“Greek Logic”
“The way we think and the way intelligent prose works in Western languages is founded on three simple principles of logic that can be founded on three simple principles of logic that can be found already in Greek philosophy. They are sequential and linear:
1) The Law of Identity: A = A. A thing is the same as itself (and no two things are exactly the same).
2) The Law of Contradiction: If A = A, then A cannot be B (that which is not A).
3) The Law of the Excluded Middle or Third: A cannot be both A and B at the same time.
These principles are at work in all educated Western people, consciously or not: you don’t have to know them consciously to follow them. They served us well in terms of the scientific and industrial revolutions, in terms of measurements and math, and most day-to-day life, but their severe limitations in other areas, such as science, philosophy, theology, and astrophysics – are now becoming apparent. We need a way through and a way beyond this closed system. Of itself, Greek logic cannot lead us to the kind of wisdom we are seeking, as Paul himself warned us in 1 Corinthians 1, 119-31.
“In fact, these Greek principles of logic are reductionistic and not always true at all. They lead to what Ken Wilber calls ‘flatland.’ Let’s consider two examples of the shortcomings of such logic. One came from fourth-century Christian theology and the other from recent developments in quantum physics and astro-physics. They all undercut and overcome Greek logic and place us inside of a new frame different from what most of us took as self-evident. They are opening up an entirely different mind, and if religion does not wake up, it will, in the centuries to come, find itself even less able to talk to the world.
Christian Logic: Trinity
“Trinitarian theology was almost made to order to humiliate the logical Greek mind: It said, in effect: the Father is the Father, but the Father is also the Son, and in fact, he is the Father and the Son at the same time, which relationship is, in fact, the Holy Spirit. If actually encountered and meditated on, the doctrine of God as Trinity breaks down the binary system of the mind. For a Christian who lives in a Trinitarian spirituality, it makes either-or thinking totally useless. Perhaps, in addition to everything else, the Trinity is a blessing, to make us patient before Mystery and to humble our dualistic minds. I noted earlier how the unspeakable name of the Jewish God, YHWH, was supposed to have had the same effect.
“Unfortunately, for the majority of Trinitarian Christians, we believed the doctrine of Trinity as some kind of strange riddle, a mathematical conundrum, but never let it call our addiction to Greek logic into question. The sweet Irish nuns who taught me wisely said, ‘Don’t think about it!’ and held up the shamrock as a rather lovely natural symbol of the three-in-one. Even though the doctrine of the Trinity was at the very center of Christian faith, we did not allow it to change our consciousness. We just believed it to be true, and then shelved it, as we did most doctrines. Only the mystics tended to relate to God in a Trinitarian way, and often passionately so (such as Augustine, Bonaventure, Julian of Norwich, and the Cappadocian Fathers [St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nyssa an St. Gregory Nanzianzen]). I am certain that the future of Christian mysticism will be strongly Trinitarian, which, perhaps surprisingly, also creates a huge opening for interreligious dialogue. Unfortunately, faith became a matter of believing impossible or strange things… instead of an entranceway into a very different way of knowing altogether.
“We Catholics frequently signed our bodies with the Trinitarian sign of the Cross and fully accepted the mental doctrine, but we set it aside as of no practical or real consequence. We did not let the principle of three undo our dualistic principle of two. As Karl Rahner taught, we could drop the doctrine of the Trinity tomorrow, and it would have little or no practical effect on the lives of most Christians. This was a real loss and mistake, especially considering that Jesus himself knew no Greek , and clearly did not think with this kind of logic when it came to matters divine.”
The Logic of Modern Physics and Astrophysics
“Our modern and postmodern world has given our minds any number or recent humiliations, available to all, whether scientists or laypeople, who dare to study atoms, galaxies, and thenature of space and time. One that comes to mind – or better, one that is unable to come to mind – is the discovery that an electron is an impossible mixture of ‘here; and ‘there’ (B). And at the same time! Any intelligent person would think he is showing his intelligence by saying ‘Impossible!’ It looks like it must be some imagic show or an illusionist’s trick; but in fact, the ‘principle of the excluded middle’ shows itself not to be true here either. There is a third something, although we have no idea how to understand it. We only know it indirectly, by its effects. Something like Spirit.
“Quantum physics and astrophysics are filled with similar ‘logical’ impossibilities. Much of the universe seems to feed on paradox and the mysterious – everything from black holes to dark matter to neutrinos, which are invisible and weightless and yet necessary to keep matter and anti-matter from cancelling out one another. They have to be there – things don’t sense otherwise – but no one can prove it, because the scientific method cannot measure it or know it, except by its effects.
“We have all heard how light is both a wave and a particle, and scientists long ago gave up trying to prove it was just one or the other. It is clearly both – and at the same time! Now, how do you deal with facts of that nature, if you are intelligent? This signals that you need a very different kind of intelligence. In both the worlds of religions and science a certain kind of reductionistic Western mind is being forced to reframe itself..." From Riichard Rohr" "The Naked Now," Crossroad (2009) p. 149-155.
What is Reality?
The Word of God: The Person of Christ
- Joseph Ratzinger:
" [...] "(T)he Word of God is the foundation of everything, it is the true reality. And to be realistic, we must rely upon this reality. We must change our idea that matter, solid things, things we can touch, are the more solid, the more certain reality. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount the Lord speaks to us about the two possible foundations for building the house of one's life: sand and rock. The one who builds on sand builds only on visible and tangible things, on success, on career, on money. Apparently these are the true realities. But all this one day will pass away. We can see this now with the fall of large banks: this money disappears, it is nothing. And thus all things, which seem to be the true realities we can count on, are only realities of a secondary order. The one who builds his life on these realities, on matter, on success, on appearances, builds upon sand. Only the Word of God is the foundation of all reality, it is as stable as the heavens and more than the heavens, it is reality. Therefore, we must change our concept of realism. The realist is the one who recognizes the Word of God, in this apparently weak reality, as the foundation of all things. Realist is the one who builds his life on this foundation, which is permanent. Thus the first verses of the Psalm invite us to discover what reality is and how to find the foundation of our life, how to build life." (Keynote Address, Synod on the Word of God, Oct, 6, 2008) - [Richard Rohr: "The Naked Now" Crossroad Book (2009) 149-153.
"The Priority of Christ" [Brazos - 2007]
Robert Barron
"Accepting St. Paul’s face to face experience of Christ led to his Colossians 1, 15: “(Jesus is) the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible… All things have been created through and unto him, and he is before all creatures, and in him all things hold together.” Barron writes: “Jesus is not only the one in whom things were created but also the one in whom they presently exist and through whom they inhere in one another. And if we are inclined to view the future as a dimension of creation untouched by Christ, we are set straight: ‘Through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross’(v. 20). Individuals, societies, cultures, animals, plants, planets and the stars – all will be drawn into an eschatological harmony through him. Mind you, Jesus is not merely the symbol of an intelligibility, coherence, and reconciliation that can exist apart from him; rather, he is the active and indispensable means by which these realities come to be. This Jesus, in short, is the all-embracing, all-including, all reconciling Lord of whatever is to be found in the dimensions of time and space.
b) The Prologue to the Gospel of St. John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God; and the Word was God… He was in the world, and the world was made through him… And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us… No one has at any time seen God. The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has revealed him.” (1-18).
Barron writes [the same as Guardini]: “Now what follows from these breathtaking descriptions is a centrally important epistemic claim: that Jesus cannot be measured by a criterion outside of himself or viewed from a perspective higher than himself.”[1]That is, you cannot apply a metaphysic of “being” taken “from below” – i.e. from the experience of the created world [except the created human person going out of himself]. And this because there cannot be any created things without the Creator. The Being of God and the being of things have two totally different meanings save that they are (or can be). Barron writes: “He cannot be understood as one object among many or surveyed blandly by a disinterested observer. If such perspectives were possible, then he would not be the all-grounding Word or the criterion than which no more final can be thought. If we sought to know him in this way, we would not only come to incorrect conclusions but also involve ourselves in a sort of operational contradiction. To be consistent with these accounts, we must say that Jesus determines not only what there is to be known (since he is the organizing principle of finite being) but also how we are to know what is to known (since the mind itself is a creature, made and determined through him).
“A Christ-illumined mind in search of Christ-determined forms seems to be the epistemology implicit in Colossians and the Johannine prologue. Further, as Bruce Marshall has argued, this primacy implies that the narratives concerning Jesus must, for Christians, be an epistemic trump, that is to say, an articulation of reality that must hold sway over and against all rival articulations, be they scientific, psychological, sociological, philosophical, or religious. To hold to Colossians and the prologue to John is to have a clear negative criterion concerning all claims to ultimate truth: whatever runs contrary to the basic claims entailed in the narratives concerning Jesus must certainly be false.”[2]
[2]Ibid
The Answer:
The action of self-determination to give oneself to another is the experience which gives us a consciousness of ourselves as becoming "other Christs." This, and this alone, is the ultimate way of being in contact with the real. This is what "faith" is and means.
Notice the relation of doctrine and dogma to the consciousness of the experience of self-determining and self-giving: Rohr says: "Doctrines and dogmas are very good pointers in the right directions. But often it is easier for people to believe things, or even to be moral, than to go on such full and risky journeys. Church doctrines are billiant and much-needed if we experience the necessary change of mental structure that underlies these very 'mysteries.' Otherwise, they are largely harmless affirmations. If we do not experience this underlying revelation, what becomes of these sacred, transrational teachings? ... religion ends up looking like prerational silliness or merely early life conditioning. Yet God is at work in those lives, too, in a surely unique way, for nothing is ever lost in the great underserved economy of grace" (Ibid. p. 148).
And so: doctrines and dogmas point. But they don't give you the understanding that is consciousness from experience.
And so: doctrines and dogmas point. But they are not the experience of the real that becomes knowledge as consciousness.
And so: doctrines and dogmas point. But they don't give you the understanding that is consciousness from experience.
The action of self-determination to give oneself to another is the experience which gives us a consciousness of ourselves as becoming "other Christs." This, and this alone, is the ultimate way of being in contact with the real. This is what "faith" is and means.
Notice the relation of doctrine and dogma to the consciousness of the experience of self-determining and self-giving: Rohr says: "Doctrines and dogmas are very good pointers in the right directions. But often it is easier for people to believe things, or even to be moral, than to go on such full and risky journeys. Church doctrines are billiant and much-needed if we experience the necessary change of mental structure that underlies these very 'mysteries.' Otherwise, they are largely harmless affirmations. If we do not experience this underlying revelation, what becomes of these sacred, transrational teachings? ... religion ends up looking like prerational silliness or merely early life conditioning. Yet God is at work in those lives, too, in a surely unique way, for nothing is ever lost in the great underserved economy of grace" (Ibid. p. 148).
And so: doctrines and dogmas point. But they are not the experience of the real that becomes knowledge as consciousness.
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