification and glorification are wholly
    compatible, soteriologically, with notions of justification, many would contend, even
    those of reformed traditions.
    Previously, I purposefully used vehicle negativa as distinct from via negativa, as the
    latter refers to a rational mode and a form of kataphasis, while the former refers to a
    transrational experience or participation, a form of apophasis, which does not proceed
    through essentialist negations but, instead, through ineffable existential experiences or
    REALizations. The latter are robustly relational in an interpersonal sense, experiences
    beyond words. Such is the reality to which perichoresis vaguely refers without robustly
    describing.
    A vehicle negativa transports and trans-forms us, while a via negativa in-forms us, such
    as the distinction between knowledge of and knowledge about, the latter a problem to be
    solved, the former a lover to be loved. Both are necessary but one is a means, the
    other an end.
    To be more clear, some Orthodox theologians point out that both the via positiva and via
    negativa are RATIONAL approaches, both sharing the same trajectory of increasing
    descriptive accuracy, whether through affirmation of what something is, ontologically,
    or is like, analogically, or through negation of what something is not or is not like. That’s
    how kataphasis and apophasis are largely conceived in the West, often through radically
    logo-centric lenses.
    When Lossky employed an apophatic, perichoretic strategy, though, he referenced a
    transrational mystical experience moreso in terms of ineffability. He aspires merely to a
    successful relational reference but does not ambition a successful metaphysical
    description. (This distinction applies, by the way, to so much of nondual teaching in
    Buddhist & Hindu traditions, as they aren’t doing metaphysics as much as they are
    leading us into experiences or real-izations).
    The Orthodox priest, Dumitru Staniloae, according to some, was more rigorous and
    nuanced than Lossky. He would refer to our ineffable experiences as transrational and
    trans-apophatic. That’s why I prefer to refer to
    trinito-logy vs trinito-phany.
    The difference between a metaphysical image and a model does not lie in how
    exhaustively it is employed in different contexts as a basic metaphor. An image does
    symbolic and metaphorical work, poetically and aesthetically. A model, though, is based
    on a root metaphor, which serves as an heuristic device, metaphysically, employed
    systematically, ordinarily, in terms of classical Aristotelian causes --- material, efficient,
    formal and final, setting forth putative relationships to bridge emergent phenomena
    such as in natural theologies, quantum interpretations, cosmogonies, biopoietics,
    philosophies of mind and symbolic language origins.
    While exhaustively applied, Rohr's images aren't doing the work of models,
    metaphysically or onto-theologically, only the work of metaphors, theo-poetically,
    aesthetically. Rohr's images already presuppose a classical Scotistic-Palamatic
    metaphysical frame of distinctions, a model of divine essence, hypostatic persons and
    divine energies, panentheistically interpreted. There is another method in play here,
    theopoetically, at the intersection between theology and spirituality.
    Once we define the applicable methodological contours of the development of doctrine
    from historical exegetical and polemical environments, through what additional
    methods might we authenticate their spiritually transformative efficacies?

    Theopoetics.

    We abide with the paradox, tolerate the ambiguity, nurture the creative
    tensions, seek out the antinomies, resist rushes to closure and admonish
    the voices of certitude but move forward, anyway, in humility, with
    hospitality, doing what we've discerned we must and saying what we believe
    we should, dialogically, boldly and imaginatively!

    As Scott Holland suggests: Good theology is a kind of transgression, a kind of excess, a


    kind of gift. It is not a smooth systematics, a dogmatics, or a metaphysics; as a
    theopoetics it is a kind of writing. It is a kind of writing that invites more writing. Its
    narratives lead to other narratives, its metaphors encourages new metaphors, its
    confessions more confessions . . .

    If all too certain theological understandings get undermined and theopolitical modes of
    historical discourse challenged, theo-poetics will have a chance to successfully advance
    the spiritual efficacies of otherwise sterile abstract doctrines, bringing them alive in the
    concrete lives of the faithful through fruitful ortho-relational, orthocommunal,
    orthopathic and orthopraxic realizations.
    As Roland Faber puts it: One moves into an “undefined land” in which one experiences
    differently, begins to think differently, and is encouraged nor just to adopt to, but to
    create new theological language. Today, I think that not only can we not control this
    field or region in fact, but that it is of the essence of process theology to be an
    uncontrollable undertaking in the infinite adventure of God-talk, and consciously so,
    in modes that I came to name “theopoetics.”

    Rohr is merely the latest in a long pedigree of people who want to run with the Trinity
    (or dance, as it were) to --- not draw conclusions, but --- to create new theological
    language, encourage new metaphors,  and to help us experience differently those
    historical realities that were developed with our traditions out of what we might call the
    “formations contexts” of the Trinity within the pro-Nicene polemical and exegetical
    environment.
    I would even call my own writings regarding Rohr’s ouvre a systematic theophany and
    not systematic theology.
    Still, for Rohr, onto-theology would be descriptive but not pejorative. After all, one could
    argue that his fellow Franciscan, the medieval Scotus, was among the first, great onto-
    theologians! That said, again, that's not what he's doing in this book.
    The Divine Dance does not amend classical ad intra, ontological  accounts of the
    immanent, essential Trinity (vis a vis questions of who and what). Arguably, neither
    does it amend the traditional ad extra, divine communication accounts of the revealed,
    economic Trinity (vis a vis when, where and how). Instead, it addends these
    approaches, supplementing them with a theopoetic, trinito-phanic, perichoretic critique.
    Some have invoked perichoresis --- not as a kataphatic, root metaphor of onto-theology,
    but --- as an apophatic, more properly trans-apophatic, theopoetic critique. Such
    theologians, while very much affirming the indispensable noetic trajectory of logos in
    every theo-logos, employ perichoresis as a vehicle negativa, which serves to remind us
    that all symbols, whether sacramentals or metaphors --- not only reveal, but --- conceal
    the realities, which they reference.
    Accordingly, a perichoretic critique, evoking the poetry of dance, doesn't at all deny
    ontological root metaphors, much less substituting its own (e.g. flow) but, instead,
    invites us to keep the trinito-phanic metaphors coming!
     
     
    A great Orthodox conception of Perichoresis
     
    from:
    https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/orthodoxbridge/plucking-the-tulip-4-an-
    eastern-orthodox-critique-of-the-reformed-doctrine-of-predestination/
    Orthodox freedom arises from ecstasis and self-transcendence, going
    beyond ourselves (Lacugna 1991:261).  The freedom spoken of here is
    based on the communion of persons, not the fulfillment of autonomous
    individuals.  Zizioulas draws the distinction between the individual and
    the person noting that the individual becomes a person by loving and
    being loved (Zizioulas 1985:48-49).  True human freedom means going
    beyond our individual self and becoming open to others which finds its
    ultimate fulfillment in union with Christ and life in the Trinity.

    Eastern Orthodoxy’s emphasis on the person (hypostasis) leads to


    freedom and relationality.

    The fact that God exists because of the Father shows that His existence,
    His being is the consequence of a free person; which means, in the in the
    last analysis, that not only communion but also freedom, the free person,
    constitutes true being.  True being comes only from the free person, from
    the person who loves freely–that is, who freely affirms his being, his
    identity, by means of an event of communion with other
    persons (Zizioulas 1985:18; emphasis in original).

    This in turn opens the way for perichoresis, the idea that the three Persons
    of the Trinity mutually inhere in one another (LaCugna 1991:270 ff.). 
    Perichoresis lays the foundation for the idea of persons in communion,
    both in terms of intradivine relations within the Trinity and our being
    invited (elected) into that interpersonal communion.  (See John of
    Damascus’ De Fide Orthodoxa Chapter VIII (NPNF Vol. 2 page 11 Note 8).)

    end of quote

     
    Assuming such a theopoetic critique, then, one must avoid the category error of
    employing such perichoretic references (e.g. dance, flow or relating) as kataphatic and
    onto-theological root metaphors, when, indeed, they are precisely otherwise intended to
    serve as artistic conceptual placeholders. This is to say that such placeholders,
    apophatically and phenomenologically, deliberately bracket such metaphysics. They
    much less so deny old models, interpretations and metaphors and much more so
    encourage ever new, always deeper, understandings!
    Bottomline, I knew Rohr wasn't doing onto-theology or metaphysics precisely because,
    as a Roman Catholic and panentheist, he's manifestly not committed to a
    metaphysic that refuses to recognize a distinction between God and the
    world.
    Also, when reading Rohr and Morrell's references to divine energies, I relexively put on
    the Orthodox lens and thought of Gregory of Palamas and, in turn, interpreted their
    perichoretic references as apophatic, theopoetic critiques, for example, consistent with
    Vladimir Lossky's approach. Any implicit metaphysic would be Scotistic, trinitarian
    distinctions consistent with his Eucharistic, Christological and Incarnational
    approaches, some representing minority reports but not otherwise unorthodox.
    This is all to point out that I knew before reading the Divine Dance that Rohr's
    approach to the Trinity with Morrell would be neither some ad hoc poetic musing nor
    some fanciful flight of a superficial theological imagination. Rather, I am poised, here, to
    harvest the fruits that will have emerged organically from a theological crop that's been
    long cultivated in the ground of

    Scotistic intuitions (in continuity with Peirce),

     
    Franciscan sensibilities (often a minority account within larger traditions),

     
    Patristic outlooks (apokatastasis and practical universalism, oh my!),

     
    polydoxic sophiologies (others are on efficacious wisdom trajectories?! e.g. Gregory
    of Palamas),
    a generous ecclesiology (preferential option for the marginalized, even),
    a pluralistic pneumatology (the Spirit 's also over there?! in her?!),
    a Goldilocks anthropology --- neither too pessimistic (e.g. total depravity) nor
    optimistic (ergo, no facile syncretism, no insidious indifferentism, no false irenicism)
    and, paramount,
    a contemplative stance that affirms a most robust, participatory relationality, beyond
    a mere propositional, problem-solving preoccupation.
    None of this wouldn't a priori be inconsistent either with various Arminian, Molinist or
    Open approaches, with various logical defenses or evidential theodicies to problems of
    evil (whether Augustine, Plantinga or Oord), with various creation accounts (ex nihilo,
    profundis, multitudinae, tehomic) or various wisdom traditions vis a vis their shared
    soteriologic trajectory of human authenticity (an implict pneumatological,
    Christological inclusivism via Lonergan's transcendental imperatives and conversions)
    and diverse sophiologic trajectories of sustained authenticity (via being in love).
    The late Don Gelpi, SJ had a saying: "orthopraxy authenticates orthodoxy."
    Gelpi had Lonergan's conception of authenticity in mind as he so related "right practice"
    to "right belief. " And Gelpi expanded Lonergan's authenticity to include what he called
    five "conversions." Those conversions refer to intellectual , affective, moral, social and
    religious transformations. We might, then, think of them, respectively, in terms of

    right believing,
    right desiring,
    right behaving, 
    right belonging and
    right relating.

    Rohr and Morrell address these in spades! more appropriately, HEARTS!


    Following Lonergan and immersed in the pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce, Gelpi
    would offer that any authentication of the various dogma, practices, liturgies, rituals and
    doctrines --- not just of Christianity, but --- of any of the world's great traditions, as well
    as indigenous religions, could be cashed out in terms of how well they foster ongoing
    human transformation.
    Now, this doesn't invoke that vulgar pragmatism of "if it's useful, then it's true," but it
    does suggest that, wherever, whenever and in whomever we witness
    right belonging ,
    right desiring,
    right behaving and/or
    right relating, then we will more likely also encounter
    right believing.
    It's no accident, then, that systematic theology will typically address five integral human
    value-realizations:
    1) truth via creed, as articulated in beliefs about reality's first and last things, in what
    we call an eschatology, which orients us;
    2) beauty via cult-ivation, as celebrated in life's liturgies, rituals and devotions, in what
    we call a soteriology, which sanctifies us;
    3) goodness via code, as preserved in codifications and norms, in an incarnational or
    sacramental economy, which nurtures and heals us;
    4) unity via community, as enjoyed in familial and faith fellowships, in what we call an
    ecclesiology, which empowers and unites us; and
    5) freedom via contemplation, as realized through radical self-transcendence, in a
    given sophiology, which will ultimately save and liberate us.
    Rohr and Morrell, right up front, ask:
    "If Trinity is supposed to describe the very heart of the nature of God, and yet it has
    almost no practical or pastoral implications in most of our lives… if it’s even possible
    that we could drop it tomorrow and it would be a forgettable, throwaway doctrine…
    then either it can’t be true or we don’t understand it!"

    As prologue, they introduce the pragmatic critique, inquiring whether orthopraxy has
    authenticated Trinitarian orthodoxy!
    They make the point: "Remember, mystery isn’t something that you cannot understand
    — it is something that you can endlessly understand!"
    They don't confuse a lack of comprehensibilty with a lack of intelligibility. Thomas Oord
    similarly resists a retreat into theological skepticism when it comes to our God concepts
    vis a vis the problem of evil and thereby has articulated a theology of love (considering
    putative God-constraints, such as essential, metaphysical or kenotic). Similarly
    eschewing a radical skepticism regarding Trinitarian doctrine, Rohr and Morrell are on
    their way to articulating --- spoiler alert --- a theology of love!

    Here comes the leit motif of Rohr's lifelong emphasis on the fruit of the contemplative
    stance: "Whatever is going on in God is a flow, a radical relatedness, a perfect
    communion between Three— a circle dance of love."
    They ask: "Instead of God watching life happen from afar and judging it… How about
    God being inherent in life itself? How about God being the Life Force of everything?
    Instead of God being an Object like any other object… How about God being the Life
    Energy between each and every object (which we would usually call Love or Spirit)?"
    This reminds me of the Orthodox hesychastic conception of Divine Energies as well as
    Joe Bracken's process notion of the Divine Matrix. In some ways, it speaks to Scotus'
    univocity of being.
    Whether one employs a root metaphor like substance, process, experience, energy or
    flow, mystics and philosophers have long intuited some type of unitary being, some type
    of interconnectedness that allows objective interactivity across what may otherwise be
    ontological gulfs, which would be logically necessary to account also for the
    intrasubjective integrity of each unified self, who then participates in those glorious
    unitive strivings of all loving intersubjective intimacies.
    I'm willing to bet, though, that those above references to life forces and energies will
    have many exclaiming a heterodoxic: "Game! Set! Match!" That is, they will filter the
    rest of the book through the cloudy lens of their facile,  hence errant, metaphysical
    presuppositions --- that Rohr articulates a pantheism!
    So few traffic in the nuances required to distinguish between pan-en-theism, pan-
    entheism, panen-theism or cosmotheandrism, theocosmocentrism, between an
    objective unitary identity and a subjective unitive intimacy or between epistemic, ontic
    and interpersonal nondualities. I won't tease out all the relevant nuances, here, but I can
    only suggest from a rather long acquaintance with both Rohr and Morrell that they
    aren't playing theology without a suitable philosophical net! Keep reading!
    Here comes another minority opinion grounded in a long established Scotistic
    Franciscan sensibility - that the Incarnation was not occasioned by some human felix
    culpa but was in the Divine pneumatological cards from the cosmic get-go: "This God is
    the very one whom we have named 'Trinity'— the flow who flows through everything,
    without exception, and who has done so since the beginning."
    Yes, indeed, for God so loved the world!
    "But divine things can never be objectified in this way; they can only be 'subjectified'
    by becoming one with them! When neither yourself nor the other is treated as a mere
    object, but both rest in an I-Thou of mutual admiration, you have spiritual knowing.
    Some of us call this contemplative knowing."
    There it is - -- the distinction between the objective and subjective, the merely
    propositional and the robustly relational!
    Ultimately, beyond the truth, beauty, goodness and unity, in which all creation
    participates, there emerged a freedom gifted by that contemplative faculty found in the
    human imago Dei: "But we have to be taught how to 'gaze steadily into this law of
    perfect freedom, and make this our habit,' as James so brilliantly intuits it."
    Love and freedom remain integrally related to the extent that in addition to any
    essential and metaphysical constraints God may even kenotically self-constrain toward
    the end of augmenting our freedom, amplifying our love!
    The following is so poignantly put:
    "Did you ever imagine that what we call 'vulnerability' might just be the key to
    ongoing growth? In my experience, healthily vulnerable people use every occasion to
    expand, change, and grow. Yet it is a risky position to live undefended, in a kind of
    constant openness to the other—because it would mean others could sometimes
    actually wound you (from vulnus, 'wound'). But only if we choose to take this risk
    antie also allow the exact opposite possibility: the other might also gift you, free you,
    and even love you. But it is a felt risk every time. Every time."
    Did you ever imagine that God might take risks? Felt risks? Precisely to free you? That
    beyond any omniscience, omnibenevolence, omnipotence, omnipresence --- all suitably
    (apophatically) nuanced as capacities greater than which could not otherwise be
    conceived without falling into either metaphysical incoherence or theo-logical
    contradictions --- God passionately experiences, also, a divine omnipathy? precisely
    through the Incarnation!
    How does one merit this type of love?
    "Jesus never has any such checklist test before he heals anybody. He just says, as it
    were, 'Are you going to allow yourself to be touched? If so, let’s go!' The touchable ones
    are the healed ones; it’s pretty much that simple. There’s no doctrinal test. There’s no
    moral test. There is no checking out if they are Jewish, gay, baptized, or in their first
    marriage. There’s only the one question: Do you want to be healed? If the answer is a
    vulnerable, trusting, or confident one, the flow always happens, and the person is
    healed. Try to disprove me on that!"
    Here we encounter the wisdom of an authentic formative spirituality, where right
    relating precedes right belonging which fosters right desiring which encourages right
    behaving and sees right believing much more so as a participatory orthocommunal,
    orthopathic and orthopraxic response, much less so as an orthodoxic proposition,
    which, truth be told, more often presents in polydoxic sophiologies, which entail the
    wisdom of love (beyond our philosophical love of wisdom).
    While the Dance perichoretically circles around truth, beauty, goodness, unity and
    freedom, each of these divine imperatives integrally intertwined with and leading to the
    others, because of our radical human finitude we will ordinarily follow a transformative
    path conveyed first in community and gifting us, even, our deepest desires. The pro-
    positional, apart from the participational and relational, will lack normative impetus
    unless those norms derive, first, from some energizing evaluative dis-positions.
    It's beyond the scope of this consideration but modern semiotic science with roots in
    medieval Scotism very much resonates with this emphasis on relationality, which need
    rely on no robust metaphysic, no particular root metaphor, only a vague phenomenology
    (Christianity can remain in search of a metaphysic!):
    "What physicists and contemplatives alike are confirming is that the foundational
    nature of reality is relational; everything is in relationship with everything else. As a
    central Christian mystery, we’ve been saying this from the very beginning while still
    utterly failing to grasp its meaning."

    My favorite quite from the Divine Dance:


    "God does not love you because you are good. God loves you because God
    is good. I should just stop writing right here. There’s nothing more to say,
    and it’ll take the rest of your life to internalize this."
    Merton once lamented that our churches do a great job helping socialize people but a
    terrible job transforming them. He was not using my broadly conceived notion of
    transformation, which includes Lonergan's conversions, like the social. Instead, he was
    talking about that growth in intimacy with God, self, others and cosmos that lays in
    store for those who properly relate, contemplatively. Rohr and Morrell touch on this:
    "Most Christians have not been taught contemplation. Contemplation is learning how
    to abide in and with the Witnessing Presence planted within you, which of course is the
    Holy Spirit, almost perfectly symbolized by the ark of the covenant. If you keep
    'guard,' like two cherubim, over the dangerous, open-ended space of your transient
    feelings and thoughts,  you will indeed be seated on the mercy seat, where God dwells
    in the Spirit. The passing flotsam and jetsam on your stream of consciousness will then
    have little power to trap or imprison you. The only difference between people that
    matters is the difference between those who allow this space to fill iith flow— and those
    who don’t, or won’t, allow it. Like Mary, the model for contemplatives, 'it is done unto
    you,' and you can only allow. Always."
    If the kind reader can grasp these fundamental distinctions from Part I of the Divine
    Dance and thereby realize that Rohr and Morrell are supplementing not rewriting
    Trinitarian doctrine, they'll be readily disposed to receive the gifts of the book's
    remainder, which are participational, contemplative, pastoral or, in other words,
    distinctions that can make a transformational difference in one's life!
    The crux of the Sanders critique was: "And my long—forgive me—review has one main
    point: it’s that The Divine Dance isn’t about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It’s a
    book about an alternative spirituality of Flow, committed to a metaphysic that refuses
    to recognize a distinction between God and the world."
    Beyond either classical theism or panentheism (broadly conceived, as it has many
    versions variously heterodox), Rohr was being charged with PANtheism.
    Long story short, he's NOT a pantheist.
    I've seen panentheist flirtations even in Reformed, Calvinist notions (the great
    Edwards!) and have drawn great inspiration from Wesleyan Arminian theologians in the
    same direction! We're talking about LOVE here, so, I'm confident this misunderstanding
    will resolve, happily!
    RE: essence (ousia) vs (hypostaseis) vs uncreated energies (energeiai)

    One way of interpreting these distinctions would be to consider the first two metaphysically
    and the last mystically. That’s been partly my thrust in distinguishing trinoto-logy from
    trinoto-phany, rational from trans-rational, kata/apo-phatic from trans-apophatic,
    speculative from relational, philosophical from contemplative, ontotheology from
    theopoetic, episteme from gnosis, science from art.

    My case in favor of Rohr’s project has been to emphasize it as an exercise in post-


    experiential effabling about ineffable contemplative encounters, drawing on reflections of
    our contemplative community and tradition.

    Clearly, though, Rohr has never advocated an arational contemplative stance, as if


    mysticism gifted a gnosis unconstrained by doctrine, tradition, philosophy or science. The
    contemplative, relational, mystical approach goes beyond these other epistemic approaches
    but clearly never without them.

    So, too, the distinctions between essence (ousia) vs (hypostaseis) vs uncreated energies
    (energeiai) are much more subtle than I’ve let on for fear of going too deep into the
    metaphysical weeds. But, I’ll set those fears aside.

    Distinguishing the divine energies from the divine essence does, of course, have a
    philosophical and doctrinal angle in addition to the mystical, all which must be expressed in
    continuity. There’s a question of how much continuity vs how much free rein to be
    answered. It’s hard to put this succinctly without coming across too bluntly, but the old
    essentialism vs nominalism, Thomism vs Scotism, analogy vs univocity of being, tensions
    come into play. This problem cannot be satisfactorily addressed using essentialistic
    approaches.

    One must honor Fr Rohr’s Franciscan sensibilities and contemplative approach and turn to
    Scotus, placing him in dialogue with Gregory Palamas regarding divine energies in the
    Orthodox tradition. The distinction between the divine essence is neither what Scotus would
    call real nor merely conceptual but is, instead, a formal distinction, not wholly unrelated to
    what Peirce came to call thirdness in his modal ontology. There is a great deal of continuity
    between Scotus and Palamas, Peirce and Hartshorne, and panentheism (broadly conceived).
    Just for the record, my point is that Rohr did not elaborate a trinito-phanic interpretation
    wholly apart from an eminently defensible Scotistic-Palamic metaphysic-theology. He went
    theo-poetic-ally beyond but not without an onto-theo-logic.

    Some my have confused his not being sufficiently Thomist with his not being doctrinally
    sound. Those are two wholly different considerations. There is great promise for bridging
    East and West, Catholic and Orthodox, divine essence and divine energies, if we pay more
    attention to real vs conceptual vs formal vs modal distinctions, if we open our hearts and
    minds to both Scotus and Palamas.

    Note:
    Rohr would probably affirm divine passibility while denying mutability (cf. Denis
    Edwards). His trinitarian approach might be influenced by Joe Bracken, who expanded
    on Whitehead and Hartshorne (Bracken deliberately mindful, too, of orthodox notions
    of transcendence) using a field theoretic approach (social ontology employing fields). At
    least, it seems Rohr often uses such field metaphors and he has referenced a divine
    matrix, too. Not all Catholics think any of this succeeds or that it or panentheism is
    necessary (Norris Clarke).
    Amos Yong, with whom I most resonate, shares some of Bracken’s insights regarding
    reality’s pervasive interrelationality, interactivity and intersubjectivity. But he derived
    those insights from a pneumatological reading of creation narratives, not from a process
    cosmology.
    Footnote regarding Sanders' hyper-Critique:
    Being immersed in Rohr's spirituality and theology for decades, I gathered his
    meaning easily and implicitly. I would be unable to easily discern where he might
    have more artfully been more explicit in his presupposed onto-theo-LOGY to keep the
    uninitiated reader, one as intelligent as Sanders, from misinterpreting anything. I just
    don't know but my sneaking suspicion is that Sanders will accept any needed
    clarifications and place part of the blame on Rohr. At the same time, as a scholar,
    Sanders could've inquired further into Rohr's body of work to equip himself with better
    hermeneutical lenses, especially once he realized how hypercritical his review would
    be, if only not to embarrass himself, but also to avoid offending charity.
     
    Confer:
    In "Divinization: A Lost Pearl" Fr Rohr writes:
    If you want to do your own research here, the fathers of the church to study are St.
    Clement of Alexandria, Origen, St. Basil, St. Athanasius, and St. Irenaeus in the West;
    and St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Maximus the Confessor, Pseudo
    Macarius, Diadochus, and St. Gregory Palamas in the East. The primary texts are
    in the Philokalia collection and the teachings of the Hesychastic monks.
    https://cac.org/divinization-lost-pearl-2016-04-14/
    In "The Univocity of Being" Fr Rohr quotes Bonaventure:
    Christ has something in common with all creatures. With the stone he [sic] shares
    existence, with the plants he shares life, with the animals he shares sensation, and with
    the angels he shares intelligence. Thus all things are transformed in Christ since in the
    fullness of his nature he embraces some part of every creature. —Bonaventure [1]
    https://cac.org/the-univocity-of-being-2016-11-14/
    See also:

     
    Divine Simplicity and the Formal Distinction
    http://lyfaber.blogspot.com/2010/02/divine-simplicity-and-formal.html
    The Essence/Energies Distinction and the Myth of Byzantine Illogic
    https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2016/06/27/the-essenceenergies-distinction-and-the-
    myth-of-byzantine-illogic/

    “Farewell, Divine Dance”? An Open Letter to The Gospel Coalition.


    http://mikemorrell.org/2016/12/farewell-divine-dance-open-letter-gospel-coalition/
    See:
    http://theopoetics.net/what-is-theopoetics/definitions/
    Special Footnote:
    Deeper into the theological woods, I wanted to mention that, in reconciling Fr Rohr's
    reading of Catherine Mowry LaCugna's trinitarian theology to his own Franciscan
    sensibilities, which employ robustly participatory accounts of communion, I found
    palamite distinctions helpful, especially amenable to scotistic distinctions.
    See: https://www.academia.edu/30618485/PARTICIPATING_IN_THE_DIVINE_DA
    NCE
    LaCugna, herself, would not make this move because she does not similarly interpret
    palamite distinctions. The following article supports my reconciliation of scotistic and
    palamitic approaches in a manner consistent with how I conceive Fr Rohr's implicit
    metaphysical and theological presuppositions (which, however, were not what Divine
    Dance was explicitly about as it was otherwise a trinito-phanic theopoetic and an
    exquisite one, at that!).
    Modern Theology 32:1 January 2016 ISSN 0266-7177 (Print) ISSN 1468-0025 (Online)
    COMMUNION WITH GOD: AN ENERGETIC DEFENSE OF GREGORY PALAMAS
    by D. GLENN BUTNER, JR.
    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/moth.12222/pdf
    theopoetic, trinity, richard rohr, mike morrell, scott holland, roland faber, vehicle
    negativa, via negativa, perichoresis, apophasis, kataphasis, transrational, ousia,
    hypostaseis, energeiai, theosis, theotic, sanctification, justification, glorification,
    perichoresis, perichoretic, episteme, gnosis, trinity, eucharist, apophatic, trans-
    apophatic
    From ontotheological (trinito-logical) is-ness to
    theopoetic (trinito-phanic) dance-ness? YES!!!
    Regarding perichoresis, Rohr has spoken and written rather extensively regarding
    divine interpenetration and indwelling, all in fidelity to its patristic etymological roots.
    Of course its not uncontroversial to univocally predicate such a perichoretic dynamism
    of persons, both divine and imago Dei, but its eminently defensible.
    What's not defensible, though, is the presupposition that Rohr's use of dance imagery
    was grounded in philological warrant, though, rather than metaphorical effectiveness,
    which was precisely LaCugna's position.
    As it is, again, the apophatic and theopoetic evocation of perichoresis refers to a
    relational reality and not an ontotheological modeling attempt. The dance metaphor
    thus belongs to Rohr's trinito-phany and is not over against classical trinito-logy. As
    such, it doesn't tell us how to think about the immanent Trinity in terms of essence, but
    how to experience the economic Trinity in terms of divine energies (or other psalmodic
    not philosophic metaphors).

    Rohr's inviting us into a robustly relational, contemplative, mystical


    experience and not rewriting classical trinitarian formulae.
     

    trinitology, trinitophany, catherine lacugna, richard rohr, mike morrell, perichoresis,


    divine energies, divine dance, immanent trinity, economic trinity, ontotheology,
    theopoetic, mystical experience, contemplative experience, apophatic
    Divine Dance: Rohr, Morrell & Panikkar - Oh my!

    As to Fr. Richard Rohr, I've been getting excited with his every new publication, tape,
    mp3, video, webcast or daily e-mail for almost 40 years now. I can never resist
    hyperbole and superlatives as I commend each new work to family and friends. Why
    stop now?
    I have always unwrapped each new gift from Fr Rohr anticipating its practical, pastoral
    significance, looking for changes I can make in my relationships to God, others, the
    world, even myself. He's never trafficked in idle, academic speculation (nothing wrong
    with that, just not his theo-schtick) but has engaged us with invitations to new ways,
    dis-positions, of seeing, imagining, participating, giving, receiving and experiencing
    Love, moreso than any new pro-positions.
    The Divine Dance, in all of the above ways, in my view, represents Fr Richard's
    magnum opus!
    In a nutshell, right away, I thought: Fr Richard and Mike Morrell have done regarding
    the Trinity precisely what Panikkar did regarding the Christ!
    That's to suggest that in the same way that Panikkar elaborated and related his Christo-
    phany to classical Christo-logy, they've, in effect, elaborated and related their
    beautiful Trinito-phany to classical Trinito-logy.
    Enough of my words. But, to my point, I used the glossary entry for Christophany at the
    Panikkar website and did word substitutions --- Trinity for Christ, Trinito-logy for
    Christo-logy and Trinito-phany for Christo-phany.
    Below's what fell out.
    It's eerily on the mark???!!!
    Trinito-phany is the Christian reflection that the third millennium must elaborate.
    - It does not claim to offer a universal paradigm, nor even necessarily a model to
    adopt, but rather simply to offer to all humanity a believable image of Trinity.
    - It is a Christian word yet opened to the universal problematic in a concrete and
    thereby limited way.
    - The word is used in the sense of “phaneros of the Christian scriptures”, visible and
    public manifestation of a truth. Divine energies are a direct manifestation of God to
    human consciousness and represents an experience.
    - Trinito-phany does not ignore nor claim to abolish the preceding trinito-logy, but
    trinito-phany rather tries to situate itself in a continuity with trinito-logy in order to
    deepen it.
    - Trinito-phany “suggests that the encounter with Trinity can not be reduced to a mere
    doctrinal or intellectual approach”; it wants to elaborate a reflection on the economic
    Trinity and the human being with clear reference to the immanent Trinity: “The logos
    is also the Logos of God, but the Logos is not “all” of the Trinity."
    - The Trinito-phany does not take anything away from the Trinito-logy, but shows
    itself opened to the reality of the Spirit.
    - This contemplative, mystic attitude situates trinito-phany in a more receptive
    posture, in contrast to the more aggressive search on the part of reason.
    - This notion of Trinity must include both the figure from the historic past as well as
    the present reality.
    - Trinito-phany is a reflection opened to the Christian scriptures, but is in dialogue
    with the other religions; opened to dialogue with the past (even the pre-Christian) and
    with the present (even the non-Christian) and in particular the contemporary
    scientific mentality.
    - Trinito-phany, therefore, does not exclude a priori any epiphany of the sacred or the
    divine when searching for an integration of the image of the Trinity in a more
    spacious cosmovision.”
    http://raimon-panikkar.org/english/gloss-christophany.html
    trinitology, trinitophany, christophany, christology, raimon
    panikkar, richard rohr, mike morrell, divine dance, perichoresis,
    trinity, mystical experience, contemplative mystic Morrell’s 4-D
    IMAX Rohrian Perichoretic Adventure
    To get properly immersed in a 4-D IMAX Rohrian theo-phanic adventure, one needs a
    set of 3-D lenses, which implicitly provide Rohr's indispensable theo-logic vision.
    “Of a hundred writers who have held Duns Scotus up to ridicule, not two of them have
    ever read him and not one of them has understood him." ~ Etienne Gilson
    Perhaps the same could be said of Richard Rohr?
    Occasionally, it does seem to be the case that his Franciscan, Scotistic sensibilities,
    which have long yielded minority --- not unorthodox --- reports, leave him
    misunderstood, and ...
    precisely by those who, only having engaged him sparingly, have engaged him
    superficially, thus rashly judging him, even while stridently recommending to others
    that he best go unread!
    Those who fail to trade-in their hermeneutically polarized theo-logical shades before
    entering Rohr's perichoretic theater will not only find his motion picture of our
    relationship to the Trinity blurry, but might feel theologically poked, jolted and shaken
    in their seats from a lack of that hermeneutical context, which otherwise allows his
    imagery to theophanically stoke, ignite and fire-up others of us!
    Rohr's hermeneutic --- not only neither blurs nor ignores, but --- manifestly
    employs very robust notions regarding identity (strict and nonstrict),
    separability and distinction.
    For those searching for his onto-theo-logical, trinito-logical model, it's not articulated
    explicitly in The Divine Dance, which explicates Rohr's theo-poetic, trinito-phanic
    imagery. But it is nevertheless implicated and rather pervasively!
    This is to recognize that Rohr's mystical imagery has always most certainly represented
    a trans-rational, trans-apophatic, experiential and relational over-flow and precisely
    from the rational, kataphatic-apophatic, modalities with which they confluently stream,
    existentially model-ing the doctrinal and liturgical continuities, which they theo-
    phanically transcend but do not theo-logically transgress.
    Rohr employs a robustly relational Hermeneutic of Presence:
    We encounter Rohr's Implicit Hermeneutic (Scotistic & Palamatic) of Presence vis a vis
    the ways he addresses:
    Incarnation (Christological & panentheistic) and
    Eucharist (people gathered, word proclaimed & sacred species), which then onto-theo-
    logically extends to the
    Trinity (perichoretic), trinito--logically, for those searching for his model, which takes:
    essence as ousia
    persons as hypostaseis
    energies as energeiai
    eucharist as christ's transfigured, life-giving, but still human, body, en-hypostasized in
    the Logos and penetrated with divine energies
    participation, as methexis --- not partaking of divine essence, but --- partaking of met-
    ousia
    metousiosis as a multifaceted presence that involves
    semiotic (sign and symbol),
    dynamical (efficacious via divine power and activity),
    penetrative (indwelling) and
    distinct (essentially, conceptually, adequately, formally and/or modally) realities.
    None of this is to claim that such a hermeneutic is either unproblematic or
    uncontroversial, only that, at least in Catholic circles -- Anglican, Orthodox and Roman
    --- it is not unorthodox. I don't see why it would necessarily be incompatible in
    Arminian, Wesleyan or other traditions. Indeed, many of its elements can foster
    ecumenical and interreligious dialogue across all of our great traditions, East and West,
    pneumatologically, panentheistically and polydoxically!
    theo-phanic, Duns Scotus, Etienne Gilson, Richard Rohr, Scotistic sensibilities,
    perichoretic, strict identity, nonstrict identity, separability, onto-theo-logical, trinito-
    logical model, Divine Dance, theo-poetic, trinito-phanic trans-rational, trans-apophatic,
    kataphatic, apophatic, Hermeneutic of Presence, Scotistic, Palamatic, Incarnation,
    Christological, Eucharist, people gathered, word proclaimed, sacred species, onto-theo-
    logically, Trinity, trinito--logical, essence, ousia, hypostaseis, energeiai, en-hypostasized,
    divine energies, methexis, met-ousia, metousiosis, semiotic, divine indwelling), essential
    distinction, conceptual distinction, adequate distinction, formal distinction, modal
    distinction, mike morrell, polydoxy, ecumenical dialogue, interreligious dialogue
    A Fallibilist, Realist, Emergentist, Personalist,
    Existentialist, Polydoxic, Tehomic PanSEMIOentheism
    (tongue only partly in cheek)
    I traffic in a
    1)metaphysical realism, phenomenologically, vis a vis an emergentist account,
    2) moral realism, axiologically, vis a vis an objectivist account,
    3) epistemic fallibilism, epistemologically, vis a vis a pragmatic semiotic realism
    4) holistic personalism, anthropologically, and
    5) humanist existentialism, cosmologically (meta-mythically).
    Charles Sanders Peirce considered god-argumentation a fetish. At the same time, he
    distinguished between that and the formulation of an argument, such as the classical
    proofs. While those are not conclusive, they are suggestive. They do not prove God's
    existence but demonstrate the reasonableness of faith by, at least, establishing the
    equiplausibility of its interpretations versus competing stances, especially regarding
    putative primal grounds, primal origins, primal being, primal destinies, primal meaning
    and primal causes. Such propositions go beyond reason but must not go without it,
    whether empirically or logically. They would not, then, interfere with or compete with
    probabilistic sciences.
    Our traditions contribute so much beyond such creedal propositions. Indeed, ordinarily,
    formative spirituality proceeds first via right belonging, which cultivates right desiring,
    which then inspires right behaving. So, our faiths gift us much more so orthocommunal,
    orthopathic and orthopraxic stances and much less so orthodoxic propositions, which,
    across the different traditions are truly polydoxic, meaning that they addresss different
    dimensions of the same ultimate reality, for example, variously emphasizing unitary
    being or unitive strivings, etc
    Faith, properly, goes beyond reason but not without it. Absolute claims to truth have no
    place in a fallibilist epistemology, which is the only empirically defensible anthropology.
    Faith, properly conceived, is an existential disjunction or a "living as if" that is
    normatively justified and eminently actionable even though not otherwise robustly
    warranted, epistemically, via either descriptive, evidential accuracy, or interpretive,
    explanatory adequacy. It's indeed what Wm. James described as a forced, vital and live
    option, when suitably approached.
    The most satisying theological stance that I've come across in which to situate all faith
    traditions would be a polydoxic, tehomic panentheism, which I'll explain. I ground mine
    in a fallibilist epistemology and vague emergentist phenomenology.
    Without necessarily denying a creatio ex nihilo, some interpret Genesis as describing a
    creatio ex profundis, which refers to a co-eternal void or abyss or tohu va bohu or chaos
    or tehom, which means "the deep," over which the Spirit breathed.
    God's omnipotence would thus be reinterpreted as that power greater than which could
    not be otherwise conceived without raising logical inconsistencies, whether those would
    violate, for example, some agapic logic of the trinity or tehomic logic of the primordial
    deep.
    As with other process-like god conceptions, a tehomic panentheism qualifies the
    classical divine attributes, recognizing limits on God's power, which remains, in my
    view, radically good enough to effect the eschatological gospel promises as well as some
    anticipatory (proleptic) realizations, which, through signs and wonders, provide us
    down payments, earnest deposits, guarantees or the Spirit's seal. If by this logic, for
    example, there might be a rock so big that God could not pick it up, in principle, one
    might suspect it would be human freedom.
    It is my belief, then, that God abhors all suffering, authors no evil, has no instrumental
    use for it but saves, heals and transforms what He can per logics beyond our
    comprehension that would not otherwise allow the obstruction of that freedom, which
    remains indispensable to any authentic love.
    Primarily, the Spirit, in an ineluctably unobtrusive but utterly efficacious way, coaxes all
    forward in love, eternalizing all wholesome trivialities, every trace of human goodness,
    every beginning of a smile.
    It may be that what the great traditions and even indigenous religions share is an
    essential soteriological trajectory, which, through the orthopraxy of various disciplines,
    practices and asceticisms, effects human authenticity (e.g as described by Lonergan and
    others). This authenticity entails "secular conversions" that are available even to people
    of implicit faith, including atheists, agnostics and ignostics.
    Otherwise, then, the traditions then diverge via diverse sophiological trajectories, which,
    through a glorious polydoxy of orthopathic liturgies, cults and rituals, effect a sustained
    authenticity (e.g. akin to Lonergan, Abraham Maslow, Viktor Frankl and others). This
    sustained authenticity entails different ways of being in love with God, others, world and
    self, including manifold and multiform dimensions.
    Human nature remains radically finite. Human epistemology remains inherently
    fallible.
    This polydoxic, tehomic panentheism remains a vague, speculative account,
    theologically, coupled with some anthropological interpretations that grew out of both
    interreligious dialogue and comparative theology. Regarding the logical problem of evil,
    it serves, somewhat, as a defense.
    However, regarding the evidential problem of evil, it resists theodicies, which can
    trivialize the enormity of human pain and the immensity of human suffering in ways
    that are too often calloused. It also requires only a vague phenomenological approach
    rather than any robust metaphysic or root metaphor.
    In other words, it resists saying more than we can possibly know, proving too much or
    telling untellable stories. Mystery perdures, wholly incomprehensible but eminently
    intelligible.
    Some paradox surely dissolves from paradigm shifts or changes in perspective. Some
    resolves dialectically. Some we just evade via a reductio ad absurdum, ignoring it for all
    practical purposes. But some paradoxes, like the mysteries of faith, can be fruitfully
    maintained in a creative tension.
    Human Values
    All human value-realizations probe reality methodologically asking five distinct
    questions:
    1) epistemic-ontic (descriptive)
    2) telic (evaluative)
    3) deontic (normative)
    4) pragmatic (interpretive)
    5) aretaic (transformative)
    Each of these methodologically autonomous probes presupposes all of the others, so
    these probes are axiologically integral for every human value-realization.
    ADDENDUM
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    John Sobert Sylvest


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    How to Bust a Neo-Chalcedonian, Cosmotheandric Move [micro-blog mode, one


    may wish to mute thread] As divine hypostatic realities, the logoi of all finite,
    determinate creaturely becoming proceed from the infinite, nondeterminate
    Logos-Spirit hypostases-exemplifications, 1/
    8:46 PM · Apr 30, 2020·Twitter for Android

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    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    16h
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    pneumato-christologically in the gratuity of creation, christo-pneumatologically in
    the gratuity of grace, incarnationally in both, per the divine esse naturale. 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    16h
    The logoi (hows) carry the divine esse intentionale (will & intentions), both freely
    affecting creatures & freely affected (per energeia) by the aesthetic scope of all
    telic creaturely becoming, although divine realities are never affected in aesthetic
    intensity. 3/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    16h
    The divine esse naturale-intentionale is thus affected by more than mere
    Cambridge properties, but without any change in intrinsic perfection. Does this
    weaken DDS? Yes. Trivially, so. 4/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    16h
    As it is, since we neither reify the essence (natures aren’t “existing things,”
    whether divine or created) nor hypostasize energeia, why ontologize the
    intentionale, inquiring about its mode of being, determinatively -what, rather than
    of identity, denominatively -how? 5/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    16h
    Finite creatures proportionally participate (through a univocity of loving
    determinate effects or synergy) in the Logos-logoi identity, which, itself, grounds
    the differences of in/finite natures (through an analogia entis). 6/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    16h
    This in/finite disjunction doesn’t quantitatively differentiate Being & beings
    through a multiplication of quiddities (determinative nouns, genera, species, i.e.
    whats) by infinity. Instead, it multiplies qualia (denominative modifiers &
    participles, hows, etc.) by infinity, 7/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    16h
    recognizing the qualitative differentiation of divine & determinate hypostases, i.e.
    via propria-idiomata-relata vs essentially-existentially-relationally. Such a
    differentiation, then, entails no alienation from some Wholly Other, but, instead,
    fosters otherness & intimacy, 8/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    ·
    16h
    participation via donativity-receptivity, & immanence in transcendence, all
    theotically. Cosmotheandric participation entails more than the mere growth in
    resemblances of vestigia & imagoes Dei into similitudines Dei, from image to
    likeness. 9/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    16h
    Generally, participation further requires a participant to freely choose to (in
    various ways to various extents) “take possession” of WHAT the participated, as a
    whole, “IS.” 10/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    16h
    Specifically, regarding God as Actus Purus, as participants, we, the Many, must
    freely choose, therefore, to “take possession” of HOW the Participated One, as the
    Whole, “DOES.” 11/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    16h
    If we don’t go beyond an analogy of being, ontologically & determinatively, to a
    univocity of doing, semantically & denominatively, we can’t bust the Maximian
    move, theologically or anthropologically or cosmogonically, in an authentically
    Neo-Chalcedonian fashion. 12/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    16h
    Cosmotheandric participation entails more than the mere growth in resemblances
    of vestigia & imagoes Dei into similitudines Dei, from image to likeness. It entails
    each participant’s progressive realization of facility in freely choosing to
    kenotically participate ... 13/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    16h
    in how the ur-kenotic Participated One Acts, which is, *naturally*, Purely Loving.
    There can be no Shakespearean soliloquy: “To Be or Not to Be,” for that remains
    decidedly decided for every intrinsically valuable imago Dei, ensuing from its
    essential nature. 14/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    16h
    Rather, the transcendental imperatives in-form-ing our existential orientations
    include both “To Be Like God or not?” and “To Do How God Does or Not?”. 15/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    16h
    All of this is articulated in Lonergan’s imperatives, the Degrees of Humility of
    Ignatius, & Therese's Little Way. A proper interpretation of the Capps Bros, Cyril,
    Maximus & Severus, helped along by idioms like those of Scotus, Palamas & Peirce,
    might say it the best? 16/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    5h
    So, finally, re the Logos-logoi identity, while it's "just" a semantic predication, the
    reference remains eminently realist. Still, in the same way we eschew any
    overapplications of an analogia entis, we'd desist, here, from any over-
    specifications of peircean generals, 17/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    5h
    created or uncreated, nomicities or probabilities, etc b/c, for DBHartians, if
    there's anything more frightening than an unwitting infernalism, that would be -
    not a spinozan modal collapse, but - an accidental baroque thomism via a báñezian
    praemotiophysica! -sorta kidding 18/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    5h
    below are relevant snippets from "Peirce's View of the Relationship Between His
    Own Work & German Idealism" “… the universe is not governed by immutable
    law." ~ CSP "I believe I have thus subjected to fair examination all the important
    reasons ... cont'd 19/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    5h
    for adhering to the theory of universal necessity & have shown their nullity” (CP,
    6.65). “My philosophy resuscitates Hegel, though in a strange costume” “The truth
    is that pragmaticism is closely allied to the Hegelian absolute idealism." 20/
    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce/self-contextualization.html

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    4h
    Perhaps we can designate a type of collapse (telic) via - not any modal ontology of
    determinate being, but - the Abelardian modes of identity, i.e. essential,
    exemplificatory & formal, where the formal includes the synergeia, energeia &
    oikonomia of "our" logoi & teloi. 21/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    4h
    While neither the Chalcedonian formula nor its NeoC development, nor even our
    speculative Trinitological & Christological grammars, provide more than semi-
    formal, meta-heuristic contours, still, they constrain our neo/classical,
    panentheist & mereological panen-theist approaches.

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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Peirce said that to say that "God exists" amounts to a fetishism. I agree. Further, I
    agree w/CSP that universals do not exist (like particulars do). [Below, I'll be using
    my TL to microblog the following disquisition, so, you may want to mute this
    thread. Thanks!] 1/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Yet, CSP articulated "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God." And he
    claimed to be more realist, in the "scholastic" sense, than Scotus, while positively
    eschewing nominalism, in the anti-realist sense, as attributed to Occam. 2/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Before finally pointing toward CSP’s "Neglected Argument," however, I want to
    dispense with both theological non-cognitivism & metaphysical ignosticism. 3/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    While I side with Lakatos regarding such as the laws of nature, over both Popper &
    Carnap , it’s Popper who most aptly observed that "positivists, in their anxiety to
    annihilate metaphysics, annihilate natural science along with it." 4/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    "Scientific laws, too, can't be logically reduced to elementary statements of
    experience. If consistently applied, Wittgenstein’s criterion of meaningfulness
    rejects as meaningless those natural laws the search for which Einstein says is the
    supreme task of the physicist." 5/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    So, while I accept "meaning as use," I don’t wholesale buy into the notion that,
    regarding all uses of terms, we must deny belief in entities to which they might
    correspond. I only buy that, for many, maybe even most uses, our terms won’t
    "necessarily" correspond. 6/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    To be sure, regarding reality’s underdetermined general probabilities, we continue
    our advance toward specifications. So, too, we continue our advances in the
    delimitations of its overdetermined vague possibilities. 7/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Just because that’s what semiosis does, infinitely, that’s no reason to wholly
    despair of truth as correspondence. After all, we ARE advancing, approaching
    REAL limits, getting infinitesimally closer, albeit asymptotically to REALity. 8/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    So, regarding Wittgenstein’s maxim, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one
    must be silent," that can’t be suggesting that, in doing our modal ontologies, only
    talk of actual realities is meaningful, that meta-heuristics regarding possibilities &
    necessities are nonsense. 9/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    It only means that too much of metaphysics & god-talk is nonsense! It does mean
    that we best fallibly prescind from the necessary to the probable in both our
    quotidian affairs & scientific endeavors, as regarding reality’s putative nomicities
    & Peircean generals. 10/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Here, Peirce does distinguish between what it means to be a) "real" (a mode of
    "being" having properties sufficient to be identified) & what it means to b) "exist"
    (as a spatio-temporal object). This is reminiscent of Scotus’s formal distinction. 11/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    So, all this does mean we should cease & desist from proving too much, from
    telling untellable stories, from saying way more than we can possibly know
    regarding necessities. 12/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    ·
    Apr 28
    There’s no epistemic demarcation of nonoverlapping magisteria, here, as if our
    layering of explanations entailed separate epistemologies. Epistemology is
    epistemology is epistemology. Don’t we all, unavoidably, reason under uncertainty
    ... 13/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    regarding matters speculative & practical, whether quotidian, scientific,
    metaphysical or theological? I say all this in accord with Putnam, who’s
    sympathetic to a more pluralist account of truth, & over against, for example, both
    theological non-cognitivism & minimalism. 14/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    While this does, inescapably, require existential leaps of faith regarding life’s
    forced & vital options, it requires both prudential & speculative deliberations,
    normatively oriented to evaluative REAL-izations by our discernments regarding
    which such options remain "live" 15/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    "live" in the sense of what remains of competing equiplausibilities after having
    applyied our axiological epistemology, with its pragmatic semiotic criteria. What
    we argue for regarding certain of our beliefs, then, at bottom, is their rational
    acceptability 16/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    & existential actionability, not their truth. But that doesn’t entail that they’re not
    true, only that they’re not necessarily true. Our knowledge, as nonfoundational (or
    weakly foundational, if that’s one’s epistemic schtick), remains ineluctably
    informal, 17/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    ·
    Apr 28
    always closely akin to our common sense & sensibilities, as we so often know more
    than we can say (cf Polanyi, Newman in addition to CSP), as we taste & see the
    truths of the Godelian axioms we can't formally prove. So, what might Peirce say of
    a given putative Necessity? 18/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Finally, below, now consider CSP’s "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God"
    & keep in mind his modal distinctions where Being > Reality > Existence 19/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    To wit: "Since God is not another spatio-temporal object, it amounts to fetishism,
    Peirce remarks, to say that God exists. Hence his argument, strictly speaking, is
    not an argument for God’s existence, but for God’s reality." ~ Gary Kessler As a
    prayer:
    https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Neglected_Argument_for_the_Reality_of_G
    od
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    I should like to add, now, that this Peircean meta-heuristic & its associated
    speculative grammar, the surface of which I barely scratched, above, bears some
    remarkable similarities, I think, to the Neochalcedonian architectonic articulated
    by
    @JordanW41069857
    21/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    especially pertaining to 1) CSP's asymmetric formulation, where: Being > Reality >
    Existence and 2) CSP's denial that universals exist (though not as an anti-realist or
    nominalist). 22/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    ·
    Apr 28
    Nuances would have to be teased out to avoid risking a facile eisegetic
    mischaracterization of Jordan's stance as equivalent to my own. For example, my
    meta-heuristic employs Abelardian modes of identity & Peircean modes of being,
    for nondeterminate & determinate being. 23/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    At the least, it's worthwhile to consider these stances as helpful foils, heuristically.
    Wrenched from their context in Jordan's paper, consider: 1) An hypostasis is not a
    what. 2) Nature signifies what never exists for itself. 3) We do not impute to
    "natures" existence. 24/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    4) Natures always occur in hypostases. 5) Hypostases are everywhere the basic
    metaphysical & existential reality. 6) While an hypostasis is also a nature, a nature
    is not also an hypostasis. 7) Nor is man any idea of a self-subsisting nature called
    human. 25/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    So, consistent with CSP, essences or natures do not "exist," are not hypostases,
    albeit they're "real" & only ever occur instantiated. 26/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    cf. Wood, Jordan. (2019). A Novel Use of the Body-Soul Comparison Emerges in
    Neochalcedonian Christology. Review of Ecumenical Studies Sibiu. 11. 363-390.
    27/

    (PDF) A Novel Use of the Body-Soul Comparison Emerges in Neochalcedonian


    Christology
    PDF | Comparing the union of Christ’s two natures to the body-soul union in a
    human being was a typical way among patristic authors to conceive the... | Find,
    read and cite all the research you need...
    researchgate.net

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Of course, there's WAY much more going on than that such as in this semiotically-
    freighted observation: "Indeed the nature signifies what never exists for itself but
    most properly that which is [formally] complete.” These considerations warrant
    deeper dialogue w/CSP. 28/

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    Might this be a leitmotif of David B. Hart's anthropology & metaphysic?


    Admittedly, part of the problem bedeviling _____'s narrative is the difficulty of
    making a case that seems so hard to reconcile with quotidian experience. 1/
    The Illusionist
    David Bentley Hart on Daniel Dennett’s mindless materialism

    thenewatlantis.com

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    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Feb 29
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    Whether a theological anthropology or philosophy of mind, Hart appeals to our
    common sense & sensibilities (reminiscent of GKC?). Above he spoke of Dennett
    but one could substitute his sparring partner du jour, e.g. infernalists. 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Feb 29
    Our eschatological speculation shouldn't do violence to the deepest aesthetic &
    moral sensibilities or relational aspirations of our everyday human experience,
    however much those eternal realities are otherwise expected to far exceed our
    imaginings. Beyond does not = without! 3/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Feb 29
    Hart will be returning to philosophy of mind, I believe. In the same way he recently
    navigated the extremes of anthropological self/determinism, he will no doubt
    deftly avoid those of eliminative materialism & panpsychism. 4/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Feb 29
    If true to form, after setting forth devastating critiques against his ideological foils,
    he'll offer a constructive proposal and defend it with - not only formal, deductive
    argument, but - informal, intuitive & commonsensical appeals. 5/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Feb 29
    As with That All Shall Be Saved, DBH's persuasiveness will not rest on the validity
    of his logic, a given, but on dis/agreement regarding his terms & definitions. He'll
    leave little room regarding which conceptions lead to ultimate absurdity versus
    (super)rational coherence. 6/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Feb 29
    Followers of Charles Sanders Peirce describe his "minding of matter & mattering
    of mind." My own philosophy of mind entails Minding of our P's & Q's, to wit:
    Plotinus, Porphyry, Pseudo-Dionysius, Palamas & Peirce w/the Quaestiones
    (quodlibetales & subtilissimae) of Scotus. 7/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Feb 29
    I suspect that resonates to an extent with what will be DBH's general Christian
    Neoplatonic thrust, based on his prior metaphysical excursions. I do metaphysics
    but don't have a metaphysic, so stop shorter than DBH in trying to demonstrate
    such arguments w/root metaphors. 8/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Feb 29
    Keep your beliefs practical! DBH: Writes Clark, “What was aimed at was real
    assent, not merely a notional one. It was not enough, as it were, to ‘know the way
    to Larisa’ and be able to repeat the directions: what mattered was getting to
    Larisa.” https://firstthings.com/article/2017/01/getting-to-larisa
    9/
    Getting to Larisa | David Bentley Hart
    Plotinus: Myth, Metaphor, and Philosophical Practiceby stephen r. l.
    clarkuniversity of chicago, 336 . . . .

    firstthings.com

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Feb 29
    Plotinus: Myth, Metaphor, & Philosophical Practice by Stephen R. L. Clark Clark
    shows how Plotinus offers a vital set of spiritual exercises by which individuals can
    achieve one of his most important goals: self-transformation through
    contemplation. https://goodreads.com/book/show/26153628-plotinus
    10/

    Plotinus: Myth, Metaphor, and Philosophical Practice by Stephen R.L. Clark


    Plotinus book. Read 2 reviews from the world's largest community for readers.
    Plotinus, the Roman philosopher (c. 204-270 CE) who is widely regarded as t...

    goodreads.com
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Feb 29
    For centuries Scotus has himself been seen as part of the neoplatonist movement,
    given the extreme platonism of his doctrine of the Ideas.
    http://lyfaber.blogspot.com/2019/08/eric-perl-on-neoplatonism.html
    11/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Feb 29
    Peirce characterized Aristotelianism as "a special development" of Platonic
    philosophy, & counted himself "an Aristotelian of the scholastic wing, approaching
    Scotism ..." The Ascent of Soul to Noûs: Charles S. Peirce as Neoplatonist
    http://kellyaparker.net/kap/Neoplatonism/
    12/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Feb 29
    Plotinus: reality must indicate a reality simpler & more capacious than either: a
    primordial intelligence, Nous, and an original unity, the One, generating,
    sustaining & encompassing all. Mind over Matter - ‘The Enneads’ by David Bentley
    Hart 13/

    Mind over Matter


    A new translation of The Enneads, the third-century cosmological poem by
    Plotinus, is likely to remain the definitive critical edition in English for years to
    come

    commonwealmagazine.org

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Feb 29
    "It isn’t inappropriate to connect category theory & relational logic, the conceptual
    foundations of quantum mechanics, to broader philosophical interrogations.
    Relational & categorical principles have been presented by Aristotle, Leibniz,
    Kant, Peirce, among others." 14/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Feb 29
    "Relational ontology is one of the cornerstones of Christian theology, advocated
    consistently by the Fathers (notably by Saint Gregory Palamas)." Relational
    Quantum Mechanics by A. Nicolaidis, who authored quote in 14/ above 15/
    https://arxiv.org/abs/1211.2706

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Feb 29
    Nicolaidis: We should view then science as a “laboratory philosophy” & always link
    the meaning of concepts to their operational or practical consequences. We
    suggest that the inner syntax of QM is relational logic, a form of logic developed by
    C. S. Peirce. 16/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    The next generation of Jenson students should, at a minimum, be familiar with the
    history of logic that links the Cappadocians to Poinsot, Peirce and, later, to
    developments in quantum logic. ~ Peter Ochs, Postliberal Logics in the Spirit of
    Jenson

    Postliberal Logics in the Spirit of Jenson


    Robert Jenson’s call to repair Christian theology’s reliance on Hellas’ static
    philosophic categories should not be read as a call to insulate theology from
    philosophic discipline and critique. We...

    academia.edu

    8:54 AM · Apr 30, 2020·Twitter for Android

    View Tweet activity


    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 30
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    "Jenson - might be the face ... as foremost of the diabolical “Hegelian”
    Trinitarians, or a champion of metaphysics in a postmetaphysical age. His
    theology is FAR more interesting & promising than any alleged debt to Hegel or
    any of these caricatured reductions of his work." a/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 30
    intro, above, fr editors of _The Promise of Robert W. Jenson’s Theology:
    Constructive Engagements_, eds. Christopher E. Green & Stephen J. Wright
    wherein I most recommend: Peter Ochs, Postliberal Logics in the Spirit of Jenson,
    as cited in thread above https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/2013949

    Feb 29
    Relational Logic has applications to Quantum Mechanics, String Theory,
    Cosmology & Statistical Mechanics. https://imperial.ac.uk/events/104055/argyris-
    nicolaidis-relational-logic/
    17/

    Argyris Nicolaidis: Relational Logic


    A Mathematical Physics Seminar

    imperial.ac.uk

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Feb 29
    See: Palamas among the Scholastics: A Review Essay - Divine Essence & Energies:
    Ecumenical Reflections on the Presence of God in Eastern Orthodoxy (Cambridge:
    James & Clarke, 2013) by Christiaan W. Kappes, J. Isaac Goff, & T. Alexander
    Giltner
    https://academia.edu/8586448/_Palamas_Among_the_Scholastics_Logos_55_2
    014_Essence_and_energies_in_Palamas_disciples_and_Bonaventurian-
    scotistic_parallels_versus_thomistic_opposition_
    18/

    "Palamas Among the Scholastics"


    David Bradshaw's impressive study in Palamism: "Aristotle East and West"
    resulted in a supplementary study in 2013 ("Divine Essence and Divine Energies).
    Here we critique and offer friendly challen...

    academia.edu

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 1
    Some naturalists (e.g. Nagel & Deacon) renew teleology in their philosophy of
    mind w/a clear critique of materialism (e.g. Dennett & Dawkins). David Bentley
    Hart goes further, arguing that a metaphysic of transcendence undergirds an even
    more coherent account. 19/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 1
    So, I refer to a philosophy of mind account such as DBH offers as a "Minding of
    our P's & Q's" i.e. Parmenides, Plato, Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, Pseudo-
    Dionysius, Palamas & Peirce and the Quaestiones quodlibetales & subtilissimae of
    Scotus). 20/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 1
    Thus DBH avoids dualisms & idealisms in addition to materialism. An Aristotelian
    - Thomistic hylomorphism works, too, in my view, especially if "the capacity for
    deliberation is understood as inherent not to embodiment per se, but to epistemic
    distance" (T. Belt). 21/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 2
    More on DBH's systematics & methods:
    https://twitter.com/AEROdynamicCat1/status/1234188871342133252?s=19
    22/
    Quote Tweet

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    · Mar 1
    Consider Ed Feser's befuddlement with David Bentley Hart's epistemology: 1)
    Then there is Hart’s characterization of the rationalism he rejects as holding that
    reason is “capable of discerning first principles & deducing final conclusions ... 1/
    Show this thread

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 2
    Yet another way of grasping Hart's argument:
    https://twitter.com/AEROdynamicCat1/status/1232332808598716417?s=19
    23/
    Quote Tweet

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    · Feb 25
    No one in their right mind & with their full senses would freely reject God forever.
    Any who do reject God, while lacking both, remain exculpable. Our existential
    orientation to the transcendental imperatives & divine attributes is constitutive of
    who we are & how we act and 1/
    Show this thread

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    ·
    Mar 2
    On Hart's conception of human freedom:
    https://twitter.com/AEROdynamicCat1/status/1232068608085446659?s=19
    24/
    Quote Tweet

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    · Feb 24
    David Bentley Hart's conception of human freedom seems to me to be compatible
    with an eminently defensible soft determinism, philosophically (although I
    subscribe to Scotus' nuanced version, which feels a tad softer to me). 1/
    Show this thread

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 2
    Apart from the metaphysical & exegetical, but integral to same in DBH's argument,
    anyone should be able to grasp his appeals to our common sense & sensibilities. If
    one rejects those informal aspects, then the deductive argument will hold no sway.
    https://twitter.com/AEROdynamicCat1/status/1233185658828705792?s=19
    25/
    Quote Tweet

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    · Feb 27
    How & Why Anyone Might Profitably Engage David B. Hart's _That All Shall Be
    Saved_ https://sylvestjohn.org/that-all-shall-be-saved-by-david-bentley-hart-how-
    and-why-anyone-might-profitably-engage-it/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 2
    The holistic character of DBH's universalism:
    https://twitter.com/AEROdynamicCat1/status/1230230055017680896?s=19
    26/
    Quote Tweet

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    · Feb 19
    DBH's appeals were to me: 1)existentially satisfying, affirming our will to live,
    suitably contextualizing the very act of our existence in a grand telic adventure;
    2)interpersonally sensitive, well expressing our urgent need to authentically
    belong; 2/
    Show this thread

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 2
    When you cut to the chase, the question becomes are we, per DBH's conceptions,
    "free enough" consistent w/our views re dignity, culpability, etc?
    https://twitter.com/AEROdynamicCat1/status/1229871800353464321?s=19
    27/
    Quote Tweet

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    · Feb 18
    DBH’s soft determinism, in my view, recognizes that we’re free enough to love & be
    loved, both superabundantly, consistent with that degree of human dignity
    sufficient to both mirror the divine as imagoes Dei & to grow in likeness as
    similitudinae Dei, theotically. 1/
    Show this thread

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 2
    Finally, we will grasp neither vedantic nor neoplatonic approaches if we ignore
    that their metaphysical aspects are more so pointers to practical, experiential
    realizations than to idle theoretical musings.
    https://twitter.com/AEROdynamicCat1/status/1229493484094181376?s=19
    28/
    Quote Tweet
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    · Feb 17
    Years ago, in my conversations with different friends who practiced in various
    non-Christian Eastern traditions, I realized that it was often best to take off my
    Western metaphysical lenses during many of my attempts to appreciate certain of
    their spiritual disciplines 1/
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    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Peirce said that to say that "God exists" amounts to a fetishism. I agree. Further, I
    agree w/CSP that universals do not exist (like particulars do). [Below, I'll be using
    my TL to microblog the following disquisition, so, you may want to mute this
    thread. Thanks!] 1/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Yet, CSP articulated "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God." And he
    claimed to be more realist, in the "scholastic" sense, than Scotus, while positively
    eschewing nominalism, in the anti-realist sense, as attributed to Occam. 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Before finally pointing toward CSP’s "Neglected Argument," however, I want to
    dispense with both theological non-cognitivism & metaphysical ignosticism. 3/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    While I side with Lakatos regarding such as the laws of nature, over both Popper &
    Carnap , it’s Popper who most aptly observed that "positivists, in their anxiety to
    annihilate metaphysics, annihilate natural science along with it." 4/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    "Scientific laws, too, can't be logically reduced to elementary statements of
    experience. If consistently applied, Wittgenstein’s criterion of meaningfulness
    rejects as meaningless those natural laws the search for which Einstein says is the
    supreme task of the physicist." 5/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    So, while I accept "meaning as use," I don’t wholesale buy into the notion that,
    regarding all uses of terms, we must deny belief in entities to which they might
    correspond. I only buy that, for many, maybe even most uses, our terms won’t
    "necessarily" correspond. 6/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    To be sure, regarding reality’s underdetermined general probabilities, we continue
    our advance toward specifications. So, too, we continue our advances in the
    delimitations of its overdetermined vague possibilities. 7/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Just because that’s what semiosis does, infinitely, that’s no reason to wholly
    despair of truth as correspondence. After all, we ARE advancing, approaching
    REAL limits, getting infinitesimally closer, albeit asymptotically to REALity. 8/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    ·
    Apr 28
    So, regarding Wittgenstein’s maxim, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one
    must be silent," that can’t be suggesting that, in doing our modal ontologies, only
    talk of actual realities is meaningful, that meta-heuristics regarding possibilities &
    necessities are nonsense. 9/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    It only means that too much of metaphysics & god-talk is nonsense! It does mean
    that we best fallibly prescind from the necessary to the probable in both our
    quotidian affairs & scientific endeavors, as regarding reality’s putative nomicities
    & Peircean generals. 10/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Here, Peirce does distinguish between what it means to be a) "real" (a mode of
    "being" having properties sufficient to be identified) & what it means to b) "exist"
    (as a spatio-temporal object). This is reminiscent of Scotus’s formal distinction. 11/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    So, all this does mean we should cease & desist from proving too much, from
    telling untellable stories, from saying way more than we can possibly know
    regarding necessities. 12/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    There’s no epistemic demarcation of nonoverlapping magisteria, here, as if our
    layering of explanations entailed separate epistemologies. Epistemology is
    epistemology is epistemology. Don’t we all, unavoidably, reason under uncertainty
    ... 13/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    regarding matters speculative & practical, whether quotidian, scientific,
    metaphysical or theological? I say all this in accord with Putnam, who’s
    sympathetic to a more pluralist account of truth, & over against, for example, both
    theological non-cognitivism & minimalism. 14/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    While this does, inescapably, require existential leaps of faith regarding life’s
    forced & vital options, it requires both prudential & speculative deliberations,
    normatively oriented to evaluative REAL-izations by our discernments regarding
    which such options remain "live" 15/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    "live" in the sense of what remains of competing equiplausibilities after having
    applyied our axiological epistemology, with its pragmatic semiotic criteria. What
    we argue for regarding certain of our beliefs, then, at bottom, is their rational
    acceptability 16/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    & existential actionability, not their truth. But that doesn’t entail that they’re not
    true, only that they’re not necessarily true. Our knowledge, as nonfoundational (or
    weakly foundational, if that’s one’s epistemic schtick), remains ineluctably
    informal, 17/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    always closely akin to our common sense & sensibilities, as we so often know more
    than we can say (cf Polanyi, Newman in addition to CSP), as we taste & see the
    truths of the Godelian axioms we can't formally prove. So, what might Peirce say of
    a given putative Necessity? 18/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Finally, below, now consider CSP’s "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God"
    & keep in mind his modal distinctions where Being > Reality > Existence 19/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    To wit: "Since God is not another spatio-temporal object, it amounts to fetishism,
    Peirce remarks, to say that God exists. Hence his argument, strictly speaking, is
    not an argument for God’s existence, but for God’s reality." ~ Gary Kessler As a
    prayer:
    https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Neglected_Argument_for_the_Reality_of_G
    od

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    I should like to add, now, that this Peircean meta-heuristic & its associated
    speculative grammar, the surface of which I barely scratched, above, bears some
    remarkable similarities, I think, to the Neochalcedonian architectonic articulated
    by
    @JordanW41069857
    21/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    especially pertaining to 1) CSP's asymmetric formulation, where: Being > Reality >
    Existence and 2) CSP's denial that universals exist (though not as an anti-realist or
    nominalist). 22/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Nuances would have to be teased out to avoid risking a facile eisegetic
    mischaracterization of Jordan's stance as equivalent to my own. For example, my
    meta-heuristic employs Abelardian modes of identity & Peircean modes of being,
    for nondeterminate & determinate being. 23/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    ·
    Apr 28
    At the least, it's worthwhile to consider these stances as helpful foils, heuristically.
    Wrenched from their context in Jordan's paper, consider: 1) An hypostasis is not a
    what. 2) Nature signifies what never exists for itself. 3) We do not impute to
    "natures" existence. 24/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    4) Natures always occur in hypostases. 5) Hypostases are everywhere the basic
    metaphysical & existential reality. 6) While an hypostasis is also a nature, a nature
    is not also an hypostasis. 7) Nor is man any idea of a self-subsisting nature called
    human. 25/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    So, consistent with CSP, essences or natures do not "exist," are not hypostases,
    albeit they're "real" & only ever occur instantiated. 26/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    cf. Wood, Jordan. (2019). A Novel Use of the Body-Soul Comparison Emerges in
    Neochalcedonian Christology. Review of Ecumenical Studies Sibiu. 11. 363-390.
    27/

    (PDF) A Novel Use of the Body-Soul Comparison Emerges in Neochalcedonian


    Christology
    PDF | Comparing the union of Christ’s two natures to the body-soul union in a
    human being was a typical way among patristic authors to conceive the... | Find,
    read and cite all the research you need...

    researchgate.net

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Of course, there's WAY much more going on than that such as in this semiotically-
    freighted observation: "Indeed the nature signifies what never exists for itself but
    most properly that which is [formally] complete.” These considerations warrant
    deeper dialogue w/CSP. 28/
    To that end, I commend Andrew Robinson's book, _God & the World of Signs:
    Trinity, Evolution, & the Metaphysical Semiotics of C.S. Peirce_, especially his 2
    chapters re a) A Semiotic Model of the Trinity and b) Semiotics and Christology
    29/
    6:05 PM · Apr 28, 2020·Twitter for Android

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    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    Teasers: Robinsons asks: "What happens to Christology when the metaphysical
    superstructure is no longer in place & the ontology of substance on which much of
    its logical consistency was based has been consigned to the philosophical dustbin?"
    30/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Robinson further muses: "The failure of the imperial Council of Serdica in 342 [my
    note: where the proposed explanatory revision of the Nicene Creed was rejected]
    might be regarded as having been a result of the absence of the metaphysical
    semiotics ... 31/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    that would have been needed to resolve the philosophical problems that divided
    the two sides, rather than simply the intransigence of either of the parties. Which
    leads me to wonder, might things have turned out differently if the Fathers had
    known Peirce?" 32/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    See Andrew Robinson's _God & the World of Signs_
    https://brill.com/view/book/9789004195899/Bej.9789004187993.i-382_013.xml
    33/

    Index Of Subjects
    "Index Of Subjects" published on 01 Jan 2011 by Brill.

    brill.com

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    To answer Robinson's question about what might have otherwise transpired in
    342, who knows? More politics! Perhaps Wood has given us an account of how, at
    least, Cyril anticipated such Peircean-like solutions, as developed by
    Neochalcedonians, like Leontius & Maximus! 34/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    And that brings us full circle back to the fetishism of saying God exists.
    https://twitter.com/AEROdynamicCat1/status/1255155167974117382?s=19
    35/
    Quote Tweet

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    · Apr 28
    Peirce said that to say that "God exists" amounts to a fetishism. I agree. Further, I
    agree w/CSP that universals do not exist (like particulars do). [Below, I'll be using
    my TL to microblog the following disquisition, so, you may want to mute this
    thread. Thanks!] 1/
    Show this thread

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Per a preliminary skimming of Serhiy Hovorun's thesis, Theological Controversy
    in the 7th Century Concerning Activities & Wills in Christ ... I'll share some quick
    notes & impressions. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/4061/1/4061_1578.pdf
    %3FUkUDh:CyT
    36/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Severus' property in the singular sounds like hypostatic idiomata, natural
    characteristics of what Scotus would refer to as an exemplification, reflecting the
    wholeness of Christ's nature, incarnationally, & which includes divinity &
    humanity of the One Logos, cont'd 37/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    what Severus called particularities, maybe like Scotus' haecceities & Peirce's
    secondness or actualities Severus' properties in the plural sound like relata, divine
    deeds or activities or energeiai, definitely not hypostatic, more like Peircean
    thirdness, cont'd 38/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    which includes nomicities & probabilities, finalities & formalities, some fully
    realized, protologically = eschatologically vis a vis Scotus' immanent universal &
    others proleptically anticipated via divine logoi & teloi 39/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    For Sergius, properties implied nature, and he seemed to me to conflate the
    hypostatic w/energeiai, idiomata w/relata, person w/deeds, failing to draw
    Peircean modal distinctions between secondness & thirdness or Scotistic formal
    distinction, cont'd 40/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    also conflating the propria of ousia with the hypostatic idiomata as well as
    energeiai Preliminary conclusion remains that a Neochalcedonian architectonic
    fits my Peircean-like stance. 41/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Here, I tease out Scotistic vocabulary, consistent with the Neochalcedonian
    architectonic: http://sylvestjohn.org/2019/02/04/how-scotus-might-gift-zizioulas-
    coherence/
    42/

    How Scotus Might Gift Zizioulas Coherence


    Zizioulas’ musings evoke images for me that work really well, metaphorically &
    theopoetically. And any rhetorical & liturgical approach, which is that existentially
    persuasive & i…

    sylvestjohn.org

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 28
    Here, I flesh out Trinitarian predications, again, consistent with the
    Neochalcedonian architectonic: 43/
    David Bentley Hart & Duns Scotus Walk Into a Bar, See Radical Orthodoxy & Ask:
    Why the Long Face?
    Prologue – Conciliar trinitarian doctrines define the theological contours of
    worship & theosis, norming our responses to the Trinity, Who participatorily
    enfolds the essences, substances…

    sylvestjohn.org

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 29
    A List of Thinkers w/Logical Family Resemblances (not a reading back of post|
    modern philosophical debates into earlier thinkers) that fully bloom in Peirce’s
    Semiotic Realism Parmenides (early 5th) & Plato (348 bc) Plotinus (270) &
    Porphyry (305) 44/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    ·
    Apr 29
    Gregory of Nyssa (394) & Basil (379) Augustine (430) & Cyril (444) Proclus (485) &
    Pseudo-Dionysius (c 500) Severus (538) - miaphysite Maximus (662) - logoi
    Eriugena (877) & Avicebron (1070) Palamas (1359) & Scotus (1308) Poinsot (1644)
    & Peirce (1914) 45/

    tidbits re my axiological epistemology, especially re epistemic virtue


    Psychologically & neuroscientifically, there's a body of literature devoted to
    epistemic emotions & motivations, in particular. 1/
    7:30 PM · Apr 27, 2020·Twitter for Android

    View Tweet activity

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 27
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    Philosophically, the "nonepistemic motives" for virtue|utilitarian, contractarian,
    instrumentalist, consequentialist & deontological normative approaches can all
    help strengthen epistemic virtue. 2/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 27
    Philosophically, I would associate "epistemic motives" with aretaic dynamics like
    authenticity (Lonergan), self- honesty (Nietzsche), agreeability (Hume) &
    admirability (Peirce's aesthetic primacy). 3/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 27
    Motivational dimensions of epistemic virtue would include enduring character,
    temperament & affective traits, as well as ephemeral states. Affective dimensions,
    alone, include a) emotions (environmental, mostly limbic); b) feelings
    (interpretive, mostly frontal lobe); 4/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 27
    c) desires (instrinsic desires, insular cortex & incentive desires, posterior
    cingulate cortex) & d) affective dispositions. Those motivational components can
    be hard-wired or acquired, 5/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 27
    as well as either a) nonconscious (e.g. perceptual, memorial & abductive instincts)
    or b) conscious (e.g. inferential triad, effortful, intentional reflection & inquiry) or
    c) both (cognitive closure needs). 6/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 27
    There's a primacy of the aesthetic in play, as, inseparably, a) the normative
    (means) mediates between b) the descriptive (exploratory heuristics) & c) the
    interpretive (explanatory heuristics) to effect d) the evaluative (ends), 7/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 27
    which, itself, can be transmuted by experience. Not unlike Hume, this telic
    dynamic's rather pluralistic, for human persons pursue value-realizations for
    reasons extrinsic & intrinsic, proximate & ultimate, self & other oriented, etc. 8/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 27
    Lonergan's imperatives to be attentive, reasonable, intelligent, responsible & in
    love lead to human authenticity, so expresses such Humean motivational
    emphases as love & benevolence. 9/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 27
    Our evaluative dispositions can be transmuted by experience, for example by
    grace, re-positionally transforming us to foster what Peirce might call a "quietus"
    vis a vis "admirability" (per his primacy of the aesthetic), what the mystics might
    call sweet repose! 10/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 27
    This model doesn't play to justified true beliefs & gettier problems. Rather, it's a
    semiotic pragmatic realism that's - not robustly truth-conducive, but - weakly
    truth-indicative. Fallible. But realist. 11/
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    @AEROdynamicCat1
    Where do we thus stand re nature's laws? Re putative laws of nature, I favor
    Lakatos' criteria of adequacy (heuristic power) over either Carnap's
    (confirmationist) or Popper's (falsificationist) methodologies. How to parse these
    laws in terms of description, observation, 1/
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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    prescription, modeling, explanation, prediction, nomicity & such remains a sticky
    widget. While I'd still accept the criticism of analycity (along w/Wittgenstein,
    Quine et al), as applied to common language concepts, 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    ·
    Apr 26
    I'm less convinced of its applicability to the concepts of well structured scientific
    theories, which employ rigorous definitions with strict criteria of application (&
    highly precise subject-predicate containments). 3/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    Re analycity, above, I summarized & paraphrased Johansson's "Natural
    Necessity," cited below. Lars-Göran Johansson, In Henrik Lagerlund, Sten
    Lindström & Rysiek Sliwinski (eds.), Philosophy. Uppsala University. pp. 221-229
    (2006) http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:51166/FULLTEXT01.pdf
    4/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    So, ontological parsimony's but one type of utility among a whole bundle of
    epistemic strands, which, when woven together, contribute to the resilience of our
    pragmatic realist accounts. 5/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    And "the Razor" more narrowly applies to competing hypotheses & theories that
    already exhibit explanatory adequacy, predictability & a host of other heuristic
    criteria. All this - not to mention when the Godelian dragons arrived. 6/

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    Over Against "gods in Gaps" charges Methodological naturalism remains


    indispensable, but, so does an eschewal of "a prioristic" ontological stances,
    including metaphysical ignosticism. 1/
    12:38 PM · Apr 26, 2020·Twitter for Android

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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    One can affirm the coherence of a belief in statistical laws, natural nomicities,
    divine prescriptions AND Peircean generals, while remaining agnostic when it
    comes to specifying them in given causal joints. 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    ·
    Apr 26
    Our realisms must simply remain critical (not naive), our metaphysics fallible (not
    apodictically certain), our empiricism realist (not nominalist) & our positivism
    pragmatist (not logical). 3/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    We can't know, a priori, when in/determinacies arise from in/determinables or
    in/determinedness, or when regularities should connote a reality as regulated
    and/or as regulators. 4/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    We can't know, a priori, when we've been temporarily thwarted, epistemically &
    methodologically, rather than permanently occulted, ontologically &
    metaphysically. 5/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    We can bookmark reality's aporia in terms of emergent "aboutness"es (e.g.
    quantum, cosmic, life, sentience & language origins), while metaphysically
    bracketing them, by eschewing facile characterizations like weak & strong
    supervenience, 6/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    which remain either question begging or trivial, & by minding our speculative
    grammars even when not relying on any given root metaphor (substance, process,
    relation, etc). 7/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    Telic causal joints don't present as metaphysical gaps to fideistically place our
    gods, but neither can the neo-Nietzscheans guard the metaphysical perimeters,
    where reality's initial, boundary & limit conditions shouldn't, a priori, be declared
    brute rather than donative fruit.

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    The practical implications of the doctrine of the Trinity are manifold & multiform.
    An inventory of those implications reveals a remarkable convergence of views
    coming from otherwise incredibly diverse cohorts within Christianity, including
    Protestant, Reformed, Catholic, etc 1/
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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 24
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    Religious interpretation goes beyond our cognitive mapmaking, which, when
    dealing w/primal realities, remains inescapably fallible & radically incomplete,
    even after revelation; semiotic interpretation participatorily involves an
    existential living as if these Persons matter. 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 25
    I would add that, aporetically, beyond our speculative apophasis re knowledge
    about God, our performative & participatory knowledge "of" God involves an
    ethical apophasis, as an element of risk inheres in our practices of theological
    virtues. Analytics can't avoid this adventure.

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    The use of apophasis & analogy in Trinitarian interpretations does not mark an
    epistemic retreat via some ad hoc mysterian strategy. It represents the very same
    indispensable aporetic sense implicit in every fallible hypothesis of every highly
    speculative scientific frontier, 1/
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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 24
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    e.g. aporia like quantum interpretations, philosophies of mind, biogenesis,
    language origins, cosmogonies, etc. It's also implicit in every quotidian common
    sense abduction (cf Peirce). If it's indispensable on those frontiers, isn't it even
    more so re primal realities?! 2/2

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    Maximus: One could say then, that He experienced suffering in a divine way, since
    it was voluntary (& He was not mere man); and that He worked miracles in a
    human way, since they were accomplished through the flesh (for He was not naked
    God). 1/
    8:30 PM · Apr 23, 2020·Twitter for Android

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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 23
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    Therefore His sufferings are wondrous, for they've been renewed by the natural
    divine power of the One Who suffered. So too are His wonders wedded to
    passibility, for they were completed by the naturally passible power of the flesh of
    the One Who worked them. (Ambiguum 5, 18) 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 23
    https://classicalchristianity.com/2016/04/28/on-the-suffering-god/
    3/3

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    ·
    Apr 23
    Thread re: Scholastic Realism, which I hold in high esteem. And its schools aren't
    monolithic, e.g. there's semiotic Thomism, etc From the Maverick Philosopher:
    https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2010/03/schol
    astic-realism-and-predication.html
    1/

    Scholastic Realism and Predication


    This post continues our explorations in the philosophy of The School. What is a
    scholastic realist? John Peterson (Introduction to Scholastic Realism, Peter Lang,
    1999, p. 6) defines a scholastic...

    maverickphilosopher.typepad.com
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 23
    Comparing Peirce to Neoplatonism http://kellyaparker.net/kap/Neoplatonism/
    2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 23
    Comparing Peirce to Scotism Bastian, Ralph John, "The "Scholastic" Realism of
    Charles Sanders Peirce" (1953). Master's Thesis
    https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses/906/ 3/

    The "Scholastic" Realism of Charles Sanders Peirce


    By Ralph John Bastian, Published on 01/01/53

    ecommons.luc.edu
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 23
    Peirce & the Philosophy of Science by Susan Haack
    https://researchgate.net/publication/311427430_Extreme_Scholastic_Realism_It
    s_Relevance_to_Philosophy_of_Science_Today_992
    4/

    (PDF) Extreme Scholastic Realism: Its Relevance to Philosophy of Science Today


    (992)
    PDF | What, exactly is Peirce's Extreme Scholastic Realism? Is it compatible with
    his pragmatism? And does it have any relevance today? Absolutely,... | Find, read
    and cite all the research you need...

    researchgate.net

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    Why I've never gone beyond a speculative grammar & vague realist
    phenomenology. It's just a disposition. But I salute those who do! Neoplatonists,
    Scotists, Thomists, Analyticals, all. 5/5

    Why I Have No Metaphysic


    My adolescent fascinations and undergraduate & graduate preoccupations were
    rather narrowly focused on the behavioral sciences. And not just at the macro-
    levels of ethology, ecology & compa…

    sylvestjohn.org

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    What happens when we must reason from effects back to unknown causes? We
    can use adverbs to model the rules of the metaphysical *how*s of those causes. But
    we lack access to all the nouns & verbs that would be needed to define the nature of
    their ontological *what*s. 1/
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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 12
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    As that yet remains true for such as philosophy of mind & quantum
    interpretations, how very much more so that will apply to Primal Realities. e g.
    trinitarian models 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 12
    We shouldn't mistake our modeling of rules for explanations. And however
    consistent our heuristic models (closed formal symbol systems) may be, they'll
    remain unavoidably incomplete. Yet, Truth will emerge &, informally, we'll taste &
    see the eminent reasonableness of our axioms!
    GIF

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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 12
    Trying to better grasp how MOF has been articulated. Help modifying the
    following categories welcome! MOF has been affirmed: 1/ sans filioque, where
    Spirit proceeds immediately fr F, ad intra, & thru Son, economically 2/ w/filioque
    as further broken down, cont'd a/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 12
    2a/ monarchical filioque, where Son proceeds immediately from F, Who, alone, is
    principle w/o principle, & Spirit mediately thru Son, ad intra & economically 2b/
    diarchical filioque, where Spirit doubly proceeds immediately from F & S, ad intra,
    & economically b/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 12
    Whatever else folks are trying to say re filioque, some distinction between the
    Spirit's internal procession from F & economic manifestation thru Son is
    necessary to account for our participation - not by nature, but - via the grace of
    divine indwelling. c/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 12
    We can distinguish between an essential unity, where essential acts are common to
    Godhead (common love) in a processional trinitarian model, and a personal unity,
    where notional acts are unique to the Persons (mutual love) in a bestowal model.
    d/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 12
    These models are complementary, but we can flip what some might consider a
    Thomist script (where the essential plane is primary & notional plane - secondary)
    to better conceive notional acts as primary, e.g. the MOF, itself. e/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 12
    While the Son's generation connotes intellection & the Spirit's procession
    connotes volition, an account of any given notional act will only establish which
    common divine faculty a given Person might be expressing (as the different
    Persons don't express unique faculties). f/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 12
    Concerns remain re precisely how we best relate the MOF & filioque, as well as re
    what's essential dogma, e.g. monarchy, & what's theological opinion, e.g. filioque,
    and finally, how to regard such opinions, exegetically & otherwise. See, Zizioulas:
    g/
    Orthodox Research Institute

    orthodoxresearchinstitute.org

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    h/ above was influenced by David Coffey's Spirit-Christology


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    Note, I once again flipped the platitudinal anti-universalist script. I purposefully


    avoided a theological construction where hope was being replaced by
    presumption. Instead, I offered an anthropological formulation, which merely cast
    a skeptacle glance a/
    Quote Tweet

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    · Apr 9
    Replying to @AEROdynamicCat1 @thomaesplendor and 2 others
    The final tension to resolve is that of being told that this particular hope doesn't
    have the character of the theological virtue of hope, which would otherwise gift it -
    not just speculative, but - performative significance, ... 8/
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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 9
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    a skeptical glance at the notion that anyone would ever obstinately & eternally
    resist grace. It's not derived from - but not inconsistent with - the Gospel
    injunction not to judge, which allows me to implicate that default bias, which gifts
    all the benefit of the doubt. b/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 9
    That bias takes any obvious failures to cooperate with grace to presumptively
    represent - not inculpating refusals but, rather - exculpating inabilities. c/

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    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 4
    At about the 43 minute mark
    @DZRishmawy
    says something like, “wouldn’t it be crazy to suggest someone could do more with
    less grace...” and
    @thomaesplendor
    and
    @mattleeanderson
    both chuckled in agreement, but...

    “Grace, Predestination, and the Permission of Sin,” with Dr. Taylor Patrick O’Neill
    What hath St. Thomas to do with predestination? Dr. Taylor Patrick O’Neill joins
    Matt and Derek to discuss his recent book, Grace, Predestination, [...]
    mereorthodoxy.com

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 4
    isn’t that what we see happening every day? People who are born into
    circumstances lacking many graces are drawn toward God and those born with
    many turning away?

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 4
    Taylor tried to step in and clarify that the turn toward God is caused by God, so
    that no one can boast, but are you all just denying any participation of the
    individual will in the process?
    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 4
    I was worried about my ability to listen charitably to the discussion, so I had a big
    lunch to make sure I wasn’t “hangry,” but it was hard hearing you guys laugh about
    how everyone else has to “skip over a bunch of scripture” but the Calvinists and
    Thomists embrace the mystery.

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 4
    Two things: 1) Temporal circumstances say nothing about the invisible graces
    being bestowed upon an individual. None of us have any idea how much grace a
    neighbor receives. Doing more with less is referring to this invisible grace, not
    money or education or something visible.

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 4
    2) Affirming with St. Paul that we cannot boast about our own holiness in no way
    rejects free will or even the doctrine of merit. I'm not sure why you'd assume that
    anyone holding to the position that grace is necessary would assume participation
    isn't real.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 4
    Either they’re natural/temporal graces or they’re not, if they’re not and they
    belong to the realm of supernatural/eternal then I’m tempted to side with Hart
    that they should not be spoken of as discernable motivations. Not sure how you
    came to your second point...

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 4
    if my turn toward God is entirely predicated on grace made effective by God then
    there is no participation. Unless your suggesting three categories on mankind the
    elect, the elect who resist, and the non-elect.
    Taylor Patrick O'Neill
    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 4
    1) I don't know what you mean by "discernible motivations." By definition, all
    graces are supernatural, though we do sometimes talk about being "blessed" with
    riches or something. 2) You're presupposing competitive causality. Nature is full
    of examples where...

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 4
    two causes work to produce a shared effect but one cause is contingent upon a
    more primary cause. The existence of the primary cause does not negate the
    participation and true causality of the secondary cause but, in fact, causes it!

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 4
    Let me ask: where do children come from? Presumably they come from God, but
    does that mean that they do not also come from their parents? If one says that they
    come from their parents are we bound to maintain that this means they do not
    come from God?

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 4
    I was responding primarily to your statement that “temporal circumstances say
    nothing of invisible graces,” so if you’re discussing a subset of graces with no
    temporal manifestation then by definition are they not eternal and indiscernable?

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 4
    I’m not familiar enough with Thomistic language to ensure that I’m getting my
    meaning across. Usually this is the point at which
    @David_Mahfood
    jumps in and explains what I’m trying to say. Hopefully he’s still awake, lol.
    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood
    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 5
    I think by "temporal circumstances" Taylor was referring back to your claim about
    people being born in certain circumstances. Not saying that grace has no effect in
    time, just that obviously a great deal of grace can be given to someone who lacks
    material goods.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    I tried to clarify what I meant here, wasn’t sure if you saw this branch of the
    conversation.
    Quote Tweet

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer
    · Apr 4
    Replying to @thomaesplendor
    I would say then that graces with no discernible temporal manifestation should
    not be evoked to describe visible reality (eg eternal decrees). Sticking with your
    analogy, there were a near infinite number of graces which allowed my wife and I
    to have children, and...
    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood
    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 5
    Sure, but I think this still suggests talking past one another. Having children is
    wonderful, but what Taylor's talking about as "grace" is the gift of faith, hope, and
    charity—those habits out of which one acts when one pleases God.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    Right, when we talk about those gifts, I see them as dependent on such an infinite
    number of causes throughout history that they belong to a different “class” of
    grace. One that we should not speculate about God’s reasoning (eg eternal
    decrees). Unles we say...

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    that God unilaterally gives or withholds the gift of faith apart from those causal
    connections, but that is not what we see in the gardens. Inboth circumstances it
    requires cooperation of the will of the individual, & I would also argue God is
    giving the gift to everyone always.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 5
    But Taylor isn't saying you could receive grace against your will. That continues to
    be a point of slippage.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    First, I think it’s built in when discussing conversion as a gift given, implying those
    not turning not being offered the gift, and I think they were more explicit about
    this point in the podcast and I may be mixing that into the current conversation,
    but...

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    if I’m mistaken about some part of his overall thought I’m open to correction.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 5
    Yeah, I'm pretty certain both Taylor and Derek are operating from a compatibilist
    perspective where God by grace brings it about that the will freely cooperates. So
    objections that the cooperation of the will isn't necessary on their are at best
    question-begging.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    Well I think we both know that not all compatabalisms are created equal.
    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood
    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 5
    I don't know what you mean by that

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    IMO, compatabalism is like a philosophical junk drawer with a spectrum of beliefs
    between libertarianism and determinism. Derek and Taylor’s seems very close to
    the determinist pole.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    To the point that it sometimes appears to be determinism simply claiming to be
    compatabalism through a “mystery.”
    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood
    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 5
    This is a misunderstanding. Compatibilism (at least with respect to an individual
    act, though not necessarily all acts) is not *near* determinism, but rather simply
    accepts determinism and says freedom is compatible with it.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 5
    Compatibilism just is the view that an act can be both determined and free.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    Yes I consider myself a compatabalist, but are you suggesting there’s no variation
    within that category? Maybe I’ve just listened to too much Sproul to take a
    reformed claim of compatabalism as much more than a feint.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 5
    I don't know how I could be taken to be saying that. I'm just saying the basic idea
    that compatibilists have in common is that an act can be both determined and free.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 5
    Maybe it is a feint I guess but that doesn't justify just begging the question against
    it.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer
    ·
    Apr 5
    My point earlier was that the “class of grace” by which God is able to bring about
    free choices, is a class that we can not comprehend and should not speculate about
    (eg eternal degrees). Not sure how that’s question begging but I might have
    shortened the argument at some point..

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 5
    But you are indeed speculating about it for you are arguing that what Derek and I
    (and Calvin and Thomas) are advocating for is wrong. You're basing that on your
    own understanding of the grace which you're saying we shouldn't speculate about.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    Okay, I’m saying that eternal acts are in a class in and of themselves and should
    not be used as explanations for temporal realities, and vice versa. So suggesting
    regeneration must come first, because of radical corruption, is an attempt to...
    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    order eternal acts based on our limited temporal understanding. This creates
    competition between the temporal and eternal for countless causal relations. And
    I must apologize, you may be an innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of my
    limited knowledge...

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 5
    How do temporal realities come about if not at the end of a causal series which
    begins with eternal acts?

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 6
    I apologize, I said it backward. Temporal realities should not be used to “order”
    eternal acts. For example, Sproul’s insistence that regeneration must be “logically
    prior” to faith because of radical corruption.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 6
    I don't get why. Whether or not Sproul is right in this instance, I don't get why this
    isn't something we can argue about.

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 6
    I take it to be an intelligible question precisely because I think the claim is true
    that man has no good which doesn't first come from God ontologically.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer
    ·
    Apr 6
    I doubt that I could communicate any better than it was done here...
    Quote Tweet

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    · Apr 4
    Replying to @CorbyAmos and @mattlarimer
    DBH aims his theological crosshairs on the Banezian Thomists’ subsequent
    development of predestination in the early modern period culminating in the “de
    auxiliis” controversy, specifically, their teaching of physical premotion (praemotio
    physica). https://exumbrisblog.wordpress.com/2019/09/10/summary-of-
    impassibility-as-transcendence-on-the-infinite-innocence-of-god-by-david-
    bentley-hart/

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 6
    I really think that DBH misses the fundamental doctrine of movement ad extra,
    and his argument fails to explain how even creation itself would not contradict
    divine simplicity.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 6
    Though I'm more sympathetic to Hart here than Taylor is, I don't detect an
    argument here against logically ordering (our understanding of) things like divine
    decrees. I detect an argument against a certain way of doing that.

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 6
    In fact, I think it is pretty clear that Hart holds essentially the same position
    regarding the divine decrees that I do. In TASBS, he even comes pretty close to
    endorsing premotion.

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 6
    To reiterate, I thought DBH missed RG-L's implicit analogical & apophatic
    predications, which are explicitly stated elsewhere in the same discussion. Ergo,
    no worries re competing causes. I reject, too, as radical apophaticism, any
    proscription of RG-L's speculative grammar. 1/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 6
    What I don't grasp, though: Stipulating to the distinction between sufficient &
    efficacious graces (the former *sufficient* in that only a free resistance of same
    would ever be met w/a denial of the latter), does the teaching that there
    necessarily exists a predestined elect 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 6
    require: a) merely the possibility? or b) clearly the necessity, that some will have
    been damned (i.e. intractably reprobate)? 3/3

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 6
    I think that it depends upon what sort of necessity you're talking about. Simple or
    absolute necessity? No. Conditional necessity? Yes.

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 9
    Thanks, again, Prof. O'Neill. My engagement's not idle, but heartfelt. I've
    experienced a tension between a classical-type subjunctive/hopeful universalism &
    ressourcement-type indicative/essential universalism. I'll share a longish musing
    but don't request the favor of reply. 1

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 9
    When one conceives the gratuity of nature gifted via creatio ex nihilo in theonomic
    terms of - not only necessity, but - contingency, in my view, it will both soften our
    determinist & temper our libertarian conceptions. 2/
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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    I deleted my original response to this Thomistic schema, below, b/c it needed


    qualification. I'll repost it, then provide those amendments. 1/
    Quote Tweet

    Fr Aidan Kimel
    @EOrthodoxy
    · Apr 8
    A lengthy Thomistic presentation of divine providence, in four parts. I have not
    read it yet, but it sure looks interesting. I'd like to hear what Twitter Thomists
    think about the author's presentation. https://thinkingthoughtout.com/omni-
    instrumentality/
    6:24 AM · Apr 9, 2020·Twitter for Android

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    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 9
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    re: grace & nature, Lonergan avoided the extremes of de Lubac vs natura pura & re
    grace & created freedom, he transcended the false dichotomy of Bañezianism vs
    Molinism Roland's doing the same. Whether he & Lonergan got Aquinas right, I
    dunno, but they make good sense to me. 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 9
    Roland's Thomist account reminded me a lot of this article, below. Another great
    read. The Integrity of Nature in the Grace-Freedom Dynamic: Lonergan's Critique
    of Banezian Thomism, Joshua Brotherton, Theological studies75(3):537-563 ·
    August 2014 3/

    (PDF) The Integrity of Nature in the Grace-Freedom Dynamic: Lonergan's Critique


    of Banezian Thomism
    PDF | Lonergan makes unique, balanced contributions to the debates on the
    relationship between the natural and supernatural and on the grace-freedom... |
    Find, read and cite all the research you need...

    researchgate.net

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 9
    Taylor O'Neill does not think Lonergan's account of causality squares with that of
    Aquinas. Unless Roland departs from Lonergan in ways I can't discern, some
    Thomists may consider his approach similarly at odds. cf O'Neill's _Grace,
    Predestination & the Permission of Sin_ 4/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 9
    Qualifying: In any case, we must back up to ask how they all approach the broader
    question of nature & grace, for that's preliminary to how freedom & grace best be
    related. In my view, Lonergan didn't exactly get this right either, though he made a
    great start. 5/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 9
    While the neo-scholastic artificial extrinsicism or duplex ordo of natura pura
    remains a theologically untenable zero sum game, Lonergan's de Lubacian account
    had its own deficiencies, anthropologically, which Don Gelpi corrected:
    https://opcentral.org/resources/2015/01/12/donald-l-gelpi-two-spiritual-paths-
    thematic-grace-vs-transmuting-grace-part-1/
    6/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 9
    This is the link to Part II of Gelpi's Lonerganian account. With those corrections to
    the broad question of nature & grace, the Lonerganian accounts of grace &
    freedom gain even more impetus over against the Bañezian flirtation
    w/determinism. 7/ https://opcentral.org/resources/2015/01/12/donald-l-gelpi-
    two-spiritual-paths-thematic-grace-vs-transmuting-grace-part-ii/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 9
    As our accounts gain impetus over the Bañezian, who cares if they remain strictly
    Thomist? as long as they remain sufficiently Neo-Platonic & participatory Neo-
    Bañezians will say metaphysical questions beg, but that's a feature not a bug of our
    semiotics & speculative grammar. 8/

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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    While rationality accounts for the will's freedom & an absence of reason entails a
    lack of freedom, sin does not reduce to mere errors of judgment but to a person's
    unrestrained capacity to act without deliberation or, per Scotus, w/o virtue, i.e. in
    the way that nature acts, 1/
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    @AEROdynamicCat1
    ·
    Apr 6
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    which is by refraining to will at all. One thus, culpably, & via habit, viciously acts,
    when one refuses the gift of one's very humanity, when one acts (via one's negative
    freedom, i.e w/o restraint) inauthentically, 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 6
    when one refuses to engage & grow the gift of freedom within (i.e. the positive
    freedom to self-actualize). 3/3

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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    Marilyn M. Adams meditated deeply on the realities of serious sin, deep suffering
    & horrendous evil. She did so w/a type of authority that can derive only from one
    who's personally entered such an abyss. 1/
    9:08 AM · Apr 7, 2020·Twitter for Android

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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 7
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    After coming through it, she found Julian of Norwich a singular resource for her
    theological anthropology. She expresses an evaluative disposition w/which I
    resonate every bit as much as I did w/many of Hart's own in TASBS. 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 7
    Adams: Personally, I am appalled at [such] valuations, at levels too deep for
    words. I invite anyone who agrees w/Craig-that the saved can in good conscience
    let their happiness be unaffected by the plight of the damned b/c the destruction of
    the latter's self-willed ... enough

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    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    re: post-mortem anthropology, however much the hereafter will present what no
    eye's seen nor ear heard nor heart of woman's conceived, I trust that, in so going
    beyond our earthly sensibilities, it won't do them violence, e.g. those based on
    medieval speculative angelology 1/
    5:33 PM · Apr 5, 2020·Twitter for Android

    John Sobert Sylvest

    ·
    Apr 5
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    For example, why shouldn't integral human persons (re-embodied souls) not be
    able to still respond to saving grace? over against, e g. Ch 44: Soul's immutability
    after death, _Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought_, Reginald Garrigou-
    Lagrange, O.P. 2/

    EWTN Global Catholic Television Network: Catholic News, TV, Radio | EWTN
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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    Where do we thus stand re nature's laws? Re putative laws of nature, I favor
    Lakatos' criteria of adequacy (heuristic power) over either Carnap's
    (confirmationist) or Popper's (falsificationist) methodologies. How to parse these
    laws in terms of description, observation, 1/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    prescription, modeling, explanation, prediction, nomicity & such remains a sticky
    widget. While I'd still accept the criticism of analycity (along w/Wittgenstein,
    Quine et al), as applied to common language concepts, 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    I'm less convinced of its applicability to the concepts of well structured scientific
    theories, which employ rigorous definitions with strict criteria of application (&
    highly precise subject-predicate containments). 3/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    Re analycity, above, I summarized & paraphrased Johansson's "Natural
    Necessity," cited below. Lars-Göran Johansson, In Henrik Lagerlund, Sten
    Lindström & Rysiek Sliwinski (eds.), Philosophy. Uppsala University. pp. 221-229
    (2006) http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:51166/FULLTEXT01.pdf
    4/
    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Apr 27
    I find myself siding with Hume and Quine. That paper seems to be assuming an
    odd metaphysical realism which, following a long line of neo-Kantians, I find
    incompatible with the empirical realism it claims to represent.

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 27
    Yeah, I get that. During the week, when I'm more focused on temporal affairs &
    scientific pursuits, I'm more Humean re regularities (heck not even Hume was
    humean in the pejorative sense erroneously ascribed to him). Epistemic statistical
    regularities generally suffice. 1/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    ·
    Apr 27
    BUT - on the weekend & Sabbath eves! When I contemplate putative nomic
    necessities, divine prescriptions & influences & such, I muse w/Peirce on the Ens
    Necessarium. But, metaphysically, I remain realist about "generals" but agnostic
    re causal joints, content to believe THAT 2/

    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Apr 27
    Can't one be both Piercean and anti-realist? That seems to be the most
    epistemically humble option.

    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Apr 27
    Of course, I'm assuming a Wittgensteinian antirealism: not so much "it doesn't
    exist" as "the question needs to be passed over in silence."
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    Replying to
    @cjbanning
    As w/CSP, I've seen all manner of (re)characterizations of both early & late
    Wittgenstein, even coming across Kaluzinski's interpretation re truth (which I
    didn't read b/c it's in Polish). I do resonate w/the "passing over in silience"
    injunction 1/

    Truth as correspondence in late Wittgenstein's philosophy


    Download Citation | Truth as correspondence in late Wittgenstein's philosophy |
    This article is a reconstruction of late Wittgenstein's views on the notion of truth,
    found in the Philosophical...

    researchgate.net

    10:58 AM · Apr 27, 2020·Twitter for Android

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    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    ·
    Apr 27
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    and
    @cjbanning
    generally, as expressed in my metaphysical agnosticism. For limit questions of
    profound existential import, though, that agnosticism does consider its forced &
    vital options, then leaps! 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 27
    Does that moreso make me a Wittgenstenian fideist or Jamesian pragmatist? I
    dunno. I feel like it's not in any thoroughgoing fideistic way though, as I consider
    such options as seem live in a robustly realist way, semiotically & pragmatically,
    per a nuanced fides et ratio. 3/

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    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    Where do we thus stand re nature's laws? Re putative laws of nature, I favor


    Lakatos' criteria of adequacy (heuristic power) over either Carnap's
    (confirmationist) or Popper's (falsificationist) methodologies. How to parse these
    laws in terms of description, observation, 1/
    6:17 PM · Apr 26, 2020·Twitter for Android

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    Like

    John Sobert Sylvest

    ·
    Apr 26
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    prescription, modeling, explanation, prediction, nomicity & such remains a sticky
    widget. While I'd still accept the criticism of analycity (along w/Wittgenstein,
    Quine et al), as applied to common language concepts, 2/
    1
    1
    John Sobert Sylvest

    ·
    Apr 26
    I'm less convinced of its applicability to the concepts of well structured scientific
    theories, which employ rigorous definitions with strict criteria of application (&
    highly precise subject-predicate containments). 3/
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    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Apr 25
    Sometimes I feel like I'm the only Christian who accepts causal determinism as
    compatible with human free will, but rejects theological predestination as
    incompatible.

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 25
    Are you sympathetic with Anscombe-like takes re causation & necessitation? With
    some qualifications akin to hers, I can follow you down this path. Or, how do you
    otherwise bust this move?

    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Apr 25
    Answering how one busts the move requires a little bit more clarification on what
    aspect one considers in need of busting.

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    ·
    Apr 26
    That's true. Sorry. The move I sense could be in play would involve taking
    necessitation out of the equation, causally. I read just a little of what Anscombe
    said, but am unfamiliar really w/Wittgenstein. So, I really meant to ask if you turn
    to him or others re necessitation?

    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Apr 26
    "Neccistation" isn't language I'm super familiar with. My argument is basically
    that while human actions are determined by their cause, human freedom requires
    that the entire string of causes must be a contingent feature of the actual world,
    not determined by God.

    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Apr 26
    Maybe I should specify "not determined by God in the relevant sense"? One of the
    issues that one would have to work out is that how events in the world can be
    dependent upon God (through whom all things are made) without being
    determined by God.
    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Apr 26
    I do think traditional Catholic accounts of free will--Molinism, etc.--can be helpful
    here, although I don't know that I ascribe to any specific account in toto.

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    I use "necessitation" to refer to such putative realities as nomic necessity,
    nomological necessity, ontological necessity, natural necessity, physical necessity,
    etc, distinguished from mere logical or conceptual necessity. a/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    Rejecting the idea that causation must involve such necessitation, Anscombe spoke
    of "non-necessitating" causes, thus sundering causation from determinism &
    deterministic explanations. Many theological problematics result from unsound
    anthropologies & muddled metaphysics?! b/

    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Apr 26
    Does that simply re-create libertarian free will (my actions were caused by X, but I
    still could have acted differently), or something else?

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    In my view, it reveals that absolutist distinctions, such as between compatabilist &
    libertarian stances or in/determimism must be abandoned as inapt, or, at least,
    qualified in degrees (e.g. soft/hard, thick/thin, moderate). For me, it's consistent
    w/DBHart's free will notions.
    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Apr 26
    It seems to me that any sort of indeterminism is in essentially a "God of the gaps"
    position, and that as we learn more and more about the way physical causes
    determine human action, there's going to be less and less room for it.

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    That remains a legitimate concern but such a pejorative characterization can be
    too faciley charged? It's precisely by prescinding from necessity to probability,
    speculatively, & from "a priorism" to fallibilism, metaphysically, we can avoid it!
    Quote Tweet

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    · Apr 26
    Over Against "gods in Gaps" charges Methodological naturalism remains
    indispensable, but, so does an eschewal of "a prioristic" ontological stances,
    including metaphysical ignosticism. 1/
    Show this thread
    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Apr 26
    It's not clear to me that it's something we ought to try to avoid.

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    It's not always clear where legitimate limit questions differentiate from gap
    arguments, some being obvious logical fallacies, others -- clearly valid, layered
    explanations. But we do know this: it's not *useful* to prematurely foreclose on
    inquiries, natural or theological.

    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Apr 26
    Isn't it? If it limits the number of metaphysical entities required, that's certainly a
    type of utility. We shouldn't prefer a metaphysical explanation if a physical
    explanation is available.
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    Replying to
    @cjbanning
    Yes & no. For starters, my positivist methodology rejects NOMA (nonoverlapping
    magisteria). But, that's not to say it doesn't also reject the unnecessary
    multiplication of ontologies. Further, it interprets Occam's Razor more so in terms
    of inferential parsimony, a/
    6:23 PM · Apr 26, 2020·Twitter for Android

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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    and
    @cjbanning
    i.e. abductive facility (ease of hypothesizing), a Peircean insight. Most importantly,
    it countenances the use of such hypothetical clippers on competing explanations -
    not as a general class, but - only when they already exhibit sufficient degrees of
    explanatory adequacy. b/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 26
    In other words, too many wield the Razor too often without sufficient epistemic
    warrant. https://twitter.com/AEROdynamicCat1/status/1254550160266465280?
    s=19
    c/
    Quote Tweet

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    · Apr 26
    Where do we thus stand re nature's laws? Re putative laws of nature, I favor
    Lakatos' criteria of adequacy (heuristic power) over either Carnap's
    (confirmationist) or Popper's (falsificationist) methodologies. How to parse these
    laws in terms of description, observation, 1/
    Show this thread
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    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 4
    At about the 43 minute mark
    @DZRishmawy
    says something like, “wouldn’t it be crazy to suggest someone could do more with
    less grace...” and
    @thomaesplendor
    and
    @mattleeanderson
    both chuckled in agreement, but...

    “Grace, Predestination, and the Permission of Sin,” with Dr. Taylor Patrick O’Neill
    What hath St. Thomas to do with predestination? Dr. Taylor Patrick O’Neill joins
    Matt and Derek to discuss his recent book, Grace, Predestination, [...]
    mereorthodoxy.com

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 4
    isn’t that what we see happening every day? People who are born into
    circumstances lacking many graces are drawn toward God and those born with
    many turning away?

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 4
    Taylor tried to step in and clarify that the turn toward God is caused by God, so
    that no one can boast, but are you all just denying any participation of the
    individual will in the process?
    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 4
    I was worried about my ability to listen charitably to the discussion, so I had a big
    lunch to make sure I wasn’t “hangry,” but it was hard hearing you guys laugh about
    how everyone else has to “skip over a bunch of scripture” but the Calvinists and
    Thomists embrace the mystery.

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 4
    Two things: 1) Temporal circumstances say nothing about the invisible graces
    being bestowed upon an individual. None of us have any idea how much grace a
    neighbor receives. Doing more with less is referring to this invisible grace, not
    money or education or something visible.

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 4
    2) Affirming with St. Paul that we cannot boast about our own holiness in no way
    rejects free will or even the doctrine of merit. I'm not sure why you'd assume that
    anyone holding to the position that grace is necessary would assume participation
    isn't real.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 4
    Either they’re natural/temporal graces or they’re not, if they’re not and they
    belong to the realm of supernatural/eternal then I’m tempted to side with Hart
    that they should not be spoken of as discernable motivations. Not sure how you
    came to your second point...

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 4
    if my turn toward God is entirely predicated on grace made effective by God then
    there is no participation. Unless your suggesting three categories on mankind the
    elect, the elect who resist, and the non-elect.

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 4
    1) I don't know what you mean by "discernible motivations." By definition, all
    graces are supernatural, though we do sometimes talk about being "blessed" with
    riches or something. 2) You're presupposing competitive causality. Nature is full
    of examples where...

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 4
    two causes work to produce a shared effect but one cause is contingent upon a
    more primary cause. The existence of the primary cause does not negate the
    participation and true causality of the secondary cause but, in fact, causes it!

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 4
    Let me ask: where do children come from? Presumably they come from God, but
    does that mean that they do not also come from their parents? If one says that they
    come from their parents are we bound to maintain that this means they do not
    come from God?
    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 4
    I was responding primarily to your statement that “temporal circumstances say
    nothing of invisible graces,” so if you’re discussing a subset of graces with no
    temporal manifestation then by definition are they not eternal and indiscernable?

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 4
    I’m not familiar enough with Thomistic language to ensure that I’m getting my
    meaning across. Usually this is the point at which
    @David_Mahfood
    jumps in and explains what I’m trying to say. Hopefully he’s still awake, lol.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood
    ·
    Apr 5
    I think by "temporal circumstances" Taylor was referring back to your claim about
    people being born in certain circumstances. Not saying that grace has no effect in
    time, just that obviously a great deal of grace can be given to someone who lacks
    material goods.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    I tried to clarify what I meant here, wasn’t sure if you saw this branch of the
    conversation.
    Quote Tweet

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer
    · Apr 4
    Replying to @thomaesplendor
    I would say then that graces with no discernible temporal manifestation should
    not be evoked to describe visible reality (eg eternal decrees). Sticking with your
    analogy, there were a near infinite number of graces which allowed my wife and I
    to have children, and...

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 5
    Sure, but I think this still suggests talking past one another. Having children is
    wonderful, but what Taylor's talking about as "grace" is the gift of faith, hope, and
    charity—those habits out of which one acts when one pleases God.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    Right, when we talk about those gifts, I see them as dependent on such an infinite
    number of causes throughout history that they belong to a different “class” of
    grace. One that we should not speculate about God’s reasoning (eg eternal
    decrees). Unles we say...

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    that God unilaterally gives or withholds the gift of faith apart from those causal
    connections, but that is not what we see in the gardens. Inboth circumstances it
    requires cooperation of the will of the individual, & I would also argue God is
    giving the gift to everyone always.
    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood
    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 5
    But Taylor isn't saying you could receive grace against your will. That continues to
    be a point of slippage.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    First, I think it’s built in when discussing conversion as a gift given, implying those
    not turning not being offered the gift, and I think they were more explicit about
    this point in the podcast and I may be mixing that into the current conversation,
    but...

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer
    ·
    Apr 5
    if I’m mistaken about some part of his overall thought I’m open to correction.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 5
    Yeah, I'm pretty certain both Taylor and Derek are operating from a compatibilist
    perspective where God by grace brings it about that the will freely cooperates. So
    objections that the cooperation of the will isn't necessary on their are at best
    question-begging.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    Well I think we both know that not all compatabalisms are created equal.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 5
    I don't know what you mean by that

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    IMO, compatabalism is like a philosophical junk drawer with a spectrum of beliefs
    between libertarianism and determinism. Derek and Taylor’s seems very close to
    the determinist pole.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    To the point that it sometimes appears to be determinism simply claiming to be
    compatabalism through a “mystery.”
    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood
    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 5
    This is a misunderstanding. Compatibilism (at least with respect to an individual
    act, though not necessarily all acts) is not *near* determinism, but rather simply
    accepts determinism and says freedom is compatible with it.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 5
    Compatibilism just is the view that an act can be both determined and free.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    Yes I consider myself a compatabalist, but are you suggesting there’s no variation
    within that category? Maybe I’ve just listened to too much Sproul to take a
    reformed claim of compatabalism as much more than a feint.
    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood
    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 5
    I don't know how I could be taken to be saying that. I'm just saying the basic idea
    that compatibilists have in common is that an act can be both determined and free.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 5
    Maybe it is a feint I guess but that doesn't justify just begging the question against
    it.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    My point earlier was that the “class of grace” by which God is able to bring about
    free choices, is a class that we can not comprehend and should not speculate about
    (eg eternal degrees). Not sure how that’s question begging but I might have
    shortened the argument at some point..

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 5
    But you are indeed speculating about it for you are arguing that what Derek and I
    (and Calvin and Thomas) are advocating for is wrong. You're basing that on your
    own understanding of the grace which you're saying we shouldn't speculate about.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    Okay, I’m saying that eternal acts are in a class in and of themselves and should
    not be used as explanations for temporal realities, and vice versa. So suggesting
    regeneration must come first, because of radical corruption, is an attempt to...

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 5
    order eternal acts based on our limited temporal understanding. This creates
    competition between the temporal and eternal for countless causal relations. And
    I must apologize, you may be an innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of my
    limited knowledge...

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 5
    How do temporal realities come about if not at the end of a causal series which
    begins with eternal acts?

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 6
    I apologize, I said it backward. Temporal realities should not be used to “order”
    eternal acts. For example, Sproul’s insistence that regeneration must be “logically
    prior” to faith because of radical corruption.
    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood
    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Apr 6
    I don't get why. Whether or not Sproul is right in this instance, I don't get why this
    isn't something we can argue about.

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 6
    I take it to be an intelligible question precisely because I think the claim is true
    that man has no good which doesn't first come from God ontologically.

    Daman78701
    @mattlarimer

    ·
    Apr 6
    I doubt that I could communicate any better than it was done here...
    Quote Tweet

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    · Apr 4
    Replying to @CorbyAmos and @mattlarimer
    DBH aims his theological crosshairs on the Banezian Thomists’ subsequent
    development of predestination in the early modern period culminating in the “de
    auxiliis” controversy, specifically, their teaching of physical premotion (praemotio
    physica). https://exumbrisblog.wordpress.com/2019/09/10/summary-of-
    impassibility-as-transcendence-on-the-infinite-innocence-of-god-by-david-
    bentley-hart/

    Taylor Patrick O'Neill


    @thomaesplendor

    ·
    Apr 6
    I really think that DBH misses the fundamental doctrine of movement ad extra,
    and his argument fails to explain how even creation itself would not contradict
    divine simplicity.
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    ·
    Mar 31
    If God suffers, then he suffers in a divine manner, i.e. his suffering is an
    expression of his freedom; suffering doesn't befall God, rather he freely allows it
    to touch him. ~ Walter Kasper trans. Matthew J. O’Connell, God of Jesus Christ,
    London: SCM, 1984, 195 1/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 31
    Thus we speak of the Son's impassible suffering or of how the Impassible suffers.
    2/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 31
    Without denying the Patristic teaching, should we not also say something more
    than this? ~Kallistos Ware We might affirm that God remains directly involved
    with & not indifferent to creation, even prior to the Incarnation, without ascribing
    human feelings to God. 3/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 31
    God’s constant love shows itself as mercy on occasion & God’s constant holiness
    shows itself as wrath on others. Love & holiness are essential attributes of God
    whereas mercy & wrath are contingent (per divine gratuity) characteristics.
    ~Weinandy 4/

    Does God Suffer? | Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap.


    Some readers may think this an odd article to be published by “a journal of
    religion and public . . . .
    firstthings.com

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 31
    In "The God Who Wept A Human Tear," Graham Cole suggested a way forward
    (Biblically Qualified Impassibility): God's impassible in the essential but not in the
    affect sense of the word, anthropopathic but not anthropomorphic. 5/
    http://ojs.globalmissiology.org/index.php/english/article/view/612/1539

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 31
    More specifically, how might we affirm Cyril, Kasper, Ware, Weinandy & Cole
    while preserving DDS? I've relied on Norris Clarke's Personalist Thomism, which
    understands Aquinas' entire metaphysical system as an original synthesis of
    Aristotelianism & Neoplatonism. 6/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 31
    M. J. Dodds looks at Clarke's dialogue w/Lewis Ford in _The Unchanging God of
    Love: Aquinas & Contemporary Theology on Divine Immutability, , CUA Press,
    2008: The absolute nature of God being affected relatively to His creatures must
    not contradict divine simplicity. 7/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 31
    God's whole being, including His absolute being, is indeed affected by all of his
    conscious life (both knowledge & love), but in some respects 1) absolutely &
    relatively (inner perfection of divine esse naturale independent of creatures &
    interpersonal trinitarian relations) 8/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 31
    2) absolutely & not relatively (eternal inner perfection of divine esse naturale) 3)
    relatively & not absolutely (extroverted knowledge & love relations of divine esse
    intentionale with creatures) 9/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 31
    Per Clarke, there's nothing new in the absolute order added or affected in God's
    inner being, as what God knows with respect to creatures neither augments nor
    raises to an absolute level the absolute perfection already there in God. 10/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 31
    Clarke doesn't specify how such a relative enrichment works in an absolute being,
    but I imagine it in terms of differences in aesthetic scope rather than intensity, ie
    via a thin passibility of the divine esse intentionale w/an abiding intrinsic
    perfection of esse naturale. 11/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 3
    To some extent, it may be easier to grasp the above by looking at how W. L. Craig's
    engaged Clarke's personalist thomism, i.e. as a foil (where what man takes to be
    features may be what another woman considers as bugs). 12/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 3
    The caveat is that analytical approaches often fail to capture the highly nuanced
    distinctions of divine propria vs idiomata vs epinoia or the nature of semantical,
    ontological & apophatic predications, so thus engage caricatures. 13/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 3
    Per Clarke, there's no divine temporalization but, instead, a time-transcendent
    eternal contemporaneity that's outside the flow of motion dependent time, hence,
    no internal succession in God. 14/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 3
    In my (mis?)appropriation, there's no best possible world or set of counterfactuals
    that present in a "this *after* that" temporal fashion, implying change, but, rather,
    an eternal pareto front of equipoised optimalities (divine aesthetic scope sans
    intensities), 15/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 3
    instead characterized as "this *rather* than that." The divine's thus - not only
    omnipresent, omnibenevolent, omnipotent & propositionally omniscient , but
    experientially omnipathic via a great-making, non-composite & essential
    theopathy, 16/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    in which our anthropathy participates as an image, which can grow into a likeness.
    17/
    9:21 AM · Apr 3, 2020·Twitter for Android

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    @AEROdynamicCat1
    ·
    Apr 1
    Neoplatonism & semiotics When one assumes a participatory stance, one
    stipulates that successful references can be made to modes of nondeterminate
    reality (beyond being) by employing a speculative grammar (of semantical
    univocity, ontological analogy & apophasis) 1/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 1
    ... a speculative grammar that riffs off the modes that we'd otherwise specify only
    for in/determinate being, which, taken as a whole, presents as an effect proper to
    no known causes. 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 1
    An emergentist phenomenology of in/determinate being can inventory
    qualitatively distinct types of aboutness (teloi = logoi) & characterize them
    (semiotically) as various types of signs in our realm of (theophanic) multiplicity.
    3/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 1
    Modern semioticians, including - not just pious believers, but - scientistic
    positivists, have recently retrieved, rather uncontroversially, such classical
    notions as formal & final causations, thereby affirming im/material realities. 4/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 1
    What gets philosophically controversial, though, precisely involves the question of
    which of these "aboutness"es constitute the primitives of in/determinate being &
    which ontologically might emerge therefrom & how. 5/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 1
    Some, then, introduce distinctions - like "strongly emergent & weakly
    supervenient" and "weakly emergent & strongly supervenient" - which, in my view,
    have no a priori warrant. As it is, the former distinction, epistemically, remains
    question begging, the latter - trivial. 6/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 1
    In/determinate being's aporia thus perduring, the more coherent stances will
    cultivate a healthy aporetic sense (i.e. abide an undecidability?). 7/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 1
    What's most salient to me, theologically, remains the increasingly less
    controversial assertion THAT notions of formal & final causations and
    im/material realities remain metaphysically indispensable heuristics and 8/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 1
    THAT broad categories like nous, soul & the im/material remain eminently
    intelligible, even as we remain methodologically thwarted in specifying HOW. I
    thus embrace a plain vanilla emergentist heuristic, agnostic to realities like
    supervenience, and reckon that, 9/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    whether consciousness is a primitive or an emergent in/determinate reality, will


    only ever change certain references & predications of my God-talk (what's
    semantical & univocal? what's ontological & analogical? what's apophatic?) and
    10/
    1:15 PM · Apr 1, 2020·Twitter for Android

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    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 1
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    nothing whatsoever of strictly transcendent sense, i.e. it will otherwise have no
    bearing on my original existential leap of faith in the nondeterminate One or Ens
    Necessarium, which theophanically manifests in the signs of the heavens above &
    symbolic wonders of the earth below.

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Apr 1
    cf Eriugena & Peirce, for example
    Quote Tweet

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    · Mar 31
    Replying to @Brendan_W_Case
    D'accord. Some elements of Eriugena's Neoplatonism remind me of Peirce.
    Neither considers God a being. To say "God exists" amounts to a fetishism for
    Peirce, who argues, instead, the "reality" of God. 1/

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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 30
    Alexander Earl well sets the stage for demonstrating the fruitfulness of the Neo-
    platonic synthesis for Trinitology. In my view, Neoplatonism is robust enough to
    also harmonize, for example, the Cappadocians, Maximus, Avicebron, Palamas,
    Scotus (don't be a hater) & Peirce!
    Quote Tweet

    Fr Aidan Kimel
    @EOrthodoxy
    · Mar 29
    Platonism and the Trinity https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2020/03/29/platonism-
    and-the-trinity/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 30
    Many approach reality & characterize it using the participatory, donative &
    analogical elements found in neoplatonic systems. But not all thus proceed from
    the same epistemological, metaphysical or anthropological stances. 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 30
    The most coherent neoplatonic approaches: 1) understand participable
    experiences in fallibilist terms; 2) affirm the possibility of metaphysics as a gift
    apart from special revelation; 3/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    ·
    Mar 30
    3) interpret the use of analogy & univocity in Aquinas & Scotus in terms of a
    speculative grammar; 4) eschew both Báñezian & de Lubacian anthropologies. 4/4

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 31
    re: the "scientific Neoplatonism" of Peirce's metaphysics
    http://kellyaparker.net/kap/Neoplatonism/
    5/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 31
    The Latin theological tradition, at least in the Franciscan school, reserves a place
    for Eastern metaphysics & theology & shows remarkable harmony w/insights of
    the Cappadocians, Maximus, & Palamas. ~ C. W. Kappes et al citation follows 6/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 31
    Palamas among the Scholastics, by Christiaan W. Kappes, J. Isaac Goff, & T.
    Alexander Giltner, Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, Vol. 55 (2014)
    Nos. 1–2, pp. 175–220
    https://academia.edu/8586448/_Palamas_Among_the_Scholastics_
    @Sheptytsky
    7/

    "Palamas Among the Scholastics"


    David Bradshaw's impressive study in Palamism: "Aristotle East and West"
    resulted in a supplementary study in 2013 ("Divine Essence and Divine Energies).
    Here we critique and offer friendly challen...

    academia.edu

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    ·
    Mar 31
    In Roger Bacon, & above all in Duns Scotus, there is fairly substantial evidence of a
    development of some of Avicebron's most original ideas. ~ A. G. E. Blake citation
    follows 8/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 31
    Implications of Avicebron's Notion of Will - Introduced into Neo-Platonic
    Metaphysics, Systematics V 4 No. 1 June, 1966
    http://systematics.org/uploads/Main/IMPLICATIONS_O_AVICEBRONS_NOTION
    _OF_WILL.pdf
    9/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    re Thomism, properly considered, see Aquinas and Radical Orthodoxy: A Critical


    Inquiry by Paul DeHart (review) James F. Keating The Thomist: A Speculative
    Quarterly Review, Volume 79, Number 1, January 2015, pp. 155-160 (Review)
    https://muse.jhu.edu/article/635985/summary
    10/
    12:22 PM · Mar 31, 2020·Twitter for Android
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    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 31
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    re Scotism properly considered, see
    https://syndicate.network/symposia/theology/postmodernity-and-univocity/
    11/

    Postmodernity and Univocity - Syndicate


    Ours is an age of genealogy—of narrative mastertext, that is, which frames the
    advent of the present through the contingencies of history. Among the most
    stimulating genealogies on offer belongs to...

    syndicate.network
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 31
    Converging, then, with DBH's Neoplatonic inclinations:
    https://twitter.com/AEROdynamicCat1/status/1243579351263821827?s=20
    12/
    Quote Tweet

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    · Mar 27
    All that said to agree with & qualify Hart's brand of Thomistic neuralgia, directed
    mostly over against the Classical & Banezian approaches w/their Neo-scholastic
    revival. My leanings, articulated above, greatly converge w/DBH's Neoplatonic
    inclinations:
    https://twitter.com/AEROdynamicCat1/status/1233890439801057280?s=19
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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 25
    Re Mary & us vs the natures, energies & wills of divine hypostases-when
    incarnated, due to analogical intervals, ontologically, we necessarily refer to the
    latter only in terms of dyophysitism, dyenergism & dyothelitism (or, at least, a
    properly nuanced miaphysitism). 1/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 25
    These are distinctions that make real differences in how we participate in the very
    same activities (i.e love). e.g. How do different persons traverse between the
    earthly & heavenly realms? After Jesus ascended, the Spirit descended. Mary, for
    her part, was assumed. 2/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 26
    Bracketing any specific ontology, dogma do specify general meta-ontological
    contours that, for example, necessarily distinguish between creativity & co-
    creativity. 3/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 26
    Such theo-anthropological non-negotiables remain distinct, however, from more
    specific theological questions, such as which persons play which roles in
    co/creating which realities. 4/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 26
    Even as essentialistic definitions & ontological accounts of "person" elude us,
    theoretically (eg Is CSC an emergent or primitive reality?), yet, we might deploy
    robust cluster concepts to interpret classical Aristotelian causes in terms of their
    meanings or "aboutnesses." 5/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 26
    We experience those causes, integrally, each necessary - but none, alone, sufficient
    - in every human value-realization. So, to construct authentic conceptions of
    personhood, we must go beyond mere discursive, cognitive map-making to include
    our participatory imaginations. 6/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 26
    We're often thus guided, nonconceptually. Much of life's meaning-making & value-
    realization takes place via intuition, connaturality, affective inclinations &
    dispositions of the will. 7/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 26
    Even re the "noetic," we must attend to the manifold & multiform "aboutnesses" of
    our integral human episteme. descriptive & exploratory •perinoetic|empirical
    •epinoetic|apophatic normative & evaluative •dianoetic|aesthetical, ethical &
    logical 8/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 26
    interpretive & explanatory •diastemic|aporetic •ananoetic|metaphysical liberative
    & transformative •kinetic|dynamical (strivings for actualization) •metanoetic|
    transformative 9/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 26
    natura pura or supernatural existential? neither 10/
    Quote Tweet
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    · Mar 25
    I present these felicitous phrases out of context: did not formally impose
    Aristotelian philosophy; understanding should be interpreted pre-philosophically;
    true mystery lies in dominical determination, not metaphysical wizardry. 1/
    https://twitter.com/EOrthodoxy/status/1242795982842212353
    Show this thread

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 28
    Somewhere, between a - mythologization, where the economic trinity (pro nobis)
    is the immanent trinity (ergo, as for Greek metaphysics, nothing to see here) and a
    11/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 28
    gnostic speculation, where the immament trinity is the economic trinity (ergo, as
    for any vicissitudes of history affecting an eternal deity, nothing to see here)
    Without equating the immanent & economic Trinity, we must somehow allow
    them to illuminate each other, 12/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 28
    going beyond Chalcedon but not without it? Perhaps we can use a christological
    analogy of being, ontologically, & univocity of being, semantically, to shed such
    light. 13/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 28
    Why shouldn't we imagine that we can make - not only successful ontological
    descriptions of Jesus' suffering, using nouns & verbs, but - successful semantical
    references to God's suffering in our contemplative Trinitarian passiology, using
    adverbs? 14/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 28
    And, beyond that, acknowledge a thin divine passibility? "Norris Clarke affirms
    that it should be unambiguously stated that God is truly, `really', personally
    related to the world by relations of knowledge & mutual love & affected in
    consciousness, ... 15/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 28
    but not in abiding intrinsic perfection of nature, by what happens in the world. ~
    Robert A. Connor http://robertaconnor.blogspot.com/2005/05/fr-clarke-sj-and-i-
    on-person-as.html?m=1
    16/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 28
    Both a kenotic Christology & Trinitarian passiology will thus impart normative
    impetus to & performative significance for the manner of our own unitive
    aspirations, our own sufferings, missions & theosis. 17/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 28
    If the gratuities of both creation & grace remain in no way necessary for
    nondeterminate divine realities, still, they might have been chosen by self-
    determinate divine persons because, necessarily, the realities of creation & grace
    so very truly fit how they act. 18/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    So, aside from the mystery of what different natures are & their relations, we do
    inquire, also, about HOW they act. And we do meditate on how we might
    participate in those divine activities. 19/
    9:49 AM · Mar 28, 2020·Twitter for Android

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    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 28
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    So, again ...
    https://twitter.com/AEROdynamicCat1/status/1243740285768814595?s=19
    20/
    Quote Tweet

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1
    · Mar 27
    The list of putative divine acts that would, somehow, indeed diminish the abiding
    intrinsic perfection of the divine esse naturale is shorter than many seem to
    imagine, I suspect.

    0:25
    24 views

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 28
    Other predications made for realities concurrent with but not identical to a nature
    (esse naturale), which necessarily inhere, characterizing but not defining it,
    naming but not describing it, include univocal semantic references & analogical
    predications ... 21/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 28
    of meta-ontological & meta-nomological realities: Propria – predicated essentially
    re: attributes Idiomata – predicated personally re: exemplifications, hypostases
    22/
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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    "I sense a connection being made silently between Mary, the Incarnation & the
    Cosmic Christ & the entire cosmos. ... Mary bearing & giving birth to Jesus, the
    Creator of the world, is interrelated with the cosmos & creation." ~ Marie
    Azzarello

    Mary and the Cosmic Christ


    Sacred art, in its stillness, holds an energy that often opens our minds and hearts
    to a new way of seeing the truths of our faith. I invite you on a virtual pilgrimage
    with me.

    globalsistersreport.org

    6:05 PM · Mar 27, 2020·Twitter for Android

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    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 27
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    The Incarnation was in the holy cards from the cosmic get-go, not essentially
    related to some felix culpa. Thus foreordained, the Theotokos was chosen in Christ
    before the foundation of the world. 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 27
    From all eternity, the mother of God's Son was predestined to be Mary, a daughter
    of Israel, a young Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee, who'd offer the free assent
    of her faith, wholly borne by God's grace. 3/

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    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    "I sense a connection being made silently between Mary, the Incarnation & the
    Cosmic Christ & the entire cosmos. ... Mary bearing & giving birth to Jesus, the
    Creator of the world, is interrelated with the cosmos & creation." ~ Marie
    Azzarello

    Mary and the Cosmic Christ


    globalsistersreport.org

    6:05 PM · Mar 27, 2020·Twitter for Android

    John Sobert Sylvest

    ·
    Mar 27
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    The Incarnation was in the holy cards from the cosmic get-go, not essentially
    related to some felix culpa. Thus foreordained, the Theotokos was chosen in Christ
    before the foundation of the world. 2/
    1
    1

    John Sobert Sylvest

    ·
    Mar 27
    From all eternity, the mother of God's Son was predestined to be Mary, a daughter
    of Israel, a young Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee, who'd offer the free assent
    of her faith, wholly borne by God's grace. 3/
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    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    utility's role in the meaning of truth utility & instrumentality must be broadly
    conceived beyond the ends & means of technology, efficiency & representational
    vehicles to accommodate the human contemplative stance 1/
    10:53 AM · Mar 22, 2020·Twitter for Android

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    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 22
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    a) practical meanings that equate with use can be indexed to behavior, practices b)
    symbols are performative, pragmatic c) one doesn't need a metaphysic or theory of
    truth to engage in meanings (although metaphysical ignosticism must be rejected)
    2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 22
    d) our conceptions of truth's meaning impart normative impetus thru a regulative
    ideal e) any belief that's not useful in practices neither expresses truth nor
    approaches the limits of inquiry 3/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 22
    f) b/c means implicate ends, a belief that does not instrumentally lead to reality
    does not express truth g) some practices have inefficient ends, so neither seek
    technological progress nor involve efficient causation, ergo, require non-
    representational qualitative vehicles* 4/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 22
    citation for item g Champagne, Marc. (2016). Can Pragmatists Believe in Qualia?
    The Founder of Pragmatism Certainly Did…. Cybernetics and Human Knowing. 23.
    39–49. 5/5

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    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    Sometimes we must approach "believe" in a clearly performative sense. Let's say


    we employ some equiplausibility principle [EP], for reasoning under uncertainty.
    When we're faced w/a vital question or ultimate concern, it would prescribe our
    taking the most life-giving & 1/
    Quote Tweet

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood
    · Mar 21
    Replying to @DogOfPoasts @SalisburyJohnof and 3 others
    Well honestly, if something useful to believe but not actually the case, I am not
    sure I'd want to believe it.
    4:15 PM · Mar 21, 2020·Twitter for Android

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    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 21
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    relationship-enhancing course of action. Equipped w/that EP, upon entering a
    dark cave, we're confronted by a coiled-up figure on the floor. Uncertain whether
    it's a snake or rope, we jump over it rather than pick it up. 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 21
    At such an existential disjunction, we thus choose to "live as if" it's a snake & not a
    rope, not unhappy to have done so, even if it turns out to be a rope? Such can be
    the life of faith for some. And, if, in the end, we turn out to have been wrong, we'd
    have no regrets? 3/3

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    @AEROdynamicCat1

    Should any false belief prove useful or any useful belief prove false, that would
    refute any theory of truth as utility. In short, consider all such theories long ago
    refuted. 1/
    10:47 PM · Mar 21, 2020·Twitter for Android

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    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 21
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    What we mean by truth, rather, is that which lies at the limit of inquiry, ie an
    opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate. This
    meaning imparts normative impetus (as regulative ideal) for any process ordered
    to the realization of that product. 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 21
    To thus state *what truth means* differs from offering a *theory of truth*, i.e.
    giving an accounting, in terms of ultimacy, for how & why truth must thus simply
    mean to "tell it like it is!" 3/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 21
    In my theory of truth, the Ens Necessarium, the Reality of God, constitutes our
    primal origin, meaning, order, destiny & cause & so, as Truth, Beauty, Goodness,
    Unity & Freedom, itself, donates to determinate reality whatever's true, beautiful,
    good, unitive & liberative. 4/

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    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood
    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Mar 20
    Well, I can. As I've suggested, it's natural to humans to have a body and rational
    soul, to be finite, to be mortal, to have a beginning, to be born, and so on.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Mar 20
    But more to the point, it is very hard to believe that in this case you know what's
    accidental (physical location in this solar system) without any knowledge of what's
    essential.

    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Mar 20
    Not if you're convinced everything's accidental.
    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood
    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Mar 20
    But then what basis could there be to calling anything human? Or what basis for
    calling anything accidental? Is it not an essential feature of accidents that they
    aren't essential to the subjects they're predicated of? Or is that feature is accidents
    also accidental?

    Elizabeth Loupe
    @elizabeth_loupe

    ·
    Mar 20
    Also, in response to the first question: yes, exactly, which is why ordained AIs are
    not only acceptable but actively good!

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Mar 20
    Ok but doesn't this principle imply that all features of AI are accidental too? And
    all ordained things? And good things? So what basis for calling anything any of
    those things?

    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Mar 20
    The basis for calling things things are lingustic conventions. By their very nature
    these are always contingent, temporary, and arbitrary (in the Saussurean sense).

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Mar 20
    Ok, but if that's the way you assert things, why bother arguing? I can simply opt to
    arbitrarily assign a different convention. Entirely pointless as far as I can see.

    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Mar 20
    Of course you can, but then you're no longer felicitously engaging in the
    conversation if you simply choose to ignore the relevant lingustic conventions. But
    it's not like we could stop you, or would even want to.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Mar 20
    But does "felicitously engaging in the conversation" mean anything normative?

    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Mar 20
    Go up to someone (once the pandemic is over, of course) and start talking
    deliberate nonsense to them and I imagine that question will be answered in the
    positive for you pretty quickly.
    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood
    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Mar 20
    What's nonsense

    Elizabeth Loupe
    @elizabeth_loupe

    ·
    Mar 20
    "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Mar 20
    LoL, right, I mean, I'm perfectly happy to grant that as an example of nonsense,
    because I think I understand what nonsense is. But if "nonsense" is just a string of
    sounds or syllables and has no meaning, it's hard to see how it could explain
    anyone's reaction to that sentence.
    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood
    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Mar 20
    It's just a matter of convention!

    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Mar 20
    Right, and sometimes people react violently to violations of convention, until and
    unless the convention itself changes....

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Mar 20
    So I want to avoid being punched. That's it?

    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Mar 20
    Avoiding being punched is pretty important.

    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Mar 20
    I mean, arguably most of our language use is geared towards either avoiding being
    punched, or having sex.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Mar 20
    Agreed. But at I said, if that's all there is... Well, as I say, I think you've gone astray.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Mar 20
    It's good to know all this, because here I am trying to figure out what's true, and
    you're up to something completely different, trying to avoid getting punched. I
    take this as positive sign for my case.

    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Mar 20
    I don't think your definition of "true" is ultimately coherent. At the very least I
    don't think it's ultimately knowable.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood
    ·
    Mar 20
    I haven't even given a definition of truth.

    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning

    ·
    Mar 20
    You've rejected mine, though.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Mar 20
    Indeed so.

    Cole J. Banning
    @cjbanning
    ·
    Mar 20
    Which means I think your definition of truth is ultimately incoherent.

    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood


    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Mar 20
    That's interesting. For my part, I think your definition is coherent, but incorrect.

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 20
    If we stipulate to a correspondence theory of truth, for argument's sake, we can
    better focus on our theories of knowledge. Retreating from a classical, essentialist
    approach needn't mark a surrender to either a vulgar pragmatism or arbitrary
    nominalism. 1/
    John Sobert Sylvest
    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 20
    Our language conventions might, instead, reveal that our metaphysics function as
    heuristics, which approach truth - not only fallibly, but - statistically. As such, the
    deliverances of our metaphysics do not gift us a priori or necessary truth, 2/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 20
    but they still provide normative impetus. When we prescind from the necessary to
    the probable in our modal ontologies, we're still holding to noncontradiction
    (PNC), only folding on excluded middle (PEM), normatively. For possibilities, PNC
    folds, PEM holds. 3/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 20
    For actualities, both hold. That's taking reality as it's been donated - as pervasively
    probabilistic - by the transcendent Ens Necessarium. That's part of a speculative
    grammar that I intuited from Peirce. But, last year, I came across a similar
    approach inspired by Lonergan. 4/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 20
    To wit, & this is brilliant, by
    @JonathanRHeaps
    But what if we revised our heuristic structures & so our basic metaphysical
    commitments? This article proposes such a revision. It trades the normativity of
    classical correlation for statistical correlation, 5/

    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    @David_Mahfood
    and 4 others
    & so a metaphysical normativity the force of which is not exploded by marginal
    cases & so for which marginal cases are still normal, in the sense of “to be expected
    statistically." Statistically Ordered: Gender, Sexual Identity, & the Metaphysics of
    “Normal” citation follows 6/
    10:35 PM · Mar 20, 2020·Twitter for Android
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    John Sobert Sylvest


    @AEROdynamicCat1

    ·
    Mar 20
    Replying to
    @AEROdynamicCat1
    @David_Mahfood
    and 4 others
    Jonathan Heaps, Neil Ormerod in Theological studies 80(2):346-369 · June 2019 
    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0040563919836194 7/7

    Statistically Ordered: Gender, Sexual Identity, and the Metaphysics of “Normal” -


    Jonathan Heaps,...
    The recent call by Pope Francis for the church to develop a “theology of women”
    raises more fundamental and prior questions about the very nature of gender
    and ...
    journals.sagepub.com
    Quarant-Easter David Mahfood
    @David_Mahfood

    ·
    Mar 21
    Yeah, it's a brilliant piece applied to the specific categories Heaps and Ormerod
    apply it to. But I think it hinges on a classical picture underlying the whole thing,
    so that the law of the excluded middle still applies at a fundamental level.

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