Readers, Ye Be Warned: Morbidly Philosophical...

Spring is upon us. At least it is here in merry old England. I do not know if the same can be said for the frozen and desolate wastes of Scandinavia or Texas. But as for me and my house, we are enjoying looking at daffodils and crocuses, at the snowdrops and the occasional flower that kind of looks like a crocus, but also a bit like a tulip, but it's not a tulip because those won't come up for at least another month.

You know the ones.

Spring is a most excellent season, particularly in England. Winter's grey is given way to hues of blue and green. Yes, you can quote me on that. Of course, it's still windy, still rainy, and still soggy, but the days are rapidly elongating with a reckless abandon not normally seen in a place like England. I don't honestly know how the locals cope, but I'm loving it.

And, of course, in springtime, a young man's fancy turns to love. In my case, since I already love my wife, my fancies go wandering among the various authors I've been reading of late. And, I should add, lest you think I am less than faithful, this sort of fancy is not one my wife would want or particularly thank me for. She is, I think, much happier that I expend it on (often dead) theologians and philosophers.

Right now I'm expending it on Karl Barth. For what follows it is not only unimportant that you have read Barth, it is probably unhelpful because then you'll just tell me how I'm wrong (which I probably am) and that that's not what Barth said.

You've got some nerve, fella. Let's put it this way: Barth inspired me.

First Principles (?): Karl Barth and Epistemology

Barth's theology is 'dialectic' working within the constant tension of statements about God of 'yes' and simultaneously 'no.' What we affirm of God we immediately deny, and somewhere between these we find God. How? We do so by God's revelation to us, which is primarily given in Jesus Christ in the Incarnation. This is the point at which God who is totally other to the world (no') reaches out to the world in his self-giving ('yes'). The Incarnation is the intersection point of 'yes' and 'no.'

Of course, this revelation is not an immediate one for most of us. Barth outlines the mediators between us and God as the Bible and, especially the way in which divine revelation (inspiration, the Word) is mediated by the human freedom and personality of the individual authors ('the words'). Likewise, when we approach the Bible we do not do so to gain a system of ethics or of philosophy, but to encounter the risen Christ. This we do also through the second mediator which is the Church. Although Barth's ecclesiology could not be called Orthodox, he does, at least, seem to have one. (Indeed, Georges Florovsky could have had much in common with Barth in the ways he chose to present his Rule of Faith!)

But, and here is where I will begin to part ways with the Karl Barth of history, taking his shade along with me as a guide into the mirky abyss of epistemology.

(Like the Divine Comedy reference? Like oil on the beard of Aaron...)


Definition: Tangent: a line which touches a circle at only one point

So. We have this picture of theology, or at least of its epistemological capacity, which could be described visually as a line beginning from a center-point and extended infinitely in both directions. At the center-point, this line is tangent to a circle. Remembering that it is possible to find a tangent for any point on the circumference of a circle, I'll explain what the picture means.

In one direction, the line approaches a negation, a 'no'. In the other direction, it approaches an affirmation, a 'yes.' Both 'yes' and 'no' are assertions we can make about God and are, therefore, positive. Yet it is equally clear that we cannot assert their synthesis or their resolution, and so the line itself represents the 'dialectic' of 'yes' and 'no', which is not itself assertable. We cannot simultaneously assert 'yes' and 'no' except in a hypothetical fashion.

Consequently, this line marks out kataphatic theology (in the two ends, each of which is assertable) and apophatic theology (in the line itself, unassertable). Apophatic and kataphatic are, under this representation, irreconcilable, irreducible, and inextricable. One may wonder if this is not the nature of all dialectic.

Anything we can say about God we find immediately leads us into tension. To affirm of God that he is love is, immediately to affirm that he is not love. Both positive and negative statements are, as it were, affirmative. God is not-love. Something else may be substituted for love--mercy, justice, holiness, etc. None of these are equivalent to 'hate' although some biblical passages imply the presence of 'hatred' in God. The point, however, is that there is a long list of possible alternatives to 'God is love' which can be substituted, each carrying an equally positive affirmation of God which simultaneously denies that 'God is love.'

In Christ we find, as the hymns say, that 'justice and mercy have kissed.' This line is from the hymns of the Feast of the Presentation in the Temple, and it perfectly illustrates the reality of Christ as holding together (in a kiss, in communion, in one flesh) the various 'yes' and 'no's of God's nature.

Thus, Barth calls the center-point (the point of tangent) Christ and I am inclined to agree. Christ (the incarnate, theandric Christ) holds together in one person (hypostasis) two natures (dua phuseis). These natures, like the 'yes' and 'no' of dialectic are irreconcilable, irreducible, and inextricable. In a sense, I think, this is what the Chalcedonian definition with its subsequent affirmations and qualifications in the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils (upholding to two wills and the two 'energies' against monothelitism and monenergism), was saying. Christ's person subsists not 'from' but 'in' two natures--the two natures do not coalesce into a synthetic 'third.' Rather they maintain their own integrity while being totally united. There is a simultaneous affirmation and denial which may be made of each nature in reference to the other--to say 'yes' to the human is, logically, to say 'no' to the divine. Yet in the person of Christ each of these receives its own 'yes' and the result is not antinomy but person--the unknowable that can be touched, the kiss of 'yes' and 'no'.


First Tangent: Apophaticism

But any statement we may make about God leads us into dialectically apophatic contradictions. And every one of these can find its center-point in Christ. Why? Because Christ is God and Christ is human--everything Divine is present, just as everything human. Consequently, anything we say about the Divine we say about Christ. Yet, in some sense, each of these statements is mediated through Christ's humanity. Consequently, the Divine is made tangible in a way commensurate with human thinking--dialectically tense statements about the Divine can be held together apophatically and related to the world we experience.

I must emphasize that this is not a Palamite 'essence v. energies' distinction. That distinction has little, if anything, to do with the Incarnation, whereas this theogical-epistemological model absolutely relies on it.

Critically, it is also true that the model of apophatic theology I have given is not simply a via negativa--a way of negations. The way of negations is, at its hear, still a way to something. Such a way proceeds by denials, but each denial can be made a positive statement (as above)--'God is not x' becomes 'God is not-x' and we still try to pin down God as the 'wholly other' the 'hyperousion.' In doing so, we have actually delimited God's nature as not being 'wholly same' or 'in the world.' Yet the Incarnation makes clear that these must be held together if we are to ever appreciate both the infinite incomprensibility of God and the infinite tangibility of Jesus.

Apophaticism, it seems, lies deeper. Apophatic theology maintains both via positiva and via negativa as affirmations. However, by holding to a strictly incarnational model, these affirmations are simultaneously held together at a center-point which does not attempt to resolve them. Therein lies something of what apophaticism truly means: a comfort with paradox, but not with paradox for its own sake--paradox for us. More of this later.


Definition: Epistemic Lens

To return to the circle. Actually, as yet, there is no circle. There is only a line and its center-point. But, each statement about God finds its center in Christ. Each point thus defined takes its place on a circle whose size begins to emerge, the more we say about God. Thus, the picture we end up with is one of a circle with an infinite array of lines, each one tangential, stretching out infinitely into the space in which the circle exists (this space I shall define below).

The easiest way, of course, to define a circle, is to take one point as the center (a), and one point some distance from that (b) and say that a circle is the set of all points equidistant with (b) from (a). The shape which emerges is a regular plane curve.

What I have outlined is, in a sense, the reverse. We've begun with some point and, rather than calling it the center, we call it a point on the circumference. We then find other other points and, as these emerge, we look for the circle which can fit them. (I assume it is a circle and not, say, an ellipse--an ellipse feels almost tritheistic to me, although one may say that a circle implies radical monotheism. Perhaps in 3-D space one can combine the two. How glorious would that be?) But the upshot of this reversal is that the circle (or whatever) is fuzzy. It is not the product of definition, but of experience, and its boundaries are not well-marked.

Such a process recalls the development of Orthodox theology--things are fuzzy until someone oversteps the bounds and then definitions clamp down and points on the circle emerge.

Because we do not define the circle from its center, we have allowed a sort of empty space within, a realm of possibilities. All we have given are certain boundary markers. One may say that whatever lies within the circle is 'in Christ' and whatever lies outside is, like those outside the sanctuary, 'without.'

What then? To return briefly to Barth. He suggests that we should relate to everyone by seeing Christ in them and by seeing them in Christ. At the same time, we offer advice, counsel--and receive it. We become like Christ and we allow others to become like Christ. But we do so in terms of how we see. We walk around with 'Christ-glasses', if you'll pardon the image. The way in which we do so, I think, lies within the geometric analogy I have laid out.

The circle whose boundaries are fixed by Christ leaves an empty space within. This space we may call the Constrained Constructible--that is, the realm of possible ways of seeing and speaking the world which are themselves defined by Christ. It is an epistemic lens, the filter through which we take in the raw, meaningless data of the world and construct meaning out of it. If we do so only in terms of what we can say of God through Christ, then we constrain the possible constructions to fit those primary and, indeed, primal bounds. Christ comes to function epistemologically as a way of excluding possible meanings and implying others. Thus, we see Christ in all things and in all people. Likewise we become increasingly capable of seeing ourselves within Christ.


Second Tangent: Meaning and Construction

What of the space outside the circle? This we may term The Constructible. That is, this space (infinite, it would seem) represents the totality of possible meanings which we can create out of the totality of data available from the world.

I do not call any of this the Knowable. Why? We are not dealing with knowledge as such. Rather, we are dealing with the ways in which we approach knowledge. At the most basic level, every approach resolves into a 'yes' or a 'no', but likewise every approach also takes on board other ideas, other constructions, maxims, first principles, etc. Like Euclid, each approach to knowledge begins somewhere and builds upward. Like Euclid, each such approach verges on 'system' and every system is limited. Consequently every approach is limited. This means that other approaches (Lobachevsky, Minkowski, Pascal) are equally possible, equally valid in the realm of construction. We limit ourselves each time we choose between them. Yet the other possibilites continue to exist, not merely in the abstract but because someone chooses them.

The circle defines a group of possible constructions (themselves infinite as the points within a circle), but delimits others. Even as it does so, it cannot help but imply others: a circle in space defines not only its interior but its exterior. In all parts of the surrounding space we find an array of lines radiating from the circle. In each direction, these lines point to certain possible affirmations--certain meanings which can be ascribed to the world and its content. Each of these statements are limited precisely because they hold 'no' or 'yes' and not, as Christ does, both.

The interplay of metaphysics and epistemology becomes clear at this point. The world is created by God. Therefore, the whole world and all its infinite possibilities relate back to God. Therefore we may say that any possible construction of meaning on the world is the same as a possible statement about God. However, most statements are limited in one direction or another and cannot affirm the dialectically tensed unity of Christ. Only statements about Christ which properly maintain both sides actually do describe God.


Preliminary Conclusion: Apophaticism Revisited

Consequently, the circle is an apophatic one. It is such not by being negative but by holding both positive and negative together. It is apophatic likewise because it is fuzzy--it boundaries are not clear until pushed and, even then, admit both interior and exterior. For every positive statement we make about God we must immediately qualify it negatively and then allow both to rest without resolution or synthesis.

Renee Magritte's painting Le Condition Humain

criticizes something very similar to what I've described. Here it shows us as limiting the world and, in fact, missing out on so much of it, precisely because of the boundaries and filters we use to interpret it. The WSOGMM, as Douglas Adams called it, is vaster than any approach, any system, any statements. The circle as I have described it, however, does not suffer from the problem of limitation. It freely admits not only the possibility but the actuality of surplus, infinitely more than what we deal with.

But it says to the space beyond: I cannot stray. That is, to step into 'yes' and leave behind 'no' is to misrepresent God and, in so doing, to misrepresent the world, and thus to appropriate it and relate to it in a skewed way. We end up in Aquinas' 'love distorted' as Dante lays out Purgatory: every good thing distorted into sin. The circle delimits sin epistemologically and relates that to praxis. We cannot do what we will not see. Yet exterior and interior are not so separate: 'yes' and 'no' collide at every point on the surface. The circle is, as it were, a vast zero-point, a center which can hold.

Maybe. We'll see. This is, after all, getting far too long for a blog post.