Metacosmic Circularity²

Let us reluctantly continue with our attempt to harmonize Christian metaphysics with metaphysics per se. 

I say "reluctantly," because this is a job so vital to the vertical economy that no one wants it, so it has devolved upon me to come out of retirement and deal with it, notwithstanding my lack of qualifications. 

In yesterday's initial approach we touched on the subjects of cosmogony and original sin, and of how horizontality and outwardness can constitute a "sin" against the verticality, transcendence, and inwardness that constitute our very reason for being. 

This is again not to go all Manichaean and imply that there is something wrong with materiality per se. But a man who is fully plunged into matter, with no trace of verticality, is no longer a man, rather, a tenured beast or end-stage political activist. 

As we shall see, maya can be a wall or window; come to think of it, it can be an ascending telovator or a bottomless mineshaft. We decide. Or deicide, disrespectively.

Schuon speaks of a "duty of inwardness"

without which we would not be men, precisely; this means that that pole of attraction which is the "kingdom of God within you" must in the final analysis prevail over the seductive magic of the world....

To be "horizontal" is to love only terrestrial life, to the detriment of the ascending and celestial path; to be "exteriorized," is to love only outer things, to the detriment of moral and spiritual values (emphasis mine). 

In a Christian context, it is perfectly fine to love horizontal things so long as the love is a vertical prolongation, so to speak. We have only to look for the union label -- union with the Divine. Every mystic says as much -- that the things of this world speak of their creator. Metaphysical transparency, and all that. 

Seriously, if we couldn't see through things, we couldn't see them at all. Rather, like animals and journalists we'd see only surfaces with no essences. 

Every scientist sees nothing but essences. It's just that their curiosity stops short of inquiring into essentiality as such. Following one's nous in that direction would plunge us into subjectivism, and that would be a sin against science!

I do understand your point, and the point is precisely backward. 

For literally nothing can be as objective as metaphysics. It doesn't mean metaphysics is "complete," for this requires a subject and all this implies. 

But for now you need only remember that "Transcendence is objective inasmuch as it concerns the Divine Order in itself" (ibid.). Naturally it becomes "subjective" on contact with man, but only "inasmuch as it refers to the Divine Presence in us."

To put it another way -- and this will lead us back to Christian metaphysics -- it turns out that both objectivity and subjectivity are anchored in the principial world of the Trinity.

Let's say, for example, that the Son is a kind of exteriorization or objectification of the Father, only literally. Down here we experience only distant echoes of this eternal procession. Farfetched, or insufficiently fetched?  

The latter. To repeat what was said in yesterday's post, 

this intra-Trinitarian procession, which is perfect, must be the cause and explanatory reason for the procession of creatures as well (Torrell).

This creature, anyway.  

the procession of the Son is the model, the exemplar and the reason for the procession of creatures in the natural order, where they imitate and reproduce something of the divine nature.

Not only do I agree, I agree². In short, Yes². On steroids. With bells on. 

"The whole course of time is immersed," writes Torrell, 

in the Trinity. Exit-creation and return-divinization are embraced in the eternal cycle of the divine processions.

Is this enough for one day, or are we just getting startled?!

Let's see what Thomas has to say.

in all creatures there is a representation of the Trinity in a vestigial mode, in the sense that we find in each of them something that we must necessarily refer to the divine persons as cause.... 

If God is necessarily in all things, and God is a trinitarian dance of eternally generous exit and infinitely loving return, then we'd better take 'er easy for now, for the next post will be a big one.