Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

From the Mail Bag: Old-Time Reader Swims the Tiber

This just in from Russell B.:

Long time no talk.

I hope you’re doing well. I have been thinking about your work on existence over the past 3-4 years very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that it has made me swim the Tiber (well, I was born and raised Catholic so did I actually leave?). But I had to leave Protestantism; there was nothing left for me there. However, my biggest problem was divine simplicity. Long story short: I think your view (and Barry Miller’s view) is more or less the proper way to think about existence which in turn helps make DDS easier to swallow. And, if I might add, while the view is philosophically rich, I find the mystical and religious implications much richer. I have been obsessed with the mystics and in particular Teresa of Avila and Juan de la Cruz. I am unsure if you have felt similar ways in which their ideas deeply coincide with a God that just is Being itself. I don’t really know if I have words to describe how other than it just 'appears' to me that way.
 
Another way in which you helped me religiously was helping me decide between between Eastern Orthodoxy and Rome. They are essentially the same religion but I remember you saying that we need to approach truth from four different angles: philosophically, morally, religiously, and mystically. Well, I would say that Catholicism uses all four of these approaches while Orthodoxy ignores the first. This was huge for me. Now I know you have problems with the amount of dogma the Catholic Church has. This was also a stumbling block for me but I have tried to approach the matter like the parable where Jesus says only a child will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It has been humbling to say the least. 
 
Very good to hear from you, Russell.  Here are a couple of questions and some comments that will interest you and perhaps others.
 
1) What were your reasons for becoming a Protestant in the first place and then leaving Protestantism, apart from acceptance of DDS? And what sect did you leave?
 
2) You ask whether I think  mysticism, particularly that of the two great Spanish mystics you mention, coheres with the notion of a God who is ipsum esse subsistens.  I do indeed. I am sure you are aware of Exodus 2:14: Ego sum qui sum . . . dic illis: QUI EST misit me ad vos. On Mount Sinai God reveals himself to Moses, and communicates to him the following message to be relayed to those at the foot of the mountain, a message presumably not couched in the words of  any human language: "I am who am . . . say this, 'He Who Is sent me to you.' "
 
To my mind, this passage from Exodus expresses the identity of the God of the Bible with the God of the philosophers. The God of the Bible, a being, reveals himself to man as Being itself.  The two upward paths, that of religion and that of philosophy, come together as one at the apex of the ascent in the divine simplicity.  The ascent to the Absolute is thus onto-theological.  And so, the two paths, neither of which in itself is a mystical path, culminate in a mystical unity, that of the simple God.  It is a mystical unity in that it defies discursive grasp.  We ineluctably think in opposites and naturally balk at talk of a thing identical to its attributes, its attributes identical to one another, its essence  identical to its existence, and so on.
 
You can come to understand how a God worth his salt must be ontologically simple without being able to understand how he could be ontologically simple. You can reason your way up to the simple God, but not into him or his life.  There will be no syllogizing in the Beatific Vision.  Discursivity must be dropped as it must also be dropped in the transition from ordinary, discursive prayer to the Prayer of Quiet, the first stage of infused contemplation, with several more beyond it.  These stages are well-described in Teresa's Interior Castle, and in all the manuals of mystical theology.  Poulain, about whom I say something over at Substack, is particularly good.
 
Mystics properly so called, such as Teresa de Avila and Juan de la Cruz, are able to jump immediately to the apex by mystical intuition.  And so there are three upward paths, although the mystical way is perhaps not well-described as a path inasmuch as it can be trod in an instant  without any preparatory ascesis if one receives an infusion of divine grace. (Grace is gratuitous and so cannot be brought about by any technique.)   The philosopher plods along, discursively, step by step. The religionist proceeds tediously with rites and rituals, petitions and penances and processions, fasting and almsgiving, kneeling and standing.  Mystics, properly so-called, do these things  as well, but not as well and not as much.  You may have noticed, Russell, that St. Teresa is a pretty sharp thinker who works out a criteriology for the evaluation of mystical experiences in The Interior Castle, a late work of hers, and the one I would recommend to people above her others.  It is short and easy to read.
 
As for Thomas Aquinas, the main exponent of DDS, he too is a mystic, a minor mystic if you will, not at the level of Teresa and Juan, not to mention Meister Eckhart, et al.   I believe the only experience of Thomas's we are aware of is the one at the end of his life which prompted him to give up writing. See my Substack article, Why Did Thomas Aquinas Leave his Summa Theologiae Unfinished? Aquinas is all three: philosopher, religionist, mystic.  Or it might be better to say he wears four hats: philosopher, religionist, theologian, mystic. 
 
This response is beginning to get lengthy, so I'll leave two more comments I have until later.  The Comments are enabled.
 
 
Ipsum esse tattoo

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Bill Vallicella

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4 responses to “From the Mail Bag: Old-Time Reader Swims the Tiber”

  1. EG Avatar
    EG

    Hi Bill,
    A simple question, you write:
    “We ineluctably think in opposites and naturally balk at talk of a thing identical to its attributes, its attributes identical to one another, its essence identical to its existence, and so on.”
    So here, you’re saying thinking in opposites is pointing to how we apprehend things cognitively, that we have to “separate” or “break a thing away from” something else, to hold it in our minds? And that God in this instance is the “whole thing,” and to separate it is then to say take a picture, tear it up into little pieces, re-organize it in some way that we think makes sense (and then argue with everyone endless about just this), and then complain that the “picture” relative to what it was before it was torn into pieces and re-arranged–itself whole and perhaps in the non-discursive sense, “intelligible”–does not make sense.
    Thinking about this, I feel like a discussion about the Sublime might be useful, and why the appreciation and “sense” (perhaps, extra-sensory) is something that the mystics grasp and stands behind the Beatific vision. And perhaps also why, having any sense of this, even defectively, points you to the sense of an order of Being, and gives sense to “above”, “below” and why one is preferred over the other?

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  2. Dominik Kowalski Avatar
    Dominik Kowalski

    I am wondering, can we really say that EO lacks the philosophy Catholicism is supposed to have?
    I won’t deny that the great philosophers we refer to tend to have been Catholic, but is that anything other than a historical contingency? Particularly, since the vast majority of the philosophy goes back to pre-Christian sources in Plato and Aristotle.
    I can’t comment on how both denominations integrate philosophy into their practice, particularly in their sermons. The German church is a disappointment in that regard, but that should be a surprise to nobody here, since it is exactly that in innumerable other aspects as well. Nevertheless, what the religiously minded participant on this blog here is interested in, should go over the head of most churchgoers, so that is perhaps not the standard I should be setting.
    But I would like to give a little pushback in the form of a question: Shouldn’t we regard the denomination which expects from its believers the acceptance of more dogmas, to be the less philosophical one? If rational disagreement is discouraged for more propositions, isn’t that also more hostile against the philosophical method?

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  3. BV Avatar
    BV

    Dominik,
    I disagree with Baldocchi about Easter Orthodoxy. From what I’ve read it is very rich philosophically. See, for example, Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church.
    >> Shouldn’t we regard the denomination which expects from its believers the acceptance of more dogmas, to be the less philosophical one? If rational disagreement is discouraged for more propositions, isn’t that also more hostile against the philosophical method?<< I see your point. Dogmas tend to shut down independent thinking and are often rearguard institutional reactions to attacks from without. I am thinking of the Modernist crisis in the RCC and the subsequent promulgation of the dogmas of papal infallibility and Immaculate Conception. Franz Brentano, a Catholic priest and a noted philosopher who could be called the grandfather of phenomenology due to his influence on both Husserl and Heidegger, left the priesthood because the infallibility dogma.

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  4. BV Avatar
    BV

    EG,
    This is relevant: https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2022/06/platonism-aristotelianism-and-divine-simplicity.html

    Reply

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