Who's Afraid of Pantheism, Determinism & Nominalism in Kenotic Panentheisms?
Bracken's Divine Matrix & Woods' Maximian Cosmology
Note: This essay is excerpted from this document: A Neo-Chalcedonian, Fransiscan Cosmotheandrism
So, any references like hereinbelow refer to that document & not this essay.
Both the methodological naturalism of science & moderate realism of metaphysics, as overlapping magisteria, employ an Hegelian dialectical method, as utilized in any epistemic emergentism.
Its realist aspect suggests that epistemology models ontology, which further implicates putative ontic superveniences of different kinds & to various degrees of in/determinacy.
It further implicates a dialectical conception of the in/finite.
In terms of boundaries, limits, initial conditions & definitions, i.e. determinations - an infinite will be boundaryless, limitless, conditionless & undefinable, i.e. either wholly nondeterminate and/or absolutely self-determined.
The dialectical methodology, then, as an epistemology that's thus wholly consistent with the dialectical conception of the infinite, above, will logically & in-principle, both scientifically & metaphysically, necessarily exclude any naïve conceptions of the infinite. Those naïve "infinities" only function analytically &, historically, have presented insurmountable difficulties for science, philosophy & theology.
Beyond these methodological limits of our exploratory naturalisms & heuristics, then, all other ontological explanatory metaphysics, in many ways, will turn their attention to what will essentially be mereological inquiries.
Regarding these mereological questions, our dialectical method won't algorithmically drive us to one mereology versus another. That method, precisely because of its description of the infinite, will not specify the nature of the whole but will be consistent with competing mereological models.
I won't trace the logical or historical developments of those mereologies, here. But any readers who've come this far will have jumped ahead, anyway, knowing that these mereologies will represent what are undeniably - not just metaphysical, but - existential leaps, which are more so normatively justified and less so merely epistemically warranted.
Specifically, then, you readers already know that I am referring to those theories of the Whole, which reduce to various monisms, dualisms & pluralisms, mostly of materialist, idealist & dual aspect polarist varieties, which go beyond, even, what are more modest heuristic models, e.g. hylomorphism or hylopsychism.
For this present consideration, we can limit our discussion to the most well known existential leaps. And they are inescapably - neither idle nor merely academic, but - existential in that these leaps represent what are unavoidably forced & vital options.
I set forth, hereinbelow & at length, what to me constitutes a "live" or normatively defensible option, which addresses, among other concerns, whether or not they engage a fallacy of composition and/or include both vertical & horizontal causations & whereso in our pervasively dynamical reality.
The leaps under consideration here, then, are a materialist monism, pantheism, process theism & classical theism.
I also set forth, hereinbelow & at length, the defense of my own series of leaps. What I want to address now, though, is a more narrowly tailored defense of kenotic panentheisms. More specifically, I want to examine how they avoid nominalism, pantheism & determinism.
How & whether we successfully avoid nominalism, pantheism & determinism will very much depend on where & whether we locate the nondeterminate, absolutely self-determinate, in/determinate & relatively self-determinate in reality.
Any stances which conceptually attribute some eternally transcendent vertical causalities to reality as a putative whole, mereologically ---
as distinct from merely ephemeral downward causations among its parts, which otherwise reduce to spatio-temporal horizontal causes,
will, by virtue of their not defining such vertical causes, but rather describing & referring to them as, somehow, both nondeterminate & absolutely self-determinate, will, in principle, avoid - not only any thoroughgoing determinism, but - unintended pantheism. This is even more demonstrably the case when that stance also defines any spatio-temporal horizontal causes among its parts in terms of in/determinacy & as relatively self-determinate.
A question, perhaps, arises as to just what such a description of the infinite in partly absolutist terms - absolutely self-determined - means. Also, one might inquire as to whether or not it escapes the intrinsic logic of our dialectical method by introducing some illicit terminus to - not just our knowledge, epistemologically, but - to history, itself, ontologically.
Is not change, i.e. historical process, itself, the one eternal & absolute reality?
What happens, then, to the unity of our integrally related infinite & finite, our coincidences of opposites, our negations of negations, to all change, movement, process & development?
I wonder if this answer partly lies precisely in our distinctions between vertical & horizontal causes, between robustly eternal (real) & merely ephemeral (perishable) effects. Such a hermeneutic wouldn't violate our dialectic but indeed escape it, that is escape it in the sense of going beyond or transcending it.
Might the introduction of this pattern of real vertical causes as juxtaposed to ephemeral horizontal causes suggest a cosmic chiasmus?
Could some chiastic reversal, here, shed some light on a reality that presents - not only as cosmos, but - chaosmos? becoming & being? paradox & pattern? chaos & order? asymmetry & symmetry? random & systematic? chance & necessity?
Per pattern reversal, then, what we perceive as the End (per our realm of horizontal causations, which are mere spatio-temporal ephemeralities) would refer to, when thus alternatively interpreted (per the realm of vertical causations, which are eternal verities) the Beginning.
Eternal, vertical hypostatic multiplications will have ENDED the FINAL determination of - not only WHAT, but - THAT, THIS & WHO we are, once & for all, per the immutable, inviolate logoi of the Logos.
Our horizontal hypostatic acts would represent only the beginning of our synergistic, co-creative reductions of potencies of HOW we will REAL-ize, who we already are, eternally. This represents a telic theotic trajectory of - not logoi, but - tropoi.
Only those tropic horizontal acts that are freely performed together with the vertical promptings & energeia of other incarnated presences, both universal & particular, will co-creatively & synergistically transist into eternity, partially self-determining one's unique communal charisms, spiritual gifts & secondary beatitudes.
The END of our tropic journeys will mark the BEGINNING our our eternally, real sojourns, where dialectical becoming will be an epectatic unitive process of being eternally well, passing from glory to glory to glory of both primary & secondary beatitudes, so beatifically embracing person after person after person, every embrace ending with the beginning of the next per eternal affirmations of the affirmations.
Our END, each imago Dei, was determined in the BEGINNING.
Our FINITE nature IS / has been eternally contained in the ABSOLUTE.
HOW He realized it was absolutely self-determined & HOW we realize it is partly self-determined.
Now, one might object to the introduction of this vertical causation in terms of nondeterminacy & absolute self-determinacy for its in-principle ineffability. To wit:
"But this 'Absolute Idea' or the 'True Infinite' of Hegel like the mathematical 'Absolute Infinite' of Cantor; are only absolutes in the sense that they have absolutely nothing to say about it!"
~ Abdul Malek citation below
Well, last time I checked, a Person (self), Who's - not defined, but - described as somehow, both nondeterminate & absolutely self-determined, rather precisely conforms to our creedal theo-contours.
Further, due to our actual bruteness (Peirce) & haecceity (Scotus), creaturely persons will share this same essentially naked hypostatic positivity, hence an ineffable, mysterious depth dimension to which we can successfully refer although unable to successfully define.
This logic of hypostatic ineffability, positivity & relationality applies perichoretically, both ad extra & ad intra, from Bonaventure's emanative account of the Monarchy of the Father to a Neochalcedonian Christology to a cosmotheandric interpretation of Maximus' cosmology, where hypostases remain irreducible & indifferent to - but inseparable from - natures, each tropos expressing its logoi, while neither exhausting nor being obliterated by the Logos.
This account thus avoids pantheism & its determinism.
To avoid nominalism, we shouldn't misconceive Logos & logoi as mere abstractions, thoughts or ideas, or only in essential or formal terms, but must think of them in concrete terms, real potencies to be reduced to acts of freely acting Persons with intentions or wills, reasons or purposes, to Whom some end is “fitting." This applies to both the immanent universals of divine & instantiated universals of human persons.
Nominalism can occur in degrees, too, especially when we yield to too much reductionism & efficient causation in our accounts in mechanistic ways.
Ironically, because of the dialectical realities implicated in our embodied antinomies, nominalism can creep in from not being sufficiently antinomic, not recognizing the reality of Peircean absentials. We can mistakenly reduce true, existential, pragmatic antinomies to one of their theses as if they were false opposites or mere disjunctive binaries rather than authentic harmonizing contraries.
The above criteria, which collectively avoid pantheism, determinism & nominalism, it seems to me, have been successfully met by Joe Bracken's neo-Whiteheadian process approach and by Jordan Daniel Woods' interpretation of Maximian cosmology. Certainly other kenotic panentheisms meet these criteria. On the surface others seem to but I haven't engaged them in as much depth.
In general, the Hegelian dialectical method & Absolute and the Peircean pragmatic semiotic realism & Ens Necessarium, as heuristics, seem amenable to development in these directions. Bulgakov's sophiology comes close as does Hartshorne's neoclassical process-based conception, but they require meta-tweaking.
Finally, we recognize all personal hypostases ex Deo as freely, willing, loving actors with intentions or wills, reasons or purposes, to whom various ends can be “fitting." Over against any thoroughgoing deterministic appearances, then, to divine persons we can apply the Anselmian principle to all Trinitarian missio ad extra -
potuit, decuit, ergo fecit: ‘twas possible & “fitting,” ergo accomplished.
And it applies even to the shadows & vestigia in the gratuity of creation, the oikonomia of soteriology & the theosis in the gratuity of grace. And we needn't attribute such contingent effects to any *necessity* as would be grounded in God’s nature, divine esse naturale, but, instead can attribute same to an *inevitability* as would be
grounded in God’s Will, divine esse intentionale!
Abdul Malek, The Infinite as a Hegelian Philosophical Category and Its Implication for Modern Theoretical Natural Science, Volume 10 (2014), Progress in Physics, Issue 4 (October)