Life reveals Beauty

A few words about Christos Yannaras's remarks on Plato (in his Person and Eros 2007, p. 75). One must, of course, read the entire book to understand the implications of Yannaras's stance toward Plato, but here is a nice summary and review of the contents.

Plato recognized the salvific quality of Beauty, notably in its ability to awaken the desire for eternal truth or wisdom, not merely the possession of physical instances of 'the beautiful' (cf. Symposium 206 ff.). Our initial contact with instances of living beauty here in the world has the potential to inspire and raise us up to contemplation of the source of that beauty, which is the Idea of Beauty Itself. Yet it must not be forgotten that life amidst changeable, pale reflections of beauty is where our intuition of eternal Beauty begins. Our fallen existence is one bereft of Beauty, and life is the arena of remembrance of our forgotten association with Beauty.

The visible world, or kosmos, for Plato is alive, ensouled, endowed with reason. We are akin to this world, not strangers in a strange land; yet Plato is clear that we exist for the sake of this world, not vice-versa (Laws, Bk. X). Our kinship, however, is not that of a mere part, or intra-cosmic function; the cosmos is possessed of nous, as are we, and the purpose of life is to dwell in contemplation of the eternal source of all things, i.e., the Good and the Beautiful that is "beyond being" (Republic, Bk. VI). Herein lies our kinship with the cosmos: it exists through, and is dependent upon, its contemplation of changeless Good (as Plotinus explained so well), and we, as intellective parts of this cosmos, owe our being to contemplation (theoria) as well. Yannaras writes that for Plato "the categories of beauty are revelatory of life rather than of a personal presence." This betrays his misunderstanding of Plato. Beauty does not reveal life; life is revelatory of beauty. If beauty did not exist, nothing would exist. For Beauty is beyond change, motion, rest, being, becoming, etc. It reveals nothing, but everything yearns for it, and this yearning is the source of life, understood as the quest for intellectual perfection. Life and Beauty are primarily intellectual; physical instances of living beauty are secondary, and depend upon and reveal, as image, the noetic Beauty that is life's hidden or forgotten source.

Yannaras goes on to state that the Platonic view "keeps human knowledge of the world within the bounds of an experiential relationship with the objective whole or totality of physical reality." Yet this reality is revelatory of the Good and the Beautiful, and so is not a closed system. Neoplatonic metaphysics, especially in the philosophy of Plotinus, makes clear that all beings depend upon their prior for their existence; since Beauty is prior to the physical life of the cosmos, the so-called cosmic animal is not an independent entity -- even though Plato, in the Timaeus, describes it as taking in nothing and exuding nothing. What he is referring to here is the physico-biological life of the material realm, not its rational nature, which is the vivifying presence of the Demiurge or Intellectual Principle within the created order. This is not, to be sure, a "personal presence" in the Christian sense of a creator God whose work is expressive of His will and love; rather, Plato's Demiurge ordered pre-existent matter into an ordered universe because he desired everything to be as good and perfect as possible, on the basis of the model from which he was working, i.e, the Forms or Ideas. So, the Demiurge did not have much choice in HOW he crafted the world; but he did desire its perfection and beauty as far as possible.

otherness in beauty

Desire is not a natural state; it is a response to a lack. Divine Beauty, when perceived by the soul, inscribes itself as a possibility. The image of God that is our highest part, our nous, responds to Beauty by desiring it. But this desire is not our primordial state, nor is an absolute possession of Beauty, which somehow later becomes sullied through indifference or boredom, etc., as Origen would have it. The question here is whether we desire to possess Beauty, or to be Beauty. Do we desire to become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4) or do we desire to exist as God, as that Beauty which is the first fruit of the divine life, to speak Platonically? Our being as persons naturally rebels against the stasis of eternity, yet we also desire an eternal ek-static be(com)ing as our person. Our "biological hypostasis," to use John Zizioulas's term for the erotic love that seeks immortality through procreation, recognizes only the tragic expression of personhood in time. The beauty we find in erotic love is but a pale reflection of the true beauty of noetic life. Yet even the noetic life requires time for its expression. Both the contemplation of the eternally changeless divine Beauty, and the hypothetical state of being God, are modes of existence in time. The genesis-kinesis-stasis schema of existence, as put forth by Maximus, posits a Beauty that cannot be lived, but only experienced. Without the tension found in a network of differentation arising from desire, knowledge of Beauty is impossible, and so is love of Beauty.

Beauty is not a substance, it cannot be defined objectively as something to which accidents may be applied. As Christos Yannaras has explained, if I understand him correctly, ousia is contemplated only as relationality, as eternal presentations of an ek-static being that is always bringing Being to light, as Heidegger might put it.

Is there perhaps a flaw in the Platonic notion that like naturally desires like? Self-knowledge is only possible through objectification, of becoming other to one's self. The person relates to itself first before it relates to others, and provides the others with the necessary ground upon which to express, in turn, their personhood. If God is a person, as Christianity proclaims, then difference and otherness must be at the heart of God, as it is at the heart of the human person. The Beauty that inspires desire must contain within it its own opposite.

Beauty has no opposite?

Maximus the Confessor, in his early Ambiguum 7 1069C-D writes, attempting to refute Origen’s theory of pre-existent minds that fell away from God out of a desire to exist for themselves:

[I]f our opponents should say that intellects could have adhered to the divine goodness, but did not, because they wanted to experience something different, then the beautiful would of necessity be loved not for itself, but because of what had been learned from its opposite. That would mean the beautiful is loved for some other reason than that it is itself lovable by nature. What is not good and lovable in itself, and does not draw all movement toward it simply because it is good and lovable, cannot properly be the beautiful. (tr. Blowers, Wilken 2003)

In order to love something, one must know it. Ferdinand de Saussure, in his Course on General Linguistics went to great lengths to explain how meaning, and hence knowledge, is produced by the play of signifiers operating in a network of differentiation. Meaning, as the post-structuralists were fond of saying, is thereby endlessly deferred. Taken to its extreme (I won’t say illogical) conclusion, this attitude leads to such relativist epistemological stances as ‘uncanny’ deconstruction. Knowledge is considered a mere construct, open to endless revision, with the consequence of a complete annihilation of meaning. When we approach the Absolute, however, we have left behind the network of differentiation that makes linguistic comprehension possible. Yet who will deny that we, as creatures of God, by necessity approach the Absolute from the uneasy ground of our indeterminate primordial state, poised between being and non-being? In order to know anything, much less love it, we must create a system of intelligibility derived from a reference-point. That reference-point is our active intellect (nous which, as the Church Fathers held, is that part of our soul most akin to God.

Plato, and the entire Platonic tradition in antiquity, held that like always desires like, and that to love something means that one desires to possess the object of one’s love. In the Symposium (206 ff.), Diotima explains to Socrates that the lover’s desire to possess his or her beloved is really a desire for immortality; for erotic love produces an overwhelming passion that results in procreation. The desire to procreate points to an even deeper lack, i.e., the inability to achieve immortality on one’s own. The knowledge of our immanent demise produces a longing for perpetuity which is only satisfied, on the biological level, by procreation. One seeks to live on, if only by proxy, in the continued life of one’s offspring. This is not, as John Zizioulas has pointed out, a survival of the person, but a continuation of the species – necessary in itself, but not sufficient to fill the existential void opened up by the knowledge of one’s finitude. The erotic lover, then, is really only a lover of the body, i.e., of that which is perishable, universal (as species) and therefore opposed to the uniqueness of the person. A philosopher, one who desires wisdom, does not seek personal immortality, but the eternal, changeless, undying Beauty itself, the divine source of all that is. The philosopher, the lover of wisdom, is “pregnant with beauty,” as Diotima puts it, for s/he is akin to the Good-Beyond-Being, which is Beauty itself, not merely an instance of beauty in the ever-decaying realm of time and matter.

The image of God within us, our nous, is the source of our desire for the Good-Beyond-Being; it is also that part of us which is capable of being perfected, of attaining likeness to God (homoiôsis theô). … TBC ...

Jottings from the past few weeks ...

August 1, 2008

The goal of the Christian life, according to the Orthodox theological tradition, is theôsis, deification or divinization. This does not mean that the Christian eventually hopes to become God; rather, it means that the Christian strives for an eschatological state in which s/he will finally realize the existence intended by God for the crown of His creation, humanity. One result of this eschatological hope is that the Christian looks not to the past but to the future for meaning. Indeed, our great Saint Maximus the Confessor even taught that the Incarnation of Christ would have occurred even if humanity had not fallen into sin (cf. Thunberg, Man and the Cosmos, p. 80 ff.); for God created out of His unbounded love, wanting, to borrow Plato’s phrase (Timaeus 29e), everything to become as much like Himself as possible. It is not our past, then, that determines our history, but God’s plan for His creation – and this plan involves the full realization of the image and likeness of God in the human person, or, more accurately, in human persons (for we are not destined to become all alike, but to remain in a communion of love, with our identities firmly intact). Having been created in the image of God, we enter into history seeking to actualize the likeness of God within us.

Origen, in Book III of his treatise On First Principles, tells us that the likeness is not something given to us by God straightaway, but rather something we must attain, through our own efforts. Certainly, as Origen puts it elsewhere in that treatise, our efforts are not unaided; God accomplishes the greater part. Yet the little that we, as creatures, are capable of accomplishing must come about through our engagement with history – the continually unfolding history of self, other, and Other (God). At the end of this engagement, God will no longer be Other, His face will no longer be veiled; we will possess both His image and likeness, and will “be one” with Him in an ever-abiding communion of love.

Now it is at this point that Orthodox theologians usually hasten to assure us that the eskhaton will not involve a loss of selfhood, of a personal ego or existential center – despite the fact that the lanugage of many Church Fathers indicate strongly such a loss of self. We are assured that we will continue to be unique, unrepeatable entities – i.e., persons – and that the divine life will be an eternally dynamic experience of love and communion with each other and with God. We are sometimes reminded of the dangers of mysticism, especially the notion of complete absorption into the deity, with the consequent loss of our most precious posession, the mind (nous), the image of God, in a state of unknowing, or of “knowing beyond the mind by knowing nothing,” as Pseudo-Dionysius has put it. Mention is sometimes made of the difference between Orthodox theôsis and ‘pagan’ philosophical (Platonic) henôsis, or unity with the highest principle, with emphasis on the complete ineffability and impersonal nature of Plotinus’ One, for example, as contrasted with the personal God of Christianity, who became man, and shared our life so that we may share His. (Neo)Platonic-style ‘mysticism’ may indeed lead to “the creation of meaninglessness,” as Bishop Athanasius Yevtich, in his book Christ: The Alpha and Omega (Alhambra, CA: Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Western America 2007, p. 81) has described the complete surrender of the self to the overwhelming otherness of God. But at least these so-called mystics – especially Plotinus – were capable of building a systematic philosophy on the basis of an experience, or at least an intuition, of the single, changeless, and eternal source of all things.

As H. Tristram Englehardt, Jr. has argued recently (“Critical Reflections on Theology’s Handmaid,” in Philosophy and Theology, vol. 18. no. 1, 2006), Orthodox theology is distinctly non-academic, and Orthodoxy in general is rather suspicious of secular philosophy. Since Orthodoxy, according to Englehardt, emphasizes the absolute transcendence of God, considering Him beyond knowledge, any discursive theology or rational speaking about God is considered pointless. God is beyond the grasp of human reason. Indeed, we are God’s creatures, and any knowledge we have of God comes from His Spirit at work in the world. Theology, then, is not, for Orthodox Christians, an academic discipline, but a lifestyle involving prayer, almsgiving, asceticism, worship, etc. Such a lifestyle is considered true theology, for it allows one to remain receptive to the influence of the Holy Spirit. Yet we must remember that the Spirit of God works upon our minds, i.e., the image of God in which we were created. The Church Fathers are unanimous in affirming the mind as the highest part of our being, that which is closest to God. This is why Apollinarianism was so fiercely opposed by the Orthodox Fathers: if Christ did not assume a fully human mind, then the most glorious aspect of our nature remained unsaved. So, if we are to have any knowledge at all of God in this life, even just a tiny glimpse of His majesty, it must come through the exercise of our reason. It seems to me a great conceit for certain Orthodox Christians (or any Christians for that matter) to tut-tut those of us who value hard-core, nose-to-the-grindstone academic, philosophical theology. A true experience of the vastness and beauty of God’s presence is not the sole provenance of the prayerful monk or the pious ascetic. The academic laboring away in his or her study, amidst a pile of recondite tomes, may also achieve a sense of communion with the deity.

So, it makes little sense to value certain applications of the intellect over others, as the Spirit will reward the noble and well-intentioned endeavor. It makes a lot of sense, however, to vigorously oppose those who encourage the Christian to forego the use of intellect, and merely live a life of worshipful quietude, at peace with his or her own ignorance. Living such a life is to allow the image of God to languish, and that is not a good thing. Now it must be admitted that a certain arrogance tends to arise at times among those (this writer not excepted) who devote themselves to the academic style of theology. St. Maximus the Confessor issued the warning most eloquently: “Just as parents have affection for the offspring of their bodies, so also is the mind naturally attached to its own reasonings. And just as to their parents who are emotionally attached the children appear as the fairest and handsomest of all even though in every way they might be the most hideous of all, so it is with the foolish mind” (Chapters on Love 3:58, tr. Berthold). This is quite true; but one must not forget that one of the first fruits of academic discipline is the ability to accept criticism of one’s ideas, mull them over and, if necessary, revise or even reject one’s own views. It’s called peer review … and it’s not something that a monastic ‘theologian’ is normally subjected to.

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August 7, 2008

It is important to understand that all attempts at speaking about God have the effect of dragging God down to earth (metaphorically speaking, of course). God did become man, of course, in the person of Jesus Christ, so that we may become God. St. Gregory the Theologian really put it best: Man and God blended so that I might become God to the extent that He became man (Oration 29:19). St. Gregory affirms that God is the predominant power, as we would expect, being His creatures. Yet the fact remains that we become God, to an extent. This caveat is quite similar to that of Plato in the Theaetetus (176b) when he describes salvation at attaining “likeness to god as far as possible.” Quite simply, for a Christian, it is recognized that the Incarnation involved a voluntary descent of God to a lower nature; indeed, it involved an “emptying” (kenôsis), as St. Paul tells us (Philippians 2:7), of divinity and the assumption of a life antithetical to that of impassible divine nature. We, on the other hand, shall ascend to a higher nature and become God, as far as possible. When Plato gave this caveat, he likely meant (as Eudorus, for example, interpreted him) to the extent that our minds are capable of contemplating divine things. St. Gregory likely meant that we shall become God to the extent that our creaturely nature is capable of partaking of, or participating in, the divine nature (cf. 2 Peter 1:4). As Torstein Theodor Tollefsen explains, in a fine essay on theôsis in St. Gregory Nazianzen (in Børtnes, Hägg (eds.), Gregory of Nazianzus: Images and Reflections, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2006), the language of participation is the key to properly understanding the radical concept of “becoming God.” We will not literally become triadic beings; rather, we will participate in the community of shared existence in a manner like unto the Holy Trinity. This is really the summit of theology, as Pseudo-Dionysius expresses so well in his aptly titled treatise De mystica theologia. It is at this point that academic theology must recognize its limit. Discursive knowledge of the life of the Trinity is beyond us. Whatever the eskhaton holds for us … well, we’re just gonna have to wait. This does not, of course, mean that we can’t speculate about the eskhaton; nor does it mean that our speculations will be necessarily pointless or unfounded. “All men by nature desire to know,” Aristotle stated at the beginning of his Metaphysics. And Plato boldly assumed the existence of the Good and the Beautiful, existing in and of itself (Phaedo 100b). The natural desire for empirical knowledge coupled with the faith in a perfect existence, above and beyond this manifestly flawed one in which we presently labor, is the beginning of philosophy; and the crown, the flower of philosophy is theology.

A few words about theology. I’ll start by indicating what theology is not – and for that I’ll summon the aid of St. Irenaeus, whose fear of falling into heresy led him to degrade the inherent powers of the human mind, and to take a decidedly anti-intellectual stance. “It is therefore better and more profitable to belong to the simple and unlettered class, and by means of love to attain to nearness to God, than, by imagining ourselves learned and skilful, to be found [among those who are] blasphemous against their own God, inasmuch as they conjure up another God as the Father” (Against Heresies 2.26.1, tr. ANF 1). So, for Irenaeus, it is better for us to squelch our natural human desire for knowledge, along with the faith that our reasoning can lead us to a glimpse of the “Good beyond Being” (Plato, Republic VI.509b), than to run the noble risk of falling into error regarding the Godhead. Here we encounter the main difference between what I have taken to call the humanism of a true theologian like Origen and the ‘guru mentality’ of a dogmatician like Irenaeus. (By ‘guru mentality’ I mean the surrender of one’s own quest for knowledge or ‘enlightenment’ by deferring to the guidance of a supposedly more experienced teacher.) Origen believed that the human mind is eternally active, and creative, and capable of engaging with God in a mutual co-operation leading to the perfection of the human soul. Irenaeus believed, as did many of his successors (such as St. Maximus), that human ‘perfection’ will consist in a complete submission to God, in which any positive human contribution plays little no part (see, for example, the striking statement of Maximus regarding the replacement of the human ego by the divine presence, in Chapters on Knowledge 2.88, or the self being wholly overcome by the object of its desire, i.e., God, in Ambiguum 7 1073C-D, etc.). The weakness of the fallen human nous is not healed, for Irenaeus, so much as it is defused by the dictatorial power of God.

If, therefore, even with respect to creation, there are some things [the knowledge of] which belongs only to God, and others which come within the range of our own knowledge, what ground is there for complaint, if, in regard to those things which we investigate in the Scriptures (which are throughout spiritual), we are able by the grace of God to explain some of them, while we must leave others in the hands of God, and that not only in the present world, but also in that which is to come, so that God should for ever teach, and man should for ever learn the things taught him by God? (Against Heresies 2.28.3, tr. ANF 1)

The eskhaton, then, for Irenaeus, is an eternal schoolroom, with God as omniscient teacher. How different this is from Origen’s description of the heavenly schoolroom, at the end of Book II of the De Principiis! Origen describes the salvific souls as co-operating with God on a voyage of discovery. As each soul gradually progresses more and more along the path of wisdom, each “feasts upon” the various problems of the meaning and causes of all things. The culinary metaphor is important, for it implies a shared activity: God provides the food, and the soul consumes it, each according to its ability to digest the food. This is an extended metaphor, taken from Hebrews 5:12-14. The more the soul advances in knowledge, the richer the food becomes. Origen is not saying that we will leave our instruction wholly in the hands of God; rather, the salvific soul is described by Origen as literally taking up its instruction with its own hands, i.e., consuming the intellectual food given to the soul by God. In the eskhaton, we will not simply sit in chairs fidgeting before a schoolmaster, but actively participate in a feast of endless accumulation of knowledge. In short, a philosopher’s paradise!