1.25.22

The Son of Man

I.

Above all else must a writer, if he is to both give birth to his creative work and also bring it to its conclusion, must carve out for himself a designated time and physical space in which he will conduct the majority of his work. Once established, he must defend this time and space against all worldly intrusions which might seek to force their way between him and it — and be ruthless in doing so. For, if the writer is touched by the world and its incessant distractions – which are, of course, innumerable, frivolous, and utterly meaningless compared to the weightiness of the task before him – gone is he to such distractions for at least the rest of the day if not longer and fled is he from any potential insight that might, in the end, have proved profound. For, profundity always speaks in that still, small voice which – so delicate in its hearing – is, despite its meekness, incurably jealous for the lion’s share of one’s attention and will not suffer long the overtures of any potential rival for the writer’s mental and emotional affections and intentions.

Guard, therefore, you thinkers, your writing life as you would a treasure of inconceivable value for only by shunning the world can one rise above its menial concerns so as to perhaps see it for what it “actually is”.

II.

A writer can only traverse as far as the continuity of his literary instincts allow. Any far leap of thought or hard break in the narrative flow of his ideas will be, if not “back-filled” with considerable rear-guard activity, met with confusion and an immense amount of self-derision and self-doubt as it pertains to the defensibility of his ideas; self-doubt that could easily handicap the writer from penning any idea at all.

III.

In the domain of Reason, everything can be reduced to aesthetics, to a self-created aesthetic determinant that is, of course, communicated by and through the senses of man which, despite their marvelous capacities, can in no way can “discover” a Value in its fullness and entirety, but merely interprets such values according to the personal bias and life history of the discoverer.

In the domain of Faith, nothing has an aesthetic value for there is no sensual capacity to enframe any”thing” that might be “experienced” there. As such, there are only eternal values and transcendence, meaning, purpose, and truth, none of which can be reduced to any other thing but the Value “in itself”.

Without the availability of the bodily senses to enframe and the mind to comprehend such enframement, how can man say that a domain such as Faith even “exists” in the first place?

In fear of jumping to a hasty conclusion, I suppose one must take Aquinas’ position that the only things we can “know” about the domain of Faith must be posited with, by, and in a negative valuation: that God and His heavens and the whole of the metaphysical realm that Western philosophy has contemplated since the time of Socrates can only be “known” by asserting what it is not. For the senses can do nothing but affirm themselves and by so doing, all of “what-is” by and through their very mode of being and existence. But, as to those things which “are not”, Reason is powerless and impotent. “I feel, therefore I am”, say the senses continually and cannot say anything besides. It is only the mind that has the power to later reflect upon the efficacy of the experiences of the senses and decide, based upon the accumulated experience it has been able to hitherto integrate into its own self-narration and by it, establish its nominative “I”, whether a thing is “real” or “unreal”, “good” or “bad”, “true” or “untrue”. And because the senses cannot affirm anything at all in and of the realm of Faith, one is forced to resort to speaking about that which has no speech and has no thought in terms of “heaven is not like this, nor can it be like that.”

IV.

What then, or Who, created Reason?

What’s more, could such a domain – as the creator of all that apparently is and ever will be – be “created” at all?

V.

Faith contains that for which Reason perpetually longs and is perennially kept from – purpose, meaning, and universality. Reason, on the other hand, contains that which Faith, if it could want anything, also “wants” which is finitude, change, and movement.

Both domains thus uphold the possibility of the other and could not independently “exist” and be thus “experienced” at all if not for the essentiality of the other: God who made man not arbitrarily or haphazardly but for a specific reason, never mind if that reason is knowable to and by man’s Reason or not.

Faith can “do” nothing without an intrinsic purpose.

VI.

By this, it can loosely be said – from the perspective of Reason – so that man might know “anything” of God, that heaven and Faith “lack”.

Lack what?

“That which unites Faith to Reason which is ‘desire’ itself.”

VII.

Are we to say then that Heaven, Faith, and God are insufficient in, of, and to themselves because they appear to be “in lack” and thus “in need” of Reason, man, and his world?

The answer would appear to our senses and our Reason to be “yes”. The Word of God even confirms this. For Heaven, in and of itself, has willfully chosen to lack “the want of man” and thus “deep emotion of man” to include his highest and most lofty emotion – love; Love which the Word of God says that God is but of course could not be without the limited omniscience and material physicality of the Son. God could not be God without man; without, most importantly, the Son of Man “whom through were all things made and without whom nothing was made that has been made.”

Yes, from the perspective of man, God lacks because He made Himself to lack through the person of Christ so that the Godhead might “experience” in the first place, the highest “experience”, of course, being “love” of which He is the embodiment and fullest expression. Now, as to whether God actually lacks or, moreover, can lack from His own perspective (which is the only perspective that actually matters), is, of course, another matter entirely.

VIII.

Out of no-“thing” did God thus create the conditions and eventuality of all things, insofar as His Son is material transcendence itself and can therefore not be relegated to a “thing” dependent on man, at least not that which could be grasped in its totality by man’s Reason.

For Christ is indeed no “thing” in and of Himself insofar as we reckon other “things” as “things” but is the transcendence of things for He is Himself also God and thus the totality of Faith; Christ who makes all other things possible, and by “possible” I mean not subject to unending futility in the domain of Reason and its materiality.