Troutner’s The Eclipse of the Word: Five Theses on Apophaticism is a provocative piece of an engaged scholar that is thoughtful and worthy of response. Its rhetorical tactic is, no doubt, meant to garner and generate reaction of varying sorts. And this it has done. So, like Bauerschmidt, I cannot say with Radner that “I agree with everything in it.” But nor am I as perplexed as Bauerschmidt as to the “irascible” and “appetive” passions fuelling the text. I understand something of them as well as something of Bauerschmidt’s response. Leithart’s response is smooth and generous, and I absolutely agree with his much-needed emphasis that creation, understood as the Creator’s first revelation, “justifies the use of human language to speak of the Creator.” A Christian metaphysical understanding of creation should not primarily be spoken about in terms of “effects,” but rather in terms of iconographic tracings through which we understand a likeness of the Creator through his creation; a Creator that is ever in-and-beyond his creation. Here, the metaphysical difference between God and creation is what allows for the proximity of his shimmering presence.
The tactic of my response will be twofold. First, I will seek to interpret Troutner’s implicit narrative given in the form of theses, looking at his targets, heroes as well as some curious silences. Second, I will then turn to more systematic and metaphysical considerations implicated in his implicit narrative. Both parts are united around his call for a speculatively rejuvenated “Neochalcedonian theology” aspiring to innovation. My intention is not to refute Troutner’s position but to provoke clarification(s) as to what is really being called for, along with expressing some worrying suspicions often related to his Hegelian subtext, as well as a call for more caution here and there.
The Narrative
Troutner is concerned with an unbridled bridling of theological speech where Kant’s Sapere aude becomes a rather limited daring. He sees Kant’s insidious influence exerted on 20th century thought to be primarily two-pronged and both show strong symptoms of “apophatic rage” (Laird). The first, via Wittgenstein, is exemplified in the so called “Grammatical Thomists” (McCabe, Mulhall et al). On the second continental side, via Heidegger, one finds representatives in Marion, Levinas, Derrida, and Caputo. Kantian “modern” apophaticism thus gives birth to these non-identical twins (or Orthrus) and this birth is quite different from the midwifery of Socrates’ learned ignorance. Opposed to these voices of silent rage, Troutner offers an eclectic set of counter-voices comprising French Catholic thinkers Claude Bruaire, Jean-Louis Chrétien, and Olivier-Thomas Venard; Barthian Lutherans Robert Jenson and Eberhard Jüngel, along with Maximus and Hegel as perhaps the two major protagonists of the narrative. Further, when turning to the theme of “eternal humanity” at the conclusion and in the concluding footnote 67, Schelling, Soloviev and Bulgakov are also importantly enlisted and referenced on this point, a fact to which I will return.
If this group is enlisted to sever the two-headed Kantian Orthrus, it is presumed that Troutner thinks them immune to that subtly ubiquitous perfume of enlightened scepticism that Hegel warns against in the Phenomenology. But German Idealism, and recourse to Hegel in particular, is a complex and multi-scented phenomenon. It is also multi-headed, like Medusa—cut off one head and three dialectically grow back. Or to use another image, in severing the two-headed Kantian Orthrus is it replaced by a Hegelian Cerberus, a dialectical hellish hound guarding other scented fleurs du mal. I would like to hear more as to how Troutner sees his cast of characters negotiating with, yet not allowing Hegel’s visionary metaleptic re-writing of the Christian story of fall, incarnation, redemption and apocalypse win the day. Are they subsumed or triumphant and if triumphant at what cost and how?
Further, how is his eclectic set of characters cast? Chrétien and Venard pair well in their musing on the possibilities of a poetics of Christianity and Christology, in particular. But neither thinker can be said to be in any way Hegelian. Even if Chrétien gives a salvaging nod to Hegel (ultimately Claudelian), in The Ark of Speech, in which he tries to save Hegel’s dialectical reading of language from shamelessly murdering dogs, pace Kojève (an example so dear to Blanchot’s thinking of linguistic negativity). Do these two then pair with the French Catholic Hegelianism of Bruaire who I think of as something like a French non-identical repetition of Ferdinand Ulrich, insofar as both are given over to thinking being-as-gift through and after Hegel. Both stare intently down the parrel of Hegel’s rather impressive speculative gun. But do they escaped unscathed and unchanged; I have my serious doubts. As for our Lutherans (perhaps Hegel was just a good ole traditional Lutheran, just like Böhme!), how do they square with the French Catholics Chrétien and Venard? And what of their too loose reading of the communicatio idiomatum that is in danger of slipping into Christological identity which metaphysically squares quite well with a theogonic or developmental God (ending in a God-world identitas entis) as opposed to the analogia entis (the Creator/creature distance of love and thus the expression of real relation)? Then there is Maximus and Hegel, Hegel and Maximus. Which Maximus? A Maximus after Hegel and thus compromised (even Balthasar is not immune to this temptation)? Soloviev is certainly a profound representative of eliding Hegel (Schelling too) with Maximus in his development of Sophiology. How do Troutner’s theses fit in this trend and is this not like something of the theological innovation he is aspiring for or to? If not, how respond? I am not saying that Troutner should have answered all these queries in his theses, some clues were given but also more could have perhaps been offered. Moreover, as this is clearly part of a larger theological project these questions must be clarified as it moves forward. What then is really meant by “Neochalcedonian theology” is this a (Neo) Neochalcedonian theology which is really a front for a Christian rehabilitation of Hegel or something of the sort? I am not being flippant, I really want to understand and converse.
Now to one of my worries and then to a question of silence(s) within Troutner’s implicit narrative given in thesis form. Troutner, makes the claim that the thrust of his project is against “modern” apophaticism. He further warns against “hasty genealogies” here in relation to Scotus and the narrative of univocity. He is no doubt referring to RO. (To my mind he also very much misses the real threat of univocity even if it is not the only one). But in Thesis 2 he starts to extend his narrative back to pre-modern modes of apohaticism from Aquinas to Dionysius, to negative theologies of 5th and 6th century precursors of Kant. This seems to me too “hasty” as well and in need of much more careful analysis in making these claims. Marion has already had to make one retractatio in this regard. Lastly, the grand silence in regards to Troutner’s narrative is its avoidance of any real engagement with the analogical tradition post-Przywara, including Balthasar. This tradition is extended in various styles in Milbank and Hart. It also finds representation in Betz’s rehabilitation of the analogia entis, and in the central role analogy plays in O’Regan’s project. And this is to mention nothing of William Desmond’s metaxological “elective affinity” with Przywara’s thinking. It is not enough to simply cite Jüngel, echoed by Radner and Misiewicz. Jüngel (and Bonhoeffer) fatefully misunderstood the Christological matrix of Przywara’s analogia entis and its strong presence already in the 1932 Analogia Entis. It is further not seen how the semper maior of the more philosophical “creaturely metaphysics” understood as our inability to answer fully the quid sit Deus must be understood as the segue into a theological metaphysics broken before the wood of cross, face-to-face with the God of crucified Love. This is the height and depths of the semper maior,a love that is shown forth but never fully comprehended and must thus be lived out and participated in flesh and service. Any dismissal of analogy must tarry with this Christological centre and there is good reason that Przywara’s most faithful and creative follower, Balthasar, called Christ the concrete analogia entis. This Przywara already deeply knew, and the law of analogy is revealed to be the law of crucified love (there is space for dialogue with Luther here) in its ever-greater difference. I thus encourage Troutner to say more in this regard to make his case stronger.
Systematic and Metaphysical Reflections
I agree with Troutner that if we are to move beyond modalities of Christian thought and theology that are afraid of saying too much then we must situate our thinking around a robust Christology that is the only access to Triune life. Christian thinking cannot shy away from “Christ the heart of creation,” as Williams would say. I would likewise agree that Chalcedon is key but perhaps offering a different interpretation than Troutner. For me Chalcedon is the statement of the very meaning of Christian analogical logic which presumes the difference between the Creator and his creation which then allows for the analogical unity-in-difference between the divine and human natures in one divine Person. Without the distinction between Creator/creation the Word could not have been made incarnate because the law ruling the God/world relation would be an identitas entis and thus the Scylla and Charybdis of theopanism or pantheism. Implied further in this view is a strong distinction between the immanent and economic Trinity, even if we only know the former through the latter (one can thus accept Rahner’s famous statement depending on the interpretation given). In sum, a strong doctrine of creation ex nihilo goes hand in hand with the immanent/economic distinction, made concrete in the analogical unity-in-difference of the two natures and one Person.
How do these analogical metaphysical laws operate in Troutner’s call for a “Neochalcedonian” theology that seems to be a rejuvenation of Maximus post-Hegel? Concerning the ex nihilo Trounter says very little. He says that we are all creatures “spoken into existence” and creatures themselves are “fundamentally, speech.” I agree in many ways but what is the metaphysics underlying this statement and how do we interpret this? Concerning Triune life Troutner holds that the divine nature only exists as hypostasized in the three divine Persons. This again is true depending on how it is metaphysically conceived. Troutner warns of not speaking of the divine nature “abstractly” and that taken abstractly it is “unknowable.” He then adds to one interpretation of the Maximilian nature/ hypostasis distinction the Hegelian “not only as substance, but also as subject.” But this is already misleading as there is no “unknowable” (grounding a dialectic of an unknowable nature with a knowable hypostasis) divine ground or nature that is not always already analogical expressive relation. The divine nature Is the very Triune circulation of the eternal movement of Love that the Trinity Is. As Przywara says, the dynamic rhythm of eternal being is “(T)he theologoumenon of the intra-divine ‘relations’ (relationes), which are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Being is analogical relation and thus to distinguish between nature/hypostasis, in the above manner, is to miss the eternal event that Triune Being Is. Maximus sounds too much like the mouth through which Hegel speaks and the need for a transition from substance to subject. In this transition (in/as the theogonic development of God) the rhythm of the intra-divine life is laid hold of since the origination of creation is understood as the “origination of God” (the Son) on this dialectically Trinitarian model. Any Christology based on this model must then collapse in an identity of the two natures. Even one’s more careful stress the identity (a post Hegelian Maximus), as Troutner says, “it enables a hypostatic union (even identity)”…he [Christ] just is the second person of the Trinity (there is no logos asarkos).” But this misses the analogical unity-in-difference that Christ Is as the concrete analogia entis, he is not just the second Person. The creaturely being of his humanity means he is the Word incarnate. This is where Aquinas analogical stress on the unity-in-difference of the one divine esse of Christ rightly includes the very creaturely being of his humanity (esse secundarium) (Przywara and Rowan Williams understand this truth profoundly).
Lastly, I turn to Troutner’s “there is no logos asarkos” and his flirtation with the “eternal humanity” found in Schelling, Soloviev, Bulgakov, Barth, Jüngel, and Jenson. Yes, “eternal humanity” is a tantalizing idea, but also dangerous. Take the example of Soloviev, that brilliant synthesizer of Maximus and Hegel + Schelling (and so much more!). When Soloviev speaks of the “eternal humanity” he makes it very clear that he is not speaking about an analogue of humanity being found or contained in the Father-Son relation of eternal begetting. Rather, he is speaking of an eternal action that is presupposing an eternally subjective receptacle of this action which is humanity—not the eternal Logos receiving himself from the Father. But this is to to miss the eternal analogon of our fleshed humanity in the Father-Son relation, insofar as the Son Is, receptive gratefulness as Being-as-Begotten or Eucharistic begotteness. Second, it is to introduce, at the minimum, something like potencies in God (or an exemplarism of Sophianic inflection) which seemingly need to be expressed for God to be fully God, or at the very minimum, for God to not be abstract (an eternal world inside God which is more than Triune life). And that is to endanger the immanent/economic Trinity distinction, the ex nihilo, and a Christology that makes concrete these two analogical truths. There is a Christian metaphysical logic that John’s Progue follows; namely it proceeds for the eternal existence of the Logos with God, that was God, to his descent into the flesh. The analogon of our fleshed humanity is eternally ‘there’ in the Father-Son relation of Eucharistic begotteness. But there was a metaphysical ‘time’ when the Word was not enfleshed. He descended, took up his fragile and fleshed creaturely humanity (esse secundarium), and dwelt amongst us. The Creator, the only Begotten, must show the creature what it means to be a creature by receiving creatureliness itself. Christ’s shows that our humanity is a created image of his eternal Sonship and thus the more deeply we become creatures the more we participate in the processional life of Triune Sonship without erasing the analogical law of dissimilarity. In concrete life this is living a kenotic life of love and service for our neighbour because the semper maior of crucified love can never be fully known or conceptualized but—in the flesh—it can be imitated and practised. And, so, the humanity which becomes eternal is the humanity of finite contingency and crucified created fragility. It is this humanity that Dante sees in the Empyrean where crucified flesh is at the very centre of his poetic vision of the Trinity—the three interlocking circles of rainbow hue. This analogical way of the flesh is far more dramatic than a Sophianic “eternal humanity” of a Christianity and Maximus read through the lenses of Schelling or Hegel or both as in the great Soloviev.
What then does Troutner’s exciting call for an innovative “Neochacedonian theology,” against “modern apohaticism,” consist in? Is it something like my picture sketched here, if not, perhaps he will clarify some of my worries…
Philip Gonzales is Lecturer in Philosophy at St Patrick’s Pontifical University in Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland.
Troutner’s The Eclipse of the Word: Five Theses on Apophaticism is a provocative piece of an engaged scholar that is thoughtful and worthy of response. Its rhetorical tactic is, no doubt, meant to garner and generate reaction of varying sorts. And this it has done. So, like Bauerschmidt, I cannot say with Radner that “I agree with everything in it.” But nor am I as perplexed as Bauerschmidt as to the “irascible” and “appetive” passions fuelling the text. I understand something of them as well as something of Bauerschmidt’s response. Leithart’s response is smooth and generous, and I absolutely agree with his much-needed emphasis that creation, understood as the Creator’s first revelation, “justifies the use of human language to speak of the Creator.” A Christian metaphysical understanding of creation should not primarily be spoken about in terms of “effects,” but rather in terms of iconographic tracings through which we understand a likeness of the Creator through his creation; a Creator that is ever in-and-beyond his creation. Here, the metaphysical difference between God and creation is what allows for the proximity of his shimmering presence.
The tactic of my response will be twofold. First, I will seek to interpret Troutner’s implicit narrative given in the form of theses, looking at his targets, heroes as well as some curious silences. Second, I will then turn to more systematic and metaphysical considerations implicated in his implicit narrative. Both parts are united around his call for a speculatively rejuvenated “Neochalcedonian theology” aspiring to innovation. My intention is not to refute Troutner’s position but to provoke clarification(s) as to what is really being called for, along with expressing some worrying suspicions often related to his Hegelian subtext, as well as a call for more caution here and there.
The Narrative
Troutner is concerned with an unbridled bridling of theological speech where Kant’s Sapere aude becomes a rather limited daring. He sees Kant’s insidious influence exerted on 20th century thought to be primarily two-pronged and both show strong symptoms of “apophatic rage” (Laird). The first, via Wittgenstein, is exemplified in the so called “Grammatical Thomists” (McCabe, Mulhall et al). On the second continental side, via Heidegger, one finds representatives in Marion, Levinas, Derrida, and Caputo. Kantian “modern” apophaticism thus gives birth to these non-identical twins (or Orthrus) and this birth is quite different from the midwifery of Socrates’ learned ignorance. Opposed to these voices of silent rage, Troutner offers an eclectic set of counter-voices comprising French Catholic thinkers Claude Bruaire, Jean-Louis Chrétien, and Olivier-Thomas Venard; Barthian Lutherans Robert Jenson and Eberhard Jüngel, along with Maximus and Hegel as perhaps the two major protagonists of the narrative. Further, when turning to the theme of “eternal humanity” at the conclusion and in the concluding footnote 67, Schelling, Soloviev and Bulgakov are also importantly enlisted and referenced on this point, a fact to which I will return.
If this group is enlisted to sever the two-headed Kantian Orthrus, it is presumed that Troutner thinks them immune to that subtly ubiquitous perfume of enlightened scepticism that Hegel warns against in the Phenomenology. But German Idealism, and recourse to Hegel in particular, is a complex and multi-scented phenomenon. It is also multi-headed, like Medusa—cut off one head and three dialectically grow back. Or to use another image, in severing the two-headed Kantian Orthrus is it replaced by a Hegelian Cerberus, a dialectical hellish hound guarding other scented fleurs du mal. I would like to hear more as to how Troutner sees his cast of characters negotiating with, yet not allowing Hegel’s visionary metaleptic re-writing of the Christian story of fall, incarnation, redemption and apocalypse win the day. Are they subsumed or triumphant and if triumphant at what cost and how?
Further, how is his eclectic set of characters cast? Chrétien and Venard pair well in their musing on the possibilities of a poetics of Christianity and Christology, in particular. But neither thinker can be said to be in any way Hegelian. Even if Chrétien gives a salvaging nod to Hegel (ultimately Claudelian), in The Ark of Speech, in which he tries to save Hegel’s dialectical reading of language from shamelessly murdering dogs, pace Kojève (an example so dear to Blanchot’s thinking of linguistic negativity). Do these two then pair with the French Catholic Hegelianism of Bruaire who I think of as something like a French non-identical repetition of Ferdinand Ulrich, insofar as both are given over to thinking being-as-gift through and after Hegel. Both stare intently down the parrel of Hegel’s rather impressive speculative gun. But do they escaped unscathed and unchanged; I have my serious doubts. As for our Lutherans (perhaps Hegel was just a good ole traditional Lutheran, just like Böhme!), how do they square with the French Catholics Chrétien and Venard? And what of their too loose reading of the communicatio idiomatum that is in danger of slipping into Christological identity which metaphysically squares quite well with a theogonic or developmental God (ending in a God-world identitas entis) as opposed to the analogia entis (the Creator/creature distance of love and thus the expression of real relation)? Then there is Maximus and Hegel, Hegel and Maximus. Which Maximus? A Maximus after Hegel and thus compromised (even Balthasar is not immune to this temptation)? Soloviev is certainly a profound representative of eliding Hegel (Schelling too) with Maximus in his development of Sophiology. How do Troutner’s theses fit in this trend and is this not like something of the theological innovation he is aspiring for or to? If not, how respond? I am not saying that Troutner should have answered all these queries in his theses, some clues were given but also more could have perhaps been offered. Moreover, as this is clearly part of a larger theological project these questions must be clarified as it moves forward. What then is really meant by “Neochalcedonian theology” is this a (Neo) Neochalcedonian theology which is really a front for a Christian rehabilitation of Hegel or something of the sort? I am not being flippant, I really want to understand and converse.
Now to one of my worries and then to a question of silence(s) within Troutner’s implicit narrative given in thesis form. Troutner, makes the claim that the thrust of his project is against “modern” apophaticism. He further warns against “hasty genealogies” here in relation to Scotus and the narrative of univocity. He is no doubt referring to RO. (To my mind he also very much misses the real threat of univocity even if it is not the only one). But in Thesis 2 he starts to extend his narrative back to pre-modern modes of apohaticism from Aquinas to Dionysius, to negative theologies of 5th and 6th century precursors of Kant. This seems to me too “hasty” as well and in need of much more careful analysis in making these claims. Marion has already had to make one retractatio in this regard. Lastly, the grand silence in regards to Troutner’s narrative is its avoidance of any real engagement with the analogical tradition post-Przywara, including Balthasar. This tradition is extended in various styles in Milbank and Hart. It also finds representation in Betz’s rehabilitation of the analogia entis, and in the central role analogy plays in O’Regan’s project. And this is to mention nothing of William Desmond’s metaxological “elective affinity” with Przywara’s thinking. It is not enough to simply cite Jüngel, echoed by Radner and Misiewicz. Jüngel (and Bonhoeffer) fatefully misunderstood the Christological matrix of Przywara’s analogia entis and its strong presence already in the 1932 Analogia Entis. It is further not seen how the semper maior of the more philosophical “creaturely metaphysics” understood as our inability to answer fully the quid sit Deus must be understood as the segue into a theological metaphysics broken before the wood of cross, face-to-face with the God of crucified Love. This is the height and depths of the semper maior,a love that is shown forth but never fully comprehended and must thus be lived out and participated in flesh and service. Any dismissal of analogy must tarry with this Christological centre and there is good reason that Przywara’s most faithful and creative follower, Balthasar, called Christ the concrete analogia entis. This Przywara already deeply knew, and the law of analogy is revealed to be the law of crucified love (there is space for dialogue with Luther here) in its ever-greater difference. I thus encourage Troutner to say more in this regard to make his case stronger.
Systematic and Metaphysical Reflections
I agree with Troutner that if we are to move beyond modalities of Christian thought and theology that are afraid of saying too much then we must situate our thinking around a robust Christology that is the only access to Triune life. Christian thinking cannot shy away from “Christ the heart of creation,” as Williams would say. I would likewise agree that Chalcedon is key but perhaps offering a different interpretation than Troutner. For me Chalcedon is the statement of the very meaning of Christian analogical logic which presumes the difference between the Creator and his creation which then allows for the analogical unity-in-difference between the divine and human natures in one divine Person. Without the distinction between Creator/creation the Word could not have been made incarnate because the law ruling the God/world relation would be an identitas entis and thus the Scylla and Charybdis of theopanism or pantheism. Implied further in this view is a strong distinction between the immanent and economic Trinity, even if we only know the former through the latter (one can thus accept Rahner’s famous statement depending on the interpretation given). In sum, a strong doctrine of creation ex nihilo goes hand in hand with the immanent/economic distinction, made concrete in the analogical unity-in-difference of the two natures and one Person.
How do these analogical metaphysical laws operate in Troutner’s call for a “Neochalcedonian” theology that seems to be a rejuvenation of Maximus post-Hegel? Concerning the ex nihilo Trounter says very little. He says that we are all creatures “spoken into existence” and creatures themselves are “fundamentally, speech.” I agree in many ways but what is the metaphysics underlying this statement and how do we interpret this? Concerning Triune life Troutner holds that the divine nature only exists as hypostasized in the three divine Persons. This again is true depending on how it is metaphysically conceived. Troutner warns of not speaking of the divine nature “abstractly” and that taken abstractly it is “unknowable.” He then adds to one interpretation of the Maximilian nature/ hypostasis distinction the Hegelian “not only as substance, but also as subject.” But this is already misleading as there is no “unknowable” (grounding a dialectic of an unknowable nature with a knowable hypostasis) divine ground or nature that is not always already analogical expressive relation. The divine nature Is the very Triune circulation of the eternal movement of Love that the Trinity Is. As Przywara says, the dynamic rhythm of eternal being is “(T)he theologoumenon of the intra-divine ‘relations’ (relationes), which are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Being is analogical relation and thus to distinguish between nature/hypostasis, in the above manner, is to miss the eternal event that Triune Being Is. Maximus sounds too much like the mouth through which Hegel speaks and the need for a transition from substance to subject. In this transition (in/as the theogonic development of God) the rhythm of the intra-divine life is laid hold of since the origination of creation is understood as the “origination of God” (the Son) on this dialectically Trinitarian model. Any Christology based on this model must then collapse in an identity of the two natures. Even one’s more careful stress the identity (a post Hegelian Maximus), as Troutner says, “it enables a hypostatic union (even identity)”…he [Christ] just is the second person of the Trinity (there is no logos asarkos).” But this misses the analogical unity-in-difference that Christ Is as the concrete analogia entis, he is not just the second Person. The creaturely being of his humanity means he is the Word incarnate. This is where Aquinas analogical stress on the unity-in-difference of the one divine esse of Christ rightly includes the very creaturely being of his humanity (esse secundarium) (Przywara and Rowan Williams understand this truth profoundly).
Lastly, I turn to Troutner’s “there is no logos asarkos” and his flirtation with the “eternal humanity” found in Schelling, Soloviev, Bulgakov, Barth, Jüngel, and Jenson. Yes, “eternal humanity” is a tantalizing idea, but also dangerous. Take the example of Soloviev, that brilliant synthesizer of Maximus and Hegel + Schelling (and so much more!). When Soloviev speaks of the “eternal humanity” he makes it very clear that he is not speaking about an analogue of humanity being found or contained in the Father-Son relation of eternal begetting. Rather, he is speaking of an eternal action that is presupposing an eternally subjective receptacle of this action which is humanity—not the eternal Logos receiving himself from the Father. But this is to to miss the eternal analogon of our fleshed humanity in the Father-Son relation, insofar as the Son Is, receptive gratefulness as Being-as-Begotten or Eucharistic begotteness. Second, it is to introduce, at the minimum, something like potencies in God (or an exemplarism of Sophianic inflection) which seemingly need to be expressed for God to be fully God, or at the very minimum, for God to not be abstract (an eternal world inside God which is more than Triune life). And that is to endanger the immanent/economic Trinity distinction, the ex nihilo, and a Christology that makes concrete these two analogical truths. There is a Christian metaphysical logic that John’s Progue follows; namely it proceeds for the eternal existence of the Logos with God, that was God, to his descent into the flesh. The analogon of our fleshed humanity is eternally ‘there’ in the Father-Son relation of Eucharistic begotteness. But there was a metaphysical ‘time’ when the Word was not enfleshed. He descended, took up his fragile and fleshed creaturely humanity (esse secundarium), and dwelt amongst us. The Creator, the only Begotten, must show the creature what it means to be a creature by receiving creatureliness itself. Christ’s shows that our humanity is a created image of his eternal Sonship and thus the more deeply we become creatures the more we participate in the processional life of Triune Sonship without erasing the analogical law of dissimilarity. In concrete life this is living a kenotic life of love and service for our neighbour because the semper maior of crucified love can never be fully known or conceptualized but—in the flesh—it can be imitated and practised. And, so, the humanity which becomes eternal is the humanity of finite contingency and crucified created fragility. It is this humanity that Dante sees in the Empyrean where crucified flesh is at the very centre of his poetic vision of the Trinity—the three interlocking circles of rainbow hue. This analogical way of the flesh is far more dramatic than a Sophianic “eternal humanity” of a Christianity and Maximus read through the lenses of Schelling or Hegel or both as in the great Soloviev.
What then does Troutner’s exciting call for an innovative “Neochacedonian theology,” against “modern apohaticism,” consist in? Is it something like my picture sketched here, if not, perhaps he will clarify some of my worries…
Philip Gonzales is Lecturer in Philosophy at St Patrick's Pontifical University in Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland.
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