Origen's Speculative Angelology

Origen of Alexandria can be credited as the founder of a Christian speculative angelology, in which Christ the Logos is both the creator and the interpreter of the angels. He introduces the angels as the first created rational beings who, in contemplating the divine Word (Logos), freely choose to direct their will as holy angels in service to or wicked demons in antagonism against the love of God. The first created rational beings are divided into three orders: the angels, the demons, and the neutral spirits of human souls. The angels remain closest in contemplation of the Logos, yet, due to their negligence, descend to unfold in the angelic hierarchy. The angels and demons thereafter guide the movements of all spirits, substances, and signs in the created world. The neutral spirits of human souls can choose to follow either the guidance of guardian angels or demons. And yet after the Incarnation, the angels are distinguished from the demons by their choice to follow Christ. Origen’s angelology has often been regarded as an early Christian alternative to Middle Platonic daemonologies. And after Karl Barth, his angelology has come to be dispensed from Christian theology. However, as Jean Daniélou has observed, Origen had previously departed from Platonic daemonology in affirming that angelic mediacy must pass away like the light of the stars before the brilliance of the Logos of Christ. He had, in this way, already assimilated the mediacy of the angels to the absolute mediation of Christ. And, in assimilating angelic to christic mediacy, Origen also attributes the reason with which the world is moved to the divine reason of the divine Word (Logos) of Christ in God. Origen’s angelology can thus be read both before and after Barth as a science of the angels

The Light of the Leaf: A Theological Critique of Timothy Morton’s ‘Dark Ecology’

The plant has recently emerged as a battleground of conflicting ecocriticisms. ‘Dark Ecology’ is, in the works of Timothy Morton, an ecocritical hermeneutic, in which the world can be subtracted into the parts of objects, of the plant, and of any leaf that exceeds the totality of abstract ‘Nature’. In dividing the whole into the parts, and combining the parts into an imminently subtracted whole, he has recommended a negative dialectic of virtual objects that can be collected into a ‘hyperobject’. This dialectic can, however, be argued to dissolve any whole into parts, and render the hyperobject internally fissured. We can, from the ‘darkness’ of this fissure, begin to read Nature according to the ‘via plantare’, that is, a mystical way of desiring an other as plant so as to know and love the visible light of the invisible God. ‘Vegetal difference’, the difference of the plant from the animal, should, I argue, be read for theology as a finite reflection of the divine difference of the Holy Trinity in a Trinitarian Ontology, in which the originary difference of the Son from the Father is related through the Holy Spirit, and given again in accelerating gratuity—like the light of the leaf that shines forth from any flower.</jats:p

Analogy and dialectics: a genealogical comparison of Hegel and Przywara

Analogy and dialectics are principles of logic, grammar, and metaphysics for intermediating the elements of theology. Analogy is a grammatical relation that differentiates many distinct terms that remain related by a proportionate similitude, while dialectics is a logical relation that opposes many contradictory theses for the purpose of resolving these contradictions into a synthetic unity of opposites. Each may be abstractly divided by definition but both must be concretely united, through the shared semiotic medium of signs, in the essential relations of the Trinity. The Trinity is the consummate centre in which analogy and dialectics completely coincide. Both principles have been alternatively championed for the purpose of constructing the metaphysical infrastructure of theology: analogy has been presented as a metaphysical-causal principle of the proportionate participation of imperfect analogate in perfect analogon terms; while dialectics has alternatively been presented as an onto-noetic principle that annuls so as to preserve contradictory theses. The champions of analogy and dialectics typically subordinate one to the other: analogy is subordinated to dialectics as an equivocal opposition of theses, while dialectics is subordinated to analogy as a more restricted dialectics between terms. This mutual subordination has been deployed to preserve the purity of analogy and dialectics, but proves to subvert both principles: for when dialectics is subordinated to analogy the force of its contradictory theses can be fossilized in analogy; and when analogy is subordinated to dialectics the bonds of participation between its analogate terms can be broken in dialectics. The broken analogy and the fossilized dialectics that result from such a subordination must inevitably fail because the broken analogy can no more grammatically conjoin its opposed terms than the fossilized dialectics can argumentatively unite its opposites. Since, however, analogy possesses the power to suspend any distinction between terms, and dialectics possesses the power to sublate any opposition between theses, dialectics can erupt from its fossilized form and analogy can only restore its broken bonds in and through the essential relations of the Trinity

Recollecting the Religious: Augustine in Answer to Meno’s Paradox

Abstract: Philosophers of education often view the role of religion in education with suspicion, claiming it to be impossible, indoctrinatory or controversial unless reduced to secular premises and aims. The ‘post-secular’ and ‘decolonial’ turns of the new millennium have, however, afforded opportunities to revaluate this predilection. In a social and intellectual context where the arguments of previous generations of philosophers may be challenged on account of positivist assumptions, there may be an opening for the reconsideration of alternative but traditional religious epistemologies. In this article, we pursue one such line of thought by revisiting a classic question in the philosophy of education, Meno’s Paradox of inquiry. We do this to revitalise understanding and justification for religious education. Our argument is not altogether new, but in our view, is in need of restatement: liturgy is at the heart of education and it is so because it is a locus of knowledge. We make this argument by exploring St Augustine’s response to Meno’s Paradox, and his radical claim that only Christ can be called ‘teacher’. Though ancient, this view of the relationship of the teacher and student to knowledge may seem surprisingly contemporary because of its emphasis on the independence of the learner. Although our argument is grounded in classic texts of the Western tradition, we suggest that arguments could be made by drawing on similar resources in other religious traditions, such as Islam, that also draw upon the Platonic tradition and similarly emphasise the importance of communal and personal acts of worship

Restoring Reason: Theology of Logic in Origen of Alexandria

Logic and theology were once spoken of together in a divine speech with which we spoke of God, even as God spoke to us, in one and the same sacred speech. Logic had been conceived as a simulation of speech in argument from the divine Logos. Yet logic has since been repeatedly separated from theology by Aristotle, Ockham, and Kant, just as often as it has been re-united by Plotinus, Cusa, and Hegel. Each separation has resulted in the successive construction of logic into more articulate forms of argument and inference. Origen of Alexandria (fl. AD 184–253/4) has contributed the first Christian theological interpretation of logic. He has, beginning in his systematic theology On First Principles, interpreted logic as a simulation of the Logos, communicated by Christ, in and through the divine hypostases of God as Trinity. And he has, in his scriptural commentaries, shown how, beginning in the ‘spiritual sense’, logic is virtually ‘interwoven’ in all the philosophical sciences, and supremely through the mystical or ‘epoptic’ science of theology. This ‘theology of logic’ announces a new way to study the subject of logic for theology. It should be doubly distinguished, on the one hand, from theoretical or philosophical logic, which asks what are the rules of logic, and on the other hand, from practical or applied logic, which asks how these rules of logic can be used to demonstrate the conclusions of any science. It thus starts with no standing presumption as to the absolute necessity of logic, but, rather and more radically, asks the prior question of the contingent grounds for our very belief in the truth of logic. It raises the most originary questions of the beginning and end of logic before any separation from theology. This discovery has, however, since been submerged and silenced, first due to the Origenist controversies, but finally due to the progressive formalization of logic in medieval and modern logic, culminating in the ‘pure analytic’ of mathematical logic. Once it has reduced the living spirit of speech to the dead letters of writing, and suspended this spirit in an artificial syntax, the logical can lapse into the formalization of a secular logic. Logic then tends to forget and frustrate its own formality as it signifies without speaking of its first formalization. It has thus tended to render logic a-theological, theology a-logical, and both altogether inarticulate. Yet so long as logic remains separate from God, theology can never demonstrate its conclusions, and logic may never come to know its highest truths. Origen can, as this dissertation will show, be read by a theological interpretation of logic, or a theology of logic, which asks theological questions of the fundamental assumptions of any possible form of logic. He had, in contrast to later secular, formal, and mathematical logics, shown how logic can be simulated as it is spoken in and from the higher ground of the divine Logos, and communicated by Christ in God as Trinity. We may, with Origen, begin to weave each exercise of logic through all the sciences, in this speech that may be spoken, as it ever is spoken, in one and the same sacred speech.Peterhouse Graduate Research Studentship, Peterhouse, University of Cambridg

Via Digitalis: From the Postdigital to the Hyperdigital

Acknowledgements: The research that has contributed to this article has been supported in part by a Research Fellowship of the 2022 Diverse Intelligence Summer Institute and a Research Fellowship of the William Temple Foundation. For the inspiration to think and write about the ‘hyperdigital’, I am grateful to Jenny Liu Zhang, Brandon Yip, Olivia Thomas, and the ‘How to Play with Fire’ Team of the 2022 Diverse Intelligence Summer Institute. I am also grateful for the support and accommodations provided by the MAGIS@Home Community of the Jesuit Young Adult Ministries and the Kensington Priory of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St. Simon Stock.AbstractThe way beyond the digital can be discovered, not outside, but rather in and through the digital at its highest point. Since its introduction, the postdigital has neither been adequately defined nor scientifically demonstrated to be indefinable. If, on the contrary, the postdigital can be defined by a conceptual and genealogical analysis as a circuit of reflections upon the essential rupture of the digital, then the way that, in the digital, we calculate in writing can, in the postdigital, be assumed into a hyperbolic reflection in and from its more originary creative source. In this theological critique of Maggi Savin-Baden and John Reader’s volume Postdigital Theologies, I prosecute three theses: first, the postdigital has failed; second, postdigital theology is incompatible with Christian theology; and third, for mystical theology, the hyperdigital is the truth of the postdigital. The postdigital is not ‘ineffable’ but rather only appears indefinable because of a prior and contestable refusal to analyse the digital, as it predicates the ‘postdigital’ of the plural ‘theologies’, and as it speaks past theology. Once, however, it has been analysed into a circuit of reflections upon the rupture of the digital, the truth of the postdigital can be discovered in the hyper-negative or apophatic judgements of mystical theology. This theological critique of the postdigital has thus been written to prepare the mystical way of the digital or ‘via digitalis’ to read the digital and the postdigital on a spiritual ascent towards a hyperbolic cybernetic grammar, which, following Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, should be named the ‘hyperdigital’.</jats:p

Analogy and dialectics: a genealogical comparison of Hegel and Przywara

Analogy and dialectics are principles of logic, grammar, and metaphysics for intermediating the elements of theology. Analogy is a grammatical relation that differentiates many distinct terms that remain related by a proportionate similitude, while dialectics is a logical relation that opposes many contradictory theses for the purpose of resolving these contradictions into a synthetic unity of opposites. Each may be abstractly divided by definition but both must be concretely united, through the shared semiotic medium of signs, in the essential relations of the Trinity. The Trinity is the consummate centre in which analogy and dialectics completely coincide. Both principles have been alternatively championed for the purpose of constructing the metaphysical infrastructure of theology: analogy has been presented as a metaphysical-causal principle of the proportionate participation of imperfect analogate in perfect analogon terms; while dialectics has alternatively been presented as an onto-noetic principle that annuls so as to preserve contradictory theses. The champions of analogy and dialectics typically subordinate one to the other: analogy is subordinated to dialectics as an equivocal opposition of theses, while dialectics is subordinated to analogy as a more restricted dialectics between terms. This mutual subordination has been deployed to preserve the purity of analogy and dialectics, but proves to subvert both principles: for when dialectics is subordinated to analogy the force of its contradictory theses can be fossilized in analogy; and when analogy is subordinated to dialectics the bonds of participation between its analogate terms can be broken in dialectics. The broken analogy and the fossilized dialectics that result from such a subordination must inevitably fail because the broken analogy can no more grammatically conjoin its opposed terms than the fossilized dialectics can argumentatively unite its opposites. Since, however, analogy possesses the power to suspend any distinction between terms, and dialectics possesses the power to sublate any opposition between theses, dialectics can erupt from its fossilized form and analogy can only restore its broken bonds in and through the essential relations of the Trinity

Sacramental Engines: The Trinitarian Ontology of Computers in Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine

Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine can be recollected as a fossilized image of the first digital computer. It is essentially distinguished from all prior and analog computers by the transcription of the ‘mechanical notation’, the separation of the mnemonic ‘store’ from the cybernetic ‘mill’, and the infinite miniaturization of its component parts. This substitution of finite space for an accelerating singularity of time creates the essential rupture of the digital, in which a singular calculation of mechanical force stands opposed to the universal totality of space. Babbage’s criticism of Christian doctrine to preserve the mathematical consistency of mechanics and computing would result in the collapse of the Christian Trinity into a digital theology. This Arian subordinate difference of the Son to the Father would then be infinitely transcribed in a technical contradiction that would threaten to annul the metaphysical ground of any machine. Against digital and postdigital theologies alike, this rupture can only be repaired by a dialectical analysis of the digital into a hyperdigital grammar, which is created by Christ the Logos in a trinitarian ontology of computers. Digital computers can thus be vindicated from theological suspicion as incarnationally accelerated calculators of the sacraments, or ‘sacramental engines’ of the digital age