total depravity

1. Can good exist without evil? In other words, was good supposed to exist without evil before the fall?

OR

2. Can evil exist without good? I.e. if man is corrupted/guilty upon birth (because of the fall) does that mean all good has vanished within his nature, or does some good remain because we are fashioned in God's image?

Steve answers:
1) Good can and did exist without evil. Prior to the Fall, there was another fall – the fall of Lucifer and a significant portion of the angels, but going back even farther than that, there was a state of perfection. Between the creation of time and the creation of the physical universe (an unknown span of time), before the angels fell, there was good unmixed with any evil. Even before any creation had taken place, the Triune God existed in a state of perfect peace and fellowship. All that to say, yes – good can and did stand alone. The idea that evil is necessary is a form of dualism. Interestingly, the concept of free will carries with it the possibility that evil can be created. Lucifer and all the angels were created good, but exercised their free will in rebellion against God and became evil. This is an enormous theological and philosophical subject, so your question opens up a can of worms, so to speak. That’s why I said “hopefully I can help” J

2) All people retain a vestige of the image of God. The Fall marred, but did not destroy, the image of God in humans. I think your question relates to how “total depravity” is understood. My understanding of the biblical concept of human depravity is that without the supernatural action of God in our lives, we are always going to choose and act toward self and away from God, even if we’re moral and religious. So our inclination is away from God. How that manifests itself in an actual human life or human society varies considerably. Since we retain a vestige of the image of God, people are capable of doing good things. We are capable of acting selflessly, of creating art, of loving, of making good choices, of caring about our fellow man, etc. All good has not vanished from our nature. However, we are also capable of a wide range of evil, all the way to a complete inability to function morally and thepotential to commit heinous acts, either individually or corporately (Nazi Germany being an example). The fall means that most people will do some good, and all people will do some evil (evil being understood generically – acts in opposition to the will and character of God).

1 Timothy 2:1-7

¹I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— ²for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. ³This is good, and pleases God our Savior, ⁴who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. ⁵For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, ⁶who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time. ⁷And for this purpose I was appointed a herald and an apostle—I am telling the truth, I am not lying—and a teacher of the true faith to the Gentiles.

Christ is the screen that does not separate us from God but allows access to him directly. The veil is torn and we are redeemed. Let us not forget that God who created all things is living in us, breathing and working out his meticulous plan throughout all creation, simultaneously. He is not distant, but very much within.

Decreation

"Relentless Necessity, wretchedness, distress, the crushing burden of poverty and of labour which wears us out, cruelty, torture, violent death, constraint, disease- all these constitute divine love. It is God who in love withdraws from us so that we can love him. For if we were exposed to the direct radiance of his love, without the protection of space, of time and of matter, we should be evaporated like water in the sun; there would not be enough 'I' in us to make it possible to surrender the 'I' for love's sake. Necessity is the screen set between God and us so that we can be. It is for us to pierce through the screen so that we cease to be.

There exists a 'deifugal' force. Otherwise all would be God."

Looking at necessity as physical distance from God so that we can be seems a bit contradictory. Understanding necessity as a physical distance from God, which is perhaps a true statement. It is our fallen nature (Sin, which creates distance between me and God) that marks our lack which is a prerequisit for necessity. Calling it a screen is a fairly good analogy in the sense that there is a penetrable wall between the two. A conditional viscosity is required- how available (viscous, malleable) are you to receive God's grace? (then the question of predestination comes in from the baptist peanut gallery...perhaps I'm digging into the analogy too much)

But my point being is that in the garden, what was the distance between God and Man, and how does that distance differ after the fall...God who is beyond time, how does his relationship to man transform before and after the fall (which is linear): God's relationship doesn't change, but Man's relationship changes.

So the final question remains, if we are without lack (in the garden before the fall), what is our condition of 'being'- if Weil suggests that Necessity is the screen set between God and us so that we can be? There must have been some sort of distance in the Garden, (adam was not God)...but how was that distance different from the distance that Sin placed between Man and God. I understand that these are mere formalities that aren't necessarily relevant to my own realtionship to God, but they seem like curious departure points in order to bring me back to a further understanding of my own relationship to Him.

Can we ever 'cease to be' here on earth? seeming to imply death, ceasing to be could be a spiritual death or a physical death...I would believe it to be first a spiritual one so that God can fully 'be' in us. That is the essence of salvation. However, as we struggle with our flesh, it is a fluxuation between ceasing to be and being that brings upon spiritual warfare.

These are all loose thoughts, not fully investigated or articulated.

limitation in perceiving the infinite.

"There is no more steely barb than that of the Infinite." - Charles Baudelaire

The moment the infinite is comprehended, we lose it. The same runs true for our comprehension of Man, Nature and God. This is our call to grace. Grace must come from us in the same way we receive it. Willingly and undeserved.

the self

what keeps us from God is our power to say I. We are often more concerned with the temporal than the eternal (because of our inadequate understanding of the eternal) and therefore choose the fleeting pleasures of this world before we consider the eternal impact of our every choice.

Affliction robs us of our power to say I and this is where Weil turns to asceticism I suppose. She talks about violent revolts against the I, in order to avoid the destruction happening from within. She leans towards external pressures in order to placer herself in alignment with the void (which is simultaneously the absence and presence of God). Perhaps we should talk about this chapter further before I respond completely. It deserves a conversation and I'm not sure I understand what she's getting at when she suggests: redemptive suffering, expiatory suffering, superficial Hell and really the rest of the chapter.

to desire without an object

covetousness=attachment

"We must not seek the void, for it would be tempting God if we counted on supernatural bread to fill it. We must not run away from it either."

Rather, Weil is calling for us to preserve the void (suspension) so that we might continuously reap from it. We must accept the void. Once we 'know' it, there is no longer any void. Our job is not to figure out who God is, but to follow him with everything in us. Once we figure him out, he is no longer God (he is a finite shadow glimmering upon the cave walls).

"All sins are attempts to fill voids."

If we are to understand God as eternal, we must also understand His depth (or complexity) as infinite. Any form of lack that we undergo as human beings is never a temporal lack - for all things temporal die and vanish in the void. These things are mere shadows of an eternal lack that through our limited perspective satisfy only temporarily. Our only real lack is ever God. All else is simply a gift, undeserved and rarely gratuitous.

"But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." (Matthew 6:33)

How often I put myself before you Lord, and how unknowingly ungrateful I am for all you have provided. May I renew my mind daily and see the wonder of your creation as a gift. May I learn myself as lacking nothing, for your spirit dwelleth within me. May I also understand my brothers and sisters without lack so that I might learn to Love them in their completeness that is also within me. I am full and grateful for your Love.

"To say to Christ: I will never deny Thee' was to deny him already, for it was supposing the source of faithfulness to be in himself and not in grace."

Too often, we expect our love to look a certain way, to feel a certain warmth, and to play out in a certain direction. How foolish we have become. Love is never this contrived. Love is supernatural and must be accompanied by grace which does not come from us, but from God, through us. The infinite working through the finite. we are that intersection.

"To implore man is a desperate attempt through sheer intensity to make our system of values pass into him. To implore God is just the contrary: it is an attempt to make the divine values pass into ourselves. Far from thinking with all the intensity of which we are capable of the values to which we are attached, we must preserve an interior void."

non-objectificaion=rehumanization

Let God be God so that you might be you.

climbing out of this temporal cave.

Time is an incredibly complex factor in the function of the void. Weil defines time as an image of eternity, but it is also a substitute for eternity.

I am constantly thinking about the infinite intersecting the finite (at a single point). Time adds an interesting dimension into play.

past and future hinder the effect of affliction by providing an unlimited field of imaginary elevation. (affliction over time makes affliction bearable and gravity 'succumbable')

"Time and the cave. To come out of the cave, to be detached, means to cease to make the future objective."

If all we see are mere shadows, and understand what we see as such, we can then approach the world with grace. However if we climb out of the cave and understand the shadow's origin, we can then approach the world with supernatural Grace. May we then know non-objective love.

"When pain and weariness reach the point of causing a sense of perpetuity to be born in the soul, through contemplating this perpetuity with acceptance and love, we are snatched away into eternity."

Essentially this is where the infinite intersects the finite upon a single point. Through Grace, by the power of the Holy Spirit, this point demarcates Love.

imagination which fills the void

imagination is filling up the fissures through which grace might pass.

the thought of death calls for a counterweight, and this counterweight--apart from grace--cannot be anything but a lie. (life) Our imagination which fills it is essentially a lie.

poor in spirit...imagination is stopped from pouring itself out. we stop trying to translate the world, and simply 'encounter' it (bonhoeffer, buber discussion from barcelona) through grace. (subjective/objective understanding of the world)

"We must continually suspend the work of the imagination filling the void within ourselves."

I am very drawn to the word suspension. learning who God is rather than defining who he is. terms like process, sanctification, enduring the void, renewing of the mind, fervent prayer. (moving towards my typical idea of platforms and leaving room for potential as a form of learning and understanding)...access to subjectivity.

"If we accept no matter what void, what stroke of fate can prevent us from loving the universe?

This is assurance at its fullest.

Renounced

Ok, this is in response first to your post on Imaginary Equilibrium and then into something else I wanted to start writing about. She starts to talk about renunciation later in the "Decreation" section - two helpful quotes -

"There exists a "deifugal" force. Otherwise all would be God."

"Renunciation. Imitation of god's renunciation in creation. In a sense God renounces being everything. We should renounce being something. That is our only good.
We are like barrels with no bottom to them so long as we have not understood that we have a base."

Alright, firstly, deifugal - dei is Latin for god and -fugal comes from the Latin word meaning to flee. Think centrifugal - a force that spins from the center. It is important though to note that the force originates in the center, it proceeds from it to the outside. With that said then, my understanding of her concept of God's renunciation is that in order for God to create, He had to renounce being everything.
"God could create only by hiding himself. Otherwise there would be nothing but himself...." (Gravity and Grace p.38)

Maybe you noticed The Creation of Adam looming above... let me explain. In Italian, this section of the Sistine Chapel is known as The Donnadio - the suffix dio is derived from the above-mentioned dei and the prefix donna- comes from the Latin word meaning to give, think donation. So this image is traditionally understood as the moment when God, alongside a host of heavenly beings, confers to Adam the gift of life. Breath. If you look close though, there is another gift being given, and this serves very well to what I believe Mlle Weil means by renunciation.

God has given Adam distance, separateness, a will of his own. Before this moment, there was (not factoring in that whole angel thing) one will guiding the universe, but God, in giving us a free will, renounced that right. It is of course disastrous as we have experienced when our will does not line up with his, but this is the choice we were given, or, as she puts it, "We possess nothing in the world - a mere chance can strip us of everything - except the power to say 'I'. That is what we have to give to God - in other words, to destroy. There is absolutely no other free act which it is given us to accomplish - only the destruction of the 'I'." (p. 26) And I think it is safe to draw the connection between what she refers to as our power to say 'I' and the gift of free will.

God, as creator, has separated himself from creation - distance is necessary. The apostle Paul says that there is "one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." (Ephesians 4:6) and this is slightly confusing in light of the previously assumed distance and also profoundly beautiful in light of its profound beauty.

"The presence of God. This should be understood in two ways. As Creator, God is present in everything which exists as soon as it exists. The presence for which God needs the co-operation of the creature is the presence of God, not as Creator but as Spirit. The first presence is the presence of creation. The second is the presence of decreation. (He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent. Saint Augustine.)" (p. 38)

How does God exist within all things and yet these things maintain their own identity? How can God exist within me and within you and yet I am not you?

What to do with this? Distance creates language (Lacan) to bridge an unbridgeable distance. The duty of language is to draw connections (see Weil quote below) but connections to what? If God is over all and through all and in all, then should not language be connecting all things over a distance back to Him?

"Everything which is vile or second-rate in us revolts against purity and needs, in order to save its own life, to soil this purity.

To soil is to modify, it is to touch. The beautiful is that which we cannot wish to change. To assume power over is to soil. To possess is to soil.

To love purely is to consent to distance, it is to adore the distance between ourselves and that which we love." (p. 64)

[Je Vous Salue, Marie]
[T.S. Eliot]
[Poetry as lack]
[Transparency]
[Translation as the act of crossing]
[matrices]

detachment

"To strip ourselves of the imaginary royalty of the world. Absolute solitude. Then we possess the truth of the world."

"Always, beyond the particular object whatever it may be, we have to fix our will on the void--to will the void. For the good which we can neither picture nor define is a void for us. But this void is fuller than all fullness.

If we get as far as this we shall come through all right, for God fills the void. It has nothing to do with an intellectual process in the present-day sense. The intelligence has nothing to discover, it has only to clear the ground. It is only good for servile tasks.

The good seems to us as nothingness, since there is no thing that is good. But this nothingness is not unreal. Compared with it, everything in existence is unreal."

I look at this last statement as a comment on reification. Good is the palpable shadow that stretches across our uncertainty. We see good things knowing full well their empty promises, yet unaware that it is the pedestal that simultaneously supports inadequate certainty, hence disbelief. It is not Good we ought to be after, but the void (that infinite gap that both separates and connects us to God almighty referred to as Grace). Once we go after God (which we have no power in our own self to attain), we end up following god as a reified subject...which is without saying, no God at all.

The notion of distance is interesting in this sense...the unbridgeable gap which can only be crossed by the Holy Spirit. As long as we are within our fleshly, fallen and decaying vessels, we will find ourselves trying to traverse this gap and falling tremendously short every time.

This seems to be where grace comes in, which for Weil is also a form of detachment.

"The reality of the world is the result of our attachment. It is the reality of the self which we transfer into things. It has nothing to do with independent reality. That is only perceptible through total detachment. Should only one thread remain, there is still attachment."

As long as we perceive nature, man and God as extensions of our own self rather than independent subjects, we will "soil" our relationship to these things (succumbing to gravity and thus refusing Grace to occur between us).

affliction is a cause for attachment (false comfort, false knowledge, false control, false security).

"Attachment is a manufacturer of illusions and whoever wants reality ought to be detached." (Weil, 14)

Attachment is an insufficiency in our sense of reality. We think if we cease to possess a thing it ceases to exist.

Misery.

Misery would be intolerable if it were not diluted in time. If misery were intolerable it would detach us from our unreality.

"All suffering which does not detach us is wasted suffering."

this ties back to Weil's issue with consolation and how inconsolable affliction is necessary to detachment. We are comforted in our understanding, yet by our own perception, understanding (objectively) is in fact misunderstanding without Grace.

"Each time that we say 'Thy will be done' we should have in mind all possible misfortunes added together." (Christ on the cross)

"The miser deprives himself of his treasure because of his desire for it. If we can let our whole good rest with something hidden in the ground, why not with God?"

detachment is distance that allows a thing to be fully that thing, Man to be fully Man and God to be fully God. (all through Grace).

positive entropy?

accept the void...we do not have the capacity to fill the infinite void.

This does not stop us from filling the void with empty material.

Some consider the filling of an infinite void "positivism" - Christians might call it entropy with a bittersweet ending. (how can we celebrate our own life, when everyone around us is dying?)

"Man only escapes from the laws of this world in lightning flashes. Instants when everything stands still, instants of contemplation, of pure intuition, of mental void, of acceptance of the moral void. It is through such instants that he is capable of the supernatural." (Grace)

forgive me of my imaginary equilibrium

"The search for equilibrium is bad because it is imaginary. Revenge. Even if in fact we kill or torture our enemy it is, in a sense, imaginary."

How appropriate that the title of this section is Void and Compensation Most of our energy in life is expended upon that which we do not know while filling it with meaningless jargon and useless material. All for the sake of imitating purpose and meaning. Rather it is all but an excuse to convince ourselves we are doing good for the world (under the guise of "change" or "equality") when in fact the reality that we seek to intervene is only a figment of our imagination. we created it.

I understand that this is very dangerous territory to tread upon, because it can easily yield to forms of nihilism or at the very least existentialism. However, I only illustrate the imaginary to highlight the reality of God's creation and the violence that has clouded our understanding of his purpose.

Instead of allowing the parts of God that we cannot understand let be, we fill it with what we do know. This similar act is analogous to our relationship with the other (Buber's Thou).

"Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.

To accept the fact that they are other than the creatures of our imagination is to imitate the renunciation of God. (I'm still a little unclear about imitating the 'renunciation' of God.)

I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness."

We make people our debtors (through our imagination) = objectification
we deserve nothing apart from eternal condemnation. Nobody owes us anything.
we must extend grace always, and rely on God's ultimate justice.
we are forgiven by God, redeemed through Christ and must live out our new life worthy to that which God calls us through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The supernatural is among us, and we must not debase it through our own imaginations, but tune ourselves to its reality (as the natural).

push against gravity

"I must not forget that certain times when my headaches were raging I had an intense longing to make another human being suffer by hitting him in exactly the same part of his forehead.

Analogous desires--very frequent in human beings.

When in this state, I have several times succumbed to the temptation at least to say words which cause pain. Obedience to the force of gravity. The greatest sin. Thus we corrupt the function of language, which is to express the relationship between things."

My first thought about this is that Weil must have either read or interacted with Martin Buber on this thought.

"Obedience to the force of gravity" - our flesh (natural) vs. grace (supernatural)
how do we deal with people, and how do we percieve/express relationships between things?

I love the last sentence- because of sin (or the obedience to gravity) we corrupt the function of language (viewing language as an act against the force of gravity in order to fulfill its purpose) which is to express the relationship between things. (hence, martin buber...our interactions with people should constantly be an act of grace which is supernatural, only given to us by the power of God who is infinite...reaching into the finite through language) I'm so flippin' excited about this statement! goodness...

Now if only I could live this out better...My prayer is that I become conscious of this "force of gravity" that I succumb to so often so that I might constantly and fervently act against it in order to speak and do according to His will (through his grace which is sufficient). I can think about this relationship to death, but until I actually adopt it and live it out, all is but a field of grain, and will wither.

my grace comes from you and your perfect supernatural intervention

"All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception." (Gravity and Grace, Weil 1)

It is good to define the act of the infinite reaching into the finite as grace. We as created beings cannot offer Grace back to God. Does grace implicate authority?

"We must always expect things to happen in conformity with the laws of gravity unless there is supernatural intervention" (Gravity and Grace, Weil 1)

Does this make Grace supernatural intervention?

Response from Steve Laughlin:

I don't think God is looking for grace from us, but rather that we extend grace to one another. If God's gift is indeed a gift, then repayment is inappropriate, and indeed impossible.

How would we show unmerited favor to God anyway? God has infinite merit - any favor we show Him would be deserved, which is the opposite of grace.

i might never hear from you.

Godel's proof - Nagel, Newman, and Hofstadter
Gravity and Grace - Simone Weil
The Future of Love: Essays in Political Theology - Milbank
The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? - Zizek, Milbank
Radical Orthodoxy - Milbank
Originality and the Avant Garde - Krauss

sublimation and desublimation

The vertical and the horizontal.

http://www.aspenmays.com/larry/

I'm very attracted to photography as a medium for implicating the infinite.

take a vertical photo of the sky perpendicular to the earth. The infinite depicted through a finite point. (cross diagram: horizontal is the physical, vertical is metaphysical- only by nature of infinite). Then displaying the photograph on a vertical wall, desublimates (definition) the image back onto a horizontal plane...and becomes a metaphor for our perception of the infinite. Not only is it an illustration of our perception, but pinpoints a fundamental barrier in our relationship to God. This barrier keeps us from ever accessing the infinite (God), however does not prohibit the infinite from making contact with the finite (man). (this could be a place to talk more about the Holy Spirit, or even the idea of the temple, where God used to be housed in the Holy of Holies).

What makes this photo project even more interesting is in our own perception, we as viewers view these photographs as if we were in a horizontal position. So in a sense, we place ourselves within a reified dimension in order to view these photographs more perfectly (so we think).

A cunning encounter with the what was once infinite, proved finite through our fallen nature- desublimation.

You cannot force God into what He is not.

hope.

If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery