A perichoretic, modal & synergetic har-Monism

There's neither tragedy in creation's essentially "not being God" nor violence in our being substantially different persons & thus situated in mutual opposition to God & each other.

That's because the whole of reality is harmoniously ordered to essentially participate in God's nature & each particular person in reality already substantially coinheres in God's presence.

In each theotic sojourn, we co-creatively self-determine - not whether, but - how we will manifest our unique participation in God's essence to reveal the pneumato- Christo-presence coinhering within us.

Every synergetic act eternalizes every last trace of human goodness, every beginning of a smile, all wholesome trivialities, via the graced tropoi of our virtuous secondary natures (similitudines Dei).

Non-synergetic acts ephemeralize (perhaps tantamount to decreative self-nihilation?) every trace of our vicious natures. While, temporally, our vicious natures can obscure our essential divine participation & personal coinherence, i.e. mask our imagoes Dei, eschatologically those parasitic existences are starved.

Evil, parasitic existences are starved because, while temporally they are situated halfway between formal acts & final potencies, thus hindering them, eschatologically, all epistemic & axiological distancing will close from visions beatific. That closure will wholly reduce those potencies to formal acts of assent or, at the least, an absence of refusal of assent. (No intellect can unsee or refuse assent to a fulsome beatific vision).

A Conversational Precis of my Neo-Chalcedonian Cosmotheandrism with its practical universalist implications

Below are redacted excerpts from recent conversations that might serve as a precis for my universalist apologetic, which is grounded in my Neo-Chalcedonian Cosmotheandrism.

I

If a Manichean cosmic dualism makes no sense protologically, then, why in the world embrace it eschatologically?

One thing I've never suffered is any libertarian neuralgia from imagining that, in the end, I'll be denied the 'freedom' to deliberate & choose between being & nonbeing, to follow or ignore my natural will, but will only be free to choose among various states of eternal wellbeing.

I've only ever considered our experience of epistemic distancing as ordered toward our co-creative realization of our unique tropic gifts of personal sanctification & charismata; & only that distancing sufficient to allow for our choosing among rationally desired eternal goods.

Our human finitude, however radical, does not by design make sin necessary, although it does make its possibility unavoidable.

Our epistemic distancing & finitude is about the co-creative fashioning of our theotic tropic trajectories, i.e. not about WHERE but HOW we go.

II

My take's perhaps more than a tad idiosyncratic, so,  here:

I do believe one's not free to choose nonbeing & not free to reject being an imago Dei (primary nature or logos).

But one is free to choose one's unique degree of divine intimacy, to self-determine one's degree of likeness (secondary nature or tropoi via virtues). I indulge a sort of theotic quietism, maybe.

Any vicious secondary nature that obscures the imago Dei is but an ephemeral parasitic existence that cannot transist eternally, so undergoes purgation.

I reject the notion of eternal conscious torment [ECT] but embrace the idea of passing from one glory to the next, eternally growing via diverse divine intimacies; one thus freely chooses one's beatific scope. One can become a blazing helios or remain a votive candle, but one can't extinguish the divine flame.

B/c we're imagoes Dei, I believe that God's attributes remain sufficiently accessible to us in terms of both our aesthetic sensibilities & moral intelligibilities. Believing the Father's character has been adequately revealed to us pneumato-Christo-logically, then I wholesale reject ECT as aesthetically repugnant & morally unintelligible. And I reject mysterian appeals re God's character in that regard; His ways are not inscrutable to that degree.

III


To the Monarchy of the Father, even, n'est pas?

If mutual I-Thou oppositions are emanational, the principles of the total divinity & the totus Christus eternally generate both difference & identity, as the Divine persons act - not only relationally, but - constitutively.

And, to be more clear, it's the arche anarchos "principle" acting, self-constituting, emanating, generating - trinitologically. In other words, a person, the Father. Analogously, other perichoretic coinherences refer to other self-determinations, eg hypostatatic union & cosmic Christ.

Quote: Creation is "a self-determination of intra-divine life, not a special, independent principle of being, existing alongside God." - Bulgakov (BoL, 45) /Unquote

B/c Bonaventure's hypostatic Trinito-logic was first illuminated by his Christo-logic, his emanation account should lead us away from - not only both a putative  proto-Father & Logos asarkos, but - any natura pura in the dynamics of creation & Incarnation?

IV

B/c the divine nature is very like a primary substance, it's "natural" for person-talk & essence-talk to conflate. But for nondeterminate being & pure acts, where we properly eschew quiddative references, our monistic root metaphors will instead refer modally & synergetically.

V

I view perichoreses analogously, ie as different types of coinherence, emanation, generation, etc Recall our discussions of Bonaventure's emanation & the positive content he imputes to innascibility, ie fecundity, fontal plenitude, ur-kenosis. Nothing temporal. Arche anarchos.

Beyond nondeterminacy & self-determinacy ad intra, how would the creative act, even an eternal creation as Incarnation, relate to time?

See page 242 of JDW's thesis. Chronological strictures aren't in play.

The Trinito-logic was first illuminated by Bonaventure's Christo-logical insights, so not deduced a priori. These are revealed personal mysteries, not metaphysical inferences. So, we'd say metaphysics contributed - not these principles, but - our idioms & helpful translations.

VI

Other salient "constitutive" content would include the generation of identity & differences, hypostatic multiplications (not divisions or divine fractures, so to speak), so proper relating of I|Thou, in|finite, absolute|relative, universal|particular, embodied antinomies, etc?

VII

And to riff on Dame Julian, it's because the worst-ever has indeed been remedied that we know that all manner of things may, can, will & shall be remedied.

In a creatio ex Deo, there can be no eternal Manichean residue of otherwise ephemeral parasitic existences on perfections.

Well, I understand why I can be misunderstood - and precisely as you succinctly & well stated. But, in my volitional account, wherein will & intellect are integrally related, beyond assent & refusal there's also an absence of refusal, whereby a justifying faith may be gifted.

B/c I account for the intellect - not tropically, but - naturally, it is true, per my post-mortem anthropology, that, when our epistemic distances are closed, the intellect can't not see & the will can't not persevere in, ie can't refuse, a beatific vision.

Even if volition remained in the form of - not only assent, but - the absence of assent, the same divine donative dynamic operative in justifying faith could similarly impart a grace that's, indeed, freely willed & received post-mortem in a hellishly purgative way even, maybe.

It's thus true that, in my account, our freedom will ultimately self-determine - not whether, but - only how we'll manifest Christ &, perhaps, also in terms of various degrees. This may disappoint those whose libertarian notions incline more toward absolute rather than relative conceptions of freedom. But that's how the participatory calculus of an analogia has always viewed absolute & relative perfections? So, who, then, are the real idolaters?

The hypostatic logic of analogous essences & participation remains intact, for me.

However, hypostases aren't just essential natures but freely willing loving persons with tropic secondary natures & distinct idiomata, whose identities & differences are generated, emanatively ex Deo.

The reason this part of our hypostatic logic does not devolve into a proto-Father, Logos asarkos or natura pura, respectively, trinto-, Christo- or cosmo- logically, is that it's not talking about natures (whats) per se, but, rather, wills & tropoi (whos & hows), some Absolutely free, others only relatively so.

The compatabilism vs libertarianism debate lacks sufficient nuance. We're sufficiently free.

VIII

Actually, the distinctions between the divine nature & volition, esse
naturale & intentionale, remain indispensable for my own thought. Only if we facilely apply categories of determinate being to the nondeterminate, pure acts of divine persons would we imagine that a co-eternal creation as Incarnation (a truly fitting inevitability!) must somehow implicate some natural necessity.


Well, there's a level of d'accord, here, b/c neither do I. We disagree on implications & parse certain  concepts differently. And your response reveals how our evaluative dispositions, participatory imaginations & propositional cognitive mapmaking are integrally related.

Peace

IX

Your analogy was unduly dismissive, trivializing the enormity of human pain & immensity of human suffering. It reveals, too, a stuckedness at the earliest of Kohlberg's stages of moral development. Universalism neither obviates the impetus to evangelize nor indulges a kerygmatic indifferentism. It entails rather a radically inclusive Christocentrism, tolerant religious pluralism, where compassion ensues from each realization of our solidarity.

While it suffices, soteriologically, for one to remain on the lowest rungs of the Bernardian ladder of love, a true lover of Christ will seek enlightenment not for oneself but out of compassion for those who'd otherwise suffer our unenlightened selves.

The Good News has implications - not just eschatologically, but - temporally, as it allows us to move more swiftly & with less hindrance as we more nearly approach the truth, celebrate the beauty & realize the goodness of the Lord.

We can co-creatively minister consolations needed to endure our present wars, famines, pandemics, addictions, etc

Let us desire & occupy ourselves in prayer less for its consolations & more so to gain the strength to serve.

X

It definitely seems monist to me, especially in emanational terms, where hypostases are eternally generated, for example, most consistent w/Maximus, Eriugena & Bulgakov regarding, respectively, multiple incarnations, manifestations & revelations.

If, per one's hypostatic logic, the personal, existential & perichoretic enjoy a primacy over the natural, essential & participatory, then one's concrete references to identities & differences and universals & particulars will be more about mutually constituted I's & Thou's, i.e. about a social, unitive, interrelationality, and much less focused on quidditative asymmetries, e.g. absolute vs relative perfections.

Pantheism? Good grief! I must be grossly oversimplifying Feser's misunderstanding of DBH's account? I say that because, istm, his caricature mostly arises from a single rookie category error: treating many of Hart's references to "hows" as if he were referring to "whats."

DBH said nothing over against any plain vanilla hypostatic logic regarding natures, logoi, participations & analogy, when elaborating (eloquently!) on the effects of grace vis a vis hypostatic modes, tropoi, perichoreses & coinherence.

Does Feser simply not get that theosis & transformation are effected by grace - not essentially, but - modally? Further, not deterministically, but - synergetically?

XI

Haldane said reality was
not only stranger than we imagine but stranger than we CAN imagine. Chesterton, on the other hand, cautioned that we do not know enough about reality to say that it is unknowable.

Why's the supremely intelligible also absolutely incomprehensible? cf. Bracken on Hegel in Joseph A. Bracken, Panentheism in the context of the theology and science dialogue, Theology 2014; Volume 1: 1–11

My own take, then:

B/c it's only "ever on the move" that identity & difference unite, it's by opposing even the "annulment of annulment" that objective idealism sets itself apart from - not only impoverished materialisms, subjective (naturalist) & objective (pantheist), but - subjective idealism.