New Search for Ultimate Reality

JB & Sylvester, your conversation is wonderful and interesting, but it's a little like watching billiards played with colored ping-pong balls.

I have a particular question for you both:

IF, in fact, the dialogic play of metanarrativeS were, indeed, the ONLY means to escape tautology (rather than what JB asserts to be the opposite), what would constitute a "Pedagogy of Conversion"?

[I presently am writing a book on the PEDAGOGY of CONVERSION and am interested in any ideas you may have on this interposition of metanarrative & tautology.]

God's peace,

e+

The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy

"All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear..." (Romans 8:14-15)

Subvert THAT Tautology

This is the last of my disquisitions. Summertime exigencies press in on me. I hope to continue with those posts of mine that offer both brevity and clarity ;-)

PAX!
jb

Rev. Dr. E. McCoy wrote: "IF, in fact, the dialogic play of metanarratives were, indeed, the ONLY means to escape tautology (rather than what JB asserts to be the opposite), what would constitute a 'Pedagogy of Conversion'? I presently am writing a book on the PEDAGOGY of CONVERSION and am interested in any ideas you may have on this interposition of metanarrative & tautology."

I previously learned from E+ that our "opening to" precedes our "thinking about" and, below, I am trying to say that with some philosophical precision. What I am attempting is to articulate a theological anthropology using awkward philosophical
constructs, which don't capture the texture of our rich human experience very well. In so many words, I am recognizing that our tautological constructs are on a different plane of rationality, are discursive and even ideological. But I am suggesting that, in describing their foundations, we must prescind from the more explicitly philosophical, at least the logical and moral, or the descriptive and prescriptive, to emphasize the aesthetical and nonpropositional, or the evaluative. It is here that I locate our hidden tautological foundations, which support the tautological "construction" that takes place on top of them. Those hidden foundations are thus aesthetical, nonpropositional and/or evaluative and do not lend themselves, in principle, to formal construction and argumentation.

Let's consider tautologies, in general. By way of example, let's say we start positivistically with our observation of the speed of light in a vacuum, just a simple empirical observation. We are ALREADY, even if unconsciously, inhabiting a
tautology when this measurement is made. Did we measure the speed using Euclidean Geometry (a metamathematical tautology of quite arbitray axioms) or NonEuclidean Geometry (a different tautology)? It probably wouldn't matter much on a small scale,
but we would discover that, on immense scales, that NonEuclidean geometry gifts us with better predictions. Both geometries are logically consistent, but only one is more externally congruent with reality. I like to say "more taut." As far as major
worldviews go, however, things are NOT as simple as in the example above. It is simply too early on humankind's journey to adjudicate between them all. We have not been able to reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics yet because these theories were formed in two different tautological schemes with different axioms, concepts and logic and no one has been able to "renormalize" them into a Grand Unified Theory.

What I am try to do below is to articulate an intellectual defense of the importance of praxis and pathos and how folks need to look over their shoulders at these types of nonsuppositional commitments and Kierkegaardian leaps in order to "escape" or, better said, criticize and subvert their tautologies.

I am dealing in abstractions without fleshing out my lived experiences. Very briefly, those experiences involve such as nondual awareness, kundalini arousal/awakening and nondiscursive prayer, all which had to be reconciled to my Catholic roots. I came to see that folks like Ken Wilber, Bernadette Roberts, Matthew Fox, Thomas Berry and others were not best articulating MY lived experience but that pseudo-Dionysius, Meister Eckhart, Duns Scotus and St. Francis, as well as John of the Cross, for example, were. I often prescind from lived experience to the structured philosophical and metaphysical speheres because they provide a lingu franca and a rigor to evaluate other's hermeneutics and to then deepen my own
self-understanding thru dialogue, while using others' perspectives as a foil, and, very often, as even a gift and invitation to change and grow. A LOT of folks are taking nondual awareness and elaborating heterodox ontologies that PRECISELY have
profound impications for praxis, especially PRAYER.

Theological Anthropology as a Prologue to Developing a Pedagogy of Conversion

As I would interpret our tradition in terms of the positivistic, philosophic, theistic (creatio continua) and theotic (via transformativa), while theotic propositions both presuppose and are constrained by those of the theistic, and the theistic both presupposes and is constrained by the philosophic and positivistic, and the philosophic both presupposes and is constrained by the positivistic, the theotic hermeneutic does make a claim on the nonpropositional axioms of the theistic, which in turn makes a similar claim on the philosophic, which finally makes a claim on the positivistic. Propositionally, once the nonpropositional axioms are in place, each of these spheres of human concern are autonomous inasmuch as they are polynomic, representing radically different commitments to distinct values. Nonpropositionally, these spheres of human concern are mutually interpenetrating, informing each others' axioms, and thus integrally related.

Helminiak explicates the hierarchical nature of the propositional aspect of these spheres or foci of human concern, which I prefer to call epistemic fields of value actualization (precisely to recognize their bidirectional influence on each other,
but also to correspond to the ontic and cosmic fields of my own triadic, but still vague, metaphysic).

What is going on, then, when these epistemic fields of value actualization "inform each others' axioms?"

When we commit, anagogically, through orthopathos via authentic worship, and we commence our journey of Lonerganian authenticity via conversion, we are buying into a theotic hermeneutic. Theologically, our existential orientation toward the realization of the transcendental imperatives of truth, beauty, goodness and unity has, then, committed us to theosis, to humanization via divinization, to divinization via humanization.

This journey, soteriologically, needn't be cast in a traditional redemptive sense vis a vis overcoming some type of ontological rupture in the past (the felix culpa of original sin), but could be viewed in terms of teleological realization (for instance, Jack Haught's aesthetic teleology). Whether one measures the distance to be traveled in the transformative journey in terms of ontological, teleological, axiological, cosmological or epistemological distances, that there is a gap, a rupture, a goal or what have you, cannot be denied. Common sense tells us that suffering is not a delusion and our radical finitude is undeniable.

This theotic commitment thus means that atheism and nontheism are out. And it also means that pantheism and panen-theism are out, at least such a panentheism as considers nature as an extension of God with God merely being That which is greater than the sum of Its parts. With no distance to travel between nature and God, theosis makes no sense. A pedagogy of conversion is, then, incoherent. At the same time, a suitably predicated pan-entheism, perhaps, may not necessarily require an axiomatic and theoretical commitment to any type of ontological gulf. It may entertain a certain ontological undecidability or ontological vagueness, emphasizing a successful reference to, and not rather a successful description of, the Reality of God. At the same time, it emphasizes the Creatio Continua of God's omnipresent, indwelling presence, inviting an abiding awareness of the Intimacy of all intimacies and the Relatedness of all relating. Solidarity implies relationship, not complete identity.

Relationship invites compassion, not quietism. Relationship inspires orthopathos, hope and worship. [This is, of course, an over against any heterodox parsings of panentheism, which is articulated in some creation spiritualities.]

Thus it is that our interpretation of Via Creativa, in light of our Via Transformativa hermeneutic, makes us Hefner's created-cocreators. Our commitment to orthopathos then informs the axioms of our orthodoxy and our theistic hermeneutic as we affirm the Creatio Continua. Here, our articulations employ such as the dionysian logic of both/and & neither/nor, apophatic, kataphatic and unitive predications, Origen's senses of Scripture and so on and so forth, including binary logic when
appropriate. Our semantical vagueness companions our ontological vagueness and provides an ongoing subversion of the otherwise inescapable fossilization of the institutional church as it can tend toward pseudo- and quasi-tautologies and away
from the authentic tautology of that metanarrative which gifts us with orthopathos, orthodoxy and orthopraxis.

Thus it is that our theotic and theistic hermeneutics support the nonpropositional axioms on an aesthetic realism (via an aesthetic teleology) and a critical realism (via the vehicle of semantic vagueness, which is implicit in the different logics, predications and layers of meaning above-referenced). Taken together, then, these inform the nonpropositional axioms of our philosophic focus of concern, or the epistemic fields of our normative sciences of logic, aesthetics and ethics, as well as our metaphysical outlook. The theotic and theistic thus make a claim on our philosophic axioms by way of a commitment to both metaphysical realism and moral realism.

By the time we have arrived at our positivistic hermeneutic, we already have many of our hermeneutical bags packed with 1) aesthetical realism, teleologically 2)critical realism, epistemologically 3) metaphysical realism, ontologically and 4) moral realism, axiologically, whose integral and mutually interpenetrating relationships imply 5) semiotic realism, cosmologically (signs & symbols & icons, etc). The positivistic sphere of human concern is thus inherently normative and its
nonpropositional axioms reflect our commitment to the epistemological rubrics of both the scientific method and empirical observation.

Because of our ontological vagueness, and commitment to Mystery, our metanarrative is then incomplete but still consistent.

We have articulated a justification for our fundamental trust in Uncertain Reality. Not only does Kung's nihilistic foil reveal an unjustified and, hence, paradoxical trust in uncertain reality, its philosophical naturalist cohort, which
ambitions a materialist monist metaphysic, offers a complete but inconsistent metanarrative, okay via Godelian parameters, but sacrificing common sense notions of causality in a question begging infinite regress of causations.

As it is, most folks do not reflect on these nonpropositional axiomatic elements of their hermeneutics, just as they are unaware of human tacit dimensionality, connaturality, illative sense, nonintuitive immediate awareness and abductive
inference as viable and efficacious epistemic fields.

When awareness of these faculties dawns and one begins to articulate what is going on in some disquisition such as this, one typically begins in media res, which is to suggest that orthopathos, orthodoxy, orthopraxis and orthocommunio all mutually interpenetrate and contain one another as we, then, consciously and competently, learn how to 1) Worship 2) Witness 3) Walk and 4) We.

Unconscious competence ain't too shabby either!

Considerations for a Pedagogy of Conversion

Quote from Bertrand Russell: "The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it."

Russell's quote, applied to pedagogy and conversion, in my analogical imagination, speaks to several dynamisms. It speaks to the developmental aspect of formative spirituality (think pistic, charismatic & mystic, or purgative, illuminative and
unitive, or other growth paradigms for the Lonerganian conversions). It speaks to the hermeneutical layers of meaning (e.g. think senses of Scripture), which correspond to the plurality of values to be actualized (think truth, beauty, goodness and unity). And it speaks to how formation and transformation are precisely ordered toward mining these strata of meaning in a progressive augmentation of value actualization.

Toward orthopathos, we learn how to Worship and how to mine meaning from beauty, such as from the anagogical sense of Scripture and sacramental and liturgical theology. I think of affective conversion.

Toward orthodoxy, we learn how to Witness (talk the talk) and how to mine meaning from truth, such as from both the literal & historical, as well as the creedal & allegorical, senses of Scripture and systematic theology. I think of intellectual
conversion.

Toward orthopraxis, we learn how to Walk (walk the walk) and how to mine meaning from goodness, such as through the moral sense of Scripture and moral theology. I think of moral and sociopolitical conversion.

Toward orthocommunio, we learn how to be a We, having thus mined unity through beauty, truth and goodness, such as through cult, creed & code and ascetical & mystical theology. I think of religious conversion.

Orthopraxis will authenticate orthodoxy when orthopathos progresses through lectio tacita & aperta, oratio, collatio, operatio and contemplatio. Notice that, per our prayer ladder, we listen to the Word, speak the Word, speak the Word together, act on the Word and then wait in expectation on the Word. The Worship, Witness and Walk gift us with the We.

The augmentation of value realizations thus derives from the progressive amplification of value pursuits that are facilitated via ongoing formative development and conversion. All of these values are being realized in some measure at every stage of human development.

Each epistemic field of value actualization mutually interpenetrates the others, axiomatically or nonpropositionally, but remains otherwise autonomous and polynomic, propositionally. Poetically, truth comes flying in on the wings of beauty and goodness; beauty on the wings of truth and goodness; goodness on the wings of truth and beauty. Each of these fields of value presuppose the others. The epistemic fields of value objectification (possibilities) and the ontic fields of value
actualization (actualities) are mediated by the cosmic field of value realization (probabilities).

Inchoately, I sense a relationship between such concepts as Polanyi's tacit dimension, Newman's illative sense, Fries nonintuitive immediate knowldge, Maritain's connaturality and Peirce's abduction. They seem to represent an unobstrusive nexus between our epistemic fields of need and their corresponding ontic fields of fulfillment, such a nexus as suggests some type of implicate ordering by a cosmic field, which provides the matrices connecting them all and accounts for an isomorphicity implied by an emergentist perspective and co-evolutionary dynamics. Each of these philosophers speak of an epistemic faculty that, as I see it, furnishes that part of the human epistemic suite that is axiomatic and nonpropositional, ordered toward aesthetic inclinations, first principles, common sense notions of causality, instinctual pragmatic
orientations, all unspoken presuppositions, or, in other words, our innate existential orientations toward the transcendental imperatives of truth, beauty, goodness and unity. This is the part of our epistemic suite where all unconscious competence resides and where the facility of abduction originates. These are the epistemic furnishings that make human ecological rationality so impressive and which account for human exceptionality among other species.

I've gone to some length to describe this part of human [non]rationality because this is where I locate the infrastructure that supports our tautologies and which is first-impacted by our metanarratives. This has implications for our pedagogy of
conversion because it reveals that our worldviews are foremost a way of SEEING and EXPERIENCING reality (or opening to) and only, derivatively, a way of THINKING ABOUT reality. Deconstruction, then, is not about changing our conceptual furniture or
even removing our epistemological walls, ontological ceilings, and/or cosmological roofs. Deconstruction involves replacing those BUT ALSO our axiological studs, joists and rafters, while not sacrificing our nonpropositional and evaluative
teleological foundations. And these foundations form an aesthetic teleology, a cosmos striving toward beauty, for that is what comos means. Value-actualizers that we are, and finite, too, human hope enjoys a certain primacy and the anagogical
approach, orthopathos, is the first element of a metanarrative that will impact the axiomatic aspect of the human epistemic suite. Our first request: "Teach us how to pray ..."

So, when unity arrives on the wings of truth and goodness, look for beauty in the engine, for worship as the fuel. Thus, when formation does not lead to transformation, reformation must begin with a return to authentic worship. Formation, of course, begins with worship, too. "What can we hope for?" precedes both "What can we know?" and "What must we do?" and thus it is that cult facilitates creed and code in forming community, even as they all, fractal-like, contain the others, presupposing the others.

Institutional decay of dogma into dogmatism, ritual into ritualism and law into legalism is pretty much inevitable and renewal is thus always to be in play. Failures of creed, code and community originate in failures of cult, both communal and private worship. The experience of a community-wide trapping in a tautology results from a failure to facilitate such a formative development as optimally mines the strata of meaning, optimally realizing the plurality of values. The early church
had a dionysian logic of both/and & neither/nor, alternating between the apophatic and kataphatic and unitive; it also employed Origen's "senses of Scripture." This tradition has repeatedly been subverted by dichotomous thinking, either-or dynamics and binary logic. Meister Eckhart's via Positiva, via Negativa, via Creativa, and via Transformativa is NOT such a subversion; rather, the approach of the Inquisition was. So, too, has been the approach of various Enlightenment fundamentalists and of their polar-opposites, the fideists. When I first came across Derrida's desconstructive strategy, his logic of supplementarity, honestly, it didn't seem very new to me. Derrida's approach is not to step outside one's metanarrative, as if most people could, but, instead, to "subvert" it from within via critical thinking. I think pseudo-Dionysius, Origen and Eckhart would agree.

It is when we embrace epistemic, ontological and semantical vagueness that we revert to our authentic tradition and subvert our pseudo- and quasi-tautologies. A tautology is not intrinsically wrong-headed. We are, after all, continually searching for the most taut of all tautologies, not looking to PROVE its axioms but rather to SEE whatever truth, beauty, goodness and unity they reveal. What happens, though, if we do not subvert the faulty logic of our pseudo- and quasi-
tautologies to reinhabit our authentic tautology?

Pseudo-tautologies leads to pseudo-religion and the consciousness of the individual is exulted. Quasi-tautologies lead to the quasi-religious and a Godless, collective consciousness is exulted. An authentic tautology will robustly employ both/and,
neither/nor and either/or logic in an epistemic dance that honors the multivalent ontic realities presented us in this divinely-gifted cosmic matrix. Hopefully, then, God is exulted.

Both pseudo- and quasi- tautologies morph into raw, human power plays. But it is no game. It if life-destroying and relationship-destroying. They employ a hermeneutic of suspicion and an epistemology of control. They produce repression and oppression, within and between people, and manifest all manner of alterity and exclusion at all strata in the social sphere.

Now, as far as people seeing or inhabiting radically different perspectives, few enough folks are enlightened with regard to personality and temperament differences, such as through personality typologies like the MBTI and Enneagram. Fewer still
would be interested in interreligious dialogue. Of those who have been involved in interreligious dialogue, I think the prevailing consensus is that only in very rare circumstances should people forsake their traditions, culturally embedded as they are, tautology-inhabiting as they are. I've seen a lot more folks in a reactionary mode who can articulate a critique or fashion a deconstruction. Fewer still accomplish a reconstruction without TOTALLY missing the boat regarding their so-called new vision. For instance, so many jump out of a dualistic mindset and think that some type of monism is the answer, either idealist or, worse, materialist. They do not realize that the point of nondualism is not, necessarily, monism (but, perhaps, instead, a most intimate inter-relationality.) So, they get over against their original tautology at a superficial level and still have not forsaken their original categories! It is about a power struggle. They are playing the SAME game as when they were previously victimized, staying enslaved themselves, hauling off to yet another tautological prison, even if they are better empowered.

Rev. Dr. McCoy: all narratives of the human story, whether from the historical, philosophical or theological (religious) perspective, deal with the singular reality of cosmically expressed Earthlife. To answer your question, I fall back on Tom Berry and the "PRIMARY, SINGULAR STORY" that underlies all other narratives, and that is the "Cosmic/Earthlife Story", PRECISELY AND CREDIBLY informed in fact-evidence. [See Berry's "Principles for Understandings" at my most recent posting.] As faith supposes reason, as grace supposes nature, so all narratives suppose the Cosmic/Earth Story. All metanarratives succumb to misdirection in their parallel tautologies except they develope out of the PRIMARY STORY of the self-expressive cosmos, of self-expressive Earth/life.

A "Pedagogy of Conversion", in my view, is yet another misdirected tautology except it is premised on/in an informed sense of the transformational cosmos and Earthlife, as for example, "The Great Story" of Father Berry and Brian Swimme. In short, a pedagogy of conversion begins with reinterpreting the Garden of Eden Myth, and all faith fixations, in the light of science (physical and psychological) and the limited consciousness of people who have handed them down to us. The Holy Spirit continues the Work of Enlightenment. It keeps getting better!

I read with great respect and appreciation the thoughtful AND CHRISTIAN contributions you consistently make. The Holy Spirit can deliver us, each and every one of us, from the slavery of fear. Thank you.

Thanks, Sylvester! Never having known of Tom Berry until encountering him at NCRcafe, my ignorance of DREAMS(s) of the EARTH is all too apparent. I must investigate more fully (when/if there is ever time ... speaking of real-world boundaries).

I love the final Spirit-filled words of Berry's "The New Story",

"If the dynamics of the universe from the beginning shaped the course of the heavens, lighted the sun and formed the earth, if this same dynamism brought forth the continents and seas and atmosphere, if it awakened life in the primordial cell and then brought into being the unnumbered variety of living beings, and finally brought us into being and guided us safely through the turbulent centuries, there is reason to believe that this same guiding process is precisely what has awakened in us our present understanding of ourselves and our relation to this stupendous process. Sensitized to such guidance from the very structure and functioning of the universe, we can have confidence in the future that awaits the human venture."(p. 137 of Dream of the Earth)

The questions prompted by your explication of Berry are:

1/ why is a (any) "primary, singular story' not, at base, simply a retelling of the Incarnation; and without this Jesus-hinge, how can we avoid escaping the seemingly unavoidable snare of solipsism (dressed up as World View)?

2/ when is a narrative a Lie? (And not just a bad tautology...)

The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy

"All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear..." (Romans 8:14-15)

Luke Timothy Johnson says in a BeliefNet interview:

"When I was younger man, I shared the common conviction that the existential decision of faith, the response of the whole person, was far more interesting and important than belief, which seemed too intellectual, too abstract, and not sufficiently connected to life. Over the years, without letting go of that, I've come to understand the critical nature of belief as the starting point for that response-as the letter to the Hebrews says, you can't really approach God unless you believe there is a God. I've also come to appreciate the way a statement of belief structures our understanding of the world and is therefore very much connected to our practice. The old understanding of faith was very much in line with the psychology of the emotions. I think one of the great contributions of cognitive psychology has been the recovery of that ancient sense the Romans and Greeks had, that people really do act on what they think. If our construction of the world is stupid or faulty, our behavior is probably going to be as well. The final thing that has grabbed me is the sense of what peril the church is in when it doesn't have a clear articulation of its construction of reality, both inwardly in terms of guiding its practices, and outwardly in terms of presenting any kind of credible conception of the world that would make sense to outsiders."
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/133/story_13333_1.html

Now, consider Thomas Berry's eloquent Credo in the form of a resolution:

WHEREAS the dynamics of the universe from the beginning shaped the course of the heavens, lighted the sun and formed the earth,
WHEREAS this same dynamism brought forth the continents and seas and atmosphere,
WHEREAS it awakened life in the primordial cell and then brought into being the unnumbered variety of living beings, and finally brought us into being and guided us safely through the turbulent centuries,
WHEREAS there is, ergo, reason to believe that this same guiding process is precisely what has awakened in us our present understanding of ourselves and our relation to this stupendous process ...

Finally, considering what Johnson has to say regarding the nexus of belief and praxis, or what you, yourself (anybody), consider to be true regarding the nature of faith, and explain why this or that person would be moved, existentially and cognitively, in both belief and praxis, by Berry's Credo to one versus the other hermeneutic below. Why would this or that metanarrative be a lie? or even a good or bad tautology? in view of Berry's cosmic narrative?

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT, sensitized to such guidance from the very structure and functioning of the universe, the future that awaits the human venture is best described by:

a) militant atheism
b) nihilism
c) nonmilitant atheism
d) buddhism's respectful silence
e) agnosticism
f) religious naturalism
g) pantheism
h) panen-theism (heterodox)
i) deism
j) theism
k) pan-entheism (orthodox)

pax, amor et bonum, cum the Jesus-hinge
jb

"1/ why is a (any) "primary, singular story' not, at base, simply a retelling of the Incarnation; and without this Jesus-hinge, how can we avoid escaping the seemingly unavoidable snare of solipsism (dressed up as World View)?"

The story-telling of incarnation (human origin) means to account for our own and fellow human coming-into-existence. Myths seek to give explanations of human origins as believeable as possible according to fact-knowledge possessed (worldview). "The Jesus-hinge" labors under well-intentioned stories and recalled accounts that serve purposes and recollections of writers, AND institutional ideologies. New truths about the Jesus-hinge are yet to be learned.

Myths crop up around episodes in the lives of all significant people, as in the lives of saints, for example. When better fact-knowledge informs the myth, the myth becomes a lie if it contradicts known fact-knowledge and misleads but continues to be the presumptive explanation of people who know better; e.g., literal belief in the "creation days" of Genesis. Hero-stories may be of edification value, like myths, but, truth (fact-based knowledge) is reliably more edifying than fiction, especially as it pertains to personal ontology.

Our personal ontological connection to ecology and ecology's role in the sustainability of all life on Earth are radically at issue now because of the perpetuation of "primary, singular stories", that are accepted radically and that mislead radically to our common peril.

MYTH?

re: "Hero-stories may be of edification value, like myths, but, truth (fact-based knowledge) is reliably more edifying than fiction, especially as it pertains to personal ontology."

I'm not sure everyone is employing the word MYTH in the same way? I think of a TRUE MYTH as that which, while not literally true, nevertheless, evokes an appropriate response to ultimate reality. Of course, one thing, among others, that sets Christianity apart from other myths is that its God was a real person.

How do others of you use the word myth? whether in literary, religious or conventional senses? Is there a resource one might point me to, por favor?

Theology is a practical science and not a speculative science. It transvalues our philosophic and positivistic horizons of human concern, anagogically, by speaking to what we can hope for and to what we can aspire. Thus it has a normative impetus and deals with the quid JURI and does not otherwise initiate fact-based, falsifiable knowledge propositions, or the quid FACTI.

Thus it is that, to the extent the word edify conventionally means "to instruct and improve especially in moral and religious knowledge," both which deal with the quid juri and not the quid facti, it is a theological anthropology that uplifts and enlightens us, not some merely positivistic, emergentistic, physicalistic, biologistic account, which, taken alone, without the benefit of divine revelation, leads one just as quickly to nihilism, agnosticism or atheism as it does to a theistic hermeneutic. Natural philosophy (theology) establishes epistemological parity between most of these worldviews but does not anoint any a clear winner, positivistically.

However, as a practical science, theology does indeed, in my view, help us discern the hermeneutical winners from the losers, as orthopraxis does help authenticate orthodoxy. One cannot idly speculate and be a believer, cognitively, without also walking the walk, trying a religion on existentially.

pax!
jb

Wonderful explanation, Sylvester! Thanks for the teaching; especially the description of a lie, viz, "the presumptive explanation of people who know better." This is perspicacious, very efficient, and useful.

The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy

"All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear..." (Romans 8:14-15)

Escape From Tautology

RE: IF, in fact, the dialogic play of metanarrativeS were, indeed, the ONLY means to escape tautology, what would constitute a "Pedagogy of Conversion"? by e+

Such a Pedagogy of Conversion would start with something so simple as not to seem worth teaching and would end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

I'll give this some thought. But I could not resist paraphrasing Bertrand Russell's statement regarding the point of philosophy, which I offer in both a serious and humorous vein. We need initiation into Mystery. We need to be freed from an "epistemology of control," a phrase Jack Haught uses to critique scientism, but, boy oh boy ... ahem ... I'm sorry ... girl oh boy, does that phrase not also describe our churches!

pax,
jb

Ah, JB, ... if only it did,I would be so much less discouraged...

The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy

"All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear..." (Romans 8:14-15)

AMEN, JB!

Sylvester, merci beau coups, we say here on the bayou.

I looked over your essays and your exhiliration in musing over creation is palpable.

I apologize for my tedious parsing of all of this stuff. There is just SO much being addressed in the writings of Berry and Rue, or in your own or Jack Haught's or Joe Bracken's or Jim Arraj's or Daniel Helminiak's, all very worth a Google!

I like to be clear regarding this project or the other regarding whether or not one is doing science, philosophy or theology. And we mustn't forget, oh my gosh, religion. And if one is talking about ALL of these spheres of human concern, in which sphere do they begin their conversation, and, in which do they end up.

Except for the classical "proofs" by Aquinas and Anselm, and CS Peirce's "Neglected Argument for the Reality of God," and the Modal Ontological Arguments as crafted by Godel and Hartshorne and then, in my view, lately and greatly improved by Christopher McHugh, I don't consider much of what is going on, nowadays, to be natural theology or a natural philosophy of God. There is just not THAT much that one can say, in my view, about God, using philosophy as a starting point, at least not when methodologically restricting one's musings to the rubrics of formal argumentation. The same is true for any notions regarding "ultimate" reality, using either philosophy or science as a starting point. All anyone thus establishes is a modicum of epistemological parity with alternate worldviews, i.e. elaborate tautologies.

I do not dismiss these enterprises that demonstrate the reasonableness of faith, for some, like me, they have been indispensable parts of my journey. For most, though, I've been told they don't matter very much. And I trust what they report and am better and better coming to grasp why. Even then, I've enjoyed many, many fruitful dialogues with many nonbelievers who do seek such apologetics and we've grown in mutual respect and understanding and self-understanding.

Worldviews, thankfully, are not mere formal arguments. They represent deeply and profoundly experienced existential orientations and ultimate concerns. And, if they are authentically re-ligious, they "tie life's experiences back together" and heal us that we may survive and grow us that we may thrive. If we are not experiencing both healing and growth, both broadly conceived, well, that's what the Prophets are for! They remind us that we are to be about the actualization of value.

The interface between science and theology is not terribly interesting, philosophically, unless our project is to disambiguate their definitions. If it remains interesting, even early in the 21st century, it is only because so many scientistic and fideistic apologists are arguing past each other, precisely because they've neglected the work of philosophical disambiguation of concepts. [Here I place a "rolling eyes" emoticon.]

Unlike philosophy/natural theology and science, wherein we bracket, best we can, our theology, in a theology of nature we start with God and see His presence in all things and hear Her siren song from all places. From a different explanatory stance, we break out in analogy and metaphor, poetry and song, allegory and parable, joke and koan, story and dance, ritual and sacrament. And we speak of trail dust and stardust, quarks and supernovae, maidens and sailors, the Cosmic Adventure and the Divine Matrix, leaping whitetails and creeping lizards, bright indwelling presence and luminous dark nights, hope and love and faith ...

Thanks, Sylvester, for sharing the links to your essays.

pax, amor et bonum
jb

I appreciate VERY MUCH your kind comments. I've been working fifty years specifically to illumine religion-science-philosophy connections. But not being a "professional" in any of these, and specifically being outside all three professions, I don't get much "respect" from them. Not that I expect it or am complaining about it, but it is a little disconcerting that it takes global catastrophes to unsettle the "professions" and get them to see the world outside the backyard they occupy. I've never doubted the validity or importance of what I've been doing, so professional disconcern toward me hasn't deterred me. The truthfulness of things have a way of surfacing in due time. I know that it is daunting to penetrate the webs of ecosocial complexities, even more so, to deconstruct them in a way that makes sense so correctives can be perceived.

Let's keep the communication happening: from communication, consciousness; from consciousness-communication, conscience. Conscience is a process, not a dogma. It is an intuitive process leading to faith, to authenticity; everybody owns it.

Among Earth-life creatures, humans alone, so we think, can abstract conclusions about themselves and their world, and transmit them from generation to generation. Naturally, abstractions are made in the context of worldview understandings and pertain to self-interests of people and common wellbeing. Worldview consciousness in ancient times was framed largely in a situation in which the wild world challenged human survival. The world situation today is quite in reverse, that is, whole ecologies of the wild world are being consumed beyond their capacity for survival. Human predation is to the point of extinguishing the wilds and it is a real and gathering threat also to human existence, if humankind continues to live by the presumptive abstractions of a long outdated worldview.

Father Tom Berry puts it in context:
“The enormous energies and corresponding organizational skills of this complex [the 20th century industrial corporations of Western civilizations] have built an industrial world with a withering influence on the life systems of the planet so devastating that our period is in the midst of a mass extinction of species. So now the events of the twentieth century have terminated the Cenozoic era…

“Everything that has happened has multiplied by an order of magnitude in the millennial vision that came in through the biblical world… The millennial vision manifest in the apocalyptic literature from Daniel in the Book of Revelation held a vision of a future period when the human condition would be transcended. This vision can be considered a seminal dynamizing force in Western history… Our awareness that life might be other than what it is causes a pervasive resentment against the human condition. This resentment is what drives our Western historical effort to change the very condition of life through our scientific technologies. The industrial establishment has been trying to initiate this WonderWorld millennial period through the seductive power of advertising and the media… What we are really getting is a WasteWorld. However we still think deep in our souls that we are on our way to WonderWorld…

“The human community is moving from limited forms of democracy to a more comprehensive biocracy. What we need is not merely constitutions for humans, but constitutions for an entire continent… The global environment with its infinite resources is a common concern for all peoples. The protection of Earth’s vitality is a sacred trust.

Father Berry outlines six “transcendences” [abstractions] that have been advanced in religious/civil cultures and that bar humankind psychologically from getting beyond the fixations of a past worldview and era that no longer serve the times, circumstances, needs and consciousness of the people.

The first abstraction is the casting of God in terms of “a transcendent, personal, monotheistic creative deity.” This conceptualizing “desacralizes the phenomenal world… those who gave him [God] this status had a certain abhorrence of the feminine Earth-dwelling deities of the Eastern Mediterranean [people]. We have lost the primary manifestation of the divine in its cosmological manifestation.”

2. Humans have arrogated to themselves a superiority over nature “as spiritual beings [detached] from the visible world.” They (we) make the world “an external objective reality” that we treat as subservient because of our presumption of higher “spirituality for which all things exist”.

3. Our sense of “redemption” is misplaced for we blame the world as the cause of our “loss of primordial innocence”, and we presume that we are “redeemed…from the natural world itself."

4. The Cartesian blunder presumes a “transcendence of mind… Descartes desouled the world”. Soul designates “anima as the primary organizing, animating principle of a living organic being ... Descartes shattered the world of the living when he divided the world into mind and matter… The animal world” is but the “extension of material forces coming together by a synchronicity of their activities. He identified every living being as mechanism… This removal of soul began the mechanistic trend of the modern world”

5. The fifth misleading abstraction is “transcendent technology”. We humans arrogate the presumption of a divine power that “allows us to transcend [the] biological law that every species should have opposed species or conditions that limit each species so that no one species could overwhelm others…we…subvert the biosystem of the planet in a way that nature, in its nonscientific technological phase, cannot remedy”.

[Thomas Berry, EVENING THOUGHTS, 2006, edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, CA, pp 25-32]

I inadvertently failed to include the sixth transcendence; briefly, it is this:
6. humankind self-disconnects from reality (sustainable relationships) in its “transcendent historical destiny”.

An NCR Podcast: Awakening people to something inside them, Tom Fox talks with Fr. Thomas Berry

Dennis Coday, NCR cafe management

Father Tom Berry is one of many voices of prophetic ecological protest. Humankind's relationship to the environment deserves critique. No one can seriously question that this relationship is broken and in need of repair. Clearly, an indictment is warranted and an investigation is justified.

Or, to change to a more apt metaphor, our ecological symptoms suggest dis-ease in our social, economic, political, cultural and religious institutions. It is critically important, therefore, that we properly diagnose the causes of any such diseases so we can best devise the most effective prescriptions for what ails us.

To wit, Sylvester quotes Berry: “The enormous energies and corresponding organizational skills of this complex [the 20th century industrial corporations of Western civilizations] have built an industrial world with a withering influence on the life systems of the planet so devastating that our period is in the midst of a mass extinction of species. So now the events of the twentieth
century have terminated the Cenozoic era… "

Berry and many others in the late-20th Century ecology movement have largely contributed to the world's heightened awareness of the symptoms of this socio-economic-politico-cultural disease. We owe them all a debt of gratitude.

That we suffer severe symptoms and that they indicate a serious disease, there can be no doubt. That our western traditions can learn from Eastern traditions and from the religious lives of various indigenous peoples is also an important insight. These themes also resonate in the
writings of Thomas Merton. Still, much of what has been so very well developed in the East with its emphases on the immanent, impersonal, existential, natural and apophatic, as complementary to the transcendent, personal, theological, supernatural and kataphatic, was already robustly developed in the patristic and medieval church and lives on in our cenobitic and contemplative
spiritualities. The Franciscan tradition via the little friar from Assisi, Bonaventure and Duns Scotus have long-offered enlightened alternatives in both metaphysics, incarnational theology and creation-spirituality.

All that said, at the same time, I think Berry is otherwise, at least partially, in error regarding both his disease diagnosis and, consequently, his prescribed cure. In a nutshell, in my view, following GKC, it is not so much that Christianity has been tried and found wanting as much as it has scarcely been tried at all.

Berry objects to "the casting of God in terms of 'a transcendent, personal, monotheistic creative deity.'[which] desacralizes the phenomenal world… those who gave him [God] this status had a certain abhorrence of the feminine Earth-dwelling deities of the Eastern Mediterranean [people]. We have lost the primary manifestation of the divine in its cosmological manifestation.”

As mentioned earlier on this thread, there is no need to jettison these above-listed aspects of God in order to affirm other aspects, which are already long-recognized, by the way, in all suitably predicated God-concepts. The answer lies in a return to authentic orthodoxy and not the elaboration of a new heterodoxy.

RE: >>>2. Humans have arrogated to themselves a superiority over nature “as spiritual beings [detached] from the visible world.” They (we) make the world “an external objective reality” that we treat as subservient because of our presumption of higher “spirituality for which all things exist”.<<<

What if humans simply better developed an enlightened self-interest vis a vis Creation and as Created Co-Creators (cf. Phil Hefner)? What if we adapted Bernardian love of God to that of the cosmos? To wit: Love of self for sake of self. Love of cosmos for sake of self. Love of cosmos for sake of cosmos. Love of self for sake of cosmos. Thus we'd appreciate creation both for the
intrinsic and extrinsic rewards it offers for our proper inter-relationship. Thus we needn't elaborate a new theological anthropology that doesn't really sqaure with what we know from science, in general, and evolution, in particular. For, the fact of the matter is that, in an
emergentist creation, where something more comes from nothing but (cf. Ursula Goodenough), there is a certain degree of ontological discontinuity, a certain hierarchy that does place Homo sapiens in a unique relationship to the cosmos. Stewardship needn't necessarily entail arrogance.

RE: >>>3. Our sense of “redemption” is misplaced for we blame the world as the cause of our “loss of primordial innocence”, and we presume that we are “redeemed…from the natural world itself."<<<

Whether one thinks of Original Sin as an ontological rupture located in the past or a teleological chasm oriented toward the future, or as a cosmological, epistemological or axiological gap, that there remains a gap in our essentialistic idealizations and their existential realizations cannot be seriously challenged. The Franciscan metaphysicians did not believe that the Incarnation was occasioned by any Felix Culpa but, rather, that God so loved creation from the get-go that the Christ was coming no matter what! Still, this musing comes from a theology of nature and not from a natural theology, which is philosophy and not really theology. Natural philosophy can get us to a compelling form of deism, perhaps, but it takes more than natural revelation to speak to the issue of whether or not this God or even this Cosmos is ... well ... even friendly versus unfriendly. It takes "special" revelation, i.e. Good News.

RE:>>>4. The Cartesian blunder presumes a “transcendence of mind… Descartes desouled the world”. Soul designates “anima as the primary organizing, animating principle of a living organic being ... Descartes shattered the world of the living when he divided the world into mind and matter… The animal world” is but the “extension of material forces coming together by a synchronicity of their activities. He identified every living being as mechanism… This removal of soul began the
mechanistic trend of the modern world”<<<

That there was a Cartesian blunder ... well ... let me say this. Not even the classic view of an aristotelian thomism made that mistake, instead, viewing all human attributes integrally. Philosophy of mind issues remain unresolved. How they eventually get resolved will be interesting but any such resolution will not be ultimately dispositive of our theological anthropology. Phenomenologically, we already know what we experience and what we value. THAT we experience and THAT we value is essential. HOW this all comes about is accidental. It does not matter one whit, in my relationship with my God or with my spouse, whether consciousness is another primitive alongside space, time, mass and energy, as folks like Berry and even Ayn Rand seem to suggest, or whether it is an emergent, semiotic reality, let's say, following Terry Deacon. Until neuroscience and philosophers of mind resolve these issues, Berry is saying WAY more than either science or philosophy warrants. It is almost as if Berry and like-minded folks would to do away with any notions of ontological density
as a master stratagem for leveling the ecological playing field, as if de-throning humanity was necessarily the cure-all for ecological sustainability. They also seem to downplay the eschatologically inevitable: If we do not end in a nuclear bang, we certainly will end, at the very
least, in an ecological whimper, as the helios burns itself out. It is pretty apparent we will need "outside" help, if you ask me.

RE:>>>5. The fifth misleading abstraction is “transcendent technology”. We humans arrogate the
presumption of a divine power that “allows us to transcend [the] biological law that every species should have opposed species or conditions that limit each species so that no one species could overwhelm others…we…subvert the biosystem of the planet in a way that nature, in its nonscientific technological phase, cannot remedy”.<<<

This critique sticks, not just because it speaks to our unenlightened approach. It describes an insidious form of idolatry, too.

In summary, Berry is right in that, ecologically, things are awry. I disagree, in part, with his account of WHY this is so and, consequently, with his prescribed CURES. One cannot cure the breach between science and religion by starting with Eastern and indigenous traditions, wherein, in fact, science, itself, was mostly stillborn. These traditions DO offer a critique of Western idolatries but Berry's theology of nature is little more than a natural mysticism and mysticism of nature. What we need, rather, is rigorous natural science, disciplined natural philosophy, and theological speculation that goes beyond both science and philosophy, in faith, but not without their empirical and logical insights.

Berry unquestionably goes beyond both science and philosophy when he credits all aspects of creation with consciousness. This is not unlike a similar maneuver I've seen others attempt by invoking infinite semeiosis. Even if we eventually prove that consciousness is a primitive, a given, its phenomenal presentation as human consciousness is a distinct and novel reality. Or is this not evident to anyone with common sense?

Best regards,
jb

return(?) to "authentic orthodoxy" When and with whom is (was) authentic orthodoxy? How many views of orthodxy exist, and which is more orthodox?

Where do humans find the resource(s) by which to (1) define self, and (2) and get "orthodox" enlightenment?

Do we believe that the Holy Spirit is with us and yet Self-reveals in and through nature? "Grace supposes nature: faith supposes reason as grace supposes nature" (J. Courtney Murray)

Divine intervention outside natural events? I don't track with you on this.

A "Second" Enlightenment to correct and complete the "First", perhaps?

Thomas Berry credibly exposes I believe how we have come to the end of the Cenozoic period by our mindless exploitation of life forms. What he says to me is that this has happened because of the way humankind formulates ideas, packages the ideas in words, and passes them on as fixed formulae, sacred and unchanged from generation to generation. We too easily accept "institutional faith" uncritically.

Words, like ideas, are two-edged swords. They can help us cut through the confusion of ignorance and they can let us cut and paste reality (relationships, DNA) in such ways that natural continuity is subverted and trashed. Our “smarts” are at the same time doing and undoing reality. This is really the lesson of the Original Sin Story; only now humankind has “successfully” trashed the global Garden of Eden.

Berry's six cultural fixations (transcendences) can be (are) balled together in a single package; they are included in a single, “memetic” package of culture that makes humankind successful and self-destructive. And that “single-package transcendence” is largely the product of the dominion culture of patriarchy (theology) that still sets its mind in the conviction (fixation) of its own institutional inerrancy — the imperial culture of dominion over nature — a hierarchy of corporate arrogance (religious, political and educational) and of control by institutional dominion (fear, guilt and violence).

When we think and talk about God, we have a seemingly irresolvable problem. Because our thinking and words about God are in human terms, God is understood ambivalently as we humans understand ourselves, and we argue ambivalences. In the meantime, while we fiddle with words and ideas, the planet burns.

David Toolan ("At Home in the Cosmos", Orbis Books) puts the Bible's "Priestly" and "Jahwist" take on God in pretty stark terms. The "priestly" is the prescriptive, patriarchal God and the "Jahwist" is the compassionate, maternal God. The "maternal" is the groundstate of vitality, the love-basis of Symbiotic Intention. Unlike Jesus, in our attributions of divine retribution we argue over human/divine legalisms. Jesus reveals the God of Love, and mandates essential fidelity to the "requirements of love", what faith is, what faith does. [Vatican I is history; Vatican II is now.]

By entangling ourselves in the ambivalence of ideas and words, we undo ourselves. The doing of philosophy "for philosophy's sake", and theology "for theology's sake" is counter-purposeful except they together lead us to some affirmative outcomes and to conscionable behavior; unless they together enable us to commit to Intentional Symbiosis, the messianic mission, we lose ourselves in self-deconstruction and neglect the work of reconstruction. Intentional Symbiosis is the Sacrament of Love, fidelity to the Sacrament of God-Present.

The obligation of love trumps philosophical/theological esoterica. In vain we exercise ourselves if we fail bottomline love. Our culture of "transcendent abstractions" (entes rationis) is a tangle of ambivalent memes that cry for the clarity of "apocalypse", uncovering. By our webs of self-deceit we fail the natural/divine mandate of intentional symbiosis, and in our waste of natural providence we trash Divine Providence and frustrate Love's Intention.

Pride! Before the Fall. We have fallen, big time. It’s time to confess our ignorance and arrogance by which we have defeated ourselves and nature. It’s time to undo the “transcendences” of cultural fixation and discover “humility” (humus, earth-origin) and the “reality” of total relational dependency in nature.

Breaking up my response a bit, for us and the two other people who might be interested ;-)

This is a difficult subject. I apolgize for any overly pedantic tone or condescending tenor. I enjoy this and see it as a useful dialogue to deepen my own understanding and self-understanding. Namaste.

Sylvester writes: >>>What [Thomas Berry] says to me is that this has happened because of the way humankind formulates ideas, packages the ideas in words, and passes them on as fixed formulae, sacred and unchanged from generation to generation. We too easily accept "institutional faith" uncritically. Words, like ideas, are two-edged swords.<<<

Sylvester employed various and sundry phrases like >>>a) “memetic” package of culture b) ambivalence of ideas and words c) "transcendent abstractions" (entes rationis) d) “transcendences” of cultural fixation.<<< and also wrote: >>>we lose ourselves in self-deconstruction and neglect the work of reconstruction.<<<

In one fell swoop of psycho-linguistic critique, Berry calls into question both the origins and the entire developments of both Western science and religion?

Well, from a practical perspective, I would have to agree that much of Western culture is impoverished. And it could truly be enriched by a more midful use of language, such as through a more robust engagement of our ancient Christian mysticisms, medieval scholasticisms and modern
biblical interpretations, all which recognize and employ hermeneutical methods and styles that more fully accomodate those nuances of language which better express our experiences of multivalent realities. They might better employ the rich and depthful symbolic approaches of our liturgies and prayer life, discursive and nondiscursive, kataphatic and apophatic. They might
better employ the use of storytelling and parable in conveying metanarratives. They might proactively seek and incorporate the time-honored spiritual technologies and ascetical insights of the East. [You see, I am advocating a RETURN because, in my view, we are ALREADY getting much of this right, at least in catholic Christianity - Anglican, Orthodox, Roman and liberal Protestantism.]

To the extent that the East has gifted us with so many fruitful insights and approaches to a rich human interiority, it can well-complement the West's "mastery" of its external envrionment, and, yes, mitigate, ameliorate and re-direct this so-called mastery with a more holistic and self-enlightened perspective that values the cosmos on many levels, for its intrinsic value as well as its extrinsic gifts.

I have also seen the East as deserving of critique, as impoverished in its own way, especially vis a vis its cosmology, which is why it failed to produce a self-sustaining scientific enterprise.

In my view, it is not so much that Berry seems to be calling us to a post-Christian worldview as that, upon closer inspection, he seems to be beckoning us to a pre-Christian worldview. It is not that he merely wants to refashion our language conventions and thereby reform our cultural metanarratives, in effect he is adopting an idealist, panpsychic metaphysic, reverting to an ancient cosmology that better accomodates an idealist monism or pantheism or heterodox panen-theism. See Wikipedia for orthodox an