Trinitarian and Cosmotheandric Vision (Opera Omnia Volume-8)

The ambition of this study is to present, albeit in a very schematic T form, a vision of reality, a cosmovision that differs from the prevailing cosmology of today's dominant culture. The trinitarian vision of reality, indeed, is not limited to the conception that is usually called Christian: it is much wider and more universal. Humanity has always been aware, with greater or lesser clarity, of a Mystery that is higher, transcendent, or immanent in Man.

The pages that follow dare to speak about this reality that we call Mystery.

If we listen to how humanity has expressed its understanding of itself and of the universe we can discern three great visions: the monist vision, the pluralist vision (in the final analysis a dualist vision), and the a-dualist vision. From a metaphysical perspective the three definitions point to three great cosmovisions of human history.

The Monist Vision

The human spirit yearns to decipher the mystery that surrounds it and uses its intelligence to do so. Human intelligence has concentrated on one of its functions: reason. Reason is more practical than pure intellect because it is able to understand things by discovering their concatenation (logic) and thus to succeed in manipulating them. Pure intellect, on the other hand, concentrates on the inner light (intelligibility) that is proper to everything.

In order to understand, reason must reduce to uniformity the data with which it is presented. Therefore it must reduce data to a concept. Faced with the complex diversity of Reality, reason resorts to ever more general and abstract concepts. Thus, reason leads us to the unity of the concept of Being, or of something equivalent. Being is one, the One, or simply Reality or what is to gloss over the various and important philosophical distinctions. Reason, to be clear, requires the reductio ad unum, as the Scholastics said. No matter how much effort we spend on analogy or dialectics, there will always be a primum analogatum, a primary concept that allows to apply the same analogy to different concepts or a "synthesis" that enables us to embrace the dialectics of opposites. If we want to understand Reality rationally, we shall have to arrive at monism via numerous modalities that we introduce to distinguish distinct Beings. They will be only modalities. In short, unless we want to renounce rationality we shall have to affirm that ultimately everything is God or Being or Spirit or Matter or Energy or Nothingness.

The Dualist Vision

Whether by good sense, intuition, or human instincts, some philosophers have ended up renouncing a final synthesis and have remained in a philosophical pluralism that in the end is reduced to dualism between the two great spheres of reality-the material and the spiritual-and this is metaphysical dualism. So-called ontological pluralism (not to be confused with the religious pluralism of present-day debate), by admitting a plurality of entities-like "atomism," for example-also requires a mental nexus that is conscious of the plurality, so that it is ultimately reduced to the aforementioned dualism.

These are the two major options with which human thought presents us. Neither of them, however, is exempt from serious difficulties, as history itself shows. The pure rationality of monism seems to suffocate Man, who is something more than mere reason. Pure dualism, if it is to avoid renouncing rationality, must admit the provisional nature of divergences and hurl us toward a future or an eschatology in which "God" will be all in all, the "good" will triumph over the wicked, the "class struggle" will manage to eliminate human inequalities, "capitalism" will bring well-being to all, "science" will find the answer to unsolved puzzles, the "spirit" will conquer matter, the totality of atoms will form a "superatomic world, politics will finally be human, religion will explain everything, and so on. The temporal framework is always the same: the future has the solution-and the consolation, when one believes in it.

If monism grants preeminence to the static, the immutable, and the absolute, then dualism tends toward the dynamic, to change, and to temporariness. In both cases it is a flight from irrationality as the number-one enemy. Man cannot renounce his quest for meaning in life and for finding his place in the cosmos. Neither agnosticism nor skepticism is averse to the rational maintenance of its own respective attitudes. Since the enigma of the universe cannot be unveiled, it is more rational to abstain from ultimate explanations: this is what these schools of thought tell us. The monism- dualism dilemma seems unable to admit a middle way if rationality is to be saved.