All authentic indicators point to Jesus Christ - God Man - as the ontological center of all that is. Therefore, Christ is the Epistemic Trump and only key to authentic Knowledge.
"Even more, the 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 notion that matter, solid things, things we can touch, is the most solid, the most 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. He who builds on sand only builds on visible and tangible things, on success, on career, on money. Apparently these are the true realities. But all this one day will vanish. We can see this now with the fall of two 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. 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 he who recognizes the Word of God, in this apparently weak reality, as the foundation of all things. Realist is he 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, October 6, 2008).
2) Robert Barron (commenting on Col. 1, 15): “In this Jesus, all things have come to be; he is the prototype of all finite existence, even of those great powers that transcend the world and govern human affiars. If we re tempted to understand his influence as only a thing of the past, we are corrected: 'in him all things hold together' v. 17). 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;" "The Priority of Christ" Brazos (2007) 134-135.
3) Romano Guardini: "The person of Jesus is unprecedented and therefore measurable by no already existing norm. Christian recognition consists of realizing that all things really began with Jesus Christ; that he is his own norm - and therefore ours - for he is Truth.
Christ's effect upon the world can be compared with nothing in its history save its own creation: 'In the beginning God created heaven, and earth.' What takes place in Christ is of the same order as the original act of creation, though on a still higher level. For the beginning of the new creation is as far superior to the love which created the stars, plants, animals and men. That is what the words mean: 'I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled"' (Luke 12, 49). It is the fire of new becoming; not only 'truth' or 'love,' but the incandescence of new creation" ["The Lord" Henry Regnery (1954) 306-307]
Barron's Conclusion: “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] Blogger: 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]
And now, Richard Rohr:
Dying and Living in Christ
Thursday, April 7, 2016
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Paul uses the phrase en Christo, in Christ, around seventy times. He's trying to describe this larger life in which we are participating. He speaks of belonging to Christ, of being possessed by Christ, captured by Christ, apprehended by Christ. He says, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13). Paul speaks of being clothed by Christ. He tells us to put on Christ. He says he suffers with Christ, he's crucified with Christ, he dies with Christ, he's buried with Christ. He's raised up with Christ, he lives with Christ, and Paul says he's making up in his body the afflictions which still must be undergone by Christ.
Paul writes, "All belongs to you, you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God" (see 1 Corinthians 3:21-23). He's grasping at mystical language for describing how we participate in this reality that is larger than our individual lives. Being "in Christ" will eventually lead us to join in the universal pattern of death and resurrection that Christ went through. This is the universal initiation experience, the transformative experience that all human beings go through whereby we come to know what's real. We must go into the death of the small self in order to discover the Big Self, the True Self. At the mystical level, all the world religions say this.
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