Radio Beloved

A few weeks ago, I wrote an essay on life and death in light of the Atonement. It ended thus:

We are now a hard kernel of wheat, dead but with infinite potential. Face to face with the breadth of charity, charity greater than love, we pause in trepidation. Yet there need be no fear in the consecration of ourselves to God, nor in the metamorphosis from a selfish creature to a child of God. Far less of our ego than we suspect is truly who we are, and far more of our potential.

Identity has been rolling around in my head for a long time now. What is identity? Who am I, or, at least, who will I be? Those are deeper questions, perhaps, than we can expect answers to in this life, but I’d still like to explore it, especially as embodied in the last phrase I wrote above. “Far less of our ego than we suspect is truly who we are, and far more of our potential.”

“Far less of our ego…” What did I mean? I’m still trying to catch that elusive thought, hanging like gossamer in my mind. Certainly my selfish interests and habits will be burned away as chaff; I have to wondered how literally consciousness of myself will die, and to what resurrection. I don’t believe that we will become the nameless, faceless, identityless ‘brothers and sisters in Christ’ of which I’ve heard some evangelical Christians speak, not for an instant. God didn’t create human identity in his children only to destroy it mere decades later, as in that conception. Furthermore, we do know that there was self-identification before this life, as evidenced by the agency exhibited in the war in heaven. Joseph Smith preached,

I have another subject to dwell upon…, associated with the subject of the resurrection of the dead,—namely, the soul—the mind of man—the immortal spirit. Where did it come from? All learned men and doctors of divinity say that God created it in the beginning; but it is not so: the very idea lessens man in my estimation… .

The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is [co-eternal] with God himself.

–Joseph Smith (King Follett Discourse)

This is a marvelously deep and important doctrine in Mormonism, and we’ve hardly scratched the surface of its implications in the nearly two centuries since its revelation. We are self-existent beings, beings of cohesive identity, beings which are self-determining as uncreated.

Mere reflection cannot give us too much insight into our identity, although it can be useful. Ultimately, we can never strike too close to the quick of existence, because we are a sort of recursive observer-observing-him or her-self, condemned to perceive ourselves only as phenomena, as Kant pointed out in The Critique of Pure Reason.

Neal A. Maxwell wrote, in what is the kernel of this post, that, “What we now defensively regard as constituting individuality is likely to be significantly refined” (The Inexhaustible Gospel, 200). Furthermore, George MacDonald reminded us, “This love of our neighbour is the only door out of the dungeon of self” (Love Thy Neighbor). And so we must leave that dungeon of self, and venture forth into the wild and windy universe.

“…and far more of our potential.” Venturing forth, we now enter upon the reasons for this life, the motivation for a crucible. As children of God, destined to inherit his glory and enter into the mysteries of Godliness, it is our potential that defines our future identity. The genius of linear thought, as we are forced to have, is that every single thought determines which direction we are headed, which of the two ways we follow. There is no neutrality in divine war.

“For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.”

–Romans 14:7

As our own ego dies, our own potential lives. We become more effective in the inherently social world into which the Lord placed us, more effective at reflecting or transmitting the light of Christ within us, more effective at filling the same potential.

I spoke of linear thought, the chain of combinatorial logic in which we are enmeshed irrevocably. Hugh Nibley refers to this linearity extensively in his famous essay, Zeal Without Knowledge:

But why this crippling limitation on our thoughts if we are God’s children? It is precisely this limitation which is the essence of our mortal existence. If every choice I make expresses a preference; if the world I build up is the world I really love and want, then with every choice I am judging myself, proclaiming all the day long to God, angels and my fellowmen where my real values lie, where my treasure is, the things to which I give supreme importance. Hence, in this life every moment provides a perfect and foolproof test of your real character, making this life a time of testing and probation. …

Sin is waste. It is doing one thing when you should be doing other and better things for which you have the capacity.

Or, in my immediate terms, sin is the waste of our potential on our ego. It’s back to the question of how we deal with our cognitive surplus.

On another note, we are reminded by C. S. Lewis that the path to Hell is paved with good intentions. How do we reconcile this? By performing every action authentically, in Sartre’s term, or ethically, in Kant’s, or infinitely, in Kierkegaard’s. It is not a question so much of “intention”, as we may easily deceive ourselves in self-justification of our meddling. It’s a question of conviction–is what we are doing the deep action that we can will all others to perform, is it according to the Golden Rule, is it consistent with the deepest feelings and inspirations of our heart? That is the feather of Ma’at against which our heart will be weighed, and thus the canon we must bear in mind as we seek to become.

Refining away the chaff–I say this so cavalierly, but I know no way to say it that could give the terror of existence its full due–refining away the chaff, we have only gold left. And yet, not only gold left, but emphatically gold, to be poured into the divine mold. To recoin my phrase, far less of our chaff than we suspect is who we truly are, and far more of our gold.

In the eleventh century, the medieval monk St. Anselm introduced the analogia entis, the analogy of being or ontological argument, as an attempt to prove the existence of God a priori, in a vacuum, with no reference to the outside world, divine revelation, the Holy Ghost, or anything else. He presents it in chapters two through four of his Proslogion. It’s actually two closely related arguments. The core of his first argument runs as follows:

For, it is one thing for an object to be in the understanding, and another to understand that the object exists. When a painter first conceives of what he will afterwards perform, he has it in his understanding, but he does not yet understand it to be, because he has not yet performed it. But after he has made the painting, he both has it in his understanding, and he understands that it exists, because he has made it.

Hence … something exists in the understanding, at least, than which nothing greater can be conceived… . And whatever is understood, exists in the understanding. And assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone. For, suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater.

Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, is one, than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality.

Understandably, the ontological argument has fired centuries of controversy. I once remarked to a friend of mine (Jeff at The Pilgrim) that I found the analogia entis to be neither compelling nor damnable, but rather irrelevant; my current discussion of it shows that the last position, at least, has been revised. In part, my interest in Anselm’s analogia entis stems from a recent re-reading of the writings of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price, as I am sure every LDS philosophy major ever coined has noticed. We find there written:

If two things exist, and there be one above the other, there shall be greater things above them….

Now, if there be two things, one above the other, and the moon be above the earth, then it may be that a planet or a star may exist above it; and there is nothing that the Lord thy God shall take in his heart to do but what he will do it.

Howbeit that he made the greater star; as, also, if there be two spirits, and one shall be more intelligent than the other, yet these two spirits, notwithstanding one is more intelligent than the other, have no beginning; they existed before, they shall have no end, they shall exist after, for they are gnolaum, or eternal.

And the Lord said unto me: These two facts do exist, that there are two spirits, one being more intelligent than the other; there shall be another more intelligent than they; I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all.

–Abr. 3:16-19 [gnolaum is a Hebrew transliteration signifying eternal]

It’s almost as if God Himself were using the ontological argument—or something strikingly similar—to explain his existence. I’ll base my brief critique of Anselm on these premises, knowing that others have thought much longer and harder about the analogia entis than I have.

The logic in Anselm’s first argument runs roughly as follows:

1) Anything that really exists is greater than anything that possibly exists.

2) There is a greatest conceivable being.

3) The reality of this greatest conceivable being is greater therefore than the mere possibility; ergo He exists, and is God.

The logic presented by the Lord to Abraham condenses to:

1) “If two things exist, and there be one above the other, there shall be greater things above them.”

2) “I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all.”

Statement 1 is assertive: a schema exists that if one thing is greater than another, there is a third thing greater than both. This becomes a synthetic rule by which to construct an understanding of the universe, at least for the purposes of the Abrahamic account of the Creation which ensues. The nested spheres of being one can imagine are reminiscent of Dante or the medieval astronomers.

Yet in the same breath, almost, as the canon is spoken, the Lord declares a capstone to the endless tower He just built—that He, being God, is the greatest.

Transcendental mathematics offers a way to understand the Lord’s seemingly contradictory statements. It is as if the Lord were ∞, infinity, and other beings the integers. Again, nothing earth-shattering here, but merely a reminder that God is separated from us by a mighty chasm. However, we’ve shifted gears to talking about two paradigms simultaneously: the simple set of counting numbers, where 1 and 2 exist and 3 exists above them, and infinity, where ∞ still equals ∞ + 1, and all other relations fade into insignificance. I suppose it’s only fair to point out that the idea of infinity in mathematics has probably stirred as much controversy as the ontological proof of God. (As an interesting aside, Kurt Gödel, of incompleteness theorem fame, formulated St. Anselm’s proof mathematically.)

It seems to me that the very manner in which the Lord uses his second statement above precludes any resort to the ontological argument by Latter-day Saints. ^* The seeming contradiction, that (∞ + 1) = ∞, stands in direct opposition to Anselm’s last claim that the greatest conceivable being (∞) has a greater, the reality of such a being (∞ + 1, or ∞ × ∞, or whatever one wishes to write; it still equals ∞^†). I interpret Anselm’s claim that such a being “exists both in the understanding and in reality” to mean that the conception of God and the reality are one and the same; after my recent reading of Kant I have to reject this claim as absurd. (We haven’t, of course, even addressed what is meant by “greatness”; there is fertile ground for discussion here.)

In a reading of the Reformed theologian Karl Barth’s work a few months ago, I wrote the following observation, the kernel of my inspiration: “It is a very different thing to know that God is the greatest of all and to suppose that he is God because there must be a greatest.” This seems to me to be kind of a survival of the metaphysically-fittest, cosmological fascism; while it is true that there is a greatest and He is God (as in Abraham), it is not a logical a priori deduction (as in Anselm), but an observation on the hierarchy (literally holy order) of the universe.

I just don’t think the game is simple enough that mere logic will allow us to satisfy ourselves that God exists. It’s never been sufficient, but only a toy, like Pascal’s wager, when unaccompanied by the stringent requirements and revelations of spirituality, mysticism, and communion with the Divine. God requires faith, and there is no substitute for that Angst-ful sacrifice.

————-

* The Lectures on Faith (2:33), however, seem to follow a line of argument similar to the early portion of Anselm’s other argument, in that Sidney Rigdon claims that the idea of God was present to God’s children by direct testimony–or, in other words, that we contemplate the concept of God by virtue of His existence, a more compelling thought in my mind.

† Although there are provisions in transcendental mathematics for operations on infinity, ∞ or אₒ; those go beyond my discussion here. In any case, I doubt that we as humans are prepared to talk about whether the transition from possibility to reality is equivalent to ∞^∞ or anything else.

In any case, the ontological argument is complex enough that I have to read the whole post three times to pick up the train of my thought (and St. Anselm’s) again. It’s confusing enough, so I welcome criticisms of my deductions herein, as I try to refine my understanding of these complex arguments.

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. (KJV)

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (NIV)

I came, that they have life, and have more plenteously. (Wycliffe)

Ego veni ut vitam habeant et abundantius habeant. (Vulgate)

–John 10:10

Christ delivered this teaching to the disciples and Pharisees in the last months of his life, recorded in the Gospel of John directed to the disciples familiar with the introductory teachings of the Church already. As Jesus built his ministry to the crescendo of Gethsemane and Golgotha, he continually reaffirmed the cosmic significance of the doctrines he taught–and doctrine is too weak a word. This is the symbolic end of every lamb on every Levitical altar and the real end of the real Lamb on the Golgothan altar.

What is it to have life and to have it more abundantly?

Death is separation, whether from God, from others, or from ultimately one’s own potential. Freedom from death is through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, freedom to have no elements of death in your life–but freedom is burdened by choice.

I wonder what it was like in that moment in our early childhood when we first understood death. At some point, we all experience the icy realization that I, too, will die. Yet we have been taught continually to not fear death, but accept it as part of our natural mortality, a return to a spiritual plane. Finitude, the Heideggerian certainty of impending end, should not be a challenge to the believing Christian with more than a casual faith–there is no impending end, except to progress and glory, should we allow sin in. The universal gift is, of course, the Resurrection, but that only covers part of the question of death.

The first spiritual death, separation from God, is possibly the most fundamental neurosis we can have, and I believe that recognition of this death, whether overtly religious or atheistic, is what led to the modern notions of alienation and existentialism. God is separate from us by an infinite qualitative distinction (Kierkegaard’s phrase), a complete difference of kind and degree, and the separation is an unbridgeable gap by finite means. Thus, an infinite Atonement (Alma 34:10) was necessary and sufficient to reconcile that divide–that this corruption might put on incorruption (2 Nephi 9:7).

Alienation from each other is another great divide of human existence, and our common lot. Condemned, as Kierkegaard said, to know others only in potential, we struggle through miscommunication and mistrust, largely products of our own selfishness, to construct our fragile relationships. But the Atonement, literally (Tyndale’s word) at-one-ment, is to bring us all of one heart and one mind, Zion, to seal us together in love and charity. The division and argument common to us are elements of spiritual death, and preclude us from living life more abundantly. Christ taught a higher way, and through continual application of the Atonement we can approximate it better and better over the years of personal striving.

We all look in the mirror and see someone who is less than what we would have them be. Life more abundantly certainly precludes any sense of failure or inadequacy (beyond humility–but that’s another topic). And yet we so often insist on maintaining the elements of death, physical and spiritual, in our lives. Why? What hammer drives the relentless march of our own self-destruction, whether from cigarettes, pornography, or just momentum in inactivity? In some ways, I feel that this is the most difficult part of death to approach, not because it is somehow deeper than the others, but because it is the one we face every moment of every day. Our own inadequacy confronts us at every turn; we can throw up walls of pride to hold it apart, but it is still there, leering at us through windows and mirrors.

In Sartrean existentialism, bad faith, or inauthenticity to one’s own self, reveals an answer to this problem. Although I won’t here discuss one’s own self (which I take to mean that self God desires us to be and sees in us), I will examine inauthenticity. The individual insists that external circumstances (poverty, athleticism, social standing, education) dictate the terms of his or her existence, thus denying the personal freedom to change. We pretend that the possibilities of existence, good and bad, are closed to us, with one or two overriding exceptions (normally continuing in the same vein in which we already are). Alternatively, we use internal or social definitions of self (labels such as Christian, stubborn, sloppy, or liberal) to dictate our response, choosing to act according to the archetype of the label rather than to act authentically to one’s own desires. In the case of Christian, Muslim, or Latter-day Saint, this choice may be considered virtuous; in many, many other cases, the choice is self-limiting and enclosing, perpetuating the elements of death rather than purging them.

Yet recognition of this problem is not solution: it takes more than “hard work”, concentration, or even redemption to become more than what we were. It takes the rest of the Atonement, quickening and exaltation, beyond “re”-anything.

Jesus Christ came to free us from death, to life more abundant. The truest, deepest fear of the believer, the one with a more-than-casual faith, is not death but damnation–the complete, unequivocal, eternal cessation of progress. A more complicated aspect of death and life-more-abundant is Paul’s reminder that we must pass through death to approach life, crucifying the old man of sin (Romans 6:6); but that is a discussion for another time.

God’s life, eternal life, the infinitely qualitatively distinct life, is a life free from death, a life in which all gifts are life to the degree we will let Him bestow it. He took it upon Himself in order to free us from it, and invites us continually to leave it behind–to become, rather than merely be, a son or daughter of God.