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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 6/9/2010 7:29 PM (GMT -6)

Cynthia is a brilliant blogger I wish I had more time to follow. But I enjoyed this:

For Marion, there are two basic orientations to world: (1) an iconic consciousness or (2) an idolatrous consciousness. As Marion explains, “[t]he idol measures the divine to the scope of the gaze of he who then sculpts it.” Hence, an idol is produced when we attempt to conceptually circumscribe God, which is in essence to limit God to the human gaze. In our attempts to measure God by human understanding, we become trapped in a kind of self-reflexivity in which the idol becomes a mirror that reflects the human gaze back to itself. In contrast, the icon allows one’s gaze to move through the icon (visible) to that which is invisible…

Marion’s aim is of course to bring us into a more iconic consciousness, which in turn allows God to manifest himself according to his terms (not ours). If we embrace an iconic orientation, then, as Marion puts it, we must abandon any attempt to measure the divine by our own human gaze. Here Marion again seems very much in harmony with Dionysius. That is, for both Marion and Dionysius, there is no concept that adequately captures God. God, who is beyond being, is ipso facto beyond definition, and Marion is at pains to free God from our limiting (idolatrous) gaze. As Robyn Horner observes, Marion both continues within the Dionysian trajectory and also furthers the conversation with his own distinctive contributions. That is, in addition to drawing our attention to conceptual idols, Marion likewise speaks of conceptual icons as a way of thinking God in a non-idolatrous way. This path does not move “through the traditional metaphysical route that focuses on being, but through the mystical route of love.”

For the whole post, see percaritatem.com/2007/04/21/jean-luc-marion-a-postmodern-dionysian-of-sorts/

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I really enjoy and can get with Marion's mission. God always exhausts our concepts. But I think the whole line of thought that seeks to place God absolutely outside all conceptual access makes his "iconic consciousness" itself impossible. Analogy doesn't deliver real meaningful God-talk without SOME equally real likeness between the spheres of divine and human being, between the divine life and its image in human life.

Tom

KIXYTΘEMTA

Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968

Posted 6/10/2010 5:43 AM (GMT -6)

Tom: I really enjoy and can get with Marion's mission. God always exhausts our concepts.

Jeff: Exactly, as does atheistic thought.

Tom: But I think the whole line of thought that seeks to place God absolutely outside all conceptual access makes his "iconic consciousness" itself impossible. Analogy doesn't deliver real meaningful God-talk without SOME equally real likeness between the spheres of divine and human being, between the divine life and its image in human life.

Jeff: Exactly. How is "Marion’s aim ... to bring us into a more iconic consciousness, which in turn allows God to manifest himself according to his terms (not ours)" anything more than Marion's own conceptual understanding of things? The approach is not doable. Humans are conceptual beings. "God" is a concept, not a picture. Moreover, I don't know how I could articulate anything about God to another person without concepts/words. So even if Marion is right that some knowledge of God is derived iconically, I dont' see how it would be knowledge we could talk about or debate. We couldn't write songs/psalms about it that were intelligible, etc.

Post Edited (Similitude) : 6/10/2010 6:13:08 AM (GMT-5)

One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 6/10/2010 9:28 AM (GMT -6)

The Cloud of Unknowing

(Googlebooks)

Think Hesychasm and the removal of thoughts and images in stillness before God. Basically, our noetic powers include yet TRANSCEND our psychological powers.

While he maintains his practice of the Jesus Prayer, which becomes automatic and continues twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the Hesychast cultivates watchful attention (Gr. nepsis). Sobriety contributes to this mental askesis described above that rejects tempting thoughts; it puts a great emphasis on focus and attention. The Hesychast is to pay extreme attention to the consciousness of his inner world and to the words of the Jesus Prayer, not letting his mind wander in any way at all.

The Hesychast is to attach Eros (Gr. eros), that is, "yearning", to his practice of sobriety so as to overcome the temptation to acedia (sloth). He is also to use an extremely directed and controlled anger against the tempting thoughts, although to obliterate them entirely he is to invoke Jesus Christ via the Jesus Prayer.

...

The goal at this stage is a practice of the Jesus Prayer with the mind in the heart, which practice is free of images (see Pros Theodoulon). What this means is that by the exercise of sobriety (the mental ascesis against tempting thoughts), the Hesychast arrives at a continual practice of the Jesus Prayer with his mind in his heart and where his consciousness is no longer encumbered by the spontaneous inception of images: his mind has a certain stillness and emptiness that is punctuated only by the eternal repetition of the Jesus Prayer.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Post Edited (One Love) : 6/10/2010 9:34:16 AM (GMT-5)

Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 6/10/2010 11:53 AM (GMT -6)

Right, Jeff. Part of what's behind EO apophaticism (and Dionysius' writing, like in his The Divine Names, to be precise) is the concern not to subsume both God and creation under a single overarching concept of "being" or "existence" so that God becomes one among others and all equally exemplify a third thing we call "being" or "existence" -- as if God participates in being along with creatures. I appreciate and share this concern. I'm not not sure it requires the sort of negation of God-talk I hear from the EO much of the time. It makes sense to me to say God is NOT just one among many existing things (that he's not subsumed under some independent concept of "being" per se) AND that our language/concepts REALLY do apply to him.

Tom

KIXYTΘEMTA

Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968

Posted 6/10/2010 6:09 PM (GMT -6)

I think of "being" like this:

Being, per se, covers all being--necessary and contingent. But God exists necessarily and is therefore unlike creation in that respect. By necessary, here, I mean NOT contingent. And contingency implies final causality. Thus, God doesn't come into existence nor does He exist FOR anything. We do come into existence and exist FOR Him. It's the combination of necessary existence with the fact that contingency is correlative with intelligent/final causality that grounds the intelligibility of these distinctions, to my mind.

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