Prologue:
A child has a mother and a father and
she loves them both. They are divorced and she lives her life between
them, constantly ferried from one house and back again. The parents
are amicable and polite to each other, but, it is a politeness just
for their daughter. The girl has tried to deal with the tension of
the situation and has even used it to her advantage playing one
parent against the other to gain a few toys and a succession of trips
to the Zoo. However, the situation will never be as comfortable as
before. Well, the before that she thinks she remembers. It has been
so very long that this dual life lived out in different houses with
different parents is all she knows. What came before is a distant
memory. Merely a desire that echoes in her when she stops long enough
to let it haunt her. The parents live out their lives trying their
best for their daughter but they cannot go back to what was before.
There is too much hurt and trying to build from the ruins of the past
would be even more disastrous. Better to live in this way as there is
less of an issue. Less of an issue for the parents as they only see
each other in passing where the daughter lives in the constant
tension of life in two houses. Each house is different, the spoons go
on the left in Mum's house where they go on the right at Dad's. The
daughter lives in a duality where to notice the tension too much or
to let the echo of desire for uniformity and structure where it could
all rest in peace, reveals the fact that the world is in pieces.
The child of divorce lives in a world
where the universals of love, joy and truth are divided much as the
division between the parents. The divorce that is being alluded here
is the one between Man and God that was created in the battle between
Realism and Nominalism that birthed Modernity which in turn becomes
Post-Modern that is (possibly) changing into the supposed
Post-Everything world to come. In “The Theological Origins of
Modernity” Michael Allen Gillespie describes this battle in the
hope that a survey of the battle may bring understanding by knowing
the origin of the world we live in today. The issue is that like the
child modernity rarely remembers the origins of its current
situation, let alone what came before. Because of these forgotten
origins there is little understanding of the metaphysics that lie at
the core. A core where man replaces God as the centre of the
universe. More cynically this could be described as the you-niverse
as it appears that modernity looks at the universe through an
Endoscope and not a Telescope.
Moore and Parker's “Critical
Thinking” is a modern introduction to logic and thinking. Logic is
mentioned and even wished for, but, they seem to acquiesce to the
lamented status quo and package logic as critical thinking. This they
describe as “the careful application of reason in the determination
of whether a claim is true or not” (Moore & Parker, 2009 : 3).
Their main concern about argument and persuasion is on how to avoid
the snares of those who argue in emotional claims that have little or
no proof at all. It is about how not to get duped and not ending up
doing something based on no argument at all (Moore & Parker, 2009
: 5-16). They spend a single paragraph on truth and two on knowledge
but there are three pages on value judgements. In this explanation
the analogy of beating a donkey and the response people give is used
to explain a moral value, however, they also appear to give religious
belief the category of taste and not a value. If this is so where did
the moral value gain its weight from? The starting point appears to
be the individual or the society where critical thinking allows the
person or society to avoid harm. The centre of this you-niverse is
the individual, the critique is of words and their meanings. The
value is the safety of the individual from the arguments that could
bring harm.
In comparison to More and Parker is
Plato's Timaeus where the cosmos and creation is explained in a
detail that seems to echo the future discoveries of biology, physics
and medicine. It is an intricate fashioned chronicle of the cosmos,
an awe-filled account of the order and beauty that is the the work of
a creator god (Plato's Timaeus, 2012 : np). There is little focus on
values as they are part of the common knowledge of the day. Timaeus
is a grand vision of a saviour god who crafts the whole of the cosmos
in an harmonious and awe-filled artistry. There is a place for all
things in the Timaeus, there is order and harmony as the shapes of
the elements which reflect the created beings as the beings reflect
the creator. Even the internal angst is explained in the creation of
the person where the soul (made in moving pieces divided on the
fibonacci number) struggles within the body and its sensory
information. This telescopic view begins with harmony and order of
the creator god and ends with the human being able to see the
intelligence in the movement of the stars and planets which move in
musical rhythm. Order and beauty and intelligence exist within all of
the created cosmos (Plato, 2008 : 20-38). With this knowledge, there
is no need for personal safety when the created world is such a joy
and delight to be a part of.
What happened? Was Plato merely naive
and/or a rich person who never had to struggle in a life of opulence
and pleasure? Well that could be true as Plato is not a slave and the
categories of the city did suggest an elite class with others below
them. Gillespie's explanation is that since the time of Plato the
divine attributes have travelled from god to man and nature (McClure,
2010 :700). Plato sits at the beginning of this voyage while today,
the western world is possibly at the end. Possibly, because where
else can the divine attributes move to other than back to god? What
is being dealt with is ontology (the study of being) and metaphysics
where being and becoming signify the difference between the creator
and the created. For Plato god is being while the rest of creation is
always becoming. This creation is good and beautiful and therefore
its creator is as well (Plato, 2008 : 19). Divine attributes existed
within the realm of theology, the attributes of man within an
anthropology and nature within cosmology. They leant logic and
ontology their foundation in exploration and identity. In the analogy
of the daughter of divorce this is the time before that has been
forgotten. It is the same for modernity points out Gillespie that
without an understanding of the theological and its importance leads
us into the struggle that occurs as modernity struggles, like the
daughter of divorce, to find equilibrium. Plato looks above to the
divine and down to the earth he lives in. Life is defined not in
forward or back historically within time, ontology is defined by
society, geography or god. Modernity defines itself by looking
forward pressing onwards striving for the new (Gillespie, 2008 :
xii).
Gillespie's analogy of choice is
Oedipus who does not know where he comes from and because of this
disaster results (Gillespie, 2010 : 705) . Our daughter of divorce is
less naïve than Oedipus and knows that something is wrong but
because of the dual life she lives in she cannot decipher the issue
that is foundational to her calamity. Yes her parents are no longer
together but why? Gillespie asserts that the world today was the
result of the conflict between nominalism and scholastic realism. In
this struggle the ontology of being has changed, this ontological
alteration did not happen all at once but gradually. Like a stone
creating ripples in a pond the difference in the way God and the
divine was conceived flowed out into the way man and nature is
conceived. To understand this ripple effect requires an explanation
of Heigeger's ontic realms.(Gillespie, 2010 : 705-706)
As explained before Plato's Timaeus has
a telescopic view that includes god, man and nature all are connected
by the hand of the artisan deity in whose divine reason all are made.
For Plato the ontic realms of Theology, Anthropology and Cosmology
(the metaphysica specialis) are obviously apparent and do not
need any pointing out. Plato's logic and ontology (metaphysica
generalis) flow from the foundation of these three realms. The
understanding that the divine being creates the mortal and human
which is always becoming, the ontological is informed by the
theological and anthropological arrangement. This foundational
theology that informs ontology is the pond in which a stone was
thrown, a stone called Nominalism. Nominalism brought not a change of
nature, or of man but of God in the exchange of divine reason for
divine will. The effect of this exchange altered the informed
ontology of man, the cosmos and logic. The alteration developed into
the ontology of the individual that we see today (Gillespie, 2010
:706). God changes, and, because of the structure that was in place
modernity came to be. Much like the “deeper magic” that Aslan
knows because he was there when Narnia was made, modernity is like
the White Witch who came after the foundations were made (Lewis, 1980
: 148). The difference between Moore and Parker's Endoscope and
Plato's Telescope is their ontology. Plato exists in a world of
identity and difference, a quandary where there is no exclusive focus
on identity or difference. If focus is solely on the personal
identity, the individual, the one how do you live with the different,
the other, the many? If you only live for the many then the one is
squashed and subjugated. What was once divine reason that made man
reasonable is exchanged for divine will that leads to individual
units and the confusion between this and the needs of community, love
and procreation. The contradictions that arise create confusion and
the unknown theological origins merely obfuscate especially when the
origin is believed to be a turning away from religion to a secular
world (Gillespie, 2010 : 706-708).
The winter that we exist in today
brought by the effects of the divorce between God and Man hide in the
snow an origin that is in Gillespie's opinion theological. What
response should be given because the responses available appear to
sit between two extremes. At the end of “The Theological Origins of
Modernity” Gillespie explains one of these responses, mysticism. In
this the one is absorbed into the other, the human abandons itself
into the divine to becoming a feather in the wind (Gillespie, 2008 :
290-292). Luther calls for a fanatical response with his scriptural
revelation. However, as history has shown the reformation was not the
golden age for Christianity and Europe, but a time of war. Religion,
especially revelation and those following it brought nothing but pain
and sorrow. Enlightenment theories of the self and the purity of
human thought was offerd but that was brought to naught by more war.
Before you can say secularism and übermensch, God is declared dead
and is replaced by man and nature. The divine attributes have to go
somewhere and they merge with nature and man. Appearing the divine
sanctity of the individual and the uncontrollable wild ferocious
nature that has to be tamed by man (Gillespie, 2010 :709).
Today the contradictions are still
there in the snowdrifts and the responses can be seen in literature
and song. In “We didn't start the fire.” Billy Joel offers up the
conclusion that the fire has always been there “always burning
since the world's been turning.” that the baby boomers “didn't
light it but we tried to fight it.” (Joel, 1989 :np.). How it was
fought was an ontology of the individual. In response to this
post-modernism attempts to fight and find the answer within
diversity. To say that this has not been an unqualified success can
be read in the songs of today. The ontology of emptiness from Billy
Corigan and the Smashing Pumpkins is an example of the ennui that
waits in the snow drifts for those willing to search “Emptiness is
loneliness, and loneliness is cleanliness, and cleanliness is
godliness, and god is empty just like me.” (Corrigan, 1996 : np.).
Plan B's “Lost my way” describes
the position that western society has found itself, fallen down a
hole of its own creation with no way out. In the second verse the
lyric retells the Genesis creation story, but with a twist turning to
the modern emptiness of greed and commercialism.
“God said: "Let there be light"
“God said: "Let there be light"
Created Adam and Eve
Then he gave them eyes and told them
both to both believe
In something they'd never actually
physically see
But then the devil came along and
planted a seed
And doubt started growing from the
ground like trees
Right up to the sky so profoundly seen
To be the only thing in this life that
wasn't a dream
Made from stone, steel and iron beams
The council blocks they defined the
mean
And bullied the sky so that everybody
can see
Some birds are caged and will never be
free
And gradually people began to change
their beliefs
Until god was nothing more than just a
fictional being
The worship and money merged all
colours and creed
Into one true religion that was driven
by greed
Corporate machines trying to sell you
shit you don't need
On television and the ad breaks in
between
Until people only cared about material
things
Not lives with other fellow human
beings
And I'm guilty of it too, or so it
seems...” (Drew & Shuckburgh, 2011 :np)
Where do go when you find yourself in
the hole? What responses are there? If there is no way for the
daughter of divorce to reunite her parents what is she left with but
a hole?
Warren Ellis in “Supergod” uses the
argument the man makes his own gods, creatures that will save the
world. Ellis's characters tell us that the divine is the result of a
neurochemical reaction, a high that has been denied and lied about.
Humanity is merely a bunch of well dressed monkeys that get their fix
on the transcendent. God is our stash concludes Ellis something used
to get off on. The story ends with the super-beings created by man
destroying the world. The main characters response is to give up and
join the created super-being abandoning himself to the destruction
and death brought by the omnipotent (Ellis, 8 :2010). This is a
mystical response to the fall of the world of science and technology
that has emerged from nominalism. It can also be an addiction to not
just the divine but merely to the transcendence of emotion and
feeling. Australian hip-hop artist Illy's description of life being
one where the reality that we exist in is transcended by happiness of
parties that momentarily pauses reality. A happiness that is owned by
the individual experiencing it, a happiness that is a moment that
requires continual pursuit to get back to (Murray, 2010 : np).
Where else does one run too? Beauty is
certainly possible, however, beauty can run to the sensual being a
physical element. Gillespie's mystical foil Abu Hamid al-Ghazali was
jaded by the political skirmishes of his time. Deluded, he traveled
about his world searching for answers in philosophy finding solace
only the sight of an omnipotent God (Gillespie, 2008 :290). Around
the same time Omar Khayyam left his studies and education to focus on
sensual pleasures and speculations of the divine.
“The grape that can logic absolute
The two and seventy jarring sects
confute:
the sovereign alchemist that in a trice
Life's leaden metal in gold transmute;”
(Khayyam,1974 : 77). There is not much of a distance between
Khayyam's poetry and the lyrics of Illy's “It can wait”
“Happiness is fine but its momentary
a momentary lapse of reality
reality is fine,
for the moment it can wait
I'm addicted to the chase of my
happiness”(Murray 2010, : np.).
Perhaps beauty and God do not have to
be so separate? John Mark Capper's “Joy in the Church Dogmatics? A
Neglected Theme” illuminates Barth's theology of joy and how this
has been missed. In Capper's opinion Hans Urs von Balthasar's linking
of the concepts of beauty and glory is an aesthetic that does not
deal with Barth's attention on divine Joy. Unlike Barth, Balthasar's
understanding of the divine glory was relied on the aesthetic of
beauty instead on joy. For Barth God is Beautiful because of his
love for his creation and is deserving of love being that he is God.
Even though Barth is able to describe God as beautiful he avoids in
making it a leading element. Beauty is too close to the created world
of being and not the divine world of becoming. But Joy is not so
attached with earthly aesthetics as beauty is. Joy comes from
dwelling and thinking about the divine. That Joy spills put
continuously in the life and communication of God to us (Capper, 2001
: 102-116).
What is unfortunate is that this view
of Joy requires a cosmological balance where Anthropology and
Cosmology are rejoined with Theology. To be able to find this divine
joy that flows from God there are some elements of our view of God
that need to be altered. This is not a call to return to the Platonic
understanding and a denial of the efforts that many have made in
scientific discovery. Neither is it a mystical denial of the
individual or a need to enhance the difference that each
person/culture/faith brings. Yes there is a deeper magic that is lost
in the winter of modernity a theological origin that does not have to
be dominant and restrictive. Perhaps the need to worship something,
that to experience the transcendent is neurochemical because the
creator made us that way. The ennui and angst that declares God dead
or empty, that drives some to despair or distraction is something
obscured that needs to be brought into focus and engaged with. The
hole that we fell down we do not need to stay in, it was a hole of
our own making. To be able to find a path out requires not just
emotions and feeling but balance. The foundation that we can see
touch and feel requires a firmament above to give us, not a boundary
requiring a promethean efforts to defy the deity, but a balance to
the bottom heavy view that exists. A firmament where the divine can
be and known. Joy is not the solution it may just be a light to find
the way, but which ever path is chosen if joy of the divine is there
then maybe it will melt the snow of winter.
Epilogue
She remembers back when she younger and
so full of pain and worry. The life that she lived between the houses
of her mother and father were not so bad. She knew they both loved
her despite that they could not get along with each other. But today
they both are in the same room, laughing. When she was a girl they
would greet the other with curt and polite sentences that disguised
the anger that lay beneath the surface. The joy that fills the room
is so far away from back then.
“He's got your nose.” Says her mother to her father.
“Thanks goodness that's all he's got.” laughs her father.
In the small cot sleeping lies her new born son as his two grandparents continue delight in the child's presence. It was not the restoration that she dreamed of when she was younger. No, that is not possible now. But if this joy could be bottled and remembered in the hard times and not forgotten then maybe it will not happen to her own child.
“He's got your nose.” Says her mother to her father.
“Thanks goodness that's all he's got.” laughs her father.
In the small cot sleeping lies her new born son as his two grandparents continue delight in the child's presence. It was not the restoration that she dreamed of when she was younger. No, that is not possible now. But if this joy could be bottled and remembered in the hard times and not forgotten then maybe it will not happen to her own child.
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