A Christmas Eve Substack meditation that draws upon a mystical and possibly heretical passage from Juan de la Cruz.
« A Lefty Sees the Light | Main | Political Opponents or Political Enemies? »
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
The comments to this entry are closed.
Dr. BV,
What do you say in response to the charge that appealing to mysticism is simply a retreat in the face of insuperable logical challenges? I have a real problem with your approach for this reason. I suppose it seems to me legitimate to argue that these doctrines ought not to be interpreted in an objective way, as you put it. But you need to give independent reasons for taking this interpretative position, that is, reasons that are independent of the logical difficulties these doctrines face. Otherwise, when faced with logical difficulties, it looks rather illegitimate to just say, 'to hell with logic!'. I see this in theology text books sometimes. When the author gets to explaining the part about the doctrine of the Trinity that looks logically problematic, he then appeals to 'divine mystery'. That's just a cop-out in my opinion.
Thanks for the enjoyable read!
Posted by: tom | Sunday, December 24, 2023 at 06:44 PM
forgot to say, "Merry Christmas!".
Posted by: tom | Sunday, December 24, 2023 at 06:45 PM
Merry Christmas, Tom. And thanks for the useful and challenging comment.
I could invoke the example of Aquinas who was a philosopher, a theologian and a mystic who believed that his mystical experience crowned and surpassed his philosophical and theological work.
The thought is developed here: https://williamfvallicella.substack.com/p/why-did-thomas-aquinas-leave-his
Note also that if the logical problems are, as you say, "insuperable," and thus unintelligible to the discursive intellect, then we have excellent reason to consider whether there is a form of intelligibility not accessible to the discursive/dianoetic intellect, but accessible to mystical intuition.
Posted by: BV | Monday, December 25, 2023 at 05:11 AM
Tom writes, >>But you need to give independent reasons for taking this interpretative position, that is, reasons that are independent of the logical difficulties these doctrines face. Otherwise, when faced with logical difficulties, it looks rather illegitimate to just say, 'to hell with logic!'.<<
I'd say the reasons are precisely the logical difficulties the doctrines face. To demand of me reasons independent of these difficulties is to beg the question against my position. For what I am saying is that, with respect to these transcendent matters, intelligibility is not to be had by logical operations on the discursive plane. The content of such doctrines as Trinity, Incarnation, divine simplicity (which are all essential to classical Xian theism) is supralogical. You beg the question against me if you flatly deny that there is the supralogical.
And surely it is unfair for you to tax me with saying 'to hell with logic.' I am all for logic when confined to its proper sphere: the plural world of the senses. I could easily turn the tables by accusing you of absolutizing logic and the discursive intellect. I might go so far as to call you an idolater of logic. I could say you are extending logic beyond its proper sphere. I could also say you are confusing the irrational with the transrational, the sublogical with the supralogical. Would that not be a LOGICAL mistake? If you were Ayn Rand, I would accuse you of not seeing the distinction between mysticism and utter irrationality.
Or I could accuse you of making the logical mistake of confusing the Real with the Effable and the Unreal with the Ineffable with the result that you blind yourself to the possibility of Ineffable Reality.
Or I could tax you with the 'Hegelian fallacy' of maintaining that all the real is rational and all the rational real.
Posted by: BV | Monday, December 25, 2023 at 05:48 AM
So what are you proposing, Tom? That we continue to grind away on Trinity, Incarnation, etc. in the hope of finding satisfactory logical explanations? But we haven't, and we've been at it for 20 centuries. Has anyone ever explained, to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners, how one suppositum could have two mutually incompatible natures? No.
So why not go the Dale Tuggy route and reject trad Trinity and trad Incarnation and adopt unitarianism and the view that JC was a very special man but not God.
You know how Tuggy argues: Jesus died on the cross; no divine being is subject to death; ergo, Christ is not God.
It looks like there are three approaches. Keep trying to solve logically the logically insoluble; take the contradictions as supporting a Tuggy-like position; go mystical.
Which do you prefer? Can you definitively establish that your way is the best way?
Posted by: BV | Monday, December 25, 2023 at 06:06 AM
Collateral observation: philosophy as practiced here is a spiritual practice on a level with prayer and meditation. And certainly superior to attending a Novus Ordo mass on Xmas morn said by a priest who is unversed in hard-core theology, is incapable of moral exhortation, and will give a namby-pamby 'sermon' on Santa Claus and is probably a Bergolio-infected political and theological librul to boot.
And now, as Old Sol is fixin' to rise, I head for 'pool church.'
Posted by: BV | Monday, December 25, 2023 at 06:13 AM
I vote for Go Mystical.
Merry Christmas everyone !
Peace on Earth with Christ the King !
Posted by: Joe Odegaard | Monday, December 25, 2023 at 07:52 AM
I can't establish that the third way is the best way, but I believe, not unreasonably, that it is.
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts" (Isaiah 55 8-9).
Posted by: Vito B. Caiati | Monday, December 25, 2023 at 10:39 AM
Thanks for these helpful replies! Please allow me the following rejoinder.
When we are faced with a set of propositions that are individually plausible yet jointly inconsistent, I take it there are two options available to us: 1) either show that they are, in fact, consistent after all, or 2) deny one of the propositions. Now, when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, which arguably does constitute a set of propositions that are jointly inconsistent, you reject both of the above moves and instead decide to 'go mystical'.
My question is the following. What licenses your move to go mystical in this case, but not in other cases when faced with a set of jointly inconsistent propositions? Would you say it is just the content of the doctrine itself? Or some prior commitment to the trans-rational that you have? My initial worry was that the move to go mystical is arbitrary in this case. But I suppose you would argue it clearly is not, since the doctrine of the Trinity pertains to trans-rational realities in the first place, and so making that appeal is in no way arbitrary or ad hoc. Have I got that right?
Posted by: tom | Monday, December 25, 2023 at 11:24 AM
Bill,
The struggle between an objectifying and subjective approach to theological mysteries is explicated by that greatest of all Catholic theologians — Dante Alighieri.
The intellect has much to tell us about sin and about its purgation. But the intellect can only do so much.
Every step of the way down into the pit of the Inferno, and every step up the seven story mountain of the Purgatorio, Dante the pilgrim is accompanied by Publius Vergilius Maro, Virgil.
Virgil is the intellect; Dante the wounded soul. They walk together. They converse. The intellect is engaged. In the Inferno, it talks about sin. In the Purgatorio, it has something to say about how to get out of it. Sin and its purgation are on a “discursive plane.”
But the intellect can only take us so far. Dante the poet, the guy who’s writing the poem, not the character in it, has to solve a problem. He has to find a way to get the intellect out of the picture.
Virgil and Dante reach the top of Purgatory mountain. There is a plateau. They start walking along and are conversing, in a way the reader has become accustomed to. A mist is ahead and in it Dante sees a figure coming at them. It is Beatrice, Dante’s beloved, his unrequited love, who in life had died while he was a young man.
Dante blurts out something like, look, it’s Beatrice, what shall I say to her? He turns to Virgil for an answer, but Virgil’s not there. The poet has taken him out of the story. Readers rebel. They have come to like Virgil for his reason and wisdom, while Dante the pilgrim sometimes comes off as a bit of a jerk. Virgil’s a good guy and he’s got to be there at the end of the story. He’s got to go to heaven. He is sent back to Limbo.
With Virgil’s exit, the poet is telling us that the intellect has reached the limit of its powers. It has been the soul’s guide through the horrors of hell and through the experience of getting rid of sin. It counsels, instructs, and enlightens. But to progress further, it is of no use. The intellect falls silent in the Paradiso. Beatrice (beatific vision?) replaces Virgil. She becomes Dante’s second guide, and in the Paradiso the two start their ascent to the Empyrean.
But even Beatrice at a certain point reaches a limit. For the final ascent, she passes Dante on to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who during his lifetime was known as a mystic. The poet brings a saintly mystic into the story to lead Dante the pilgrim to that part of Heaven where, as a mortal, he is granted The Final Vision of peering directly into the Godhead:
“Here powers failed my high imagination:
But by now my desire and will were turned,
Like a balanced wheel rotated evenly,
By the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”
Merry Christmas,
Jim
Posted by: James Soriano | Monday, December 25, 2023 at 12:19 PM
My own intellect falls silent even here on this earth; I cannot fathom the behavior of a pre-tensioned bicycle spoke in a wheel; though under great tension it behaves exactly like you could compress it. Unfathomable to me. And so it is perhaps appropriate that Dante writes about a balanced wheel. O the humility that we need ! Without it, we humans create dark ages.
Merry Christmas to all.
Posted by: Joe Odegaard | Monday, December 25, 2023 at 01:55 PM
Merry Christmas, Bill!
Posted by: Hector | Monday, December 25, 2023 at 03:37 PM