{142} (cont’d)
II. Are they equivalent ways?
Therefore, we have three ways: the way of dispersion, the way of immanence, and the way of transcendence. Yet, Are {143} these three ways purely optative and equivalent? That is the second point of the question. I cannot repeat here what was covered in another place, when I tried, with or without success, to justify monotheism1. The diversity depends essentially on the line upon which the way to supremacy has been placed. In the end, this way is the one that proceeds from a relatively absolute reality, which man is, to the absolutely absolute reality we have called God. In this line there is only room for one divine reality, personal and transcendent. Therefore, the other two ways are simply something impossible as far as full conceptions of the divinity.
[Faith, I was saying, is optative. Yet, in that option there are moments and characteristics of the idea of God that appear in the history of religions, which are excluded by pure intelligence. Thus, for example, radical polytheism. The reality of God qua absolutely absolute reality, is unique. And this, not because it may consist in fundamenting the cosmos —then it could be plural—, but because it consists in fundamenting reality insofar as reality, and reality is unitary. Consequently, absolutely absolute reality, not as fundament of the cosmos, but as fundament of the whole world, is unique. Similarly, this absolutely absolute reality, precisely by being such, cannot be converted into a moment or a property of the relative realities, which constitute everything else, and much less of the relatively absolute reality, which the I constitutes. In other words, from sheer reason also the pure pantheisms are eliminated, understanding by pure pantheism the pantheism, which attributes to the {144} world the properties of God or to God the properties of the world. It is a metaphysical impossibility.
Nevertheless, even after having made these eliminations, there is a wide margin, within the idea of God, for the one God. Obviously, a wide margin from the theoretical point of view, because the truth is that all the monotheisms, which history registers are the same. Neither the monotheism of Islam, nor the Israelite monotheism, nor the Christian monotheism, as monotheisms, have a substantial difference. This is a fact, which must be taken into consideration. However, at least on principle, different hues of monotheism are not excluded. For example, monotheism is not incompatible with the existence of lower demiurges that might have as their mission to make the world, etc. However, from the point of view of the radical existence of an absolutely absolute reality, monotheism only has one form in history.]2
It must be remembered that I am not dealing here with monotheism from this point of view, but with a deeper monotheism such as the religious monotheism. It is a different thing, even though not independent from the above. And so, from this religious point of view I would have to affirm:
1) In the first place, as absolutely absolute reality there can only be one God. That is to say, the line of supremacy is concretely the line, which goes from the relatively absolute reality, which man is, to the absolutely absolute reality, which God is. That fact made this route quite difficult to travel. However, Why did it exist? Further down I expect to deal with this problem.
{145} 2) This absolute reality, insofar as founding, has an essential connection with this world. This is not pantheism, precisely because that absolutely founding divinity belongs in creation, not in the sense that it forms part of it or may be its legal quality, but in the sense that God in the depths of this creation is making it be what it is, precisely as natura naturans. [It is important to be cautious when the term pantheism is used. We are used to the pantheism I have called of the European type, in which actually it is understood that the totality of the real has a divine character. It finds its supreme expression in the metaphysics of Spinoza. There are other pantheisms. Primarily in Asia. For example, the brahminic pantheism, in which the identity between God and the world does not refer to the identity between what God is, and what the world is, but refers to a different moment: to the characteristic of subsistential sameness —sit venia verbo— that the world has. Certainly the world is not God through its extension, or through its colors or through its vicissitudes. Yet, the reality of the world has an itself, and this itself is precisely identical to the itself we call God, to the absolute itself. This is not metaphysically impossible. For a believer it is the reality of Christ. And it is a commonplace in theology to say that the Word could have been Incarnated in the entire creation. What happens is that, in order for this to occur, God has to begin by being God. Whatever relationship this God may have afterwards with the world, it will not actually be a relationship of identity. The world and God are not two, but neither are they one. It is a difference, which is beyond the concept of number, and therefore, cannot be expressed with the number two or the number one. The oneness of these two dimensions (they are not identical, however, they are also not two) is what {146} one term expresses: transcendence. God is transcendent to the world. However, transcendence does not mean that God is beyond the world, but that He is in the very depths of the world, as a fundamenting reality]3. This has expressed what there is of possible truth or error in every unitary and pantheist conception of the divinity.
3) In the third place, it is a question that this truth about God is a religious truth, a religious monotheism. Insofar as they affirm the absolutely absolute reality of God, the three great monotheisms of history —of Israel, Christianity, and Islam— are identical. But, as religious monotheisms the matter is different. Confronting them one can only appeal to an internal option of faith. It is not a matter of conceptual dialectics, but of an internal option by the faith. The only thing we can do facing this possibility of option with respect to religious monotheism is to ask, from the point of view of one that admits the existence of an absolutely absolute reality like God, In what does the internal essence of that radical and fundamental diversity of the ideas of God we have found, and described all along history and human societies, ultimately consist?
III. In what does the essence of diversity consist?
To this question I will only respond here with a first approximation. We shall soon see why. And as a first approximation the reply is as follows: the diversity of the ideas about God is ultimately the diversity of a {147} “towards” with respect to God. To this “towards” man is hurled by the presence itself of the divinity at the bottom of the human spirit, as I have maintained above. It is the palpitation of a personal God, unique, and transcendent in the depths of each human spirit. But, naturally, this God is not an internal event of consciousness, not even an object. However, the presence —if I may be permitted the expression— is in an auditive form: we take notice of Him. We also have a certain groping, a certain probing. Because of this we are hurled towards divinity itself. In this “towards” is inscribed, not in a fortuitous way, but intrinsically and essentially, the possibility of multiple ways. This possibility is absolutely essential. Any pluralism, regardless of its kind, religious or theologic, formally consists in the essential possibility, which religious thinking and the human spirit has, when placed in a religious situation, of arriving to God by different ways.
The plurality of concepts about God, to which the human spirit accesses through these different ways of the human spirit, is not a mere projection of man on God. It is quite easy and even legitimate to talk about anthropomorphism. But it is not the case of a projection, indeed precisely the reverse: more or less clumsily, with a thinking more or less phantasmic or conceptual, through lived experiences, that line is progressively determined upon which the supremacy has to be placed, for one to be hurled necessarily to find God.
Actually, this is a difficult task because the situations through which the human spirit passes, in different social bodies and different types of life, are absolutely dissimilar. For this reason homogeneity is difficult. Besides, there is the intrinsic and fundamental difficulty of distinguishing with precision the things, which constitute its reality. Due to this, of course, the line of supremacy {148} placed on the line of the absolutely absolute reality has been difficult to find. Be that as it may, it is the case of a conceptiveness on this line. But, a conceptiveness of what? One might think of a certain primary idea that afterwards became too complicated and was lost in history. That is not the case. It is also not the case of believing there is a primitive religion from which all the other religions would be but broken pieces and complications. In order to find it in its purity we would have to appeal precisely to the marginal elements of mankind, such as the pigmies. This was the thesis of Wilhelm Schmidt. But this is absolutely irrelevant. It is not a question of a primary idea or an originary religion. It is a question of a personal reality. With different ideas, but concerning the same personal reality. It is precisely what I would call the diffraction of the personal presence of God in the depths of the human spirit, through the modes of the human spirit.
Diffraction is a physical phenomenon. We are all familiar with the case of a ray of light coming through the slit in a door. The smaller the width of the slit the straighter the ray of light becomes. But when the width is so small that it has the same wavelength of the light ray, then the light does not pass in a straight line, but diffuses itself like a fan. To explain this, the idea of a ray of light is no longer useful, and it has to be substituted by the idea of a field of waves or a field of photons. This is the phenomenon of diffraction. The human spirit and the divine Spirit, in their radical diversity, coincide in one same order of quality: in being absolute. God is absolutely absolute, and the human spirit is relatively absolute. On this point concerning the absolute is where diffraction occurs formally and explicitly. It is not the diffraction of one idea of God, but the {149} diffraction of the very reality of God. And of this reality of God we already know through another avenue that it is the only one that can be accepted as an absolutely absolute reality, one, personal, and transcendent.
This diffraction means, in the first place, that this personal reality is one, that it is the same. And this personal reality who is always the same is de facto accessed through all the ways, through all the polytheisms, and through anything at all. As I said above, man accesses to this unique God really and actually, whether he knows it or not, whether he believes it or not. In the second place, man accesses from different situations by virtue of a convergent truth. It is the convergence of a way with its object. And, in the third place, if this is so, if there is no other reality that hurls us through different experiences towards a God who is de facto accessed, and who diffuses itself into different ideas, it means that none of these ideas is absolutely false. Not only because of the supreme reason —and in the end quite banal— that there is never anything in the human mind that may be absolutely false. That is rather evident, but it is not my point. I am referring to something completely different, i.e., that the strict and formal content of the non-monotheistic ideas about God is anchored in the reality of the monotheistic God. In this sense there is no idea that can be absolutely false because all, in diffraction, belong to the same luminous phenomenon. It is easy to talk about crass polytheism, but, What would have become of religious humanity if polytheism had not progressively enriched the idea of God? On the other hand, it is easy to say that one is not a pantheist, but, What would become of a monotheism that considered God to be separated from creation? The fact is that all these ideas of God are true in what they affirm, are assertive. In fact, {150} only monotheism is true as exclusive. That God may be on the Moon is something completely acceptable. What is not acceptable, of course, is the affirmation that he is nowhere, but in the Moon.
The fact that there is a multitude of religious ideas is the negative dimension of that which positively constitutes what I have called the diffraction. The diffraction of the unique divine reality, personal and transcendent, in the depths of the human spirit, and the entire universe. It appears then under multiple forms; and this multiplicity is essential as a possibility of the stepping march of religious thinking.
With this I have responded to the question with nothing but a first approximation. Because in fact religions are not only diverse, but also intrinsically historical.
_________________
1 He is referring to the first part of the 1971 seminar. The justification of monotheism by Zubiri can be found in El hombre y Dios (Man and God), pp. 115-164.
2 The text inside square brackets is taken from the first part of the same seminar of 1971.
3 The text inside square brackets comes from the 1968 seminar.