Chalce-DONE Part 3

Hypostatic Logic from the Capps, Cyril & Maximus to Bonaventure & Scotus

When I first read Jordan Daniel Wood’s thesis, especially together w/his retrieval of Bonaventure, I saw some of the same themes in play w/my own (mis?)appropriation of Zizioulas in my How Scotus Might Gift Zizioulas Coherence.

What I observed was that there’s a certain idiomatic felicity in tracing Christology from the Capps & Cyril to Maximus with Scotus. One can get to a Neochalcedonian Christology w/Aquinas, but they need JDW’s thesis & Bonaventure paper.

If hypostases refer to persons who ground, existentially, as irreducibly brute thisnesses & who distinguish (or differentiate or individualize) themselves by properties that refer to “how” they “act” …

(i.e. not “what” they “are,” even indifferent to whatness, essence or nature, although inseparable therefrom) … and

If perichoresis refers to hypostases & “how” they relate, while participation refers to natures & “what” hypostases share per variously non/in/determined modes

Then, we can properly “Behold the paradox to contemplate a composed hypostasis without thereby predicating a composed nature of that hypostasis, as if of a species.” ~Maximus

For Scotus, divine hypostases are – not primary substances, but – exemplifications.

re exemplification

Again, note the semiotic language, consonant w/Eriugena’s theophanic stance, w/Bonaventure, even Bulgakov via manifestation, signification & revelation.

Because we speak of hypostases using semantic references, not ontological descriptions, Scotus thus proposes a Univocity of Predication “In Quale” & Analogy of Predication “In Quid”.

Basically, we’re just trying to avoid category errors between propria, idiomata & energeia, natures, hypostases & opera, etc

At any rate, when I first introduced my meta-heuristic of panSEMIOentheism in a paper (2010) w/Amos Yong, I did not realize that my approach was consonant w/or even implicated a Maximian Neochalcedonism, but the OFMs work well w/ Byzantine Neoplatonism.

re Aquinas & Bonaventure

Part of my interest in having a consistent grammar of hypostases (and ousia) of both divine & creaturely (non/determinate, self-determinate & in/determinate) realities is to go beyond analogy & apophasis of ousia to better refine our references to participation & perichoresis.

IOW, what do we mean by humanization & divinization, Logos-logoi, creatio ex Deo, synergetic acts in terms of divine-creaturely agential interaction?

I’m pressing toward a mereological panentheism of – not beings & whats, but – doings & hows of actors (nonrepeatable, nonformal).

re how I feel about some antinomies

We re-cognize them b/c we are “embodied antinomies” (intentional-absential) that exist for eternal I-Thou epektasis. Identity & difference are unitive & harmonious – not violent.

Because creaturely identities are primordially grounded in differences between relative & divine perfections, the natures of all creaturely autonomies are essentially & ineluctably harmonious with & participate in the Logos and so manifest various degrees of freedom as proportional to each tropos. Any metaphysic (or ecology or politics) that otherwise grounds those identities nihilistically, i.e. in differences between nonbeing & being, will conceive all creaturely autonomies as unavoidably competitive due to natures that are essentially & inescapably violent, b/c they view evil’s existence as substantial, when it is rather a parasitic subcontrary. In no measure, then, is evil necessary to the eternal act of creation or for eternal acts of incarnation (One Pure Act, really). This discussion pertains also to differences like those of epistemic distance.

Whither divine vestige, image, likeness & identity?

Persons reduce the

1) essential potencies of their primary nature via participatory existential acts by being images of God (divine esse naturale);

2) im/material potencies of their hypostatic nature by perichoretic efficient acts by doing, thereby reducing any inherent material potencies, cosmically, as vestiges of God, & immaterial potencies, theandrically, as identities of the will of God (divine esse intentionale);

3) final potencies of their secondary nature by participatory formal acts by becoming likenesses of God (divine energeia). consistent w/Cosmotheandrism & Neo-Chalcedonism.

Eschatologically, primary & secondary natures participate, respectively, in apokatastenai (essential beatitude) & apokatastasis (theotic beatitude); hypostatic “natures” in a perichoretic & inexhaustible deeping of intimacy expand their aesthetic scope of beatitude in epektasis.

Note: I like Gelpi’s Lonerganian-Peircean conception of grace as “transmuted experience,” which, using my wording, is gifted us gratuitously, both by creation & special revelation. I’m especially consoled in knowing it comes via – not only assent, but – absence of refusal! PTL!

A Pansemiotic Hypostatic Logic? – panSEMIOentheism

How is each divine person constituted? distinct from the others?

What principle individuates, differentiates or particularizes persons?

What theory of idiomata applies?

And what theory of universals?

Is there a logic that might apply to both the ad intra trinitarian taxis and the hypostatic union?

If so, then, why wouldn’t it extend to anthropology?

And, if that is so, how could it not extend to cosmology?

That is to ask, wouldn’t this logic apply to – not just personal, but – all hypostatic realities?

To which realities must we refer with proper nouns and which with common? And which are particular and which generic?

How might we best refer to that infinite reality than which no greater can be conceived? How might we best refer even to the Monarchy of the Father in terms regarding both His person & his nature?

What insights to these questions might we glean from Peirce’s “secondness” or Scotus’ “haecceity” or Maximus’ “λόγος“?

Why is Peirce’s modal ontology and semiotic pragmatism irreducibly triadic? Whether regarding ontic possibilities, actualities & probabilities – necessities or epistemic icons, indices & symbols? Each category with its unique application of the principles of noncontradiction & excluded middle?

The underlying dynamics of both my appropriation of Peirce’s semiotic as well as of the Neo-Chalcedonian hypostatic logic is foundationally one of emergence without supervenience, the emergence of novel entities in terms of thatness, thisness & howness but with neither epistemic nor ontic reducibility from whatness.

To be clear, my Peircean semiotic approach only provides a metaheuristic that bookmarks reality’s ontological aporia and asserts epistemic irreducibility. Any stances regarding ontological irreducibility, themselves, go further, inviting an exploratory direction without aspiring to a complete metaphysical explanation. They involve, then, a leap of faith, albeit in no way an unreasonable one, rather the product of a practical reasoning under uncertainty regarding ultimate concerns that are (per James) forced, vital & live, hence, eminently actionable, existentially, & defensible, evidentially & rationally.

Might it be because, primordially & emergently, an ineffably nondetermined person beyond being self-determinedly, eternally & kenotically donates all being, self-emptying by communicating all possibilities & actualities – not arbitrarily, but – with mediating nomicities?

Divine perichoresis is “exemplified” by the dance between that which is nondetermined in & self-determined by divine persons. All creation “signifies” divine perichoresis in the dance between that which, in each person, remains divinely determined & that which, in each person, is self-determined.

Creation’s overdetermined possibilities are not arbitrarily reduced by hypostatic self-determinations without mediation by an underdetermined range of probabilities, a range (scope) which has been necessarily & wholly determined.

The divine fontal plenitude, the abyss of anarchical nondetermination, self-determinedly manifests as an eternally, freely willing loving person, Who communicates His being (nongeneric “whatness”) as revealed by each divine person.

Each person freely & willingly loves, both self & each other, in a way that’s different from “how” each other person manifests love per each’s own ineffable, irreducible & brute “thisness.” A person’s identity is that existential thatness presenting with “this” unique “howness” that’s otherwise indifferent to & irreducible to any given whatness.

So, while a participatory metaphysic of being still obtains, it seems that freely, willing, loving divine persons

are individuated – not by matter or accidents, i.e. “what,” but – per a perichoretic metaphysic of goodness, which provides an account of “how” each loves. The anthropological implications are that all human persons freely & willingly love – not only via natural participation in Being, but – via hypostatic coinherence with divine operations.

The perichoretic concept used in late Patristic Trinitology conveyed mutual interpenetration or permeation without merging or mixing. But, the concept was first employed in early Patristic Christology by the Cappadocians.

So, while the Trinitarian perichoresis refers to homogenous, consubstantial realities, the Christological refers heterogenously & heterosubstantially, thus, again, indifferent to & irreducible from any nature, ousia or essence.

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 perichoretically coinhere relationally (albeit participatorily proportional to our being) – not only creature to creature, but – with divinity, for the very same logoi that humanize the divine also divinize the human.

Christ, for Bonaventure, is the centre of the entire created order. This echoes Origen of Alexandria, the Cappadocians, Maximus the Confessor,

Gregory Palamas, and would be deepened and enriched by Duns Scotus and his doctrine of the Primacy of Christ. ~ Mulholland

Perhaps relational accounts of MOF can be characterized as ‘only personal’ (weaker) or ‘also emanational’ (stronger)?

While it’s in Christology (via its epistemic primacy) that the meanings of various types of coincidence of mutually affirming complementary opposites are revealed, it’s in Paterology that we locate their intrinsic structural foundation per hypostatic logic in terms of innascibility & fecundity.

That Bonaventurian architectonic busts several moves:

Cappadocian emphasis on persons (more so than substance);

Nazianzen & Damascene mutual coinherence;

Dionysian self-diffusive goodness;

Victorine highest good as love; hence, a

Neoplatonic ’emanation, exemplarity & consummation’

perichoretic metaphysic of goodness (more than just a participatory metaphysic of being).

for Aquinas persons are both constituted & distinguished per relations

for Nyssen persons are distinguished causally but he’s silent re constitution

for Scotus, personal relational properties constitute the persons but aren’t their only unique properties;

we might add Bonaventure’s emanational relations or something analogous to Scotus’ haecceities

They’ll all assert the indivisibilty of the essence & incommunicability of hypostatic properties to avoid, respectively, tritheism & modalism, using analogies to different substance – universal accounts or idioms to show via similarities what divine essences & hypostases are like, but as soon as those analogies lead to unhappy inferences, they’ll assert dissimilarities, then get confronted with the combined challenges of loss of intelligibility & charges of mysterian adhockery, which can be defended in various ways to various degrees.

identificatory vs constitutive?

Three possess the one indivisible divine essence, and are constituted as distinct persons by certain incommunicable properties, not common in one with the other two.

Personal relational properties constitute the persons but aren’t their only unique properties (those properties aren’t communicable).

Bonaventure’s Christ illuminates the hypostatic & essential logics that inhere in paterological uniqueness (MOF), essential unicity, unitary energeia, hypostatic union, hypostatic unity & sophiological union, as well as trinitological, Christological, cosmological (vestiges), anthropological (images) & theotic (likenesses) perichoreses.