Summary of text [comment] page 45

[At this point, we have encountered three resonant movements in widely separated passages: the cessation of God Recognizing Himself, the death of the spontaneous order in which we are embedded, and the eclipse of think^divine.

The movements all describe horrific evil, where actuality₂ ceases to emerge from the realm of possibility₁.  All describe a supernatural evil beyond the goods and evils of nature.  All describe the ultimate limitation.

Attaching this afterthought to the end of the Lord’s Prayer makes the prayer a work of monstrous, sublime beauty.  The poetic light of de Chardin pales in comparison to the theatrical fireworks of the Lord’s Prayer.

Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts.  Let us forgive the debts of others.  Um … what else? … oh, I know:

Deliver us from the cessation of You Recognizing Yourself, the complete annihilation of my society, and the total and utter loss of sanity.]

Summary of text [comment] page 45

[God will not even allow us this assurance, in the present, after the Fall.]

Summary of text [comment] page 45

[The presence of statistical variation (which de Chardin, for all practical purposes, used to explain the necessity of natural evil) means that we have another worry.

When we will slip from the realm of actuality to possibility, will the context remain true?

Consider our prayers:

First, we may ask God to “preserve us” (and suppress the obvious consequences that, if God were to preserve me, then more and more energy would be devoted to maintaining “me” and less and less energy would be available for other trials, thereby undermining the spontaneous order).

Second, we may ask God to “design something better” (that is, to “alter the rules of the game in our favor”, and suppress the obvious consequences of biased selection in a spontaneous order).

Third, we may ask God to “deliver us from evil”.

Now, this one is in the Lord’s Prayer, so I better not dismiss it.

The phrase “deliver us from evil” is placed after a very practical list. It comes almost as an afterthought.]

[Both nature (spontaneous order) and human efforts (designed order), will alter the formal elements in order to adapt to recurring (statistically frequent) instrumental failures.

Applying this to the realm of freedom and morality, (that is, the realm of virtue and sin, or perhaps, I should say, the realm of culture and designed orders) I sense that the challenge of evil (perceived as the occurrence of failure through instrumental causes or formal requirements, which are statistical) induces us to feel that we should change formal designs to prevent particular failures.

The statistical character of evil pushes us to become either control freaks, always designing a better system, or reactionaries, clinging to what works in a stubborn effort to keep everything intact.

Here, we encounter a “demand on God” that resembles the previously discussed “demand that God preserve us”.

In this demand, we fail to acknowledge that we are beings in a spontaneous order and, if God did literally preserve our homeostasis, metabolism and definition, other aspects of the spontaneous order would suffer.

In short, we ask for a cure.  We ask God to remove failure (evil) by intervention (instrumentally) or decree (formally).]

Summary of text [comment] page 45

I now return to page 45, where Schoonenberg accepts that “evil is a statistical necessity” for God’s creation and wonders whether it applies to the realm of freedom and morality, that is, to us.

[There are two types of statistical necessity.

One relates to instrumental causes.  Instrumental (dyadic) causea and effects build situations₂, such as those found in de Chardin’s interscoping nested forms.  Consider the workings of homeostasis₂, metabolism₂, and definition₂.

Statistical chances of instrumental failure account for why we slip from actuality back into possibility, through illness, poisoning and violence.

The other relates to formal requirements.  These explain our particular designs. Consider the designs of homeostasis₂, metabolism₂ and definition₂.

Often, we slip from actuality back into possibility with respect to some level of the interscoping forms because our particular design could endure only a certain statistical range of challenges.  Each one of us exhibits a slightly different design with its corresponding vulnerabilities.

Both types of failure are familiar to us.  These statistical necessities appear in the production and maintenance of all designed forms.]

[What did de Chardin see as our illusion?

We long to be above the participation.  We long to be like God.

Consider those who have arranged that they never slip back into Nothingness.  Consider Lenin and now, Chavez.  Their plasticized remains are on display for all to see.  They are preserved as demonic apparitions beneath glass facades.

Compare them to the famous Christian relics, which are preserved in equally beautiful, sublime and scary apparatuses.  The saints did not ask to be so preserved.  In a way, their admirers preserved their bodies against the wishes of the saints.

Relics are icons of a “remembering”.  They are our way of asking God to not forget this moment, or that moment, when the spontaneous order held this person of great gravity and intensity.

We cannot imagine that this moment, every moment, is God Recognizing Himself.   Even though we physically return to Nothingness, something remains.

God remains.]

[But what of Nothingness?

Consider the clinging that Buddha let slip, back, into what?

Perhaps, this is what Tielhard was hoping to evoke.  Rather than taking the Buddhist perspective that all striving is illusion, which is technically correct since all arises then returns to Nothingness, Tielhard revels in the creativity and destruction – the beauty and the terror – the Mythos of the “Illusion Being Actual”.

The Logos follows.  Even Buddha did not slip back into Nothingness.

God’s spontaneous order brings us into being then lets us slip away. Yet, God does not create for Nothing.  God creates for Himself.]

Summary of text [comment] page 44

[The “shame of participation”?

Yes, each one of us faces “the shame of not being beautiful forever” along with the shame of “not being alive forever”.

“To be alive” is simply more beautiful than “to be dead”.

In my shame, I want to lure God into preserving me, at cost to all others, from the ravages of slipping back into Nothingness.]

[Evil^physical  and evil^metaphysical necessarily occur in the context of creation through spontaneous order, which means that failure is inevitable and success is always contingent.

So we must admit that natural evil is part of God’s creation.

At the same time, the drama and the abundance of the spontaneous orders are beautiful to behold, far more beautiful than any designed order.

Plus, without the spontaneous order, none of us would have come into existence.

Perhaps, we can parody St. Paul in saying that the abundance of beauty is greater than the shame of participation.]

[Recall that

Evil^physical is that portion of the nested form:

___₃(situated as evil₂(event₁))

This corresponds to an event that produces a negatively stressful situation or a privation of a good.

Evil^metaphysical is that portion of the nested form:

normal context₃(situated as evil₂(__₁))

This corresponds to a limitation tested by the negatively stressful situation.]