Would you say that Maximus' synthesis situates the medieval vision of harmonious cosmic order on the eschatological horizon rather than in the present? And perhaps, drawing on our recent discussion of Balthasar, a temporal process of becoming is the only way that creatures isolated from one another by their finitude can be brought into harmony.
This, I suppose, raises the question of whether (pre)history can be construed as such a process, which might seem a dubiously optimistic reading. But that could well be my late-modern pessimism talking. Or perhaps my residual evangelicalism, which strikes me now as just a Christian version of late-modern pessimism. If the cosmos is a sinking ship destined for annihilation, in free fall from some primordial beatitude (situated roughly 6000 ago, of course), one wonders what the point of history (pre-history having been jettisoned) could possibly be. Redemption, then---rather than the climax of creaturely becoming---becomes at best a benevolent but arbitrary deux ex machina violation of creaturely being, history the abortive meddlings of a demiurge, and God...well, it actually becomes rather hard to work God back into the picture. And, indeed, atheism seems to be just where this cosmovision leads.
In a happier take on Pascal's wager, I'll bet on the option worth hoping for.
Would you say that Maximus' synthesis situates the medieval vision of harmonious cosmic order on the eschatological horizon rather than in the present? And perhaps, drawing on our recent discussion of Balthasar, a temporal process of becoming is the only way that creatures isolated from one another by their finitude can be brought into harmony.
This, I suppose, raises the question of whether (pre)history can be construed as such a process, which might seem a dubiously optimistic reading. But that could well be my late-modern pessimism talking. Or perhaps my residual evangelicalism, which strikes me now as just a Christian version of late-modern pessimism. If the cosmos is a sinking ship destined for annihilation, in free fall from some primordial beatitude (situated roughly 6000 ago, of course), one wonders what the point of history (pre-history having been jettisoned) could possibly be. Redemption, then---rather than the climax of creaturely becoming---becomes at best a benevolent but arbitrary deux ex machina violation of creaturely being, history the abortive meddlings of a demiurge, and God...well, it actually becomes rather hard to work God back into the picture. And, indeed, atheism seems to be just where this cosmovision leads.
In a happier take on Pascal's wager, I'll bet on the option worth hoping for.