May 8, 2005
-
Geometry and Theology
See
- C. S. Lewis on this topic (pdf) and
the science fiction writer mentioned in a Friday entry.
Mark Olson’s article is at the website of the New England Science Fiction Association, publisher of Ingathering: The Complete People Stories of Zenna Henderson. This book, by one of my favorite science-fiction authors, was apparently edited by the same Mark Olson.
The following remarks seem relevant to the recurring telepathy theme in Henderson:
From the first article cited above,
David L. Neuhouser,
Higher Dimensions in the Writings of C. S. Lewis (pdf):
“If we are three-dimensional cross-sections of four-dimensional
reality, perhaps we are parts of the same body. In fact, we know we are
parts of the same body in some way, this four-dimensional idea just may
help us to see it more clearly. Remember the preceding comments are
mine, not Lewis’s. He puts it this way, ‘That we can die “in” Adam and
live “in” Christ seems to me to imply that man as he really is differs
a good deal from man as our categories of thought and our
three-dimensional imaginations represent him; that the separateness…
which we discern between individuals, is balanced, in absolute reality,
by some kind of inter-inanimation of which we have no
conception at all. It may be that the acts and sufferings of great
archetypal individuals such as Adam and Christ are ours, not by legal
fiction, metaphor, or causality, but in some much deeper fashion. There
is no question, of course, of individuals melting down into a kind of
spiritual continuum such as Pantheistic systems believe in; that is
excluded by the whole tenor of our faith.’”From Webster’s Unabridged, 1913 edition:
inanimate,v. t. [Pref. in-
in (or intensively) + animate.]
To animate. [Obs.] – Donne.
inanimation, n.
Infusion of life or vigor;
animation;inspiration. [Obs.]
The inanimation of Christ
living and breathing
within us.
– Bp. Hall.
Related words…
Also from the 1913 Webster’s:
circumincession, n.
[Pref. circum- + L.incedere ,incessum , to walk.]
(Theol.) The reciprocal existence in each other
of the three persons of the Trinity.From an online essay:
perichoresis, n.“The term means mutual indwelling or, better, mutual
interpenetration and refers to the understanding of both the Trinity
and Christology. In the divine perichoresis, each person has ‘being in
each other without coalescence’ (John of Damascus ca. 650). The roots
of this doctrine are long and deep.”– Bert Waggoner
coinherence, n.“In our human experience of personhood, at any rate in a fallen world, there is
in each person an inevitable element of exclusiveness, of opaqueness and
impenetrability. But with the three divine persons it is not so. Each is
entirely ‘open’ to the others, totally transparent and receptive. This
transparency and receptivity is summed up in the Greek notion of perichoresis,
which Gibbon once called ‘the deepest and darkest corner of the whole
theological abyss.’ Rendered in Latin as circumincessio and in English usually
as ‘coinherence,’ the Greek term means literally, cyclical movement, and so
reciprocity, interchange, mutual indwelling. The prefix peri bears the
sense ‘around,’ while choresis is linked with chora, ‘room,’ space,’ ‘place’ or
‘container,’ and with chorein, to ‘go,’ ‘advance,’ ‘make room for’ or ‘contain.’ Some also see a connection with choros, ‘dance,’ and so they take perichoresis
to mean ’round dance.’ Applied to Christ, the term signifies that his two
natures, the divine and the human, interpenetrate one another without separation
and without confusion. Applied to the Trinity, it signifies that each person
‘contains’ the other two and ‘moves’ within them. In the words of St Gregory of
Nyssa, ‘All that is the Father’s is seen in the Son, and all that is the Son’s
belongs also the Father. For the whole Son abides in the Father, and he has in
his turn the whole Father abiding in himself.’
another, each dwelling in the other two through an unceasing movement of mutual
love – the ’round dance’ of the Trinity.”– Timothy Ware, Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia,
The Human Person as an Icon of the Trinity
