GRGR Nothingness (was Re: Pynchon as propaganda)

[Terrance]

Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> I just would like to reiterate that it's not so much the presence of the
> word "nothingness" in Christian writing (though Keith has shown THAT to
> be fairly prodigious) but the idea that if we came from nothing, we are
> headed toward nothingness.



Thus the book of Genesis which can be read as the beginning of the first
principle of creation on the Western tradition. The God (one of words in
that GR phrase) of the the book of Genesis is a creator God who creates
heaven and earth and Man in his own image. And, to be created in the
image of God means in this context is to be a creator, with the freedom
to obey or disobey the commands of the creator who created him. Of
course, with the creation of Man, creativity becomes part of the
creation itself. In Genesis the two kinds of creators, God and Man, use
their creative powers to establish and harmonious dialectical order (GR
is critical of dialectic and endorses sustained agons). On way to
establish an harmonious order is for the created Man to act in
accordance with the plan of the primary creator, God. Man, however, is
not content with this subordinate position and uses his freedom in a way
that frustrates God's initial plan. (note: in Milton's PL Satan
recognizes that this "frustrating" must target God's creation). Left to
his own devices, man is inventive and occasionally good, but
predominately evil and unable to establish an harmonious order. God,
with the flood (Death, Baptism, fertility, re-creation) cleanses his
creation of the sins of Man and starts over with a single family. The
blessed family, its generations through Abraham through Jacob to Joseph
provides a paradigm for the moral advance of Man by which the Primal
Fratricide (this Freudian theme is treated in the Fragmented episode of
GR--Perncicious Pop and Blicero) of Abel by Cain is superseded by its
opposite, the willingness of Judah  to lay down his life for his brother
Benjamin. This story of creation is a progress, a historical progress
with an open future. What that future will be depends on the creative
forces and actions of Men and God. An open system! What/who, closed it? 

Well, this is a gross oversimplification as usual, but the creative act
(see Augustine) were attached to the Necessary Sequences of Logistic by
Calvin in the 16th Century and after that we get Hobbes, Locke, Newton
(Dixon's Deity) and all the others that we read about in M&D. Of course
now we are in the enlightened world of arbitrary law. From Locke, God
creates us, we are rational beings and this provides the foundation for
a law of nature and demonstrative science of morals. But in Hobbes, the
state of nature is a state of war, and to escape from this condition
requires the subordination of the wills of Men to a single and arbitrary
will. Can you say, scatter-brained-mother-nature? Darwin couldn't. Like
Genesis, Darwin accounts for things by their, well, Origin or Genesis.
He doesn't being his story with a creator God, but with a variety from
which there is either waxing or waning. And even Marx, whose father was
a Rabi, applies the creative act of Genesis to his material world. Of
course no creator God is involved, only men who work and produce and
most importantly (to return to Sartre and Dostoyevsky) create MAN: 

"For socialist man, the whole of what is called world history is nothing
but the creation of man by human labor, and the emergence of nature for
man: he, therefor, has the evident and irrefutable proof of his
self-creation, of his own origin." 

>From Abraham to Jacob to Joseph. 

>From Marx to Lenin to Stalin. 

Stalin was clearly a God who failed to create. 

In Heidegger, God and Man, Being and Dasein, are co-creators. 
Nothingness is not about the void or a lack of grace, but Freedom. 

Free to Serve. 

Free to Fall. 


Fortunately Fallen, 

T