The Cosmotheandric Perichoresis

Take our logics of natures, grammars of analogy, dynamics of participation & theotic processes of growth from image to likeness. Aren’t Maximus’ multiple incarnations consistent with an economic progression of theophanic manifestations via ever-greater revelatory presences?

For example, a pneumato-Christological, cosmotheandric presence from the cosmic get-go?

That would all be consistent with the conciliar definitions of Trinitological perichoresis of Nicaea & Constantinople and Christological perichoresis of Chalcedon.

It points us in the direction of how the divine logoi process through nature from one mediated presence to the next.

What none of these above logics of progression, procession, succession & coinherence account for is how qualitatively different any & all experiences of immediate divine presence would be from those mediated presences!

We’ll have to go beyond our serial, linear & quantitative notions, beyond our natural logics & participatory dynamics, beyond our doctrines of logoi and beyond our Trintological & Christological perichoreses. While not in the least suggesting that we go without them, we must go beyond them.

We will also need a logic of persons, a doctrine of tropoi, a grammar for hypostatic identity, a distinctly cosmotheandric perichoresis, an account of – not only the humanization of the divine, but – the divinization of the human.

We’ll need a phenomenology that accommodates a conception of – not just ontological emanation, but – personal generation.

Such a multiplicative, Christological monism would not culminate, eschatologically, in an obliteration of individual persons into a supraindividual Christ. It would, rather, account for our epectatic interpersonal unitive doing of loving manifestations. It’s all opera-tic.

In the same way that Bonaventure’s emanation account gifted us a positive conception of innascibility for the Monarchy of the Father, our positive conceptions of Christ’s self-determinate divine otherings (vertical causations) would block inferences like the ‘logos asarkos‘ in the hypostatic union, Christologically, and like the ‘natura pura‘ in the creatio ex Deo, cosmotheandrically.

Through Him, With Him & In Him, we’ll thereby enjoy with the Trinity – even though we’re adopted! – the identical perichoretic communal delights they’ve shared eternally, delighting – not only in each Other, but – in each Person’s own Self. That’s how adoptions have worked in my family, anyway!

Without the Neo-Chalcedonian heuristic & logic of persons, our references to realities like divine immediate presences, beatific visions, inancaritability, impeccability, epectasy & primary beatitudes reduce to mere apophatic placeholders without a postive heuristic.

Of course, as heuristic, it’s – not explanatory, but – exploratory. Still, it very much has practical implications for how we approach others in love, God in prayer, the kerygma in hope, proclamations as promises, secular conversions in formative spirituality and missiology in an historical, ***cosmotheandric global context of racial, cultural & religious plurality.

In an eschatological & protological context, my cosmotheandric universalism points to the indispenable role that anagogy must play in every juxtaposition of eros & agape, the proleptic & eschatological, incarnations & deifications, liturgical contemplations & ecclesial communions, etc. The anagogical reveals the mystical nexus between our every particular quotidian experience & our final communal beatific consummation.

note above ***cosmotheandric global context of racial, cultural & religious plurality.

For your consideration, in my reading queue is Aizaiah G. Yong’s _Multiracial Cosmotheandrism: A Practical Theology of Multiracial Experiences_

All of the above just represents my appropriation of Jordan Daniel Wood’s The Whole Mystery of Christ
Creation as Incarnation in Maximus Confessor as my grasp of same has only slowly (& hopefully) progressed beyond the inchoate.

To me, Bulgakov & Maximus seem to converge in their “personal” logics.

Beyond embodying “natural” antinomies such as Absolute (in potency) & relative divine perfections, human persons embody the “personal” antinomy of “I -Thou“-ness.

If so, Joe Bracken’s “Divine Matrix” can accommodate both doctrines of Sophia & of logoi-tropoi because it treats persons & societies as equiprimordial.

The Logos creates the universal – particular mutuality that we experience, intentionally, in our intrinsic I-Thou-ness.

That “I-Thou“-ness is what human “being” means and what our eternal “well being” realizes.

How are these cosmotheandric realities related protologically, historically & eschatologically?

For Christ, in His very person via His divine self-determination to “other.”

For us, it’s like – historically, we go to the “school of being” in preparation for (& even theophanic expansion of?) our “life of eternal well being,” eschatologically.

No universalists I know appropriate Bulgakov in pantheistic or deterministic ways, even if, arguably, he did lend himself to such interpretations.

They variously employ, rather, some type of Christological monism, creatio ex Deo, Neo-Chalcedonism, Creation as Incarnation, cosmotheandrism or even a panentheistic Sophiology.

These approaches go beyond ontology & participation to further explore persons & various perichoreses, introducing new categories that resist facile shoehorning into substance ontologies.

They speak of interpersonal unitive doings & theophanies in terms of manifestations & revelations (not unitary being & theogonies).

Still, even properly nuanced, one might still ask whether, if the universalist sophianic union is divinely determined, where is the love?

I’m willing to bite that bullet & admit that our individual nuptials & ecclesiological marriages are arranged.

There’s a good reason they can still be eminently synergistic:

Each spouse is simply irresistible!