{"id":8664,"date":"2024-11-14T06:48:57","date_gmt":"2024-11-14T12:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/?p=8664"},"modified":"2024-11-14T06:52:54","modified_gmt":"2024-11-14T12:52:54","slug":"unamuno-and-teh-eternal-journey-into-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/unamuno-and-teh-eternal-journey-into-god-8664.htm","title":{"rendered":"Unamuno and the Eternal Journey into God"},"content":{"rendered":"

Miguel de Unamuno in The Tragic Sense of Life<\/em> expresses his dissatisfaction with the view of heaven as a static vision of God.<\/p>\n

\u201cA beatific vision, a loving contemplation in which the soul is absorbed in God and, as it were , lost in Him, appears either as an annihilation of self or as a prolonged tedium to our natural way of feeling. And hence a certain feeling which we not infrequently observe and which has more than once expressed itself in satires. And altogether free from irreverence or perhaps impiety, with reference to the heaven of eternal glory as a place of eternal boredom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is clear that those who feel thus have failed to take note of the fact than man\u2019s highest pleasure consists in acquiring and intensifying consciousness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd perhaps the joy of the beatific vision may be not exactly that of the contemplation of the supreme Truth, whole and entire (for this the soul could not endure), but rather that of a continual discovery of the Truth, of a ceaseless act of learning involving an effort<\/em><\/strong> [my emphasis] which keeps the sense of personal consciousness continually active.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miguel is not aware that some of the Greek Fathers questioned the static concept of heaven.<\/p>\n

In the Platonic analysis of human nature, man was composed of logos, thumos, and epithymia. Logos was reason, thumos was the spirited part of man, the energy that led man to receive glory by overcoming great difficulties, and epithymia was desire.<\/p>\n

Gregory of Nyssa in his later works emphasized \u201cthat desire is inherent to the dynamics of the soul\u2019s participation in God. This theory of participation is called epektasis . Coming from Phil. where Paul says that he has not yet attained perfection but is straining forward (epektainomenos) to the prize that lies ahead, epektasis, as coined by Jean Dani\u00e9lou, refers to the Nyssen\u2019s view of perfection, not as rest in God (as in an Aristotelian or Augustinian view of perfection), but as the soul\u2019s eternal movement into God\u2019s infinite being. Because God is infinite in goodness and virtue, the soul will never be satiated in its contemplation of God or of its imitation of God\u2019s virtues. Therefore the soul will never stop growing in its knowledge of God and in its conformity with God\u2019s virtues. The Nyssen\u2019s account of perfection in Vita Moyis as unending growth into the likeness of God presupposes participation in God through the dialectic of the illumination of the intellect and the purification of desire. The more a Christian\u2019s desire is purified by her separation from the sensual goods, the greater the illumination her mind is able to receive and with it a clearer vision of God\u2019s beauty and goodness. The more clearly she sees God\u2019s goodness and beauty the greater and more pure her desire for God. Similarly, in Cant. Nyssen interprets the Bride\u2019s unending pursuit of the Bridegroom who is ever running away from the Bride to describe the soul\u2019s unceasing search for God. Because God is infinite, the soul\u2019s vision of God is never complete. Therefore, even in the resurrection the soul\u2019s incomplete vision of the divine beauty will arouse desire to see more of God\u2019s yet unrevealed beauty. This view of desire reflects the ontological difference between God and humanity. While God is eternal, humanity as a creature who came into being from nothing is inherently changing. God is infinite Being; creatures inhabit the realm of becoming. Since there is always a gap (diast\u00eama) between God\u2019s Being and our becoming, there will always be something of God the soul loves that eludes its grasp even in the resurrection. Therefore, God will always be the object of the soul\u2019s epithymia that is ever straining forward to glimpse more of the God whose infinite goodness exceeds our grasp.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae)<\/em><\/p>\n

This also implies, although I cannot find the citation, that thumos is part of human nature in the resurrection. Attaining an ever-greater vision of God is\u00a0 the supremely\u00a0 difficult work, for how can a creature ever comprehend the Creator? The effort, the struggle to overcome the limitations of creatureliness is given energy by thumos, with the goal of receiving an ever more profound vision of God and an ever-greater honor of being transformed by that vision into an ever more perfect image of God – theosis.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Miguel de Unamuno in The Tragic Sense of Life expresses his dissatisfaction with the view of heaven as a static vision of God. \u201cA beatific vision, a loving contemplation in which the soul is absorbed in God and, as it were , lost in Him, appears either as an annihilation of self or as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1621,504,1620],"class_list":["post-8664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gregory-of-nyssa","tag-thumos","tag-unamuno","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8664"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8666,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8664\/revisions\/8666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}