The Philosophy of Nothingness and Hayathology 2

Slide Ⅰ

1. Hayathology is a process theology of Becoming named after the concept of “Haya” contained in God’s name, "ehyeh asher ehyeh" revealed to Moses (Exod. 3-14) in the Bible.
2. The theme of Hayathology is God-Becoming, Human-Becoming, and World-Becoming in the inseparable trinity.
3. Hayathology may well be characterized philosophically as follows:
   (1) Theology of Becoming which integrates Being and Nothingness in the inseparable unity.
   (2) Panentheism (neither pantheism, nor theism, but integrates both as its abstract components)
   (3) Surrelativism (neither relativism, nor absolutism, but integrating both as its abstract components:self-transcending relativism/self-trans-de-scending absolutism)
   (4) Surnaturalism (neither naturalism, nor supernaturalism, but integrating both as its abstract components:self-transcending naturalism/self-trans-de-scending supernaturalism)

Slide Ⅱ “From the Bible”

Dixit Deus ad Moysen: “Ego sum qui sum”. Ait: Sic dices filiis Israel: Qui sum misit me ad　vos”.(Vulgata)
God said to Moses, "I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has　sent me to you.' "

Footnotes: Or I will be what I will be (NIV)
(Luther : Ich werde sein, der Ich sein werde)

As E. Gilson clearly pointed out, the mediating link between the Bible and Greek philosophy was　　thought by scholastic theologians to be laid out by Moses, who received God’s revelation of His own　name. According to the Bible (Exod.3-14), God’s name was literally, “ehyeh asher ehyeh”. This name was afterwards translated into the Greek Septuaginta as “ I am the Being”, and into the Latin Vulgate, “ego sum qui sum”, i.e. “I am who am”.

As the very name of God was identified with the Being itself, the quest for God became a philosophical inquiry into the Real Being, which Aristotle had considered as the chief concern of his metaphysics.

The text of Exodus, however, presupposes a very different conception of Being from Greek one. The Hebrew meaning of “ehyeh” is an imperfect form of the Verb “HAYA” which can be translated as “I will be who will be” as well as “I am who am”. According to the Old Testament hermeneutics of Boman, a German Old Testament scholar, the Hebrew verb “Haya” contains Becoming as the focal
core meaning, whereas the verb “on” in the corresponding Greek translation excludes any trace of change or becoming, especially in the philosophical context. Thereforem “Ego eimi ho on” (I am the Being” was interpreted by Greek and Latin Fathers to signify God’s existence as well as His Essence from the Greek philosophical perspective, i.e. the self-sufficient Being standing aloof from
the vicissitudes of the world. They affirmed God to be immutable, and invariable in his Being, and always in the same mode of existence, admitting neither progress nor diminution. The dynamic historical aspect of the Old Testament God had to be ignored because God was considered as the absolute substance, or the unmoved Mover.

The Biblical God, on the other hand cannot stand aloof from the historical process of the world. He essentially related with the fate with the fate of humankind as if the Bible were a book of God’s anthropology rather than Human’s theology. The culmination of God’s concern for human was shown in the Christ-Events, i.e. the Incarnation of the Word as Jesus, His Suffering, His Death, and His Resurrection. The so-called Christological problem, which arose from the New Testament
attribution of suffering to incarnate deity, was to the Early Fathers an insoluble aporia beyond human Reason, because such ideas were repugnant to the Greek conception of absolute Being. If we want to understand Christ-Events faithfully to the Biblical tradition, we need some other conceptual frameworks than Greek one. What I call Hayathology is such metaphysics of becoming based on the Biblical concept of “Haya”. It is essentially the theology of Historical Process, because
the theme of Hayathology is God-Becoming, Human-Becoming, and World-Becoming in the inseparable trinity.

The word of “surrelativism” was used by Charles Hartshorne in his Divine Relativity. His standpoint is, if I understand him correctly, is that thoroughgoing relativism is not a simple relativism, and may well be characterized by the name of surrelativism which includes absolutism as its abstract component. Agreeing with Hartshorne that surrelativism represents a more concrete standpoint than an abstract absolutism. I would like to apply such a dynamically relational mode of
thinking to the problematic of naturalism. I characterize my theology as “surnaturalism.” It is self-transcending naturalism which includes supernaturalism as its abstract components. It does not treat nature as the closed wholeness, but as always self-transcending, self-surpassing totality which is open to the realm of infinite possibilities in the future.

As I believe in the reality of the supernatural, I would like to underscore not only selftranscending of the natural, but also self-trans-de-cending of the supernatural. Hayathology is the middle Way between two extremes, naturalism and supernaturalism.

As panentheism is a widely accepted view among many process theologians, I may not have to explain it in the details. Roughly speaking, Panentheism says God does not exist in a specialized place of the world, but is everywhere. The reason why God is omnipresent is not that God is in the world, but that the World itself is in God, i.e. everything is in God. In other words, the world is not the place of God, but God is the Place of the world—that is the central idea of panentheism.

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The opening sentence of the Gospel according to John is crucial to Hayathology, especially for the understanding of Temporality as a moving image of Eternity.
The Chinese verb “you”(有) can be translated as “was/is” because its tense is “imperfect”. In this respect Chinese grammar resembles Hebrews grammar which also has the distinction only between perfect and imperfect, but no distinction of past, present, and future.

Do you think the sentence “In the Beginning was the Word” narrates a historically past event, or the state of affairs which “was the case” a long time ago, e.g. 6000 years ago, or 15 billion years ago before Big-Bang? Is “the Word’s being with God” only in the past? Isn’t it more suitable to say “the Word is God” rather than to say “the Word was God”? Greek grammar uses “aorist” when it narrates a historical event as if it were a point lying on the temporal coordinate of the linear
sequences of events. The verb “on” is “imperfect”, and does not represent a point-like past of the chronological table of the world history. It narrates not only the past state of affairs, but also the present/ future states of affairs.

In other words, the so-called　“Pre-existence of the Word” essentially involves the element of “Becoming” at each instant of Time.

I would like to cite another key sentence from the Gospel of John  8-58:

eipen autoiV o ihsouV amhn amhn legw umin prin abraam genesqai egw eimi.
Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am.

Here, umin prin abraam genesqai (before Abraham was) is “aorist”, and represents the historical past states of affairs as appoint-like instant on the linear coordinate time, but Jesus’ answer is not “I was” but “I am” i.e. egw eimi.  

As “egw eimi o wn” is God’s name to Hebrews, this reply “I am” is deeply connected with God’s self-revelation of his name to Moses, i.e. “I am who am”.

Under the influences of Greek ontology, theologians in the past usually considered “Before Abraham was, I am” signifies the Eternity of Christ. They do not think that such lofty phrase is absolutely not applicable to ordinal human beings because Eternity and Temporality does not intersect with each other.  But would not such theologians side with those who did not believe in Jesus and stoned him?   I would like to affirm the really real existence of such intersection between Eternity and Temporality, or rather, the dynamical relatedness of Temporality with Eternity at every instant of time.

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The Relation of Philosophical Ultimate to Theological Ultimate

Being, Nothingness, and Becoming are transcendental predicates, i.e. the Universal of Universals which are predicable to everything including God, Human, and Worlds in their inseparable Unity. (One and Many are also such universal of universals which transcends the limit of categorical predicates.)

I have shown the two diagrams of Trinitarian structure, i.e. a philosophical trinity and a theological trinity. Theological trinity is well known, and every Catholic Christian professes his faith in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three are three persons in one substance or essence in the orthodox Christian theology. And I think with Whitehead that the Trinitarian modes of thinking are necessary when we want to transcend the limit of Greek ontology, and grasp this world, and its essential relatedness to God. But how should we understand three concepts, Being, Nothingness, and Becoming? Everybody already has some pre-understanding of these three, because these constitute the most universal conceptual frameworks. The Medieval western philosophers call “One”, “Being”, and “Goodness” as transcendental concepts, because they signify the universal of universals, transcending Aristotle’s categories. They are applicable everything including God and temporal entities. So the study of transcendentals is the proper task of primary philosophy, i.e. metaphysics, whereas the study of objects under the Aristotelian categories belongs to sciences. The Scholastic philosophers did not count “Becoming” and “Nothingness” as transcendentals, because they are under the strong influence of Greek ontology. They don’t recognize the importance of “Becoming” and “nothingness” because they considered both as essentially negative dependent concepts. Whitehead calls “One” “many” and “Creativity” as the categories of the ultimate, which play the similar role in his metaphysics as “transcendentals” in the medieval philosophy. Hegel was, as far as I know, the first Western philosopher who pointed out the paradoxical identity between Pure Being and Pure Nothingness: This logic has to do with the development of philosophical thinking in the West as well as in the East. Whereas the principle of the Western metaphysics is Being itself, or Pure Being, the principle of the East-Asian metaphysics is Nothingness. What Hegel means by “Pure Being” or “Pure Nothingness” is an abstract universal which would contradicts itself and becomes its opposite if we conceptually grasp it as if it were a “concrete” universal. “Becoming” is a higher concept than Being and Nothingness, and it both abolishes and integrate Being and Nothingness. It is a great insight of Hegel that the paradoxical Identity between Being and Nothingness should be resolved in the higher concept of Becoming. But I think that the whole problem of Becoming is not merely a conceptual one of a Hegelian Logic. It is fundamentally an existential and religious problem of Life/Death which is always transcending the standpoint of Reason itself. It necessitates us to think beyond Reason(noesis), something like Metanoetics which Tanabe Hajime advocated after the World War II. The proper understanding of Becoming in Hayathology needs more than conceptual dialectics in Hegel.

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2 The Philosophy of Nothingness

As I have explained, though very roughly, the fundamental standpoint of Hayathology, I would like to take up the second theme of my lecture today, i.e. the philosophy of Nothingness. The reason why I take up the philosophy of Nothingness seriously is that I believe that the Deeper understanding of “Nothingness” in the Eastern philosophical tradition will make it possible the deeper understanding of “Becoming” in Hayathology and process theology in general. 

 First I quote Nishida Kitaro in order to know the spirit of philosophy of nothingness.

I would cite an episode narrating the young Nishida’s encounter with the East-Asian Tradition of Nothingness. It would help us to understand his philosophy of nothingness because it tells as something like the birthplace of his philosophy, or Sitz im Leben (Locus of Life) which the philosophy of nothingness was born. The locus was Zen Buddhist Temple where the young Nishida was negotiating the way of Meditation and “Koan” Practice. Epecially the first case of the Gateless Gate (無門関)　known as “Joshu’s one letter of Nothingness or Joshu’s Dog is relevant to our purpose

 

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The First Case of the Gateless Gate（無門関）

The Koan of One Letter of Nothingness （無字）or Zaoshou’s DOG（趙州狗子）

A monk asked Zaozhou, "Has a dog the Buddha Nature?"
Zaozhou replied, "NOTHINGNESS(無)"

The use of Koan is characteristic of the meditation training of Rinzai Zen. The role of the first case of Koan is similar to Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church. It is an indispensable part of the ceremony of initiation for the novice, who after the spiritual/bodily meditation exercise, must pass a series of examination (Koan) which Zen Master gives to him/her. There is a systematic way of Koan training in the Rinzai school of Zen, and the first case of Gateless Gate is often used as the first examination imposed upon Zen practitioners.

   The young Nishida struggled with this test, but he did not pass the examination so easily, because he did not understand intellectually the purpose and meaning of the Koan “one letter of Nothingness.”

   So he wrote a letter to Zen Mater Tekisui, asking many philosophical questions to the meaning and purpose of “One letter of Nothingness”.  Tekisui wrote the following reply to Nishida, and Nishida, thinking much of this letter, put it in a frame, and kept it as his precious treasure for a long time.

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Zen Master Tekisui’s Letter to the young Nishida

 Dear Nishida, 　　　　　　

　An old man of virtue says: I have no word, no phrase, none of dharma to give others. Nothing other than

Nothing

can be expected from such an old monk as me. Do not ask any more questions in your letter.

February 4th
Tekisui

Note that the extremely strong power of “Nothing”. It is not a negative abstract concept at all, but is full of transcending Power. “Nothing” is a very powerful word which seems to have awakened Nishida to Something Very Important. I pointed out the similarity between “Koan” training of Rinzai Zen and the spiritual exercise and catechisms of Roman Catholics. But there is also a great difference between them. Christian Catechisms require a definite answer, “yes” or “no” to each important article of faith. To the contrary, the purpose of Koan training seems to liberate, or deconstruct any kind of dogmatic thinking. Wumen (無門) says in the concluding poem of the Gateless Gate: Has a dog the Buddha nature? This is a matter of life and death. If you wonder whether a dog has it or not, You certainly lose your body and life. The Koan is a matter of life and death: it also asks the novice, “Do you also have the Buddha Nature?” One of the dogmas in Mahayana Buddhism before Zen is the immanence of Buddha Nature, i.e. “All sentient beings have the Buddha Nature.”(Nirvana Sutra) . The Koan is about one of the most important problems of Mahayana Buddhism: i.e. the immanence of the Buddha Nature. But the simple logical answer “yes”, resulting from the Nirvana Sutra is unsatisfactory, because it seems to neglect our real experience of so many unintelligible things in this world which contradict the immanence of the Buddha Nature. On the contrary, if we answer “No”, then we will contradict the spirit and authority of Nirvana Sutra, because there should be no discrimination among humans and other sentient beings. Neither simple “yes” nor simple “no” being satisfactory, how do you yourself respond to this fundamental question on the Buddha Nature? –This is the background of the Koan of Nothingness. “Nothingness” has nothing to do with a relative “yes”, nor with relative “no”. It is Absolute Nothingness. The question of the Gateless Gate had a precursor in the Daoist Zhuangzi (荘子about 350 B.C)、which I will cite later, in his dialogue with Dongguozi(東郭子)　concerning the immanence of the Way (Dao). The influence of Zhuanzi on Wumen may be found in the introductory poem of the Gateless Gate. The Great Way(Dao) has no gate A thousand roads enter it . When one passes through this gateless gate He freely walks between heaven and earth The Gateless Gate is open to the Great Way to Zen. The young Nishida wrote several reminders on the back cover of his dairy. One of them reads: By Zen I inquire into the Great Way, By scholarship, I clarify the truth. I take the Way as my body, and scholarship as my four limbs. The Development of Nishida’s philosophy of Nothingness, the Great Way, and the Truth, may be summarized as the following 6 stages.

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The Development of Nishida’s Philosophy of Nothingness

1 Psychology of Nothingness －Pure Experience
 2 Phenomenology of Nothingness －Noetic Transcendence of Self-Awareness
3 Self-Awakening of Nothingness －The Place of Absolute Nothingness
4 Intersubjectivity in the Place of Nothingness －I-Thou Relation with He in Philosophy of Nothingness
5 The Historical World as the Dialectical Universal －The reciprocal relationality between an Individual and the World
6 The Identity in and through Absolute Contradictories －the logic of sive/non (即非), the unity of opposites such as action-intuition, the dynamism of God in the inverse-relationality (逆對應) and Self-emptying Kenosis of God’s Love.