We do not know what Humanity is. God Himself does not know what Humanity is.

for perichoresis, think theophanic & beatific (& definitely not substance ontology)

We do not know what Humanity is. God Himself does not know what Humanity is. At least for perichoresis, think theophanic & beatific (& definitely not substance ontology).

Not to be coy, it’s because we are divine.

Properly considered, I think that the Neo-Chalcedonian perichoretic insight, while it successfully refers to natures, both divine & human, for example – by remaining consistent with the participatory dynamics of analogia entis, does not otherwise, in & of itself, have to do with ontologies of natures & of persons, although it certainly would remain in search of them to better communicate them, idiomatically, to various audiences.

Confusion will reign, then, if one tries to appropriate JDW’s Maximian Christology & Cosmology as if it’s competing in any way with anyone’s pet ontology, whether substance, process, social – relational, etc. I could point to such confusion by some otherwise very erudite theologians in some rather high profile forums.

To me, perichoretic dynamics are personal & modal vis a vis WHO & HOW, beyond the participatory dynamics of natures, so, phenomenologically address intersubjective activities – knowing, willing & loving. We’re looking for those divine signs & wonders in various exemplifications, revelations and manifestations of persons who can variously serve as exemplifiers, revealers and/or manifesters.

What’s at stake are more so theophanic & beatific implications, less so any ontological specifications, although we indeed nevertheless do successfully refer to the community (Trinity) & persons (F, S & HS) in terms of their opera ad intra of knowing, willing & loving.

“We do not know what God is. God Himself does not know what He is …”

~ John Scotus Eriugena

“We do not know what Humanity is. God Himself does not know what Humanity is.”

~ John Sobert Sylvest

Immediately below, I extensively paraphrase & condense (I hope faithfully) directly from Marc A. Pugliese’s The One, the Many, and the Trinity: Joseph A. Bracken and the Challenge of Process Metaphysics (2011CUA Press). I’ll attach relevant pages below for those who’d engage it all more deeply.

Bracken Derived Categories of Subjectivity

Through intersubjective relations, a person can know & understand others’ subjective experiences by prehending the structural objectifications of those experiences, objectively knowing & identifying with them but not subjectively identifying with them.

Infinite persons objectively know & identify with each other in every way. The different subjective reality of each person precludes ontological identity (as in the logical principle of identity). Knowing & willing, then, pertain to both the divine nature AND to each person.

end of Bracken

For example, Christ’s eternal subjectivity, consistent with our notions of hypostatic idiomata (vaguely conceived here), which differentiate Him from the F & HS, successfully refers to the knowing, willing & loving that He exemplies ad intra & reveals ad extra (everlastingly on the move) & that we (and He!) manifest finitely, i.e. relatively & in part (everlastingly playing epectatic catch-up!).

In a logic of persons, the differentiating principles that head off tri-theism, then, will be the very same principles that head off pantheism: uncreated persons are completely unified in thought & action, perfectly unanimous in mind & will, with a more unified corporate agency than that of finite persons in our collaborations. Finite persons, nevertheless, do not lack infinite potential for the very same synergic, unitive corporate divine activity.

For His part, Christ subjectively knows, wills & loves, infinitely & finitely, wholly & in part, absolutely & relatively, as He exemplies divinity nondeterminately, reveals divinity self-determinately & manifests divinity co-self-determinately, ALL with the ever-abiding help of the Holy Spirit.

This successfully refers to (but doesn’t ontologically define) divine persons in terms of opera ad intra & extra and also in terms of personal subjectivity, intersubjectivity & interobjectivity. It also refers, in terms of personal idiomata, to divine – human persons.

There’s only One divine – human person Who (incommunicably) differs from all others. Christ so differs only by eternally enessencing both the infinite & finite, absolute & relative, macro & micro modes of knowing, willing & loving (all which are naturally participable, communicable & noncompetitive). This is to recognize that the difference between Christ & other created persons is located --- not in WHAT (per logoi) we manifest, theophanically, or enjoy, beatifically, but in HOW (per tropoi) we manifest loving God, others, cosmos & self theophanically (via our unique bundles of idiomata, spiritualities, charisms & missions) and, concommitantly & proportionately, HOW MUCH we synergically co-self-determine to enjoy both primary & secondary beatitudes beyond our original abundant sufficiency and toward the superabundant epectasy as remains everlastingly on offer by & into Infinite Being.

The Maximian tri-partite “out of two natures and in two natures and is two natures” in my view doesn’t define the natures but recognizes HOW He expresses the divine – human compositeness, a mode of expression which WE SHARE, practically. In Him, we SEE the two natures “from which, in which, and which is the Christ” (Epistle 15, PG 91, 573 A).

Infinitely, Christ, non-determinately, exemplifies (via immanent universals) the two natures that He IS ad intra in His Trinitarian perichoresis. This evokes for me a Spirit Christology.

Eternally, Christ, self-determinately, absolutely perfectly & wholly, reveals OUT of those two natures ad extra FROM His hypostatic perichoresis via a vertical causal dynamic of Logos. This evokes for me a Logos Christology.

Eternally, Christ, co-self-determinately, manifests finitely IN those two natures partaking in the unfolding cosmotheandric perichoretic drama as a singular part (tropos) of the horizontal causal dynamics of logoi. So. Do. We. This evokes for me an open & relational degree Christology.

A Neochalcedonian Cosmotheandrism Precis

Reality's primal subjectivities experience & express the freely willed love of their equiprimordial (contra subordinationism) intersubjectivity (contra modalism).

They socially & relationally know & understand that love as all share each other's structural objectifications of those loving experiences & expressions.

Thereby, they objectively know & identify with each other's subjective experiences, while not subjectively identifying with them (contra tri-theism).

Infinite persons know & understand each other and remain completely unified in thought & action, perfectly unanimous in mind & will.

Infinite persons experience & express a more unified corporate agency than we as finite persons do in our collaborations (participatory per analogia entis).

Finite persons, nevertheless, do not lack infinite potential for the very same synergic, unitive corporate divine activity (perichoretic per co-creative synergies).

Infinite, infinite - finite & finite persons all experience & express an essential freely willed love, each eternally operating from their original natural mode, which, consistent w/Anselm & Scotus, implicates a qualitative infinity (per analogia entis).

Essentially, the necessaria & logoi of the Ens Necessarium & Logos, which is to say, their freely willing loving nature, remains eternally unchanging in the intrinsic perfections & aesthetic intensities it gifts to personal experience, beatifically (divine simplicity of esse naturale).

Modally, infinite persons eternally & dynamically expand the aesthetic scope of their expressions of this eternal love, theophanically, exemplifying its nature as an immanent universal (thin passibility of esse intentionale).

Modally, finite persons eternally & via infinite potential expand the aesthetic scope of their expressions of this eternal love, theophanically.

Finite persons, as likenesses, exemplify aspects of this loving nature as each person's tropos uniquely instantiates the logoi in an everlasting epectasy. As images, they signify uninstantiated aspects of this nature in their finite strivings to realize their personal authenticity in Christ.

The epectatic dynamic eternally re-situates each, socially & relationally, in a concrete, social Absolute that's ever on the move.

This epectasy fosters ever-new theophanic expressions & allows one's experience, which already essentially enjoys a super-sufficient beatitudinal intensity, to expand beyond one's original aesthetic scope as each variously & progressively experiences both primary (uncreated) & secondary (created) beatitudes.


The infinite - finite One eternally experiences & expresses, beatifically & theophanically, all of the above (neochalcedonian cosmotheandrism).

There'a nothing algorithmically universalist about a  Neochalcedonian Cosmotheandrism. It's bring your own account of purgative grace vis a vis our vicious secondary natures, soteriologically, coupled with your own post-mortem anthropology, eschatologically. Those choices boil down to either a quasi-Manichean or annihilationist account of evil.

Consistent with this Neo-chalcedonian Cosmotheandrism would be:

tri-polar presencing in a three domain model (Jenson, Bracken)

social, relational metaphysics of dynamical experience & expression (Gelpi, Bracken)

grammars of modal identity for infinite persons, modal ontology for finite persons, hypostatic identity for infinite - finite person

grammars that suggest that any cosmotheandric metaphysic can only aspire to a semi-formal heuristic that fosters successful references (modally, metanoetically & metaontically) but, in-principle, successful definitions necessarily succumb to hypostatic irreducibility of both persons & natures, ergo, not exhaustively formalizable, analytically

neither essentialistic nor nominalistic

harmonizing vis a vis all contrasts

entitatively multiplicative, as entities are not divisibly generated

aesthetic primacy, teleologically

affectively dispositional, epistemologically, including
aesthetical & ethical connaturality

evil as privation

creatio ex deo

If Creation as Incarnation means that we're already the cosmic Body of Christ, protologically, doesn't a question beg, eschatologically: What's it all about, Alfie?

Personally, per our tropoi, what are we becoming, cosmotheandrically?

If Creation is Incarnation, then, both the natural union of participation, which deifies Christ's humanity, as well as the hypostatic identity of perichoresis, which by virtue of the generation of opposites makes the world the cosmic Body of Christ, are protological events.

There are more divine realities in Heaven & Earth (e.g. Trinitarian society & its persons, a divine-human person), which/who are equiprimordial, than are dreamt of in your substance ontologies.

~ John Sobert Sylvest

Essentially, per logoi, human nature with its relative perfections remains an inviolable, hence unwounded, image of God, which, in each person, embeds a sufficiently free will & adequately illuminated intellect, which together allow us to both aspire to & attain a vision beatific. This freedom remains possible - not inspite of, but - precisely because of our epistemic & axiological distancing. It also necessarily introduces the possibility of both virtuous & vicious acts & habits, the latter which will require purgative graces.

If we're already the cosmic Body of Christ, protologically, an obvious question will beg, eschatologically: Personally, per our tropoi, what are we becoming, cosmotheandrically? Which is to ask: What does growing from image to likeness involve?

In short, we can expand our freedom, grow in intimacy, broaden our aesthetic scope, and, superabundantly, both multiply our theophanic manifestations & deepen our beatific enjoyments.

Theosis, then, involves our self-determined, synergic growth in likeness, eschatologically & epectatically. Apokatastasis involves that universal invitation to theosis to which we can freely assent in terms of degrees, which will concommitantly match various grades of glory vis a vis beatific enjoyments of both primary & secondary beatitudes.

Apokatastenai involves purgations, including both active & passive, which restore our original beatitude, essential freedom & basic intellect.

I cover these speculative stances exhaustively here in my Neo-Chalcedonian Cosmotheandric Universalism

From a reply to Tom Belt:

I receive Scotus & Maximus as our libertarian allies, Bracken as our antidote to nominalistic process approaches (& tweaker of Bulgakovian insights), Clarke’s thin passibility per esse naturale-intentionale distinction as compatible w/our aesthetic intensity/scope, all cohering w/our universalism.

I affirm Creation as Incarnation = We’re already the cosmic Body of Christ. That’s not “open.” What’s wholly determined for me is Maritain’s apokatastenai of imagoes Dei, whether by active post-mortem purgation or passive ephemeralization (phantasm-like annihilation of vicious secondary natures, which, lacking divine synergies, fail to enjoy the eternalization that our virtuous natures do). Soteriologically, done deal. Abundance assured – theophanically & beatifically – for all.

Such purgative graces are no more repugnant to or prejudicial of my libertarian conception of freedom than are those of justification, Thomist predestination, post-mortem impeccability or any other volitional dynamic grounded in our natural inclination to The Good.

Epistemic distancing closures, epectatic apokatastasis, theotic & sophiological dynamics may all be gifted by either co-determined synergic assent (ordinarily, like w/ sanctifying grace) or absence of refusal (extraordinarily, like w/justifying grace). This all remains everlastingly “open.”

Apokatastenai divinely determines WHAT we abudantly & sufficiently are via generation of opposites (Logos – logoi), guaranteed, sealed by the Holy Spirit, first fruits, earnest, all as a down payment to images of God on that everlasting apokatastatic – epectatic – theotic dynamic , which is the open invitation to become likenesses of God, whereby we synergistically co-self-determine HOW we shall supersufficiently theophanically manifest & HOW MUCH we shall superabundantly beatifically enjoy God, others, cosmos & self.

The Whole Mystery of Christ: Creation as Incarnation in Maximus Confessor by JDW - Practically considered, So What?

its day by day implications

I’ve very nearly broken my brain trying to appropriate JDW’s insights, trying to conceptually shoehorn them into my favorite phenomenological categories, especially as on offer by Maximus, Eriugena, Anselm, Bonaventure, Scotus, Peirce, Don Gelpi (Lonerganian) & Amos Yong (pneumatologist).

For example, I’ve wondered: How might one parse the differences between Christ’s humanization and our divinization?

More specifically, I’ve asked: What differences might obtain in terms of our final potencies regarding, let’s say, theophanic manifestations and/or beatific enjoyments?

I’ve not gotten very far beyond the rather clear notion that, personally, while we’re all intended, like the Son & with the help of the Holy Spirit, to reveal Our Father & to beatifically enjoy the Trinity’s self-delight, we’re different subjects with unique tropoi.

I suppose this is to admit that my notions about the distinctions between the finite & infinite have gotten a lot more elusive and my conceptions about essences, natures, ousia, attributes, propria & idiomata – a lot more vague.

Concretely, this is to say that, in learning more about the whonesses & hownesses of persons, I now realize that I know way less about our whatnesses than I once imagined. In other words, I’ve no idea how to successfully define “what” created persons are, even though I accept that our natures differ from the divine nature in that they do, indeed, have a “whatness.” I also acknowledge that, like the divine nature, we can successfully refer to created natures because, like the uncreated divine nature, they’re infinitely intelligible.

So, there you have it. So far, I've only located two differences between us & Jesus. First, as persons, we're all different subjects. Then, vis a vis natures, Jesus has one nature that's uncreated with no whatness and another that's created with a whatness that we can successfully refer to even if we haven't yet defined it.

Jesus has told us, though, that those equalities with God's nature are nothing to be grasped and that we can experience as adoptees by Grace both Who He is to the Father & How it is the Trinity, together, enjoys - not only each other & each's own self, but - all of Creation, most especially us persons!

Yes, we're all intended, like the Son & with the help of the Holy Spirit, to theophanically reveal Our Father & to beatifically enjoy the Trinity's self-delight, as well as secondary beatitudes!

Yes, the analogia entis does obtain but the primary practical takeaway for me from JDW's __The Whole Mystery of Christ: Creation as Incarnation in Maximus Confessor__ has been that, in our self-appropriations, in our journeys to authenticity, in our formative spiritualities, in our private worship & liturgical prayer, in all our interactions with & service of self, others, the Cosmos & Trinity, we need to more thoroughly deemphasize our status as adoptees and to more radically awaken to & so interrelate as the theophanies that we all already are, can everlastingly real-ize & increasingly become!

It is here that I might segue to concrete examples of how it is we might all better pursue such theophanic & beatific aspirations to daily walk closer to Jesus? But I’m not advocating performative changes to our ascetical practices, spiritual disciplines & other practical theologies.

What I’m suggesting, rather, is that Jordan’s book be appropriated as the Love Story it truly is! And that should better form our interpersonal dispositions, better foster affective conversions and thereby to more swiftly & with less hindrance approach the Truth, celebrate the Beauty & realize the Goodness of Our Lord, day by day by day by day by day!

The Whole Mystery of Christ: Creation as Incarnation in Maximus Confessor

Jordan Daniel Wood, Notre Dame Press 2022

Buy the book HERE.

Listen to a Jordan Daniel Wood interview HERE at the The Particular Good podcast, which is focused on literature, theology, and philosophy. The podcast title is inspired by St. Thomas, who said humans by nature are made for particular goods.

View Jordan Daniel Wood’s interview by Larry Chapp HERE.

Read the Preface to The Whole Mystery of Christ: Creation as Incarnation in Maximus Confessor HERE.

Watch Jordan Daniel Wood’s 15 minute Introduction to The Whole Mystery of Christ: Creation as Incarnation in Maximus Confessor HERE.

HERE at Syndicate, Jordan Daniel Wood engages Blowers, Balthasar and others. This colloquy provides us helpful foils that can enable us a better grasp of the significance of Wood’s interpretation of Maximus, which affirms an identity between God & the World beyond - though not without - what others affirm, which of course is only a natural difference per the logic of analogia entis. Wood’s reading is thus consistent with that of Zizioulas, who reads Maximus according to the logic of persons.

Finally, here’s my own graphical synopsis:

Notes:

Modal Ontological Grammar of a Maximian Cosmology

All shall be well.

Essentially, our primary nature's not only not wounded but not woundable.

Grace, then, operates tropically & inescapably, as purgative grace can annhilate vicious secondary natures without violating free will.

How I eisegetically appropriate JDW's Maximian Cosmology using my modal ontological grammar, for any interested

What's going on, temporally & transiently, when one asserts that

a) persons & entities are  indifferent & irreducible to but inseparable from natures & essences?

b) generated - not by dividing essences, but - by multiplying entities (I - Thous)?

And when we say that

c) all hypostases are enessenced;
d) all essences are enhypostasized;
e) no energies are hypostasized?; and

f) essences, entities & energeia, as experiences & expressions, are irreducibly triadic in their manifestations?

Each novel multiplicative entity will be enessenced with a nature as manifested by how select essential potencies reduce to existential acts.

This enessencing follows a logic of possibilities, wherein noncontradiction folds (coincidence of opposites obtains) but excluded middle holds (some logoi may be enhypostasized, some not, based on varying ontological densities of shadows, vestiges & images ex Deo).

The recursive enhypostasization follows a logic of actualities, wherein both noncontradiction & excluded middle hold as an enhypostasized original nature (essential) will be manifested by HOW select im/material potencies reduce to efficient acts.

Microcosmic entities, i.e. persons, reflect a reduction of all essential & im/material potencies to irreducibly dyadic & contemporaneous existential & efficient acts.

Microcosmic entities manifest & express via energeia in an irreducibly triadic way as they also, contemporaneously, follow a logic of probabilities, wherein noncontradiction holds but excluded middle folds as select final potencies are reduced to formal acts (per tropoi encoded in an entity's essential logoi). This is the theotic logic of growth in likeness.

The practical upshot of this grammar is that personal hypostases (dyad of essence + entity) are essentially inviolable as imagoes Dei.

Further, their tropic reduction of final potencies to formal acts can be hindered but never obliterated by vicious natures, as they remain eternally fostered by virtuous natures and graces, both created & uncreated, as always on offer.

It's wonkish, I know. But it has helped me keep categories straight as I navigate between competing metaphysical idioms of those mis-critiquing JDW's book.


Modeling Sophia

A mediation model of Sophia works as it applies via energeia to our tropic reductions of final theotic potencies by graced formal acts? It roughly corresponds to Peirce's thirdness, Scotus' formal distinction, regularities, laws, coaxings - uncreated & created & grace-filled.

Both sides are divine - human?

One side is "immanently Infinite - finite" & the other "finite - Infinite potentially" via instantiation.

Sophia, uncreated & created, synergistically cooperate opera-tively & perichoretically.

It mediates hownesses not whats & whos.

Some accounts of created Sophia reminded me of Gelpi's account of created grace. I've run w/that ever since. In my appropriation (caveat emptor), the uncreated Sophia refers to the pure act of the perichoretic Three, as they manifest infinite, cosmotheandric, uncreated grace.

Created Sophia refers to the cumulative finite acts of created co-creators, as they perichoretically manifest an Infinite - finite created grace, which gets progressively co-created by their every synergistic cooperation with uncreated grace.

note: Since Gelpi & Bracken resonate via Peirce & I saw some merit in Gallaher's "The Problem of Pantheism in the Sophiology of Sergii Bulgakov: A Panentheistic Solution in the Process Trinitarianism of Joseph A. Bracken?", that all informed my "constructive"(I hope) engagement.


Maximian Likeness Epistemology

In my reading of Maximus, there's not a discursive negation of propositional cognition or gnoseological knowledge, which indeed can play an instrumental role as a means to engaging one's  participatory imagination, enjoying more so an operative knowledge driven by desire, like knowing like.

It's more of a methodological negation, where the latter supplants the former, especially as theotic means advance erotic ends. The former does help us see Him more clearly, that we'll desire to follow (imitate) Him more nearly b/c we love Him more dearly. Likeness Epistemology.

If by temperament, you are drawn to propositional modeling, take heart! A lot of folks pray the Proslogion.

Marilyn McCord Adams - not only proved that there's no ontotheological fallacy, but - further consoled me that ontotheology can be prayer!

Thick or Thin Passibility? Strong or Weak Simplicity?

Today, I might begin the retirement of my inflationary - deflationary distinctions re weak & strong simplicity and thick & thin passibility. I suspect I've used them to preemptively assuage the concerns of both classical & relational theists.

Rhetorically, I haven't succeeded in convincing myself that those distinctions make the difference that my semiotic pragmatism looks for.

As a charismatic w/pentecostal sensibilities, who sees God universally & particularly present, I'm affectively attuned to the fact that His formal influence (cause to effect) doesn't just extend mostly via a mere accidentally ordered causal series as in what amounts to a practical deism, but also via an essentially ordered way - creatio ex Deo continua.

The freely willing loving formal theophanic acts that reduce final theotic potencies involve a graced synergy between co-creative & divine agents. So, I take it very personally. The interrelation's bilateral. If it looks asymmetric, as if the potencies of human divinization don't finally mirror the reality of divine humanization, that's only b/c we will instantiate, diachronically in our temporal existence, what the Son eternally exemplifies as the Infinite - finite, divine - human One.

Personally, then, our freely willing love is both bilateral & symmetric in terms of both potential theophanic expression & beatific experience.

Our primary nature enjoys an essentially unchanging & everlasting original aesthetic intensity via Logos : logoi, as we're imagoes Dei. Our primary nature's not strongly immutable; it's eminently so.

Our secondary natures, via divine-human tropoi, theotically & epectatically, can potentially grow to enjoy a divine aesthetic scope that's eternally ever on the move as the concrete, social Absolute, wherein, operatively, we're together revealed as the Body of Christ, in Whom we each manifest as a unique & indispensable, mutually constituted part. We're not thinly passible; we're eminently so as divine - human persons.

The rhetorical device of being a little bit pregnant vis a vis divine - human passibility doesn't refer vis a vis the tropoi of our secondary natures, which, nonetheless, do remain pregnant with infinite potential to go beyond our essential & inviolable original beatitude, like Christ ever-growing per an open aesthetic scope.

Christo - logy & -phany

Christo-logically, the heavenly man experienced heavenly flesh by - neither emanative origin nor essence, but - its hypostatic union.

Christo-phanically, because the heavenly man experienced heavenly flesh, He could will to manifest it temporally - not just universally & pneumato-Christologically in the Incarnational creation, but - by expressing Himself Christo-pneumatologically & particularly in times & places other than Bethlehem!

Any analogical interval or diastema is not so much ontological, but more so meta-ontological, and refers to natures more often in terms of modal hows, using qualitative references like Infinite &/or finite.

Divine humanization, then, refers to an eternal exemplification of an immanent universal, while human divinization refers to temporal instantiations of logoi, in which eternally epectatic tropoi (with abyssal freedom) are also embedded & from which various energeia flow.