Ryan Haecker

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite should be celebrated as the Doctor of Darkness (Doctor Tenebrarum).  In a Gothic style that reflects the depth of his many masks, his enduring achievement has been to have conceived of a theological grammar to speak of God beyond the haunting spectre of both ancient and modern nihilism.  His Christian theological grammar is distinguished by speaking in the sense of a hyperbola (ὑπερβολή) or excess of signification, which signifies beyond yet within the world: first in the positive or cataphatic grammar, a positive judgment speaks of God; second in the negative or apophatic grammar, a higher or hyper-negative judgment annuls the positive, even as it speaks of God ‘beyond being’, and ‘beyond intellect’, as the absolutely originary source of any such positive judgment; and, third in the proportionate or analogical grammar, this procession of divine Power reciprocally annuls the infinite repetition of all such negative judgments, even as, from the centre of this cycle, it constitutes the absolutely higher ground from which alone speech of God is warranted.  At the centre of this cycle, Christ can be acknowledged by faith to descend into the depths of the negative so as to shine from within the essentially proportioned and hyperbolic grammar of analogy.  The elements of the Latin Scholastic analogy of being can, as this commentary will show, be reconstructed from Pseudo-Dionysius’s hyperbolic grammar.  In these hyperbolic arcs, the infinite repetition of hyper-negative judgments is annulled, and yet, in a reciprocal determination, equally constituted to virtually proceed from a higher ground in the essential proportions of analogy.  Like fireflies that carry the torch of the Sun before the doors of night, the theological grammar of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite can be shown to be radically shaped by a Christian and Trinitarian theology, in which Christ the Logos is the originary ground and source, not only of the hyper-negative, but of the essential proportions of the analogia entis.

The way beyond the digital can be discovered, not outside, but rather in and through the digital at its highest point. Since its introduction, the postdigital has neither been adequately defined nor scientifically demonstrated to be indefinable. If, on the contrary, the postdigital can be defined by a conceptual and genealogical analysis as a circuit of reflections upon the essential rupture of the digital, then the way that, in the digital, we calculate in writing can, in the postdigital, be assumed into a hyperbolic reflection in and from its more originary creative source. In this theological critique of Maggi Savin-Baden and John Reader’s volume Postdigital Theologies, I prosecute three theses: first, the postdigital has failed; second, postdigital theology is incompatible with Christian theology; and third, for mystical theology, the hyperdigital is the truth of the postdigital. The postdigital is not ‘ineffable’ but rather only appears indefinable because of a prior and contes...

Origen has been acknowledged as a great theologian, but he has not yet been recognised as a logician. He hardly ever appears today in histories of logic. Ancient logic has typically been narrated to begin with Aristotle and end with the early Stoa. Origen’s logic has come to be relegated to little more than a footnote to Stoic logic. Robert Somos has recently argued that Origen’s logic cannot be simply reduced to Stoic logic. Yet he has declined to develop its implications into a genuinely theological interpretation of Origen’s logic. Origen has, however, clearly indicated a theological interest in logic, when, in the prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs, he describes how logic may be “interwoven” in and through all of the sciences, even as it is presupposed in language and rhetoric, and, most of all, as it is completed in what he calls the mystical or “epoptic” science of theology. This “epoptic” science appears to supersede logic as the science of the intelligible attributes or epinoia of the Logos, communicated by Christ, through the Trinity. Origen’s logic is, on this account, not, as it has so often been misread, simply a machinic calculation of Stoic or Peripatetic syllogisms, but, more mysteriously, a way of speaking in and with the Logos, which, beginning with the Sophia, can be communicated by Christ, in and through the divine hypostases of God as Trinity.

Analogy and dialectics are principles of logic, grammar, and metaphysics for intermediating the elements of theology. Analogy is a grammatical relation that differentiates many distinct terms that remain related by a proportionate similitude, while dialectics is a logical relation that opposes many contradictory theses for the purpose of resolving these contradictions into a synthetic unity of opposites. Each may be abstractly divided by definition but both must be concretely united, through the shared semiotic medium of signs, in the essential relations of the Trinity. The Trinity is the consummate centre in which analogy and dialectics completely coincide. Both principles have been alternatively championed for the purpose of constructing the metaphysical infrastructure of theology: analogy has been presented as a metaphysical-causal principle of the proportionate participation of imperfect analogate in perfect analogon terms; while dialectics has alternatively been presented as an...

One of the most frequently asked questions in Hegelian studies is whether Hegel’s idea of God is immanent or transcendent. Answering this question is especially challenging because Hegel appears to have rejected both Augustinian divine transcendence and Spinozian divine immanence in favour of some more ambiguous mixture. This ambiguity can appear all the more puzzling in light of Hegel’s political philosophy. In Transcending Subjects: Augustine, Hegel, and Theology, Geoffrey Holsclaw attempts to solve this puzzle by contrasting the political theologies of Hegel and Augustine. He argues that Hegel produces a political theology of ‘self-transcending immanence’ while Augustine produces a political theology of ‘self-immanentizing transcendence’. Self-transcending immanence can be regarded as the activity of exceeding categories within the immanent domain of subjective thought, while self-immanentizing transcendence can be regarded as the activity of entering into these categories from the transcendent domain of objective being. Holsclaw places Hegel in the position of self-transcending immanence, Augustine in the position of self-immanentizing transcendence, and sides with Augustine to criticize Hegel for failing to transcend the domain of subjective thought. In his view, ‘Hegel claims that transcendence destroys freedom and Augustine claims that transcendence is the only means to freedom’ so that, ‘Augustine gives a better explanation of and therefore funds a better practice for freedom’ (8–9). Holsclaw thus advocates an Augustinian political theology for the purpose of protecting the Christian belief in divine transcendence and preserving the ideal of political freedom. Holsclaw develops a dialectical narrative of opposed positions which is meant to be resolved by the ‘plausibility and suitability of Augustine’s position over Hegel’s’ (10). He divides his study into two parts and six chapters: in each part, the initial chapters critique two opposed interpretations; the subsequent chapters examine the relation of transcendence to immanence; and the final chapters explore whether this relation frustrates or fulfils the ideal of freedom for political liberalism. doi:10.1017/hgl.2017.6 Hegel Bulletin © The Hegel Society of Great Britain, 2017 , 40/2, 334–338

Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine can be recollected as a fossilized image of the first digital computer. It is essentially distinguished from all prior and analog computers by the transcription of the ‘mechanical notation’, the separation of the mnemonic ‘store’ from the cybernetic ‘mill’, and the infinite miniaturization of its component parts. This substitution of finite space for an accelerating singularity of time creates the essential rupture of the digital, in which a singular calculation of mechanical force stands opposed to the universal totality of space. Babbage’s criticism of Christian doctrine to preserve the mathematical consistency of mechanics and computing would result in the collapse of the Christian Trinity into a digital theology. This Arian subordinate difference of the Son to the Father would then be infinitely transcribed in a technical contradiction that would threaten to annul the metaphysical ground of any machine. Against digital and postdigital theologi...

Philosophers of education often view the role of religion in education with suspicion, claiming it to be impossible, indoctrinatory or controversial unless reduced to secular premises and aims. The ‘post-secular’ and ‘decolonial’ turns of the new millennium have, however, afforded opportunities to revaluate this predilection. In a social and intellectual context where the arguments of previous generations of philosophers may be challenged on account of positivist assumptions, there may be an opening for the reconsideration of alternative but traditional religious epistemologies. In this article, we pursue one such line of thought by revisiting a classic question in the philosophy of education, Meno’s Paradox of inquiry. We do this to revitalise understanding and justification for religious education. Our argument is not altogether new, but in our view, is in need of restatement: liturgy is at the heart of education and it is so because it is a locus of knowledge. We make this argume...

The plant has recently emerged as a battleground of conflicting ecocriticisms. ‘Dark Ecology’ is, in the works of Timothy Morton, an ecocritical hermeneutic, in which the world can be subtracted into the parts of objects, of the plant, and of any leaf that exceeds the totality of abstract ‘Nature’. In dividing the whole into the parts, and combining the parts into an imminently subtracted whole, he has recommended a negative dialectic of virtual objects that can be collected into a ‘hyperobject’. This dialectic can, however, be argued to dissolve any whole into parts, and render the hyperobject internally fissured. We can, from the ‘darkness’ of this fissure, begin to read Nature according to the ‘via plantare’, that is, a mystical way of desiring an other as plant so as to know and love the visible light of the invisible God. ‘Vegetal difference’, the difference of the plant from the animal, should, I argue, be read for theology as a finite reflection of the divine difference of th...

Philosophers of education often view the role of religion in education with suspicion, claiming it to be impossible, indoctrinatory or controversial unless reduced to secular premises and aims. The ‘post-secular’ and ‘decolonial’ turns of the new millennium have, however, afforded opportunities to revaluate this predilection. In a social and intellectual context where the arguments of previous generations of philosophers may be challenged on account of positivist assumptions, there may be an opening for the reconsideration of alternative but traditional religious epistemologies. In this article, we pursue one such line of thought by revisiting a classic question in the philosophy of education, Meno’s Paradox of inquiry. We do this to revitalise understanding and justification for religious education. Our argument is not altogether new, but in our view, is in need of restatement: liturgy is at the heart of education and it is so because it is a locus of knowledge. We make this argument by exploring St Augustine’s response to Meno’s Paradox, and his radical claim that only Christ can be called ‘teacher’. Though ancient, this view of the relationship of the teacher and student to knowledge may seem surprisingly contemporary because of its emphasis on the independence of the learner. Although our argument is grounded in classic texts of the Western tradition, we suggest that arguments could be made by drawing on similar resources in other religious traditions, such as Islam, that also draw upon the Platonic tradition and similarly emphasise the importance of communal and personal acts of worship.

Origen of Alexandria should be acknowledged as the founder of a Christian science of the angels, or angelology. In On First Principles (1.5-8.), he introduces the angels as the first created ‘rational beings’ who, in contemplating the divine Logos, freely choose to direct their will as holy angels in service to or as wicked demons in antagonism against the love of God. The rational beings are divided into three orders: the angels, the demons, and the neutral spirits such as human souls. The angels remain in contemplation of the Logos, yet, due to their negligence, descend to unfold in the angelic hierarchy. The angels and demons thereafter guide the movements of all spirits, substances, and signs in the created world. Human souls can freely choose to follow the guidance of either guardian angels or demons. And yet after the Incarnation, the angels can be distinguished from the demons by their choice to follow or oppose the coming of Christ. Origen’s angelology has often been regarded as an early Christian alternative to Middle Platonic daimonologies. After Karl Barth, his angelology has often been dispensed from Christian theology. However, as Jean Daniélou has observed, Origen had previously departed from the principles of Platonic daimonology in affirming that angelic mediacy must pass away like the light of the stars before the Logos of Christ. He had, in this way, assimilated the relative mediacy of the angels to the absolute mediation of Christ. And, in assimilating angelic to Christic mediacy, Origen also assimilates the reason with which the world is moved to the divine Logos of Christ in God as Trinity. Origen’s angelology can thus be read before and after Barth to recommend a new speculative angelology.

The plant has recently emerged as a battleground of conflicting ecocriticisms. ‘Dark Ecology’ is, in the works of Timothy Morton, an ecocritical hermeneutic, in which the world can be subtracted into the parts of objects, of the plant, and of any leaf that exceeds the totality of abstract ‘Nature’. In dividing the whole into the parts, and combining the parts into an imminently subtracted whole, he has recommended a negative dialectic of virtual objects that can be collected into a ‘hyperobject’. This dialectic can, however, be argued to dissolve any whole into parts, and render the hyperobject internally fissured. We can, from the ‘darkness’ of this fissure, begin to read Nature according to the ‘via plantare’, that is, a mystical way of desiring an other as plant so as to know and love the visible light of the invisible God. ‘Vegetal difference’, the difference of the plant from the animal, should, I argue, be read for theology as a finite reflection of the divine difference of the Holy Trinity in a Trinitarian Ontology, in which the originary difference of the Son from the Father is related through the Holy Spirit, and given again in accelerating gratuity—like the light of the leaf that shines forth from any flower.

The city is a library of analogy. Analogy is a form of grammar in which one thing is compared to another. The analogy of being (analogia entis) had been conceived among the Medieval Scholastics as a theological grammar of participation, in which any speech on being is spoken of in two or more senses, and from the higher ontological ground of a mediating proportion. However, from Dons Scotus to Gilles Deleuze, it has been reduced to an increasingly univocal grammar of aesthetic proportions. Once reduced, it ranges across the spaces of the earth, and the city. The first city was founded as a cybernetic engine of writing, and of calculation for computing the administration and allocation of productive surpluses. In The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin rendered the Fourierist ‘harmonies’ of urban spaces as material traces of the symbolic forms of analogy. The production of symbolic commodities thereafter accelerates across successive virtual plateaus of civic designs and urban environments. Walter Benjamin’s ‘city of arcades’ can recall Charles Fourier’s ‘theory of universal analogy’, which gestures beyond the unfulfilled desires of the earthly towards an eschatological ‘heavenly city’. Since analogy must be related from its extremes, the analogia entis should be spoken of, not as abstractly prior to, but concretely as it is spoken of in a theological grammar of analogy that shapes the spaces of the city of man, as of the city of God.

What is the shape of the resurrected body?  Origen of Alexandria was condemned for having apparently believed the shape of the resurrected body to be that of a sphere.  We can perhaps trace the pedigree of this belief, through Neo-Pythagorean sources, to Philo of Alexandria, and ultimately to Plato's idea of the soul, which, as in Aristophanes' speech of the Symposium, assumes the shape of a sphere.  Common to these writers was the conviction that a soul freed of the body should assume the shape of the most perfect geometric form, proceeding in the dialectical circuit of a hyperbolic geometry.  The 'shape' of the soul may be expressed in the plenitude of all possible articulations.  Origen’s allusions to a 'city of the saints' can be read in anticipation of Augustine’s Civitate Dei as a model for conceiving of the shape of the body in felicitous communion with the Church.

The plant has recently emerged as a battleground of conflicting ecocriticisms. ‘Dark Ecology’ is, in the works of Timothy Morton, an ecocritical hermeneutic, in which the world can be subtracted into the parts of objects, of the plant, and of any leaf that exceeds the totality of abstract ‘Nature’. In dividing the whole into the parts, and combining the parts into an imminently subtracted whole, he has recommended a negative dialectic of virtual objects that can be collected into a ‘hyperobject’. This dialectic can, however, be argued to dissolve any whole into parts, and render the hyperobject internally fissured. We can, from the ‘darkness’ of this fissure, begin to read Nature according to the ‘via plantare’, that is, a mystical way of desiring an other as plant so as to know and love the visible light of the invisible God. ‘Vegetal difference’, the difference of the plant from the animal, should, I argue, be read for theology as a finite reflection of the divine difference of the Holy Trinity in a Trinitarian Ontology, in which the originary difference of the Son from the Father is related through the Holy Spirit, and given again in accelerating gratuity — like the light of the leaf that shines forth from any flower.

Logic and theology were once spoken of together in a divine discourse with which we spoke to God, even as God spoke to us, through the same sacred speech.  This sacred speech was first announced in poetry before it was articulated in philosophy.  Yet it has since been forgotten due to the further formalization of language in logic.  This further formalization has now rendered logic a-theological, theology a-logical, and both altogether unthinkable.  To think once more of the logic of theology we must think once more of the metaphysical foundations of a theology of logic.  The theology of logic is, I propose, a new way to study the subject of logic as it should now and always be studied for metaphysics and theology.  It starts with no standing presumption as to the universal and invariant necessity of logic, but rather asks so as to answer the prior question of the contingent grounds for our very belief in logic.  It thus asks how we can speak of logic as we speak of any speech of the logos, of metaphysics, and of theology.  I wish, with this paper, to present a short introduction to the themes of this new theology of logic.

The Great Music of the Ainur, the Ainulindalë, appears, at the start of the Silmarillion, as an angelic rehearsal of the providential historicism of Middle-earth: the first theme resounds with the cooperation of the faithful Ainur; the second theme results from the rebellion of Melkor and his followers; and the third theme, introduced through the power of Ilúvatar alone, reconciles the first and second themes into a “solemn pattern, blended of sorrow and beauty.”  These three themes are thereafter echoed in the three movements of the creation, fall, and restoration of the societies of Elves, Men, and Dwarves.  In each ensuing historicist cycle, these societies suffer from a steady decline that may be momentously remedied by a sudden ‘eucatastrophe’.  A eucatastrophe is a sudden reversal of fortune that momentously resolves the conflict and restores the characters to an unforeseen and inexplicable happy ending.  Since such restorations cannot at all be explained away by any historical precedent, each eucatastrophe must mark the miraculous intervention of a providential historicism.  This providential historicism can be considered as the divine logic of history that directs all historical change towards this restoration of the world.  As the historical drama of the Third Age draws to its conclusion in the Lord of the Rings, the historicism of Middle-earth can be heard to contribute a central theme to the sub-created movement of mankind's providential restoration.

A Plastic Possibility for Ralph Cudworth’s Libertarianism [Origen’s Philosophy of Freedom in Early Modern Times: Debates about Free Will and Apokatastasis in 17th-Century England and Europe, Alfons Fürst ed., Adamantiana 13 (Münster: Achendorff Verlag) 2019, 75-85]

Silence is not nothing.  It is the negation of the sound of being in the silence of nonbeing.  Silence suggests a puzzling paradox: for if the being of speech is opposed to the nonbeing of silence; and speech can only be spoken through silence, just as silence can only be silent through speech; then it seems that speech and silence must be opposed but mutually mixed into every contradictory expression.  Plato’s Parmenides presents the possibility for a dialectical resolution of this paradox of silence.  The first hypothesis appears to conclude in nothing more than the simple silence of a one beyond being.  Interpretations of Plato’s Parmenides have historically progressed from dyadic interpretations, which alternatively multiplies all hypotheses by two, to triadic interpretations, which replicate the first three hypotheses in interlocking triads: Hegel, Heidegger, and Baidou have advanced dyadic interpretations that have prioritized nonbeing over being to nihilate being into nothing, while Milbank and Pickstock have suggested how these dyadic interpretations may be recycled into a triadic interpretation of interlocking triads in the Trinity.  The possibility of speaking through silence, and of silence in speech, can, I will argue, only be preserved by this triadic interpretation in the Trinity.

Alan Darley has implored Radical Orthodoxy to become " more radically Thomistic " by recovering the law of non-contradiction that has lately been lost by Milbank, Pickstock, and Hoff in a " Cusanian tributary from the Neoplatonic river ". He contends that this prohibition on all contradictions can be explained through Aristotle's indirect demonstration against any possibility of denying it. But he fails to recognize how this very indirect demonstration already operates as a viciously circular formalized dialectic. Plato developed this dialectic into the self-determination of Intellect; Plotinus suspended it from the divine hypostases; and Proclus systematized it as the creative hypercontrariety that imparts every determination. Thomas Aquinas inherited Proclus' creative hypercontrariety from Pseudo-Dionysius of Areopagite, Aristotle's Principle of Non-Contradiction from Avicenna, and sublated all contrariety into the divine impartation of individuated acts of existence. This impartation of existence into entities may have produced an aporia of existence: if existence is multiple then it is contrary to the individuality of every entity; but if existence is unitary then it may conceal the creative contrariety of participation. The indiscriminate application of the Principle of Non-Contradiction threatens to break the bonds of being and dissolve the Thomistic metaphysics of participation into post-Ockhamist nihilism. The further radicalization of Thomism may thus require the aporia of existence to be resolved through a Neoplatonic dialectic.

Transcending Subjects should be commended for opening an overdue conversation between Hegelian political philosophy and Augustinian political theology for the purpose of answering the challenges of post-Kantian Liberalism. Such an Augustinian critique of Hegel promises to show how the return to Hegel may require just as much of a return to Augustine. The key conflict between them may turn upon the role of transcendence in the ‘true infinite’. If the true infinite proves irreducible to any finitized failure of understanding, then we should nonetheless welcome the opportunity to compare Augustinian with Hegelian notions of transcendence. And if its presuppositions of immanence and transcendence ultimately leave this issue undecided, then Holsclaw can be credited for calling renewed attention to their importance within the political arena. The numerous contemporary themes and topics canvassed in this book should prove rewarding for both students of theology and for dedicated researchers who share an avid interest in the emerging intersections between theology and politics. Holsclaw has admirably addressed all of these weighty themes with an extraordinary patience, clarity, and delicacy, which promises to welcome conflicting schools of thought to a mutually enriching discussion about the theological dimension of politics.

Plato’s contest for the early Academy was to answer Parmenides’ criticisms of the Theory of the Universal Forms through an interpretation of the dialectical exercises presented in the Parmenides (§I).  Plato’s Theory of the Universal Forms and the objections of the Parmenides may now be more precisely formulated in predicate logic using the notational convention developed by Edward Zalta (§II).  The two principal objections to Plato’s Theory of the Universal Forms are the Third Man Argument and the Greatest Difficulty Argument: the Third Man Argument can be answered by Constance Meinwald’s distinction of Self-Predication and Gail Fine’s distinction of Non-Identity (§III); and the Greatest Difficulty Argument implies the inconsistent set of Russell's Paradox, yet may be answered through the construction of a hierarchical set theoretical model that subsumes and restricts the semantic scope of each subordinate hypothesis (§IV).  The rejection of the external predication of the Third Man Argument and the two-world ontology of the Greatest Difficulty Argument suggests a monistic ontology of internal relations in the Concrete Universal form of all forms (§V).

Where Plato had robustly conceived of numbers as Mathematical Ideas generated by the supreme Principles and multiply instantiated in numerically distinct sensible objects, Aristotle rejects Mathematical Ideas and thinly re-conceives of numbers as no more than abstract concepts generalized by the intellect from quantities of numerical distinct sensible substances.  Aristotle’s many criticisms of Plato’s theory of Mathematical Ideas are, however, an ignorant argument (ignorationes elenchi) that, not only disregards the eidetic generation of numbers from the supreme Principles, but may only plausibly succeed against his own forced re-conception of eidetic numbers as mathematical numbers. The many absurdities that Aristotle purports to derive from Plato's theory of Mathematical Ideas are thus the consequence of his own, rather than Plato's, conception of mathematical objects.  The following commentary will (§I) describe how Aristotle re-conceives of Plato's Mathematical Ideas of eidetic numbers; (§II) defend Plato's theory of Mathematical Ideas against Aristotle's criticisms in Metaphysics XIII 6-8; and (§III) prosecute the case for Plato's transcendental argument for eidetic numbers against Aristotle's abstraction theory for mathematical numbers.

The analogy of being was introduced by Aristotle, and later thematised by Thomas Aquinas, as a special mode of grammar in which one term may signify two or more meanings, but in which each of the signified meanings derives its primary meaning by participating in one common meaning. The analogy of being thus decisively presupposes this metaphysic of participation. But this very pillar of participation is also the principal source of the aporia of analogy. In the Science of Logic, Hegel outlined how the quantitative ratio and the syllogism of analogy may be successively sublated into the Idea in what I call a ‘speculative analogy’. When Erich Przywara later re-formulated the analogy of being at the apogee of phenomenology, he implicitly opposed Schelling’s rhythmically oscillating opposition of contraries to Hegel’s sublation of contradictions. This conflict over contradiction has produced two competing models of analogy: Hegel’s analogical dialectics in which contradictory differences are meant to be sublated into the ‘absolute middle’ of the Idea; and Przywara’s dialectical analogy in which contrary opposites are meant to participate in the mysterious ‘suspended middle’ of God. Przywara criticizes Hegel for evacuating the mystery into concepts, but Hegel might respond by criticizing Przywara for withholding these mysteries beyond the concept. This comparison illustrates how Hegel’s Science of Logic cannot adequately resolve all contrary opposites in a speculative analogy unless the middle terms the syllogisms are re-read against the letter of Hegel’s text as the absolute middle of Christ in the Trinity.

The genealogy of phenomenology, from Kant to Heidegger, has concealed an ontological inversion of Plato’s real logic of phenomena into an ‘irreal’ phenomenology of epistemic correlations. But by exposing this hidden inversion, we may retrieve from the depths of the phenomena the possibility of a theological critique and reformulation of phenomenology. Where phenomenology has compressed and concealed its epistemic divisions of subject and object within its intrinsically pre-determined being of the phenomenon, Trinitarian theology promises to disclose how its inwardly collapsing differentia may be reflected back into a supersaturated matrix of free ecstatic love. This Trinitarian reflection may promise to succeed, where Heidegger had failed, in escaping the apocalypse of phenomenology by raising the radiant icon of the risen Christ from the depths of the past.

In the Parmenides, Plato delivered a series of devastating critiques that demonstrated how even our most basic semantic formulations of the perfect paradigms must be mired in a medley of contradictions. In the Sophist, Plato dissolved all such contradictions into relative differences and resolved all differences into proportions of identity-in-difference. Hegel may thus have found in the Divine Method of Plato's Philebus the the ancestor of his own dialectical solution to the Kantian antinomies, and interpolated this solution to re-interpret Plato's later dialogues as a positive dialectic: where the negative dialectic of the Parmenides dissolves all Ideas into a medley of contradictions, the Sophist suggests a resolution of these contradictions in and through self-moving spirits, and the Philebus proposes the Divine Method as a positive dialectic to fulfill Plato’s promise of philosophy.

How has infinity been molded into art?; how has art been modelled on infinity?; and how have infinity and its aesthetic of the sublime shaped theology? A prejudice for the sublime against the beautiful has suggested an a-theological transcendence towards a virtual infinity to annihilates all finite content. Since the sublime is an aesthetic of infinity, this prejudice for the sublime may be criticized by a theological genaelogy of infinity. Infinity would have no history if numbers were pure forms without content. But the belief in the pure formality of numbers results from the specific algebraic tradition of François Viète and the late-Franciscan virtual infinity. The decisive shift occurred, not with infinite sets, nor infinitesimal calculus, nor even modern algebra, but rather in a long-ignored late-medieval conflict concerning whether potentially infinite enumerations could signify the divine essence. A hidden genaelogy of infinity exhibits the repeated unfolding and enfolding of the virtual infinity in a tandem movement through the history of theology, mathematics, and art: the the (a) ancient agony of infinity, between the infinitized finitude and the finitized infinitude, was first pacified in a Trinitarian economy of divine persons as they exceeded and preserved their own distinctions within the divine essence; from which a (b) late-medieval dispute over knowledge of the attribution of actual infinity unfolded to produce the self-enclosed virtual infinity; and this (c) virtual infinity was finally partitioned and recombined until it gave birth to the terrible aesthetic of the sublime. This re-entry of the Beautiful into the finite thus required the flattened representations of the virtual infinity to be folded back into some shape that might signify the presence of divine infinity and the restoration of the beautiful proportions of the analogy of being in Gothic art. Erich Przywara’s Analogia Entis may similarly be imagined to have opened a Gothic space for a Gothic analogy of being.

Logic and theology were once spoken of together in a divine discourse with which we spoke to God, even as God spoke to us, through the same sacred speech.  This sacred speech was first announced in poetry before it was articulated in philosophy.  Yet it has since been forgotten due to the further formalization of language in logic. This further formalization has now rendered logic a-theological, theology a-logical, and both altogether unthinkable.  To think once more of the logic of theology we must think once more of the metaphysical foundations of a theology of logic.  This theology of logic is, I propose, a new way to study the subject of logic as it should now and always be studied for metaphysics and theology.  It starts with no standing presumption as to the universal and invariant necessity of logic, but rather asks so as to answer the prior question of the contingent grounds for our very belief in logic.  It thus asks how we can speak of logic as we speak of the speech of the Logos, of metaphysics, and of theology. I wish, with this paper, to present a short introduction to the themes of this new theology of logic.

Jacques Derrida has, in subverting the supplementation of writing to speech, of absence to presence, and, ultimately, of every binary opposition throughout the whole history of philosophy, developed a general critique of logocentrism, which could expressly and easily be deployed to specifically critique Origen's hermeneutic centred on the logos.  Derrida’s deconstruction of logocentrism threatens today to liquidate Origen’s logos-hermeneutics, scriptural exegesis, and systematic theology into an utterly unreadable maze of metaphysical sophistry.  Yet the danger of this deconstruction is also at once the occasion for a dialectical alternative.  For Derrida’s originary question of ‘what is writing’, like Heidegger’s originary question of ‘what is being’, is, today, not simply a naïve question with no apparent answer, but a question that summons an alternative answer, in an alternation away from any answer that has hitherto been determined, in a dialectic between the surface questioned and the supplement answered.  The decisive criticism of Derrida's difference may, for this reason, result from a dialectical destruction of his temporally differed difference that is differánce, his alterior emancipation from logocentrism, and his last ‘Heideggerian hope’ to escape from the logos.  Origen of Alexandria can be reread to dialectically destroy the differánce of Derrida’s deconstruction of logocentrism.

The Holy Spirit is, for Origen of Alexandria, the inspiration, not only of scriptural composition, but, ever afterwards, of scriptural interpretation, doctrine, and tradition.  It is inspiration of interpretation in history and time.  Time is, for Origen, not, as for the Stoics, an eternally recurring circuit, or, for the Platonists, an imperfect image of eternity, but, by the incarnation of God in Christ, an uncontainable excess that is always already enveloped in and through the reflective relations of the Spirit.  And since it also reflects upon so as to recollect the sources of its history, the Spirit can, no less than Christ, be radically historicized – without the loss of its true transcendence – in a hermeneutical circuit that reflexively imitates the hypostatic circuit of the Trinity.  The development of scriptural interpretation, like the development of doctrine thereafter, appears, thereafter, as an economic elaboration of this intra-trinitarian procession through the hermeneutic circuit of spirits from and for the hypostatic circuit of the Spirit of God the Trinity.  Henri de Lubac was inspired by Origen’s spiritual interpretation of the history of salvation to develop a spiritual interpretation of history.  The Ressourcement movement thus sought to return to the sources to recollect the traditions of theology in this hermeneutical in hypostatic circuit – initially of scriptural interpretation, but, supremely, of all spirits in the Spirit of God the Trinity.  Ressourcement has, however, been challenged perhaps most powerfully by Jean-François Lyotard’s postmodern collapse of ‘metanarratives’: Lyotard describes the “postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives”; as an acceleration of socio-linguistic scepticism that delegitimizes modernist metanarratives; and, most malevolently of all, the toppling of the grand narratives of spiritual progress with which de Lubac, like Origen, had sought to reflect upon so as to recollect the sources of the theological tradition.  Lyotard’s collapse of metanarratives now threatens, not only historical knowledge, but, moreover, any attempt to return to recollect the traditions of theology.  The traditions of theology can today only be defended by dissolving these sources of scepticism.  We must, if we wish to search the sources of the theological tradition, argue that, since this delegitimization also narrates its own collapse into nihilistic incredulity, de Lubac’s Ressourcement can, like Origen’s spiritual interpretation, point a path, beyond any aporetic impasse between alternative and adventitious metanarratives, towards this spiritual progress of the Spirit of God the Trinity.

The Exodus 3:14 annunciation 'I Am that I Am' has traditionally been taken as a statement that God is the supreme self-grounding Being of all beings: Philo first translated "He who is" into "the Being who is"; Anselm correlated it to the "true being" at the apex of ontology; and Aquinas stated that it shows that the essence of God is simply to exist.  Immanuel Kant's critique of metaphysics and Martin Heidegger's critique of ontology have, however, cast considerable doubt upon this entire enterprise.  Martin Heidegger's critique of ontotheology has come to haunt theology with the fear of a deconstruction of the metaphysics of theology.  Jean-Luc Marion has recently responded by arguing that this announcement is, not a being, but the gift of a saturated phenomena.  I argue that Origen of Alexandria had, through the divine epinoia of the logos, dialectically determined the ontological difference between Being and beings.

The Great Music of the Ainur, the Ainulindalë, appears, at the start of the Silmarillion, as an angelic rehearsal of the providential historicism of Middle-earth: the first theme resounds with the cooperation of the faithful Ainur; the second theme results from the rebellion of Melkor and his followers; and the third theme, which was introduced through the power of Ilúvatar alone, reconciles the first and second themes into a “solemn pattern, blended of sorrow and beauty.”  These three themes are thereafter echoed in the three movements of the creation, fall, and restoration of the world through the historicist cycles of the societies of Elves, Men, and Dwarves.  In each historicist cycle, these societies suffer from a steady decline that may be momentously remedied by a sudden ‘eucatastrophe’.  A eucatastrophe is a sudden reversal of fortune that momentously resolves the conflict and restores the characters to an unforeseen and inexplicable happy ending.  Since such restorations cannot be explained by any historical precedent, each eucatastrophe must mark a miraculous intervention of providential historicism.  Providential historicism can be considered the divine logic of history that directs all historical change towards this restoration of the world.  As the historical drama of the Third Age draws to its conclusion in the Lord of the Rings, the historicism of Middle-earth can be heard to contribute a central theme to the sub-created movement of mankind's providential restoration.

William Desmond has, beginning in Desire, Dialectic, and Otherness (1987), and continuing in his metaxu trilogy Being and The Between (1995), Ethics and The Between (2001), and God and the Between (2008), developed an influential ‘metaxological critique’ of Hegel’s dialectic.  Metaxology is, for Desmond, the logic of the ‘in-between’ (metaxu) that mediates the ‘positive plurality’ of ‘given being’ on the side, not of the self, but of the other.  He has proposed four potencies of being with which to reduce dialectic to the equivocal, suspend the equivocal from the analogical, and supercede dialectic through this other-mediation of metaxology.  And he has argued, against Hegel, that where dialectic merely mediates ‘on the side of the self’, metaxology also mediates on the ‘side of the other’.  Desmond’s metaxological critique thus pivots around this radical otherness of mediation on the side of the other.  And the viability of his metaxological critique, no less than Schelling’s Hegelkritik, rests on such an extra-systematic possibility of radical otherness.  I propose to make the following three arguments against Desmond’s metaxological critique.  First, since metaxology pivots around mediation on the side of the other, and such a distinction between self-mediation and other-mediation does not appear anywhere in Hegel’s system, Desmond’s metaxological critique appears to amount to an extra-systematic and extrinsic critique, begs the question of radical otherness, and thereby remains uncritical.  Second, since such radical otherness amounts to a dogmatic presupposition, and nothing that is dogmatically presupposed can prove to be presuppositionless in any alternative system of science, Desmond cannot construct an alternative system of science with which to sublate dialectic into metaxology.  And, third, if, for these reasons, Desmond’s metaxological critique can be shown to be both uncritical and dogmatic, and the difference of the other in the radical otherness of other-mediation can always be dialectically reversed as difference is reflected into identity, then Hegel could, especially in the Doctrine of Essence, also have anticipated a counter-critique with which to dialectically reverse, annul, and sublate metaxology into dialectic.  Desmond’s metaxological critique appears on these arguments to be uncritical, dogmatic, and imminently reversible through this dialectical destruction of the otherness of otherness as the difference of otherness is reflected in and for the reflective identity of the ground of essence.  Desmond has recently responded to this suggestion of such a dialectical reversal of other-mediation into self-mediation by radically reaffirming the difference of the other of metaxological mediation on the side of the other.  Such a radical reaffirmation of the difference of the other can, at best, beg the question of radical otherness, and, at worst, reinstate this radical otherness in an endless equivocity of oppositive otherness.  I propose, for the purpose of developing a Hegelian counter-critique of Desmond’s metaxological critique of dialectic, that Hegel can, especially in the Doctrine of Essence, successfully sublate every such externality of otherness, difference, and, finally, of any 'positive plurality' of mediation on the side of the other into the self-reflective identity of the idea of essence.

Origen has long been believed to have added nothing new to logic than could have been conceived by the later Stoa in an abortive anticipation of modern formal logic.  Origen’s logic has thus come to be relegated by the majority of Origenists to little more than a footnote to Stoic logic.  Robert Somos has recently argued, against this communio opinio, that Origen’s logic cannot be simply reduced to Stoic logic.  He has, however, declined to develop its implication into a theological interpretation of Origen’s logic in light of the first principles of the Trinity.  Origen’s logic is, I suggest, a consequence of, rather than a condition for, the first principles of the Trinity.  Origen appears to highlight this trinitarian logic in his Commentary on the Song of Songs, where the supreme science of ‘epoptics’ appears not to substitute for but to supersede logic as the science of the supersensible ideas cycling in and through the divine dialectic of the Trinity.  Origen’s logic is, I wish to argue, a radiant reflection of the divine dialectic that shines forth from the first principles of the Trinity, through all the angels and spirits, into the spirit of human thinking, which thinks through the first principles of logic even as it thinks through the first principles of philosophical theology.

The comic book superheroe genre provides a substitute mythos for modern secular society.  It is thematically typified by a serialized spectacle of violence between its titular heroes and villains who are variously super-empowered to exceed, destroy, and restore the world.  This thematic conflict is, moreover, not simply any juvenile fantastic spectacle of violence but rather a genuinely theological conflict that repeatedly represents its final justice. The finality of its justification must, however, be ineluctably frustrated by its episodic repetition and reproduction in and for the cycles of capitalist consumption.  The demand for publication, production, and profit has resulted in an endless episodic repetition of its cardinal conflicts to vanquish all villainy; to overpower every disempowerment; and – in the spectacle of its supreme triumph – to justify capitalism in and for itself. 

Comic book superheroes can thus serve as theological avatars of capitalist ideology.  Since, however, the superheroes are, themselves, ignorant of this ideology, the characters can never escape from their narrative repetition, and the cardinal conflicts must be infinitely repeated in a ceaseless opposition.  This ceaseless opposition is the consequence of the negative dialectic in an oscilating opposition of contraries that can never be cancelled to coincide in any shared synthesis.  The negative dialectic of the comic book superhero genre results from the repetition of its central thematic conflict to symbolically justify the world.  Since each symbolic justification must, moreover, essentially retain the genre’s own original self-opposition, the comic book superhero genre must be repeatedly frustrated in fulfilling its own purpose to justify capitalism.  This frustrated fulfillment has historically propelled the comic book superhero genre through a retrograde movement of successive stages: the genre can be periodicized from the late-modern optimism of the Golden Age, to the self-reflective tragedy of the Silver Age, and, finally, to the post-modern cynicism of the Bronze Age.

Once this negative dialectic has dissolved the inner meaning of the genre, comic book superheroes may only fulfil their purpose of justifying capitalism through a new theological fantasy.  Origen of Alexandria’s typological mode of biblical interpretation can then be extended, throughout each and every domain of textuality, from sacred scripture to secular comic books, so that the symbolic allegory of Christ in comics can be construed as a kind of posterior-evangelium, which mirrors, for the future, the prior or proto-evangelium of all past anticipation of Christ in comics.  Modern superheroes may, in this way, be re-interpreted as symbolic re-imaginings of ancient biblical narratives, which can at last culminate in the coming of Christ.  Jesus Christ can, through this typology, appear as the secret superhero who may alone promise to save the comic book superhero genre from the negative dialectic fatally frustrates its essential thematic purpose.  The comic book superhero genre can, therefore, be taken to portend an alternative theological fantasy, where, even in his ostensible absence, Christ can show the spectacle of final justice shining through every injustice, through an episodic repetition of justification, within a quasi-liturgical cycle of capitalist consumption.

The Alien film series can be interpreted as a popular cinematic liturgy centered on a eucharistic sacrifice.  The eucharist is, in the alien xenomorph, first virtually alienated, like Duns Scotus’ eucharistic ‘body without organs’, but finally re-corporealized, like Jacques Lacan’s lamella ‘organ without bodies’, by alien impregnation to recollect and repeat a vampiric sacrificial cycle. Modern materialism exhibits this sacrificial cycle.  I argue that Quentin Meillasoux’s anti-correlationist program of ‘speculative realism’ has repeatedly re-inscribed every ‘uncorrelatable’ element of matter within the contradictory un-binding and re-binding of an ‘anti-correlationist circuit’ to produce a paradox of speculative materialism.  This paradox may be minutely personified in the alien xenomorph but is much more monstrously embodied in the Weyland Corporation.  The Weyland Corporation acts as the primary antagonist of the Alien film series as it manufactures the alien xenomorph as a ‘bioweapon’ to virtualize, alienate, and annihilate all life in a necrophilic orgy of vampiric sacrifice.  The impregnation of the last alien queen at the climax of Alien3 fatefully alienates and re-corporealizes the Lacanian ‘organ without bodies’ of the alien xenomorph within the Scotistic ‘body without organs’ so as to allow for a final sacrificial supersession of the paradox of speculative materialism through the repeated recollection of a cinematic liturgy in a theological science fiction.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s response to modern rationalism and scientism, which is characterized by the Kantian domination of the understanding, was to have imaginatively sub-created the mythopoeia of Middle-Earth. The cosmos of Eä is structured by the metaphysics of Christian Neo-Platonism, and historically directed by providence. Within the history of Middle-Earth, Tolkien illustrates a philosophy of history, or a theory of historicism, characterized by repeated historicist cycles, in which the societies of Elves and Men suffer from steady decline that is remedied by miraculous restoration. These historicist cycles are Neo-Platonically determined by the providence of Ilúvatar. The characters’ and the readers’ reflections upon the historicism of Middle-Earth serves to impart the dramatic significance the whole historical narrative of Middle-Earth into the partial narratives of Tolkien’s Legendarium. The readers’ imaginative participation in the sub-created mythopoeia of Middle-Earth effects Tolkien’s philosophic purpose: to facilitate reconciliation between readers and the majesty of universal being - the subject and the object – so as to liberate the intellect from the domination of the understanding.

The traditional attribution of divine infinity to God suggests infinity as a theological topic. Most histories of infinity have interpreted it in purely formal terms without theology. But if infinity had no content then it would have no history. The purely formal infinity has, in fact, resulted from the specific algebraic tradition of François Viète and the late-Franciscan virtual infinity. The decisive shift occurred, not with infinite sets, nor infinitesimal calculus, nor even modern algebra, but rather in a long ignored late-medieval conflict concerning whether potentially infinite enumerations could signify the divine essence. A theological history of infinity can exhibit how the repeated unfolding and enfolding of this virtual infinity in a tandem movement through the history of theology, mathematics, and art: the (a) ancient agony of infinity, between the infinitized finitude and the finitized infinitude, was first pacified in a Trinitarian economy of divine persons as they exceeded and preserved their own distinctions within the divine essence; from which a (b) late-medieval dispute over knowledge of the attribution of actual infinity unfolded to produce the self-enclosed virtual infinity; and this (c) virtual infinity was finally partitioned and recombined until it gave birth to the modern aesthetic of the sublime.

Logic is the art of reason to know that which is true.  It had once been conceived as a simulation of arguments spoken from the ground of the divine Logos.  When, however, it reduces the living spirit of speech to the dead letter of an artificial grammar, logic is liable to fall under the amnesiac spell of its own simulated form.  So long as it remains closed to its creative source, logic can never analyse its metaphysical ground, and theology can never reflect upon to know whether its teachings are true.  Our loss of knowledge of religion has thus coincided with our loss of confidence in science.  Yet, at this aporetic reversal of secular reason, the conditions of our cultural amnesia can be analysed to discover the hidden sources of a sacred logic of theology.  ‘Theology of logic’ is a theological investigation of logic.  It asks the absolute theological questions, not only of what logic is, and of how logic can be used, but of why there is logic at all.  It recommends a creative re-narration of the genealogy of logic, which begins more mythically with the ‘wisdom of Solomon’.  And it calls for an immanent critique of mathematical logic: the essential form of the predicate calculus can be analysed into the quantified figure of the syllogism, even as the elements of the syllogism can be divided and combined in the circuits of dialectic that are communicated by the divine Logos.  This theological investigation of logic will finally authorize a critique of Analytic and Systematic theologies that neglect to ask these more absolute and mythic questions of the use of logic for theology.  The way in which we think of God is equally the way in which God speaks, and is spoken of, in the silent word of every thought.

We can discover in Goethe’s Urpflanze a momentous clue to a new reading of the plant for theology.  For the figure of the Urpflanze captures this most radical vegetal difference concentrated in an originary unity – always striving, yet ever the same.  The post-Hegelian ejection of difference from identity, in Schelling, as in Heidegger, is here anticipated, even as it is elided.  And the anarchic difference of Deleuze’s rhizomatic assemblage of virtual plateaus may, at this point, also be reversed at its roots, as a negative unity of nomadic relations.  As the flower ever turns its leaves to the Sun, we too must turn our thoughts to its hidden source, as we read Goethe against his critics to have written a mystagogical treatise, an initiation into the sacred mysteries, where the ‘light of the leaf” shines forth like a visible icon of an invisible spirit.

The Sophist is, among Plato’s later dialogues, an exploration of the figure of the ‘sophist’, the pretenders to wisdom who make falsehoods appear true, by an investigation into the possibility of speaking of nothing, as the negative is related in and from the division of the forms.  It has often been read to demonstrate an excess of difference beyond the LNC.  Yet it can, as this study will suggest, also be read to show how the LNC can be legislated from the higher ground of the Logos in Christian theology. The tragic aporiae of Plato’s dialogues call for a creative reinterpretation, not only of Plato, but of the entire Platonic tradition, in a recapitulation of the transformation of Platonic into Christian and Trinitarian Ontology.

The Principle of Sufficient Reason has long been absolutely presupposed by modern science to deny the possibility of miracles.  It holds that for any fact there must be an analytic demonstration that is a sufficient condition to prove it to exist as true.  As a sign of an unconditional event, miracles appear to trespass beyond the iron laws of nature and logic. Yet to disprove the miraculous, we must first prove the Principle of Sufficient Reason.  As a ‘principle of reason’, it cannot be proven by any direct argument, but rather and only by an indirect or dialectical argument that stands open to skeptical dissolution.  We can, following recent currents in Continental philosophy of religion, argue against this absolute presupposition of the Principle of Sufficient Reason that would deny the possibility of miracles: Martin Heidegger’s destruction of metaphysics has radically questioned so as to subvert the basic concepts of science in every constructed ontology; Alain Badiou’s mathematicised ontology has subtracted one into the pure multiplicity before the void at the site of the event; and Quentin Meillasoux’s anti-correlationism has charted an escape of ‘absolute contingency’ from the correlationist circle of the ‘principle of reason’ and scientific necessity.  As Tyler Tritten has recently argued, “all necessity is based on the utter contingency of being as a factum brutum, the fact that there is something rather than nothing.” (2019, 9)  The unconditional event of a miracle can thus be read to come before even as it marks the beginning of conditional scientific reason.  As a sudden moment of understanding, miracles appear ubiquitous.  Yet as a ‘metanoia’, miracles are the mark not of a sheer rupture, but of wonder before an unconditional call, the pivot upon which understanding turns; and the nova of spiritual reflectivity in the progress of faith seeking understanding.

Augustine, in De Musica, suggests that the divine music may not pass away in time but must enter into time. An angelic music may, accordingly, be sung through the harmony of the worlds (harmonia mundi), before it is heard in the audible sound of any earthly music.  Yet if a song is music, music must be made in the intervals of time, and angels are also said to exceed any duration in time, then there may be neither space nor time where angels may be said to sing or celebrate.  Angelic music may, paradoxically and problematically, thus enter into, even as it exceeds, both in and beyond any audible duration of time.  Angelic music may, in answer to this objection, be considered to create the cosmos, as angels sing the harmonia mundi by singing the creation of the cosmos, as a whole, in its part, and in every punctiliar place.

What is a plant?  May it be said to be in some way the same or other than the animal?  And if it is said to be other, how can the plant, as an image of nature, come to be cultivated for our collective ecological benefit?  Michael Marder has asked this question again of Heidegger and Derrida's deconstruction of the latent metaphysics of natural taxonomies; Foucault and Agamben's politicization of botany as biopolitcs; and Latour, Harman, and Morton's challenge of a network of objects without nature.  We have, from the Western canon, received three traditional answers: the plant is, for Plato, Aristotle, and ancient philosophy, a vegetative soul lacking locomotion and reason; the plant is, for Darwin, Mendel, and modern evolutionary biology, a descendant of photosynthetic eukaryotes; and, yet, a plant is, in the Genesis narrative of the Hebrew scripture, the fruit-bearing trees, like the Tree of Life, that God created on the third day.  Since, however, God is also said to create plants on the third day before the creation of the light of the Sun, and no physical plant can possibly grow without sunlight, Genesis can, we may argue, be read to allegorically illustrate, no physical plant, but rather the light of the seminal reason (logoi spermatikoi) that shines forth, as from the divine Logos in every leaf.  Schelling, Hegel, and Romantic idealist botany thus described how the plant brings forth the light of the leaf in each of its blossoms.  And this theme of the 'light of the leaf' also appears in Plato's Timaeus, Paracelsus' homeopathic archetypes, and Goethe's 'ever-moving light' within which love unites all as in a 'higher world'; of nature; as in divinity.

What is music? Was it first performed by artificial instruments, by singing, or, before both, in nature, as by the birds, and even among the planets and stars? And if the music of nature is, in some way, prior to that of men, may there not also be another music, before both, as it is sung by the angels, and even as the very principle of music itself?  What is it, we may say, that the angels should sing?

Plato first mixed Pythagorean analogy and Parmenidean dialectic into a single idea.  He mixed Pythagoras’ analogy of countably constructed harmonia and Parmenides’ dialectic of being opposed to nothing but bounded by being into the pure proportionality of the beautiful cycling through the circuit of ideas shining forth from the supreme idea of the good itself.  Analogy and dialectic may thus, for the first time, have been mixed together as one in and for the good itself.

Why Philosophy of Nature? Nature can be thought to be an intermediary between transcendent logic and immanent dynamic human society. What is the Philosophy of Nature? Philosophy of Nature can be described, in the most general sense, as the speculative idea of the cosmos that is prior to observation because it is only as an idea that observations may be conceived within a system. What is Natural Law? Natural Law is the concept of the necessity of ethical norms according to the essential structure and purposes of nature, which conjoins the concepts of nature and law.

Origen of Alexandria's 'angel of history' presents us with an alter-modern possibility for a progressive future.  Angels are trans-temporal spiritual intelligences that can, more than any mortal, think through the categories of any and all historical epochs.  History is often tripartitioned into three epochs: the beginning of the ancient era; the middle of the medieval era; and the ending of the modern era.  The modern era is thus paradoxically presented at 'the end of history'.  Time measures the passing of the present into the past for the future.  History tells a narrative of these causes of events in time.  And narrative strings the story of these causes together into a chain of logical inferences.  Logic thus shapes, not only space, but time - and the story of time that is, at its end, the history of modernity.  Modernity, the activity of the modern, can be considered to have begun with the late-medieval reception of the logica nova of Aristotle's logic in the via moderna of Nominalism; the Renaissance; and the Enlightenment. The high hopes of the Enlightenment have since been wasted on ruinous wars and aimless peace.  Walter Benjamin's 'angel of history', who both turns backwards towards the wreckage of the past even as it is carried forward by the storm of progress, symbolizes this dual perspective that points between but beyond the modern towards the post-modern.  Jean-François Lyotard has defined the post-modern as an acceleration of this progressive potential to delegitimate the grand meta-narratives of modern science into the micro-narratives of local linguistic practices.  This narration of the collapse of macronarratives into micronarratives radicalizes even as it remains within the modern.  Bruno Latour has rejected this radicalization of the modern, and alternatively affirmed that 'we have never been modern', because, he believes, modernity privileges sophistical purification over dialectical translation.  He recommends, not another conceited post-modern radicalization of the modern, but rather a complete elision of the modern for the non-modern - yet, in so doing, he also abolishes the grammatical categories with which we may narrate the progress of history.  Since history is nothing if not a narration of the causes of events time, and nothing can be narrated without a grammar of categories, we must, for the purpose of preserving the possibility of historical progress, think through historical narration like Origen's angel of history.  Origen of Alexandria described angels, not only of nations, but also of history, as the first created spirits, and intelligent intermediaries of historicist narratology, which are reflected and refracted through serially successive spheres; and throughout every level and layer of history in time.  Origen's 'angel of history' can thus think through the grammar of history to announce the advance of goodness in time from the ancient to the medieval to the modern eras.  I will argue, against Lyotard and Latour, that Origen's angels are, more than any metaphor, essential to human progress; that the angelic points the path beyond any aporetic alternative between the post-modern and the non-modern; and that, if we wish to truly preserve this possibility of progress, we must try to think of how the angels think through the very grammar of history.

Alan Darley has implored Radical Orthodoxy to become “more radically Thomistic” by recovering the law of non-contradiction that has been lost by Milbank, Pickstock, and Hoff in a “Cusanian tributary from the Neoplatonic river”. Darley contends that this prohibition on all contradictions can be known through Aristotle’s indirect demonstration against any possibility of denying it. But he neglects to recognize that this very indirect demonstration already depends upon the surreptitious use of some contradictions in a formalized dialectic. Aristotle’s circular corroboration of the principle of non-contradiction in Metaphysics 1006a thus presents a further formalization of Plato’s dialectical ascent Republic 510b, which was suspended by Plotinus and systematized by Proclus. Thomas Aquinas’ inheritance of this formalized dialectic from Pseudo-Dionysius of Areopagite produced an aporia of existence that may only be resolved through a new Neoplatonic dialectic. The further radicalization of Thomism thus requires Thomas Aquinas to be reinterpreted according to the Dionysian lights of participation, dialectic, and analogy.

Parmenides had identified speech and thought with Being itself, but could not explain the contrary opposition between Non-Being inscribed in every determination of Being. Heraclitus purported to explain this opposition as the coincidence of contrary opposite properties in all beings, but could not explain the possibility of non-contradictory knowledge of beings. Socrates answered that, by exposing and rejecting false definitions, we might come to know the definitions of all beings; and Plato individuated Parmenides’ Being into a plentitude of universal Ideas, each of which perfectly unites the thought and being of some predicate-property. Plato’s logic of Ideas may re-construct Aristotle’s syllogistic logic on the basis of universal Ideas of subject and predicate terms, which flow from universal Ideas to particular instances according to the higher-order Ideas of the laws of logic. This logic of Ideas is grounded, unlike Aristotle’s formal logic, in Plato’s ‘unwritten’ ontology: the original opposition of the One and the Dyad is mixed in the Triad to generate the numerical dyad, the Idea-numbers, and all complex mathematical and geometrical forms which comprise the World-Soul. This original opposition of the Dyad motivates the division of genera into many species, as well as the exclusion, opposition, and contradiction between the various assumptions of Socratic dialectic; even as the One unites these differences into ever richer triadic mixtures.

Logic and theology were once spoken of together in a divine speech with which we spoke of God, even as God spoke to us, in one and the same sacred speech. Logic had been conceived as a simulation of speech in argument from the divine Logos. Yet logic has since been repeatedly separated from theology by Aristotle, Ockham, and Kant, just as often as it has been re-united by Plotinus, Cusa, and Hegel. Each separation has resulted in the successive construction of logic into more articulate forms of argument and inference. Origen of Alexandria (fl. AD 184–253/4) has contributed the first Christian theological interpretation of logic. He has, beginning in his systematic theology On First Principles, interpreted logic as a simulation of the Logos, communicated by Christ, in and through the divine hypostases of God as Trinity. And he has, in his scriptural commentaries, shown how, beginning in the ‘spiritual sense’, logic is virtually ‘interwoven’ in all the philosophical sciences, and supremely through the mystical or ‘epoptic’ science of theology. This ‘theology of logic’ announces a new way to study the subject of logic for theology. It should be doubly distinguished, on the one hand, from theoretical or philosophical logic, which asks what are the rules of logic, and on the other hand, from practical or applied logic, which asks how these rules of logic can be used to demonstrate the conclusions of any science. It thus starts with no standing presumption as to the absolute necessity of logic, but, rather and more radically, asks the prior question of the contingent grounds for our very belief in the truth of logic. It raises the most originary questions of the beginning and end of logic before any separation from theology. This discovery has, however, since been submerged and silenced, first due to the Origenist controversies, but finally due to the progressive formalization of logic in medieval and modern logic, culminating in the ‘pure analytic’ of mathematical logic. Once it has reduced the living spirit of speech to the dead letters of writing, and suspended this spirit in an artificial syntax, the logical can lapse into the formalization of a secular logic. Logic then tends to forget and frustrate its own formality as it signifies without speaking of its first formalization. It has thus tended to render logic a-theological, theology a-logical, and both altogether inarticulate. Yet so long as logic remains separate from God, theology can never demonstrate its conclusions, and logic may never come to know its highest truths. Origen can, as this dissertation will show, be read by a theological interpretation of logic, or a theology of logic, which asks theological questions of the fundamental assumptions of any possible form of logic. He had, in contrast to later secular, formal, and mathematical logics, shown how logic can be simulated as it is spoken in and from the higher ground of the divine Logos, and communicated by Christ in God as Trinity. We may, with Origen, begin to weave each exercise of logic through all the sciences, in this speech that may be spoken, as it ever is spoken, in one and the same sacred speech.