S E L F A N D W O R L D AS S T A R T I N G

P O I N T S I N T H E O L O G Y

The most striking feature of the present situauon in theology is the radical divergence that exists between the existential and phenomenological approaches to the problem of God and tran- scendence on the one hand, and the metaphysical and cosmological approaches on the other. Behind this divergence stands the fun- mental contrast between starting points. Much depends on the place given to the self and the world in raising the question of God. According to the existential type of theology as represented, for example, by Kierkegaard, God is to be understood only in and through the predicament of the existing self; God is envisioned as the reality who resolves the problematic situation of man by reconciling him with himself through the model of a sacrificial love. The cosmological dimension is missing. Speculative or metaphysical theology, moreover, is frowned upon because it is said to turn God into an "object" or an "object of knowledge" or both. These conse- quences are regarded as unfortunate, because God is beyond the subject-object distinction. At the other pole stand the cosmologi- cally oriented theologies which start with the processes of nature and seek to reach God by taking natural existence as a premise. The continuing Thomist tradition, and the emerging theologies of process having roots in Whitehead and Peirce exemplify this approach. The aim of the latter positions is to show how an under- standing of the world and indeed of all natural existence, requires reference to God or a transcending reality. It is characteristic of cosmologically oriented positions to deny that the self furnishes a privileged starting point for dealing with the question of God.

I am purposely overdrawing the contrast in describing the approaches based on the two starting points, partly because I believe that in one point at least, they are irreconcilable, and partly in order to underline a basic incoherence in the present theological situation as a prelude to overcoming it. I f the positions

98 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

were in fact mutually exclusive and without any point of contact whatever, it would be futile to attempt to connect them in some intelligible and fruitful way. If, that is to say, self and world had no connections, the two types of theology would have to remain utterly distinct. I shall show that this is not the case. Overcoming the opposition between the divergent viewpoints is one of the important intellectual tasks of our time. This task, however, can be accom- plished only if we first clearly understand what the opposition is and means; prior to synthesis there is need for analysis, or, as Hegel so well expressed the point, first we distinguish and then we unite.

I.

Theology in the many forms in which it has made its appearance - natural, revealed, philosophical, mystical, moral - points to the basic enterprise of expressing God, the Religious Object, through discourse which is (a) a medium of communication between distinct centers of experience, and (b) a form of intelligibility. The "theos" points to the reality to be expressed, and the "logos" is both means and medium of expression. The "logos" element is twofold in its import; on the one hand, it means a language or set of signs in use in some historical speech community, and, on the other, it means a form of intelligibility in the sense that the language interprets the "what" or nature of the Divine, and is aimed at expressing that nature in a controlled form involving concepts and rules for relating concepts to each other. Theology, therefore, is to be distinguished from the more immediate forms of expression found in primary religious literature such as prayer, hymns of praise, parables, sacred history, lamentations, confessions etc. These more immediate forms are material for theology, but by themselves they do not constitute it, because theology implies systematic consistency 1 and conceptual control which means, not the mere acceptance, but the analysis and synthesis of these materials. Theology, moreover, passes beyond

I speak of "systematic consistency" and not of "system" because of the widespread belief that a "system" is a pretentious body of final truth that is closed. The point is rather that theology aims at consistency in statement, an aim that can be achieved only by a "putting together" (sustema) of many different statements for critical comparison. The so-ealled "piecemeal" approach to what is basically a comprehensive subject does not allow for critical comparison.

SELF A N D W O R L D AS S T A R T I N G P O I N T S IN T H E O L O G Y 99

previous forms of expression to constructive reflection on the experience underlying the religious meanings that have already been expressed. It is common knowledge that for the theologies developed in the western tradition, philosophical concepts and principles were used and relied upon to a very considerable extent.

The concern of the present discussion is to consider the two fundamentally different starting points for theology developed in the western tradition - self and world- to identify these starting points in theology on the contemporary scene, and then to decide about their relation to each other. Are the theologies based on these starting points nmtually exclusive? Can one type be included in the other? Can they be harmonized in some way? The immediate reason for putting these questions stems from the fact that the two types have often stood in opposition to each other, or at least in considerable tension. We need, therefore, to know whether the opposition and tension represent the final truth, or whether it can be overcome in some way. The point is of the utmost importance for contemporary attempts at reconstituting theology.

As a preliminary, it is essential to be clear about the meaning of a "starting point." I mean to use the term in the sense of an arch? or principle as first suggested by Aristotle in his Metaphysics (Book V. i Io i2b ft.). He distinguished several senses of a "beginning" among which is the idea of a point from which a thing or topic is first comprehensible. In describing "self" and "world" as starting points, I mean to take them as principles or points from which the nature and existence of God are to become comprehensible. There is no need to suppose, as Aristotle claimed, that a principle must be certain in the sense of an ultimate premise known intuitively and to be used in a demonstration. It is true that Augustine, whose Trinitarian theology is the classical example of the approach through the self, regarded the consciousness of existence, knowledge and will as certain and thus as the proper starting point. And at a later time, Aquinas regarded the existence of finite things - the world - as a certain premise from which to begin the demonstration of the divine existence. If, however, we do not hold that theology must follow the model of a deductive system starting with intuitively certain premises, we need maintain only that self and world represent the beginnings of a process of experience and reflection that is ultimately to issue in God. The beginning is to be taken a~

IOO INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

"privileged" vis a vis other realities only in the sense that it is the locus for raising the question of God and at the same time affords an intelligible way of access to that which is not immediately accessible. For unless we adopt a thoroughly mystical position according to which God is apprehended without a medium of expression, our starting point must of necessity be other than God. Self and world have classically served as such other than starting points.

II.

The classical model of a theology in which reflection on the self forms the starting point is to be found in the philosophical theology of Augustine. Three basic features of his thought may be abstracted and used as reference points both for understanding his position and for comparing it with its main cosmological counterpart as represented by the system of Thomas Aquinas. The three features are: (I) the starting point and aim of theology; (2) the form of thought or reflection required; and (3) the conception of God which is involved. Let us consider each in turn.

I. I f a text were needed for expressing the Augustinian starting point, it would be found in the words of Anselm, "Enter the inner chamber o f thy mind." The quest for God as the eternal, immutable and self-sufficient, is a reflective quest that aims at the recovery of a first principle that is always present but not always grasped and acknowledged as such. "Don' t go outside yourself, return into yourself," says Augustine. "The dwelling place of truth is in the inner m a n . . , press on, therefore, toward the source from which the light of reason itself is kindled. ''2 The goal of the reflective process is the discovery of a prius which is the creative source of existence, of knowledge and of good. As prius, this source does not take its place among other items which depend on it. Augustine frequently identifies this prius with Truth or Light; it cannot be adequately described in terms of any category of discursive reason (scientia), but it can be apprehended through reflective analogies derived from the analysis of self-consciousness. The crucial role of the self becomes especially clear when we realize that Augustine based his understanding of God - especially in terms of the Trini-

De Vera Rel. 39.72.

SELF A N D W O R L D AS S T A R T I N G P O I N T S IN T H E O L O G Y I O I

tarian view - on the certain knowledge which the self is said to have of itself through reflective analysis?

The aim of theology, according to this view, is not theoretical knowledge or understanding - although there is a marked con- templative strain in Augustine - but rather the recovery of the presence of God as creative source and the consequent integration of personality. The purely religious function of theology is em- phasized; the understanding which faith seeks never becomes the end of a purely intellectual drive such as the thrust of curiosity or the desire to know, taken in a sense that ignores the transformation of the will and the reorientation of the person towards the Good. There is a self-referential character in theology for Augustine; the self who initiates the quest, aims at the recovery of a reality upon which that same self depends for its existence, its knowledge and its ultimate good.

2. The distinction Augustine draws between scientia and sapientia is crucial for determining the form of thought required for the reflective process. Scientia denotes knowledge gained through sense perception and inference in accordance with certain normative concepts and logical canons. Scientia results from the employment of discursive reason. Sapientia, on the other hand, means the philoso- phical or reflective analysis of the fundamental elements of conscious- ness; thought in this form issues in an apprehension of its own Source. The reflective process involved is "dialectical" in the sense that it leads to apprehension or vision; this form of thought is not demonstrative in the sense of proof or what has sometimes been called "linear inference." Augustine did at times speak of proving the existence of God and Anselm, his successor, transformed the Augustinian prius into the object of his famous ontological argument. But in contrast with Anselm's method, and even with his own procedure at times, Augustine generally did not think of proof or demonstration. Instead, he depended on the reflective process to lead the mind to "see" what is there to be recovered, if one follows out the pattern of reflection. "Understanding" is the result; it is neither proof nor demonstration as exhibited in scientia. The process of understanding is, again, self-referential in the sense that each individual is attending to and analyzing his own self-conscious-

3 See esp. De Cir. Dei, X I , 26; De Trin. X V I2. 2 i .

IO2 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

hess. This means that the "journey of the soul to God", as Bonaven- tura later expressed the Augustinian reflection, is the leading of the mind to a vision; there is no arguing from data stemming from the world of nature to God as a supreme cause.

3. It is an error to suppose that all the theologians in the western tradition understood the term "God" in the same sense. The familiar theological language of the tradition has led us to suppose more agreement than actually existed. Augustine's understanding of God as Verum, Bonum, Esse emphasizes a quite different aspect of deity than the actus purus of Thomas Aquinas, for the latter is a dynamic conception while the former stresses the structural aspect, the contemporaneous pattern that transcends time and yet is the Source of time. Augustine's concept of God is conditioned by the mystical trend in his thought - God is said to be beyond the subject- object distinction that determines the operation of discursive reason. Since God is beyond that distinction, he cannot be described as, in the strict sense, an individual. The recovery of God as creative source is the recovery of God as Veritas; vestigia Dei can be found in all finite realities, including the world, man and reason itself, but the Veritas as an afch~ cannot itself be conceived as one more individual reality among others. At this point Augustine's theology becomes negative; the discursive categories do not apply and such apprehension of God as is possible for man can be had only through the analogies of selfhood. Man's awareness of his own existence, knowledge and will provide the only means of under- standing the triune God. That the God of Augustine transcends all finite reality is not in question; the exact form of the distinction remains a problem.

We may now compare, by means of the three reference points selected, the Augustinian approach to God through the self with the other classic western theology, that of Aquinas, which took as its starting point the world of finite things. (I) With regard to the starting point and aim of the Thomist theology, we encounter a striking contrast with the past which at once sets it apart from the approach characteristic of the Augustinian tradition. Whereas Augustine made central the religious quest of the individual self so that the aim of his theology could be taken as the search for self- fulfillment, Thomas aimed at producing a Summa of theological knowledge, embracing both the knowledge of God which can be

SELF AND WORLD AS STARTING POINTS IN THEOLOGY 10 3

attained by natural reason and that revealed knowledge available through the sacred writings and their interpretation at the hands of previous theologians. For Thomas the reflecting self is neither the starting point, nor the special channel of theology. As a science, moreover, theology is, for Thomas, a matter of explanation in the sense that reasons and causes must be found for the world, its creatures and the relations they bear to each other. Theology functions as a body of ultimate explanation which is why Thomas places faith in the genus of knowledge (epist?m?) where it is forced to become a mean between opinion and certainty. Thomas, follow- ing Aristotle, has a sense-bound epistemology which begins with what is prior in knowledge, that is, with what is better known to us, as a basis for reaching knowledge of God. This better known starting point (arch?) is the world of sense (S .T . I . I 2 . 19) taken as both a natural existence, and as exhibiting certain specific traits such as order and motion. Since we do not know the essence of God, we must start with the effects of God as they are manifest to us, and these effects take the place of a definition as a starting point (S.T. I. i, 7 Rep. Obj. i). The world figures in this position primarily as an effect, which implies that God is known through it primarily as a cause. The starting point with the objects of sense replaces the retirement into the self; self-consciousness belongs entirely to the created order and it affords no special insight into the nature of God.

2. Just as the starting point and aim of theology in Thomas differ sharply from those of Augustine, so does the form of thought required. Theology for Thomas is primarily a scientia, and while he does maintain that theology is a wisdom, or sapientia, (S. T. I. I. 6), Augustine's distinction between the two is blunted so that sapientia no longer has the special function which it assumed in the earlier system. For Thomas, the human intellect can attain to intellectual knowledge, including knowledge of self-consciousness, but such knowledge is no "nearer", so to speak, to the knowledge of God and no more "revelatory" than sensible knowledge in the form of generalizations from experience. Intellectual knowledge, no less than sensible, belongs to the order of the created intellect. For Thomas, the movement of thought is a movement from effect to cause; the principle of causality or sufficient reason is the primary logical canon, and, while the first principles of theology are not demonstrated, theology is nevertheless said to be an argumentative

10 4 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

science aimed at establishing conclusions that follow from the articles of faith. Whereas Augustine sought to lead the mind through the medium of reflection on sapientia, or first principles, to the presence of the Uncreated Light, Thomas aimed at demonstrating in terms of scientia the existence of God as the cause of the world, plus several characteristics that are said to be known through the inferential process. Augustine, the Platonic rationalist, appears, curiously enough, as the proponent of an experiential process of reflection lifting the individual mind to the sense of the presence (i.e. the experience of) God, while Thomas, the proponent of know- ledge based on sense experience, has God at the end of an objective inference (at least in connection with the divine existence) which is valid logically for all men regardless of their individual experience. Thomas aimed at attaining objective knowledge of God and he regarded theology as the supreme science; Augustine aimed at bringing the individual to a vision and an acknowledgment of God as the source of his own being.

3. Starting, as he does, with the world and finite existence as fact from which to infer God, Thomas did not conceive of God primarily in terms of human self-consciousness, or of the arch~ embodied in sapientia - Verum, Bonum, JEsse. Instead, Thomas con- ceived of God primarily as an Individual standing over against the world. ~ Augustine was wary of this sort of characterization of God because he did not want to describe God as one Individual among others. Individuality, for Augustine, is a category of the discursive understanding and is thus inadequate to express the divine nature.

The contrast in question can best be seen in connection with Thomas' rejection of the ontological argument. Without entering into a full scale discussion of the grounds of that rejection, we may take note of a point not always emphasized. In considering the proposition that the existence of God is self-evident, Thomas men- tions the identification of God and Veritas as held by Augustine and Anselm (S. T. i. 2. i) and claims that while "the existence of truth

Those who suppose that Thomas regarded matter as the sole principle of individuation may be puzzled by this statement. The fact is, however, that matter is not his sole principle. Quite apart from rational individuals who have control over their acts, and are thus individuals, the Persons of the Trinity and God represent individuals in a sense that does not involve matter; the Persons are individuals in virtue of their peculiar relations and God is an Individual in virtue of the fact that the divine form is not receivable in matter ( S . T . I . 2 9. 3; cf. I. 3 o. 4)-

SELF AND \ u AS STARTING POINTS IN THEOLOGY IO 5

in general is self-evident," the existence of "a Primal Truth is not evident to us." The point is crucial; its implications go far beyond the criticism of the ontological argument. Whereas the meditative approach through self-consciousness issues in a creative source to be understood only through the principles of sapientia that are beyond discursive categories, the approach to God through the world leads to an individual cause required for explaining the one existent cosmos. Thomas transformed the Veritas of Augustine into "truth in general" which belongs to the sphere of the created intellect; God, on the other hand, is neither a principle such as Veritas nor a reality beyond description in discursive categories. For Thomas, God is an Individual, as the world is an individual. Under- standing God through the world is the understanding of God as the Primal Individual who is the highest cause of the world.

III .

No attempt has been made in the foregoing discussion to show that treating the problem of God by starting with either the self or the world must result in theologies of precisely the form which did in fact result. It seems clear, however, that the respective theologies were determined in large measure by their starting points, even if we can envisage, and even point, to other theologies that constitute exceptions. What we lose in philosophical necessity, however, we gain in the relevance of historical fact, for the counterparts of the two types of theology, grounded in the same two starting points are to be found on the contemporary scene. This fact by itself shows that the two starting points have roots in human experience and that neither is easily reducible to the other. The problem of God may be posed from either standpoint; the question that remains is how the two approaches are to be related to each other.

The heirs of the Augustinian approach in contemporary theology are to be found in the existentially oriented positions, exemplified in Kierkegaard and Tillich among others. The starting with the self in these positions is, however, developed in a way that is at once more purely religious in emphasis and less contemplative. Augustine could still think in terms of a noetic, dialectic develop- ment of experience through thought, a literal leading of the self to a visio Dei. In the modern representatives, the dialectic becomes

IOG INTERNATIONAL J O U R N A L FOR PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

"existential," and involves the contrast of different and competing styles of life. The religious and ethically decisive features of the self are made central - Being, in the sense in which it is significant for theology, becomes for Tillich "my being" and in Kierkegaard the self as existing (Existenz) or "subjective" becomes the starting point of the religious quest. The problem of God is recast; we do not search for a Being who may or may not "exist", but for a Ground or a Power beyond the contrast between existence and non- existence, able to fulfill the religious concern and provide the ground for an eternal happiness. To think of God as a Being who "exists" is still to think of God largely in theoretical or non-existential terms, as a Being among others in a cosmic system. For Kierkegaard, God does not "exist" because God is Eternal; for Tillich, God does not "exist" because God is the Ground and the source of the "courage to be" which is beyond the god of theism. In both cases the problem of God is understood in and through the experience of man the religious animal, for it is only in man that the religious question becomes explicit. While Tillich sets man in a historical, social, cultural context to a far greater extent than Kierkegaard was able to do, the fact remains that for both thinkers the cosomological dimension is either secondary in importance or it is entirely neglected. God is envisaged wholly as a religious problem; the extent to which God figures in the interpretation of natural exist- ence does not constitute a matter of primary concern.

The heirs of the cosmological approach in contemporary theology are the Thomists, the speculative theists and the philosophers of creativity and process. The number would no doubt be larger, were it not for the fact that philosophical interpretation of nature (to say nothing of theological) has been frowned upon in recent decades, with the result that the special sciences have come to be regarded as the total and final interpreter of natural existence. From the theological side, however, the problem of God's relation to the world cannot be ignored, for that reality which is God must be a reality that is related in an intimate way to everything that exists, and not only man and his experience. Peirce, Whitehead, Weiss, Hartshorne among others have not neglected the task implicit in this requirement, although each interprets it in his own way. Simple deductions of the existence of God from the cosmologic- al premises are no longer the order of the day. Instead, the aim is

SELF AND WORLD AS STARTING POINTS IN THEOLOGY 10 7

to show how an adequate interpretation of natural existence leads to an acknowledgment of the need for a reality that is related to everything that happens. For Whitehead, this meant a principle of selection among competing alternatives with respect to the entire cosmic advance. For Peirce, it meant a coordinator of the universes

- first, second, third - constituting the cosmic scheme, and a delicate adjustment or adaptation between the cosmos as intelli- gible, or open to rational interpretation, and the sign-functioning animal who can interpret it. Contemporary cosmologically oriented theology tries to understand God as the supreme exemplification of the categorial scheme through which all natural existence is interpreted. This attempt runs counter to any form of negative theology; God, as Whitehead expressed it, cannot be a principle invoked in order to save the collapse of a philosophical scheme.

Further elaboration of the differences between the theologies of self and world will not bring us any closer to solving the problem of relating one to the other. To that we must turn, but not until it becomes clear that there is one sense in which the two approaches are irreducible, namely, in the sense that they have fundamentally different aims. The difference is bound up with a fundamental difference between religion and philosophy. The basic truth in the approach through the self is that only in man's experience does the basically religious concern for the ground and goal of life become fully explicit. The question of God may be said to be raised by the existence of the cosmos and its constituent features, but only man can experience the question of the meaning of his being as one which he must resolve in some way for the fulfillment of himself. Man can view the cosmos as something whose existence is a wonder and which needs in some sense to be explained, but he cannot readily see the cosmos as standing in need of either forgiveness or regene- ration in the sense in which he experiences that need and the consequent anxiety that comes from awareness of the difficulty with which it can be overcome. Theologies of the self focus the religious problem and see the problem of God primarily as a religious problem. Whatever else theology is and does, it must remain responsive to that religious problem. Cosmologically oriented theologies, on the other hand, have almost invariably seen the problem of God as a philosophical problem in which the ultimate aim of intelligibility overcomes the aim of that total self-fulfillment

I 0 8 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

which is, in religious language, the salvation of the soul. Both aims are legitimate and important, but one is not the other. The fact is that man needs both the salvation and the intelligibility and it is just because the two are not identical that an understanding of their relation becomes a special object of concern. The religious quest through the self, when unrelated to the cosmological problem as focused by philosophical thought and science, has the tendency towards obscurantism and the rejection of objective rational criticism. The philosophical quest through the world, on the other hand, has a tendency towards rationalism in which the theoretical aim overcomes the subjective concern of the person to find self-fulfill- ment. Each approach needs the other; our task, therefore, is to connect them. I now propose three basic considerations which support the conclusion that, since self and world are essentially related, the two theological approaches must be essentially related.

IV.

I. Man is in the world and has continuities with it. Man is in the world understood both as natural, physical system, and as culture. Man is in the Naturwelt as well as the Lebenswelt; he is not exclusively a creature of the latter. It is in the world of nature, precarious, unstable as well as stable, frightening, surprising, both hostile and friendly, that man realizes the predicament of his incompleteness from which the religious question takes its rise. Man becomes problematic as a being in the world and not only within the confines of self-consciousness. Moreover, self-conscious- ness itself is mediated both by the world and other selves. The shock of existence for the self, its coming to the awareness of "being there", is not something that descends from the blue, as it were. We become aware of ourselves, come to ourselves, as we say, as a result of the discovery that there is an other which is not ourselves. The fact of this mediation implies that the other - both the environ- ment and other selves - belongs essentially to our self-consciousness. The other is not "wholly other" since we live and move within it, repeat within our own nature the patterns and forms of natural existence, and are sustained by the other even when we struggle against its precariousness and hostility. The fact of self-conscious- ness does not remove us from the world because it is realized only

SELF A N D W O R L D AS S T A R T I N G P O I N T S IN T H E O L O G Y 10 9

in and through the world. The self becomes encapsulated within itself only when, upon receiving the shock of its own existence, it concentrates exclusively upon that existence and forgets the other which mediated it in the first place. The contrast between the self and the world is, or should be, a constant condition for our awareness or ourselves. When the self retires into itself, as it does in the Augustinian theology, the other is still there as the contrast term. If the self recovers the prius or Source of its own existence, it must at the same time discover the Source of the other or the world. Unfortunately, the point is often forgotten because the self sees the object of its quest only for itself and the other falls from sight. This consequence can be avoided if self-consciousness is understood as essentially involving the other which is the world.

2. A second and, in some ways more striking, consideration showing the essential interconnection between the self and the world is found in the capacity of man to represent the world. I f we consider the world as the totality of the finite or limited reality including man, and at the same time attend to man's peculiar equipment for representing and expressing what there is, we arrive at the idea that the world is a self-representative system. The world, that is, contains, in the form of one of its proper parts, an interpreter that is capable of representing the whole in myriad ways. Let us con- sider the general nature of representation. One item may be said to represent another when there is a constant and regular relation between what can be said about the one and what can be said about the other. The parabolic figure plotted on the sheet of graph paper may be said to represent the trajectory of a missile in flight because there is a constant relation - in this case, a one to one correlation between point values on the graph and positions through which the missile passes - between the two items. The objects in the world may be said to represent each other in countless ways in virtue of many such constant relations.

In human experience, mediated through the use of language and symbolic devices, the capacity for representation reaches a new level of mobility. Not only is there deliberate use of representation, but the relation itself can become the object of special analysis and interpretation. In becoming aware of his capacity to represent the world, man becomes aware of his ability to use symbolic devices far more subtle and mobile than iconic devices of representation such

I IO INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

as a photograph or one to one spatial correlation. The mobility of such representation and its infinite variety is best seen when we consider our representation of the world in symbolic form, as happens when the world is considered from a metaphysical and religious point of view. Here we pass far beyond the iconic and other simple forms of correlation to the representation of things in terms of general categories relevant to everything that happens, and to the representation of the world in terms of a cosmic purpose or principle of compossibility.

For present purposes, the nature and forms of representation are not as important as the striking fact that the world contains within itself an interpreter in the form of the self-representative being. And while this being is not itself an infinite interpreter - a fact that becomes clear when we see that man raises the question of his own ground and goal and thus reveals his incompleteness - the capacity for representation which man does have suggests forms of at tunement or adaptation between man and the world which make it illegitimate to consider them in isolation from each other. Self and world cannot be disconnected if the self, continuous in structure and form with organic nature, is capable of significant representation of the cosmos of which it is a proper part. As Peirce pointed out long ago, not nearly enough attention has been paid to the philosophical and theological problem raised by the fact that the world contains an interpreter.

3. A third form of interconnection between self and world is found in the fact that the world is such that it can be appreciated and shaped by the self. The foundations of the esthetic and the technological capacities of the self must be sought in the constitution of the world as well as in man. The significant form of things evokes from man that peculiar sense of enjoyment and of appreciation that constitutes the basis of art in all of its manifestations. The self is able to take delight in the significant forms of the world for their own sake, and the ground of that delight is as much in the forms themselves as in the constitution of the being who appreciates them. The self, moreover, is able to shape and reshape the world in ways both continuous and discontinuous with its own natural constitution. I f self and world were merely conjoined or wholly externally related, deliberate anticipation and transformation of the world of natural existence would not be possible.

SELF A N D W O R L D AS S T A R T I N G P O I N T S IN T H E O L O G Y I I I

The aforegoing arguments for showing the essential connection between the self and the world are intended to show the inadequacy of any theology based exclusively on one or the other. What has been said, however, does not of itself resolve the problems posed by the other two reference points considered in the first part of our discussion - the problems, namely, of relating the reflective form of thought to the argumentative or demonstrative, and of relating the conception of God as Being or prius to the idea of God as the Primal Individual. Solving these problems remains as a major task of philosophical theology at the present time. The way to their solution, however, is opened up by bridging the gap between self and world. As long as it is supposed that the two starting points are independent, the resulting theologies will remain unconnected.But if it is understood that starting with the self means being involved with the world which is the other, and that starting with the world means being involved with the self who is the interpreter, we have the necessary path to connecting the two approaches in new and fruitful ways.

JoI-IN E. SMITH Yale University