The Dialectical God - Part Three
It is essential to prevent the attempt to attribute evil to God while absolving man.
God opposes himself in sin and reconciles himself in mercy
The Theology of Jakob Böhme
Jakob Böhme's conception of God is a development of the Kabbalistic concept of God's right hand (goodness) and left hand (evil). Böhme begins with two presuppositions, which will reappear in German idealism starting with Fichte: consciousness requires the opposition of subject and object; free will presupposes the opposition of good and evil. Böhme states:
"The One has nothing within itself to desire, nor could such unity sense its own self. This is only possible in a state of duality." [1] "The One, the Yes, is pure power and the life and truth of God himself; but God would be unknowable to himself and there would be no joy or perception in him if it were not for the presence of the No. The latter is the opposite or antithesis of the positive or truth; it makes this manifest and this is only possible because it is the opposite in which eternal love can become active and perceptible." [2]
"Light and darkness are opposed to each other, but there is a bond between them, so that neither can exist without the other." [3] "In God there are two states, eternally and without end: eternal light and eternal darkness. Light is God, and in darkness there would be no pain if it were not for the presence of light. Light causes darkness to yearn for light and suffer as a result." [4]
Just as in God—according to Böhme—thought turns against itself, so does the will. It (the will) involves:
“an appropriating and reflecting desire, a self-will” — a finite will, the creature, which nonetheless is God opposed to God — “which cannot coincide with the singular will. For the singular will desires the singular good, which is itself; it desires only itself in identity. But the will flowing outward” — creation — “desires diversity” — the world — “to distinguish itself from identity and be its something” — that is, a determined something, the creature — “so that eternal seeing has something to see and to feel. And from self-will arises the No’”— man's sin against God, which is God against God — “because it enters into a property that wants to assert itself as its own. And wanting to be something, cannot coincide with unity, which is a pure flow and a pure Yes” — the initial God — “free in his breathing and insensitive, for he has nothing in which to feel, if not for the screen of deviated will” — sin — “that is, the No” — the creature, God who opposes himself to himself, the creature — “which is a limit of the Yes in which the Yes becomes manifest and has something to desire” [5].
Essentially, for God to know and will Himself, He must create the world. This world, by opposing Him and sinning against Him, allows God to negate this denial and return to Himself. Sin becomes necessary for God to be God. God sins against Himself in man to reconcile with Himself.
This terrible intrigue hinges on Böhme's ignorance of the spiritual motion of self-awareness. Unlike the outward physical action of bodies, which requires an external object, self-awareness involves a duality of subject and object. Self-awareness is an immaterial, circular motion. It is the self returning to itself within itself. In this process, the subject—the spirit—intentionally eliminates the separation between subject and object, fully reclaiming its original unity. A similar dynamic occurs with the will, where God desires Himself in an external object.
But Böhme falls into a second error by confusing the divine creation proper to the divine nature with the divine procession proper to the divine person. In this way, God does not create a finite entity from nothing. Instead, He brings forth another being from Himself [6], one that is opposed to Him but of the same essence, though limited. He places a God opposed to Himself—the God of No—against the God of Yes. This being would be the creature, which at the same time serves as the No to God. This opposition leads God to deny Himself, to return to the initial identity or unity, thus closing the circle.
A third error lies in the fact that Böhme understands divine creation as divine self-limitation, and therein lies evil, that is, the No to the God of Yes. However, since Yes and No are constitutive for Böhme of the divine, it follows that the negation of negation reconstitutes the identity, but at the same time restarts the process of opposition of No to Yes.
For Böhme, to know and will Himself, God must posit Himself as an object not only outside Himself but against Himself. He divides Himself into subject and object, into Yes and No, opposing Himself to Himself. If God initially is Yes, He then posits an anti-God, a No, against Himself. This No, which emerges from God, becomes the anti-God—the creature. As a limited being opposed to the God of Yes, this creature is inherently evil and sins against the God of Yes. But here's the twist: since it is the same God of Yes who has posited the God of No, it is God Himself who has performed this operation. He does so precisely to become self-conscious and self-aware. In dividing Himself, God ultimately seeks to return to peace with Himself.
Notice that with this self-opposition, God goes out of himself and creates man, who precisely by sinning, that is, by saying no to God, allows God, of whom he is a finite manifestation, to deny the God of No and to reconstitute the initial God of Yes. Thus, God denies twice: the first time by opposing Himself in man; the second time by denying the negation and finding identity and peace in Himself. But this is already Hegelian dialectic (bold by the Editor). Therefore, it must be said that Hegel took his dialectic from Böhme.
So, just as there is no subject without object and vice versa, there is no good without evil. Since there is self-awareness and will in God, this division occurs, so that God may be God. The One cannot but divide into Two; but the Two gives rise to the Three, because the third, to reconcile itself with the Second as opposed to the first, returns to being One, and the circle closes. This is also the schema of Plotinus, which we find in Origen (bold by the Editor).
Already here is the seed of Hegelian dialectic, which von Balthasar will embrace: God opposes Himself to Himself – the Father opposes Himself to the Son (this would be the kenosis of the Son damned to hell) –; but since it is not possible for God not to be One, hence the need for the Holy Spirit to reconcile God with God, that is, the Father with the Son. Now, through the Incarnation, the Son has united himself to every man.
This means that every man follows the tragic and glorious story of the Son: to be damned and to be saved. Suffering is inseparable from sin. It is the confusion between the evil of guilt and the evil of punishment. Therefore, we are saved not only by suffering but also by sinning, as Christ did, who abandoned his innocence to save us and became sin for us.
But von Balthasar is the first in the history of Catholic theology to apply with greater radicalism the Hegelian dialectical conception of the Trinity (bold by the Editor). Hegel stops at seeing an image or figure of the dialectic of being in the Trinity of persons. Instead, von Balthasar is eager to take seriously the reality of the divine persons by applying the principle of the Hegelian dialectic in their relationships, derived from Böhme, Plotinus, Proclus, and the Kabbalah (bold by the Editor).
What occurs within the Trinity is mirrored in humanity: damned and yet simultaneously saved in Christ, saved precisely because of being damned. In this context, von Balthasar suggests that all are saved. He does not deny the existence of hell; for him, hell is not empty. Rather, everyone in Christ experiences hell, but as those who are saved, they are also simultaneously in heaven—a dialectic of yes and no. This operates similarly to Luther's concept of simul justus et peccator—at once righteous and a sinner.
To trace the origins of Balthasarian eschatology and soteriology, beyond the influences of Plotinus, the Kabbalah, and Hegel, we must look back to Jakob Böhme. It is from Böhme that Hegel derived his dialectical concept of God, a synthesis of good and evil. For Hegel, the absolute being must encompass even evil within itself, embodying the unity of opposites to be truly absolute.
"If God is the absolute being, we ask: what absolute being is this, which does not have within itself every reality, especially evil? Böhme therefore tends ... to discover how evil is contained in good, which is the problem of our time."
"Böhme has the deepest idea of God, which strives to bring or connect in unity the most absolute oppositions, but not for the thinking reason. We will say in short that Böhme struggled to understand in God and from God the negative, evil, the devil, to grasp God as absolute.
Jakob Böhme's fundamental idea is the attempt to achieve everything in absolute unity: indeed, he wants to demonstrate the absolute divine unity and the unification of all oppositions in God. His fundamental thought, or rather his unique thought that penetrates everything, is generally to comprehend in everything the sacred triplicity, to see in all things the unveiling and manifestation of it, which thus is the universal principle in which everything is, precisely in such a way that all things have in themselves only this divine Trinity, not as a Trinity of representation, but as the real Trinity of the absolute idea. According to Böhme, everything that exists is only this Trinity; this Trinity is everything. Therefore, for him, the universe is a single divine life, a single revelation of God in all things, so that more precisely from the single essence of God, the sum of all forces and qualities, is eternally generated in the Son, who shines in those forces: the inner unity of this light with the substance of the forces is the Spirit. ...
The first is God, the Father; this first is at the same time different in itself, and is the unity of these two. "God is everything – he says – is darkness and light, love and wrath, fire and light; but names himself only the one God according to the light of his love. He is an eternal contrarium between darkness and light; neither one grasps the other; neither is the other, yet there is only a single essence, but distinct because of torment; and also because of the will, yet it is not a separable essence. A single principle is realized in distinction, which one is in the other as nothing and yet is according to its property, but not manifestly."[7]
Building on this Böhmean conception of God, Hegel began to argue that our reason can grasp not only why God is one, but also why He is three. He does not posit in God only the one, but also the two, namely the opposition, which is found only in the creature, such as the distinction between essence and existence or the opposition between good and evil. Now, however, in the divine nature, there is no opposition or composition because the divine essence is simplest, it is the pure act of being. In this regard, God in His essence is absolutely One. On this point, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Muhammad stand in agreement with Abraham and Moses.
But Christ tells us that in God there is also the Three. Here we must make an act of faith, because with our reason alone we cannot understand why there are the Three in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Hegel's error, deceived by Böhme, was to claim to know rationally, with logical necessity, why there are the Three in God.
To make this demonstration he used the Two, which in reality is not in God, but only in the creature, and these two are the pairs: essence and existence, being-non-being (being-nothing), yes-no, good-evil, life-death. It's not a matter of denying the principle of non-contradiction, as many have criticized Hegel for, partly due to his lack of clear explanation. Rather, it involves a conflictual opposition—something that can occur in creatures, but certainly not in God. Nevertheless, Hegel employed this duality to attempt to demonstrate the Trinity through his famous dialectic.
This dialectical view of God leads to the idea that sin is forgiven the moment it is committed, without the need for repentance or penance. According to this view, God does not require a bad will to become good but simply regards the bad will as good. God himself wants sin, but at the same time denies it. He is not a God of pure yes, but a God of yes-no. It is the so-called "forensic justification" of Luther, an offensive euphemism for forensic judgment, which would be better called simulated justification.
As we delve into the historical roots of this God who is deemed greater than Jesus Christ, we uncover intriguing precedents. These reveal that this supposedly super-benevolent God is, paradoxically, also the author of sin and death—and is, in fact, identical to the devil. Let's explore these precedents.
Everything starts from the Kabbalistic interpretation of original sin (bold by the Editor). This interpretation leads to the conclusion that the true liberating God, the one who reveals humanity's true dignity, is not the Father in heaven but rather the serpent. According to this view, it is the devil who exposes to Adam that his creator is a tyrant, envious of humanity. This revelation, similar to the Promethean myth, suggests that true empowerment comes from eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil [8].
According to this interpretation, the liberating God is not the creator God, but the devil: it is he and not Christ who divinizes man precisely by carrying out the action that God had forbidden, so that man, by sinning, finds himself naked and is punished with death; but now he possesses the knowledge of good and evil, which will allow him to free himself from God and follow the devil, his true God.
At this point, it’s important to differentiate between the Kabbalistic interpretation of God, which is anti-Christian, and the pseudo-Christian Gnostic view influenced by Plotinus and Iranian dualism. In the latter, Christ is seen as the Savior, but not in the context of the biblical God, who is truly just and merciful. Instead, this interpretation presents a God who is both good and evil, akin to the Kabbalistic view. This God is the source of both good and evil, and thus, humanity is absolved through Christ by enduring suffering and sin—essentially living as both righteous and sinful -justus et peccator.
Here then is where the origin of this best and most merciful God, who punishes no one, is found. We will realize that it is an imaginary God, a God of convenience, not at all "biblical", a God ad usum delphini, that is, one that leaves men free to commit all the sins they want and that moreover, they cannot avoid wanting because of human "concupiscence" or "fragility", sins that in this way are no longer sins, so that they are not punished at all but are excused and forgiven in an eternal happiness after death, what they call "salvation", without clarifying or admitting that salvation consists precisely in seeing in heaven, pure from every sin, the face of that God who was obeyed on this earth.
This dialectical concept of God, influenced by Kabbalah, Plotinian emanationism, and 13th-century Gnosticism, and later theorized by Hegel and anticipated by the Lutheran mystic Jakob Böhme, is now prominently featured in the theology of Von Balthasar [9], Teilhard de Chardin, and Rahner (emphasis added by the Editor).
It must then be said that this God of mercy, tenderness, and forgiveness, this God who is not only good but too good, reveals himself at the same time, at the end of the dialectical circle, precisely because of his dialectical structure of yes-no, as we are seeing, as the God of maximum cruelty and wickedness.
What underlies this surprising yet inevitable reversal? It stems from a metaphysics that cannot conceive of pure being without simultaneously acknowledging nothingness, or being without non-being. It struggles to imagine pure good without evil, a pure yes unconnected to no, or affirmation without negation—something certain that cannot be denied.
This perspective cannot conceive of an unquestionable truth or a pure good existing independently of evil. It holds that good and bad deeds, truth and falsehood, joy and suffering, and life and death are inseparably intertwined, even within God. Rooted in a mindset of opposition, it remains bound to the cycle of conflict and contradiction.
Why are these inseparable pairs? Because reality is confused with thought, and metaphysics with logic. Let me give you an example: on the logical level of concepts, I understand what good is by comparing it with evil and vice versa. It is normal for the two opposites in my mind to be together: one recalls the other, and one is understood in the light of the other. Now, what can happen? If I, as the idealists do, close myself in my thoughts and, as Husserl says, "put reality in brackets", my ideas come to replace reality and since they are based on opposites, here I see all of the reality made up of pairs of opposites.
This way of thinking seems to combine mutually incompatible things, excluding what should be included and including what should be excluded, contrasting what should be united, and confusing what should remain distinct.". It is a way of thinking that is unfair, divisive, confusing, and slimy, based on duplicity, ambiguity, lies, and hypocrisy.
But why are being and non-being, true and false, good and evil also in God? The reason is simple: because this "theology" - if we can call it that - cannot conceive of God if not essentially connected to the world (bold by the Editor), as Hegel says: "God without the world would not be God", in this perfectly in line with Luther, for whom God cannot exist if not as God incarnate.
It is evident that in the world, there exists both truth and falsehood, good and evil. If God is identified with the world, then it follows that truth and falsehood, good and evil, must also be inherent in God. This is particularly true if we accept that God is the creator of the world and its underlying principle.
Rahner's thesis that the Trinity does not exist except as an "economic" Trinity, that is, incarnate, is in line with the theology of Luther and Hegel. For these theologians, it is unthinkable that God could have existed alone, even without creating the world. For them God is not a creator by will, but by essence. If God had not created the world and incarnated Himself, He would not truly be God. His act of creation is what brought Him to completion, fulfilling His divine essence.
Soloviev offers a precise description of Hegel's dialectical concept of God, who must include His negation—evil—to truly be God. In this view, evil is seen as a necessary element in the perfection of being, without which being would be incomplete and therefore not absolute. Soloviev says[10]:
«The necessity and the driving principle of the dialectical process are included in the very concept of the absolute. As such it cannot have a purely negative relationship with respect to what is opposed to it (which is not absolute, but finite), but must enclose it within itself»; the finite is conceived as a negation not only logical, but real of the infinite absolute, «because otherwise, if it had it outside itself, it would be limited and finite, it would come to be the self-sufficient limit of the absolute, which in this way, would transform itself into the finite.
Consequently, the authentic character of the absolute is revealed in its self-negation», the divine kenosis as understood by Von Balthasar, Christ in Hell, God against God, «in the fact that it posits its opposite or its other», that is, the world, «which, insofar as it is posited by the absolute itself, is its reflection; the absolute, then, in this being-outside or being-other finds itself».
Here is the Böhmian theme of the subject who needs the object to know himself, «as a realized unity of himself and his other», unity of yes and no, of good and evil, of God and the world. «Now, since the absolute is what is in everything, this same process comes to be the law of all reality», hence the all saved and all damned. «The force of the absolute truth, which is hidden in all things, breaks the limits of particular determinations, frees them from their immobility, forces one to pass into the other and to return to itself in a new, truer and freer form.
It is in this movement, which is present in everything and gives form to everything, that we must seek all the meaning and all the truth of what exists, that living connection which intimately unites all the parts of the physical and spiritual world among themselves and with the absolute. Which absolute then, outside of this connection, if it were reduced to something "in itself", that is, transcendent and self-subsistent independently of the world and evil, "would not exist at all" [11], where we see that the dialectical conception of God marries at the same time pantheism and atheism (bold by the Editor),
P. Giovanni Cavalcoli
Fontanellato, February 22, 2024
Source:
https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/il-dio-dialettico-occorre-bloccare_7.html?m=0
[1] Quoted from Franz Hartmann, Il mondo magico di Jakob Böhme, Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma 2005, p.75.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Quoted from Flavio Cuniberto, Jakob Böhme, Edizioni Morcelliana, Brescia 2000, p.95.
[6] A "non-I," as Fichte would say.
[7] *Lezioni sulla storia della filosofia, Edizioni La Nuova Italia, Firenze 1981, vol.III,2, pp.41-45.
[8] It is interesting how Hegel interprets the story of the original sin in this way. See Lezioni sulla filosofia della religione, Zanichelli Editore, Bologna 1974, vol.I, p.363; vol.II, p.78. Eric Fromm, Voi sarete come dèi, Ubaldini Editore, Roma 1970. Satan as a symbol of the liberating God is a well-known figure in esoteric Freemasonry. See the studies by Father Paolo Siano.
[9] See the presentation of his thoughts in my book L’inferno esiste. La verità negata*, Edizioni Fede&Cultura, Verona 2011.
[10] Soloviev's words are in square brackets. The others are mine.
[11] Vladimir Soloviev, La crisi della filosofia occidentale e altri scritti, Cooperativa editoriale La Casa di Matriona, Milano 1986, pp.356-357.