Gary R, List,
I recommend adding Emerson's essay "The Poet" to your list of resources on trinitarianism. On a personal note, I was once asked to give a few presentations to a Unitarian Universalist congregation when they were without a pastor. I offered to give one on a defense of trinitarianism based on Emerson's remarks in "The Poet". One reason I wanted to give a presentation on that topic is that Emerson, himself, was a Unitarian minister. He gave up that ministry, in part, because of his attraction to certain patterns concerning what appears to be first, second and third in a number of different cultural traditions. As such, I thought it would be fun to explore his ideas on the topic. Here is one particularly interesting passage from "The Poet": For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear under different names in every system of thought, whether they be called cause, operation and effect; or, more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or, theologically, the Father, the Spirit and the Son; but which we will call here the Knower, the Doer and the Sayer. These stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and for the love of beauty. These three are equal. Each is that which he is, essentially, so that he cannot be surmounted or analyzed, and each of these three has the power of the others latent in him and his own, patent. The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right. For better or worse, my offer to give a presentation on that topic was turned down by the committee. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 ________________________________ From: Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com> Sent: Saturday, May 18, 2019 9:45:11 PM To: Peirce-L Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Trinity, Continuity, and the Cosmotheandric, was, [PEIRCE-L] Re: Continuity of Semeiosis Revisited Jon, Gary f, Jeff, John, Edwina, List, In this message I would once again like to suggest that the idea of trinity 'properly understood'--by which I mean understood in a Peircean semeiotic/metaphysical sense--has the potential to contribute to a shared understanding which could facilitate that rapprochement of science and religion which Peirce imagined was yet possible. However, it seems important before attempting to go further with that challenging project that some other not unrelated work on trinity be considered as background. I earlier mentioned Richard Rohr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rohr Richard Rohr<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rohr> en.wikipedia.org Richard Rohr (born 1943) is an American author, spiritual writer, and Franciscan friar based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was ordained to the priesthood... as a contemporary of advocate of trinitarian thinking. Commenting on the work of another trinitarian of some note, Rohr wrote: Raimundo (or Raimon) Panikkar (1918–2010). born to a Spanish Roman Catholic mother and an Indian Hindu father. . . saw Trinity not as a uniquely Christian idea but as the very structure of reality. For him the Trinity overcame the challenges of monism (undifferentiated oneness), dualism (separation of sacred and profane), and pantheism (God and creation are indistinguishable). Richard Rohr, Newletter Archive, https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/ Daily Meditations Archives — Center for Action and Contemplation<https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/> cac.org Over the course of the 2019 Daily Meditations, Richard Rohr mines the depths of his Christian tradition through his Franciscan and contemplative lens. Each week builds on previous topics, but you can join at any time! Learn more about this year’s theme—Old and New: An Evolving Faith—watch a short intro, and explore recent reflections. Scroll down to read the most recent post. Sign up to receive Fr. Richard’s free messages in your email Inbox every day or at the end of each week. Select the email frequency that works best for you Please select... Daily Meditations Weekly Meditation Summary Monthly Newsletter First Name Last Name Email Re-Enter Email Phone Numbers only; no punctuation Country Please select... Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antarctica Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana B As I recently noted, Cynthia Bourgeault commenting on Ranikkar's idea of Cosmotheandric, writes: Cosmotheandric is the term Panikkar invents to describe this dynamic relational ground. The word itself is the fusion of cosmos (world), theos (God), and andros (man) and suggests a continuous intercirculation among these three distinct planes of existence in a single motion of self-communicating love. For Panikkar, "the Trinity is pure relationality": CB: Panikkar is emphatic that “being is a verb, not a substance,” and the Trinity is the indivisible expression of the mode of this [verbal] beingness. All speculation on the “substance” of the individual divine persons (as has dominated Western metaphysics for more than fifteen hundred years) thus starts off on a fundamental misperception; for, as Panikkar sees it, “the Trinity is pure relationality" (Cynthia Bourgeault, Raimon Panikkar, Christophany: The Fullness of Man (Orbis Books: 2004), 116. I read Panikkar in my 30's when I was studying comparative religion and inter-religion, and was participating in interfaith dialogue. While Panikkar was not to my knowledge aware of Peirce's work, yet his writings on trinity show some intriguing similarities to Peirce's when one considers the cosmos (or, kosmos, as Panikkar would have it to include not only the scientists' cosmos, but the kosmos write large, that is, metaphysically), while even differences in their approach may prove to be valuable in the present discussion. However they might differ in their approaches--and in some ways the difference is considerable--I think that both Peirce and Panikkar can contribute to our understanding of a trinitarian kosmos. I should add that I tend to agree with Jon Alan Schmidt's "Semeiotic Argumention" even as he and I seem not to agree on a panethentistic view in consideration of the notion of the 'Cosmic Christ' (the second person of the Trinity theologically speaking 'writ large', in my opinion). One of Panikkar's last books was his reworking of the Gifford Lectures he'd written 20 years prior and which he then titled The Dwelling of the Divine in the Contemporary World (1989). He apparently found that title too "theological" and, as such, less relevant than his new "orientation" for the "overall situation of the contemporary man in our world." His revision of those lectures was retitled The Rhythm of Being. One can find summaries of each of the lectures on this page: https://www.giffordlectures.org/news/books/rhythm-being [http://www.giffordlectures.org/sites/default/files/the-rhythm-of-being.jpg]<https://www.giffordlectures.org/news/books/rhythm-being> The Rhythm of Being - The Gifford Lectures<https://www.giffordlectures.org/news/books/rhythm-being> www.giffordlectures.org Rewriting the lectures two decades after delivery allowed Raimon Panikkar to “discern what is abiding” and to add material from two other intervening books on Christology. In the last few years I've been reading as much as I can find on trinity (and the Trinity), especially that which seems to me either not incompatible with some of Peirce's trichotomic ideas (as applied to semeiotic/metaphysics) and, even if differing from some of Peirce's conceptions, of potential value in deepening our understanding of trinity. For example, Stephen P Smith's, Trinity: The Scientific Basis of Vitalism and Transcendentalism makes many references to Peirce's writings on especially the categories and semeiotic. Here, find a brief summary: https://www.amazon.com/Trinity-Scientific-Basis-Vitalism-Transcendentalism/dp/0595420230 While I'd eventually like to discuss some of the ideas set forth in Smith's book, in this post I'll limit myself to summarizing two of Panikkar's fundamental notions. In Chapter 5, Panikkar introduces what he considers to be the universal "triadic myth": From the editorial gloss on Chapter 5: The Triadic Myth . . . Trinity is not a Christian monopoly, although the rationalism of monotheistic monarchy has obscured this principle of relations in Christian thought: “The Trinity is pure relationship.” [Panikkar] gives examples of the triadic mythos: Chaldean oracles, Egyptian thought, the Vedic tradition, the Upanishads, Buddhism, Parmenides, Valentinus, and Lao Tzu up to modern thinkers such as Carl Jung and Buckminster Fuller. “The radical Trinity I am advocating will not blur the distinction between Creator and creature—to use these names—but would, as it were, extend the privilege of the divine Trinity to the whole of reality.” I have myself also found "the triadic mythos" in Egyptian thought, the Vedas and Upanishads, certain schools of Buddhism, Lao Tse, the I Ching, Jung, and Buckminster Fuller. This idea of possibly extending the notion of trinity "to the whole of reality" is precisely why I introduced the Subject of this thread, for it seems to me key to achieving a rapprochement--or at least an increased respect and understanding--between science and religion. My sense is that Peirce's science is best suited to offering an approach to such a reconciliation. The sixth of Panikkar's lectures introduces the "anthopocosmic invariant," his understanding that "this triad belongs to our very nature," and that it is fundamentally "relational." Chapter 6: The Theanthropocosmic Invariant This lecture distinguishes between “invariant” needs of all humans (birth, food, shelter, meaning) and cultural variance, which is a fragmentation in different beliefs or professions. [Panikkar] argues that one other invariant to human nature is the “the anthropocosmic”—an innate sense of the relations of the divine, man, and the cosmos. He looks at perceptions of these three realities. This sense is also a cultural universal, since it appears in all cultures. “This awareness of this triad belongs to our very nature, though the names and conceptions of the three differ widely.” He shows how this “Triple Interindependence” appears in Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu thought, and is relational rather than monistic or dualistic. “This is the very Rhythm of Being” Best, Gary R Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York On Sat, May 18, 2019 at 8:14 PM Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com<mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com>> wrote: Edwina, List: "God" and "nature" are not interchangeable in that passage ... CSP: Shall we not conclude then that the conduct of men is the sole purpose and sense of thinking, and that if it be asked why should the human stock be continued, the only answer is that that is among the inscrutable purposes of God or the virtual purposes of nature which for the present remain secrets to us? So it would seem. But this conclusion is too vastly far-reaching to be admitted without further examination. Man seems to himself to have some glimmer of co-understanding with God, or with Nature. The fact that he has been able in some degree to predict how Nature will act, to formulate general "laws" to which future events conform, seems to furnish inductive proof that man really penetrates in some measure the ideas that govern creation. Now man cannot believe that creation has not some ideal purpose. (CP 8.211-212; c. 1905) ... and they are certainly not interchangeable when it comes to immanence. CSP: But I had better add that I do not mean by God a being merely "immanent in Nature," but I mean that Being who has created every content of the world of ideal possibilities, of the world of physical facts, and the world of all minds, without any exception whatever. (R 843:26) As previously discussed, based on Peirce's own definition of "immanent," this statement entails that Nature is neither identical to God nor a part of God. ET: I recall Peirce's outline of the emergence of our universe [1.412] and the description is most clearly an action of self-organization. No, it is not; and even if it were, Peirce later described that account as "faulty," as I discuss in my online paper<https://tidsskrift.dk/signs/article/view/103187>. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt<http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt<http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt> On Sat, May 18, 2019 at 6:22 PM Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca<mailto:tabor...@primus.ca>> wrote: JAS I keep referring to the notion of 'self-organization' - and my understanding of God or Nature [and I note that Peirce uses the terms interchangeably - see 8.210, 211] is that the Universe self-organizes these necessary modal categories. God/Nature is not 'immanent' in or caused by any of the three categories --[matter 2ns, Mind 3ns, Ideas 1ns] but is a principle of self-organization within the Universe of semiosis that requires all three categories. That is, I see the semiosic function as self-organizing - I recall Peirce's outline of the emergence of our universe [1.412] and the description is most clearly an action of self-organization. Edwina
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