Pan-SEMIO-entheism: A Pansemiotic Christological Theophanic Architectonic
A Pansemiotic Christological Theophanic Architectonic - Overview
A Theological Dialogue
Dramatis Personae regarding a Pansemiotic Christological Theophanic Architectonic:
• Sophia: a contemplative theologian grounded in patristic mysticism
• Peregrinus: a philosopher of religion informed by Peirce and process thought
• Theophilos: a systematic theologian influenced by Boersma and Maximus
• Eirene: a metaphysician with a deep interest in Eriugena and Neoplatonism
• Seraphim: a Bonaventurian theologian with sophiological leanings
• Iohannes: an interpreter of pansemiotic metaphysics and John Sobert Sylvest’s pan-SEMIO-entheism
Sophia: Let us begin with a shared conviction: creation is not merely a product of divine will, but a theophany—an unveiling of God. It is intelligible and beautiful because it manifests the divine.
Eirene: As Eriugena insists, to say creation is ex nihilo is to say it is ex deo. God is no-thing, beyond being. Thus, creation flows from divine plenitude, not from absence.1
Peregrinus: Peirce echoes this, albeit through a different idiom. The Ens Necessarium grounds all semiosis: the universe is not only intelligible but semiotically structured. Everything is a sign of something more, unfolding in triadic patterns.2
Theophilos: And Boersma would add: this is not brute structure, but participatory. The world exists only by participating in divine logoi. These are not impersonal forms, but personal gifts given in and through the Logos—Christ.3
Seraphim: Bonaventure takes it even further. The Word is the exemplar cause of all that is. Emanation is not merely metaphysical diffusion, but an act of love. Creation is a radiant sign of the Trinity, culminating in the Incarnation.4
Iohannes: That resonates deeply with John Sobert Sylvest’s proposal of pan-SEMIO-entheism. Reality is not just panentheistic, but pansemiotic. Every finite being is a significant image, manifesting God's intention and inviting divine intimacy. Christ is the interpretant of all creation.
Sophia: In such a vision, participation becomes more than metaphysical—it becomes personal and communicative. The analogical interval yields to a sublative hypostatic logic, where relationality is central.
Iohannes: Precisely. For Sylvest, drawing from Gelpi and Peirce, reality is a social-relational matrix of co-constituted persons and meanings. Christ’s hypostatic act is the linchpin—the mediating logic that grounds both nature and grace.
Theophilos: This brings us back to Maximus. The Logos contains the logoi. Christ is not only the telos of every being, but the tropos of their actualization. The hypostatic union is the condition of possibility for theosis.5
Seraphim: And Bonaventure insists: the whole cosmos is sacramental. It points beyond itself. But without Christ, its semiotic depth remains opaque. In Him, every sign finds its interpretant.
Eirene: So Christological theophany must be pansemiotic. The cosmos isn’t just meaningful—it’s configured to reveal Christ. Even its laws and structures are habits of divine communication.
Peregrinus: Peirce would call those habits evolutionary love. Semiosis guided by agapē. And in Christ, that love becomes historically manifest, personally embodied.
Iohannes: That’s the heart of pan-SEMIO-entheism. It’s a participatory, personalist metaphysics where signs are not arbitrary but expressive of divine relationality. Grace doesn’t abolish nature—it personalizes it.
Sophia: Then let us affirm: the analogical logic introduces the divine. Participation deepens it. But only in Christ does the sign become flesh, the Word become life, the divine become intimately near.
Notes:
• John Scottus Eriugena, Periphyseon, trans. I.P. Sheldon-Williams.
• C.S. Peirce, "The Architecture of Theories" (1891), "Evolutionary Love" (1893), The Monist.
• Hans Boersma, Participatory Metaphysics and Creation out of God, Heythrop Journal (2025); Heavenly Participation (Eerdmans, 2011).
• Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum; Zachary Hayes, Bonaventure: Mystical Writings.
• Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua 7 and 41; Jordan Daniel Wood, The Whole Mystery of Christ (Notre Dame Press, 2022).
• Donald Gelpi, The Gracing of Human Experience; Joseph Bracken, The World in the Trinity.
• John Sobert Sylvest, personal correspondences and essays on pan-SEMIO-entheism (forthcoming).
Epilogue In this expanded conversation, the theophanic cosmos emerges as a Christological and semiotic reality. Peircean semiosis, Eriugenian theophany, Boersmean participation, Bonaventurian emanation, and Maximian hypostasis converge in a single vision: a cosmos not merely created, but invited into communion. Through Christ, the Logos and interpretant of all signs, creation speaks—and listens—with divine intimacy.
A Pansemiotic Christological Theophanic Architectonic - a Deeper Dive
• Sophia: Patristic theologian, contemplative, focused on mystical theology
• Peregrinus: Peircean philosopher of religion and semiotic metaphysician
• Theophilos: Systematic theologian, drawing from Boersma and Maximus the Confessor
• Eirene: Philosophical theologian rooted in Eriugena and Neoplatonism
• Seraphim: Bonaventurian and sophiological thinker
• Iohannes: Interpreter of pan-SEMIO-entheism and John Sobert Sylvest’s metaphysics
I. Foundations: Creation as Theophany
Sophia: The Christian tradition affirms creation as a theophany. That is, the cosmos is not only created by God, but reveals God—intelligibly and sacramentally. It mediates the divine presence through a multiplicity of logoi, pre-contained in the Logos.
Eirene: Eriugena articulates this with particular clarity. For him, creation ex nihilo is also ex deo. Because God is beyond being (non-essentia), to emerge from "nothing" is to emerge from the superessential plenitude of God. Thus, all things are divine manifestations, not in essence, but as appearances grounded in divine wisdom.1
Peregrinus: Peirce reconfigures this within a semiotic metaphysic. His Ens Necessarium is not a being among beings, but the metaphysical condition for the emergence of signs. All being is sign-being. Reality unfolds as triadic semiosis—icon, index, and symbol—each leading us toward intelligible coherence.2
Seraphim: This coheres with Bonaventure's triadic metaphysical schema: emanation, exemplarity, and consummation. All things flow from God, are shaped by the Word, and return to God through the Spirit. Creation is not just caused—it is loved into being and structured to return.
Iohannes: John Sobert Sylvest’s pan-SEMIO-entheism synthesizes these trajectories. Reality is semiotically constituted and theophanically structured. Every being is both image (imago) and potential likeness (similitudo)—a semiotic expression of divine intentionality, oriented toward personal intimacy with the Logos.3
II. Participation, Analogy, and the Limits of Ontology
Theophilos: Boersma retrieves Cappadocian immaterialism to reaffirm a participatory ontology. Matter, for Nyssa and Maximus, is not a substantial substratum but a configuration of intelligible properties—conceptual bundles (νοήματα) united by divine volition.4
Sophia: Participation assumes analogy. There is a real similarity-in-dissimilarity between Creator and creature. This is the "analogical interval," which allows for true but never exhaustive knowledge of God.
Eirene: But analogy, as Jordan Daniel Wood and Tim Troutner insist, cannot account for hypostatic union. The logic of analogy maintains distance; Christ bridges it. Analogy must be sublated into a hypostatic logic that accounts for personal communion, not merely ontological continuity.5
Peregrinus: Peirce’s infinite semiosis resonates here. Signs never collapse into their objects; they always refer onward. This deferral, though, is not alienation—it is love-driven. Yet even Peirce stops short of fully personal presence. His metaphysic is open-ended, but only Christ introduces the subjective interpretant who gives Himself as meaning.
Iohannes: For Sylvest, this is why Christ is not just the telos of the cosmos but its semiotic center. The Incarnation is not merely a historical event but a semiotic principle. Christ is the Interpretant who makes all signs ultimately intelligible as invitations to intimacy.
III. Christological Integration and Hypostatic Fulfillment
Theophilos: Maximus presents Christ as the unifier of all logoi. He is both the origin and end of all things. The Incarnation is not reactive; it is proactive—the Logos always intended to be the interpretive ground of creation.
Seraphim: Bonaventure echoes this: Christ is the center of history, creation, and knowledge. Without Him, the cosmos would still be significant, but less so. With Him, it becomes sacramental in the deepest sense.6
Sophia: This hypostatic logic is essential. It affirms that grace is not merely an elevation but a transformation: through the hypostatic union, Christ makes personal what was only analogical.7
Iohannes: Sylvest’s pan-SEMIO-entheism explains this as a shift from divine images to theotic likenesses. Images are divinely determined theophanic embodiments. Likenesses, however, are co-self-determined in Christ—forms of personal participation in divine life through supererogatory virtue and intimacy.
IV. Pneumatological Diffusion and Semiotic Communion
Peregrinus: The Spirit universalizes Christ's particularity. For Peirce, this would be the habituation of love—habits of responsiveness to signs. For Bracken, it's the dynamism of divine self-communication in process.
Eirene: In Eriugena’s terms, the Spirit returns creation to God. The cycle of procession and return is not automatic—it requires interpretive agency. This is where human freedom and divine illumination coalesce.
Sophia: Theosis, then, is not univocal union but participatory likeness: moral maturation of our substantial being and infinite perfectibility of our accidental being. This is what epektasis means—everlasting growth into divine intimacy.
Iohannes: In Sylvest’s terms, our substantial being is universally presenced by the Spirit, but our accidental being is particularized by Christ. This opens us to infinite semiotic invitations to deepen our likeness to God.
V. Eschatological Vision: Beatitude as Semiotic Intimacy
Theophilos: Boersma’s Nyssan eschatology emphasizes mediated theophany. We never see God in essence, only in the energies. This preserves transcendence.
Seraphim: Bracken allows for more ontological intimacy—approaching a noetic identity. Sylvest and others suggest that beatitude is not just epistemic but relational: truth is a person, and we grow in love with Him.
Iohannes: The beatific vision is a communion of likenesses, each uniquely hypostasized in Christ, ever deepening in semiotic resonance with divine life. No sign will exhaust its referent, but every sign will draw us closer.
Sophia: Then the analogical interval was never a barrier, only a veil. In Christ, it becomes translucent. We don’t dissolve into God—we become fully ourselves in God.
Conclusion: A Christological Pansemiotic Theophany
This collaborative vision proposes a richly integrated Christological metaphysic. Drawing from Boersma, Peirce, Eriugena, Maximus, Bonaventure, Bracken, and Sylvest, we propose that creation is not merely intelligible or beautiful—it is a semiotic, participatory, theophanic cosmos structured by and oriented toward Christ. Analogy prepares the soul. Participation secures its place. But only hypostatic logic reveals its telos: a universe of signs, each inviting us into divine intimacy.
References
• John Scottus Eriugena, Periphyseon, trans. I.P. Sheldon-Williams.
• C.S. Peirce, "The Architecture of Theories" (1891), "Evolutionary Love" (1893), The Monist.
• John Sobert Sylvest, unpublished writings on pan-SEMIO-entheism.
• Hans Boersma, Participatory Metaphysics and Creation out of God, Heythrop Journal (2025); Heavenly Participation (Eerdmans, 2011).
• Jordan Daniel Wood, The Whole Mystery of Christ (Notre Dame Press, 2022); Tim Troutner, "Crisis of a House Divided," Modern Theology (2021).
• Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum; Zachary Hayes, Bonaventure: Mystical Writings.
• Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua 7 and 41; Donald Gelpi, The Gracing of Human Experience; Joseph Bracken, The World in the Trinity.
Toward a Christological Theophanic Architectonic: Integrating Semiotic, Participatory, and Hypostatic Logics
Abstract
This essay develops a Christological theophanic metaphysics by integrating Hans Boersma’s participatory immaterialism, Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic realism, John Scottus Eriugena’s ex deo cosmology, and the pansemiotic Christology articulated by John Sobert Sylvest. Through an exploration of analogical, participatory, and hypostatic logics, the essay argues that only a Christologically mediated theophany can adequately account for the gratuity of creation and grace, the infinite intelligibility of the cosmos, and the interpersonal nature of divine-human communion.
1. Introduction: The Metaphysical Stakes of Christology Theological metaphysics has recently witnessed a resurgence of interest in participatory ontology, semiotic cosmology, and theophanic vision. Yet many systems grounded in analogy and participation stop short of full Christological integration. This essay proposes that only a hypostatic logic centered in Christ can fulfill the promissory structures latent in analogical and participatory metaphysics. It draws from Cappadocian immaterialism (via Boersma), Peircean semiosis, Eriugena’s dialectical emanationism, and the pansemiotic Christology of John Sobert Sylvest.
2. Creation as Theophany: From Ex Nihilo to Ex Deo Creation, in the Christian tradition, is not merely the production of being from non-being. For Eriugena, ex nihilo is tantamount to ex deo: God is superessential (non-essentia), and creation emerges as a theophanic manifestation.1 The world is thus intelligible and beautiful because it is structured by divine wisdom, not because it possesses independent substance.
Peirce's notion of the Ens Necessarium offers a metaphysical analogue: it is not an entity but the condition for all intelligibility. The cosmos is semiotically structured, with every reality functioning as a sign in an infinite interpretive network.2 In both thinkers, creation is not ontologically independent but emerges as intelligible participation in divine life.
Boersma, recovering Gregory of Nyssa, affirms this through a participatory immaterialism: materiality is not a substrate but a nexus of intelligible properties (noēmata) unified by divine will.3 Theophany is thus not a poetic metaphor but a metaphysical structure.
3. Analogy and Its Sublation in Hypostatic Logic The analogical interval has long served theology by preserving divine transcendence while securing intelligibility. Yet its limits are well known. Analogy maintains relationality through proportional dissimilarity, but it cannot account for personal presence. As Tim Troutner and Jordan Daniel Wood argue, Christology requires more: a logic of hypostatic union that bridges without collapsing Creator and creature.4
Peirce’s infinite semiosis introduces a functional analog to analogy: every sign refers onward, never exhaustively capturing its object. But unlike analogy, this process is open-ended and dynamic. Peirce’s universe is animated by agapē, a love-driven logic of relationality.5 Still, without the Incarnation, semiosis lacks personal grounding.
Boersma and Maximus advance this critique. Christ is not only the telos of creation but also its tropos: the very mode by which the logoi find their coherence and communicability.6 Without Christ, participatory metaphysics remains suspended in abstraction.
4. The Christological Fulfillment of Theophany The Incarnation transforms ontology. In Maximus and Bonaventure, Christ is not simply the exemplary cause of creation, but its internal logic made manifest.7 The hypostatic union does not merely elevate human nature; it reveals that all of creation is configured toward and through Christ.
John Sobert Sylvest articulates this transformation through his theory of pan-SEMIO-entheism. For Sylvest, reality is not only panentheistically grounded in God but semiotically structured by Christ. Every being is both an image (imago) of God and a potential likeness (similitudo) that finds its meaning in Christ as interpretant.8 The Incarnation thus personalizes theophany, inviting all creation into the interpersonal communion of the Trinity.
In this framework, images are divinely determined embodiments; likenesses are co-self-determined through Christic grace. Creation's intelligibility becomes an invitation to intimacy. The analogical is transfigured by the hypostatic.
5. Pneumatological Mediation and Epektatic Growth The Holy Spirit universalizes the particularity of Christ. In both Peirce and Bracken, the Spirit’s work appears as the habituation of love and relational evolution.9 For Eriugena, the Spirit is the power of return—drawing creation back to God in interpretive ascent.
This pneumatological logic underwrites epektasis: the soul’s everlasting growth into the divine likeness. Participation is not static.
Theosis is not closure, but intensification of relationality. Through the Spirit, the image matures into likeness; through Christ, intimacy with God becomes possible.
In Sylvest’s terms, our substantial being is universally constituted through divine presence; our accidental being becomes increasingly personalized through Christological and pneumatological action. Grace is thus not only unitive but differentiating—each person becomes uniquely themselves in Christ.
6. Eschatology and Semiotic Beatitude Eschatology in this framework is not merely the culmination of knowledge but the deepening of intimacy. Boersma, drawing from Nyssen, upholds a mediated theophany where the vision of God is through the energies, not the essence.10 Bracken, in contrast, allows for greater ontological integration—a noetic identity between intellect and divine form.
Pansemiotically, beatitude is a communion of likenesses. Christ remains the eternal Interpretant—drawing every sign and soul into deeper resonance. There is no final grasp, only infinite participation in divine love.
Conclusion: A Christological Pansemiotic Architectonic This essay has argued that the fullest account of divine-human relation must integrate analogical, participatory, and hypostatic logics. Boersma’s sacramental ontology, Peirce’s triadic semiosis, Eriugena’s ex deo cosmology, Bonaventure’s emanationism, and Sylvest’s pan-SEMIO-entheism converge on this point: the cosmos is not only intelligible and participatory, but personal and communicative.
In Christ, the analogical becomes incarnational. The participatory becomes hypostatic. The intelligible becomes intimate. The world is not just a sign of God—it is a Word addressed to us.
References
• John Scottus Eriugena, Periphyseon, trans. I.P. Sheldon-Williams.
• C.S. Peirce, "The Architecture of Theories" (1891), "Evolutionary Love" (1893), The Monist.
• Hans Boersma, Participatory Metaphysics and Creation out of God, Heythrop Journal (2025); Heavenly Participation (Eerdmans, 2011).
• Jordan Daniel Wood, The Whole Mystery of Christ (Notre Dame Press, 2022); Tim Troutner, "Crisis of a House Divided," Modern Theology (2021).
• Peirce, "Evolutionary Love" (1893).
• Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua 7 and 41.
• Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum; Zachary Hayes, Bonaventure: Mystical Writings.
• John Sobert Sylvest, unpublished theological essays on pan-SEMIO-entheism.
• Joseph Bracken, The World in the Trinity (Fortress Press, 2014); Donald Gelpi, The Gracing of Human Experience.
• Boersma, Seeing God (Eerdmans, 2019).
Sylvest's instructions to ChatGPT:
I would like to bring a few others into this conversation, folks whose takes resonate with Cappadocian immaterialism, emanationism, semiosic dynamics, Maximian Christology, ex deo theophanic manifestations of Eriugena, Bulgakov & Bonaventure, Peirce's triadic semiotic realism.
Consider, then, the following basics of John Sobert Sylvest's pan-SEMIO-entheism, which echo Donald Gelpi's Maximian Narrative Christology & Peircean Social - Relational Metaphysic of Experience and explain the different ways they articulate a distinctly Pansemiotic Christological Theophanic Architectonic.
Gelpi roundly inventories & soundly critiques the inadequacies of the idioms available to the Fathers, citing a half dozen forms of dualism that rendered Christologies unintelligible. He credits Maximus & the Damascene w/seminal post-Chalcedonian insights re Nazianzen's perichoresis. He would certainly endorse (insist on) how Maximus "fixed" (inverted) Origen, e.g. genesis, kinesis, stasis and how that implicates an emanational multiplicity rather than divisibility, cosmotheandrically, vis a vis how the Many are becoming One, unitively.
Yes.
Even in an appropriation of Peirce, one (Royce, for example) might still be tempted to conceive the Many as journeying toward the One as a supraindividual unitary being rather than as an interpersonal unitive doing (of a concrete social Absolute). Yet we stan neo-Platonism's Classical Theism strands!
This all implicates a profusely pneumatological account of history & culture and opens room for meaningful dialogue between diverse approaches incl, for example, Peirce, Gelpi, Lonergan, Bergson, Hegel & Radical Orthodoxy.
To wit:
Don Gelpi, SJ, approached his synoptic narrative Christology through a Peircean lens:
"When one interprets the Christology of Maximus the Confessor in the light of a realistic, social, triadic metaphysics of experience, Maximus’s doctrine holds the key to explaining the hypostatic union doctrinally."
In the _The Firstborn of Many : A Christology for Converting Christians_, Gelpi formulates an experiential construct of the hypostatic union by invoking a metaphysics of experience.
Gelpi’s metaphysics of *experience* defines it as a process made up of three generic kinds of *relational* elements (feelings): evaluations, decisions & tendencies. These correspond modally to Peirce’s categories of firstness [1ns] or possibilities, secondness [2ns] or actualities & thirdness [3ns] or probabilities (including necessities, habits, tendencies, etc).
In John Sobert Sylvest's panSEMIOentheism:
Gelpi’s evaluations & CSP’s 1ns map to Maximian logoi, which, as essential, eschatological limiting potencies, are reduced by each imago Dei’s act of existence (becoming an inviolate WHAT).
Gelpi’s decisions & CSP’s 2ns map to Maximian hypostases, which, as volitional limiting potencies, are reduced by our efficient acts (my Scotistic move) in potency to personhood (haecceity, bruteness, a sheer thisness becoming a unique WHO).
Gelpi’s tendencies & CSP’s 3ns map to Maximian tropoi, which, as the normative limiting potencies of similitudines Dei, are reduced by our formal acts (intentional, of intellect) in potency to the final causes of synergetic energeia (our acts becoming identical to HOW Christ acts).
Below are key Maximian concepts which, in my estimation, map to Gelpi’s Maximian Christology. They are mostly excerpted or paraphrased from Steven Pustay’s dissertation: "Becoming God, Becoming the Buddha: The Relation of Identity and Praxis in the Thought of Maximus the Confessor and Kūkai" 2015, Temple University.
The logos = what, tropos = how and hypostasis ~ why.
The imago is inviolate (logoi) & similitudo (tropoi) are dynamical.
It’s the tropoi that require apokatastenai (restoration to original beatitude) & realize apokatastasis (epectatic beatitude).
Logoi are eschatological.
Transformed tropoi act as God would act.
Gelpi, Peirce & Maximus all employ an irreducibly triadic relational ontology, which thereby overcomes both pantheism , theopanism & deism.
It’s plausible to me that Royce’s Absolute pragmatism & Hegel’s Absolute idealism and especially Joe Bracken’s *divine matrix* field approach, could roughly map, as concrete & social conceptions of the Absolute, to these *relational* ontologies of Gelpi, Peirce & Maximus.
Even Aurobindo’s cosmology, perhaps due to Western influences like Bergson, may map conceptually to these ontologies.
Peirce’s pragmatic, semiotic realism defends, above all else, common sense.
Deification therefore transforms - not the whatnesses of our cosmic & anthropic ontological logoic participations, but - the hownesses of our perichoretic tropoi, thereby effecting hypostatic communion.
We become by grace what God is by nature - not at the level of logos, but - per tropoi.
The similitudo resides in tropoi & imago in logoi, although the tropoi are written in the logoi.
It’s via an exercise of the will that we become similitudines Dei tropically.
We become logoic manifestations virtuously.
Another heuristic that I apply to this triadic modal ontology comes from Scotus, who conceives the divine essence as a primary substance & immanent universal and the persons as –not individuals, but – exemplifications, which is rather felicitous to those who embrace folks like Bonaventure & Bulgakov, even Eriugena. It’s thoroughly theophanic. This seems to me to be a defensible extreme realism.
For determinate reality, the Aristotelian-like heuristic can still obtain, where our modal categories require acts – existential, efficient (volitional) & formal as limited by essential (logoic - what) material/personal (hypostatic -who) & final (tropic - how) potencies.
We navigate our temporal reality via this moderate realism, as epistemologies model ontologies.
HERE comes the turn – and it’s a most eminent *turn to community* with no loss of subjective integrity, no dissolution into an undifferentiated unitive reality, not a single *I* who is not constitutively & intimately related to every *Thou*.
What happens to the modal ontology of our moderate realism, when every logoic, hypostatic & tropic potency has been reduced by acts of existence, volition & becoming?
In neither our dynamical substance account nor relational ontology do our primary substances or hypostases disappear. As for the realized logoi, with every hypostasis wholly enessenced & every essence wholly enhypostasized, the epistemology modeling such a new ontology must adapt to account for universals no longer in potency, all having been reduced for every composite hypostasis. Only our extreme realist approach can best model this eschatological reality, where there are only immanent universals.
With all logoi enhypostasized as realized Logos & all hypostases enessenced, determinate being now requires our divine grammar, wherein logoi are eternally better modeled as primary substances & immanent universals and hypostases as – no longer mere semiotic significations, but –existential exemplifications!
Because of Stump’s eternal – temporal simultaneity, it seems to me that it’s the Scotistic extreme realism that best models both divine & determinate realities, both protologically & eschatologically.
We default to our moderate realist approach only provisionally & methodologically because we navigate temporal reality only as our empirical & practical but not authentic selves, which we become.
The crux, semiotically & temporally, we do only signify, cosmotheandrically, as vestiges, images & likenesses, because those logoi haven’t been wholly enhypostasized and every person remains only partly enessenced. Such an ontologically vague & general reality imposes a moderate realism as epistemology.
But persons, divine & human, who realize authenticity, essentially, per an extreme realism, are more properly said to exemplify the logoi. And Eriugena, Maximus, Scotus & Bonaventure can tell you what that means – WE, cosmotheandrically, are Christ
What might it mean to say that persons "exemplify" natures?
beyond distinguishing exemplifications from instantiations?
We could misinterpret thesignificance of exemplarity, if we take it out of its historical contexts.
As one moves from Plato to Augustine, Aristotle, Aquinas & the Greek Fathers, changes in the meaning of "exemplarity" go beyond mere nuance.
Bonaventure, however, following the Damascene, Dionysius & the Cappadocians, devises a conception consistent w/the best of all the above.
"[W]ith regard to the Trinity, Bonaventure opted for the Greek Cappadocian model." ~ Ilia Delio
The link, below, will download Delio's article:
http://cdn.theologicalstudies.net/60/60.2/60.2.2.pdf
"It's in this context that I lean toward Scotus' use of exemplification, which bridges East & West." ~ Peter C. Phan in The Cambridge Companion to the Trinity, 2011
In my view, Scotus' conception of divine persons as exemplifications works well w/theophany paradigms (eg Eriugena, Bonaventure, Bulgakov). Applying that same grammar, eschatologically, w/all logoi realized, humanity's essence will be a primary substance & immanent universal.
Human persons, then, become finite exemplifications of Logos.
Scotus was pretty close to threading the modalism & tritheism needle w/this conceptual maneuver.
So, it seemed to me to be a great fit to apply to the Maximian creation as Incarnation interpretation (Jordan Daniel Wood), you know, to head off both modalism & polytheism.
Exemplarity changes what we mean by - not only person, but - individual. Hypostases (real, distinct persons) are – not"individualizations," but - "mutually constituted" particulars.
As a practical upshot of adopting Scotus' haecceity & Peirce's bruteness, any given person remains a fathomless mystery, not to be defined. We can, however, still successfully refer to persons in terms of particular exemplifications and so give each a name.
This grammar does not devolve into nominalism as it affirms successful referentiality even while denying definability. It's only saying, rather, that any reference to one person will necessarily refer to all persons.
So, being neither academic philosopher nor academic theologian, so, uncertain how, for example, Hegel Dads conceive & defend creation as Incarnation, I’m just here to say that, as a Peircean PawPaw & Scotistic Schoolboy, their approach seems to work in the idioms that I employ in my own panSEMIOentheism, which aspires to be consistent with Neo-Chalcedonian, Cosmotheandric, Franciscan and other such minority reports.
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 slso 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!
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 o