Heller M, Woodin W.H. (eds.) Infinity. New research frontiers (CUP, 2011)(ISBN 1107003873)(O)(327s)_MAml_

270 notes on the concept of the infiniteinterval has been introduced between God and creatures, precisely because God is trulydeclared in both the essence and the existence of all things. Conversely, the rejectionof analogy, far from preserving God’s transcendence, can actually only objectify Godidolatrously as that which is “over against” creation: such a duality inevitably makesGod and creation balancing terms in a dialectical opposition, thus subordinating Godto being after all. The strident mysticism of the “Wholly Other” that one finds in, say,the theology of Karl Barth – both early and late – represents a “Christian” assault onthe ontology of the analogia entis, but this may safely be ignored: the sort of critiqueBarth mounts against the analogia entis is so contaminated by misunderstandings,logical errors, and thoroughly modern prejudices that it is better to dismiss it as mereconfusion, or to treat it as a fundamentally post-Christian phenomenon.28. In the analogia entis, as Przywara describes it, the term above all terms isGod, the full act of being, in whom all determinacy participates, but himself beyondall finite determination, negation, or dialectic: not one of two poles, not the infinite“naught” against which all things are set off (which would still be a “finite infinite”).Furthermore, it is not possible to regard this transcendent act as a primordial convertibilityof being and nothingness, requiring its tragic solution in the finite – by way ofHegel’s “becoming,” or Heidegger’s “temporalization,” or what have you – as sucha convertibility would already comprise an ontic opposition, a finite indeterminationsubordinate to its own limits, and so would still be in need of an ontological explanation,some account of the prior act of simplicity in which its unresolved and essentialcontradiction would have to participate in order to constitute a unity (in order, that is,to be). Being can be neither reduced to beings nor negated by them; it is peacefullyexpressed and peacefully withheld in its prismation in the intricate interweaving of thetranscendentals. Even the transcendental moments of “this” and “not this” have theirsource in God’s triune simplicity, his coincidence within himself of determinacy (asTrinity) and “no-thing-ness” (as “the all” – Sirach 43:27 – in whom we live, move, andare). The analogy thus permits the very difference of creatures from God, their integrityas what they are, and their ontological freedom to be understood as manifestations ofhow the Trinitarian God is one God. The analogy allows one to see being as at oncesimplicity and yet always already difference, not as a result of alienation or diremption,but because the fullness of being is God’s one movement of being, knowing, and lovinghis own essence; to be is to be manifest; to know and love, to be known and loved –all of this is the one act, wherein no essence is unexpressed and no contradictionawaits resolution. The analogy thus stands outside the twin poles of the metaphysics ofthe necessary: negation and identity. After all, purely dialectical and purely “identist”systems are ultimately the same; both confine God and world within an economy ofthe absolute, sharing a reciprocal identity. If God is thought as either total substanceor total absence, foundation or negation, “ground of Being” or static “Wholly Other,”God is available to thought merely as the world’s highest principle rather than as itstranscendent source and end.12.4 The Decline of the Christian Infinite1. The fully positive metaphysics of the infinite began its decline arguably as earlyas the fourteenth century, in certain new movements within scholastic thought. It had