Per Caritatem

The history of black people, as mentioned previously, is simultaneously erased and re-written by the white imagination.  This new history defines what a black person is—intellectually inferior, in need of a (white) master, incapable of contributing positively to (white, European) society and culture.  The black person does not create this narrative, but is scripted into it and constructed by it.  Nonetheless, a time comes when a black person is confronted with the white mythos by way of a particular, concrete and often painful encounter and thus begins to accept and internalize the mythology.  In Fanon’s words, “[d]isoriented, incapable of confronting the Other, the white man, who had no scruples about imprisoning me, I transported myself on that particular day far, very far, from myself, and gave myself up as an object.”[1]

Fanon’s dramatic re-telling of the train episode and the pre-theoretical, racial assumptions apparent in the child’s remarks about Fanon serve a two-fold function.  First, the narrative calls attention to the deficiencies of Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal schema.  Second, the narrative highlights the way in which phenotypic or so-called “racial” differences—as negatively interpreted by the dominant group in a given historical epoch—close off or a least severely hinder the possibilities of freedom, as well as personal and cultural transformation for the oppressed group.   Hence, Fanon offers his historico-racial schema as a corrective.  Yet, his account also includes the racial-epidermal schema.  Whereas the historico-racial schema brings to light the historical contingencies and mythological narratives imposed upon blacks, the racial-epidermal schema speaks to the sedimentation of the so-called “black essence.”   In other words, once the new narrative of what it means to be a black person, which includes the various meanings that have been assigned to phenotypic differences, has become fixed, ossified and even naturalized in the social consciousness and cultural and legal practices, the black essence has been successfully created.[2]

Once we transition to the racial-epidermal schema, the all-pervasiveness of the white gaze—here understood broadly as the white mythos as manifest in the cultural consciousness and systematically expressed in the cultural institutions and practices of a given society—functions like a Panopticon, keeping the black person under constant inspection.  Though speaking of the incarcerated, Foucault’s description applies quite well to the black person’s situation vis-à-vis the white, European other, “he is the object of information, never a subject in communication.”[3] Once the racial-epidermal schema has come to fruition and the black essence has been fixed, the requisite racial machinery has likewise been established to ensure “proper” social boundaries and to keep the white mythology unchallenged.  In a way similar to the Panopticon’s ability to “disindividualiz[e] power” and distribute it through various socio-cultural and legal structures, institutions and people, Fanon’s schemata points to the systemic racial structures of colonized Europe.  These racialized disciplinary practices, though not identical to the disciplinary practices Foucault describes, nonetheless share close family resemblances with “a machinery that assures dissymmetry, disequilibrium, difference.” [4] The racial-epidermal schema, broadly construed to include these systemic, disindividualized power structures, enables even the most vulnerable and innocent members of society—the child on the train—to be an instrument of and even operate the racial machinery.

Notes

[2] On the movement and interpretation of Fanon’s schemata, I follow Weate, who views the racial epidermal schema as “a later stage in psychosomatic disintegration and alienation” (p. 174).  Weate describes the movement to the epidermal schema as Fanon’s attempt to trace a “genealogy of racial essentialism” (p. 173).  As he explains, “[t]he epidermal marks the stage where historical construction and contingency is effaced and replaced with the facticity of flesh.  The colour of skin now appears to be intrinsically significant.  With the outset of epidermalization, we are at the edge of being-for-others sedimenting into an essence, a ‘fact’ of blackness.  Fanon is therefore demonstrating that essentialism is a discourse derived from a perversive repression of history.  By marking the two stages of the ‘historico-racial’ and then the ‘racial-epidermal’, he is therefore contesting the view that essentialism, and in particular black essentialism, is grounded in a biological problematic.  For Fanon, the essentialization of blackness is the product of a concealed perversion of history. It is only once this concealment is consolidated (through epidermalization) that questions concerning the biological ground of race arise.  The distinction he makes between the two stages of schematization or epistemic enframing therefore allow biologistic discourses around race to be seen as phenomena derivative upon a prior perversion of history that is subsequently concealed” (“Fanon, Merleau-Ponty and the Difference of Phenomenology,” pp. 174-75).

[3] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 200.

[4] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 202.

Commentary on Saunders’s Essay
by Dr. Joel B. Hunter

Bret Saunders has made some intriguing suggestions into how one might appropriate the insights of contemporary phenomenologist Jean-Luc Marion to determine some possible thematic emphases for reading Augustine. For what kind of project? This is my first question, for it is not clear how Mr. Saunders delineates the areas of investigation he mentions. For example, he claims that Marion seeks “to develop a Catholic postmodern theology” by drawing from more ancient springs of Neoplatonism refracted in Christianity (or vice versa) to overcome musty Neoscholastic interpretations of the Fathers. But in the same section he claims that Marion’s ressourcement has a second edge with which to fashion a philosophy of “revelation/creation” that overcomes the bifurcations of modernity and the Heideggerean “silence” of postmodernity. Now, I would be one of the last persons to insist on dogmatically delineated fields of inquiry and impenetrable borders between Athens and Jerusalem; however, for the sake of preliminary theses, I’d like to get my bearings with what subject matter is under consideration. Or perhaps the question I have is this: what does Mr. Saunders think is Marion’s central concern, philosophy or theology? I can certainly cheer attempts to articulate a theologically inflected philosophy. And it may be impossible to do otherwise than a philosophically ordered theology. But is a “theological-phenomenology of the self” a bit of philosophy or theology primarily? I realize that this is a coarse question, and no doubt a bit impolite, but I think how one conceives the subject matter under consideration and the proper modes of inquiry (should they differ) will help order the significance of the several figures and philosophies Mr. Saunders appeals to for our orientation; e.g., phenomenology (what is phenomenology?), Neoplatonism (which one?), (post)modernism, Neoscholasticism, Dionysius the Aereopagite, Descartes, Heidegger, the ressourcement theologians, and so on. (In my own view, phenomenology-or at least Husserl’s philosophy-must be the touchstone for interacting with Marion, regardless of how one regards the importance of phenomenological philosophy generally.)

In the second half of the essay, Mr. Saunders focuses on a very interesting (and ancient) question; namely, “Can I know myself?” Mr. Saunders’ suggested line of inquiry is equally interesting, for he does not retread analyses which focus on the equivocity of the word ‘know’. Indeed, one kind of knowing is ruled out implicitly-ratio-that which “comprehends,” i.e., that which might be known exhaustively, without remainder. I cannot know myself objectively. My desires and actions exceed my rational grip on things, including myself, as St. Paul knows quite well (Romans 7). A person’s self-knowledge is opaque. So psychology and anthropology derive from ontology: what kind of being am I that chooses, deliberates, acts, and desires who I am and will be, all the while finding who I am and what I do-in some measure-incomprehensible? Mr. Saunders (and Marion) read St. Augustine’s answer in such a way that necessitates theism: I am a created being; finite and derivative, gaining understanding only insofar as I “participate” in the Creator. And this suggests one important distinction between philosophical and theological investigations of subjectivity that one might profit from highlighting: for philosophy, the Delphic maxim, “Know thyself,” is de rigueur; however, for theology, this must be a derivative question, approached, if at all, in light of one’s knowledge of God.

In Mr. Saunders’ reflections on capacitas in Augustine, I couldn’t help but be reminded of that principle central to Calvin’s theology: finitum non est capax infiniti (“the finite is incapable of the infinite”-a particular point of contention, for example, between Reformed and Lutheran dogmatics regarding the Eucharist). I wonder if Mr. Saunders (and Marion) think Calvin got capacitas (and Augustine) right in this formulation? For if so, then the implications for a philosophy of creation are significant for all Western Christian theologies. What is the relation between the Creator and the creation? Is there an inherent deficiency to creation (i.e., does the fact of a thing’s createdness entail defect)? Perhaps the nature of the Incarnation may become problematic. How does the divine “share in” or “participate in” the human…is such language even permissible? I think the answers to these questions require a starting point for the investigation that is christological (if the “theology-phenomenology of the self” is going to be specifically Christian). Moreover, given the Platonic sea in which Augustine and Calvin are swimming, what with the inflexible lexicon of infinite-finite, original-copy, absolute-relative, real-corporeal, and so on, one must ask to what extent such a reading of Augustine can be properly post-metaphysical, as Marion seeks to be.

The final theme Mr. Saunders takes up, and perhaps most likely to be unfamiliar to readers, is that of the saturated phenomenon. Marion deploys this technical term as summative of his describing the phenomenon of man’s own incomprehensibility to himself, but the association is cryptic. Mr. Saunders leaves the correlation allusive, which the limitation of space likely demands; however, a definition of a saturated phenomenon would help the reader at least begin to unpack what Marion might be getting at. If we’ve agreed that man’s own incomprehensibility to himself is a necessary ingredient for a genuine anthropology, then how does the formulation “man is a saturated phenomenon” further characterize and clarify the nature of this incomprehensibility? Quite apart from the question whether Marion is right about man being a saturated phenomenon, and whether Mr. Saunders is right about the analogy between the saturated phenomenon of revelation and Augustine’s analysis of memory, I think Mr. Saunders is right that this component in Marion’s phenomenology is a significant tool for a theology which seeks to be self-critical and undertake the task to begin again at the beginning (i.e., with that which has been revealed-again the necessity of christological beginnings!). Perhaps it is the imposition-character of the saturated phenomenon which one could elaborate. In Husserlian terms, the saturated phenomenon exceeds the commensurability always and already operative between that which is given to intuition and the intentionality that becomes aware of it. With that compact formulation, I must conclude these comments and thank Mr. Saunders for richly suggestive preliminary remarks and look forward to further elucidation of the themes he’s introduced for us here.

Below are additional thoughts/findings related to my ongoing Augustine/Gadamer paper. 

***

Interestingly, those who, in the spirit of B. Spinoza, adopt a strict grammatico-historical method of interpreting Scripture tend to embrace only the literal or historical sense of Scripture.  Likewise, those advocating this methodological stance often claim to interpret Scripture in an unbiased manner, free from all prejudices and uncritical claims of authority.  Postmoderns, of course, are very suspicious of this alleged neutrality, and from a certain perspective, premoderns are as well.  For example, as Henri de Lubac indicates (and Augustine would agree), the Church Fathers and medievals openly acknowledged their dependence on tradition and the interpretations handed down to the Church by the apostles and their successors.  “Right from the beginning, in the first century of the Church’s existence, at the time of the very first generation of Christians, it was a matter of Scripture being read or the word of God being heard in the Church and interpreted by Tradition.”[1]  So we see that the Church from its very inception openly acknowledged her dependence on the interpretative authority of her leaders-Christ being the chief interpreter, who in turn instructed the apostles, and they in turn faithfully taught others.  Moreover, neither the Church Fathers nor the medievals approached Scripture as just another human book or piece of literature to be studied or examined scientifically, much less as something to be dissected and treated atomistically.  Rather, Holy Scripture was first and foremost understood as the very word of God, which having many parts is nonetheless, one story, written ultimately by One Author, and culminating in One Person, the Lord Jesus Christ.[2]  In other words, instead of approaching Scripture as a collection of divergent and contradicting accounts, the Christian comes to Scripture assuming its unity because she understands both testaments as unfolding one drama whose main actor is Christ.[3] 

As Gadamer points out, in stark contrast with premodern hermeneutical practices, the modern Enlightenment critique is directed against the Christian tradition and in particular, against the authority of Scriptural tradition.  “In general, the Enlightenment tends to accept no authority and to decide everything before the judgment seat of reason.  Thus the written tradition of Scripture, like any other historical document, can claim no absolute validity; the possible truth of the tradition depends on the credibility that reason accords it.  It is not tradition but reason that constitutes the ultimate source of all authority.”[4]  Here, as well as in other places, Gadamer alludes to a kind of pride exhibited by modern Enlightenment figures in their claim to be free of all prejudices and to insist that we “accept no authority” but rather “decide everything before the judgment seat of reason.” If this is correct, then perhaps Gadamer’s critique of the Enlightenment shares another point of contact with Augustine’s hermeneutical views as elaborated in the Confessions, viz., the idea that virtue and vice affect one’s interpretative endeavors. In other words, it seems to be the case that at least part of Gadamer’s critique involves the claim that the Enlightenment proponents exhibited a lack of humility (and hence a vice) which blinded them from seeing that their own position was driven by a “prejudice against prejudice itself.”
Notes

[2] De Lubac in describing the two Testaments not as two books but rather as two dispensations or covenants also alludes to the progressive unfolding of Scripture in redemptive history.  “The goal of the one that is prior in time is to prepare the way for the second.  But this is not what merits them those respective terms of ‘old’ and ‘new.’  The New Testament does not take its name solely from the fact that it comes second in time. It is not merely ‘modern.’  It is the last word, in an absolute sense [...] The New Covenant is not repeated.  It is completed and fulfilled once and for all” (Medieval Exegesis, p. 227).

[3] As Thomas Martin observes, Augustine communicates the unity of Scripture in the way he chooses to structure book XII of the Confessions.  “The very tapestry of scriptural texts that permeate the entire narrative where Old Testament verses and allusions are inextricably intertwined with New Testament verses and allusions becomes an operative demonstration of the unity between the Old and the New Testaments and the vitality of their interrelationship.  Book Twelve’s exploration of the opening words of Genesis is done by way of a deluge of New Testament citations, and once again the careful reader knows that this is not simply rhetorical amplification or incidental ornamentation.  What is being demonstrated is the unity of the Bible, the very antithesis of a Manichean reading of the Bible” (“Book Twelve:  Exegesis and Confessio,” p. 190). 

[4] Truth and Method, p. 272. 

As I noted in a previous post, a number of postmodern thinkers have become interested in negative theology, giving special attention to Dionysius. For example, Jean-Luc Marion has found Dionysius a valuable resource in the development of his own theology. In this post, I want to briefly mention some of the ways that Marion incorporates Dionysian thought into his own project. Both Dionysius and Marion are concerned with upholding God’s transcendence and avoiding conceptual idolatry of any sort. For Marion, there are two basic orientations to world: (1) an iconic consciousness or (2) an idolatrous consciousness. As Marion explains, “[t]he idol measures the divine to the scope of the gaze of he who then sculpts it.” Hence, an idol is produced when we attempt to conceptually circumscribe God, which is in essence to limit God to the human gaze. In our attempts to measure God by human understanding, we become trapped in a kind of self-reflexivity in which the idol becomes a mirror that reflects the human gaze back to itself. In contrast, the icon allows one’s gaze to move through the icon (visible) to that which is invisible. That is,

“[w]hat characterizes the icon painted on wood does not come from the hand of man but from the infinite depth that crosses it—or better, orients it following the intention of a gaze. The essential in the icon […] comes to it from elsewhere. […] Contemplating the icon amounts to seeing the visible in the very manner by which the invisible that imparts itself therein envisages the visible—strictly, to exchange our gaze for the gaze that iconistically envisages us.”

Following a Dionysian emphasis on the positive value of symbols, Marion likewise underscores that signs and images are not to be despised, as they can and should be used as contemplative aids in our worship of God. In fact, not only does creation itself function iconically to reveal the invisible things of God through that which is visible (Rom 1:20), but Christ Himself is said to be the Icon of God (Col 1:15). Moreover, given the kind of creatures that we are, it is fitting that we embrace signs and images which simultaneously hide and reveal that which exceeds this, so to speak, “clothing” of the formless.

Marion’s aim is of course to bring us into a more iconic consciousness, which in turn allows God to manifest himself according to his terms (not ours). If we embrace an iconic orientation, then, as Marion puts it, we must abandon any attempt to measure the divine by our own human gaze. Here Marion again seems very much in harmony with Dionysius. That is, for both Marion and Dionysius, there is no concept that adequately captures God. God, who is beyond being, is ipso facto beyond definition, and Marion is at pains to free God from our limiting (idolatrous) gaze. As Robyn Horner observes, Marion both continues within the Dionysian trajectory and also furthers the conversation with his own distinctive contributions. That is, in addition to drawing our attention to conceptual idols, Marion likewise speaks of conceptual icons as a way of thinking God in a non-idolatrous way. This path does not move “through the traditional metaphysical route that focuses on being, but through the mystical route of love.” Marion also adds to the discussion of icons, the idea of our being gazed upon and hence transformed by the other. Instead of a self-reflexive gaze necessitated by the idol, the icon breaks the circle of reflexivity and “gives the invisible to thought, not on the basis of the capacities of the metaphysical ego, but on its own terms.” Contrasting the two gazes, Marion writes that with the icon

“our gaze becomes the optical mirror of that at which it looks only by finding itself more radically looked at: we become a visible mirror of an invisible gaze that subverts us in the measure of its glory. The invisible summons us, ‘face to face, person to person’ (1 Cor. 13:12), through the painted visibility of its incarnation and the factual visibility of our flesh: no longer the visible idol as the invisible mirror of our gaze, but our face as the visible mirror of the invisible. […] It [the icon] transforms us in its glory by allowing this glory to shine on our face as its mirror—but a mirror consumed by that very glory, transfigured with invisibility, and by dint of being saturated beyond itself from that glory, becoming, strictly though imperfectly, the icon of it: visibility of the invisible as such.”

Though the icon indeed “opens distance,” it never claims nor pretends to exhaust God or to produce any kind of comprehensive knowledge of the incomprehensible.

In recent years a number of postmodern thinkers have become interested in negative theology and Neoplatonism. For example, Jean-Luc Marion has found within negative theology an inexhaustible resource that harmonizes well with his own theological and phenomenological project. Jacques Derrida has also engaged negative theology; however, he seems to have a somewhat ambivalent attitude toward it and particularly dislikes what he interprets in Dionysius’ thought as the retention of a “transcendental signified.” As Eric Perl explains,

“Deconstruction is fundamentally a theory of signification, which attacks the (supposedly) traditional notion that a signifier (word, text, or image) refers to a signified, the meaning which itself is prior to and independent of the signifier. Derrida calls this the “transcendental signified”: the meaning underlying the expression, the archetype underlying the image, that which is not sign but “pure signified.” On the traditional assumption, any system of meaning, be it a written text or the cosmos itself, has such a transcendental signified. In the case of a text, it is the author’s intent, what he means to express; in the case of the world, understood as a system of signs, it is God” (“Signifying Nothing,” p. 125).

Derrida takes the description above to be characteristic of Western metaphysics, and thus his own project attempts to show that no such transcendental signified can be found outside, beyond or prior to the text or world. In the end, all we have are signs. “We can never transcend signs to arrive at a pure signified which is not itself a sign” (Ibid., p. 126). Here is where Derrida’s attraction to negative theology and Neoplatonism comes in focus. As we have seen, in Dionysian thought, God is beyond being and thought. That which can be thought exists and that which is is not God but “only an image, sign, or expression.” Hence, for Derrida, the common bond between negative theology and deconstruction is their mutual agreement that everything in the realm of existence and hence thought is sign all the way down. No transcendental signified or ultimate meaning is accessible, but remains forever deferred. “But whereas for Neoplatonism this implies that the world is infinitely meaningful, the manifestation of God, for deconstructionism it implies that the world is meaningless” (Ibid., p. 126).

Though Derrida has no doubt contributed significantly to contemporary thought and his insights have and should continue to be appropriated, one wonders whether he has correctly interpreted Neoplatonism and negative theology particularly as manifest in Dionysius. For Dionysius, as is the case with Plotinus, God is both beyond being (transcendent) and excessively present (immanent). As Dionysius explains,

“God is […] known in all things and as distinct from all things. He is known through knowledge and unknowing. Of him there is conception, reason, understanding, touch, perception, opinion, imagination, name, and many other things. On the other hand he cannot be understood, words cannot contain him, and no name can lay hold of him. He is not one of the things that are and he cannot be known in any of them. He is all things in all things and he is no thing among things. He is known to all from all things and he is known to no one from anything (DN VII.3).

Here Dionysius highlights both creation (i.e., everything that exists) as theophany, where everything that is manifests God, and God’s radical transcendence in light of the fact that He is beyond the order of being, the created realm. Derrida seems to focus only on the “and” side of the Dionysian world, i.e., on God as wholly other—other in the sense of a transcendental signified, a being beyond Being who is still entangled in a signifier/signified dualism. Hence, the Derridean read of Dionysius is that of “a kind of ‘mystical iconoclast,’ who calls us to strip away all created symbols and images and attain a non-symbolic vision of and union with God as ‘pure signified’” (Ibid., p.) Dionysius, however, in no way suggests that we must finally do away with all symbols in order to encounter God. “This divine ray can enlighten us only by being upliftingly concealed in a variety of sacred veils which the Providence of the Father adapts to our nature as human beings” (CH I.2). Hence, we experience God not by peeling away or overcoming signs, but by embracing the signs as icons. In other words, God is present and manifest in the signs and “sacred veils” that both conceal and reveal Him. Derrida has done a superb job of describing the concealing aspects of Dionysius; however, it seems that he has not properly understood the iconic function of signs.

The following analogies constitute “sketchy” and “nascent” thoughts regarding our embracing rather than eschewing the human element in Scripture, while simultaneously not allowing the human aspect to swallow up the divine and not simply giving “lip service” to the biblical notion of God as Lord over all (including history and the entire process of revelation).

Beginning first with a musical example. Let’s says that the famous cellist, Yo-Yo Ma is given a Bach piece to play, and Russian cellist is given the same piece as well. Both play the same notes on the written page, yet we can hear a difference between the two performances. That is, we can sense that, e.g., Yo-Yo Ma is playing the piece because we recognize his “touch” just as we recognize the familiar voice of our spouse or friend. This personality element in no way makes the piece unintelligible or defiled, but rather adds something beautiful. If you are not convinced, consider the difference between a symphonic piece programmed into a computer or synthesizer verses a piece performed by live musicians. The former will be executed with mathematical precision—not one mistake will occur. However, the effect is a “stiffness” and “inauthenticity,” as we sense a loss of the living, breathing, human element that animates music. The live performance, on the other hand, will indeed contain “mistakes,” slight bendings of notes that cause the tuning to be off here and there, slight rhythmic glitches etc. Yet, with the live performers there is a dynamic and improvisatory element (yes, even in classical music) that comes to life in the performance—e.g., the way that the orchestra intimately follows the crescendos and dimuendos of a solo by the violinist.

Additionally, I am not convinced that the personal element somehow stands between the “original” and the interpretation in a way that harms the (multi-layered) meaning. When we consider Scripture, we see that God has purposed that human personality be part of His work and is so intimately and dynamically involved in his revelatory activity that the levels of meaning that He desires are neither skewed nor lost. Turning to a contrasting (musical) example, Edgar Varese (a French-born composer during the rise of modernism in America) in many ways exemplifies the modern quest for “objectivity.” Varese’s music gradually became more and more machine-like until he eventually proposed using actual machines instead of people to “get rid” of the “middle man” (the interpreter) – the one causing a “block” between what he heard in his head and how it the music is actually played.

As many Christian thinkers have brought to our attention, we as Christians ought to (in the spirit of Augustine) glean the postmodern “gold.” Along these lines, John Frame writes, “postmodernism has rejected fundamental norms for historical study […] the discussion of postmodernism has made it clear that even the commitment to consistency is not religiously or even culturally neutral. Is logic in the tradition of Aristotle and Russell, after all, a necessity for human thought, or is it merely a form of Western, linear thinking, by which wealthy cultures oppress those who think in paradox?” With Frame, I would agree that postmodernism’s rejection of modernism’s lust for “objectivity” is something that we as Christians can (and should) maximize in our apologetic (and of course place within the proper presuppositional context—i.e., within the Christian metanarrative–i.e., Creation, Fall, Redemption in Christ, and Final Consumation of all things in Christ–[not "metanarrative" in Lyotard's sense]).

A second analogy involves a brief consideration of the ways in which scientific paradigms have changed and been replaced by new paradigms over the course of history. Many physicists today would simply consider Newton’s laws as “obvious,” yet in surveying the history of science during the 16th and 17th centuries one would quickly recognize that that prior to Newton, such laws were anything but “obvious.” The paradigm was in no way “fixed” and given this situation any number of solutions to e.g., the problem of motion, were theoretically possible. Prior to Newton, many tried to account for motion in terms of an Aristotelian paradigm, yet this worldview was considered too laden with teleological notions and mystical “movers” exerting force over objects so as to keep them in motion. Then there were those who preferred the Cartesian account of the universe as a mechanistic, clock-work system. Descartes himself thought that he was doing the Church a service with his mechanistic theory and other writings, as he believed that his findings helped to support the position of a rational universe. However, Descartes’ mechanistic framework (as Hume rightly observed) actually works completely contrary to foundational doctrines of the Christian faith (e.g. God’s providence).

Combing the music and philosophy of science snippets, it seems that we have to admit that our paradigms (scientific or otherwise) have been “wrong.” Why could we not think of these different worldviews (i.e., Aristotelian or Cartesian or Newtonian etc.) in a way similar to how we view the divine/human element in Scripture, i.e., God is the Lord of history over these various and changing (scientific) worldviews, and He (knowing the end from the beginning) knows what paradigm will best comport with the corresponding conceptual categories of a certain period in history, thus allowing (ordaining?) that paradigm to basically “prevail,” which in turn provides a certain unity and explanatory power necessary for that time period. Such a suggestion seems to me to harmonize with our idea of God as incomprehensible and with e.g. a Poythress-inspired kind of multiperspectivalism. Stating this in a colloquial manner, given our inability to “wrap our minds around” this Triune God, his revelation, the Truth etc., God—who of course has known this from the “beginning,”—has accommodated us accordingly.