About a month ago, I suggested that Nikolai Berdyaev’s metaphysical quest should have led him to non-Omnigod and pluralism.
On rereading Chapter Five of The Meaning of the Creative Act, I revisited the closest Berdyaev seems to have come to realizing that true creativity within Creation makes pluralism a necessity (bold added):
Abstract metaphysical and mystical monism shuts out the possibility of a creative act, either in God or in the world. The creative act presupposes a mono-pluralism, that is the existence of a multitude of free and independent beings; in other words, a concrete all-oneness.
The paragraph above epitomizes what I now call the Berdyaev Hedge — the seeming inability to short something metaphysically without covering and "insuring" that short against loss with a presumably failsafe long.
Pluralism must be the bedrock of Creation, but pluralism must possess the oxymoronic quality of also being mono. There simply must be a multitude of free and independent beings, yet this multitude of free and independent beings also belong to some kind of concrete oneness.
Berdyaev continues:
The question is not whether the world and man are outside divinity, but whether every person, every being, has free and independent existence. The transcendence of Divinity may be accepted only in the sense that the individuality of every personality cannot disappear and be dissolved into Divinity. The free and independent being of the personality unites with God but does not disappear in Him. Dissolution presupposes a non-personal God: free union presupposes that God is personal.
Berdyaev is clear that his concept of concrete oneness to which the multitude of free and independent beings belongs is not the sort of dissolution unity the oneness religions promote.
Fine, but what exactly is the concrete oneness to which he alludes?
The personal God is the Triune God, the three persons of the Divine Trinity. Only with the Persons of the Divine Trinity is personal communion and union possible. A Unitarian God is non-personal. To the First-God, about whom Eckhardt taught, nothing personal applies. In the religious consciousness of India, Divinity has not yet revealed the Trinity of His Persons to the world — that is a lower degree of revelation.
In Christianity, Divinity has already shown His Triune Face. The world is an inward drama of the Trinity. It may be said both that God is completely transcendent to man and that He is immanent in man. There must be revealed in me not only God and the Divine but man as well, my human nature — this means man must be born in God.
The plurality of the world has a positive religious meaning. Eternity is the heritage not only of God but of man, as profit from the world-process. This is the meaning of Christianity, as a religion of divine-humanity.
The Trinity is the long through which Berdyaev covers his pluralist metaphysical short. He rejects the idea of a single, unique Creator God in favor of the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in one Godhead — of three free and independent beings existing in a concrete oneness.
Berdyaev appears to acknowledge the metaphysical necessity of pluralism...yet cannot take this necessity to its conclusions. Instead, he hedges his pluralism through what he calls the “dynamic development of God” within the Trinity embedded within the mono-ness of the Godhead.
Or something to that extent.
The crux of the Berdyaev Hedge involves ensuring that the orthodox supplies ample cover for any and all heterodox speculations. Unfortunately, this hedge also seems to have prevented or hindered many authentic and thorough breakthroughs in Berdyaev's thinking.
Note added: Berdyaev's mono-pluralism might be his way of attempting to express dyadic relationships, but as is the case with many of his declarations, implication overrules explication.
On rereading Chapter Five of The Meaning of the Creative Act, I revisited the closest Berdyaev seems to have come to realizing that true creativity within Creation makes pluralism a necessity (bold added):
Abstract metaphysical and mystical monism shuts out the possibility of a creative act, either in God or in the world. The creative act presupposes a mono-pluralism, that is the existence of a multitude of free and independent beings; in other words, a concrete all-oneness.
The paragraph above epitomizes what I now call the Berdyaev Hedge — the seeming inability to short something metaphysically without covering and "insuring" that short against loss with a presumably failsafe long.
Pluralism must be the bedrock of Creation, but pluralism must possess the oxymoronic quality of also being mono. There simply must be a multitude of free and independent beings, yet this multitude of free and independent beings also belong to some kind of concrete oneness.
Berdyaev continues:
The question is not whether the world and man are outside divinity, but whether every person, every being, has free and independent existence. The transcendence of Divinity may be accepted only in the sense that the individuality of every personality cannot disappear and be dissolved into Divinity. The free and independent being of the personality unites with God but does not disappear in Him. Dissolution presupposes a non-personal God: free union presupposes that God is personal.
Berdyaev is clear that his concept of concrete oneness to which the multitude of free and independent beings belongs is not the sort of dissolution unity the oneness religions promote.
Fine, but what exactly is the concrete oneness to which he alludes?
The personal God is the Triune God, the three persons of the Divine Trinity. Only with the Persons of the Divine Trinity is personal communion and union possible. A Unitarian God is non-personal. To the First-God, about whom Eckhardt taught, nothing personal applies. In the religious consciousness of India, Divinity has not yet revealed the Trinity of His Persons to the world — that is a lower degree of revelation.
In Christianity, Divinity has already shown His Triune Face. The world is an inward drama of the Trinity. It may be said both that God is completely transcendent to man and that He is immanent in man. There must be revealed in me not only God and the Divine but man as well, my human nature — this means man must be born in God.
The plurality of the world has a positive religious meaning. Eternity is the heritage not only of God but of man, as profit from the world-process. This is the meaning of Christianity, as a religion of divine-humanity.
The Trinity is the long through which Berdyaev covers his pluralist metaphysical short. He rejects the idea of a single, unique Creator God in favor of the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in one Godhead — of three free and independent beings existing in a concrete oneness.
Berdyaev appears to acknowledge the metaphysical necessity of pluralism...yet cannot take this necessity to its conclusions. Instead, he hedges his pluralism through what he calls the “dynamic development of God” within the Trinity embedded within the mono-ness of the Godhead.
Or something to that extent.
The crux of the Berdyaev Hedge involves ensuring that the orthodox supplies ample cover for any and all heterodox speculations. Unfortunately, this hedge also seems to have prevented or hindered many authentic and thorough breakthroughs in Berdyaev's thinking.
Note added: Berdyaev's mono-pluralism might be his way of attempting to express dyadic relationships, but as is the case with many of his declarations, implication overrules explication.
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