Accidental exploration...

Is there a 'Christian' Existentialism? I answer only for myself in preferring an experience that speaks directly of 'noche obscura', "Dark night of the soul", in the poetry of the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross (1542-91). Or in the poetry of that ailing, derelict being in a Jesuit's cassock, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89), whose gaze on nature rewarded him with two words of astonishment: inscape - a sensation of "oneness" in the design of things which by piercing blaze of instress reveals them shining forth in Being. Is it an immanent force in nature he describes or a transcendent supra-evidence of God? Does it matter so long as i could see with his instructed eye?

In a diary entry of 18 May 1872, Hopkins sketches the inscaped head of a blue bell; "..arched down like a cutwater drawing itself back from the line of the keel. The lines of the bell strike and overlie this, rayed but not symmetrically, some lie parallel...." 25 August 1872; "....this skeleton inscape of a spray-end of ash tree I broke at Wimbledon that summer is worth noticing for the suggested globe: it is leaf on the left and keys on the right.

8 Sept. 1872; "I took my vows."

I think this is phenomenology. Even, or particularly, in that laconic entry - "I took my vows." - Those of a novice Jesuit. A lifelong vocation to witnessing Being.

What good besides to mention that Hopkins preferred the subtler theologian Duns Scotus (c. 1266-1308) to the Jesuits' officially "Thomist" one, St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-74)? That in Scotus he found the "principle of individuation", haecceitas, "Thisness", which confirmed his sense of inscape and instress? And that Heidegger, product of a Jesuit-founded seminary, wrote his doctoral thesis on Duns Scotus?

Does it say, by accident, there is Christian Existentialism?

Absolute perception Pt. I

Immanuel Kant this morning before work. In a book I am currently reading there is a particular statement in which Kant declares [with great conviction]; 'if we think something is beautiful then we want everyone to agree with us.'1 Since then it has been running through my mind all day. Would the world be better off if everyone agreed on what is beautiful? It is incontrovertible the world would not be better off because what we discover as being beautiful is surely a reflection of our personality/individuality. With this in mind, we can actually distinguish more about our disposition, and more importantly our character by what we perceive as being beautiful. Is 'inherent beauty' ever better than constructed beauty, like in art or music? Are beauty and happiness harmonious to one another? What is the relation between beauty and the sublime? The sublime is our reaction in the face of something so overpowering that it consumes or obliterates us. There is a saying that truth is beauty and beauty is truth, but is this saying correct? Regrettably We have been taught what is beautiful, and we are buying this lesson. It is constructed for us and forms paradigms of beauty. This constructed beauty makes a boundary between us and our own intrinsic nature, separates us from appreciating the special qualities that are not reflecting the standards of these paradigms. Through placing constructed beauty outside, the completed embrace of one’s own nature is possible. Acceptance of this intrinsic nature allows creative partnership, creativity opens the potential of life......

1. The Kantain Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom, R. Clewis pp.255-256

Free will.

Having had a second glance at my previous thoughts regarding the apparent congruent and co-extensiveness between spinozian philosophy and Open-theistic theology, I have pondered on the affects of the issue of 'free will'. The unpredictability implied by quantum mechanics has done away with the Newtonian world view, in which all future events are predetermined. From a Darwinian world-view, there always is a choice: a variety of possibilities, some of which are retained by selection. The defining characteristic of a cybernetic agent is some degree of control over that selection. Because of their capacity for thought, people, moreover, are not only free to choose between given possibilities, but able to conceive novel possibilities and explore their consequences. However still restricted by this particular 'selective science'. A theistic-evolutionary perspective on the other hand could quite dexterously state that despite an individual still possessing the inevitable physical advancement in humanity [via natural selective evolution], one still does also still possess the quality of [a conscious] 'free will' with the benefits of a deeper purpose in life... Just thinking out loud.

Regressive and Progressive Theos.

Recently I have been reflecting on the views of Benedict de Spinoza, and attempting to understand his particular views concerning pantheistic monism. Essentially Spinoza was of the belief that there is no dualism between God and the world. Automatically I assumed this would contradict God's sovereign control, although having thought about it, it may possibly be the opposite. With this philosophy as merely inspired (rhetorical) thought, it has provoked me into thinking perhaps God is capable of predicting and ordaining certain future events because He is capable of working in the world and bringing certain events to pass when the time is needed. For example, God could inspire the Old Testament writers to prophesy certain events and then He could simply ensure that those events occurred at the right time. Granted this does defy the laws of 'time' and our human perceptions/measurements of it, but this 'open-theistic' theology does surprisingly run congruent with Spinozian thought if we are to say that "the present" does not exist, or exists only as an imaginary or theoretical point. The present moment is always in dissolution, ever divided between the past (into which it is always disappearing) and the future (which it has not yet achieved). That God is in complete control of a regressive and progressive state of 'the present'.