Appendix: D. G. Leahy and the Triple Nothingness of the Godhead

Transcription

1 Appendix: D. G. Leahy and the Triple Nothingness of the Godhead The contemporary trinitarian thinking of D. G. Leahy poses an ultimate challenge to Catholicism, and not only to Catholicism but also to Christianity itself, for nothing is newer than the pure theological thinking that is enacted here, one in which a pure philosophical thinking and a pure theological thinking wholly coincide, and one that is manifestly an embodiment of a truly new world. At no point is this challenge more forceful than in that radically new understanding of matter as the Body itself that is embodied here, just as nothing is more ultimately new than an enactment of the body itself in pure thinking. Yet it is precisely here that Leahy can be understood to be an authentically Catholic thinker, if not the first purely Catholic thinker in history. For surely this is the first time that the Incarnation has been absolutely central in Catholic thinking, the first time that matter and Spirit have been so deeply and wholly conjoined, so much so that now Spirit is the body itself (Foundation 96); even if this is an apocalyptic consummation of the totality of history, never before has such a Catholic consummation actually been conceived, though it may have been imaginatively enacted in Dante s Paradiso and Joyce s Finnegans Wake. Perhaps the deepest conceptual relationship in Leahy s magnum opus Foundation: Matter the Body Itself (1996) is the identity of Body and existence. Just as for the first time the body is the totality of Life, and life itself is now for the first time matter itself, in that apocalypse which is the form of the incarnation of God now occurring for the first time there is

2 152 Appendix an actual realization of the triple nothingness of the Trinity: The absolute nullification of the Trinity now occurring for the first time in thought (F 616). The absolute and pure nothingness of the Creator is for the first time called forth and revealed, as now for the first time the nothingness of the transcendent God is the actual existence of the transcendent God, and that nothingness is the omnipotence of ipsum esse or the beginning of existence itself (F 616). Indeed, this is just the context in which the most radical theological affirmations of Foundation occur, after the death of the Godhead the Resurrection of the Godhead principalis et instrumentum actual flesh : This is the identity of God for the first time, the Godhead of God identifying itself as the beginning of God in the form of the Resurrection of the Trinity, in the form of the Unity actually and ideally transcending the Difference within the identity of God. This is the beginning of the Trinity as the simple identity of the Godhead as nothing. For the first time the Triune Identity is the actual and ideal simplicity of the nothing. This is the first beginning of the ideal nothing, the absolutely pure First. The universal faith now really and actually here is the first completely actual beginning of divinity in the very form of nothing. (F 613) One of the more revealing new identities or even new categories in Foundation is absolute exteriority, so that Leahy can conceive the triune identity of the absolute beginning of God with the absolute exteriority of existence. This ultimate exteriority is the absolute elimination of the existence of the beginning of nothing, a beginning of nothing which is the form of the former existence of the failed transcendence, or the God of the theology of the death of God: The very simplicity of God, this resurrection of the Godhead of God, is the beginning of the complete elimination of the former-form of the realization of the death of God (F 613; italics are in original for all quotations from this

3 Appendix 153 source). Thus the simplicity of God perhaps the deepest of all Catholic conceptions of God is now an apocalyptic simplicity, and one that is coinherent with an apocalyptic exteriority. Yet it is precisely thereby the very form of nothing, and the beginning of the absolutely divine simplicity of existence is the elimination of the abyss of all transcendental imagination, the absolute elimination of the former identity of the nothing as the immediacy of existence: The beginning of the simplicity of nothing is the simplicity of existence: this for the first time is the absolute elimination of the former disjunction of being and nothing: the absolute now the disjunction of being and nothing: the beginning of the finite, the finite beginning, the beginning of absolute finite existence (F 613). All this occurs in the context of a truly new manifestation or revelation of the Trinity, and just as Hegel is most theologically radical in his revolutionary new conception of the Trinity, Leahy is likewise most theologically radical at this very point. Now there occurs an ultimate confrontation with Augustine s De Trinitate, the deepest foundation of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, and Foundation even contains an appendix that discovers Leahy s new trinary logic throughout De Trinitate. But Leahy sees Neoplatonism as a deep conceptual betrayal of Christianity, so if here he is deeply at odds with Augustine, he nevertheless perhaps succeeds in realizing a revolutionary Augustinian understanding of the Trinity. And this is achieved by doing that which is absolutely alien to Augustinian thinking itself, and that is conceiving the Trinity in essence as sharing the diametric identity of being and nothing, which for the first time absolutely displaces the shared diametric opposition of being and nothing (F 628). Such a diametric opposition of being and nothing is, of course, of the very essence of Augustinian philosophical thinking and of scholastic thinking as a whole, which is not truly challenged until the advent of German idealism. It could even be said that it is the very apocalypticism of German idealism, above all that of Hegel, which

4 154 Appendix makes possible a correlation and even identification of Being and Nothing, an identification which inaugurates a truly new world. So likewise Leahy s apocalyptic understanding of the Trinity is the consequence of the final advent of an essentially new universe in which existence itself is body itself. If this finally ends everything we have previously known as nothingness, it precisely thereby calls forth the absolutely unique trinitarian Godhead. This is a Godhead released only by the Crucifixion, the death of God, for only after that apocalyptic death does the Resurrection of the triune Godhead of God occur through the Incarnation of the Body of God, a Body which is an actual flesh or material body. Significantly, it is in a chapter devoted to The Beginning of the Absolutely Unconditioned Body that Leahy s new trinary logic is fully conjoined with philosophical and theological thinking. For in this logic, which claims to be categorically new, there cannot in any sense of the word be nothing (F 255). Earlier, in the chapter Transformation of World-Consciousness: The New Atonement, we are nevertheless initiated into a new even if deeply Catholic understanding of nothing: Now for the first time the atonement is existence. The new atonement is existence. The consciousness of the new atonement thinks essentially: Unfortunate unconditionally was the Fall, unhappy absolutely was the Sin, completely sorrowful was the Death. The Universe inverted absolutely was nothing. Life was nothing. The death of God was realized. Death was the absolute. Life and death was the abyss. And yet a mighty wind sweeps over the waters. The new beginning absolutely inverts the depths. For the first time the Light universal. Now absolutely now begins the new atonement. For the first time the atonement is now absolutely historical. The Now, experienced, is the atonement of existence. In every Now being atones. (F 350) Now and for the first there is nothing but the actuality of light. Leahy repudiates dialectical thinking, and there are

5 Appendix 155 only two references to dialectic in the index to Foundation. One of these refers to a truly revealing passage: In lieu of the essential dialectic of the necessity itself of unity, in which there is no necessity of an ultimate resolution since, in the essential dialectic of matter itself, nothing is thought for the first time in history but existence itself: everything else is thought in essence: indeed, now for the first time there is nothing but the actuality of light itself existing: everything else is perceived in the light. (F 52 53) Is this a dialectic in which there is only light, or is darkness essential to this light, a darkness which is ex abysso, and a darkness or nothingness apart from which there could be no shining of the light? Here, Christ is the new beginning, an absolutely new beginning which is everywhere and in everyone. But this is the absolute beginning that occurs by way of atonement, an atonement occurring for and in that Fall and Death in which an inverted Universe absolutely was nothing. What can such a nothing be, most particularly when almost immediately it is declared? The new atonement is for the first time the perfect consciousness that the world is absolutely, that there is no given, no nature, no ground for denying the existence of existence itself, no ground for positing Nothing, no ground for positing the non-existence of Unity (F 350). If this is the beginning of existence irreducible to Nothing, the beginning of the transcendental unity of transcendence absolutely manifest as nihil ex nihilo, the unity of Nothing ex nihilo, the being atoning in every now, then how can this be the Name Itself of God (F 353)? What can it mean to say that this name is the identity of nothing ex nihilo? Is this what it means to say that Godhead or the One is for the first time absolutely itself here and now? And if this is an epochē of mystical existence, an epochē of the mystical name, how is this the Spirit of God hovering over the absolutely-nothing-at-hand? If this is the epochē of every identity, the epochē of the cogito, identifying the extant

6 156 Appendix Abyss, and is thereby thought for the first time ex abysso, is that the one thought that one can know the Name Itself of God? If, in this thinking, abyss is not truly the abyss of abyss but a revolutionary metanoesis of the abyss of abyss, occurring at the end of all epochs and occurring in and through the divine rapture of absolute apocalypse, the final transformation of everything and everyone (F 355), is such a revolutionary metanoesis a coincidentia oppositorum of Godhead and the Nothing? And if this Godhead is not the transcendental God, but the transcendence of the transcendental God, the after-identity of absolute self-reversal, the after-identity of Incarnation and Crucifixion, is this absolute apocalypse an apocalypse of nothingness itself, or an apocalypse incorporating even if absolutely reversing that absolute abyss which we can only name as the Nothing? Now even if nothingness is neither original nor derivative, for nothingness is always and everywhere the beginning, always and everywhere ex nihilo, nevertheless there now occurs for the first time in history the essential comprehension that the very Nothing is created, is existence after nothing, and that the Kingdom of Heaven is the Absolute Existent completely existing in the absolutely complete act of the beginning of existence (F 383). Thus the Absolute Holy One is now for the first time in history in the form of the Act of Creation, in the form of Foundation Itself, a form which is itself the absolute unity of Nothingness ex nihilo (F 391). Now the Face of God appears for the first time as the face of existence, and if this is the face which calls forth the absolute unity of Nothingness ex nihilo, is this then the Nothingness of Godhead itself? Again and again Leahy refuses every mystical or apophatic understanding of the Nothingness of the Godhead, insisting that this is a Nothingness which is only truly or actually real in absolute apocalypse, an absolute apocalypse which is now occurring. If this is the beginning of the absolutely unconditioned body, one releasing the universality of God s Body, this is a resurrection of the body beginning in the body itself. Nevertheless, this is the beginning of the absolute emptying of the emptiness of thought, which is the actual

7 Appendix 157 perception that thought is absolutely-non-self-referentially the fullness of being, a perception that the being of God is the existence of thought (F 580). So is it this very thought and this very thinking which is the resurrection of the body, is the beginning of the absolutely unconditioned body? Is this what it means to say that for the first time nothing is no more? If what is actually occurring now is the perfect envelopment of that absolute genesis with which the Torah opens or begins, the totality of being after nothing, does this occur in the resurrection of trinitarian Godhead after the death of God? And is that death not absolutely necessary to this resurrection, a death which is the death of the transcendence of transcendence, yet precisely as such a real and actual death, one which has actually and fully occurred, and occurred in what the Christian most deeply knows as the Godhead of Christ? So that if faith now thinks in essence the new Christ, and thus for the first time faith thinks in essence revelation itself, how is this the beginning of the nothingness of God conceived essentially without nay-saying (F 605)? And if Christ Absolute is that absolute act ending the beyond of the Godhead, thereby releasing the absolute exteriority of the Godhead (F 606), is that an exteriority which is the nothingness of God? Does the thinking now occurring for the first time call forth an ultimate nothingness of the Godhead which has never been known before, and do so precisely by knowing the ultimacy and finality of the body itself? We are given in Foundation a new logic of beginning; while zero is retained here, it no longer equals any form of nothing, for there never was a nothing because in every now is the beginning absolutely. Christ is that beginning, an absolute beginning which is an absolute ending or apocalypse. For in every now begins the transcendence of consciousness, in every now begins the body itself, and this is the beginning of the end of the world in essence, the beginning of the end of time itself (F 423). Christ is the transcendence of transcendence itself, as the passion of Christ is for the first time the very essence of identity, for now this passion of existence absolutely creates

8 158 Appendix itself, a creation which is for the first time the absolutely passionate creation of the world: the creation ex abysso (F 198). This absolute passion is the foundation firmer than which none can be conceived, and even the foundation of that absolute world society now first beginning to exist. For this world is constructed ex futuro, after the future, and ex nihilo, after nonexistence, after the pure Nothing which modernity knows as total presence. Yet for the first time identity is absolutely without identity, absolutely without the identity of identity, absolutely without reference to the inside of the abyss itself. The absolute finality of the resurrection of the Trinity only now actually occurs for the first time; only this final resurrection is the beginning of the divine life which knows not death, the beginning of the Very Life that is ignorance of the absolute death (F 606). For what now occurs and becomes real as never before is the absolute exteriority of the Godhead, Christ Absolute, the Resurrection of the Godhead principalis et instrumentum actual flesh. As we have seen in this crucial passage, quoted earlier: This is the identity of God for the first time, the Godhead of God identifying itself as the beginning of God in the form of the Resurrection of the Trinity, in the form of the Unity actually and ideally transcending the Difference within the identity of God. This is the beginning of the Trinity as the simple identity of the Godhead as nothing. For the first time the Triune Identity is the actual and ideal simplicity of the nothing. (F 613) If this is the absolutely first beginning of the ideal nothing, it is the first completely actual beginning of divinity in the very form of nothing, and so begins the triune identity or trichotomous unity of this absolute simplicity of God conceived in essence with the absolute exteriority of existence. But this absolute exteriority of existence is the absolute elimination of the existence of the beginning of nothing, a beginning embodied in the beginning of a uniquely modern consciousness,

9 Appendix 159 so that its elimination is the elimination of the failed transcendence of the uniquely modern God. So that a nothing identically nothing perishes in that elimination, a perishing which is the advent of the very simplicity of God, which is nothing less than the resurrection of the trinitarian Godhead of God. Yet that resurrection is the beginning of the simplicity of nothing, a simplicity which is the simplicity of existence, and precisely thereby is for the first time the absolute elimination of the former disjunction of being and nothing. For this is the beginning of absolute finite existence, the first universal now: The beginning which is the ending of the ending of the eternal now in the form of the absolutely pure nothing (F 614). Now, and for the first time, there occurs that essential conception in which there is no dichotomy or otherness of existence and nothing: If existence is no longer the contrary of nothing, and if existence is no longer the contradictory of nothing, and if, further, existence is no longer the threshold of nothing, then the identity of existence and nothing is actually and ideally unconditional difference for the first time (F 614). Leahy can claim that to see the beginning of nothing is to see for the first time the nothingness of nothing as the nothingness of the infinite, for this is the arrival for the first time at the triple nothingness of the Trinity, at the infinitely finite nothingness of the Godhead of God. This infinitely finite nothingness of the Godhead is an absolutely apocalyptic nothingness, but an apocalyptic nothingness realizing itself as the finite Trinity, a finite Trinity which is, as earlier noted, the absolute nullification of the Trinity now occurring for the first time in thought (F 616). For the first time the nothingness of the transcendent God is the actual existence of the transcendent God, and now actually existing for the first time in history is the absolute and pure nothingness of the Creator, a nothingness that is the absolute apocalypse of the complete incarnation of God now actually occurring. What now absolutely occurs for the first time is the beginning of the advent of the totality of history as the advent of completely sensible very omnipotence (F 620),

10 160 Appendix one in which each and every one of us is finally and actually the Christ Absolute who is the beginning. This and this alone is the true simplicity of God, and it and it alone makes possible that absolutely actual thinking which is the thinking of absolute apocalypse, one which imitates in the very form of thought the death of Christ. Now and only now there is the beginning of the perfect mutuality of human and divine conceptions of existence, the perfect grace of perfect mutuality, for now and for the first time in history the finite is absolutely without reference to the infinite, but thereby and precisely thereby it is absolutely. Only here does Leahy speak of the kenosis which is creation, a kenosis releasing an absolutely transcendent impassivity which is the beginning of absolute pure nothing, but just thereby it is the beginning of the existence of the absolute exteriority of the Word, the absolute negativity of the finite absolute. Hence a kenotic creation is the creation of the finite absolute, or the beginning of the divine absolutely finite, or the Word spoken immediately as absolute exteriority. Genesis or the beginning is the perfect exteriority of the divine exclusivity, the Godhead of God in the beginning God within God: For the first time the perfect exteriority of the inmost being of divinity (F 623). For the simplicity of omnipotence is the sharing of that beginning which is the very structure of existence, a sharing occurring in the absolute exteriority of the absolute exclusivity of the Trinity in the beginning, and that original beginning is now occurring for the first time in the very form of thought. Yet this occurs only insofar as it is an imitation of the death of Christ, an imitation calling forth the first person of the Trinity as the Very First, who not knowing death suffered the death of God, and the righteousness of the Son is the Father having His Will sharing the suffering of death for the first time (F 623). This is that absolute death issuing in absolute resurrection, and a resurrection of that Godhead which though it absolutely dies knows not death. Here, again, we encounter a trinitarian affirmation, and one only made possible by the resurrection of

11 Appendix 161 Triune Identity after the death of God, for this is a resurrection calling forth or revealing the triple nothingness of the Trinity, or the triple nothingness of Godhead itself, which is nothing less than the apocalyptic simplicity of the Godhead. Perhaps nothing is more difficult or more cryptic in Foundation than the idea of the triple nothingness of the Godhead. This is a truly original or absolutely novel idea, but it can be illuminated by contrasting it with that pure or absolute Nothing which Leahy knows as the deepest ground of modernity. For Hegel, in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Good Friday is the deathday of the divinity of Christ, and if this is the first philosophical realization of the death of God, this is the consequence of the very essence of a uniquely modern consciousness. Then Altizer can know the second death of God, a death which is the beginning of the eternal death of God, and thus the beginning of the eternal damnation of the Godhead, the beginning of the Godhead of Satan (F 599). Now existence itself is for the first time purely Nothing, Being itself for the first time the Nothingless Nothing. This is a crucifixion of philosophical conceptualization uniquely possible in America, for in America there is the pure beginning of a universal nothingness in the depths of consciousness; for the first time there is absolutely nothing theoretical or provisional about this actual experience, and now in the very form of the American consciousness there is nothing but this experience. This is the absolute first nothing, God the Creator Nothing, which is nothing less than the beginning of Nothing, as for the first time God is really and actually dead. This is therefore the first full actualization of the pure Nothing, but it is an abysmal nothing of the beginning of nothing not nothing, the abysmal nothing of the beginning of God not the beginning of God. Yet this very actualization of the pure Nothing is finally the immediately mediated immediacy of the resurrection of the triune God after the death of God, a resurrection in which for the first time the very substance of divinity is the essential actuality of existence in a new universe: The form of the divine

12 162 Appendix actually beginning is very existence very divine (F 619). This resurrection is the beginning of the advent of the totality of history as the advent of a completely sensible divine omnipotence (F 620). But this is also and simultaneously the beginning of the elimination of the nothingness of the Godhead of God, the beginning of the elimination of saying yes through saying absolutely nothing, for it is the beginning of saying absolutely yes through saying yes absolutely to nothing (F 604). After death, and after the death of God, the resurrection of God occurs in the form of existence itself or the body itself as the very body of resurrection. For the first time this is the voyage reaching the end of the infinite backtracking of the infinite nothingness of the Godhead, and it is the arrival for the first time at the triple nothingness of the Trinity, at the infinitely finite nothingness of the Godhead of God, at the finite Trinity, or at the absolute nullification of the Trinity now occurring for the first time. This radically or absolutely new Trinity is the consequence of absolute apocalypse, an apocalypse which is the realization of the incarnation of God now occurring, an incarnation which is the act of creation of the finite absolute, the beginning of the divine absolutely finite absolutely unconditioned finite negativity the beginning of the death and resurrection of the very Godhead, which though it absolutely dies knows not death (F 624). Thus it is only by way of the revelation or realization of absolute apocalypse that it is possible to apprehend or to know the beginning of the triple nothingness that is the divine Trinity, a beginning that is the beginning of the simplicity of nothing, and therefore the beginning of the simplicity of existence. This is that unique and final simplicity which is the absolute elimination of the former disjunction of being and nothing, and the absolute advent of the diametric identity of nothing and being, which is nothing less than the final advent of that triple nothingness which is the divine Trinity itself. Foundation closes with a chapter on The New Beginning ; this is where the nothingness, the nullification, and the resurrection of the

13 Appendix 163 Trinity are called forth, wherein it is fully clear that such nullification is an absolutely apocalyptic resurrection, and a resurrection that only now is actually occurring. Now, and for the first time, nothing is no more as the contrary or opposite of being and existence, for now and only now nothingness is and only is the nothingness of the Godhead that exists absolutely and knows not death (F 624). This is a truly new apocalyptic thinking if only because of the primacy here of the body, a new body which is an apocalyptic body the apocalyptic body of Christ a body calling forth an absolutely new thinking in which the body itself is the totality of life itself for the first time (F 104). Now, and for the first time in history, the world itself terminates in essence, but this means that for the first time the world is essentially historical, for the history of the world is now absolutely actual. What can this mean? It means that the very existence of potentiality is now ended, and with that ending an absolute primal nothing is no more, and now there is no longer a necessity for an embodiment of the Nothing: We, the survivors of sin itself, the proclaimers of the body itself, declare the speaking of death to be without necessity, a waste of words, the guest at the wedding without a wedding garment (F 91 92). We, who embody the integral absolute, declare that today is the Third Day, the day after the Sabbath, the first of a new creation, a day without night, for everything now proclaims matter itself as the body itself. Matter, the body itself, is itself the beginning of the absolutely new universe, a matter precluding the present possibility of that abyss which is the ultimate ground of modernity. For the body itself is now nothing but the absolutely new form of thinking, a thinking giving birth to a new creation, as history is transcended for the first time in the death of death itself, in the absolute inconceivability of either a potential or an actual nothingness. Now, and for the first time, the body itself is the totality of Life, and Life itself is now for the first time matter itself, for now there is no foundation or grounding of Being that is not the proclamation of the body itself. Yet this body

14 164 Appendix is Christ, or the body of God, revealing itself in the absolute freedom of personality saying itself, hearing the voice of the absolute speaking freely of itself, saying of itself: I am Christ Absolute existing for the first time. I am the absolute temporality of existence (F 165). What is most challenging about Leahy s work is the very purity of its thinking and writing; here is the purest thinker not only in the history of American thought, but also in the history of European thought since Hegel, and if it is Hegel alone with whom Leahy can be compared, this is not only because both are apocalyptic thinkers, but because each is a pure thinker precisely in being an apocalyptic thinker. Leahy judges that what is most missing in Hegel s thinking is the novitas mundi, or actual newness of the world, so that Hegelian thinking is finally a reflection of an old world, and an old world which has actually and finally ended in our time. So likewise all our theologies are reflections of an old world, for even if it was Augustine and Aquinas who most decisively inaugurated the novitas mundi in thinking itself, here the novitas mundi is only partially and not totally realized a total realization that does not occur until the thinking now occurring for the first time. Nevertheless, this radically new thinking is in deep continuity with a purely Catholic thinking, and is even in continuity with the radically Protestant thinking of Kierkegaard, for Leahy s is unquestionably a Christian thinking, and the first Christian thinking since Hegel s which is a universal thinking. Unlike Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, Leahy is a truly Catholic thinker, and just as Hegel was the first Protestant thinker fully and essentially to integrate reason and revelation or natural theology and revealed theology, Leahy is the first Catholic thinker to effect such an integration; even if this was only made possible by Augustine and Aquinas, Leahy goes as far beyond Aquinas and Augustine as Hegel goes beyond Augustine and Luther. Yes, a truly new thinking occurs in Leahy, for Leahy is a truly postmodern thinker even as Hegel is a truly modern thinker. Even if he is not more radical than

15 Appendix 165 Nietzsche as a postmodern thinker, his thinking is purely logical and systematic as Nietzsche s thinking refused to be. If therefore Leahy is a new Hegel, he is a truly new Hegel, and one far more paradoxical than Hegel in being such a purely conceptual and purely logical thinker in a postmodern world in which such thinking has seemingly finally ended. Surely Leahy is the most paradoxical thinker in our world this must be at least one ground for his profound love of Kierkegaard and he is our most paradoxical thinker by being our most metaphysical and systematic and even logical thinker. But if Leahy s thinking is truly thinking, then the darkness of our world is now ending, and if only Leahy s thinking embodies such an ending, Leahy s thinking is the only thinking for us which realizes an absolute celebration of the world and of existence itself. Let us recall that Roman Catholicism arose with a dissolution of primitive Christian apocalypticism, one which is comprehensively reenacted in Augustine s City of God, and that orthodox Catholic theologians have been purely nonapocalyptic. If the first Catholic apocalyptic theologian was Joachim of Fiore, Joachism evolved as a profound heresy in Catholicism, and one which is perhaps renewed in Leahy. Even if Foundation can claim that Catholic sacra doctrina is now for the first time qua word the very form of thought (F 27), just as it also claims that ontology essentially identifies the absolute itself for the first time, so that God itself is now absolutely understood (F 121), is this a genuine possibility for the Roman Catholic God? This is seemingly a repetition of an ultimate Hegelian claim, one which Kierkegaard could know as the ultimate offense of Hegelian philosophy. Granted, Nietzsche s proclamation of the death of God is a deep ground of Leahy s thinking, and Leahy does not resist an explicitly Nietzschean language, as in Being begins in every now (Zarathustra 3, The Convalescent : In jedem Nu beginnt das Sein ). Leahy s language of yes-saying and no-saying is surely an echo of Nietzsche, and both Leahy and Nietzsche transform the original language of the gospel into

16 166 Appendix a purely philosophical and purely theological language. Here, Leahy does go far beyond the language of an Augustine or an Aquinas, but he does remain within the horizon of the language of a Kierkegaard or a Nietzsche, and does so even when he intends to annul all such language. Is such an annulment even possible? For it cannot be denied that at least Nietzsche knew and proclaimed an absolute apocalypse, an absolute apocalypse released by the death of God, a death of God that has thrown us into an infinite nothing, and an infinite nothing which Zarathustra calls us to greet with an absolute yes-saying. Clearly Nietzsche s infinite nothing is not a literal nothing, not a nothing which is in diametric opposition to being, unless being is understood as that true world which becomes a fable in The History of an Error in Twilight of the Idols. Both Nietzsche and Leahy share a deep opposition to Platonism, and Leahy s opposition here may well be just as deep as Nietzsche s, which is one reason why he is able to effect such a pure reversal of a Neoplatonic nothingness. Such a Neoplatonic nothingness has its twin in a purely Gnostic matter, and one way by which to understand Leahy s matter is to understand it as a pure reversal of a Gnostic matter, one wherein matter truly and actually becomes Spirit, but does so only by way of an absolute affirmation or yes-saying a yes-saying which is the pure reversal of every Gnostic no-saying. Nevertheless, Leahy s matter is realized only by way of a pure and total thinking, and is itself found nowhere but in pure thinking, which does suggest a parallel in a purely Gnostic contemplative thinking. Can this be true? Of course, there are no Gnostic texts that are known to us which are truly philosophical texts, but a purely philosophical contemplative thinking does occur in Plotinus, and even if Plotinus opposed Gnosticism his thinking truly does parallel Gnosticism at crucial points, and perhaps above all so in its understanding of the emanation of the One. Plotinus can conclude his discussion of matter in The Enneads by identifying it as utter destitution and ugliness or unredeemed evil (II, 4). Christianity was under the deep impact of Plotinus for over a

17 Appendix 167 thousand years, and if it was Aquinas who most deeply challenged this Neoplatonic tradition, this is the Aquinas whom Leahy chooses as a predecessor, but an Aquinas whom Leahy essentially transcends, for Aquinas s own historical conditioning prevented him from being able to understand the species or essence except as abstracted from here and now, so that he was not able to think what now begins essentially to be conceived in the wake of the actual death of God when the essence is now understood to be existence here and now, when time is now the absolute totality of being (F 586). So Leahy s thinking can be understood to be the inverse of Gnostic thinking, and most clearly the inverse of that thinking in its understanding of matter and nothingness, and above all in its understanding of the triple nothingness of the Trinity. Only the advent of that nothingness brings a final and ultimate end to every possible nothing, and if the advent of this absolute apocalypse is the beginning of the nothingness of the Godhead, a nothingness releasing and embodying a pure simplicity both of nothing and of existence itself, this is an existence which is just as fully nothing as it is being. Only the fullness of such an apocalyptic nothingness could bring nothing to an end, and even if this is a fullness in emptiness, it is precisely thereby that it is the end of nothingness and the fullness of nothingness at once, a fullness of nothingness which is the triple nothingness of the Godhead. That is the nothingness which is a pure and absolute simplicity inseparable from an absolute exteriority, body itself even the body of God an omnipotent body ex nihilo that is finally indistinguishable from the absolute nullification of the Trinity. Now if this is not the absolute Nothing, and if its very advent ends the absolute Nothing, thereby ending every nothingness whatsoever, is that because every actual nothingness is now absolute nothingness itself? Here is a calling forth of the end of modernity and the absolute beginning of a new world (novitas mundi), an order that is an actually universal new world consciousness (novitas mentis), an essentially new consciousness in which the body itself is nothing

18 168 Appendix but existence itself. Now, and for the first time, an explosion of reason has occurred in the form of faith, so that in the thinking now occurring for the first time faith has raised reason itself to the level of faith. If nothing was more revolutionary in Hegelian thinking than its apocalyptic ground, an apocalyptic ground which became even more actual and universal in Marxism itself, nothing is more revolutionary in Leahy s thinking than its absolute apocalyptic ground, one which is more total here than it has ever been before, with the possible exception of Nietzsche s radically apocalyptic thinking. Leahy can understand America as the deepest site of the death of God, an America which is the furthest extension of modernity, and the complete actualization of the death of God occurs for the first time in history in American consciousness (F 596). Yet this is a death of God prior to that absolute apocalypse which is the identity of the essentially new world now beginning. Modernity is an anticipation of that beginning, just as Marxism is a reverse anticipation of an essentially new world society, a new society in which selfhood disappears, in which work itself is essentially inalienable. For the now existing foundation of the absolute objectivity of this world society is the actuality of an absolute incarnation, the advent of the body itself absolute, wherein personality is identified with material reality, but body itself or the actual human personality is absolutely free (F 86). Just as there is no temple in this apocalyptic city, nothing whatsoever is now hidden, for the reality of this apocalyptic body is the absolutely unconditioned exteriority of the world (F 592). That absolute exteriority is the exteriority of a finally and ultimately resurrected body, the final arrival of a completely sensible omnipotence, which is nothing less than the final nothingness of the transcendent God. Yet the arrival of this final nothingness is the beginning of an absolutely pure nothing (F 621), and if this is the beginning of the resurrection of the Trinity, it is the beginning of the simplicity of omnipotence itself, a simplicity which is the simplicity of God and world, Christ and humanity at once. Only one truly major Western philosopher

19 Appendix 169 is absent from Leahy s Novitas Mundi (1980) and Foundation (except 521n94), and that is Spinoza, the one thinker who could purely and totally identify God and nature and our only thinker who could know a pure and integral harmony or coinherence between mind and body. But Spinoza is also our one great thinker who could forswear all meditation upon death, and could do so by affirming that if the human mind had only adequate ideas it would form no conception of evil (Ethics chap. 4, prop. 64). Leahy s thinking would be inconceivable apart from its centering upon the death of Christ, but it would seem to share with Spinoza a refusal of any conception of evil, as evil does not appear in the index of either Foundation or Novitas Mundi. Is evil, too, finally absent in absolute exteriority, and absent even as a potentiality, as all potentiality is ended in the absolute actuality of absolute apocalypse? If nothing is no more, then evil too has finally ended, an ending which is inseparable from the ending of all potentiality. If the essentially new foundation of Christianity itself is the necessity to create the elimination of the actual death of the Godhead of God, so that new Christianity is essentially the conception of the necessity to create the absolute elimination of nothingness (F ), is that elimination only possible through an absolute nothingness that is itself the nothingness of the Godhead? To identify the Crucifixion as finally realizing an absolute and final nothingness is certainly one way of knowing an actual and irreversible death, and if that death finally realizes a pure nothingness, and even the triple nothingness of the Trinity a realization which is the final resurrection of the Trinity then it is the passion and death of Christ that effects this realization, effecting the absolute reversal of any movement to an absolute transcendence. Now body itself is all in all, but it is all in all only because every actual way away from the body has now ended, and ended in an absolute exteriority that is the body itself, an exteriority that is not only the ending of every selfhood or within, but the ending of every eternal life that is not absolute change, or every life that is not now

20 170 Appendix beginning ex nihilo. If this is the ending of the actual death of the Godhead of God, it is so only insofar as that death itself has become an apocalyptic totality, and an apocalyptic totality that can only be known as an absolute nothingness. If nothing is no more, it is no more only because of the full and final advent of an absolute nothingness, an apocalyptic nothingness releasing a final embodiment of the Trinity ex nihilo.

21 Works Cited Altizer, Thomas J. J. Godhead and the Nothing. Albany: State University of New York Press, History as Apocalypse. Albany: State University of New York Press, The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1967; reprint, Aurora, CO: Davies Group, Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. 5 vols. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, Aristotle. Metaphysics. 2 vols. Translated by Hugh Tredennick. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Augustine. Concerning the City of God against the Pagans. Translated by Henry Bettenson. Introduction by G. R. Evans. New York: Penguin, Confessions. Translated by R. S. Pine-Coffin. New York: Penguin, The Trinity [De Trinitate]. Translated by Stephen McKenna. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics. 5 vols. Edited by G. W. Bromily and T. F. Torrance. New York: Charles Scribner s Sons, Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts. New York: Grove, Bernanos, Georges. The Diary of a Country Priest. Translated by Pamela Morris. Introduction by Rémy Rougeau. New York: Carroll & Graf, Blake, William. William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books. Introduction by David Bindman. London and New

22 172 Works Cited York: Thames and Hudson in association with the William Blake Trust, Caws, Mary Ann. Manifesto: A Century of Isms. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy. 3 vols. Translated by Charles S. Singleton. Bollingen Series 80. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, Hegel, G. W. F. Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline. Part 1: Science of Logic. Translated and edited by Klaus Brinkmann and Daniel O. Dahlstrom. Cambridge Hegel Translations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Hegel s Philosophy of Nature: Part Two of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Translated by A. V. Miller. Foreword by J. N. Findlay. Oxford: Clarendon, Hegel s Science of Logic. Translated by A. V. Miller. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, The Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: One-Volume Edition. Edited by Peter C. Hodgson. Translated by R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson, and J. M. Stewart, with the assistance of H. S. Harris. Berkeley: University of California Press, Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) [Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Erieignis)]. Translated by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, Parmenides. Translated by André Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, The Phenomenology of Religious Life. Translated by Matthias Fritsch and Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, Hermes Trismegistus. Corpus Hermeticum. In Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin Writings. 4 vols. Edited by Walter Scott. Oxford: Clarendon, Hooker, Richard. Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity vols. Edited by Ernest Rhys. Everyman s Library. New York: Dutton, Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. New York: Penguin, 1939.

23 Works Cited 173. Ulysses. New York: Penguin, Leahy, D. G. Foundation: Matter the Body Itself. Albany: State University of New York Press, Novitas Mundi. New York: New York University Press, 1980; reprint, Albany: State University of New York Press, Ptolemy s Epistle to Flora. In Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation with Annotations and Introductions.. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Milton, John. Christian Doctrine [De doctrina Christiana]. Edited by Maurice Kelly. Translated by John Carey. Vol. 6 of The Complete Prose Works of John Milton. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, Paradise Lost. Edited by John Leonard. New York: Penguin, Meyer, Marvin W. The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The Revised and Updated Translation of Sacred Gnostic Texts Complete in One Volume. Introduction by Elaine H. Pagels. New York: HarperOne, Newman, John Henry Cardinal. An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine Foreword by Ian Ker. Notre Dame Series in the Great Books, no. 4. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, Olivi, Peter of John. Commentary on the Apocalypse / Lectura super Apocalypsim. 2 vols. Edited and translated by Warren W. Lewis. St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, Rahner, Karl. The Trinity. New York: Continuum, Rilke, Rainer Maria. Duino Elegies: A Bilingual Edition. Translated by Edward Snow. New York: North Point Press, Schleiermacher, Friedrich. The Christian Faith. Translated by H. R. MacKintosh. Edited by J. S. Stewart. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, Shakespeare, William. King Lear Edited by A. R. Braunmuller and Stephen Orgel. Introduction by Stephen Orgel. New York: Pelican, Sophocles. Sophocles I: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone. Translated by David Grene, Robert Fitzgerald, and Elizabeth Wyckoff. Introduction by David Grene. The Complete Greek Tragedies, edited by David Grene and Richard Lattimore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954.

24 174 Works Cited Spinoza, Benedict de. The Complete Works of Spinoza. Vol. 1. Edited and translated by Edwin Curley. Princeton: Princeton University Press, Tanner, Norman, S. J., ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. 2 vols. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990.

25 Index Abraham, 142 Absolute Idea (Hegel), 17, 20, 27 Absolute Spirit (Hegel), 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 26, 72 abstract Spirit (Hegel), 23, 72; see also Bad Infinite abstract thinking, 27 28, 120 abyss, 105, 108, 153, 154, 156, 158, 163; see also ex abysso Act-of-Being (Aquinas), 19 actus purus, 60, Age (Joachim of Fiore): of the Father, 3; of the Son, 2, 3, 48; of the Spirit, 1 2, 3, 7, 18, 20, 48, 69 ages of the Spirit (Hegel), 26; final age of the Spirit, 18, 20, 22, 23 agon, alethia (truth), 68 Alexandria, 10, 62 alienation, 30, 106; self-alienation, 30, 72, 73 All, the, 20, 42, 76, 79, 80, 81, ; see also totality Allah, 70 Alpha, 44, 58, 81, 88, 92, 94 Altizer, Thomas J. J., ix, 122, 161 America, 161, 164, 168 anamnesis, 135, 138, 139 Angst, 105, 107, 144 anonymity, 37, 101, 103, 108 Antichrist, 2, 16, 31, 47, 48 antitrinitarianism, 5, 31, 37, 70, 105, 121 apocalypse, 3, 5, 22 24, 56, 88 89, 94, 97 98, 102 3, , , , 125, 127, 130, 132, 137, 141, 146, 151, 156, 159, 162, 166, 167, 168; reversal of, 44, 46 apocalypticism, 7, 22, 24, 40, 41, 45 48, 66, 84, 87 88, 90 91, 104, 111, 120, 124, 165; anti-apocalypticism, 22, 39, 85, 88; Jewish, 2; popular, 6 apophatic thinking, 156 Aquinas, Thomas, 1, 11, 16, 17, 19, 39, 44, 62, 75, 105, 107, 112, 119, 164, arete (virtuous power), 135, 136 Arianism, 56, 61, 63; anti-arianism, 10 Aristotle, 19, 41, 68, 133, 139; neo-aristotelian, 119 art, xi, 26, 32, 120, 126, 143, 145; modern, 114, , 129 assault, 11, 12, 17, 33, 48, 50, 55, 64; on Godhead, 83; on old Adam, 147 ate (destruction), 136 atheism, 6, 17, 18, 23 24, 102, 106, 120, 121, 123, 129, 143 atonement, 13, 128, 133, , Aufhebung (Hegel), 3, 19, 20, 28 Augustine of Hippo, 1, 14, 38 39, 62, 102, 103, 105, 112, 131, 143, 153, 164, 165, 166

26 176 Index authoritarianism, 31, 47 authority, absolute, 31, 65 66, 68 69, 71; Catholic, 66; of the Church, 2, 6, 35 37, 48 49, 67, 69; imperial, 1, 10; of the Trinity, 3, 6, 10, 31 32, 35 39, 65 67, 69 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 114 backward movement, 4, 40, 41, 44, 46, 47, 65, 77, 83, 89, 92; see also eternal return Bad Infinite (Hegel), 23; see also abstract Spirit Barth, Karl, 4, 12 17, 25, 35, 39, 53 54, 58, 66, 75, 106, 107, 116 beatific vision, 14 Beckett, Samuel, 134 begotten Son (by Father), 12, 44, 48, 53 being (or Being, esse), 15, 19, 29, 99, 141, , 157, 159, 163, 165, 167; Being-for-itself (Hegel), 20 23; Being-in-and-for-itself (Hegel), 21 23; Being-in-itself (Hegel), 20 23, 59 Beiträge (Heidegger s Contributions to Philosophy), 7 Bernanos, Georges, 108 Bible, 61, 103 4, 126, 146 biblical: apocalypticism, 104; Creator, 61; faith, 16; God, 52, 61; language, 10; nonbiblical, 10, 33, 52, 58; scholarship, 24, 35, 37; traditions, 109 Big Bang, 142 Blake, William, 2 7, 24, 47, 102, 104, 107, , 116, , , 130, 143, 149 body, 169; Absolutely Unconditioned Body (Leahy), 154; apocalyptic body of God, 24, 154, , 162, , 167, 168, 169; of Christ, 33, 151; of the Trinity, , 101 Boethius, 14 Böhme, Jakob, 26, 53, 112 Brahman-Atman, 41, 82, 92 Buddhism, xi, 47, 87, 88, 106, 113, 114, 115, 117, 129, 142 Calvin, John, 16, 35, 53, 116 Cappadocian fathers, 60 catharsis, 139 Catholic: doctrine, 153, 165; orthodoxy, 75; theologians, 10, 165; theology, 14, 34, 54, 58; thinking, 151, 164 Catholicism, Roman, 9, 41, 131, 151, 165 Caws, Mary Ann, xi chaos, 101, 114, 137, 144 Chekhov, Anton, 134 Christ, 13, 33, 40, 41, 51, 52, 56, 57, 58, 64, 69, 77, 78, 102, 155, 168, 169; Christ of Glory, 12, 41; Christ of Passion, 12, 41, 53 58, 76, 169; as Cosmocrator, 69; death of, 53; humanity of, 5, 12 13, 53; Lordship of, 51, 56, 65; see also Christ Absolute Christ Absolute, , 160, 164 Christendom, 1, 10, 33, 45, 71, 145; ending of, 1, 18, 34, 129 Christian epic, 5, 6, 105, 110, 130, 141 Christian Faith (Schleiermacher), 17 Christian God (or Godhead), 1, 9, 12, 18, 26, 47, 75, 76, 78, 82, 87, 90, 135, 148 Christianity, 2, 4, 9, 11, 31 33, 40 41, 43 44, 48, 50, 54 55, 59, 70, 72, 73, 75, 81 82, 85, 87 95, 104, 106, 107, 110, 124, 131, 143, 145, 151, 153; ancient, 10, 24, 62, 67, 85, 109, 111, 119, 120, , 131, 143; biblical, 116; Constantinian, 109, 121; Eastern, 1, 11, 12, 16, 38, 49, 62, 69, 102, 143; mystery of, 51, 99, ;