Arguments or apologetics for a Theory of Everything, whether by Hawking or

Dawkins, Moses or Reverend Moon, tend to have several, sometimes all, of the

following characteristics, which are both descriptive and prescriptive in

connotation:

deal with reality taken as a whole

not formally constructed - not completely formal or formulaic or

mathematical

allegorical - use of metanarrative, myth, analogy and/or metaphor to evoke

an otherwise appropriate response to ultimate reality

anagogical - express elements of hope or desired outcomes

moral - make appeals to virtue, whether epistemological, anagogical, moral,

socio-political or religious

literal - include some literal-historical facts

super-reasonable or supra-rational - consistent with logic and reason while

going beyond them

nonrational and transrational - include aesthetic elements, affective

appeals, pragmatic criteria and supra-rational axioms

employ unproven axioms

appeal to self-evident truth

incomplete - lack comprehensive explanatory adequacy; remain somewhat

question begging

inconsistent - have embedded paradox or terms that are incompatible,

incommensurable, mutually occlusive or mutually unintelligible

unverifiable - not falsifiable

tautological - conclusions are imbedded in premises of argument; employ

circular referentiality

suffer infinite regress

suffer causal disjunction

begin in media res

implicitly or explicity suggest spiritual imperatives to our existential

orientations

other miscellaneous characteristics:

dualistic - various dualisms

monistic

pluralistic

triadic relational

a prioristic

essentialistic

nominalistic

substantialistic

materialistic

relationalistic

absolutistic

encratistic - overemphasize speculative and apophatic

pietistic - overemphaisize affective and kataphatic

quietistic - overemphasize affective and apophatic

rationalistic - overemphasize speculative and kataphatic

Further Comments:

Especially since the human transformative process is precisely a growth trajectory thingy, we recognize a

developmental aspect to our own and others' lives. One could argue that certain so-called delusions are, in

fact, developmentally-appropriate for this or that person, or even this or that group of people, similarly

situated. Further, not all delusions are created equal and some are more or less benign, others more or less

malignant, via a vis being life-enhancing/relationship-enhancing versus life-destroying/relationshipdestroying.

It is with much discernment, therefore, that one must choose when to attempt to dispossess

another of their delusions and when to simply leave them alone. Reality, itself, takes people on the journey

toward truth and away from delusion, sometimes patiently, sometimes cruelly. It is with great

circumspection, then, that one might choose to accelerate this (super)natural process. And, indeed,

sometimes we are thus called, particularly if we have been gifted the position of being a formative

influence on others --- as pastors, parents, teachers, police ... ... friends. Iconoclasm is a morally neutral

activity. The way it is engaged is not.

And yet I wonder if we are modern-day alchemists, but of a more sophisticated variety. We turn reality into

meaning and purpose…or try to.

Spoken like a quintessential modern day existentialist. Well done!

Of course, not all existentialists are created equal, some being nihilists, others Christians, others whatever.

But you, Major Nelson, impress me as more of the Jacques Maritain flavor, which emphasizes distinctions,

while being ever-vigilant about not elevating them all to dichotomies (although some are). For instance, do

we give reality its meaning and purpose? Or, do we discover the meaning and purpose that is already there?

Why should that be an either-or question? As co-creators and pro-creators, I suspect we do both a LOT of

the latter and a little of the former?

Whatever one's worldview, some type of faith is an integral aspect of any knowing that we do, this because

of our finitude (and sin). We don't approach this part of reality with reason and that part through faith. We

grasp all of reality through the lens of faith-grounded reason and experience-grounded faith, the latter

having primacy but not enjoying autonomy.

to those employed by positivistic (mathematical) and philosophic (formal logic) realms. As Kung would

say, one has a justified fundamental trust in uncertain reality or a nowhere-anchored, paradoxical trust in

uncertain reality. I would maintain 1) that none of our attempts at justification can elude some form of

paradox, 2) with Whitehead, that all metaphysics are fatally flawed. I simply further maintain that it is

worthwhile, urgently necessary even, to pursue that TOE least pregnant with paradox, that least-morbid

metaphysic. This must be done out of compassion for humankind, for differences in worldviews translates

into differences in prescriptions (hence efficacies) for what ails us. And this must be done toward the end of

AMDG, which speaks both to our origin and our destiny, inseparable as they are from our experience of the

eternal now.

Whether or not one makes sense, I suppose, sometimes, depends on their using proper grammar. In that

regard, it is less paradoxical, in my view, to approach ultimate reality as if it were a personal relationship

requiring the grammar of trust, which includes faith and doubt. Others can reliably and profitably practice

their positivistic (re: facts) and philosophic (re: rules) life's activities without further attempting to justify

their fundamental trust in the grounding of those aspects of uncertain reality, but most of humanity, down

through millenia, finds such an approach neither satisfying nor compelling, not cognitively, not affectively,

not morally, not socially and not religiously, which is to say that they find such a "spirituality"

impoverished. That observation does not constitue a proof and is not meant to invoke the consensus

gentium fallacy, but it does, in my view, provide an important clue, one worth pursuing as if one's very

existence depended on it. There you have the essentially pragmatic justification for our supra- and transrational

endeavors. Love, then, is our philosopher's stone.

What would happen if we took the visual seriously in theology?

the measure of the woundedness of language

if language and the brain co-evolved in our species, the symbolic species per Terry Deacon, and

if nonalgorithmic information processing is the je ne sais quois of human rationality, and

if we share with the rest of creation a radical finitude,

then, whatever it has been in humanity's history, whether in terms of our finitude or in our willful failure to

cooperate in community,

that wounded our nascent, innocent language,

a new humanism can bring the theological and historical, the spiritual and artistic, the textbook and the

living, together (cf WI pg. 122)

This is reminiscent of what is distinctive in Augustine's epistemology: to know God certainly entails

mastery of information, but it also entails personal contact. (cf A.N. Williams, "Contemplation,"

__Knowing the Triune God__ edited by Buckley & Yeago, pg. 122)?

It also seems to echo F.J. van Beeck: "Even though theology, as instanced by Aquinas and Rahner, has

traditionally opened the systematic exposition of the Christian faith by an analysis of natural religious

knowledge, this has never served to deny that the Christian faith is epistemologically prior. (cf. __God

Encountered__ pp 139)"

And this seems to be true in any scientia? that the supra-rational, nonrational and pre-rational are necesarily

epistemologically prior to the rational, being, as they are, integral to the human knowledge manifold

ensemble.

This is a nonfoundational epistemic suite, an ensemble vouching of each rationality for all the others, so to

speak, trans-rationally. It is elevated by the grace of transmuted experience and realized in Lonergan's

conversions.

As such, this "[c]ontemplation [of wounded innocence] is neither the statement of a set of postulates

discovered by the assiduous effort of the human mind, nor some sort of doctrinally denuded reverie

(Williams pg. 144)" and the "contemplative character of [this] theology [of living aesthetics] points to not

only a disciplinary, but an existential unity. Just as the contemplation that is theology cannot be separated

from the contemplation that is prayer, so an authentically Christian existence consists in a unity, in virtue of

which this life is inseparably wedded to the next. (Williams pg. 147)

If the history of philosophy is bound up with the story of human language, then the history of theology will,

in part, necessarily mirror the impaling of our authentic humanity by the twin-edged swords of various ageold

distinctions turned dichotomies: physics and metaphysics, being and nonbeing, real and ideal, rational

and empirical, icon and index. It is not that there were not epistemological shouts along the way, plaintive

warnings to "step back" and avoid these sundering blades by Plotinus, pseudo-Dionysius, John Duns

Scotus, John of St. Thomas and others?

And if the history of philosophy follows the history of languages, both pre-modern and modern, from the

Greek to the Latin to the Continental, then it may be less of a surprise that the post-modern would find a

robust expression in America, which, with its language-transcendent global perspective, as gifted by its

cultural-linguistic melting pot, would produce pragmatism (as therapy). To wit: "And because the

intellectualism that James deplored has done at least as much damage in theology and in philosophy, we

can wholeheartedly welcome his insistence that reality is richer than reflection; that it is not by pure reason

alone that we can take our bearings and find our way (quite apart from the fact that reason is never as pure,

as devoid of passion and particular interest, as its advocates suppose it to be); that quality of feeling is no

less important to our well- being than quality of argument ... (Nicholas Lash, _Easter in Ordinary__, pg

86)."

If a Jamesian pragmatism was indeed therapeutic, the cure may have been worse than the disease: "It is

these disjunctive contrasts and, with their aid, the confining of the territory of the personal to the realm of

the individual, private feeling and emotion, which renders the Jamesian account at once so seductive and so

dangerous. The situation is not lacking in tragic irony. By calling us back from the death-dealing rigidity of

institutional order, and from the divisiveness of intellectual debate, to some primordial realm of pure

experience in which the individual may "apprehend" himself to "stand in relation" to that "continuum of

consciousness" of which we each form part, James sought to secure firm foundations for religious truth,

prospects for progress, and a basis for social harmony. And yet, the foundations turn out to be nothing

firmer than the fragile optimism of an excited ego entertaining dubious hypotheses concerning the

paranormal. (Lash pg. 88)"

From the outside of academia looking in, the more I looked at academic philosophy, the less it seemed

worthy of my time. Not usually given to succinctness, I was ready to write it all off, taking away only these

lessons: that not every distinction is a dichotomy, that different human rationalities often enjoy primacy but

seldom autonomy, and, very generally, that when one chooses to go beyond (for instance, the head or

heart), it is best not to also go without (again, the heart or head).

What everyone seemed to be searching for was "a common ground in which there were no fences," a

"familiar field" that "transcended all fences, methodological issues, and all claims." (WI pg. 122).

And this search was urgent, for it was nothing less than a stepping back off of the piercing swords of false

dichotomies, a stepping back from the essentialistic-existential chasm, a mending of every rupture, whether

epistemological, ontological, cosmological, teleological, or axiological. And if pragmatism and semiology

turned away in somewhat halting, incohate false-starts, pragmaticism and semiotics would soon more fully

and effectively prescind. Its lesson has been that, if any vestige of innocence remains, some saving remnant

of continuity amongst the manifold and multiform seeming-discontinuities, it has not been located in our

philosophies of nature, being, ideas or linguistics, nor has it been found in our various turns, whether

historical, subjective, hermeneutical (interpretive), linguistic, critical (praxis) or even to experience, though

the latter came the closest.

Truest to our radically social human nature, it has been the turn to experience and community which has

gifted us, now here, now there, with "paradise regained," evanescent though it may seem, ephemeral

thought it may be. For Maritain, our fallen-redeemed humanity realizes the fruits of this continuity of

experience via community in "the simultaneous peace and delight of the mind and the senses" enjoyed as

beauty (and through these very senses and intuition).

Beauty, then, is the door through which we pass into the vestibule of original innocence. Beauty is the

reality experienced as an indubitable continuity between innocent humanity, fallen humanity, fallenredeemed

humanity, and, anagogically, humanity eschatologically returning to Primal Beauty. The Holy

Breath bids the Bride, "Come!" for you are betrothed, this life of yours wedded, inseparably, to the next.

Is this credible, especially once considering our brutal inhumanity?

"The mark of our humanity lies in works of beauty. That humans are rational may be questioned and

violence mainly points out our inhumanity byt there's no doubt that works of art mark that human presence.

Indeed, what we find at the origins of humanity are not books of philosophy or murderous bands of savages

but artists capable of incredible works of beauty. A gaze at the lines that reveal the bison forms shows

something more than intelligence or violence at work. Such lines reveal a disciplined freedom, a

gracefulness that is more than the work of a self-conscious mind. They are an epiphany ofthe human soul.

Indeed, these graced curves of the bison reveal a mysterious and marvelous union of sensibility and

creativity that guided a human soul to shape a set of lines that still evoke, even 30,000 years later, a sense

of childlike wonder, and yes, beauty. We have labeled these first artists "primitive," suggesting their minds

were not as developed as ours. Yet if intelligence is to be measured by its beauty, then these first artists

may have been more intelligent than we who live today with little to show by way of the intelligence of

beauty." (WI pg. 12)