This month’s Solid Ground is an excerpt from Greg’s new book, The Story of Reality (coming out in December). The book is going to be a good one. In it, Greg describes the big picture of reality; history, theology, and philosophy all come into play as he explains the story of God, man, Jesus, cross, and resurrection.
The correct answer to the question “What is Christianity?” is this: Christianity is a picture of reality. It is an account, or a description, or a depiction of the way things actually are. It is not just a view from the inside (a Christian’s personal feelings, or religious beliefs, or spiritual affections, or ethical views, or “relationship” with God). It is also a view of the outside. It is a view of the world out there, of how the world really is in itself.
Put another way, Christianity is a worldview….
All of us have beliefs about the world we think are accurate. All of us have a worldview picture— at least a rudimentary one—forming in our minds, even if we are not consciously aware of it. Every religion tells a story of reality. Every philosophy and every individual outlook on life is a take on the way someone thinks the world actually is. There is no escaping it. These stories are meant to bring order to our beliefs, to explain the “pieces” of reality that we encounter in life, whether big things or little things, important or inconsequential.
All worldviews are not equal, though. Some have pieces that seem to fit together (internally) better than others, and some have pieces that seem to fit reality (externally) better than others. If they are good stories—that is, if they explain many things, especially the most important things, in a way consistent with our normal encounters with the world—then we have more confidence the stories are accurate, which is just another way of saying the worldview is true….
Read this month’s Solid Ground, and get a taste of The Story of Reality.
The Story of Reality
What a great title.
The metanarrative of reality is One Metanarrative because (whatever the truth happens to be) there cannot be 1.00000998 true stories about the actual story of reality nor can there be 0.999999472 of a story that is the full content of the actual story of reality.
That said, well, the audaciousness of Greg to claim such a title.
Is reality intelligible? Is perception itself merely a Big-Con with respect to what ultimately exists at bottom? Reason as truth-finder compels us into a peculiar and unique "Y" in the road for on such questions it will be some form of nihilism at some ontological seam somewhere or else it will be, well, three unavoidable vertices.
We may just find, therein, that reason and logic compel us into three unavoidable vertices, such as in all that we find within our own first person experience. Perception itself in that first person experience is itself constituted of all that we perceive as the distinction that is [1] the 'self' and all that we perceive as the distinction that is [2] the 'other' and all that we perceive as the distinction that is [3] the singular whole that is reality -- which in our first person experience would amount to something akin to the term "us", which is itself not actually [1] nor is it actually [2] but rather it is an unavoidable third distinction where perception is concerned.
We find the same three unavoidable vertices inside of reciprocity, which is to say inside of love.
We find the same three unavoidable vertices inside of all that is Knower and Known.
We find the same three unavoidable vertices inside of all that is Mind.
We find (in and by and through all of those) that we come upon the remarkable fact that the same three unavoidable vertices constitute all that is Being Itself.
In fact, the Story of Reality is (*if* we claim that reality is in fact intelligible) the story of an unavoidably triune singularity.
There's more to all of that of course, and the term "E Pluribus Unum" in such contours is itself, while relevant in a few interesting ways, *not* a replacement for what *is* [Father, Eternally Begotten, Spirit] vis-à-vis Trinity, but the title "The Story of Reality" captures something which transports reason and logic into one particular kind of genre which itself testifies of the elemental and irreducibly triune shape of Being Itself.
Uncanny.
Posted by: scbrownlhrm | March 05, 2016 at 09:13 AM
Reality’s singular metanarrative, but from another, somewhat esoteric, direction:
The Non-Theist often attempts to use this as evidence that God approved of every act which every OT character did and of course such a move betrays the Non-Theist’s glaring lack of understanding of what and where the “good report” actually streams from (it’s means and ends) as per the singular metanarrative contained within Scripture wherein all such means and all such ends cannot sum to anything less than the immutable love of the Necessary Being.
Even worse, the Non-Theist denies, outright, that which is undeniable as he refutes Scripture’s metanarrative for he refutes that Reality As Such can manifest in something less than Christ.
How’s that?
Following reason:
In all of our own human psychology it is undeniable that in all of our own interpersonal conflicts with each other, in order for me to truly forgive you, or you me, something in all of that pain must be truly surrendered, given up, let-go-of, and without that giving-up of what you did to me, or me to you, forgiveness simply cannot fully come to be, cannot run its full course. And we all know this of the contours of hurt, pain, and forgiveness. While in church the author Brene’ Brown, who has decades of research in our own human interactions, heard that in fact “….in order for forgiveness to happen, something has to die…” and such cohered perfectly with the entire anthology of research inside of said arena.
And yet this undeniable fact vis-à-vis the motions within “I Forgive You” the Non-Theist expressly denies for he denies the many and varied vectors which seamlessly converge in Christ and Cross.
Christ and Cross reaches into, pours into, and fills all that is Reality to the bitter ends of Time and Physicality. Why? Because that is what forgiveness looks like should such stream from the contours of Being Itself. There’s more of course, but the question of “Why the Cross?” reveals (at the very least) an uninformed thinking in and of both the necessary modes within Being Itself vis-à-vis all contingent affairs such as Time and Physicality, and in and of those modes within the motions inherent within “I Forgive You”.
In fact, Man in all possible states of affairs comes upon all which sums to Christ.
Why?
Because Man is, simply, the epitome of and quintessence of Insufficiency whereas God is the epitome of and quintessence of All-Sufficiency. We cannot evade (therefore) all the semantics of (and ontology of) the uniquely Christian vectors of debasement, of glorification, of acquiescence, of pouring, of filling, and so on. Thereby both reason and logic force us into the Face of God vis-à-vis Christ for the ontological topography of Eden and Man and choices there in Eden which inevitably lead into this or that possible world reveal to us the unavoidable conclusion that in all such possible worlds vis-à-vis God’s freely decreed Imago Dei (given what that necessarily entails and promises) it is the case that All Sufficiency (God) must pour, be debased, transpose, instantiate, and, per love’s free decree amid reciprocity’s landscape, fill and therein glorify the Insufficient (fill and therein glorify the created Imago Dei / fill and glorify Man), just as in all such Worlds Insufficiency (Man) must acquiesce, must (whether in Eden or out of Eden) come to know his own innate insufficiency and volitional motion and mutability and therein (vis-à-vis love’s volitional motions within Trinity / Imago Dei) love either the Mutable Self or else love the Immutable Other within reciprocity’s landscape, must be filled, be glorified in and by All Sufficiency’s (God’s) timeless reciprocity, and, thereby, per love’s reciprocity, glorify All Sufficiency (glorify God) – or else he, Man, must glorify his own Self – (there are no other options given God's freely decreed Imago Dei).
The entire of ontology of Christ is unavoidable in all Worlds given what God’s freely decreed Imago Dei necessarily entails and necessarily promises. We come upon the fact that instantiation and transposition and incarnation are from the ground up in all possible worlds which Man finds before him there in Eden logically necessary both upon the grounds of reason and upon the grounds of love.
We find then the peculiar and the uncanny yet again.
The only possible metanarrative, unless we mean to deny the undeniable and embrace incoherence, is found by allowing reason, love, and logic to do their proper work, regardless of the consequences.
Having done so we discover that we are compelled into one particular kind of genre which itself testifies of (on the one hand) the elemental and irreducibly triune shape of Being Itself and (on the other hand) the elemental and irreducible vectors which seamlessly converge in Christ.
Posted by: scbrownlhrm | March 08, 2016 at 02:20 AM
The Triune God and Christ yet again:
Only in and by the Triune God is it the case that love's timeless reciprocity – love's eternal pouring and love's eternal filling within the processions amid Knower and Known – can be coherently found within the immutable love of the Necessary Being. Christ’s Cross does not determine the nature of divine love, but rather manifests it:
Posted by: scbrownlhrm | March 08, 2016 at 02:39 AM