VORTEX AIMing

[Qarel]

Hello Conrad,

the subject matter is rather difficult, and I am bit rusty here, as it doesn't come up often. It is almost completely ignored in some Protestant circles: they see Big C as revealing itself, and no reference to other knowledge outside the revelation is even relevant. In my Catholic background there is room for something called Fundamental Theology, which is considered a kind of preamble to Theology, and tries to go as far as possible under the steam of reason alone. This project is considered to be very limited in scope: one cannot prove Big C's existence by any means. My point of view is that FT doesn't try to show that it is necessary to talk about Big C (that would amount to proof) but that it is not unreasonable to do so. While this may create room for a discussion about Big C, this space is fundamentally empty, for we agree with the Protestants that the only knowledge about Big C is revealed. This is one way to explain the silence that is hammering on the eardrums of your mind.

Indeed, it is fundamentally impossible to make an objective distinction between Big C and small c's. Such a distinction ultimately requires the 'leap of faith'. However, unobjectively, we can go a bit farther and say that no one small c in this universe should be confused with Big C. Even calling Big C the essence of the universe is unwarranted, from my point of view, but that might depend on your definition of essence. Big C can only be discerned from its workings, and then only tentatively.

Take the case of answered prayers. When someone prays for recovery from illness, and recovers, the prayer is considered answered. From an objective viewpoint it is completely likely that the illness went away naturally, or because of medical treatment. This is also clear to the person who prayed, but still the prayer is considered answered. Why this is so will become even clearer in the case that no recovery occurs. The person who prayed might still insist, and often will do so, that the prayer was answered, only in a different way. (Please remember that the archetypical Christian prayer contains the words: Thy will be done.) This conclusion: that the prayer was answered, can only be seen as tentative, and as requiring faith. It can also be seen as unnecessary, because of other explanations, or no need of an explanation at all. We have, however, moved outside the range of the purely practical and objective. We get no information on what happened in the strict sense, but when we open ourselves for a confession along the lines of 'my prayer was answered', we might get closer to the person who makes it, closer to ourselves, and closer to Big C.

Regards,

Karel