Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Moderne: Fehlen eines Bezugpunktes der Selbstbestimmung; Bestimmung von einem Bruch her

Kurzinhalt: the absence of any defining transcendent event by which the meaning of the age is constituted; all that remains as its defining feature is the consciousness of break

Textausschnitt: 67a Almost from the beginning, the modern world has been a problem to itself. The self-consciousness of its designation as "modern" seems to invite speculation and uncertainty. By contrast, the medieval world had no such concern about its own meaning. "Middle ages" meant quite simply the period between the advent of Christ and the end of the world. It had nothing to do with our perception of the medieval as the period sandwiched between the ancient and the modern. Nor was it assimilated to the "dark ages," a conceit invented to reassure the enlightenment of its modernity. Secure in its status as the age between the definitive opening of revelation and its final consummation at the end of time, the medieval world could turn its attention to the task of living out its transcendent faith within the pilgrimage of time. It is only with modernity that the problem of the meaning of an age surfaces. A break has occurred that constitutes a new era within time, and attention naturally focuses on the meaning of this novel development. The question becomes so pervasive that we might regard the search for the meaning of modernity as its defining characteristic. (Fs)

67b There is nothing unusual about our contemporary discussions of the nature of the modern or the postmodern world. Consciousness of epoch is a permanent preoccupation of modernity. What renders the debates interminable is the absence of any defining transcendent event by which the meaning of the age is constituted. Instead, we have a succession of immanent protagonists and events that rival one another in the unending struggle to define the meaning of the age. In place of a pivotal transcendent irruption, we have an endless stream of mundane irruptions that seek vainly to imprint their stamp on an age that ceaselessly flows away from them. There is a comic quality to the futile effort to command the tide of reality, but it is also susceptible to more deadly connotations. The impossibility of constituting an epoch of meaning from any mundane perspective has even today scarcely been recognized. The reason, however, is obvious. As soon as a fulcrum for the lever of meaning is located, the point from which control is to be exercised recedes away from us. Only what is outside of time can continuously provide the meaning of time without diminution. This is why, despite the intense consciousness of modernity as an epoch, it fails to identify any stable event from which its meaning can be derived. It is perpetually reviewing itself in search of the key that will unlock its meaning. Neither Renaissance nor Reformation, Enlightenment nor Revolution, have been capable of persisting as the overarching definition. Modernity, which began with the intense consciousness of epoch, seems fated to see itself evaporate in the flow of time itself. Nothing we do can save the modern self-understandings from their successive dissolution.1 (Fs) (notabene)

3.Kommentar (13/12/05): Interessant die Analogie zwischen Epoche und Mensch der Transzendenzvergessenheit.

68a All that remains as its defining feature is the consciousness of break. It is different from the medieval. The curious consequence of this structure is that the very effort to establish the distance of the modern world from its predecessor leans all the more heavily on the latter for its self-definition. Is it possible to be modern without consciousness of the medieval past? The contrast is indispensable. By establishing its independence from the framing context of revelation that constitutes the medieval order, the modern world fixes its contours. Modernity is rooted in the claim to the self-sufficiency of reason, outside of a revelatory context, as the source from which order can be created in the world. Revelation does of course continue, but now it is reached from the perspective of the individual subject whose assent of faith becomes the exclusive focus of attention. The perspective of finite subjectivity is primary. All evocations of an overarching meaning, whether spiritual or political, must first receive the assent of free individual judgment. Institutional carriers of meaning, including even the Church, have their authority mediated through the exercise of free subjective assent. In a world whose comprehending meaning has shattered, the only irreducible bedrock is the consensus emergent from individual rational inquiry. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Reformation -> Subjektivität als Kriterium (here I stand); Luthers Seinsvergessenheit

Kurzinhalt: ... it installed the perspective of subjectivity at the core of the modern understanding of faith; the soul is finally the judge of the divine gift of righteousness ...

Textausschnitt: 69a Despite the enormous complexity and extent of the modern world, the overriding pattern is clear. It is confidence in the capacity of intellectual freedom to operate independently of any theological supports, even when it is engaged in the movement toward theological affirmation. The Reformation is not its most obvious illustration, but it is its most revealing because it occurs in a context of ostensible spiritual openness. What is remarkable about the Reformation is not that it splintered the universal Church, but that it installed the perspective of subjectivity at the core of the modern understanding of faith. Of course, faith always involves a moment of individual assent. It is crucially rooted in such a confession. But Luther went further in insisting on the exclusivity of the individual perspective. Any suggestion that the individual might only have a partial apprehension of the reality in which he or she participated was wiped away. The authority of private conscience became irrevocable, and not merely because of Luther's own heroic "Here I stand."1 (Fs) (notabene)

69b The deeper reason lay in the question from which his whole theology began. How can I be certain, he worried, of how I stand in the sight of God? Emphasis was almost wholly directed toward the personal assurance of salvation, under the pressure of an anxiety about divine judgment that was widely shared. The need for a personal guarantee had been heightened by the prominence of a nominalist God whose impenetrable will lay far beyond the reach of any illumination of reason. Standing alone before God, the soul felt the full weight of impervious divine judgment and longed for the word of justification that would fill up the abyss of condemnation within itself. The realization that the miracle of righteousness was to be apprehended through faith in Christ had a transformative effect. It released Luther from the staggering impossibility of pleasing God. But it also reduced the bond between man and God to the tenuous link of individual faith in the promises of Christ contained in Scripture. The weight of judgment may have been lifted, but an even greater responsibility was placed on the movement of private faith. Nothing could mediate or sustain that movement. The soul stood naked before God. (Fs)

70a Not only is the perspective individualist because of the absence of an ecclesial community of interpretation, it is also ultimately subjectivist because the soul is finally the judge of the divine gift of righteousness received by faith. The nobility of the Lutheran self-reflection in the presence of God should not distract us from the enhanced role of the self in this process. Luther's intention was certainly to view himself through the eyes of God, but he could not escape the admission that this was still reducible to the human side of the equation. It is the eyes of God as perceived through our eyes. The difficulty could have been overcome by unfolding the mystical intersection of the two perspectives in the momentary glimpse of illumination. But that was not Luther's direction. Even mysticism might draw too much away from the absoluteness of God. Ironically, the consequence was to make the transcendence of God depend more heavily on its apprehension by finite subjectivity. Only the theological systematization of Calvin saved the Reformation from imminent collapse, although nothing could be done about the centralization of judgment in individuals cut off from wider intimations. (Fs) (notabene)

70b The connection between the Reformation and individualism is well understood in relation to scriptural interpretation. Absent an authoritative church, there is no alternative. What is less widely appreciated is the extent to which the roots of this attitude lie deep within Reformation theology. The break with the universal Church was the effect, not the cause, of the Reformation. What makes the initiative of Luther paradigmatic for the modern world is that it grounds at the deepest level the perspective from which all meaning is constituted. The isolated modern self goes through progressive states of dissociation from the matrix of reality, but its most profound expression is surely the Lutheran anxiety of judgment experienced by the soul from which God is absent. Whether the divine justification has been received or not must then be judged by the soul alone, as the ensuing preoccupation with predestination made abundantly clear. It is not too much further to reach the point where the presence of God and his inexorable judgment is subjected to examination. From the finite individual perspective, the temptation becomes strong to conclude that, even if he is present, a God who would place such impossible demands on human beings is hardly deserving of our moral respect. Indeed, it is striking how close to the surface in Luther's reflections the resonances of revolt against God lie. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Seinsvergessenheit; Bruch zwischen dem Sein der Welt und dem Sein des Menschen

Kurzinhalt: The forgetfulness of Being consists precisely in the misperception that the center of our world is not the same as the

Textausschnitt: 71a There can be no doubt that human judgment has been installed at the center. The forgetfulness of Being consists precisely in the misperception that the center of our world is not the same as the center of the world. That amnesia, as we have seen in the ideological movements, was capable of giving rise to the most grandiose schemes of self-perfection. Fueled by the outbreak of revolt against God, the nineteenth-century messiahs and their epigones sought to assume the role themselves of creating the world anew. Despite their Promethean will, reality itself has eventually exhausted their drive to master it. At the end of the age of ideological militancy, we are left with the more moderate (and therefore more enduring) expressions of the modern spirit. It is not the ideological revolutionaries that shape our world, but the more rational and more pervasive voices of technological science and individual rights. Apocalyptic dimensions are not for that reason irrelevant. They bring the theoretical character of modernity into focus with unparalleled power and thereby make plain the depth of reorientation required of our world. However, they do not touch the constructive achievements of the modern spirit or do so only indirectly. The revolutionary convulsions of our age have been a powerful expression of the spirit of destruction and a lesson we cannot forget. The task of reconstruction, however, demands another spirit, and this is still best found in the dimensions of modernity that held themselves apart from the ideological madness. (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Schizophrenie der modernen Welt: Widerspruch zwischen Realität und Selbstverständniss

Kurzinhalt: Its schizophrenia consists of the dissociation between its reality and its self-understanding; the problem is more than terminological. The inability to articulate the sources of the modern self leads toward a deeper confusion

Textausschnitt: 75a We live not so much in a secular world as in a world from which the divine has withdrawn behind a veil. Mystery is still present-indeed, it is constitutive of the horizon within which our finite rationality continues to operate. There would be no painstaking collaborative unfolding of science, nor a persevering commitment to the defense of human dignity, if there were not embedded within such movements the sense of contact with a depth of endless fascination. To behold the increments of scientific discovery or the finite character of all political achievements as all there is is to rob them of their sustaining momentum. They are of value in themselves, but not because they are all that we have. It is because they are all that we have now. By remaining faithful to their exigences, we are drawn toward a more expansive horizon whose presence can scarcely be glimpsed from where we are now. This is the vitality of life that was so important to Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, for it was not life as such that drew them, but the growth of the soul toward an indefinable fulfillment that life itself seemed to promise. Our paradigmatic modern endeavors of rational inquiry and individual dignity occupy the most prominent role because they are the most visible medium through which that enlargement of the soul takes place today. There are, of course, many other such vehicles in human life, from the intimacy of love to the ecstasy of faith, that follow the same path. It is merely that science and rights are the most publicly authoritative expressions of our sustaining momentum. (Fs)

76a The problem is that our commentary on this dynamic has involved a departure from the modern secular self-understanding. While the modern world may have found a variety of vehicles through which the intuitive participation in transcendent Being can take place, that realization cannot become transparent to modern self-consciousness itself. We fail to recognize the extent to which our most apparently secular pursuits are profoundly constituted by the horizon of transcendent mystery. As a consequence, we are perpetually in search of an interpretation of ourselves, but persistently failing in the task of identifying who we are. Despite a proliferation of philosophical perspectives, none of them seem capable of capturing what we are about, although none of them fail completely to hit on some of the relevant dimensions. The result is the peculiar character of the modern world, which Charles Taylor has described as split between powerful moral sources of inspiration and a powerful incapacity to adequately articulate them.1 Without the language of transcendent revelation, the modern world is unperceiving of its own deepest resonances. Its schizophrenia consists of the dissociation between its reality and its self-understanding. (Fs)

76b The disorientation of the modern world is generated by the disconnection between its transcendent commitments and its studiously mundane frame of reference. There is nothing unstable about an implicitly transcendent orientation as such. It is only when its character is misunderstood and mistaken for a utilitarian construction that confusion occurs. Then we encounter the perennial modern misconceptions about the nature of science and rights. Frustration and irritation arise from the failure to convince the incomprehending that such pursuits are not adequately captured by any calculus of immanent benefits. They are self-justifying orientations that, even if they rendered nothing in return, would still be deserving of our utmost support as the noblest attainments of which we are capable. But the problem is more than terminological. The inability to articulate the sources of the modern self leads toward a deeper confusion. Absent a transcendent frame of reference, we are not simply without a "sacred canopy"; we become incapable of distinguishing between the immanent and transcendent dimensions of what we do. The differentiation collapses, and the mundane reality is made to bear the mystery of it all. An implicity present transcendent dimension is not problematic so long as its character is understood. It is when the inner tension is forgotten that we are launched on a path of distortion in which the investigation of nature or the protection of rights are pressed to yield an illumination higher than that of which they are capable. (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Wissenschaft: Mittelalter - Renaissance -> Gegensatz; Giordano Bruno

Kurzinhalt: the early scientists (Renaisscane) were curiously unscientific, not only by our standards, but also by medieval standards; rediscovery of the esoteric spiritual traditions

Textausschnitt: 78a Foremost among these is the anticipation of science as a window into the order of being as a whole. One has only to consider the contrast between medieval and Renaissance science to perceive this pattern. Medieval scientists were by and large nominalists, very often Franciscans or influenced by them. For them, nature was a discrete realm, open to empirical investigation, but in no sense an avenue into the inner working of divine reason. God ruled the universe through his will, which remained inaccessible to rational speculation. Only through his self-revelation in Scripture was access provided into the divinely willed order of things. Nature by itself could not disclose its ultimate structure. There might not be a rational necessity to be apprehended within it. Ultimately, whatever rational order was to be discovered empirically fell under the shadow of the impenetrable divine will. Scripture alone allowed us entry into as much of the mystery as God was willing to disclose. The result was that science could proceed without external pressure as an unfettered empirical examination of nature.1 (Fs)

79a No doubt there were serious problems with the truncated conception of reason as well as with the capricious understanding of nature within this nominalist outlook. But, from the perspective of empirical science, the burden was relatively light. Free from the pressure to find a mode of integration with revelation, we might even regard the nominalist reason as the epitome of free scientific inquiry. Where it led was a matter of supreme indifference, since nothing of ultimate significance rested on the outcome. All that mattered had already been settled through the fideistic response of faith to the divine word of Scripture. Perhaps at no time since has science been so free to pursue its unfolding without glancing at the larger picture of reality it is constructing. No one looked to science to provide definitive guidance in existence. It was free simply to be itself, pursuing only its own intimations and obedient only to its own canons. Without the burden of ultimacy, the rationality of science was unleashed. (Fs)

79b Contrast this with the much more central role of science in the Renaissance. It is no accident that a veritable explosion of scientific interest occurs at precisely the moment when the authoritative force of revelation begins to decline. The Renaissance is marked by a raw hunger for new ways to God. Nature and the cosmos as a whole are probed tirelessly to discover the secret by which more direct access might be attained. Late medieval devotional fervor had lost much of its impetus, and Christianity had increasingly devolved into acrimonious dogmatic disputes, a pattern that only seemed to be extended with the Reformation aftermath. The spiritually attuned began to look elsewhere for the opening toward divinity. What could be more appealing than the project of reading the mind of God expressed directly in the natural order? The Bible of nature was available to all. Beyond the reach of theologians and prelates, it seemed to promise revivifying contact with the ancient theology from which all religion had originated. The result was the pervasive turn toward nature we recognize as the proximate source of the scientific revolution that culminates in the seventeenth century. Modernity itself seems to have its birth in this new found preoccupation with the empirical order of the world.2 (Fs) (notabene)

80a The only difficulty is that the early scientists were curiously unscientific, not only by our standards, but also by medieval standards. Renaissance science is enveloped in the rediscovery of the esoteric spiritual traditions that had continued a subterranean existence since the ancient world. Now the syncretistic myths of the Corpus Hermeticum and the Kaballah, together with a rejuvenation of alchemical techniques and the rich speculative framework of Neoplatonic mysticism, burst on the public scene. The sixteenth century is astonishing for the extent to which priests and scholars, kings and popes, embrace the new learning that emanates from these exotic mytho-speculative sources. It is not until the end of the century that their divergence from Christian theology becomes abundantly apparent. A moment of such recognition can no doubt be dated with the burning of Giordano Bruno, a paradigmatic instance of the Renaissance magus, by the Italian inquisition in 1601. Shattered by the ever firmer drawing of dogmatic boundaries in the seventeenth century was the dream that had sustained the flowering Neoplatonic-Hermetic spirituality: that here at last had been found the opening toward the ancient theology, the pure original divine revelation to mankind in nature. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Wissenschaft, Renaissance; Marsilio Ficino, Giordano Bruno; Thomas More -> Utopia

Kurzinhalt: why the pursuit of God in nature should also entail a veritable explosion of magical and mystical practices; It was no accident that the writing of Utopias coincided ...

Textausschnitt: 80b The connection between this inspiration and the proliferation of empirical investigations and speculations has long been understood as the moving force behind the scientific revolution. What has been less clearly understood is why the pursuit of God in nature should also entail a veritable explosion of magical and mystical practices. Renaissance science presents this extraordinary picture of an expanding interest in natural magic as perhaps its deepest inspiration. Marsilio Ficino and the Neoplatonic Academy of Florence were firmly insistent on the difference between their concern and the traditionally and properly excoriated interest in dark or Satanic magic. They sought only to make contact with the sympathetic bonds of harmony that unite all the layers of the cosmos. Far from appealing to Satan, their goal was to enter more fully into the web of occult influences by which God governs all things. In this way, they could regain more direct contact with the divine will and enter more fully into man's role of co-governor of the material world. The divinely willed plan to restore and perfect all things could proceed more effectively once man became a fully self-conscious partner in the work. Man was to become a magus again, rediscovering the original divine powers of transformation that he had enjoyed before the fall. The means was to penetrate to the inner sympathetic relationships that would allow man to ascend and descend through the order of the cosmos. Talismans, incantations, music, foods, memory systems, gammatria, alchemical operations, and manipulations of all kinds were employed ceaselessly to render the connections transparent. When successful, man would emerge as the perfected microcosmos who could proceed with the reordering of the larger cosmos in the same direction. It was no accident that the writing of Utopias coincided with this eruption of unlimited expectations. The term was coined by Thomas More in his Utopia (1517), literally "no place," which was written some time after his visit to the Neoplatonic circle in Florence. From then on, the writing of Utopias became a prolific genre under the impetus of the same inspiration. It was now permissible to indulge the dream of perfection, for the access to it had been glimpsed in the Hermetic-Alchemical-Kaballistic figuration of the divinized man. Behind the grandiose schemes for universal reformation stood the supremely self-confident magus. The reordering of his soul in line with the cosmological pattern of divine influences had provided him with a ladder up to the heights of divinity itself. Under God, man had been restored to his original miraculous condition of knowing and moving through all things. It was even possible for him to contemplate the supreme test of his creative powers in the Kabbalistic operations for creating a homunculus, a little man.1 The note of rivalry between man and God was barely contained, and its realization occasionally spilled over into consciousness. Indeed, the schemes for cosmic transformation underwent such megalomaniacal elaboration that reason was in danger of being eclipsed entirely. (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Wissenschaft; Newton (Principia, esoterische Schriften)

Kurzinhalt: it is a problem to recognize in Renaissance Hermerticism and its offshoots the background for modern natural science

Textausschnitt: 82a In short, it is a problem to recognize in Renaissance Hermerticism and its offshoots the background for modern natural science. Yet it is there and not only in Bruno and Kepler and Paracelsus; it even persists long after the Hermetic texts have been correctly dated and lost some of their pristine lustre. As central a figure as Isaac Newton is still engaged in alchemical investigations, as well as numerological speculations relating to the Book of Revelation, well into the seventeenth century.1 It is a puzzle to behold the father of modern science, the discoverer of the comprehensive laws of motion, simultaneously pursuing the esoteric connections and meanings that will lead to a higher illumination of all reality. What the connection between the two sides of Newton's work is remains to be investigated. It is only in recent times that scholars have felt comfortable enough with even acknowledging the alchemical and speculative dimensions. The intellectual confusion in regard to Newton is reflective of the broader uncertainty about the origination of modern science in what can only be described as a widespread decline of rational differentiation. Certainly, the empirical investigation of nature continued apace, but it was pressed into service in the great Hermetic project of ascending and descending through the hierarchy of being. Compared to this aspiration, any medieval conceptions of hierarchy appear overwhelmingly static and tame. Enthusiasm for the occult influences of nature accounts for the motivation of the empirical turn, but it simultaneously seems to deflect it away from any open disclosure of the factual relationships involved. Everything is immediately absorbed within a preconceived frame of reference-exactly the opposite of our model of empirical science in its norm. (Fs)

83a How was it possible for the explosion of Hermetic enthusiasm to give rise to the scientific revolution? The answer is probably best given by the example of Newton himself. He kept the spiritual and empirical-mathematical dimensions separate, assigning them to different books. The Principia (1687) would hardly stand as the great model of the scientific mind at work, mathematizing the phenomena of motion throughout the universe, if it had been embedded in schemes of alchemical and apocalyptic transfiguration. But it was Newton's capacity for keeping these two modes of thought separate in his mind that was the real cause of his scientific success. Gradually, the mystico-speculative side had been stripped away and Newton could stand as the culminating figure in a line of early physicists meticulously mapping the various types of motion. His genius was to reduce them all to one system that was capable of explaining motion, from the smallest terrestrial to the broadest celestial levels. It was a staggering achievement and stands even today as a model of the scientific method. What accounts for its extraordinary success as a mode of investigating reality is the rigorous elimination of all elements of an anthropo-centric nature. All of the interest in man's access to the occult harmonies of the universe must be utterly set aside. Scientific reason consists in the abnegation of human interests before the disclosure of reality as it is. (Fs)

83b The difficulty of sustaining this commitment is considerable. Popularly, science is conceived of as being a methodology of verification whereby knowledge advances incrementally. Discovery and development of hypotheses for falsification are commonly acknowledged to be its most creative moments. But what of the even greater creativity required in transforming the broadest theoretical frameworks within which hypotheses are elaborated? These are the great paradigm shifts that are neither easy nor frequent. Scientists are human too. They are incapable of pursuing a line of investigation that runs directly contrary to their own enframing worldview. For them too, reality as a whole must make sense; it cannot be too egregiously riven by cognitive dissonance. We continue to live with some sense of reality as a whole, and that context defines the limits of what can be hypothesized and questioned. This is why the "scientific revolutions" so famously identified by Thomas Kuhn are the great seismic events of the scientific world.2 Few minds have the temerity to contemplate them, and a steady accumulation of pressure is required to detonate them, but when that does occur it constitutes the shift to a whole other way of thinking of reality. Scientists are as susceptible as the rest of us to the containing and constraining influence of worldviews. For, much of the time, we would rather retain a flawed reality model than undergo the kind of massive upheaval in which everything we have known undergoes reexamination. (Fs)

84a Newton's achievement was to have created the modern scientific paradigm-the conception of reality as matter in motion-that endured up to the quantum and relativity shifts of the twentieth century. But even he could not eliminate the need for an extrascientific worldview that would extend and elaborate the picture only partially conceived within science as such. He could separate out these distinct phases by assigning them to different books, publishing the scientific treatises while withholding the esoteric. He could demonstrate the imperative of maintaining a clear line of separation between physics and theology. Yet he could finally not eliminate the pull toward spiritual elaboration.3 The speculative side of his work is eloquent testament to the ineliminability of the framing philosophical questions from science. At some level, they remain the irreducible residue that persists as the great source of motivation and distortion in science. Success in the scientific enterprise turns on our capacity to remain within the more modest expectations of phenomenal relationships. Straying into the speculative construction of a worldview invites the loss of scientific reason. The preservation of science consists of remaining on the right side of this tension, which can neither be abolished nor resolved. (Fs)

85a The bounded rationality of science is a raft floating in a sea of uncertainty. As Newton exemplifies, everything depends on recognizing the line of the boundary so that the speculative extrapolations are never confused with the more modest empirical justifications. The model of the scientist disinterestedly working away on laboratory experiments, unaffected by broader spiritual ramifications, is only slowly beginning to fade. Historiography of science still has a good deal of work to do in exploring the connection between spiritual worldviews and the range of what can be empirically acknowledged in science. Kuhn's work has been particularly innovative in this regard, suggesting a whole avenue of approaching the history of science. It has made us more aware of the dependence of the empirical methodology on what the worldview renders permissible. Even calling attention to this bounded rationality of science has generated its own controversy and discomfort. It was immediately seized upon as an assault on the objectivity of science. Were we reducing the scientific enterprise, the last bastion of modern rationality, to an inconclusive flow of variable paradigms that amount to no higher claim than the relativity of all knowledge? Despite the initial plausibility of the suggestion, the anxiety was misplaced. The very existence of paradigm shifts presupposes an advance in rationality and therefore confirms the degree to which a shared sense of objectivity underpins the process. Why shift at all if there is nothing to be gained? But the overcoming of this most obvious objection does not affect the deeper implication of Kuhn's work: the recognition of the bounded rationality of science. The tension between science and the extra-scientific worldview sanctioning it is ineliminable, and the rationality of science consists of resisting the pull to overstep its limits. (Fs) (notabene)

85b The reason why this problem remains so central to early modern and later science is that it exists within a world without authoritative revelation. Absent a transcendent perspective, the partial perspectives must struggle to elaborate the order of the whole. As the most successful mode of knowledge in the modern world, science is inevitably surrounded by an aura of expectation of a higher illumination. Much of what sustained the momentum of the vast scientific enterprise on which we collaborate is the fascination with piercing the mystery of it all. That was the impulse of esoteric penetration at the start of modern science, and it continues as the great imbalancing pressure against which it must resist. What science knows, it knows at the cost of foregoing the greater illumination. But the outcome is not always so successful. The more modest piecemeal process of investigation is increasingly overburdened as the subject rises in the scale of significance. It is not simply that the methodology of the hard sciences yields more certain results, but that they are capable of remaining more faithful to their methodology than the biological and human sciences. Living and human reality is not just more complex, it is also more intimately bound up with the illusory expectations of the investigators themselves. After all, one's humanity is a more integral dimension of oneself than the mere physical or chemical substratum shared with all other entities. As a consequence, the need to extrapolate toward the meaning of the whole becomes all the more intense. The need to occupy the space vacated by the revelation of transcendent reality is virtually irresistible, even though the inclination defines the loss of rational science.1 (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Wissenschaft, Evolution - Kreationismus; Charles Darwin

Kurzinhalt: little tangible proof that one species evolves into another; the fear of God that prevents the biological community from too openly discarding a theory they have long ceased to honor in practice.

Textausschnitt: 86a No doubt the best known example is the theory of biological evolution emanating from Charles Darwin. It is always a warning indicator when a scientific theory plays a greater role outside its field of application than within it. Fascinating as Darwin's account of The Origin of Species (1859) was, its real contribution lay beyond the explicit reference of the study. More important than understanding the stratification of the emergence of species and even than the evolutionary mechanism propounded to explain the emergence was the function of Darwin's theory in constituting a worldview. It was welcomed and repulsed for the exact same reason. Darwin had shown how creation could dispense with a creator. A world of chance developments could, over a sufficiently long period of time, evolve into a world of order. It was not the suggestion that men were descended from apes that was the most shattering realization, but that everything had originated through the survival of the best adapted random mutations. The most compelling natural indication of a supreme intelligence-the argument from design-had been decisively undermined. With such large theological reverberations, it was no wonder that Darwin's theory of biological evolution should receive scant attention on its own merits. It is a situation that prevails virtually up to the present. (Fs) (notabene)

87a Darwinian evolutionism functions to such an extent as the overarching worldview of modernity that even its subjection to scientific analysis is treated with deep misgivings. Everyone is more comfortable if its examination is reduced to the stylized opposition between evolutionism and creationism. That way, no one has to pay serious attention to the minor consideration that neither of them can be taken seriously as scientific theories. They cannot be disproved because the theories are designed to accommodate all contrary or missing evidence against them. This would be no more than a harmless intellectual idiosyncrasy if it did not have such disastrous consequences for science. Like counterfeit, the problem is that bad science drives out the good. Even today it is virtually impossible for conscientious biologists to admit that the evidence for evolution is extraordinarily thin. We simply have little tangible proof that one species evolves into another. As Darwin recognized, the fossil record, which is ultimately the only conclusive indication, is the weakest source of support. We have neither experience nor evidence of intermediate forms. It is clear that different species emerged and disappeared at different times, just as it is clear that chemical and genetic continuities are present across species. But the incubus of evolutionism hangs as such a dead weight on the scientific mind that even the best efforts to consider its revision encounter levels of resistance out of all proportion to their content. No one dares to attempt the removal of the ideological carcass for fear of the consequences of universal disapproval. More often than not, the voices of dissent come from outside the biological community.1 One wonders what force holds such regressive formalism in place. The only suggestion is that the anti-theological significance of evolutionism as a worldview continues to outweigh its scientific value. By calling into question the Darwinian universe, we would at the same time be restoring the openness to the transcendent creator. It is in other words the fear of God that prevents the biological community from too openly discarding a theory they have long ceased to honor in practice. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Wissenschaft; Physik, Astronomie; Big Bang

Kurzinhalt: Ultimately, the rationality of science is dependent on the differentiation of the order of being. If the distinction between Being and beings is forgotten, ...

Textausschnitt: 88a The physical sciences, notably astrophysics, have much less difficulty in recognizing the limits of their competence. There is far less hesitation in reaching conclusions that seem to point toward the openness toward transcendent Being. Probably the most obvious example is the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe, a theory that is by no means settled, but that has endured the vicissitudes of examination to represent something like a consensus so far. What is significant is not whether cosmology can demonstrate the origin of the universe at a moment of creation, but that such an implication causes it no inherent disturbance either way. Without taking a stand for or against transcendent Being, science is free to work its autonomous dynamic. Problems arise only when science conceives itself as supplanting the knowledge of ultimate reality. Then it finds itself in the unenviable position of attempting to comprehend the whole from its position as a part. The temptation is inseparable from the human condition, but the success of science depends on maintaining the balance of a perspective that resists its illegitimate expansion. Ultimately, the rationality of science is dependent on the differentiation of the order of being. If the distinction between Being and beings is forgotten, then it is almost inevitable that the investigation of beings will assume to itself the task of drawing us toward Being. Even the attitude of spiritual openness that characterizes much contemporary physics, with its talk of an anthropic principle, the role of beauty, and so on, runs the risk of promoting both bad science and bad spirituality. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Sozialwissenschaften; Unfruchtbarkeit ihrer Methode; schwache Resultate

Kurzinhalt: The hard truth is that the results of all their labor is depressingly thin; not surprising that the social sciences provide so little useful information and prove so inept at prediction

Textausschnitt: 88b But whatever the dangers that confront the physical and life sciences, they are surely nothing compared to the disarray of the human sciences. Having begun with an outburst of grandiose expectations-very often convinced that they were on the verge of discovering the basic laws of human behavior that would allow a systematic reorientation of society toward peace and happiness-reality has repeatedly disabused their messianic self-confidence. It was no accident that the social reformers and revolutionaries of the past two hundred years have been associated with the social sciences. Whether it is Marx or Mill in economics, Dewey or Laski in political science, Freud or Skinner in psychology, or Comte or Marcuse in sociology, the emancipatory impetus remained the same. These were disciplines profoundly shaped by the assurance that the rationality of science could be applied to the resolution of the most enduring problems of man and society. Crime and misery could be eliminated; world peace could be inaugurated; and the social injustice endemic to history could finally be overcome. Nothing stood in the way except the expenditure of effort required to develop the appropriate theoretical instruments by which a new golden age could be guaranteed. The brightest minds were drawn to the task of realizing the enlightenment conviction of progress by applying the power of science to the study of man himself. What obstacle could prove resistant to the penetration of science? (Fs)

89a The short answer is human nature. A century of systematic human cruelty has definitively exploded the myth of historical progress. No one can any longer take seriously the suggestion that we are on the verge of an age of universal benevolence. In many respects, the brutality and narrowness of human self-interest seem to be more in evidence than ever. But what has shredded the human sciences has less to do with the failure of the progressivist expectations they shared with the age than with the substantive inability of their methodology to yield any meaningful knowledge about the human condition. Despite more than a century of work, little in the way of valuable insight has been generated about the central problems of social and political order. Not only have the problems proved resistant to solution, they have even proved resistant to comprehension. No one knows why crime occurs, why marriages break down, why war occurs, why economies fall into depressions, or why governments cannot eradicate corruption. The problems turn out to be far more complex and their sources more profound than we had anticipated. It is therefore not surprising that the human and social sciences present a sharp contrast to their naturalist cousins. In place of the steady accumulation of results and their coalescence into ever more coherent wholes, the social sciences exhibit increasing fragmentation of data and their dispersion into ever-narrower frames of reference. It is no wonder that there are no press reports or celebrity prizes for achievements in the social sciences. The hard truth is that the results of all their labor is depressingly thin.1 (Fs)

90a What happens to disciplines that dissipate into triviality is, of course, that they become the preserve of small minds. There are no great thinkers in the social sciences because bright people quickly recognize their futility. In place of an interest in problems-the great questions of existence and the pressing problems of society-the social sciences have narrowed their focus to those issues that can be investigated through an approximately rigorous application of the scientific method. Even if the method cannot yield fruitful results, its transformation into a fetish can still manage to sustain the appearance of rigor. In this way individuals, whose own work does not amount to anything very significant, can still comfort themselves with the assurance that they are generating useful results that might eventually be comprehended within some meaningful theory. The problem is that the promise of theoretical elaboration is never fulfilled. No one raises seriously the question of why, in principle, human and social reality might never be susceptible to such theoretical comprehension. Instead, the deepest minds depart and the lesser minds churn away on piecemeal studies that, unlike the natural sciences, are never absorbed into some larger understanding of things. One might view contemporary social science as an illustration of what happens when the experimental side of science is utterly dissociated from its theoretical collaborator. It produces a plethora of isolated, meaningless studies. This is why they are never referred to or utilized by the broader society of which they are a part. (Fs) (notabene)

91a However, the point is not to critique the social sciences. It is to understand why they are such an abysmal failure, for such consistency cannot be the fault of any personal inability. Rather, the cause lies in the nature of the project itself. Human beings are not, in their most decisive aspects, illuminated by the methodology of natural science. However elementary it may seem, there is a decisive difference in reality between a human being and a rock. Both may be intelligible, but only the human being is intelligent. That means that human behavior is to be understood primarily in terms of the reasons adduced by each of us for what we do. Intelligent self-enactment and self-disclosure, as Michael Oakeshott suggests, is not an unvarying achievement.16 Often, we fail to live up to the high calling of intelligent self-government. But, even when we fall short of the full exercise of our intelligence, it is precisely as a failure of intelligent self-reflection that our actions are to be understood. Relatively little can be gained from viewing them as a set of external phenomena unrelated to the more or less intelligent self-direction that stands behind them. Indeed, it is almost impossible even to describe human actions as phenomena except by some elementary reference to what they mean for their respective agents. Meaning remains the gaping hole at the core of the human sciences. It is still possible for some of their better practitioners to intuitively assess the meaning of the phenomena they investigate, but this is achieved despite the myopia of the methodology that virtually deprives them of the power of sight. Flying blind, it is not surprising that the social sciences provide so little useful information and prove so inept at prediction. (Fs)

91b Why, we are forced to ask, this dogged persistence in a direction that yields so little rationality? It is not simply the lure of scientific methodology. Positivism, like all of the great ideological illusions, is bound to exhaust its expectations over a long period of disappointment. It becomes increasingly difficult to sustain the confidence that illumination is just around the corner. No-what maintains the human sciences today, besides their achievement of institutional control, is the absence of any conceivable alternative. Any approach outside of the phenomenal would entail the assumption of a stand within the world of meaning to be investigated. It is impossible to interpret the meaning of human actions and expressions without taking a position on its meaningfulness. The submergence in the plurality of social meanings with their conflicts and convergences would embroil the scientist in the controversies of the investigated material itself. He or she could no longer preserve the distance from which objectivity and science are possible. It is the inconceivability of a science of order that renders a science of human life and society impossible. It is far better to stick with the truncated science that is at least defensible from the perspective of blind externality. (Fs)

92a The source of this attitude is the refusal to acknowledge what is inescapable in the project of a science constituted by meaning: the observer is included. Marriage, the family, sexuality, markets, religion, and government are not really phenomena. They have a phenomenal or external dimension, but their reality is inner, as the bearer of the lives of the human beings engaged in them. Scientists and scholars who study them do not suddenly acquire a wholly other mode of existence; rather, they are part of the world of social meaning that is already there and extends beyond, after their brief interlude of scientific investigation has passed. Social science is not just about society; it also occurs within a social whole that sustains and limits it. Rather than conceiving of the subject matter of the human sciences as a set of phenomena, it is preferable to regard them as lines of meaning. They constitute a field of meaning that includes the observer. What objectivity is possible depends on the scientist's capacity to identify the most objective perspective that has differentiated within the social world of which he or she is a part. It is from that vantage point alone that we can approach the truth. All other viewpoints, including the pseudo-objectivity of externality, merely subscribe to prevailing prejudices that cannot even compare to the best objectivity of the society itself.1 (Fs) (notabene)

93a The distance we are from a rational social science can be gauged from the degree to which even the efforts in such a direction are derailed by talk of "normative perspectives," "values," and "participant observation." Such terminology is intended to suggest that the evaluation of meaning can be patched on to a fundamentally unchanged externality. "Values" and "norms" are of necessity ad hoc additions because they represent merely subjective viewpoints. Nothing, it appears, can dislodge even the claims of pseudo-science because nothing else has even the vestige of objectivity about it. This is the problem of a genuinely scientific study of man, as Max Weber contemplated most profoundly. Is there any perspective that is not itself merely one of the perspectives under investigation? Can any viewpoint maintain the primacy of its claim to truth? The only one that can, as the classical philosophers discovered, is the one that is rooted in the pull toward transcendent Being. It alone can lay claim to an objectivity or truth that transcends the partiality of all merely historical perspectives. Being is the only thing that escapes the passing reality of all finite existence and thereby provides a measure by which to judge all that comes into and goes out of existence. The admission that it is a perspective beyond the human level is not relevant. If it is what constitutes wisdom, then human wisdom consists of recognizing it. We are wise only through the love of wisdom that is divine. A science of man and society is possible only when we admit with Plato that God, not man, is the measure (Protagoras). (Fs)

93b The dependence of a science of order on the revelation of transcendent Being does not solve all the problems. It renders the task of science more complicated and far less convenient, but we cannot change the situation in which we find ourselves. To the extent that the life of reason, as we have seen, is made possible through such differentiation of Being, then the elaboration of a rational perspective on humanity is correspondingly tied to such experiences. The unavailability of any perspective outside of human experience itself means that science must always take its stand on the most differentiated viewpoint that has emerged within history. That is the task of the human sciences and the reason why they remain implicitly Christian. To the extent to which the human sciences retain a rational model of human nature as the intuitive background from which to explore human life, it is imprinted with the lineaments of a Christian perspective. Addiction, for example, is viewed in wholly negative terms as a form of escape from the more rigorous demands of self-responsibility. But why should we care about the higher goals of self-realization unless there is a higher self to be realized? The problem with contemporary social science is that its own hold on rationality can scarcely maintain its superiority to that of the addict. It may indeed be more rational to escape into the temporary relief of oblivion than to struggle futilely for equally evanescent satisfactions of careers, fame, and achievements. What contemporary social science remains incapable of explicating is the root causes of addiction that lie in the unfillable transcendent longing of the human heart. In other words, the rationality of social science is hampered by its inability to follow out the full implications of its own viewpoint. Like all science, social science derives its rationality from the recognition of the order that emanates from transcendent Being. Its uniqueness is that this relationship is equally constitutive for the rational self-ordering of the object of its study. (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Seinsvergessenheit - Wissenschaften, Heidegger

Kurzinhalt: Forgetfulness Being; he (Heidegger) saw what most of contemporary science has yet to glimpse?that science itself would become impossible if an order of givenness is eliminated

Textausschnitt: 94a Forgetfulness of the boundary of Being is therefore a source of greater distortion in the human sciences than in the natural sciences. In the former, it deforms our capacity to view the reality before us; in the latter, it merely affects our background presuppositions. For it makes a substantive difference whether one conceives of the radical inexhaustibility of each human being or not. Without the constitution through the glance of transcendent openness, human history could become a finite realm in which progress can reach its culmination, evil be eradicated, and happiness achieved. Human beings could be rendered in terms of the aggregation of their attributes, influences, and contributions. Rights would be susceptible of limits, and a definitive order might be imposed as the guaranteed attainment of universal fulfillment. The logic of the social sciences as an analysis of phenomenal relationships between human beings might finally reach its conclusion in a science of the techniques of universal rational control. Only the questions "for what?" or "for whom?" cause a hesitation in this smooth unfolding. When man too has been subsumed into science, then we seem to be left without an ostensible beneficiary of such useful knowledge. (Fs)

95a The crisis of a manipulative social science draws us deeper into the problematic of a bounded science as such. This is a problem shared across the disciplines. Sciences that operate without reference to anything beyond themselves inevitably run into difficulties in defining the reality of their study. As sciences, they cannot do more than begin with the reality that is given, but then they cannot use their instruments of analysis to probe the givenness of what has been given. To do so, they would have to leap outside of their own area of competence, since they cannot utilize the principles derived from the given reality to elucidate what lies behind the givenness. Any empirical discipline develops its analysis in relation to what is there; it can never legitimately extend those analyses into the derivation of that order of reality from another. This is the whole set of problems that arise under the heading of reductionism. They run the gamut from the consciousness-physiology problems to the search for the secret of life and the origin of the universe. Strictly speaking, they are nonproblems because they are incapable of explication in terms of the sciences involved. But they are not nonproblems in terms of human curiosity. They are irresistible in that sense, because our minds are inevitably drawn toward what lies beyond the limits of any field of investigation. We can scarcely avoid peering over from one realm into another, nor assuming that methods proven successful in one area can fruitfully be extended elsewhere. (Fs)

95b But they cannot. Despite the liveliness of current controversies, successful scientists recognize that the rationality of their disciplines is dependent on the restraint of their ambitions to the modest purview of what is given. The illegitimate extrapolation beyond such boundaries-a temptation that is reinforced through the ubiquitous extension of technological control-is an abyss from which nothing returns. Not only is it impossible to penetrate beyond the givenness of a reality stratified from conceptual thought to subatomic particles, but the attempt to do so is tantamount to the destruction of science itself. Without a relatively stable realm of reality for investigation, there would be no science. If all is reduced to a promiscuous fluidity of levels and dimensions where chemicals can become alive and neutrons can bear thoughts and stars have feelings, then the lines of demarcation within which science can explore relationships would disappear. Analysis of phenomenal relationships and the identification of the laws of their regularity cannot proceed unless the levels of reality remain constant. At the very minimum, the phenomena themselves must be susceptible of an identification that does not prove to be evanescent. If all reality was to be explained in terms of the laws of physics, then our understanding would be poorer, not richer, and we might have good reason for suspecting that the physical constancies were themselves merely provisional for something else. The rationality of the sciences is crucially dependent on the recognition of the richly multilayered character of the reality within which they move. (Fs)

96a It is, of course, an inevitable side effect of the detachment of scientific objectivity and of the technological tools generated by it that we would be inclined to imagine a point at which we could stand outside of reality as a whole. If one can exercise partial detachment, why not total? The answer is that our partial detachment presupposes a whole within which it occurs. This is the response to the widespread suggestion that modern science ultimately undermines an order of nature, both conceptually and practically. This was the problem that so obsessed Heidegger and is at the heart of the modern world. He saw what most of contemporary science has yet to glimpse?that science itself would become impossible if an order of givenness is eliminated. Science explores the relations within the givenness of reality, but, if everything is now to be derived from the manipulations of scientific technology, then there is no longer a realm for investigation. All is open to construction. The postmodern understanding of meaning, where nothing refers and everything is constructed, would extend to the so-called hard sciences as well. We would live within a reality that is available for comprehensive reconstruction at our will. But we know that even our technology?the sphere in which this constructivist impulse is most advanced?cannot live up to its grandiose self-image. Rhetoric aside, we do not create life any more than we can engineer human beings. Our technology consists of manipulating what is there and crucially presupposes an order that is given and disclosed through the investigation of science. We may extrapolate toward the dispensability of nature, but we cannot reach it without eliminating the possibility of our extension of control. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Moderne, Post-Moderne, Christentum: Schwierigkeit der Sprache; keine äußeren Entitäten

Kurzinhalt: They are not objective realities outside of us; rather, we are part of the reality that extends into them; if "postmodern" means anything, it signals the collapse of modern self-assurance

Textausschnitt: 111a PART OF OUR DIFFICULTY in conceiving the relationship between Christianity and modernity is the metaphorical nature of language. It is virtually impossible to avoid the impression we are discussing two external entities from a perspective outside of both of them. Our linguistic habits are overwhelmingly derived from a world of objects, and it is difficult to resist their extension into all other realms of discourse. A conscious effort must be made to remind ourselves that there are no such things as "modernity" or "Christianity." They are not objective realities outside of us; rather, we are part of the reality that extends into them. Far from having a vantage point outside of them, we would have no meaning at all, except for what has emerged within them. Modernity is not a world, but the limits of the perspective in which we find ourselves. It is as far as we are presently able to apprehend ourselves and our place in the order of reality. As such, it constitutes a world without being identical with it. The crucial consideration is whether modernity is the limit or is itself subsumable within a larger perspective. Has modernity surpassed Christianity, or is the Christian differentiation the horizon in which modernity has become possible? (Fs) (notabene)

111b On the answer to this question turns the meaning of the third millennium. Is the event no more than a residue of a common Christian past, or does it recall us to the ineluctable Christian limits of differentiation in the present? Do we live within a modern or a postmodern world, or has it been our fate to forget about the source of the world that still defines us? They are intriguing questions, made all the more so by our arrival at a moment of diminished certainty as to where we are going. If "postmodern" means anything, it signals the collapse of modern self-assurance. But how can we reconceive a link with the vanished Christian past? Does Christianity not itself suffer from the same sense of historical obsolescence as any public symbolism? Modernity began on the presumption of the supersession of the Christian civilization that preceded it. Can we seriously consider rethinking the link between Christianity and civilization at a time when the only public consensus is the acknowledgment of fragmentation? In particular, how is it possible for Christianity, which has accommodated to its role within the modern world, to reconfigure itself as the sustaining horizon of that world? (Fs) (notabene)

112a The burden of this essay is to suggest the far-reaching reorientation of our self-understanding that is required in order to grapple with the challenge of our time. If we wish to do more than bemoan the crisis of meaning, we must be prepared to move away from the externalist metaphor of knowing and admit we are immersed in lines of meaning before we even begin to reflect. Besides the objectivity of the investigation of objects, there is also the reality of the investigator and the world in which he takes his bearings. The latter is constituted by meaning before the inquiry ever begins, and the possibilities of inquiry are very much structured by the differentiations already achieved by that constitutive illumination. Unlike the objects indifferently lying in wait for our encounter and analysis, the boundary constituted by meaning marks the limit of our self-understanding. It can be elaborated, but not easily extended. There is no perspective beyond what has historically been differentiated and appropriated as the working framework of our thinking. Heidegger worked tirelessly to call attention to the opening within which thinking occurs. The differentiations that make thinking about objects possible are not themselves produced by thinking. Only the illumination of Being establishes that space in a not readily surpassable way. The modern world, which began in the self-confidence that it could dispense with such constitutive illuminations, has seen the collapse of its horizon of meaning cast serious doubt about the viability of its indifference. We are compelled to wonder if modernity does not simply presuppose a revelatory opening from which it has become disconnected. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Christentum - Moderne; Differenziertheit; Nietzsche (anti-christliche Kritik als parasitär)

Kurzinhalt: He had grasped the incompatibility of the Christian virtues within a secular age, yet understood that their removal could only be in the name of higher virtues beyond the Christian;

Textausschnitt: 113a The suggestion is borne out by the unavailability of any more differentiated perspective than what has emerged through the Christian tradition. Modernity may be able to separate itself from Christianity by standing apart from it, but the modern self-understanding cannot attain a higher viewpoint that includes the Christian conception of existence. Whether we think of the universal equality of human beings, their fallibility and distance from moral perfection, the mutual need for repentance and forgiveness, their incapability of obtaining the unmerited grace of divine redemption and resurrection, the result is the same. In no other symbolic form is the apex of differentiation reached. Only through Christianity is the height and the depth of human existence fully disclosed in such a way that we are enabled to live profoundly at home in the world without confusing it in the least with our final home. The authority of Christianity derives from its moral truth. Only an advance in the moral imperatives of existence could establish the ground from which a judgment of its validity could be rendered. The so-called anti-Christian critique of the modern ideologues has been, as Nietzsche understood, parasitical on the very Christianity they sought to displace. (Fs) (notabene)

113b This was the problem that preoccupied Nietzsche most profoundly. He had grasped the incompatibility of the Christian virtues within a secular age, yet understood that their removal could only be in the name of higher virtues beyond the Christian. It was an impossibility that disclosed itself the deeper it was contemplated. Objection to Christianity ultimately must become a challenge, not just to the finitude of human virtue, but to its divine completion. How can the critique extend to the One whose infinite perfection redeemed all human defects? This is why Nietzsche was compelled to admit, "There was only one true Christian, and he died on the cross" (The Anti-Christ, par.39). How could a Christian disagree with this sentiment? Christ is indeed the measure by which we are all seen to fall short, but he is also the means by which the incapacity is completed. His perfection reveals the extent to which the deficiencies of human virtue are absorbed and transcended by the divine redemptive suffering in which we participate. A careful reading of the modern critics reveals a similar pattern. The critique of Christianity can ultimately not be extended to the figure of Christ, who escapes the strictures levelled against his disciples and, we are inclined to conclude, disarms even those who sought to oppose him. A higher viewpoint beyond Christ seems morally impossible.1 (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Christentum; höchste Differenziertheit der Realitätserfahrung

Kurzinhalt: Only what has emerged historically is available to us; To the extent that Christ constitutes the limits of the differentiation of order, then ...

Textausschnitt: 114a We have no perspective beyond what has differentiated in the course of history. To the extent that Christ constitutes the limits of the differentiation of order, then his is the illumination in terms of which reality must be seen. To adopt anything less would be to settle for a less differentiated and thus less rational viewpoint. We are not free to select or develop an alternative orientation because we are embedded in the historical process. Only what has emerged historically is available to us, and it is our responsibility to immerse ourselves in its ordering light. We do not enjoy the standpoint of absolute reality capable of embracing the whole, viewing it from whatever angle we choose. Our vantage point is from within reality and, to the extent we can attune ourselves to the absolute perspective of Being, then we will see things more clearly. But we must pursue the trail of revelation in order to grasp that fluttering glimpse. We do not possess it. Submission to the gift of revelation as it has differentiated order over history is the only means available to us. The epiphany of Christ represents a unique moment in this perennial human odyssey of illumination. (Fs) (notabene)

115a The aptness of the millennial calculation from the birth of Christ is not merely a holdover from a Christian civilization. It is still expressive of a fundamental structure. Christ is the turning point of history because he marks the limit, the fullness, of the perspective of revelation.1 No more definitive opening toward transcendent Being is possible. The perspective of order illumined by the participation of God in human existence identifies the boundary of illumination. No higher viewpoint can be attained within time. It is noteworthy that Hegel alone, of all the great modern thinkers, recognized this. A measure of the opaqueness of the Christian revelation is the degree to which it has not only been rejected by the ideologues, but marginalized in the broader universe of discourse. Therefore, Hegel's affirmation of the centrality is all the more striking and is a mark of his stature as a thinker. He understood that philosophy cannot simply dispense with revelation and continue as if it had never happened. However it is handled, revelation cannot be ignored because it constitutes an advance in differentiation beyond the perspective emergent in philosophy. One cannot simply neglect what the revelation of Christ says about human nature, its participation in the divine, the redemptive and transfigurative finality of history, as well as the definitive separation of mundane from transcendent Being. No doubt, the task of philosophy would be greatly simplified in the absence of revelation, but we do not create the mystery in which we find ourselves and are called to make our way. Revelation, once it has occurred, is inescapable. A decisive break within time has occurred when the limit of revelation itself has been reached. (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Offenbarung - Philosophie (Mythos)

Kurzinhalt: The truth of revelation is apprehended because it is recognized as an extension of the truth revealed within the philosophic movement of the soul;

Textausschnitt: 115b The fullness of revelation constitutes a limit to the perspective of philosophy as well. It is not that philosophy loses its independence once it acknowledges the authoritative truth of revelation. Rather, the completion of revelation is the fulfillment of philosophy as such-an enlargement to the limits of what can be conceived. But it is, in no sense, a stepping beyond the limits of philosophy. The truth of revelation is apprehended because it is recognized as an extension of the truth revealed within the philosophic movement of the soul. What, for the philosopher, had to be extrapolated as a myth, enlarging the surroundings of his experience, is now encountered as a living reality within existence. Christ displaces much of what the philosopher must symbolize by means of the likely story, although he does not remove myth entirely, since even he cannot reveal the whole of reality from within the perspective of participation. Creation and eschatology as events outside of time cannot be symbolized in any way other than mythically. However, the saving presence within time does not itself have to be mythicized; it is encountered as the living presence of Being incarnate. Divine presence in the cosmos does not have to be mediated in terms of a story from the beginning; now it is apprehended as an event within the order of creation itself. No other occurrence can have quite the same radiance as the illuminative center of history, casting its light back toward the beginning and forward toward its end. An absolute reference point within time has emerged because it is the perfect conjunction with the absolute Being beyond all time. The enlargement of the philosophic perspective that results means that philosophy too must now take its bearings from the fullness of divine self-revelation in Christ. (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Notwendigkeit der Offenbarung; Wiedergewinnung des Grundes der Vernunft durch Vernunft

Kurzinhalt: ....the instrument that is most transparent for its constitutive relationship to Being; to be rational means to live within the differentiated horizon of the ultimate revelation; Christianity defines the limits of rationality

Textausschnitt: 119a We can do no more than take up their suggestions. Despite all appearances, our world may not be as self-sufficient, as secular, or as rational as it asserts. The schizophrenia that insists it can dispense with the very foundations that sustain it need not be viewed in a wholly negative perspective. Contradiction provides the opening into which our meditation may enter, as we begin to explore the extent to which a rational secular order might become capable of acknowledging its constitution through the definitive self-revelation of God in history. What is needed is the confidence that the rationality of the modern world will lead us back to the differentiation of Being from whence it is derived. A faithful unfolding of reason itself eventually makes plain its dependence on an order of Being from which it takes its bearings. Far from a conflict with revelation, the deepest reality of reason is that it exists in continuity with the self-disclosure of transcendent divinity. A secular world as such can hardly even be identified, except through the dedivinization of the cosmos in the full transcendence of revelation. Our problem is to retain or rediscover the enchantment of its tension toward the ground that can no longer be identified with it. A beginning is to be found in the operation of reason itself. The reenchantment of our world can most effectively begin with the instrument that is most transparent for its constitutive relationship to Being. Indeed, nowhere is the movement from the Beyond so available to us as it is through the opening of the soul. Having rediscovered the subjective pathway, we can then appreciate more fully the source of the great symbolic forms that marked the earlier eras of enchantment. (Fs) (notabene)

120a Reason has always been the illuminative center of human existence. Only its discovery is a novelty, and that particular moment is tied, as we saw in chapter 1, to the revelation of transcendent Being that can be apprehended by no other means. The memory of that derivation may have receded, but it is never closed up. It awaits, as Heidegger understood, as a destiny ready to seize us when we least expect it and therefore remains available for the meditative recovery we seek to obtain. Reason is embedded in the revelatory opening, and it can never finally cut itself off from that source without turning its back on reason. Our confidence is therefore well founded that reason, faithfully pursued, will lead us back to the full amplitude of differentiation. To stop at anything less than the definitive attainment of differentiation would be to settle for a lesser hold on rationality. This is impossible for reason, without turning away from itself. To settle for a reduced standard of rationality is to choose what is irrational. Reason cannot be itself if it fails to live up to its own exigences. Left free from preconceived restrictions and released from the ideological incubus, reason enlarges itself freely until it reaches the limiting horizon of differentiation. To be rational means to live within the differentiated horizon of the ultimate revelation. (Fs)

120b The modern world is not only historically Christian; in a deeper sense, with implications for the relation to other world religions we will explore in the next chapter, it is essentially Christian. Its rationality is not only derived historically from a Christian orbit; it is structurally related to the maximal differentiation of being achieved there as well. Christianity defines the limits of rationality. To the extent that we submit to the norms of rationality, we are drawn inexorably toward their fullest expression within Christianity. Resistance at any point along the way involves a diminution of rationality. Of course, it is not necessary to begin at the end point of fulfillment. Anyone who undertakes the rational opening toward truth is implicitly within its orbit. All that is needed is faithfulness to the imperatives of reason itself for the amplification within the full Christian differentiation of Being to disclose itself. (Fs)

121a It matters little where we begin. Ineluctably, we are drawn toward the discovery of the presumptions of our worldview and toward the recognition of their beginning. The differentiations on which we ground our rationality do not arise ready-made. They depend on an illumination of Being that demarcates the main lines of their reality. It has long been understood that the conception of divinity, the organizing framework of religion, provides the ultimate horizon of meaning for any society. We are accustomed to applying this perspective when studying other societies and civilizations. It is the theological that furnishes the most comprehensive principles of reality and, therefore, the constitutive self-understanding of a social whole. But we rarely apply the same insight to ourselves. Curiously, only the postmodernists have begun to compel a reexamination of the perspective from which our own scientific study of the world and society derives its validity.1 The problem is that such critics themselves share too much of the modernity they critique. They take the objectivity of modern science at its face value as rooted in the claim to have detached itself from all premises and presuppositions. As a viewpoint utterly detached from any interest in the organizing framework of reality, modern science and liberal rights can assert their superiority. But it does not take much to deconstruct the myth of neutrality. Even modern science cannot escape the acknowledgment of its assumptions about the nature of reality, man's place within it, the purpose of human life, and the expectations of good and bad. The problem of the deconstructionists is that they themselves share the bankruptcy of foundations. They cannot conceive of any grounding of rationality. It must therefore be, they conclude, irreducibly relative, culture bound, and interest driven. (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Gerechtigkeit als Realität

Kurzinhalt: The classic philosophers discovered that justice is not simply an aspiration. At its deepest level, it is a reality that is constitutive of human existence

Textausschnitt: 123a The classic philosophers discovered that justice is not simply an aspiration. At its deepest level, it is a reality that is constitutive of human existence. The pull toward the transcendent Good was not realized through abstract reflection, but through the existential struggle to live in accordance with its reality. The growth of the soul is itself a distinctly expanded reality of the human condition. Aristotle coined the verb athanatizein (immortalize) to convey a sense of the enlargement of reality it entailed. Striking too is the extent to which Nietzsche recognizes his own forlorn dedication to truth as deriving from the same source. It is with some discomfort that he acknowledges that his own critique of truth is derived from the same altar at which Plato worshipped. Nietzsche was not only the most pious of the godless, but the most self-perceptive. Even the nihilistic will to transcend all values drew its strength from the love of transcendent Being. How else can we identify the will to go beyond all limits? The modern impulse, whether exemplified by Nietzsche's unresolved honesty or the truncated objectivity of science and rights, is rooted not so much in a turn away from transcendent Being as in its inconclusive realization. A tragic incapacity to recognize the source of its own deepest inspiration is the defining feature of our world. (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Christus als Maß der Vernunft; Welt als Welt

Kurzinhalt: Christ as the Limit of Reason; Foremost among such parameters is the recognition of this world as a world;

Textausschnitt: 129a The reason why we live in a Christian worldview, despite all appearances to the contrary, is that it has become impossible to think beyond the limits of its differentiation. Nothing remains untouched by the illumination emanating from the discovery of the transcendent openness of being for Being. The tensional pull is already there before the limiting outburst, but the radiance could not reach as far or as clearly in the absence of the epiphany of Christ. However strange it may be to confess that reason is thus dependent on such irruptions of transcendent luminosity, the limiting revelation of Christ makes the structure unmistakable. Illumination can only come from the Beyond. Once it occurs, we recognize the degree to which all being is constituted by its receptivity toward a Love that is far beyond its immanent capacity. Since the revelation of Christ marks the limit of that openness-the fullness of divine reality present within time-the differentiation of reality has correspondingly reached its limit. The fullness of God's self-disclosure is simultaneously the limiting illumination of finite reality. This is why the Christian differentiation of the order of being exercises its authority even over those who do not explicitly subscribe to its source. Irrespective of personal inclinations or faith, it is impossible to think outside of the categories defined by the revelation of Christ. Departure from them can only be made by becoming less rational. They are the spiritual equivalents of the laws of identity and noncontradiction. (Fs) (notabene)

130a Foremost among such parameters is the recognition of this world as a world. It is only the light of transcendent perfection glimpsed momentarily that reveals the finitude and imperfection of everything else. We see reality as it is, without illusion or false expectation. This is why Christians can be the most hard-bitten realists. No one, for example, is more unblinking in his contemplation of the shortcomings of this world and life within it than St. Augustine1. Through the heightened participation in the higher transcendent life, existence in this world is beheld in all its vicissitudes and inconclusiveness. Without the burden of supporting the unlimited aspirations of the human heart, the mundane order is free to disclose itself as it is, without construction or addition. The degree to which we suffer from illusory anticipations in the modern era is a barometer of the decline of Christian experience. It is only with difficulty that we can exert the will to strip away the illusions with which we are inclined to gild our view of reality. The harshness and unsatisfactoriness of all finite reality are inescapable dimensions of the existence we know, yet we pull away from the full rational acknowledgment of the consequences. How is it possible to live in a world without illusion? The possibility has been opened up by the Christian differentiation, but we sense our grasp of it slipping as the illuminative experience recedes. (Fs)

130b Only Christians, it seems, can be fully secure in their acceptance of the unsatisfactoriness of existence. St. Augustine even approaches cynicism in his realism. But cynicism is, rather, what is left when the transcendent light has withdrawn. Instead, Augustine's attitude is more rational still; it is without the tone of resentment that attaches to the cynic. The Christian acceptance of finitude and death remains the most positive because it views this immanent reality in its highest possibility. The world is the temporary vehicle for the transcendent presence. As such, its incompleteness can be fully acknowledged without disvaluing it in the slightest. By pointing toward the higher fulfillment it is incapable of attaining, this world achieves its highest purpose. We begin to see finite existence as it is and in relation to its highest possibility. The Incarnation is the deepest affirmation of the mystery of created reality and at the same time, the unmistakable identification of its provisionality. Without bearing the significance of ultimate reality, immanent being nevertheless plays its role in the larger drama of transcendent Being entering time to redeem it for itself. Paradoxical as it may appear, it is only the differentiation that recognizes the full finitude of existence that can affirm most profoundly its full transcendence of itself.1 (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Christus als Maß der Vernunft; Grenzen d. griechische Philosophie

Kurzinhalt: Why should God wish to leave his realm of perfection? The Greeks had finally not broken through to the full transcendence of God.

Textausschnitt: 131a This is the point of greatest divergence with the Greek world that preceded Christianity. The Incarnation, with its drama of suffering, death, and resurrection, was the major stumbling block. How can we accept a God who takes on the grossness of material flesh and blood to undergo the most degrading death that was conceivable? It seemed to fly in the face of all that we knew about the gods, who were characterized by their elevation above the contingency and mortality of our condition of existence. If anything was true of the gods, it was their ascent to the higher regions of the cosmos. The highest One dwelt beyond the cosmos itself in utterly detached, immovable perfection. Purified souls of men might aspire to travel toward that realm and ultimately could reach the highest possibility of standing on the rim of the cosmos, whence they could contemplate the eternal One (Phaedrus 247c-d). But why would anyone wish to reverse the direction, least of all the transcendent God? Why should God wish to leave his realm of perfection? The Greeks had finally not broken through to the full transcendence of God. He was still too closely tied to the cosmos, whose ascending ranks defined his perfection. They had not yet recognized that transcendent Being is utterly different from the cosmos, which would itself have no relation to him apart from his gift of self-disclosure. The accent still fell on their own experience of ascent rather than on the irruption of transcendent illumination from Beyond. They did not yet see that they would not even know about Being had it not made itself present within existence. Unable to recognize the degree to which the transcendent is always radically beyond the capacity of finite apprehension, they could not fully apprehend grace or the receptivity for it. (Fs)

132a By hewing more closely to the reality of the cosmos, the Greeks devalued this world. Despite the apparently more worldly character of Greek thought, it is ironically the full contingency of existence that is missed. In retrospect, the consequence is not surprising, given the preeminence attached to the being of the cosmos itself. As the perfect manifestation of the One, the divine icon, it provided the paradigmatic measure toward which all other reality must be directed. Without sharply differentiating between the transcendent Beyond and immanent existence incapable of its manifestation, it was inevitable that the latter would never be seen for what it is. Contingency and mortality are accorded only the negative tonality of what must be pulled against in the movement toward the higher cosmological actualization. The dynamics of the struggle for attunement to the higher attraction of the Good is well differentiated, but it falls far short of our understanding of a science of nature or of society. Greek science was bound to the model of cosmic perfection, therefore, its function was conceived to be the elaboration of the laws of rational necessity governing all things. This generated an elegant mathematical conception of nature, but not its empirical investigation. Precisely, the contingently factual relationships were considered not worth studying. It is only if nature is differentiated as a realm of its own that it can become a subject of empirical exploration. Contingency can be apprehended and its investigation considered a value only where the radical transcendence of Being has differentiated its openness and its worth. Nature, despite our translation of physis, does not mean the same thing.1 (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Christus als Maß der Tugend; Grenzen der griechischen Ethik; Plato: Philosoph - Tyrann

Kurzinhalt: Reason in the Greek world was bounded by the twin convictions that the cosmos is itself the perfection of order and that the human telos must be achievable within it.

Textausschnitt: 132b Nowhere is our distance from the Greeks more evident than in relation to human nature. Aristotle, as we have seen, struggles manfully to hold together the hylomorphic model of the organism with the transcendent openness of the soul. The results are the notorious tensions between books I and III of the Politics, as well as the enduring inability to break the hold of the polis as the community of fulfillment even in the midst of its swan song. The historical openness of humanity as an eschatological community could not become visible so long as the hold of the cosmic embodiment of reason could not be broken. A universal human nature incapable of any finite fulfillment (and therefore constituted by the history of its movement toward the Beyond) remained on the boundary of Greek consciousness. They could not penetrate to the rational reorientation required because the irruption of transcendent Being had not reached its limits. Reason in the Greek world was bounded by the twin convictions that the cosmos is itself the perfection of order and that the human telos must be achievable within it. Within those parameters, the achievements are remarkable and definitive, but we recognize that the boundaries themselves are impositions of arrested rationality. (Fs) (notabene)

133a Such restrictions do not permit us to come to grips with the deepest problems of existence. Among these are the realization that life, even for the most fortunate, falls far below what could be counted as complete fulfillment and, for the vast majority, is far less than even their natural expectations would lead them to hope. A determination to expend every effort on the acquisition of the only excellence within our power-virtue-ultimately fares no better. Prolonged attention to the problem of virtue brings two things to the forefront. First, as Aristotle discovered, is that the source of virtue is ultimately impenetrable and must be ascribed to a kind of gift of nature. We know how to make men good once they have decided to become good, but we are helpless to bring about the prior movement of decision to seek after goodness. Second, the advance in virtue eventually generates the awareness of how far we still have to go. Plato betrays a fleeting awareness of the problem in his analysis of the parallel, if not proximity, between the philosopher and the tyrant. Do we ever reach a point at which virtue has become a secure and expanding attainment, or is there not lurking always the inclination to transform the very achievement of virtue into a means of domination? The abyss of evil within the human heart may become more evident in light of the transcendent grace required to overcome it, but it is there all along and its rational assessment necessitates its acknowledgement. Nowhere is the closeness of the relationship between reason and revelation more evident than in the necessity of confronting the problem of evil. (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Christentum: Befreiung von dem Bösen; Gefallenheit - Gnade

Kurzinhalt: Christianity is, first of all, a liberation from the evil that destroys us; We choose evil for no other reason than that it is evil; Grace is the inner movement of what we outwardly recognize in Jesus.

Textausschnitt: 134a This is the core of what Christianity is all about. It is not primarily a movement of salvation from this world or of reconciliation with the divine judge above it. Christianity is, first of all, a liberation from the evil that destroys us. Everything else follows from this. We recognize the depth of the evil that held us in light of the divine gift of self required to overcome it. The predicament in which we had been fastened becomes blindingly clear. Our condition had been one of fallenness, the immovability of souls barely able to sense the direction they should go, but utterly powerless to move a muscle toward it. It was not only that our gaze was limited to the range of finite reality and therefore was incapable of drawing us toward our transcendent fulfillment; the darkness within ourselves went deeper than the absence of light. It was infected with the spirit of revolt. Not only did we recurrently fall into evil and consistently fall short of our aspirations. There was a distinct component of wilfulness to it. Evil was not merely an affliction; it is also an inescapable fatality of our souls. We choose evil for no other reason than that it is evil. Irrational and surdic as it may be, we are prone to overstepping the limits for no other reason than that they are there. We want to be the center of our own existence even when we know we are not. Fallenness is not a mythic extrapolation to the beginning; it is primarily the mystery of iniquity that we recognize as holding us in its grip. The good that I seek is not the good that I will; rather, it is the evil I do not wish (Romans 7:13-25). It is the realization finally that nothing separates us from the evil we wish to avoid-the abyss we are powerless to close within us-that opens us up to recognition of the transcendent fullness that can alone close the emptiness. (Fs) (notabene)

135a What Plato intimated in the proximity of the philosopher/tyrant, we recognize as the universal condition of human hearts. Our capacity for evil is the mirror image of our unlimited openness to good. Evil is not merely a fall away from goodness. It is its inversion, and nothing can ensure against its irruption. The very unattainability of transcendent fulfillment can be redirected toward its opposite and prove equally insatiable. Our life is balanced in every moment on that knife edge of possibility where, for no reason, we might yet choose the evil we seek to avoid. Habit can consolidate the practice of virtue at every step of the way, but it can do nothing to secure the innermost orientation of the soul toward it. The final temptation is to do the right thing for the wrong reason. Augustine's critique of philosophic virtue lays bare the reserve of pride that can still remain untouched by all its impressive resolution.1 The twentieth century has presented the shock of limitless gratuitous cruelty to the de-Christianized modern consciousness, but it would have surprised neither Augustine nor Dostoevsky, who both recognized such a possibility within themselves. Once again the rational apprehension of reality seems supportable only by the light of transcendent grace dispensed by Christ. It is because we see in him the transcendent fulfillment of our longing that we are able to acknowledge its abyssal character within us. (Fs) (notabene)

135b Grace is the inner movement of what we outwardly recognize in Jesus. It is the touch of transcendent reality we recognize as our final fulfillment and whose mere brush is enough to bring about the decisive reorientation of our lives. This is the repentance at the heart of the Gospel message. Without it, not only are we unable to move toward our transcendent fulfillment, but even the limited goodness of which we are capable by nature will fail. As Augustine explains, the incompleteness and conditionality of our orientation toward the good, eventually infects even ordinary virtues with its corrosive influence.1 Thinking we can get by with a merely human effort, we eventually lose the defenses needed to prevent the coop-tation of our efforts in the service of evil. This is why a purely natural order cannot stand long. Virtues of tolerance and kindness ultimately lack the fortitude to resist the more imperious demands for self-interest and survival at any cost. Only Christianity can provide the adequate underpinnings for the realization of natural virtue because Christianity alone has differentiated the constitution of nature from its transcendent source. The capacity to rationally analyze the sources of the abyssal disorder that afflicts the natural order is intimately connected with the revelation of the transformative grace of restoration. Repentance generates an order within this life because it is rooted in the order beyond it. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Christus - Ende des Mythos; Partizipation des Menschen am göttlichen Sein

Kurzinhalt: The meaning of the opening of transcendent Being is identical with the action of Christ; Our participation in divine Being is, at the same time, the participation of the divine in human being

Textausschnitt: 136a In Christ, the transparence of this world for its constitution from Beyond is actualized. In him we behold the movement we apprehend within. As a result, we not only have the limiting differentiation of the movement toward order as immediately experienced, but we also receive the definitive symbolization of the mystery of the whole within which the drama unfolds. Previously, the philosopher's and other forms of myth were required to extrapolate the order of the whole; now it is encountered in the immediacy of a personal narrative. Moments that are distended in the other symbolizations of order are here brought into conjunction. Instead of distinguishing between the immediate disclosure of the Beyond within the soul and the mediated experience of order within the cosmos from the Beginning, we now have them joined together in the personal encounter with Jesus, who is the redemptive word.1 The uniqueness of the revelation of Christ is not only the limiting manifestation of transcendent Being; he is also the particular vehicle through which the transcendent can become manifest. Transcendent reality can disclose no more than its fullness manifesting itself, the variability of mythic possibilities has also shrunk to the unrepeatable particularity of the man who is God. Just as no more revelation is possible, so no more extrapolative elaborations are possible. In the incarnate divine fullness, revelation and myth converge. The meaning of the opening of transcendent Being is identical with the action of Christ. (Fs) (notabene)

137a The relationship is reciprocal. We understand the experienced gift of transcendent Being through the encounter with Christ and vice versa. For this reason, the experience is interpreted in the same terms as the process of the whole. Just as we are redeemed through the touch of divine Being, so the action and passion of Christ is the redemption of the cosmos. Our participation in divine Being is, at the same time, the participation of the divine in human being. All of the movement of human openness to the divine pull throughout history culminates in this unique epiphany of the fullness of divine reality in human nature. In the unrepeatable uniqueness of Christ, the meaning of the mystery of the whole is disclosed. Our responsive opening toward the revelatory pull of the Beyond is always recognized as our participation in the wider drama of the divine redemption of order from disorder. Now it is recognized as the unique event of God's participation in the human drama by which that redemption is effected. Christ illuminates not only the drama of grace and freedom, but the ultimate victory over evil within the cosmos itself. Through Christ, we enter into the redemptive movement, and it is in him that redemption takes effect. Man's participation in the divine suffering of evil in existence is recognized for what it ultimately is: God's participation in the human suffering of evil by which the redemption is achieved. (Fs) (notabene)

137b The experience of the transcendent formation of order is irresistible. God's knowledge and his will are one. It is enough to be brushed by the divine spirit of creation to know the force of that inexorable reality. Nothing is more certain, yet nothing is more invisible from our perspective. The conflict between the two harrowed the Hebrew prophets and, in a parallel sense, tortured the classic philosophers. How was the truth of transcendent Being to become incarnate in a mundane reality that seemed incapable of its reception? How could the people of Israel become the people of God, or the people of Athens fulfill the nature of the polis? Neither side could be denied. The conflict was inexorable and irresolvable, without abolishing the conditions of existence as we know them. Only the advent of Christ effects the reconciliation. Finite reality becomes wholly subordinate to the divine will in the man provided by God himself because he is identical with God. As such, his actions carry representative significance. The answer to the struggle of millennia is disclosed. Both prophets and philosophers grope toward its outlines, but it is only in Christ that its radiance can be apprehended. Not only is he the illuminative center of divine order within history, he is also its effective point of redemption. The mystery of redemptive suffering stands revealed as the central truth of the whole in which we participate. Transfiguration in the image of the revelation of Being is no longer an aspiration or a frustration. It is the mystery of the transfigurative process already underway within history. (Fs) (notabene)

138a The extrapolation of the theophanic experience is complete. Atonement for the fall into evil has been made when it is accomplished by the self-abnegation of God himself. Only in this way can the sin of revolt against infinite goodness be recompensed. The experiential confrontation with the abyss of sin would make this realization clear, but it is only in the revelation of Christ that it can emerge in its full stature. He is the culmination of the interior movement and the exterior narrative of revelation and myth. They converge in the recognition of Christ as the one from whom both the experiential grace of redemption and its eschatological victory emanates. The mystery of redemption stands revealed. It is nothing less than the revelatory gift of transcendent Being that surrenders itself to finite consciousness utterly without the merit or ability to reach it. In Christ we behold the actualization of this inner drama. He is the divine Being poured out for us as the only adequate means of reconciling our sinful nature with his divine goodness. Why there is a world and a fall and the need for redemption and restoration remain questions beyond the range of penetration. But the most central illumination has been assured to us. We know the presence of transcendent Love as the abiding reality because we behold what we glimpse inwardly. God so loved the world that he gave up his own Son so that we might be saved. From this radiant center, a transcendent order of love is created within history. (Fs) (notabene)

139b We cannot cling to the risen Lord, as Mary Magdalene sought to do in the garden (John 20:11-18). Even if we attempted to do so, we would find ourselves holding only to the wrappings, a consolation about as reassuring as the endless quest for scientific confirmation of the historical Jesus. Transcendent Being cannot be drawn into immanent reality without abolishing the latter. Even after the resurrection of Christ, our only access remains the inner opening of faith. Only with the eyes of faith can we recognize who it is that stands before us or hear the voice by which we are addressed. Even after the resurrection, it is still the opening of transcendent illumination within us that enables us to recognize what we behold; it is not a rival source of luminosity emergent within immanent being. The resurrection of Jesus is the radiance of transcendent Being. The eschatological glimpse it affords is no more than the definitive extrapolation from the strand of revelatory experiences reaching back in human history. Transfiguration is not accomplished for us yet, but we can catch an unmistakable glance of its realization. A limiting clarity is attained as we see the resurrection of the body as the fruit of its total transfiguration by the fullness of transcendent Being. Eschatological completion does not signify the abolition of immanent being. Rather, the resurrected Christ points toward the transfiguration of all finite reality as the vessel of transcendent presence. Just as the unrepeatable presence of Being in Christ augurs the uniqueness of his personal physical presence, so the openness of all beings to the same transcendent reality makes them irreplaceable recipients of the one divine Love. None are dispensable; all are destined for unique transfiguration. (Fs)

140a The luminosity of Christ's resurrection casts its light not only on our movement beyond this world, but also on the significance of earthly existence. Emphasis falls not merely on the liberation from this life; it also raises the value of the material substratum that is moving toward the moment of its subsumption into transcendent glory. Imagery of the world as a tomb or a prison from which escape is regarded as joyful was widespread in the ancient world. However, it generally prevailed in circles dominated by Platonism, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, and Stoicism. Rarely do we find a Christian hint of denigration of mere earthly existence. On the contrary, this life is more highly valued both as the prelude and preparation for what is to come and as the material whose transformation is assured. No higher value can be attached to finite existence than to regard each individual as a unique irreplaceable vehicle for the radiance of transcendent presence. Nothing can be lost of what the Father has given Jesus because each has been called to enter fully into the divine Love. Each is an unrepeatable refraction of the infinite depth of transcendent Being in finite being. The attachment of that spark of infinity within each one forms a unique being whose whole existence is radiated with the light of the One. Each human being is the whole or the presence of the whole in this finite medium. Everything about him or her is irradiated by the light from the Beyond. Just as it is impossible to conceive of a revelation beyond the fullness of God, so it is equally impossible to move beyond the sanctification of earthly life by this same relationship. (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Christus als Maß der Balance zw. Erfüllung und Realität

Kurzinhalt: If we were either to reach our goal or to conclude that it is impossible, then the dynamic unfolding would cease.

Textausschnitt: 141a Christ is the culminating revelation of our movement toward God and of the significance of existence within this world. Eschatology points toward both the beyond and the present. It is because Christ illuminates both simultaneously that he is the great force for order in history. Civilization is perpetually struggling for balance. The aspiration toward transcendent Being?the inexhaustible longing for complete and perfect reality?must be balanced with the realization of its inherent unattainability within time. If we were either to reach our goal or to conclude that it is impossible, then the dynamic unfolding would cease. All that we known as human life? its restless striving and inquiring?would be no more. Our constitution toward an horizon of mysterious fascination that, the more we approach it, the further it recedes, is the permanent condition of our existence. The difficulty of maintaining a balance between the tensional poles of longing and postponement is a source of notorious instability. How is it possible to maintain the constant fidelity of striving without yielding to the false preemption of fulfillment or the dejection of futile disappointment? Balance can only be maintained if we have been able to reach an insight into the mysterious continuity between the two. Postponement is no longer a source of frustration so long as fulfillment is perceived as being already mysteriously present in the process. The balance realized through the mythic elaboration of trust in the whole is crucial to preserving the revelatory truth from distortion. (Fs) (notabene)

142a No one has done more to bring this problematic to light than Eric Voegelin. It is the major theoretical contribution he sought to articulate over a lifetime. He understood that the great imbalancing tendency in illuminative experiences is the tendency to forget that they emerge from reality as a whole. They are movements of exodus toward transcendent Being, but they are not movements out of reality. Despite the luminosity gained, they do not transfigure earthly existence nor accomplish its abolition. Yielding to illegitimate extrapolations not only distorts our perception of reality and undermines the possibility of balance within it; it destroys the revelatory experience itself. Now the illumination is treated as a piece of information on the basis of which we might effect our escape or domination of reality as a whole. Participation in transcendent Being shrinks into insignificance as the imagination is seized by the prospect of identification with the transformative process itself. The extrapolation eclipses the original experience from which it derived. This was the tendency against which the Church had to struggle from the early days in combatting heretical movements. Transfigurative fantasies are not just a source of imbalance in individual and social life; they are lethal to the preservation of the only process of transfiguration available to us. It is no wonder that all the heretical movements are ultimately directed against the Church itself as the embodiment of the provisional eschatological presence. However, it is a great mistake to suggest, as Voegelin does, that the Church is defined by its struggle with the heretical distortions. (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Schizophrenie der Welt - Möglichkeit menschlicher Existenz

Kurzinhalt: Our sanity depends on the possibility of recognizing that the schizophrenia of the modern world is not unique or even mistaken

Textausschnitt: 146a Our sanity depends on the possibility of recognizing that the schizophrenia of the modern world is not unique or even mistaken. It accurately mirrors human existence. We are torn between the poles of poverty and fullness, as Plato diagnosed in the Symposium. Our modern split becomes schizophrenic because it forgets the partial nature of its perspective. The part is not the whole, yet it is compelled to act as if it is. Either we become incapable of articulating the transcendent significance of our exertions, or their finite achievements are made to carry a transcendent import. Disorientation is the result as we struggle ever more unsuccessfully to maintain a balance within a context in which the poles of reference seem to have disappeared. This is why the limiting differentiation of the order of being through the advent of Christ is so crucial to the preservation of a life of reason. Transcendent Being is recognized in its unattainability, and immanent reality is stripped of all illusory appearance, yet their integral relationship could not be more fully bodied forth. The building up of civilizational progress could not be placed on a firmer basis than the Christian conviction that action in this world is transparent for the redemptive drama of Being. It is the lost center restoring the wholeness of the modern fragmentation. Whereas the finite exertions desperately sought to touch transcendent consequences, now they are revealed as moments in the flow of the timeless within time. The raw hunger for Being is no longer an impenetrable source of disorientation. It becomes luminous from the balance incarnate in Christ between perfection and imperfection. (Fs)

146b This has always been the appeal of Christianity. It is not the promise of eternal salvation, since that cannot mean anything to us except in terms of the difference it makes in our lives here and now. Fullness of life is not merely a promise projected beyond time; it is apprehended incipiently within existence as well. Christianity is the heart of civilization because it is the fullest realization of life in human experience. Without turning its back on this world, it directs us to live completely within it without losing ourselves in its false infinity. No higher possibility can be conceived than the life that is lived at the highest attunement to Being while remaining within a world of beings. We would never have penetrated to the possibility had not the transcendent Beyond assumed full material presence among us, since all glimpses of the Beyond come only by way of the revelation of its fullness. But now that the opening of Being has occurred, we cannot return to a more compact mode of existence. The whole modern world, with its focus on the rational development of this world, is premised on the differentiation of Christ. (Fs) (notabene)

147a Recognition of the schizophrenic character of its isolation is the prelude to the rediscovery of the source from whence it has come and by which it is still invisibly sustained. Only through the incarnation of transcendent Being can we see the way by which mundane existence can be raised to its highest possibility without the irrational overreaching that would tempt it to futilely surpass God himself. The temptation is removed, not through the restraint of aspiration, but through its fulfillment in the only way possible. We can become God through God becoming man. Christ stands at the center of our world because he is the one who delivers on its promise. He reveals the unattainability of the longing that animates it because he announces its true transcendent fulfillment. Openness toward rational development is vouchsafed by the recognition of the incapacity of a finite world to adequately contain infinite divinity. But at the same time, the measured and manipulated world of finite intelligibility is saved from becoming a homogeneous desert. It remains transparent for the transcendent fullness it can point toward, but not attain, through its own unfolding. (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Christentum - Zentrum einer pluralistischen Welt

Kurzinhalt: Christianity is ... the limiting differentiation through which reason becomes what it is;

Textausschnitt: 151a The he observation that Christianity is the sustaining differentiation at the heart of the modern world is a hard saying. It relegates the independence of scientific rigor and the pride of human rights achievements to a subordinate position. They no longer stand on their own, or, if they do, it is with less self-assurance. But what can we say? The reality is that the space of differentiation is unfolded through the revelation of Being and not otherwise. Illuminative experiences are the mode in which reason is discovered and its continued differentiation is sustained. As the limiting differentiation of transcendent Being, Christianity is also the limiting differentiation through which reason becomes what it is. Differentiation arises in no other way, and to turn our back on it would be to choose less rationality, if not unreason. We can even sense the inner resistance of reason against such a possibility, but we cannot provide the illuminative glimpse by which the movement of resistance is sustained and enlarged. Transcendent reality is beyond all access, except through the gift of its self-revelation. Given the increasing incoherence of modern self-referential reason, we have no other option but to acknowledge its transcendence of all foundations in the opening of Being itself. (Fs) (notabene)

152a Reason cannot consistently function in the absence of existential order. Only if we are open to the promptings from the divine side will we be sufficiently attuned to the flash of Being by which we become more fully rational. Uncomfortable as it may be to admit, reason is not an instrument through which we extend our control over being. It is first of all the intimation through which we ourselves are controlled. A responsive unfolding of the invitation that comes toward us from the Beyond is the source of what enables us to live in order. Substantive reason, rather than the iron cage of formal or instrumental rationality, is created only when reason is constituted by the luminosity from what is beyond itself. The sterility of the postmodern debates about foundations is compelling testament to this dynamic. What is sorely lacking is the illuminative glimpse that would render the irretrievable contingency of all possible points of reference transparent. Our postmodern predicament is on the verge of the Christian boredom of the world, but it is incapable of understanding itself as such because the source of the disenchantment is beyond its grasp. It stands in need of the touch of transcendent Being that reveals itself as its own adequate manifestation, but thereby becomes more fully present in all things. The world from which God is absent is the Christian one in which his presence has been fully revealed in Christ. Secular reality is never simply secular. It is a provisional pointer toward what it knows it can never adequately represent; yet through its transparence, it radiates transcendent Being. In other words, the limit of rational differentiation depends more than ever on the recurrent, but unroutinized, encounter with God. The inconvenience of the theophanic structure of reason may have prompted the amnesiac temptations to render it manageable by means of formulas and dogmas for over two millennia, but they have not been able to abolish it.1 (Fs) (notabene)

152b A large part of our hesitation in contemplating this existential character of reason can be explained by our reluctance to confront the judgmental consequence it suggests. We are uncomfortable with acknowledging the revelatory dependence because we sense that it involves a ranking of the spiritual traditions of the world. Those that propel the movement of differentiation furthest are the ones that represent a higher claim to truth. In particular, the linking of Christianity with the modern secular civilization of scientific method and human rights seems to constitute an undue privileging of the Western religious tradition. Is it not enough that Western science and morality have extended their global reach, without imposing the presumption of spiritual preeminence as well? Discomfort with the suggestion of Christianity as the formative source of the modern world becomes palpable in the recognition of its incompatibility with a plurality of spiritual traditions. How can we sustain mutual toleration and respect among religions if the link between modern civilization and Christianity is more than historical? How can the other traditions survive if the rationality of our world is shown to derive its essential justification from Christianity as well? Spiritual imperialism is suspected as the unspoken agenda behind the modernizing advance, and talk of a clash of civilizations draws its inspiration from such inarticulate murmurings.2 It is no wonder, therefore, that the secular vanguard of science and rights often deny even more vigorously their Christian lineage in order to assert modernity's independence of all ultimate questions. (Fs) (notabene)

153a Our meditation has proceeded far enough to recognize the bluff entailed, but we have not yet found a way of assuaging the fears that have provoked its necessity. The concerns are legitimate. To the extent that modern civilization becomes global, it carries a set of religious implications whether it wills to or not. We have already seen the protective reaction of religious communities, both in the West and elsewhere, to the perceived secularizing threat. Fundamentalism has been the most defining feature. But what if the threat was to be perceived as religious in nature rather than merely irreligious? Can we expect the Hindu or Islamic or Buddhist traditions to submit before the acknowledged differentiations of Christian revelation? And if we cannot anticipate the Christian conversion of the world, what should our mode of conversation be? How is it possible to sustain a global modern civilization while acknowledging the diversity of spiritual traditions surrounding it? The problem is formidable because even the delineation of the relationship between modernity and its own Christian background has proved challenging enough. What prospect do we have of sorting out the relationship of modernity to the other world religions and then engaging them in dialogue with Christianity and one another? It is not an easy task, but the difficulty is not sufficient reason for avoiding it. The modern world itself puts us more in contact with one another at this millennial moment than at any other time in human history. Our calling is to rise to the occasion, no matter how daunting the challenge may be.3 (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Toleranz; Leugnung der Möglichkeit der Wahrheit - oder Maßstab am Sein

Kurzinhalt: tolerance of indifference: we fail to recognize it as a cover for the most repressive dogmatism possible; Tolerance can be most fully grounded in the unattainability of Being, not in the unattainability of truth

Textausschnitt: 160a The great enemy to tolerance in this true sense is what can only be characterized as its false alternative. We have already alluded to the tolerance of indifference but now that its true source in the openness of Being has become clear, it is worthwhile to sharpen the contrast. Sham tolerance is by far the most influential attitude toward the relationship between the world religions. It consists of a live-and-let-live magnanimity that reassures us of the irresolvability of the differences between them. The generosity of the disposition is disarming, so much so that we fail to recognize it as a cover for the most repressive dogmatism possible. Toleration in the name of unknowability appears to be a position that welcomes all traditions equally, with prejudice toward none. But the appearance is deceptive. Under the banner of invincible ignorance, all are permitted to speak, but none are permitted to be taken seriously. Not only does it not take a position on behalf of any truth, but it adamantly refuses to admit the possibility of truth. Under the guise of mutual toleration, we are asked to subscribe to a principle that renders the value of toleration moot. What is the purpose of tolerating different viewpoints and permitting their conversation if we have already resolved in advance that they cannot be permitted to reach the truth? The cost of toleration is too high if it requires us to dogmatically consent to a particular view of truth, viz. that truth is nonexistent.1 Besides, the cost of entrance into the paradise of pluralist irrelevance is unnecessary. (Fs) (notabene)

160b Tolerance can be most fully grounded in the unattainability of Being, not in the unattainability of truth. The dogmatic assertion of the latter presumes that Being has been comprehended sufficiently to determine its inapprehensability as truth. Reversing the relationship, we reach not tolerance but its perversion. By contrast, tolerance is most fully grounded in our participation in the openness of Being. The limitless Beyond can be apprehended by us through the medium of finitude, but only sufficiently to recognize its transcendence of all limits. Such a glimpse is possible because of the openness to Being that constitutes each human being as the imago Dei. The tolerance owed the formulations apprehended by each one is due to the capacity to embrace the whole, albeit from the fragmentary perspective of a part. The character of individual participation in Being attaches even more evidently to the great symbolic elaborations in which the perspectival glances are unfolded. Every symbolic form is worthy of respect, not because they are all equally developed, but because they are all equally participative in the whole. While stepping forth as the apprehensions of the parts, they nevertheless are evocations of the whole. The encompassing character of each of the great spiritual traditions is no accidental feature. It arises from their essential trajectory, which is to participate through representation of the whole. (Fs)

161a However, grounding tolerance in the mutuality of truth is no more than a beginning. Trivialization is avoided, but at the same time the stakes are raised considerably. If we are to understand the relationship between the great spiritual traditions as ultimately collaborative, then the quest for truth must eventually lead toward the sharpening of distinctions between them. They cannot all be equally attuned and equally misattuned toward the order of being. Even when each of them evokes the Being that none are capable of adequately encompassing, there are still legitimate distinctions that should be made, albeit from the finite perspective. Equidistance from Being can mean varying perceptions of the equidistance. Even their own self-emergence as distinct traditions involves the articulation of differences from the more inchoate traditions that preceded them. They cannot present themselves as advances in truth and attunement if they insist on the invidiousness of all such claims. Without succumbing to the relativity of all viewpoints, the spiritual traditions cannot maintain their own assertion of truth unless they are prepared to take seriously the rival claims of all others. Distinctions of rank cannot finally be avoided, and they can only be intelligibly made from within the spiritual traditions themselves. (Fs)

162a The task is sufficiently formidable to discourage most serious attempts over the past two millennia. Our situation is different only in the inescapability of articulating their interrelationships. Contact and contiguity between the great spiritual traditions has historically been of a more limited nature. Particular episodes and locales brought the problem of parallel revelations to occasional attention. Never has the contact across traditions been so ubiquitous and constant as the global modern civilization has made it.2 Familiarity with other civilizations has been an accelerating feature of modernity ever since its emergence in the voyages of discovery. Ease of travel, communication, and migration have made us increasingly aware of the diversity of cultural traditions, and the intensifying interdependence of global development has made the promotion of mutual understanding a more pressing requirement. Our present moment, poised at the dawn of the third millennium, raises ever more profoundly the question of the meaning of the convergence that is drawing us together. The challenge for the future is to find the means of spiritual interrelationship to match the increasing practical interpenetration of our world. We have been presented with the opportunity and the necessity of conversation across the great spiritual traditions, but we have yet to find the theoretical shelter within which a meaningful dialogue can be carried on. Indifference concealed by feigned interest is clearly neither a source of toleration or conversation. (Fs)

162b Only a common pursuit of truth is capable of grounding a meaningful exchange. Mutual respect cannot avoid eventual consideration of the character of the differences and judgment of their adequacy or inadequacy for the common reality toward which they point. Distinctions must be acknowledged because it is only on their basis that the inner unity can be explored. From an amorphous relativism, nothing meaningful can be derived. We must take seriously the presence of a common reality in which all human beings participate and by which their experience is rendered communicable, rather than give credence to the fear that there is nothing generative of a bond between us by appealing to a superficial rhetoric of toleration. The harder way is the testing of respective strengths and weaknesses through conversation. Even a robust exchange is appropriate if the issue concerns the truth or falsity of existence. In the process, we will no doubt discover that what still separates us is far less than the reality that unites us in the common quest of being. The need for illusory harmonization fades away as the invincibility of our common humanity comes to the fore. In the process, we discover that the problems so apparently insoluble at the beginning of the exercise, especially the great question of a criterion of truth recognizable by all, assumes more tractable proportions. Conversation itself leads us toward the criterion embedded in the inquiry itself. Our quest for being does not have to await the discovery of the principle by which it is to be guided, since it is already contained in the movement that animates the search. We know of what we are in search before we enter upon it. This simple but profound realization can provide the means of illuminating the interreligious dialogue it already sustains. (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Einbruch der Transzendenz: verschiedene geschichtliche Entfaltungen; Moses, Griechen, Konfuzianismu, Taoismus, Hinduismus, Islam

Kurzinhalt: It can be expressed as an utter gulf between the transcendent divinity and the rest of reality, as in the Mosaic definitiveness of the I AM ...

Textausschnitt: 168b The line by which the implications are unfolded is never smooth or uniform. It can be expressed as an utter gulf between the transcendent divinity and the rest of reality, as in the Mosaic definitiveness of the I AM, yet never succeed in extending beyond the confines of the Chosen People to the chosenness of each individual human soul. The break with the divine reality of the cosmos may be far less radical, such as in classical philosophy, in which the movement of the soul toward the Beyond is differentiated, but no countermovement from the transcendent can be conceived of a divine source whose paradigmatic ikon remains the cosmos itself. Friendship between man and God is, according to Aristotle, impossible. A fully transcendent and self-revealing God, indispensable for such a relationship, has not yet been experienced by him. The break with the cosmic reality can be so tenuous that the movement toward the Beyond is still expressed hierarchically, as in Confucianism, or has been concentrated into itself as the Way, which is simultaneously the way of the cosmos and the way beyond it, as in Taoism. Or the transcending movement can remain so tied to the struggle against the cosmos that it can only be conceived in terms of the dichotomy of illusion and liberation, as in Hinduism. By contrast, the focus on the movement itself can become so intense that it can become its own justification eclipsing all other reality, as in the Buddhist attainment of Boddhisatva. Even when the maximum differentiation is beheld in the self-revelation of transcendent Being within time, as in Christianity, there is no guarantee that the full amplitude of differentiation will be maintained. Islam arises, to a considerable extent, out of the demand for simplification of the mystery of the incarnation, and Gnosticism flourishes because of the perennial demand to overleap the distance that separates us from its consummation. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Achsenzeit (Jaspers): Kompaktheit und Differenziertheit

Kurzinhalt: Unity is the primary experience of the cosmos within which we find ourselves; transcendent Being, whose revelation is, of necessity, wholly inward

Textausschnitt: 165a Even the discovery of that necessity cannot be fully made in the absence of revelation. It is an inescapable aspect of the transcendent constitution of our existence that the illumination of its dimensions is also dependent on the revelatory events. Apart from the discovery of God, the adumbration of the full range of human nature cannot take place. Differentiation is thus not merely the history of man's increasing penetration of the order in which he participates; it is more properly conceived as the history of the episodic irruptions of transcendent Being, whose radiance irrevocably changes the order of things. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as human history apart from the history of the encounters between God and man. To the extent that the most momentous events consist of breakthroughs from a level of reality beyond anything known in our ordinary experience, the differentiation of self-consciousness is punctuated by theophanic outbursts. In retrospect the illuminations may be recognizable as elaborations of what is already known, but the luminosity that makes the apprehension possible cannot be accounted for without remainder. Even the retrospective continuity that is recognized is in some sense prepared by the preceding flow of revelation within an immanent reality that has never completely forgotten its originating divine touch of creation. Wherever we turn, we never seem to gain the purely natural unfolding of consciousness by which the odyssey of self-discovery and self-realization might become the preserve of routinized human instrumentality. (Fs)

165b We are thrown back on the revelatory process and the moment of its transparence as the decisive breakthrough of self-consciousness. Theophanic irruptions, the self-disclosure of the Beyond, are indeed the events that have structured our history. To the extent that the emergence of the world religions has been the single most significant development of meaning, then we may regard their emergence as the turning point of history. The justification for regarding them as such is that, even today, they constitute the limits of the horizons of meaning within which we live. Modernity, which has sought to absorb them within itself as external phenomena, has succeeded only in missing their import. It has not succeeded in replacing them, and the reason is clear. Mundane rationality is capable of organizing only the world of beings; it is neither capable nor receptive of the transcendent glimpse by which their permeability toward Being is apprehended. The durability of the great symbolic forms of the world religions is not coincidental. It derives precisely from their formative relationship toward Being. Only a further illumination of the transcendent is capable of extending them and, once they have emerged, they have the durability of marking a distinct limit in the glance of eternity within time. Insofar as there is any absolute turning point within history, we are justified in regarding the theophanic outbursts as the legitimate contenders. They structure history into a Before and After by which even the differentiation of history itself arises. (Fs)

166a Historians have long been fascinated by the question because the study of the past virtually invites reflection on its structure. A pattern that has impressed several generations with its significance is the occurrence of parallel irruptions of transcendent revelation between 800 and 200 B.C. This is the period when the prophets in Israel, the mystic philosophers in Greece, the Vedists and Buddhists in India, the Taoists and Confucians in China, and the Zoroastrians in Persia were all engaged in the opening of the soul toward the extracosmic revelation by which universal humanity is constituted. It was a period of such momentous significance in terms of the break with the cosmological myth, the discovery of rationality, and the emergence of universal human nature that Karl Jaspers named it the axis time.1 All history seemed to revolve around it, and we recognize the source of the great symbolic forms that endure architectonically up to the present. A particularly striking convergence seems to occur around 500 B.C., at least in retrospect, when we contemplate that Confucius, the Buddha, Heraclitus, and Deutero-Isaiah were contemporaries. The pattern could not be merely coincidental, since the moment seemed to have inaugurated the decisive opening of history toward universality. Jaspers may even be forgiven the enthusiasm of denoting the epochal contemporaneity as the "axis time" because such outbursts do signal a decisive differentiation of order. Of course, reminder is needed that the axis designation omits such momentous irruptions as the Mosaic revelation and the epiphany of Christ as well as the experience of Mohammed, but the inclination is not false. Each of the theophanies is axial, but neither individually nor in aggregate are they reducible to a mundane pattern of occurrence. The axis is precisely the shattering of the cosmic realm as the scale of measurement of reality. (Fs)

167a They converge in rupturing the compactness of the cosmological form of experience. Unity is the primary experience of the cosmos within which we find ourselves. It is one order whose consubstantial wholeness indicates that all levels of reality are connected from the most ephemeral to the most enduring. Only the cosmos as a whole is the comprehensive embodiment of order, and everything else gains its position by participating in the imitation of the cosmos.2 Just as order in the cosmos is mediated hierarchically from the highest visible divinities to the lowliest elements of nature, so too can human society live in order by analogically reflecting the hierarchical mediation of the cosmos. Just as the cosmos undergoes its cyclical redemption from disorder and the rebirth of new order by returning to its first day of creation, so human existence can participate in the same rhythms of regeneration from decay by fitting within the New Year renewal of the cosmos. Cosmological order, as it developed in the ancient high civilizations or as it perennially exists among all archaic societies, is an enchanted world. It is a world "full of gods" in which any event can become the occasion for a hiero-phany and in which magical transformations can break out at any moment. Not only is nothing simply what it is, but rational speculative unfolding is impossible. The most poignant feature is surely the degree of unself-consciousness concerning the source of its order. Everything must be depicted in tangible visible terms, since there is no differentiation of the mind, soul, or heart as the seat of its symbolic profusion.3 (Fs) (notabene)

168a All of that unexamined unity is ruptured, not by the breakdown of order that compels men to think about their situation, but only by the concomitant irruption of transcendent Being, whose revelation is, of necessity, wholly inward. The instrument by which it is apprehended is illumined only in the radiance from the Beyond. Apprehension of the radical otherness of the transcendent casts varying degrees of negativity over all other immanent transmitters. Divinity withdraws from the cosmos as it is concentrated in the revelation of Being. Mediation by the hierarchy or rhythms of the cosmos can no longer occupy central place, when the incompatibility of the God with all intrascosmic embodiments has been more or less dramatically discerned. The move is not from polytheism to monotheism, since both variants are discoverable at every point in the cosmological myth. Indeed, the consciousness of the gods as all derived from a common divine cosmic substance is its overriding emphasis. What is decisively new is the irruption of transcendent Being. The encounter with an utterly different order of reality is the signal event. Having once felt its unmistakable touch, the derivative character of all other reality can never be eliminated. All of the epochal spiritual outbursts move in the direction of this fundamental distinction from which all other differentiations follow. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Christentum - gnostische Alternative (Gnosis); Rebellion gegen die Struktur der Transzendenz

Kurzinhalt: The additional element is revolt. It is resentment at the limitations imposed on us as the price of our mysterious participation in transcendence.

Textausschnitt: 194a Contrast with Christianity's great imbalancing opponent provides the most convincing demonstration of this equilibrating force it provides. Acceptance of limits and the readiness to strive unceasingly against them is a fine line to walk, and it is not surprising that it is more often missed than found. But, whatever the difficulty, it is the one avenue toward the fullest realization of the possibilities of existence. On it depends the progressive movement of the human race, which must simultaneously avoid the overreaching ambition that destroys itself. There are many ways, as Aristotle remarked, that the mark can be missed, but only one in which it can be hit. Yet the multiplicity of distortions all derive from the same root in their unwillingness to submit to the discipline required to reach the goal. Indiscipline has its source, not primarily in the unruliness of temper that will not accept a master, but in the prior disposition of revolt that sets its own will above all others, including the will of the whole. St. Augustine refers to it as pride, the assertion of human primacy before all other reality. Even God cannot supplant the self-will at the center of the soul that has chosen its own way irrespective of the consequences. Persistence in revolt is the great imbalancing force of human existence because it cannot be deflected by a rational consideration of the costs. Revolt and irrationality go together, and the symbolic elaboration of its thrust is the great alternative to the Christian redemption of disorder. (Fs) (notabene)

195a This symbolism has for two millennia been known as Gnosticism. It has been so closely related to Christianity that it can, with considerable justification, be regarded as the quintessential Christian heresy. Features of Gnosticism are certainly discernible in most of the great heretical movements over the two millennia of Christian history. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that Christianity spawns Gnosticism as its inescapable double. While there is a certain plausibility to this perspective, it should not allow us to overlook two other decisive factors. First, the advent of Gnosticism as a syncretic, mytho-speculative movement of escape from the cosmos antedates the time of Christ and the early Church. Second, and of more crucial import, Christianity itself is the great antidote to Gnosticism because it teaches us how to live fully in the world while fully acknowledging our home beyond it. Christianity represents the definitive elimination of the spirit of revolt because it is the most complete expression of submission to the will of God mysteriously present in existence. God himself has submitted to the same imperative of order, definitively establishing it and revealing it within the unfolding of reality. Balance has been perfectly achieved in Christ between the movement toward transcendent Being and the condition of immanent existence that is the only possibility known to us. Yet the sentiment of revolt has not been eliminated. We find it present within ourselves, in the impatience with the necessity of enduring the imperfection intervening before its abolition in the blinding return of perfection.1 (Fs)

196a The propensity to run toward the final consummation is almost inevitable in any movement of spiritual illumination. Eschatological, apocalyptic, and millennarian expectations are a feature of the spiritual outbursts in which revelation is received and perennially renewed. The glimpse of Being that illuminates existence in every moment tempts us to overleap the distance that separates us from the enchanting goal. But something more is needed to make us persist in the project of consummation, even if it means jeopardizing the only condition in which the momentary glimpse of transfiguration obtains. The additional element is revolt. It is resentment at the limitations imposed on us as the price of our mysterious participation in transcendence. Irrationality erupts in the abyss of revolt that will not endure the condition of being a man and insists on jumping immediately into the state of divine being. The outbreak of irrationality, which is itself the mystery of iniquity, cannot be rendered intelligible. That is its character. It defies all reason because the futility of its aspiration remains impervious to dissuasion. This is why spiritual revolt is the great disturbing factor within human history, destroying not only our hold on spiritual life, but ultimately even the very possibility of life in this world as well. Only the healing touch of transcendent Love, pouring itself out for us, is capable of breaking through the blindness that robs us of the capacity to see through reason. (Fs) (notabene)

196b The deadliness of the Gnostic leap into perfection is seen in its evacuation of the possibility of human life. What would it mean to have realized our complete and total fulfillment right now? This is the prospect that has opened up the post-Hegelian speculations on the end of history. It is, of course, the promise contained in all of the ideological movements of immanent transfiguration. But it is only when we contemplate the end point toward which they and, by extension, the modern world is directed that we apprehend the full blankness of what they contain. The end of history, as Alexandre Kojeve most profoundly delineated for us, spells the end of human life as we know it.1 All that we are is constituted by the restless striving toward goals that, as soon as they are reached, turn out to fall short of the satisfaction envisioned. We move restlessly and ceaselessly from one achievement to the next, the former turning out to be only the means toward the latter, which in turn reveals its own provisionality towards a further impetus, and so on. Infinite progress driven by unfillable longing turns out to be the mystery that guards human life. It preserves our openness toward the transcendent Being that alone can answer our insatiable hunger and, at the same time, ensures against the attainment of any entombing resting place within this life. The restlessness of the spirit driving toward eternity is simultaneously the preservation of our earthly vitality as well. Nothing can be more oppressive than perfection, as the Utopias of our imagination forever attest. (Fs) (notabene)

197a It is one of the curious ironies of our secular civilization that the preservation of its most impressive accomplishments is crucially dependent on their inconclusiveness. Nothing is more damaging to science than the suggestion that we are entering an era in which all of the fundamental questions have been resolved. This may have been the holy grail that drew the great efforts of discovery forward, but its attainment would spell the end of all scientific life. No more would boundless curiosity set us out in search of an ever more comprehensive understanding of the world in which we live. Inquisitiveness and the thrill of discovery would disappear. Without a boundless field of inquiry to stir our imaginations and provoke our pursuit, there would be nothing to preserve even the capacity to extend our scientific reach. If all knowledge is known, then, in a certain sense, knowledge is no more. It cannot be activated as a movement of discovery; it is routinized as the transmission of what is incapable of progression. Life-not only intellectually, but in all its other dimensions-would no longer resemble the thrusting, striving, and enticing vitality we recognize as the core of human existence. If ever our satisfaction were achieved, we would be no more. Instead, we would be compelled to revert, as Kojeve so preceptively observed, to a purely animal level in which thinking has no place, since all has been reduced to the mechanical. We might go through the motions, as he explained, in preserving a kind of snob formalism, but this would be merely be an external cover for the hollowness at our core. We shudder at the suffocating finality of all Utopian dreams and are grateful that we have not been blessed with such perfection. (Fs) (notabene)

198a The most militant recent expressions of the perfectionist impulse in totalitarian ideologies may have passed, but the temptation remains a permanent possibility. What could be more plausible than the extrapolation from perfection glimpsed to its consummation? Only the definitive differentiation of the transcendent distance can guard us against the possibility. We must be able to apprehend the gulf between immanent existence and its transcendent fulfillment. The impossibility of finite being adequately embodying infinite Being must remain inescapably clear, if only to guarantee against the possibility of confusion between them. Then we recognize the incapacity of the human to become the receptacle of the divine. Only through the free gift from the divine side is a bridging of the distance conceivable. In its own terms, this world and all that is in it is clearly incapable of the transcending perfection of Being, and there is no danger of confusing the two. Far from devaluing existence in this world, such a differentiation grounds the value of immanent reality at its deepest level. Now it is free to unfold its own dynamic, secure in the knowledge that there is no possibility of exhausting its innermost nature as an image of eternity within time. Since there is no possibility of time encompassing the transcendence of eternity, the endless fecundity of finite existence rolls forth as the analog of true infinity. Existence in this world is fully accepted on its own terms and yet recognized in terms of its highest aspiration. That is, mundane reality points toward the Being it reflects, but is ever incapable of attaining. Transparence toward the infinite is the highest realization of finite existence. (Fs)

198a The most militant recent expressions of the perfectionist impulse in totalitarian ideologies may have passed, but the temptation remains a permanent possibility. What could be more plausible than the extrapolation from perfection glimpsed to its consummation? Only the definitive differentiation of the transcendent distance can guard us against the possibility. We must be able to apprehend the gulf between immanent existence and its transcendent fulfillment. The impossibility of finite being adequately embodying infinite Being must remain inescapably clear, if only to guarantee against the possibility of confusion between them. Then we recognize the incapacity of the human to become the receptacle of the divine. Only through the free gift from the divine side is a bridging of the distance conceivable. In its own terms, this world and all that is in it is clearly incapable of the transcending perfection of Being, and there is no danger of confusing the two. Far from devaluing existence in this world, such a differentiation grounds the value of immanent reality at its deepest level. Now it is free to unfold its own dynamic, secure in the knowledge that there is no possibility of exhausting its innermost nature as an image of eternity within time. Since there is no possibility of time encompassing the transcendence of eternity, the endless fecundity of finite existence rolls forth as the analog of true infinity. Existence in this world is fully accepted on its own terms and yet recognized in terms of its highest aspiration. That is, mundane reality points toward the Being it reflects, but is ever incapable of attaining. Transparence toward the infinite is the highest realization of finite existence. (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Christentum: Leben der Balance aufgrund der Differenzierung des Seins; Unterwerfung unter das Geheimnis

Kurzinhalt: The balance that sustains the full vitality of life depends on the full differentiation of Being; The way toward reception of the transcendent fullness lies through complete submission to the mystery of the whole

Textausschnitt: 199b The balance that sustains the full vitality of life depends on the full differentiation of Being. This provides the deepest understanding of mundane reality, which is beheld without illusion for what it is, but at the same time is contemplated in its full finality beyond itself. Life in this world is not merely confined to its parameters. It is pregnant with implications for participation in Being itself. Through the theophanic intervention, the luminosity of existence has been opened up as a participation in the drama of the God who becomes man in order to redeem the human world for himself. What is at stake is not mere survival, but life itself. It can be lost through the overreaching that prompts us to step outside of our stature in the order of being and thereby slip into the abyss of all that lacks reality of any kind. As a result, life here is ennobled or elevated beyond its mere biological-psychological significance. To the extent that we lose sight of this transcending dimension of existence, we are also losing our grip on what most deeply affirms the value of mere physical and emotional and factual existence. The imperative of balance could not be more heightened, and neither could the line through which it is to be found more clearly delineated. (Fs)

200a Life is to be accepted on its own terms. It is incapable of providing the uninterrupted, peerless satisfaction we crave, but neither is it for that reason to be burdened with the concupiscent drive doomed to disappoint. Within that modest range, our earthly existence is capable of the highest actualization of life through the receptive opening toward transcendent Being. But that transcendence remains dependent on acceptance of our creaturely status. The way toward reception of the transcendent fullness lies through complete submission to the mystery of the whole in which we find ourselves. No murmuring against our fate is permitted if we are to become the vehicle for ineffable divine Love, whose deepest reality consists in the same outpouring of itself toward all creatures. Not only is this world affirmed, it is enhanced as the royal road toward the truth that contains it all. Revelation of the divine gift of self freely offered to all men and shining on the whole of existence becomes the beacon transforming and drawing all things to itself. The irruption of transcendent Being within time not only saves all that respond to it from the fatality of genesis and perishing; it sanctifies the process of becoming through which the transfiguring event of intervention takes place. Suffering, life, and death are no longer the impenetrable barriers of our existence. Now they assume the radiance of utter abnegation of self by which the translation into the being of Being takes place. (Fs) (notabene)
9.Kommentar (28/12/05): Zu "The way toward reception of the transcendent fullness lies through complete submission to the mystery of the whole in which we find ourselves.": Vergleiche dazu: John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 4 On Obidience. Die fr heutige Leser so seltsam erscheinenden Ausfhrung ber die Bedeutung des Gehorsams erhlt ihre Grundlage in der "submission to the mystery of the whole".

201a A dimension far beyond this transcendent finality of revelation, however emerges with the advent of Christ. The preceding meditation might be drawn from the Sermon on the Mount, as the account of how those open to the drawing of God ought to conduct themselves. The injunction toward perfection is reiterated because that is the way of the Father. Throughout, the refrain is repeated that the motivation for going beyond what we are strictly bound to do arises from the superabundant generosity of the Father who "makes his sun to shine on the good and the bad" (Matthew 5:45). The opening toward unconditioned Love requires the unconditional self-donation of love. There is no point at which we might hold back in expending ourselves in service toward others; not even their hardness and opaqueness can be sufficient reason for not doing more than we are expected to do. It must be toward all and for all and with all. Only then will we become the kind of men and women who are capable of becoming children of God, vessels of the transcendent Spirit that lives in us too. But we forget that the Sermon on the Mount was only the beginning of the teaching of Jesus, not its culmination. Beyond the reception of the luminous teaching is the recognition of who the teacher is. The Sermon reaches its apogee in the recognition that the utter submission of self that it calls forth is undertaken most perfectly by God himself becoming man in Jesus. (Fs)

201b Another level is attained through the recognition that the fate of perfect submission is undergone by Being itself present within the world. Not only is the full acceptance of the order of existence apprehended as the way toward Being; it is also revealed as the way of Being. A dimension over and above the revelatory movement toward the Beyond is contained in the recognition of the participation of the Beyond in the full realization of existence. It is best expressed as redemption. Not only is the path of self-submission before the mysterious order of Being unmistakably clear, but its realization has been definitively attained within time as being effective for all other beings. The sacrificial surrender of Christ to the divine will accomplishes what is lacking in the submission of all other beings throughout creation. Not only is a decisive rupture marked within time radiating its light in all directions, but all finite existence has been definitively raised up toward the redemptive participation beyond all immanent expectations. The transfiguration toward which all reality unattainably aspires has been differentiated as the culminating fulfillment of the eschaton. Indeed, the eschaton has become present in the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. Finite reality already exists in the tension that is transparent for its transfiguring fulfillment. No higher possibility can be conceived for immanent being. (Fs)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Konsumbefriedigung und Narzissmus unter dem Blickpunkt der Gnosis

Kurzinhalt: Feel-good narcissism and consumer gratification ...what is less well understood is their filiation with the oldest of all rivals to Christianity in Gnosticism

Textausschnitt: 207b A measure of the degree to which our contemporary religiosity is infected with the Gnostic illusion is the extent to which spirituality has become defined by self-fulfillment. The gnostic pattern of spiritual short-circuitry is at work in it. Feel-good narcissism and consumer gratification are well-recognized features of the contemporary spiritual landscape. But what is less well understood is their filiation with the oldest of all rivals to Christianity in Gnosticism. It is sensed, but rarely understood, how deeply contrary to Christianity the spirituality of immanent success really is.1 Attainment of the means of our satisfaction undermines the redemptive thrust of the Christian message. Congregations already satiated beyond their expectations and thus perfected in their spiritual lives are hardly in need of a redeemer. No wonder there is little call for preaching on the wickedness of the human heart or on the ineradicable proclivity for evil within each of us. As a consequence, there is even less need for reference to the redemptive power of suffering. Lives neither in need of repentance nor prone to the afflictions of the body and mind are hardly receptive ground for the Christian message of healing. The perfect have no need of a savior, and the same is true of those who have lost all cognizance of their imperfection. But with this evisceration of the Christian message, there also flows away the depth of insight within which reason can unfold toward its limits. The field of rationality is correspondingly shrunk toward a mundane realm of existence closed off against all illuminative glimpses from the Beyond. It is no wonder that a spirituality reduced to secular self-fulfillment and self-esteem can offer little in the way of guidance to a reason condemned to endlessly organizing the achievement of mundane efficiency. The possibility that suffering might not be something on which we would want to turn our backs can no longer penetrate, because it is no longer transparent for the transcendent love that redeems and renders it redemptive toward all others. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Gnosis: moralische Indifferenz; Augustinus' Erfahrungen (Confessiones)

Kurzinhalt: ... incapable of detecting our own drift downwards into the abyss of indifference and self-satisfaction; Augustine's Confessions contain one of the classic analyses of the process by which the Gnostic position

Textausschnitt: 213a Nothing betrays the mendacity of the Gnostic position more than its indifference to the moral struggle.1 In many respects, Gnosticism is developed to avoid or overleap the conflict between good and evil within us. But the desire to jump into another condition does not materially affect our situation. Without attention to the rigors of resistance against evil, we do not magically leap into a state of perfection, but instead leave ourselves more vulnerable than ever to the blandishments of selfishness, cruelty, and vice, which we are no longer even able to recognize. The situation could hardly be worse. Having lost sight of the growing realization of goodness as the imperative outweighing all else, we have simultaneously become incapable of detecting our own drift downwards into the abyss of indifference and self-satisfaction. It is no wonder that Gnostic movements eventually wreak havoc on themselves and their world. In some sense, this is their intention. They wish to invert the entire established order of things. But they do not wish to extend the process into the destruction of their own spiritual selves. In this last bastion of connection with the world of ordinary experience we behold the irrationality of the Gnostic conviction, precisely at the point at which it cannot quite close off the awareness of itself. The Gnostic mindset knows that it has not attained the spiritual perfection it claims. Rather, a cosmic aggrandizement of power has been mistaken for the goodness to which it is irrelevant. (Fs) (notabene)

214a Perfection, as St. Augustine understood, is the Achilles heel of Gnosticism. He should know, having spent years under the influence of one of the most powerful ancient forms derived from the monk Mani. Augustine's Confessions contain one of the classic analyses of the process by which the Gnostic position, so seemingly impregnable against all obvious objections to it, nevertheless cannot quite avoid the inner crumbling of its certainty. The expansiveness of Augustine's personality could not be contained within the confines of a system, no matter how peerlessly consistent. He recounts the major attractions of the Manichaean outlook. It answered the questions of suffering and evil in existence that remained insoluble under all other perspectives, including the Christian. But its signal attraction was that it provided initiates with a sense of infinite superiority to all merely cosmic realities and simultaneously relieved them of the burden of the moral struggle by which we and the world are improved. Convinced of the absolute purity of the true inner sense and cognizant of its detachment from all external reality, including our own physical and social existence, the Manichaeans were left with nothing to do but contemplate their superiority to the unrelievedly evil regime around them.1 It was a quintessentially dualistic system of good and evil realities, with all of the benefits and defects inherent in such a construction. Impervious to all objections posed from outside it, since all such resistance must come from the evil morality of this world, the unravelling could only occur from within the hermetic closure of the system itself. Augustine recognized the static nature of the faith in which he lived. It allowed for no possibility of progress, since neither intellectual nor moral advance was possible within this world. The attraction might have remained firm for lesser minds, but not for the omnivorous restlessness of an Augustine. A faith in which limitless spiritual and intellectual development was impossible simply could not answer the deepest longing of his nature. The transcendent fulfillment that Gnosticism sought to grasp with such premature eagerness proved incapable of enclosure within the fixity of determined revolt. Intimations of transcendent Being eventually broke down the walls of incarceration in illusion. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Nominalismus, devotio moderna, via moderna, fideistischer Sprung in den Glauben, Unterwerfung unter die Subjektivität; strikte Trennung zw. Offenbarung und Vernunft

Kurzinhalt: fideistic leap of faith, which was tantamount to the admission of absolute subjectivity; Nominalism, whose deepest impulse lay in the urge to protect the content of revelation from the unravelling effects of rationalism ...

Textausschnitt: 55a All of this was dimly sensed in the dismissal of the Thomasic synthesis of the succeeding generation. The fourteenth century was dominated by the devotio moderna, in which Christian piety underwent a striking intensification, and the via moderna, in which reason was set free to embark on the empirical investigation of the world. The nexus between the two is the emergence of nominalism, which can only properly be understood in light of its theological motives. Nominalism was not just a chastening of the ambition of reason in relation to the problem of universals. It was a recognition of the inability of the Christian revelation to absorb the burgeoning rational energies and the sense that their endowment with a coequal stature with revelation ultimately threatened the latter. Philosophical disputes could readily become disruptive of the coherence of Christian theology. In case of a conflict between the two, one must always opt for revelation as the superior source of authority. The serene confidence of Saint Thomas, in the unity of truth that rendered incompatibility between the two impossible, had disappeared. Now a willingness to surrender the authority of reason seemed the most reliable means of securing the unquestioned truth of revelation. It was in this context that the self-contraction of reason to the investigator of empirical relations was readily accepted. Gone was the prospect of reason as a mode of wisdom guiding us toward the ultimate truth of reality and even to the very threshold of revelation itself. However, the more modest role of investigating individual beings could gladly be accepted because it went together with a flowering of devotional experience and a consolidation of ecclesiastical organization. Theology alone possessed the authoritative divine guidance, and truncated reason could no longer prove a hindrance or a help. (Fs)

56a We recognize the outline of our own world in the fideistic nominalism of the late Middle Ages. Socially, economically, politically, and culturally, it was a period of bursting vitality. Its energies were by no means confined to the mundane sphere, but were extensively translated into new spiritual movements that the Church proved increasingly incapable of absorbing. One has only to contemplate the parochial Christianity of Piers Plowman to observe the disintegration of the universal Church at the experiential level. It was the century of the great mystics-Suso, Tauler, Ruysbroeck, the Theologia Germanica, and The Cloud of Unknowing. The displaced classes of the new towns proved a ripe breeding ground for the appeal of millennarian and mystical anarchists, and peasant rebellions were fed from the same expectations of a universal spiritual renovation. Control of the spiritual initiative slipped away from the Church, despite its formidable organizational achievements, and was free to be captured by figures with the requisite skill and daring, whether saintly monks, itinerant preachers, or the national monarchs. It is the strange combination of rigor and submissivism we recognize from our own naive technicism. Revelation had established its unquestioned primacy as the only medium of authoritative knowledge about reality, but it had lost the capacity for a rational unfolding of the mysteries it preserved. The stage had been set for the increasingly subjective expressions of faith by which it eventually erodes its title to any publicly accessible claim to knowledge. Like so many of the triumphs of the time, it proved hollow. Exclusive preeminence for revelation ultimately pointed toward its alienation from the world of verifiability. Severance of the connection with the world of rational elaboration meant that revelation could eventually be discarded as authoritative knowledge. The only tenuous connection remaining was the fideistic leap of faith, which was tantamount to the admission of absolute subjectivity. On the other hand, the liberation of reason from its revelatory context proved equally illusory. No longer restrained by the pressure of a revelatory tradition, it was certainly free to explore the empirical factuality at will. But without a mooring in transcendent Being, the analyses of science aggregated to no higher meaning. Only with the later expansion of technology did the hollowness of the situation become apparent. It was possible to become equipped with a formidable control over the domain of nature, but, without an ultimate point of reference for the whole, we radically lack a sense of direction. Science could no longer deliver on its implicit promise of wisdom, and religion had ossified into the dogmatic boundaries incapable of reflective engagement with the world. (Fs)

57a Nominalism, whose deepest impulse lay in the urge to protect the content of revelation from the unravelling effects of rationalism, had severed the connection so vital to each of them. Of course, the nature of the civilizational schism does not become apparent until much later. This is why it is necessary to introduce the extrapolations toward the present in order to appreciate the full character of the nominalist rupture. To the contemporaries, and even to later historians, the combination of nominalism and mysticism appears almost as a more viable form of the medieval synthesis. Having abandoned the riskier enterprise of reconciling Aristotle and Christianity, the nominalists could claim to have reached a more stable evocation of the relationship between reason and revelation. What could be clearer than the acknowledgement of their strictly separate spheres? The absence of a classic philosophic inquiry, with all of the dangers of the meditative opening toward Being, could hardly be missed. It was enough that philosophy had been domesticated to the level of a technical analysis of problems. No pressing need suggested its expansion to the level of a comprehensive meditation on the order of reality. Revelation had already occupied that space, and it could be more securely held so long as it no longer faced the prospect of competition from rival sources of inquiry. Not only did the arrangement have the virtue of simplicity, but it also promised the incalculable benefit of stability. The tension between these millennial symbolisms and, more importantly, the tension within each of them between illuminative experiences and the articulation of meaning had been resolved. (Fs)

1.Kommentar (12/12/05): Der Absatz oben lässt die Notwendigkeit des Schrittes von der Ebene der Theorie zu jener der Interiortät im Sinne Lonergans klar werden.

58a Testament to its stability is the degree to which this nominalist arrangement still constitutes our world. It is the unexamined background for all our discussions. Faith is one realm, and science is another. Their heteronomous horizons may touch on one another, but there can be no substantial involvement between them. This is how modern science works, confident in its absolute autonomy and self-confident in the defense of its legitimacy. It knows it does not have to provide answers to the ultimate questions of the meaning of existence and is therefore released to roam as it will over the empirical details of reality. By contrast, religion occupies the space that is beyond science. Its connection with reason is increasingly tenuous, as it knows it does not have to answer for the relationship to rational inquiry. Instead, the dimension of feeling is elevated to the highest degree. Experience alone is fraught with the danger of emptiness and, in order to draw back from the abyss, religion gravitates toward fundamentalism and authoritarianism. The arrangement endures because it is so stable. All parties see their concerns best addressed. All, that is, but one. (Fs) (notabene)