Paradoxes and Disorders: Analyzing the Interface of Christian Mystery, Christian Theodicy, and Divine Pedagogy

  

Paradoxes and Disorders

Analyzing the Interface of Christian Mystery, Christian Theodicy, and Divine Pedagogy

•  Introduction

• Two Types of Disorder 

• Teleological Disorders

• Cosmological Disorders as a Mechanistic Moral Calculation                

• Cosmological and Teleological Disorder as the movement from Paradise to Eschaton

• The Christian Experience of Paradox

• The Nature of Paradox

• Approaches to Paradox

• Paradox, Disorder, and Pedagogy

• Divine Cosmological Pedagogy 

• Moral application of paradox and disorder

• Practical Religious interaction with paradox

• Conclusion

Introduction

        One of the hot-button issues as of late in Church is the discussion revolving around transgender persons.  The philosophy, anthropology (classical definition) ontology etc. as discussed by the transgender community itself is extremely fluid and unsystematic.  This most likely springs from long oppression now lifting and allowing for conversation in a diverse formerly hidden (silenced) community.  Christianity did not begin systematically defining dogma until becoming legal in the Roman empire, an event that allowed for public discourse and honest, open, and sometimes painful debate.  It appears the transgender community is undergoing a similar process in progressive western culture.

The confusion of the dynamically developing intellectual field here is reflected in the discussion happening in The Church.  As I stroll through the digital continent I often see declarations such as, “God made us male and female!” implying that to be transgender is sinful, or at best “disordered”.  If I respond, often my tact is “Is it a disorder or a paradox?  Because God and Christianity make use of both, and paradoxes are generally seen as positive things.  Jesus is the God/Man even though in the beginning God made humans in his image but as a separate reality.  Is that a disorder?”

The purpose of this treatise is to explore the relationship between paradox and disorder as methods of divine pedagogy.  It is to be hoped that the end result will be a healthy understanding of how to employ paradox and disorder when making moral judgments and an avenue for engaging paradox in useful ways in Christian life. 

In the first section, we will draw a distinction between teleological disorders and cosmological disorders.  Each of these types of disorder are used to make moral calculations thus each will need to be explored.  We will begin with teleology and draw a distinction between teleology as an indicator of purpose by use and as an indicator of purpose by progress toward an end.  These purposes will give us a window into disorder as “not reaching an intended purpose or working against an intended purpose”.  We will then turn to cosmological disorders.  After discussing the nature of moral calculation concerning cosmological disorder by use of natural law, we will note the dangers of such a methodology.  Then we will draw a metanarrative from Eden to The Eschaton where will seek to demonstrate that the “order” of salvation history as postlapsarian reality abides as disorder.  This is because process from one to the other, experienced microcosmically as disorder, is in fact macrocosmically a reordering of the cosmos. 

In the second section, we will take up the topic of paradox.  We will begin by defining paradox as a union of opposites.  We will note that distinctions are part of the makeup of reality, put there by God in the very beginning, before The Fall.  After a review of Christian ontology we will assert three fundamental relationships in order to begin to form a framework for approaching paradox.  These relationships are consubstantial relationship, hypostatic relationships, and the interpersonal binding relationship of love.  Once these are reviewed we will extrapolate three types or approaches to paradox.  The first will be a substantial approach, which is object-oriented.  The second will be a spectral approach, whose starting point is unity.  The last will be a process approach, which takes the nature of flux into account.

In the final section, we will combine the concepts of paradox and disorder to comment on divine pedagogy through speculation concerning theodicy.  We will use the relationship between disorder and paradox to comment on when it is appropriate to utilize the concept of disorder when entering moral discourse or giving moral advice.  We will also take time in this section to make use of many standard moral paradoxes of Christianity.  We will wrap the last section up with two practical practices by which one can encounter an experience of paradox in order to foster divine pedagogy. The first will be in ritual life where, by process of calculated ritual, one comes to a general experience of paradox through the somnium spirituality technique of lucid waking.  The second practice is the engagement of family life, where, by narrative appropriation, one can sacramentally experience some of the deep and fundamental paradoxes of creation, including the presence of disorder.           

     

                

Two Types of Disorder 

In this first section, we will draw a distinction between teleological disorders and cosmological disorders.  Then we will draw a meta-narrative from Eden to the Eschaton where will seek to demonstrate that the “order” of salvation history as postlapsarian reality abides as disorder.  This is because process from one to the other, experienced microcosmically as disorder, is in fact macrocosmically a reordering of the cosmos.  From there we will go on to comment on the nature of paradox before the last section, where we will seek practical application for the working relationship we attempt to forge between the two.

In the next section, we will take up the topic of paradox.  We will begin by defining paradox as a union of opposites.  We will note that distinctions are part of the makeup of reality, put there by God in the very beginning, before The Fall.  After a review of Christian ontology we will assert three fundamental relationships in order to begin to form a framework for approaching paradox.  These relationships are, consubstantial relationship, hypostatic relationships, and the interpersonal binding relationship of love.  Once these are reviewed we will extrapolate three types or approaches to paradox.  The first will be a substantial approach, which is object-oriented.  The second will be a spectral approach, whose starting point is unity.  The last will be a process approach, which takes the nature of flux into account.  In the last section of this treatise, we will go on to seek practical application for the working relationship we attempt to forge between the two.

Teleological Disorder

We will now begin by doing something that will be discussed throughout the treatise, that is, we will begin by making some distinctions.  We will attempt to parse two types of disorder that are often assumed but not distinguished in the process of Catholic moral parsing.  We will call them teleological disorders and cosmological disorders.  We will start in this part with teleological disorders.  

To distinguish again, when it comes to philosophical discourse, there are two types of teleological calculation, extrinsic and natural.   An extrinsic teleology is one that is applied to an instrument or object because humans use that instrument according to that purpose.  In the extremely pragmatic milieu of the secular world, this is the teleology that is most commented on, though not by any such philosophical name.  A thing’s purpose is defined by human use.  This is a very mechanistic understanding of teleology and does not make reference to any final or ultimate purpose beyond function. 

In Philosophical discourse “natural teleology” implies that objects have natural intrinsic purposes that they are drawn to.  So in a way, the difference between natural and extrinsic teleology is the difference between use or end, as the defining characteristic of purpose.  An example of extrinsic teleology would be the proverbial hammer.  It is a hammer and has the purpose (use) of driving nails (probably because it is designed to do so efficiently).  It is used that way because humans define that use for it, though it could be used for a variety of other purposes.  Natural teleology is better exemplified by proverbial bio-organism and the growth it experiences.  So for humans, the purpose of a fertilized human egg is to develop into a bio-organism that then develops to maturity.  No “use” has yet been described, simply a development toward a perceived end.  Natural teleology works through the lens of potentiality as opposed to casualty.  The modern world generally does not frame development teleologically.  We have a sense of causal mechanistic/empirical forced driving development forward as opposed to teleological potentialities pulling development forward.  But either way, there is a mystery to be pondered, ever drawing each of us into a sense of awe.  

Ancient philosophy and religion, in general, seeks to answer the teleological questions of use and end macrocosmically, in terms of the human’s place in the cosmos.  In modern times, it is generally a microcosmic or individuated applications, a hammer’s purpose or Bob’s purpose, and it is almost always in terms of use, not referring to development to an end.  Philosophically, this leads to an extrinsic teleology that generally lends itself to a relativism of purpose, because it is said to be “defined by humans”.  However there was a time in philosophy where items were seen to have intrinsic uses, so a bow was for shooting arrows and a ship was for sailing and that was seen as “correct”.  When the philosophical tides turned this idea became ridiculous, and these uses were seen as “applied”.  One can make a similar maneuver with natural teleology, which ends in nihilism.  If the end “purpose” of development is death for the individual human or the end point of the universe is dissolution into entropy, then there is no true end purpose.  

For Christians, the purpose of the human is to glorify God and share in his love in ways suited to our particular lives.  The end of development is The Eschaton, whereas the Body of Christ we are all working in concert to the Glory of God.  Thus when Augustine defines evil as a lack of good he is speaking with an end teleology, his standard is some form of absolute perfection of purpose that reality is developing toward (The Eschaton).  Until all potentiality has appropriately developed, there will be this lack.   

We can now begin to unpack one of the major questions of this treatise, in the Christian tradition, what is a disorder?  This first type of disorder according to Catholic moral thought is something not working toward its teleological target.  This could be by use or by development toward its end.  Therefore we can draw out two ways that people morally calculate disorder concerning purpose.  The first would be a disorder that recognizes the end of potentiality and does not go as far as its defined end.  The other is disordered because it is headed in a contrary direction as or use of the end.  The standard arena of disorder that people obsess on in Catholic moral thought is sexuality.  In the former treatise Compounding Concupiscence and Cross-Spectral Mutual Pedagogy we discussed homosexuality is an example of sloth,

  

The major assertion concerning homosexual acts is that they are “not good enough”, thus the abiding problem is that they do not have the possibility of reaching the fulfillment sexual acts were designed for.  Thus it is not so much that homosexuality is necessarily a sin of “commision”.  Any given homosexual act could be a sin of commission if it is riven by lust, but then again so would any hetero sexual action.  On this level any sexual action would be equally tainted.  It could be that same sexual action in and of itself, brings about some goodness, in that it allows for or facilitates a certain amount of unity.  This would also be true of hetero sexual action that involved birthcontrol.  But each of these involves acedia, in that they are not geared toward the full meaning and potential of the act.

        

In this case, you have a very particular teleological judgment of developmental potentiality that is not fulfilled by the action.  Sexual organs are judged to have a dual-telos and since both ends are not employed simultaneously by homosexual action, it is “disordered”.

The same action can be used to discuss the use of sexual organs with a use teleology.  The general teleological proclamation of “disorder” concerning homosexual action comes from the definition of sexual organs as having an intrinsic use and way that they are used.  We’ll call it “traditional sexual activity”.  With extensive analysis in this vein, it becomes immoral to engage in almost any type of sexual activity without constant calculation.

To employ another example of use based teleology and disorder may be beauty enhancement.  This goes for things like makeup, tattoos, plastic surgery, Rogaine etc.  The purpose of beauty is to glorify God.  If one is using beauty to that end, one is using it properly.  If one is employing beauty only for lesser ends, or contrary ends, this is a disordered use of beauty.  The disorder disposition that could lead to this would be a variety of pride. 

Both of these examples concern sex or attraction.  It is interesting that almost all of the moral conversation where the term “disorder” is brought to bear revolves around sexual activity or gender relationships.  But if the order of the universe was thrown off by The Fall, then it is disordered in a myriad of ways.  Therefore as one last example of moral calculation by use based teleology, we can turn to the use of money.  Money is not a natural phenomenon, therefore the teleology here is most certainly extrinsic.  But that does not put it out of the realm of mortality for a religiously invested person.  Money itself symbolizes a well ordered and fair society.  The purpose of money is to facilitate just transactions.  Hence to use money as an end itself, or to cheat or exploit people is a disordered use.  The concupiscent disposition to act such, a variety of greed, is also a disorder of the soul.

It is noteworthy that each of these moral calculations has a short-term end purpose or use.  Philosophically, ancient teleology often made reference to the “greater purpose” or “ultimate purpose”.  This type of speculations leads one from specific calculations to cosmological concerns that give a framework for the meaning of moral calculation and suffering.  We can now turn to the wider scope of the cosmos and see how the bigger picture illuminates the idea of “disorder” as discussed in a moral calculation. 

Cosmological Disorders as a Mechanistic Moral Calculation

As we just said, another way the term “disorder” can be used in moral calculation is by reference to an assumed cosmology.  There are several helpful ways to make moral calculations.  As we saw in the former treatise Relativism, Conscience, and The Magisterium, one can calculate for the “least damaging” or  “most edifying” effect and go a consequentialist route.  One can trust faith and listen to the Magisterium by forming a relationship with one’s priests and bishop.  There is a type of moral calculation that seeks to demonstrate morality from observation of nature.  This is often put forward as a “natural law” moral speculation.  The Catechism makes a distinction between “natural law” and “moral law”.  “Moral law is the work of divine Wisdom”.  Moral law includes the specific revelation of the scriptures, as they comment on salvation history, and the particular revelation of the person of Christ.  Natural law is the revelation of morality inherent in the cosmos and perceptible by humanity.  The Catechism states “man participates in the wisdom and goodness of the Creator who gives him mastery over his acts and the ability to govern himself with a view to the true and the good. The natural law expresses the original moral sense which enables man to discern by reason the good and the evil, the truth and the lie”   

  When someone morally calculates using the idea of cosmological disorder it seems different than using a teleological disorder in that the calculation does not operate according to “purpose”.  It makes reference to the structure of the cosmos, not use or development toward an end.  The primary example of this is Saint Augustine’s understanding of Concupiscence.  Augustine, following Plato, sees the perfectly ordered human soul as ruled by reason, which directs passions and employees appetites appropriately.  Concupiscence as defined by Augustine is the primary example of a cosmological disorder.  Concupiscence is when a soul is not ordered appropriately, when reason serves the appetites and/or passions.  The concept of concupiscence does not make comment on how the soul develops to its natural end.  Nor does it worry about the “use” of the soul for the human person.   

This is a spiritual or psychological state of affairs is writ large as a social state of affairs.  So the first great example of utopian literature, Plato’s republic, was actually a commentary on the human soul.  Modern peoples are most comfortable with cosmological disorders in these ethereal realms, either as personal psycho-spiritual realities, or social disorders, from the structure of the family, to the structure of a social organization, to the structure of civil society, etc.

A type of cosmological disorders that would have been more acceptable in a previous time would have been the physical construction of a person.  This type of calculation would see sickness or deformity as disorders and even attribute it to sin.  This is displayed often in the Bible, such as in John 9 when the disciples ask Jesus “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  Vestiges of this view can still be seen in Christianity’s assertion that sickness itself “as a human problem” is a result of original sin, though maybe not individual instances of illness in any given person.  This view would see illness or deformity as disordered, which adds a moral weight to it, given that in the religious discussion “order” syncs morality and cosmic construction according to the good will of God.   But sickness and deformity are not applied as specific moral calculations, they are used as evidence that the cosmos themselves are out of whack, though not personally a problem.  

Very rarely would anyone apply such a moral calculations specifically.  When it is done, again, it is usually in the sexual realm or possibly a comment on one’s physical weight and sloth, but not is any other realm of morality.  When these comments are made, moral speculators blend natural theology with natural law and begin to comment on moral implications of the construction of the cosmos.  Working off Saint Paul’s assertion of guilt in the first chapter of Romans 

For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them.  Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse; for although they knew God they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks. Instead, they became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless minds were darkened.

Moral speculators may make deductions concerning specific actions or constructions.  But Paul here is actually discussing natural theology, exploration and experience of God, not natural or moral law, how to act according to neighbor.  

 So for example, again to go with the standard obsession, sexual organs are ordered male and female perspective to any given human.  Thus a person born a hermaphrodite would be seen as constructed in a “disordered” way.  Some people seem to think this physical condition is a sign of cosmological disorder.  Few would admit to seeing any other physical deformity as being in any way personally morally weighted.  The treatise Aneusomy Syndromes and Eschatological Retention discussed how people do seem to regard genetic structure as being ordered or disordered. It will suffice to simply point out that there are uses and dangers of speculation regarding “disorders” when making specific moral calculations.  It may help to take a wider view that incorporated both teleological and cosmological concerns into account when considering disorder and its purpose in our lives. 

 

Cosmological and Teleological Disorder as the movement from Paradise to Eschaton

When making moral arguments concerning “disordered” acts or dispositions, it must be remembered that our knowledge of the standard for order is minimal.  We have three situations which give perfect glimpses. The first is the parents.  They are models for interpersonal relationships as a perfect community.  They also stand in for humanity because in the narrative, they are the summation of humanity in paradise.  The second is The Eschaton.  As discussed in the last treatise Two Paths for Expanding True Love these two situations are two temporal bookends of creation that offer differing views of perfect order.  But each is vague and hard to grasp.  The last is the person of Christ.  Here is a perfectly ordered individual.  He is different than the other two examples because he lives in the scope of salvation history, the span of time between paradise in Eden and The Eschaton at the end.  This means that the “way” that he is perfect is the way we are to be perfect as people who abide in postlapsarian reality.

The narrative of salvation history is the narrative of the temporal space in between The Paradise of Eden and The Eschaton.  What happens with the fall is the four fold division of the fall, which facilitates disorder in creation.  The first division is the alienation of God from humanity.  The second is the alienation from Humans from each other.  The third is the alienation of humans from  their environment.  The fourth is the alienation of humans from their very selves.  

In modern times it is common to perceive of these divisions as completely spiritual in nature.  But the mythological opening chapters of Genesis show division expressed in manifold ways.  In the treatises here, we tend to take an affirmative view of sexuality, even in Eden. However, the general trends of creation myths have childbirth come as a result of some cataclysmic moral failing, just as in the Genesis story.  It could well be that, given enough time, the first parents would have had children in Paradise.  But It could also be that the first division of humanity, between man and woman was a complete communion enough to image God, yet the new reality is forged from the division caused by the Fall.  To get to The Eschaton, humanity is divided further, physically through childbirth and death, spiritually through alienation and sin.    

The process of salvation history is the growth process from the dual communion to the communion of the multitude.  From these divisions and the scope of salvation history we get a meta narrative for a teleology of process toward an end, The Eschaton, where these divisions are healed or reordered in a way that has come from expansion of humanity beyond simply two people, The First Parents, all the way to a heavenly city, the New Jerusalem.  These pains are marked by a reordering of the cosmos from a dual communion to a communion of the multitude.  

From the punishments in Genesis 3 we get a teleology of suffering.  Christian hope demands that we proclaim, “we know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”  The punishments each involve suffering attached to the purpose of the individual.  This suffering is the experience of evil, which is what humanity asked for by eating the fruit.  The punishments are also connected to the sustenance and growth of humanity. They each end in things that maintain humanity and therefore each involves a teleology of life. The meta narrative itself shows us the abundant love and fidelity of God, that the first parents in a relationship of love broke faith, and initiated a splintering in the cosmos.  But that splintering, though painful, is expansive and that expansion is brought back into harmony by divine love.  The experience of that “reordering” from dual communion in paradise to the communion of the multitude in The Eschaton is cosmological disorder in the cosmos, but Christian faith and hope dictates that this disorder will lead to an end point (teleology).  Thus Saint Paul can say in Romans chapter 8,

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.  For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God;  for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope  that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God.  We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.  

 

At the appointed time, in the middle of this growth process, God sent his only Son to demonstrate how humans are to abide in the midst of this disorder, or as we might call it, reordering of creation.  As the only example of anthro-authenticity in the scope of salvation history, Christ’s story is the story of how to abide in justice amid disorder and suffering.  Jesus does not condemn people based on any disorder they may express.  That is not to say that the disorder does not exist.  Again our contention is that the reordering is experienced as cosmological disorder. It means that as a participant in postlapsarian reality Jesus understands teleologically, that he is in the flow of salvation history.  As the savior he associates with people and activates the process of their potentiality in anticipation of the end.  He does not treat people as a means or employ means based teleology, judging people's use or usefulness.  Christ has the knowledge of our end as humans, and seems to encounter other humans as sojourners toward that end. He gives advice to them and acts towards them in order to move them closer to this end. 

Through The Church, Christ sacramentally binds himself to humanity offering the avenue for the communion of The Eschaton, though still in the scope of salvation history, thus still in the process of ordering.  The Church is the mystical Body of Christ in growth toward The Eschaton.  So it is proper that any teleological disorder concerning what is lacking in that end is still present in The Church.  As the first chapter of Colossians says, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is The Church.” 

It is appropriate for us to do the same as long as we keep the constant awareness that, unlike Jesus, we do not have the knowledge or experience of perfect order.  “Disorder” is the order of postlapsarian reality.  It is present because the cosmos is in a process of reordering as we are grow toward perfection.  Therefore, we will have lackings in our perfection.  So some of these disorders are in a process of fulfillment.    Some of this disorder is passing away because “the world in its present form is passing away.”    

Our job is to presence Christ to each other to the best of our ability with the firm knowledge that we are all disordered.  Again, the former treatise Aneusomy Syndromes and Eschatological Retention was a definite attempt to show how the mainstream sense of perfection, the sense of “this world” can squash God’s good order of creation.  There we stated,

the Christian view asks us to take note of weaknesses, in this case “symptoms”, and intuit from them something about how God works in the world.  Syndromes themselves are not “real”, they are simply a categorized collection of perceived weaknesses, or in our more recent understanding, some genetic situation that leads to these weaknesses.  What has happened in recent times is loss of self to a syndrome.  Instead of a person having symptoms, the syndrome is the person, and the person is a weakness to be dealt with.  Hence we can return to Hitler's quote, “the only disgrace is sickness”, and begin to see how weakness is used to devalue the person to a state of an object defined as a disease, all the way to a point of mass destruction.   

Our sense of perfection does not take the true meta-cosmological narrative or the teleological end into account, but rather prefers utility. Our sense of perfection is lacking the true order of perfection that will be reached in the end, thus it is inadequate.  Mistakes are easy for us to make when contemplating perfect order.  We must meet people in their disorder aware of our own.  We must also be aware that though some disorder passes away, disorder that is used to speak to the glory of God in the growth toward The Eschaton is retained and glorified.  We are not always the best judges of which is which.  Hence in the treatise Compounding Concupiscence and Cross-Spectral Mutual Pedagogy  We noted that what is presented as a complete breakdown of human spiritual order, homosexual disposition, is actually sloth, the standard default of postlapsarian progress toward eschatological perfection, and only such in one small arena, sexuality.  A same attractive disposition is necessary for instruction of those overthrown by envy of the love people of the same sex have toward each other.  This exhibits the complexity of the flow of salvation history.  

In the next section we will explore another common mistake concerning disorder, when someone mistakes paradox for disorder.  This mistake is a misinterpretation of cosmology on a grand scale, not just a poor calculation regarding use or end.             

In this first section we have drawn a distinction between teleological disorders and cosmological disorders. We began with teleology and drew a distinction between teleology as an indicator of purpose by use and as an indicator of purpose by progress toward an end.  These ideas of purpose gave us a window into disorder as “not reaching an intended purpose or working against an intended purpose”.  We then turned to cosmological disorders.  After discussing the nature of moral calculation concerning cosmological disorder by use of natural law, we noted the dangers of such a methodology.  Then we drew a metanarrative from Eden to The Eschaton where attempted to demonstrate that the “order” of salvation history as postlapsarian reality abides as disorder.   

In the next section we will take up the topic of paradox.  We will begin by defining paradox as a union of opposites.  We will assert three fundamental relationships in order to begin to form a framework for approaching paradox and three types or approaches to paradox.  In the last section, where we will seek practical application for the working relationship we attempt to forge between the two.  

The Christian Experience of Paradox 

In the first section we drew a distinction between teleological disorders and cosmological disorders.  We also defined a metanarrative from Eden to The Eschaton where attempted to demonstrate that the “order” of salvation history as postlapsarian reality abides as disorder.   

In this section we will take up the topic of paradox.  We will begin by defining paradox as a union of opposites.  We will note that distinctions are part of the makeup of reality, put there by God in the very beginning, before The Fall.  After a review of Christian Ontology we will assert three fundamental relationships in order to begin to form a framework for approaching paradox.  These relationships are, consubstantial relationship, hypostatic relationships, and the interpersonal binding relationship of love.  Once these are reviewed we will extrapolate three types or approaches to paradox.  The first will be a substantial  approach, which is object oriented.  The second will be a spectral approach, whose starting point is unity.  The last will be a process approach, which takes the nature of flux into account.  In the last section of this treatise we will go on to seek practical application for the working relationship we attempt to forge between the two.

The Nature of Paradox

In a culture where the secular / empirical endgame is explanation and manipulation of the environment, paradox generally means something that seems enigmatic, but when investigated or explained turns out to be well founded, demonstrable and true.  A paradox is seen as a game, riddle or enigma to be solved, used to test someone’s intelligence, or spark cerebral conversation.  But there is not a sense, in a scientific word view, that there are things that exist as mystery and are not explainable.  An example of the type of paradox engaged in these days that comes to mind is one of Zeno’s Paradox.  Here is one related by Aristotle, “In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead.”  A quick Google search will show that these paradoxes have complex theoretical solutions spanning from Zeno’s time until now.  

But the type of paradox that we are going to explore is presented with the understanding that there isn’t a “solution”. This attitude among the religious is a thorn in the side of the empirically minded.  According to such a person, tautologously, if something is not explainable, it is not worth worrying about, thus everything that is worth worrying about is explainable.   As we shall see, paradox as used by religions is presented as evidence that backs a way of looking at the world.  The worldview offered is not necessarily contrary  to science or disallowing of empirical knowledge.  It simply makes calculations using a multivalent epistemology.  For our purposes a paradox is a combination, coming together, union or coincidence of opposites.

A religious worldview does not worry about being able to perfectly explain the unexplainable mysteries by methodologies of science.  Instead religion seeks to explain, or better “get and angle on”, these mysteries as much is needed in order to engage them to find existential meaning for humanity.    One of the most famous scientist theologian and philosopher to comment on what he called the “coincidence of opposites” was Saint Nicholas of Cusa.  In his De Docta Ignorantia he states,

Our intellect cannot, by means of reasoning, combine contradictories in their Beginning, since we proceed by means of what nature makes evident to us. Our reason falls far short of this infinite power and is unable to connect contradictories, which are infinitely distant.

In the ancient world even philosophy pondered about such complexities.  The arena may be called metaphysics, because it is speculation beyond empirical knowledge.  That gives it an ethos of suspicion in the scientifically minded community.  But when the great disciplines were in better concert the opposition in varieties of ways to approach a problem was not as pronounced.  Saint Nicholas of Cusa does go on to attempt do what we will also attempt to do, that is, construct a framework for approaching mysteries.  This will be helpful as we try to frame such Christian paradoxes as the God/Man, coexisting attributes of divine justice and mercy, how weakness is strength, with varying disorders used to make moral calculations.  Such a comparison and systematic synchronization will hopefully prove useful in enriching one’s lived experience as a Christian.  

To begin our exploration of the mystery of paradox as expressed in the union of opposites it will help to comment on how nature is in fact divided.  In the former section we discussed sin as the division of alienation generated by the fall.  This we placed under the category of disorder, as creation is reordered from Eden to Eschaton.  But now we will take the time to understand how there do seem to be ordered separations in creation even before The Fall.

It is the Christian understanding that in the beginning, before creation, God is one, yet even in that pre-temporal state God abides as three persons.  We discussed this paradox in painful detain in the former treatise Christian Ontology.  The hope is to not have to repeat this again here, but a few general ideas from that treatise bear repeating.  The basic point of the treatise was to explore ways of understanding God as trinity.  The major thrust of the treatise was ontological.  The assertion made was that philosophies tend to either believe that objects are real, reducing reality to atoms, or relationships are real, proclaiming all is one and distinction as illusion (monism).  Each way denounces the other reality as not having “full ontological force”.  Trinitarian ontology asserts that objects and relationships are equally real.  This annological interpretation of trinitarian existence takes the definition, “God is love” as its starting point.  

The Trinity is the self love of God, because a loving relationship needs a Lover and an Object of Love to exist.  Without at least two in a relationship the relationship cannot exist.  Each person of the Trinity is necessary if you want to use John’s definition of God, “God is Love.”  If the Spirit is not there they are not one and there is no love.  If either the Father or the Son are not there the Spirit could not spirate, to use Thomas Aquinas’ term.  The dogma of the Trinity states that God self loves from all eternity; in that God begets himself and loves himself.  Those are not illusory distinctions, or the Love itself would be an illusion, they are real distinctions.  The Father and the Son are truly distinct.  They are just bound into one by the relationship of Love that is the Spirit, making God one.   Remember of course that objects and relationships are equally real, thus the Spirit is also truly distinct and truly real. But all are one God.      

The treatise then maneuvered using this analogy as a basic interpreter of all of creation.  Reality is simple and manifold at the same time because objects and relationships are equally real.  In this treatise we will understand “objects” as individuations.  This could be individuation by category, or by subsistence.  We will understand relationships as binding realities.  Our short term task now is to try to distinguish types of relationships.  This is difficult, because relationships are naturally uinitive, they bind together and make one.  

We are going to assert three fundamental relationships, the hypostatic, the consubstantial and the loving relationship.  The first fundamental relationship in the cosmos is a hypostatic union.  A hypostasis is an individual instance or existence.  A hypostatic relationship or union is a relationship of two instances becoming one through a relationship.  This view of relationships begins with the reality of objects or instances and notes that differing realities can bind together.  So in THE hypostatic union, the instance of divinity in the person of the son and the instance of the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth are bound in a relationship of personhood.   

The relationship Catholics use to describe trinitarian existence is called “consubstantial”.  With a basic knowledge of philosophy, the reader will know that The Church is using aristotelian  language to get at a relationship of like beings, beings of the same substance, a categorical category for lack of a more confusing explanation.  When commenting on a consubstantial relationship the starting point is the existent unity that already exists between the instances.  Philosophically the employment of the concept of “substance” is the employment of ontological unity between two individual instances.  Such an employment is trying to get at how things are one and takes that oneness as its starting point.

By this analysis it makes sense that we describe the union of Christ’s two natures by starting with how they are individual instances, because we want to take into account the fall and the alienation of sin.  We want to radically distinguish humanity from divinity and marvel at how God’s power can make them one.  By this analysis it also makes sense that the starting point of how describe the self communion of God is by how God is one, Consubstantial, because we assert monotheism.  As we shall see, the act of creation offers the possibility of a hypostatic interpretation of unity, but does not necessitate “disorder”.    

This brings us to the third and most complex fundamental relationship, which is the binding interpersonal relationship, love.  This relationship is approached hypostatically, but it involves more than just hypostasis.  It implies an awareness of individuation, a self awareness.  This is different then a hypostatic relationship by, say, the physics of gravity, where atoms make a desk.  In  Christian Ontology we discussed how the primary oneness of God as trinity is God’s self awareness through an analogical psychological interpretation of the dogma of the trinity. In a loving relationship, the “objects” in relationship are aware that they are separate and must come to oneness through a process of self emptying and the mysterious force of will.

The third fundamental relationship is the most complex and we shall assert that the cosmos mysteriously reflect the other two in order that we can experience the third.  It is also by the third fundamental relationship that God becomes one with creation, through the creation of sentient beings.  All of this happens before The Fall, when no disorder has manifest in the cosmos.

 

Thus the gut reaction of negative moral calculation regarding someone who presence paradox or the assertion that such a person is “disordered” is a result of poor cosmology.  Our introductory example was a transgendered person.  We noted a metric for discerning the ability to discount disorder as a moral calculation because of paradox in the former treatise Divine Gender Transcendence and Incarnational Divine Presence, 

The litmus test for a possible paradox is the presence of goodness on both side.  Is humanity good?  Yes, is Divinity good?  yes, it seems to be impossible for two goods to equal a bad in every instance.  How such a pairing would work for good is a paradox.  Now we can apply the metric to the topic at hand.  Is bio-sex good?  Yes, male and female bodies are good.  Is gender good?  Yes, masculinity and femininity are good.  So how can a blend or mix and match of two fundamentally good things turn out to be sinful every time?

                  

If this calculation is true, there would be no disorder simply because of the feminine presence in a male boy etc.  That is not to say there are not a host of disorders that may “attach” to that condition.  But that would be no less the case for a masculine presence in a male body. 

With an angle on the three fundamental relationships, we can begin see that there are good distinctions to be observed in creation and we can proceed to distinguish a few varieties of paradoxes.  But before we do it is important to note that we are not viewing these paradoxes as dialectical.  Our analysis will not be thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.  This way of looking at reality is extremely beneficial as well.  But paradox as we are discussing it, is two opposites or contradictory that form a unity while maintaining their contrary nature.  If one wishes to contemplate dialectic here, then contemplate how reality presences both dialectic and paradox simultaneously as a paradox and we can remain on point.  

Approaches to Paradox

In this part of section two we will discuss three ways of approaching paradox; the substantial approach to paradox, the spectral approach to paradox and the process approach to paradox.  The first approach to paradox we will consider is the substantial approach to paradox.  In the first chapter of Genesis, God begins creation by division.  First and foremost the act of creation itself creates a division from God, substantially.  Meaning, that we conceive of a unified reality God, and an opposing unified reality, everything else. Based on simple observation of the first chapter of Genesis the dualism that is instituted by creation itself is continued through the creation process.  The first creation story can be interpreted as God creating through his word and drawing by that creative Word distinction after distinction, each in its proper place, until the very end when God looks at the entirety and it is all bound by one relationship, the goodness that flows from God.  This creation story makes the first hypostatic division in creation itself between light and darkness which is perceivable through night and day.  The first three noted creations are creations as completely dualistic division, dark from light, sky from terrain, water from earth.  We observe the most basic creation, light and dark, by what is made on the fourth day, the sun and the moon.  These also for all of our human existence have given us a sense of the linear and cyclical nature of our creation.  Liner in the Sun, which crosses the sky daily at a radiant brightness, and the Moon, which monthly cycles through its phases.  These cycles couples with the stars, also created on the fourth day give us a sense of rhythm and cycle inherent on a cosmic scale, marking the seasons and giving time, which is experienced linearly, a binding sense of cycle and velocity.  These dualities are experienced simultaneously without contradiction.  The paradox comes when we parse them out to “extremities” or “objects” as distinct and negate the relationship they share that binds them into one. Or the paradox comes when we bind them to one and deny that they are actually distinct. 

These distinct yet combined realties are not disordered in their union.  They are complementary.  They may demonstrate either a hypostatic or a consubstantial relationship depending on the approach one is taking to the union, whether from specificity to commonality or from commonality to specificity.  Since we title this part “approaches” we are also suggesting that some if not most can be approached both ways, depending on how the theoretician wants to work with the paradox. A substantial approach to paradox is unusually approached ontologically, and assumes hypostatic relationships. Meaning the dualities are approached as individual things, treated or viewed possibly as “substances” or “objects”, that must be worked into a compatibility or are present as a complementarity. The presence of such dualities is noted throughout ancient cosmologies of the world as the deep union of opposites such as the yin yang in the east or the dualistic religions of zoroastrianism and manichaeism in the west. This is what becomes confusing given the opening question of this treatise.  When referring to cosmological duality it is not uncommon to generalize it as masculine and feminine.  But our materialistic minds want to equivocate masculinity and femininity with bio-male bodies and bio-female bodies.  This is possibly a false equivocation in that it treats the intangible as an object.  But these are different types of things, thus, though the duality of masculinity and femininity is reflected in bio-male and bio-female bodies, as we shall see, this is not necessarily “disordered”.  This complexity begs for a variety of approaches.           

A substantial approach to paradox is generally object oriented.  It takes an atomistic approach to defining objects first then goes on to define their relationship.  So as one approaches THE hypostatic union of Christ the language is one of substance or essence, and the part to be squared is, how they are one.  There are two “objects”.  In this case we frame them as “natures”, but in this type of philosophy a nature is tantamount to an object.  They come together in a certain way to form a “person” though the two natures are the still distinct (objects).  This view of paradox relates to disorder when one complementary aspect is not present.  If one variety of teleological disorder was “lack of fulfillment or completion”, then to be lacking one agent in a complementary relationship is “disorder”.  In the very specific case of the hypostatic union, it is disordered for humanity to not one with God, either by original justice or union with God through Christ.  Since creation is a reality, its temporary non-union with God will be fulfilled in the end with the new heaven and the new earth, but until then, there is disorder. 

Another example would be to take the former treatise Two Paths for Expanding True Love.  A life of married, life giving, sexuality, engagement, and dynamism and a life of contemplation, detachment, and celibacy are compatible and complementary in The Church.  To live one or the other is not disordered.  But for “The Church” to be missing one would present a serious lack for the mission of The Church.  That lack would be a disorder for The Church, though not for the people in the life that remained.  

In this example the reader will notice the employment of two interesting strategies when one is considering using paradox and disorder in moral calculation.  One is objectification or substantiation.  The other is paradoxical scale.  In this example there is an objectification or substantiation of a way of life and of The Church itself.  A way of life (married or celibate) is taken as an independent “object”, a hypostasis, and is analyzed as complementary to another “object”.  Each of these “objects” are actually categories of qualities of another set of object, human beings. Also these “objects” [the ways of life] abide in what seems to be another “object” or hypostasis, The Church.  This complex expanding and collapsing of reality is the result of our Christian ontology which sees reality as simple and manifold at the same time.  In that ontology relationships bind and objects distinguish, even when (for philosophical purposes) the “objects” are relationships and the “relationships” are objects.  In terms of Christian ontology, these two form another of the fundamental paradoxes of reality.  Their mutual existence and interaction also gives us a concept of paradoxical scale.  

Paradoxical scale is indicative of the binding relationships that pervade reality and how they interact with objects and even as “objects”.  Because reality is simple and manifold  at the same time it can be parsed and collapsed infinitely.  This means that a binding paradox can house paradoxes as hypostasis and at the same time be part of a larger paradox.  So to take our previous example.  There is a paradoxical dyad in The Church between married and celibate life.  “The Church” is the binding relationship, which houses this paradoxical relationship.  If one steps down a level of scale (so to speak) the individual would need, within themselves, to paradoxically present the dynamism and detachment of each life.  Most people would not see, “engagement and detachment” as objects within a person.  But philosophically, when you want to show a paradox of two relationships, you must put those relationships into a relationship, which means that you must objectify the two paradoxical relationships into intidivuations or hypostasis.   

A less object oriented way of approaching paradox is by spectral analysis. It assumes that the variance in the paradox is qualitative not substantial, though once extremes are reached and observed concurrently, they are no doubt radically distinct.  Any perception of an “object” would be at the extremes, but the abidance of the paradox is in the spectrum.  On the first day God divides light from darkness.  The bizarre quality of this division made more apparent when in Exodus this division is repeated in Egypt. All of Egypt is covered in pitch black darkness except the land of Goshen, which has light.  The physical representation of this in a geographic location calls to mind the fact that humans cannot experience light and darkness simultaneously as separate realities.  Concerning light and darkness, humans only experience gradations of one or the other and a process of change from one to the other. That is, the experience is spectral.  God can literally separate these things, humans can only do so conceptually.  The starting point is not object, but relationship.  In spacetoral analysis of paradox, the relationship is a given, the objects are deduced from the extremes of the relationship.  

Since approaching paradox spectorally is less object oriented and focuses more on the relationship.  One generally approaches intangible paradoxes in spectral ways.  So in the former example of dynamism and contemplation or engagement and detachment this type of paradoxical analysis may serve better. The spectral approach is very useful when dealing with things like abstractions (such as organization/chaos), spiritual realities (such as virtues), psychological states or realities (such as id-ego-superego or thought memory and will)  etc.  By defining the extremes of these intangibles one comes to a categorization of “object”.  The flow of the spectrum is the gradation or quality of the relationship that binds the extremes together. 

Concerning spectral paradoxes they are often presented in moral thought with the virtue of temperance in mind.  So again, in the former treatise Compounding Concupiscence and Cross-Spectral Mutual Pedagogy we discussed how one comes into contact with many virtues along a spectrum.  They abide simultaneously, but the extreme of one, leads to a lack of another causing disorder.   We analyzed the solar sphere in dante’s  Paradiso Canto X   thusly

The entire circle is ringed by spirits in an order of relatability.  For example, Thomas Aquinas is the first person who Dante listens to.  To his right is Albert of Cologne, a fellow dominican student who would be amiable to Aquinas.  From there the ring works out toward ever differing types of people until the circle is complete at Thomas Aquinas’ left hand side with Siger de Brabant who was a fellow intellectual in Aquinas’ lifetime demonstrating competing ideas.  Any given spirit in the Solar Circle is flanked by a Spirit who edifies their strengths and a spirit who balances their strength with an “opposing” strength.  

  

In that same treatise, we also discussed a sort of concupiscent centrifugal effect which is where spectral analysis of paradox intersects with disorder,

If one wants to see an example of how concupiscence uses a spectral spiritual awareness to a damaging end one can look to our previous explanation of compounding concupiscence, where opposites on a spiritual spectrum centrifuge to an extreme that becomes manifest as sinful intent or action, then each extreme exacerbates the fall of the other.  Another possibility is the use of each extreme to hurl derision on all people.  

Temperance is the key.  In this case temperance is the ability to appropriately presence the paradox in one’s life.  Again, to take a matter of scale, engagement and detachment need to be present in an individual.  But the place on the spectrum where they would personally need to fall would depend on where they settle in the life of The Church or God’s plan for them as an individual.  It becomes a disorder when they vacate one aspect completely from their lives and/or see the rejected aspect as evil or unworthy.  

The spectrum presented in Compounding Concupiscence and Cross-Spectral Mutual Pedagogy was the spectrum of attraction between persons as males and females.  The entire treatise reminded us that we must love all people, that we must find a way to balance love within ourselves so that we can express it to all people appropriate to the relationship.  The disorder that we showed was sloth regarding teleological end point of concrete sexual activity concerning homosexual acts.  But pertinent here was the disorder of envy, the desire of the homophobe to eliminate one half of the spectrum of love, the half that allows people to love others of the same boi-sex.  The paradox of temperance is that one is to show temperance in all things except love, which leads us to our last framing of paradox, process paradox.   

The substantial and spectral approaches to paradox are ways we encounter reality, but our final consideration, the process approach to paradox, is in many ways the paradox of reality itself.  It is encapsulated in Zeno’s paradoxes and is commented on in Thomas Aquinas’ First Argument of the existence of God, the Argument From Motion.  This argument has less to do with modern physics and more to do with the question of how, if there is a static state, there can also begin flux or change.  This paradox is the problem of how reality is static and in flux simultaneously.  The meta paradox that undergirds “process paradox” is the simultaneous existence of time and eternity or the finite and the infinite.  

Being eternal, God can sees all of created reality, including the flow of time itself (meaning God sees all time at once), as one consubstantial reality, which he has a hypostatic relationship with.  This give one a transcendent picture of God, but for our purpose it allows us to use the human conception of transcendence to get an angle the deep Christian paradoxes of reality, such as how death and life or connected or how justice is mercy or how good God allows suffering and/or evil.  

When we (pathetically) try to picture all of reality at once, we can conceive of a timeline that is the spectral paradox between Eden and The Eschaton.  We will call this the cosmological paradox.  Here we have the simplicity of humanity and the absolute complexity of humanity which form a unit through the process of reordering we are calling salvation history, the process we abide in.  The motion of this process at the extremes is the process of a communion of two persons who form the basic unit of humanity, the First Parents, splintering into multiple billions of self regarding sentient beings that must first self regard (alienation) then turn from that splintered selfishness back to a relationship of oneness.  It is a motion from dyadinal mutual appropriation to seeming infinite self regard to maximal mutual appropriation at every level.  

A paradox can be subject to process evaluation/interpretation when it involves any element of reality that instigates flux.  Our examples here are “sentient will” or “time”.  Elements of flux are very mysterious. They aren’t objects or relationships.  Rather they are the matrices that drive causality or that are developers of potentiality.  The different expressions presented in the last sentence hint at another of the deep paradoxes where a process analysis can help one make peace, the paradox of freewill and determinism.  In this case one offers a process analysis of will and time, then overlays it with the hypostatic relationship of God and creation by substantial paradoxical analysis.  For God, creation is stable and determined, yet for creation, as a unit, flux is the order of the day.  As with any analysis of paradox, this doesn’t “solve all our problems”.  But it does offer a theoretical model to work with until it breaks down. 

Microcosmically process is what allows for the development of personhood and therefore the development of the most complex of the three fundamental relationships we defined, love.  The splintering of humanity, both spiritually by sin and physically by childbirth, is also a splintering into sentience and self regard.  Before one can effectively self give through love one must be aware of the possibility of self, which is “love” of self, but incomplete.  Each person goes through this process of acceptance, to distinction, to reintegration in loving relationships.  Meanwhile, macrocosmically, God has become hidden from humanity, accessible only by faith, in order to allow for this individuation process and allows for the ultimate reintegration in true love, the highest binding relationship.  Each creation story gets this across in its own way.  In Genesis 1 God rests, in Genesis 3 humanity falls in Eden.   Each case facilitates the process of humanity going through the course of salvation history.  This process allows for paradoxes such as God’s justice and mercy, humanity’s transcendent yet terrestrial nature, humanity’s dual state as perpetrator and victim or as sinner and forgiver.  

Each of these modalities are in process and this process is what allows for teleology of progress toward an end.  In this case the end is the justification of humanity in The Eschaton.  That there is a lack of true end as we are involved in the process of development is tantamount to one variety of disorder (or as we said, reordering), but that is to be expected.  The whole idea of salvation history, the whole teleological thrust, is to reach a new place of love through development.  That there would be apparent “missteps” according to teleological thrust of all reality are also part of this process.  These missteps allow for the individuation necessary for true, mature and complete reintegration (self communion in The Eschaton).  

If these high folutnent ideas strike one as painting sin and evil as of no consequence then one has stumbled upon another set of paradoxes, we experience sin and evil but all of creation is good, we experience sin and evil but Christ has conquered them, God is in absolute control but humans are in rebellion.  We are now dancing around the classic paradox, if God is good, why is there evil?  One basic biblical theodicy is that God brings good from evil.  But again, evil does not “exist” as an object, it is a lack of presence in a teleological process of reordering toward a good end.  God has taken simple static goodness (Himself) and expanded it to simple creation (Eden) and now, “Oh fortunate fall”, God expands it to a vast complex of Goodness (The New heaven and New Earth).  Thus in Romans chapter 5 Paul can truly say, “where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through justification for eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” 

The tools we have presented don’t allow one to “understand” these paradoxes.  They simple give various frames works for the mystery of reality.

Practice makes perfect.  So as we wrap up this section we will briefly seek to apply each type of paradoxical analysis to a situation.  Lets take up our original query at the introduction.  Someone states “God made us male and female!” implying that to be transgender is sinful, or at best “disordered”.  I respond, “Is it a disorder or a paradox?  Because God and Christianity make use of both and paradoxes are generally seen as positive things.  Jesus is the God/Man even though in the beginning God made humans in his image, but as a separate reality.  Is that a disorder?”  . . .  Now we can view the male and female bodies as object, and apply a substantial paradoxical analysis.  They are separate instances or varieties of human, but they form together a picture of humanity by their union of opposites.  This is summatively exemplified by the sexual act.  

Masculinity and femininity, or gender, is a psycho-spiritual interpretation of the duality inherent in the cosmos as applied to general human personality traits.  One can objectify it by giving gender an ontological status and analyzing the situation as a substantial paradox, but such realities are better served by spectral analysis.  This analysis can be placed on the paradoxical scale of the individual human to analyze how masculine or feminine an individual is.  If it is spectral than extreme imbalance is a vice and balance appropriate to the person is a virtue for any person displaying either end of the spectrum.  Appropriateness may be judges by the bio-sex and/ or cultural traits.  But it may be better to move up a level in paradoxical scale.  In this case it is good for a society to presence each of these.  If that is the case then it is possible that as a matter of vocation there is a necessity of persons who are at an end of the gender spectrum that doesn't “suite” their bio-sex.  These people would exist as a reminder of the unity of paradox as opposed to the hypostasis.  Their “person” is a call to balance of the presence of gender in the culture at large.   

If one were to apply a process evaluation, then one would note that in-utero the fertilized egg one has the genetic potential to be either bio-male or bio-female, but is neither yet.  There is also a spectral analysis that is less pronounced but very real in bio-sex too.  One generally develops into one or the other (though not always). Personality also develops, thus a given human must be allowed room to maneuver on the gender spectrum through their lives in order to find their gender vocation and acquire this balance.  This is not usually extreme maneuverability.  Nor is it a “choice”, but an attempt to respond to the call to presence humanity according to God’s plan for one as an individual.  Such maneuverability is not a disorder unless in the process they veer to a far end of the spectrum or reject or drop one end of the paradox.  But in this case it is not a “mismatch” that is the problem, but a spectral extremity or substantial vacuation.                                          

In the first section we drew a distinction between teleological disorders and cosmological disorders.  We began with teleology and drew a distinction between teleology as an indicator of purpose by use and as an indicator of purpose by progress toward an end.  These ideas of purpose gave us a window into disorder as “not reaching an intended purpose or working against an intended purpose”.  We then turned to cosmological disorders.  After discussing the nature of moral calculation concerning cosmological disorder by use of natural law, we noted the dangers of such a methodology.  Then we drew a metanarrative from Eden to The Eschaton where attempted to demonstrate that the “order” of salvation history as postlapsarian reality abides as disorder.

In this section we took up the topic of paradox.  We began by defining paradox as a union of opposites.  We noted that distinctions are part of the makeup of reality, put there by God in the very beginning, before The Fall.  After reviewing Christian Ontology we asserted three fundamental relationships in order to begin to form a framework for approaching paradox.  These relationships were, consubstantial relationship, hypostatic relationships, and the interpersonal binding relationship of love.  Once these were reviewed we extrapolated three types or approaches to paradox.  The first was a substantial approach, which is object oriented.  The second was a spectral approach, whose starting point is unity.  The last was a process approach, which takes the nature of flux into account.  In the last section of this treatise we will go on to seek practical application for the working relationship we attempt to forge between the two.

Paradox Disorder and Pedagogy 

In the first section we drew a distinction between teleological disorders and cosmological disorders. We also defined a metanarrative from Eden to The Eschaton where we attempted to demonstrate that the “order” of salvation history as postlapsarian reality abides as disorder.  In the second section we discussed paradox, which we defined as a union of opposites.  We asserted three fundamental relationships and extrapolated three types or approaches to paradox. 

In this final section we will combine the concepts of paradox and disorder to comment on divine pedagogy through speculation concerning theodicy.  We will use the relationship between disorder and paradox to comment on when it is appropriate to utilize the concept of disorder when entering moral discourse or giving moral advice.  We will also take time in this section to make use of many standard moral paradoxes of Christianity.  We will wrap up with two practical practices by which one can encounter an experience of paradox in order to foster divine pedagogy. The first will be in ritual life where, by process of calculated ritual, one comes to a general experience of paradox through the somnium spirituality technique of lucid waking.  The second practice is engagement of family life, where, by narrative appropriation, one can sacramentally experience some of the deep and fundamental paradoxes of creation, including the presence of disorder.  

Divine Cosmological Pedagogy

When we discussed cosmological disorder we noted how natural theology is used as an indicator of natural law to create a moral calculation based on disorder.  What we have come to understand throughout this treatise is that the objective or static view of the cosmos only works according to the meta paradox of time and eternity / God and creation.  Moral calculation using disorder assumes a mostly ordered cosmos, but with The Fall all of the cosmos was thrown into disorder, as we said a complete reordering.  The only bearings we have are the perfections of Eden, The Eschaton, and the person of Christ, who is emblematic of perfection within the disorder of salvation history.  Thus moral calculation concerning disorder must be done teleologically as best as one can grasp.  But this is not how disorder has traditionally been used.  

The idea that the disorder of the cosmos is actually a reordering of the cosmos to The Eschaton runs contrary to the standard eschatological narrative.  In that narrative, all is ordered (Eden).  Then there is a static break to that order (Postlapsarian reality).  But the disorder present there is stable.  The job of the individual is to learn to recognize the lingering aspects of the old order in the new, static, disorder and try to sync with it so that one can be ready for the next step.  According to the standard interpretation of the narrative the next step is when Jesus as deus ex machina, comes down and institutes order pretty much as it was before, but with more people (many would add, “but only a few more people, let’s not get crazy here”).

According to the model presented in this treatise, we move from static order (Eden), to disorder in teleological flux toward a new order (Salvation History), to a new type of Order (The Eschaton and a new multifaceted perfect love).  The cosmological paradox seen within the scope of the meta paradox of time and eternity allows us the opportunity of process analysis of this paradox.  In this case we find Jesus not as deus ex machina, but Jesus who appropriates the situation of disorder and saves us by effectively turning the cosmological tide toward a new and greater perfection and allowing for completion of the process.  Our job is to sacramentally integrate into his person in order to regain the unity, stability, and order lost.  But that is not complete until the whole process is complete.  But the order achieved is not the same order is it was in Eden.  In the former treatise Aneusomy Syndromes and Eschatological Retention we meditated on the nail marks of the risen Christ in the following way,

It seems that the reason he [Jesus] keeps his scars is because he turned that suffering to the glory of God.  Each of our bodies and the lives we live with them are unique.  God takes weakness and makes it strength and takes bad and brings good. Inasmuch as we do the same thing with our bodies, the marks such activity leaves on us remains on us there.  So what was the nature of Christ's wounds, they were painful things by which he demonstrated self emptying love.  To be randomly mauled by a bear is not a demonstration of self emptying love, thus those wounds would “correct” in the glorification process.  However, if one intentionally pushed a person out of the way of a bear saving that person’s life purposefully, with full knowledge of the high probability of a mauling, there may be some sort of eschatological retention.  The scars may not exactly correspond to the wounds received, they would be glorified wounds.  For example, was Jesus pierced in his wrists or hands?  His glorified wounds seem to be in his hands, keeping with scripture (psalm 22, “they have pierced my hands and feet), whereas the general Roman practice would be the wrists.  “Glorified bear maul woulds” would probably allow for the subtlety and agility ascribed to a glorified body. 

The Escaton is a new order that is in a consubstantial relationship with the old order, Eden.  A relationship that presents as a paradox that can be viewed as both spectrum and process.  That relationship is Salvation History.  

One must not assume that the “progress” we speak of is judged according the secular definition.  As much as the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin seems applicable, we are not discussing a mechanistic drive to an omega point tantamount to physics. We are speaking of creation and the persons who abide within it.  The telos (use) of these persons as sentient beings is to be windows of loving interaction with God, such that God can be in the highest binding relationship with creation, not just a hypostatic or a consubstantial, but a loving relationship.  Each instance of person has an individual telos (vocation) to measure their progress.  Together all individuals across time show the development of humanity and reveal the telos of “humanity” as an entity (the consubstantial relationship of all humans).   

It may not be that things “get better and better” through development toward The Eschaton.  At least not as we judge “getting better”.  In fact most aspects of revelation seem to imply otherwise.  This is not an intellectual progress where humans reorder the cosmos because we figured it out.  It is the progress of justification.  In the standard narrative (from the narrative of the life of Christ to the narrative of the final judgment) the state of affairs “seems” to get worse until all of the sudden it is better.  This narrative most likely gives birth to the deus ex machina framework we discussed.  But if one is able to learn from paradox then what is progressing  toward the better is the human soul, not just despite but because of the environment of suffering and disorder.    

Our personal spiritual problem is hubris.  This pride is the pride of Eden, one of individuation over communion.  The first parents were grasping to be like God, but the story is quite clear that they already were like God.  The cared for the garden and were in communion in his image.  The significance is they wanted to be like God without God.  This prideful desire for individuation was the catalyst of the splintering and flux of salvation history.  “Oh fortunate fall” it was the catalyst to a greater or more complex communion of love in The Eschaton.  But as a “problem” it must be dealt with.  This leads us to how God simultaneously uses paradox and disorder as pedagogy for humanity.  Our spiritual nature can aspire to transcendence.  We feel the necessity of grasping at God’s mystery, but we are not good at it.  We desire order, therefore we grasp at it even here where all around is disorder and inversion.  This is the suffering of pride, even though in the grand scheme, “all things work to good for those who love God.”   

Thanks to specific revelation, we can conceive that there is a greater paradox of reality that we are in the midst of and striving towards.  We are able to begin to attune our souls to God by making moral calculations in a manner that cooperates with grace towards justification.  Therefore God teaches us through paradox, which leads to confusion and thereby humility.  Thus one of our great moral paradoxes, we must be “content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”  This is the paradox that spits in the face of both pelagianism and gnosticism, where we believe we can save ourselves through  deeds or knowledge.  This is the lesson of the constant surpassing of younger sons on the scripture.  This is the lesson of concupiscence, the fact that we can not attain perfection ourselves.  This is the lesson of the of the divine triple descent we discussed in the former treatise Inversal Unity and The Divine Triple Descent.  The paradox of “weakness is strength” allows us to put off our striving for individuation and personal mastery and strive for reconnection with God in a way that fosters trust and faith that God will do the majority of the work.  And a major pedagogical technique built into creation to the same end is the constant presence of paradox to stymie our assertion of self mastery.  It is a process, not one where our lives or journeys get easier and easier necessarily, but where we can grow in peace and love and the assurance of God’s promise through Christ and his cross.               

Moral Application of Paradox and Disorder

Now we can finally return to our original purpose, which is trying to understand when and how we can make moral calculations and judgments by use o the term “disorder.  First there are many painful moral paradoxes that help us to remain humble in our moral calculations.  The paradoxes of the Law and the Prophets or the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes hint at this state of affairs. We discussed in the former treatise Relativism, Conscience, and The Magisterium a distinction between Sin and Evil.  In that treatise we reminded the reader that there is such a  thing as moral truth, a right way to act or be.  To not do these actions is evil, but not necessarily sin because sin concerns the personal relationship one has with God.  Sin as it stands in postlapsarian reality has less to do with the actual evil or good done in an action, and more to do with the knowledge one has and the will one exerts.  This complex moral assertion is summed up in the common sense assertion that “one cannot accidently sin”.  

So the law and the commandments are a reminder that there is action to be done.  They suggests a stability of right action. Add to that the other end of the paradox, intention or attitude, typified by the prophets, the more “relationship oriented” approach, and you have your paradox.  Let’s call it action and intention.  One must have  both correct action and correct intention and attitude to act completely morally appropriately.  But this is impossible because we do not have perfect knowledge or perfect freedom in order to do good as a result of the fall and the subsequent concupiscence.  So one must strive for knowledge of good action, one must intend to do good and one must act in accordance with their best knowledge.  But all the while, because of the disorder, one must be humble about the strivings.  This combats the desire gifted us by the first parents to be God without God and reattunes us to living in communion with him by a feeling of dependence.  This neccessary humility is why a mechanistic conception of progress toward the omega point is not what we are seeking to describe.  We are attempting to describe a much more personal affair, an affair where suffering and humiliation may actually increase in certain situations, an affair tantamount to the cross.    

This is the humiliating paradox of the Law and the Prophets by which God brings us to beatitude through disorder (concupiscence).  No matter where you fall on the spectrum of skill regarding this paradox, one has work to do.  That work will engender dependence on God and others, others who one most likely sees as not as good as one’s self because they are not as skilled as one perceives oneself to be.  And one is correct, they are not, but they are skilled in ways that foment cross-spectral mutual pedagogy in the paradox of moral action.  This is the process of justification, coming to love God and neighbor.  In effect someone must be willing to demonstrate that they are working with paradox to progress toward love, the highest binding relationship.

Therefore when making moral calculations it is not appropriate to judge a person because of any disorder they may exhibit.  That disorder, that “thorn in their flesh”, is a cosmological problem, through which God is paradoxically working out the salvation of that person and humanity as a whole.  Cosmological disorder, for example concupiscence, is the result of original sin.  Original sin is the sin of humanity, not the sin of individual humans.  This is why it is so well typified by the first parents, who at the time of the story are humanity itself.  Given Christian ontology, humanity is as much a reality as individual humans are and this reality is in rebellion against God the same way that individual humans are.  Since baptism (presumably under any of the three varieties) washes away the guilt of original sin, the guilt of any disorder that one possesses, as the concupiscent result of original sin, would be washed away as well.  Though our discussions among the various treatises here sometimes come off as offensive to pious ears, there is nothing controversial about this statement.  

For a person to judge another harshly for any disorder they possess is to grasp at a nonexistent order that the critic has constructed out of hubris. Such action flies in the face of Christian charity and divine pedagogy.  Much worse is to mistakenly judge a person possessing a paradox as disordered.  In this case one is thwarting a primary tactic of divine pedagogy out of a sense of moral superiority and pride.  A proper Christian attitude is to judge one out of a sense of disordered companionship.  This is the fostering of the deepest and most complex type of three fundamental relationships, interpersonal or loving relationships.  The methodology for such practice is cross-spectral mutual pedagogy coupled with a humble acknowledgement of mutual disorder and mutual striving to form good relationship with one another and with God.  The paradoxes and the disorders present both the obstacle and the methodology for reaching the goal, beatitude and justification.  

A Useful set of paradoxes that relate to this are paradoxes such as to give is to receive, one must lose one’s life to save it, etc.  A judgmental person must recognize these standard Christian paradoxes as an indictment of the order they perceive.  If they are judging their fellow human so harshly they do not perceive God’s order correctly.  With the Fall we have the entrance of Death and disease, we also have the almost immediate development of a basic sacrificial system with Cain and Abel.  In the former treatise Toward Appropriate Thanatosian Piety we discussed how the power of Holy Death was and agent of God to facilitate our release from self centeredness.  We stated,

What Paul is getting at with “The Flesh” is the idea that there are parts of the spirit which are not healthy and need to die.  The body is not the problem, but that it dies and rots seems to be an indicator for the greeks that the body is somehow evil.  So Paul labels aspects of the human soul, “The Flesh” to give the greek minds an adverse reaction, and an awareness that these things need to come under the power of Holy Death, they need to dissolve into nothingness.  “The Spirit”  is the aspects of the human soul that needs to live.  The humans build sin “The Flesh” on top of “The Spirit”.  Holy Death, under the direction of Christ, destroys “The Flesh” and “The Spirit” remains.  When one is baptized into Christ’s death, one is putting oneself under the power of Christ and “his death”  meaning Holy Death, whom he controls for your benefit.  You are conformed by baptism to utilize the grace, by means of your cooperative will, to allow Christ to direct Holy Death appropriately within your very soul.                     

       

We linked the power Christ has over death to the levitical sacrificial system and through the two together framed a morality of releasing control to God,

A peace offering, in Leviticus 7, is an offering that is killed and parts are offered to the Lord and the rest is completely devoured.  In such an offering bread and an animal are offered in fulfillment of a vow or as an expression of gratitude.  There is no description of the animal that is killed or the means of its death.  What is reiterated in a few different ways is that the animal is to be totally consumed in a set amount of time.  Nothing is to be left over.  This same prescription can be seen in the passover sacrifice as well.  The summation of such a sacrifice in the Hebrew scriptures can be seen in the sacrifice of Samuel before the rout of the Philistines.  “Samuel therefore took an unweaned lamb and offered it whole as a burnt offering to the Lord.”  The final place that such a peace offering is seen is, once again, Jesus, who makes peace between God and humanity by his complete offering of himself through the ministry of his servant Holy Death.

In this understanding of sacrifice, our flesh is the piece of ourselves that we might keep for ourselves, but must be destroyed by death and consumed completely.  As we played out the progression from sacred feast, to whole burnt offering, to self sacrificial death of Christ, we begin to see that this type of sacrifice differs from the scapegoat, where there is another goat that is kept. . . .  Through the absolute power of dissolution wielded by Holy Death, we may be able to offer a complete sacrifice to God, like Samuel, like Jesus.  

For the purposes of this treatise, the piece of ourselves that may need to die in some people is the need to find or establish and order in this world (or dare we say “according to this world”) because the temptation to use that order maliciously is too great.  Much the same way God used the sacrifices of Isaac and Benjamin to teach Abraham and Jacob not to cling to their children above God.  Just as Jesus did not cling to his life but released it, these patriarchs did not cling to their legacy, but released it to God, then, again, just like Christ, they received back what they they sacrificed, and more so than they ever would have expected.  Abraham received descendants as numerous as the starts, and Jacob received the same, as well as his son Joseph against all hope.  To give is to receive. I personally do not doubt, given the testimony of scripture and my own life, that if such a person judgmental person as we are talking about can let go, they will no doubt receive a vision of Christian order in the cosmos beyond the rest of us, but they must trust God, not their own initiative. Should that same person cling to that order against charity, they will lose all sense of peace and order in their life.

Practical Religious Interaction with Paradox

   As we wind down this treatise it will be helpful to briefly reflect on two matrices by which Catholics can engage with paradox.  The first will be calculated ritual, which will give a matrix for the encounter of paradox.  The second will be the family, which will be a matrix for encountering the disorder of the cosmological paradox.

To begin we will remind the reader of the process of calculated ritual.  In the former treatise Intuitive Ritual Investment and Conscious Ritual Investment we defined calculated ritual as follows,

Calculated ritual is a ritual action that utilizes a symbolic language symbiotic with dream and myth, which seeks to invest one in and actualize deep human meaning.  It is calculated because it adds or is the interface of the collective unconscious expressed as myth and how this myth is consciously acted upon ritually.  This type of ritual is calculated for an effect.  The ritual allows for participation in meaning and myth and allows the participant to activate myth and meaning in their own life. 

     

Our assessment of the process of calculated ritual beings in the dream world because, as we stated in the former treatise Somnium Spirituality, 

[T]he dream world is more in tune with the sacred as opposed to the secular world.  It forces one into the present by the suspension of causality and a standard existential summoning to the moment.  The dream world itself seems to access a sacred, or etymologically “set apart”, space and time that the individual enters.  The experiences there seem to gear one to a transcendent mindset that is intuitive and emotive as opposed to causal and analytic.  According to each of the dream theorist we went over the dream world is a place where one can connect to one’s deeper self, and possibly to a deeper humanity.  It is also a place where abstracts become real and one can engage with unseen realities in visual form.

 

This is most certainly a place where, with the practices we discussed in Somnium Spirituality, one can get a personal, social, and even cosmic angle on the dualities and paradoxes present on a variety of paradoxical scales in one’s life.  

One also encounters the union of opposites in scripture, the divine revelation that is meant to calibrate us to act effectively in salvation history.  The scriptures have the role of myth in our ritual system.  But it is to be remembered that by the term myth we are asserting the same definition that Pope Saint John Paul II used in his Theology of the Body,

[T]he term "myth" does not designate a fabulous content, but merely an archaic way of expressing a deeper content. Without any difficulty we discover that content, under the layer of the ancient narrative. It is really marvellous as regards the qualities and the condensation of the truths contained in it.

   Mircea Eliade, in his work  Myths, Rites, Symbols, states of myths,

they express on the one hand the diametrical opposition of two divine figures sprung from one and the same principle and destined, in many versions, to be reconciled at some illud tempus of eschatology, and on the other, the coincidentia oppositorum in the very nature of the divinity, which shows itself, by turns or even simultaneously, benevolent and terrible, creative and destructive, solar and serpentine, and so on (in other words, actual and potential).  

Eliade is a firm believer that the union of opposites is a fundamental theme pervading all mythology.  It is these myths that are symbiotic with the dream world and offer the opportunity of calculated ritual where, by means of the lucid waking technique described in Somnium Spirituality, one can engage existentially and spiritually with the paradoxical nature of the cosmos on a variety of levels.   

The place to “be informed” concerning this, that is the place to load and calibrate one’s dream life, is the ritual action of The Church, both on the magestarial level and on the level of popular piety.  In the former treatise Intuitive Ritual Investment and Conscious Ritual Investment we discussed the May Crowning as a popular piety that most certainly demonstrates the paradoxical union of opposites concerning masculinity and femininity, life and death.  The same paradoxes were also explored concerning the Eucharist in both the treatise Divine Gender Transcendence and Incarnational Divine Presence as well as the treatise Inversal Unity and The Divine Triple Descent.  The latter also discussed a host of other paradoxes that can be engaged and utilized in the believer’s life by means of engagement in, what for ancient Christianity is, the summation and calibrator of all effective ritual action.  The treatise Cosmic Evangelization had as one of its purposes the use of ritual as an engagement methodology, especially on the level of popular piety, for actualizing the already existing elements in any given religion for the service of Christ.  If the judgment of Mircea Eliade is correct, the presence of paradox would certainly be an exploitable option in the any of the three varieties of cosmic evangelization discussed in that treatise.

The second framework of paradoxical experience worth noting is the family.  The experience of family life is particularly attuned to facilitating an experience of the cosmological paradox, the union of Eden and The Eschaton.  We discussed in our last treatise Two Paths for Expanding True Love how married life is a life that seeks participation in the perfection of Eden.  In that treatise we hinted at how the married couple presences the paradox of the cosmos by pointing out how they seek to sacramentally demonstrate trinitarian life by using their bodies as sacramental matter to display the loving union of the Trinity.  Though in postlapsarian reality we are imperfect, the terrestrial narrative that a couple queues into is the story of Eden.  By their inherent masculinity and femininity and by their function as a sacramental sign of the union of God and creation, the married couple presence the original paradox of trinitarian ontology as well as the meta paradox of God’s union with creation.  This is how married life in and of itself, without children is sacred and holy.  Once one adds the fecundity of children to married life one has a chance to participate, by narative appropriation, in the cosmological paradox, and understand the deeper tactics of divine pedagogy through paradox and disorder.

We discussed in Two Paths for Expanding True Love how the narrative of the holy family is a bridge narrative between married life which finds its grounding in the Trinity and Eden and consecrated life, which finds its meaning in the Body of Christ and The Eschaton.  By means of the definitive flow presented here (Trinity > Eden > Body of Christ > The Eschaton) One can see the flow of salvation history, which, by spectrum and process, bridges the cosmological paradox.  It runs from original paradoxical perfection (Trinity) to fall (Eden) to postlapsarian perfection (Christ) to New Perfection (The Eschaton).  We stated in that treatise,

The story of the Holy Family is certainly the bridge between the first parents and the Eschaton, and the analogical narrative bridge between married and consecrated life.  It involves first parents, in this case Mary and Joseph as opposed to Adam and Eve.  It involves perfect development and order, in this case of a particular human, Jesus, as opposed to humanity as a whole.  

So it is a great story for either vocational side to bridge into the analogies primarily used by the other because Jesus himself is the bridge between paradise and the Eschaton.  Jesus is the shift between a trajectory of dynamic seeking from a fallen state through an individual who presences perfection toward a guided order culminating in a completed creation.  The narrative of the Holy Family is a  pivotal point of salvation history; offering a specific example of originating parents developing culminating perfection that embodies the entire human narrative from Adam and Eve to the Eschaton.  The married couple can use the parents in the story, Mary and Joseph, and notice their organization of the family begets and actualizes the Body of Christ, a body which humanity IS in the Echston.  The consecrated can look at the Body of Christ present in the story and trace it back to the family, a oneness connecting that body to the parents whose binding nuptial love, in our analogy, sacramentally makes present the binding divine love of the Holy Spirit between the Father and the Son, making all of  these realities one, just as eschatological humanity is one with God.

In the narrative of the Holy Family all the paradoxical dilemma of Christian power dynamics that according to the world are so convoluted take perfect center stage.  The greatest, the parents, serve the least, the child, providing him with a safe, stable and ordered life and developing him into the best person he could be according to God’s plan, not the world’s, and doing so in a way personal to him.  What all this yields is the greatest human being ever, Jesus, who is God, the greatest reality, come to serve the least, sinful humanity.  

So in the highest analogy across the span of salvation history, The Triune God, Father and Son bound by the Spirit, gives birth to nurtures and coddles Humanity as a body until it is fully developed, that full development is The Eschaton, Humanity as the Body of Christ.  On a hyper-concentrated microcosmic scale the way God chooses to show us this is a classic divine flip flop of unexpectedness.  Divinity becomes the child, Jesus, and the parents are the humans Mary and Joseph who must raise this child in an environment such that he can fulfill his mission.  They must supply him with knowledge and empowerment such that he can recognise his mission and perform it when the time is right, not sooner, not later.

In this story, as opposed to the cosmological paradox, diversity (the parents) becomes unity (Christ), and in that unity all diversity is united in The Eschaton.  By his salvific action Christ reverses the process of birth, a divisive process for humanity, through baptism, a unitive process for humanity.  This beautiful story of perfect process is generally the experiential opposite of any actual family.  In the treatise on  Two Paths we discuss the chaotic engagement of the married path.  This is foundational to the engagement of Christian paradox in the family structure.  In another treatise, The Dysfunctional Human Family and the Nontraditional Holy Family, we pointed out to the reader,

With an understanding of this theodicy one can go on to see that in the Bible how families are structured is less important than the power dynamics that exist within them.  It is here that the biblical narrative lays its focus, as it should be, because, “the home is the first school of Christian life and "a school for human enrichment.” Here one learns endurance and the joy of work, fraternal love, generous - even repeated - forgiveness, and above all divine worship in prayer and the offering of one's life.” (CCC 1657).  The biblical focus is how to be truly Christian and practice self emptying love.  When St. John Paul II offered criticism of familial developments in his Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, it did not take a structural form concerning traditional or nontraditional makeups.  His criticism revolved more around relationships and autonomy.

signs are not lacking of a disturbing degradation of some fundamental values: a mistaken theoretical and practical concept of the independence of the spouses in relation to each other; serious misconceptions regarding the relationship of authority between parents and children; the concrete difficulties that the family itself experiences in the transmission of values;       

Our argument here is that one of those “values” to be transmitted is the experience of paradox.  The process of the family, in a standard present cultural narrative, is that the married couple is happy, then children come and chaos ensues.  In part we are buying into that narrative here.  Our strategy is to buy into that chaos as part of the fracturing experienced as a result of the fall.  And in any family one experiences this in microcosmic form.  The physical persons of the couple undergoes a fracturing in the begetting of children.  The ability of the married couple to coordinate is fractured by more complicated relationship.  The narrative of salvation history as the process of the cosmological paradox allows a couple to buy into their marriage as a sacramental sign, yet also their family as a possible community of eschatological prediction.  Or at least that is the hope.  

When everything is going well in family life members can experience the complete scope of the cosmological paradox because of the times that things are not going well.  In the chaos of dynamic family life one feels the vice of the disorder of the cosmos as one strives (as a parent) to bring everything under control.  This striving rarely works out, and in that rarity it rarely works out as planned.  This humility is the pedagogical experience paradox of disorder and justification.                 

If one desires a historical and celestial icon to this effect one need look no further than last century and the example of the Martin family.  In this case we have two married (Eden) parents who are now recognized as saints and a daughter who is consecrated (The Eschaton).  Their life gives a vocational image of the scope of salvation history in one family.  That they are all saints hints at the union of the cosmological paradox and the complete unity and absolute diversity of all of reality.

Not every marriage will beget children.  Not every couple will have consecrated children.  An exact mirroring is not our goal in postlapsarian reality.  If one attempted this in a forced way, one is seeking to grasp at order against divine pedagogy through chaos and paradox.  Again, from Two Paths the married path is the path of adaptation,

The marriage story is set at the creation, everything is about to unfold, paths need to be forged.  The trinitarian God creates and the first parents also stand at a threshold, in the second story Adam has a collaborative part with God in the creation process itself, and they are charged with establishing humanity.       

One’s family may unfold into a consecration toward eschatological in a complete microcosm of the cosmological paradox. Or one’s family may presence the narrative of salvation history, that is the process itself, in general by a constant splintering into marriage over successive generation.  Each familial narrative tells a useful tale, and each is useful to instill in both parent and offspring the lessons of divine pedagogy.

Conclusion

The purpose of this treatise has been to explore the relationship between paradox and disorder as methods of divine pedagogy.  Hopefully the reader has a healthier understanding of how to employ paradox and disorder when making moral judgments and has garnered avenues for engaging paradox in useful ways in Christian life.

In the first section of this treatise we drew a distinction between teleological disorders and cosmological disorders. We began with teleology and drew a distinction between teleology as an indicator of purpose by use and as an indicator of purpose by progress toward an end.  These ideas of purpose gave us a window into disorder as “not reaching an intended purpose or working against an intended purpose”.  We then turned to cosmological disorders.  After discussing the nature of moral calculation concerning cosmological disorder by use of natural law, we noted the dangers of such a methodology.  Then we drew a metanarrative from Eden to The Eschaton where attempted to demonstrate that the “order” of salvation history as postlapsarian reality abides as disorder.

In the second section we took up the topic of paradox.  We began by defining paradox as a union of opposites.  We noted that distinctions are part of the makeup of reality, put there by God in the very beginning, before The Fall.  After reviewing Christian Ontology we asserted three fundamental relationships in order to begin to form a framework for approaching paradox.  These relationships were, consubstantial relationship, hypostatic relationships, and the interpersonal binding relationship of love.  Once these were reviewed we extrapolated three types or approaches to paradox.  The first was a substantial approach, which is object oriented.  The second was a spectral approach, whose starting point is unity.  The last was a process approach, which takes the nature of flux into account.  In the last section of this treatise we will go on to seek practical application for the working relationship we attempt to forge between the two.

In the final section we attempted to combine the concepts of paradox and disorder to comment on divine pedagogy through speculation concerning theodicy.  We used the relationship between disorder and paradox to comment on when it is appropriate to utilize the concept of disorder when entering moral discourse or giving moral advice.  We made use of many standard moral paradoxes of Christianity and sought to identify two practical practices by which one can encounter an experience of paradox in order to foster divine pedagogy. The first was ritual life, and the second practice is engagement of family life.    

In the end reading and attempting to make sense of this treatise may have been an experience of suffering, but hopefully it paradoxically lead to some sort of good.