'De-Mything' the Logos:

Anaximander's Apeiron and the

Possibility of a Post-
Metaphysical Understanding of
the Incarnation

Author: Edward Moore

Quodlibet Journal: Volume 4
Number 1, Winter 2002
ISSN: 1526-6575

Introduction [1]

When Martin Heidegger introduced

his unique brand of Existentialism
to the world, with the publication in
1927 of his vast tome
entitled Being and Time, many
philosophers recognized what they
felt to be the need to move "beyond
metaphysics." Even in the realm of
theology, this demand was felt, and
met, for example, by Rudolph
Bultmann and his program of
"demythologization." [2] What
Bultmann's program amounted to
was nothing less than the removal,
from the kerygma, of any remnant
of divine transcendence. His
resultant reinterpretation of the
Christian message in terms of
Existentialism served to place the
radical demand of Jesus Christ at
the very center of human
existence, and was therefore a
positive contribution to theology
and ethics. Bultmann's argument
that the truth of the Christian
kerygma lies in the doctrine of
God's immanence, and that the
transcendent or "cosmic" language
of the New Testament is but the
necessary consequence of the
mode of expression of a "pre-
scientific age," [3] also succeeded
in opening the way for a "post-
metaphysical" understanding of
God.

The succeeding generation of

"Death of God" theologians fixated
upon the post-structural critique of
language, and the abandonment of
what Jacques Derrida has termed
"logocentrism" [4]; for the concern
to go "beyond metaphysics" was
really a critical concern with the
way philosophy conceives of truth.
When Nietzsche stated that "we
are not rid of God because we still
have faith in grammar" [5] he was
referring to the prevalent belief that
language is capable of expressing
ultimate truth. This idea is based
upon a belief, going back to Plato,
[6] that spoken language proceeds
from the logos, or rational faculty of
the mind, and therefore owes its
referential power to an eternal
principle of veracity, if you will - a
guarantor of truth. If language all
too often fails to convey truth, this
is the fault of the one who wields
the tool of language, not of the tool
itself. Nietzsche, of course,
believed none of this, and most
subsequent philosophy has
followed suit.

Many radical theologians have

seen in the post-modern critique of
"logocentrism" a way of
reinterpreting the "Death of God" in
the sense of an "emptying out,"
or kenosis, of the logos into and
within language, which, in the
absence of any metaphysical
fundament, has become the sole
subject of philosophy. Language,
then, and the philosophy and
theology that is concerned with it,
has come to be seen as a
manipulation of the very logos upon
which language - understood as
the tool for the construction of
meaning - was formerly thought to
be dependent. In the realm of
theology, this can lead to a manner
of discourse that no longer has
anything positive to say concerning
the revelation of God. In an essay
entitled "The Deconstruction of
God," Carl A. Raschke writes:
If theology, instead of examining
the nature and attributes of God, or
even exploring the meaning and
discursive function of the holy
name, becomes preoccupied in
contrast with pondering the
purpose for which it is "done," then
it must come to understand
itself strictu sensu as a meditation
within discourse upon discourse.
The divine word, the sacra verba, is
truly made flesh; it reaches its
kenotic consummation, its radical
otherness, in a theology which is
nought but a writing about
theology. [7]
It is important to note here that the
problem that Raschke is isolating,
and which he feels signals the "end
of theology," [8] is only a problem
because he is remaining tied to the
metaphysical language or mode of
speaking that Bultmann earlier tried
to do away with. To speak of "the
nature and attributes of God," or
even of "the meaning and
discursive function of the holy
name" is, in my view, to carry over,
into post-modern discourse, a now
outmoded "mythological" sense of
the divinity in order to make
seemingly profound claims about
the kenosis of the logos in writing,
or to "demythologize" the
Incarnation by making it into an
event of language. This selective
use of metaphysical terminology is
even more suspect when we
realize that the kenotic event that
Raschke speaks of would only
have meaning if the logos has lost
or relinquished a power it formerly
held. If this is actually the case,
then to speak of this passage of the
logos from a position as
"transcendental signified" to an
immanent dwelling amidst human
beings in language as a
"transformation of word as logos
('representation') to word
as rhema ('flow')" [9] is to
subordinate this dispersed or
disseminated logos to the human
act of utilizing or gathering the
various logoi spermatikoi for the
purpose of effecting a strictly
human meaning. In other words,
the logos has become secularized.
This is indeed the ultimate kenosis,
the final ptsis or "downfall" of the
formerly divine "transcendental
signified."
Post-modernism, and
"deconstruction" in particular,
admits to working within the
general structure of Western
metaphysical discourse, even
though the work being done is
often highly subversive of the
original intention of this structure.
However, for a philosophical
mindset that still seeks positive
statements about existence, there
is very little satisfaction (to say the
least) to be found in a mode of
discourse that merely subverts the
quest for truth, or, even worse,
advocates a fluid relativism devoid
of positive assertions. While any
attempt to return to a former
metaphysical mode of thinking is
admittedly untenable, I do not
believe that one must abandon the
hope of ever again speaking
meaningfully of transcendence - or
of speaking of meaning in a
transcendental manner. It may
even be possible, if one is willing to
go the intellectual distance, to
again speak meaningfully of the
Incarnation.

I will now examine what has been

called the earliest surviving
fragment of Western philosophical
thinking - a few lines from
Anaximander - with the purpose of
re-establishing a more dynamic
conception of the Deity: one that is
not bound to static metaphysical
principles. Utilizing this non-
metaphysical conception of the
Divinity, I will proceed to interpret
the doctrine of the Incarnation in a
manner that will, I hope, preserve
the transcendent power of this all-
important part of the kerygma,
while at the same time making it
tenable for the post-modern and,
more precisely, post-metaphysical
mind.

Anaximander's Apeiron

From out of that which things arise,

there also does their destruction [or
dissolution] occur, according to
necessity; for they render justice
and recompense to one another for
their injustice, according to the
orderly arrangement of time. [10]
"It is considered the oldest
fragment of Western thinking" -
thus writes Heidegger in his
famous essay on the even more
famous sentence of the ancient
Milesian philosopher Anaximander
(ca. 610-540 BCE). [11] The
"fragment" in question, of course, is
preserved by the Neo-Platonic
scholar Simplicius, who flourished
in the early to mid-sixth century CE.
Without pausing to consider what
meaning, if any, we may find in the
phrase "fragment of Western
thinking" - as if "thinking" could
produce or be held fast in a
fragmentary manner - or even to
ask how one is justified in
assigning an age - "the oldest" - to
a passage that occurs, as a quote,
in the midst of a treatise produced
by a writer working at the very end
of a long and noble tradition, [12] I
will simply say that we fail to render
the proper tribute to this statement
of Anaximander if we only refer to it
as a preserved piece of thinking.
For thinking, as Heidegger himself
has taught us, is a tending toward
existence and all its questions; a
tending that causes questions to
grow, and calls ever more urgently
for bolder and more profound acts
of thought. [13]
A careful look at Anaximander's
statement will show us that his was
not a call for thinking, nor even a
step toward thinking; rather, it was
an interpretative attempt to answer
the boldest and most profound
question that has ever been asked:
'What is the nature and origin
of that which is?' The fact that, for
Anaximander, this abstract Being,
"that which is," was conceived,
even before questioning, as the
Divinity, the ex n, the from-out-of-
which all things emerge, shows us
that Being, for this early
philosopher, was already thought in
terms of dependence upon an
origin. But this is not the end of the
story. If Anaximander had simply
thought Being as the primordial
ground upon which all existing
beings show themselves forth, or
even as the hidden, indeterminate
source whence all determinate
entities flow, he would not be far
from Heidegger's own concept-
world. [14] The fact that
Anaximander is not uncovering or
disclosing an experience, but rather
interpreting an understanding of
reality that was based on a tradition
extending back into the prehistoric
mists of Greek memory, should
serve as evidence that he was
concerned not with the primordiality
of theapeiron as indeterminate
source, but rather as unlimited
possibility. [15] The unlimited
possibility of/that is the apeiron,
then, is carried over by all existents
into the course of a life lived, and
utilized as the fecund basis of all
self-expression or personal
becoming. Therefore, Anaximander
was, as Cornford has explained,
struggling with the traditional ideas
of divinity and the nature informed
by it, in order to explain how "that
which is" (Being) arose from that
which is not - the arkh. [16]
The genius of Anaximander is
displayed in his 'explanation,' in
which he states that genesis, the
principle of 'emergence' or birth, is
constantly usurping the power
of phthora - dissolution,
destruction, passing-away, etc. -
and vice-versa. Anaximander never
states that these two productive
principles ever attempt to usurp
the apeiron itself. This is supremely
logical, from an experiential
standpoint, for we know that no
existing thing can come to be
without the foundational support of
that which has gone before. When
we posit the apeiron, or the primal
possibility, as an actual, existing
source, whence all is derived, then
we are broaching a metaphysical
thought-mode, and foisting it upon
an expression that was made
before metaphysics was even
possible. Anaximander did not do
this. What he did was describe
the apeiron, in dynamic language,
as that which lies at the base of all
existence, making expression and
individuality possible. "From out of
that which ..." (ex n de genesis)
- this is Anaximander's apeiron, his
'principle' of unlimited power or
fecundity which makes the dual
principles of Becoming -
genesis and phthora - possible.
Further, since the 'twin' principles
of "birth" and "dissolution" are
equally dependent upon
the apeiron, and also equally
necessary for the productive flow of
existence, how are we to
understand the meaning of
Anaximander's statement that
these principles do each other
"injustice," for which they must
make "recompense"? The answer
lies, I believe, in an understanding
of the apeiron not as a primordial,
metaphysical principle or source,
but as a power that is present
within and amongst all beings.

In his masterful study of the Pre-

Socratics, Cornford went to great
lengths to explain the extent to
which the ideas of Anaximander
were based upon a very ancient,
pre-Olympian, cosmogony. [17]
This early cosmogony utilized a
non-anthropomorphic notion of a
primal ordering, moira, upon which
all existence is dependent.
However, this moira was believed
to be, itself, the result of an even
more primordial activity or process
of 'nature,' phusis. Nature itself was
understood as the ever-flowing
principle of life, of eternal
becoming, while moira, the
structure into which nature divided
itself, or came to be divided, was
understood as fixed, static,
immutable. This inviolable moira,
then, was that against which one
would commit injustice, if one
sought to step beyond the bounds
set by it - that is, if one sought, in
the manner of a tragic hero, to defy
the destiny set by the gods. Indeed,
with the rise of the Olympian
pantheon, the primal moira came to
be expressed or understood by
way of the decrees and laws of the
gods. As we know from Homer,
even the Olympians were subject
to the higher power of moira, but
that idea gradually came to be
supplanted by the belief that the
Olympian gods were themselves
the stewards and dispensers of an
eternal Justice which they were
believed to embody. By this time,
relatively late in the Classical era,
the origin of Justice, Goodness,
existence, etc., came to be
identified with an eternal and
immutable arkh, an inviolable
principle of distribution or
"allotment" (moira). This
development coincided with the
critique of the traditional
understanding of the gods carried
out by Xenophanes and, later, by
Plato himself, and provided the
impetus for Stoic allegory. This new
idea was responsible for, or
perhaps grew out of, the belief that
the cosmos is eternal, and that
each human being is a part of the
divine whole, and required to play
his or her part appropriately. In
other words, this development - of
the belief in moiraas the fixed and
immutable arkh, over against a
notion that the arkh itself is in
motion, flowing, constantly
producing - was the very birth of
metaphysical thinking.

The birth of metaphysical thinking,

then, was also the loss of that
dynamic notion of nature (phusis)
as the living and ever-flowing origin
of all existence. This dynamic
conception of nature was the very
conception that Anaximander had
in mind when he made his famous
statement about the apeiron, the
unlimited origin of all things. It was
also the idea behind Thales' belief
that "everything is full of gods." [18]
When we recall that the earlier or
Homeric use of the
term the indicated a "running" or
flowing, the meaning of this latter
statement appears to be that
everything contains a productive
force or power capable of being
expressed in a variety of ways, i.e.,
as theos. [19] If this is the case,
then how are we to make sense of
Anaximander's statement about
injustice and recompense? In other
words, if the very nature of
the apeiron is to produce
multiplicity through its ceaseless
flowing, why is guilt incurred by the
existents that are part of the
process? This question can only be
answered by thinking the apeiron in
a non-metaphysical manner.

When the twin principles of birth

and decay come to commit their
injustices, they are not said, by
Anaximander, to be held
accountable by their source for
whatever crimes they have
committed. There is no need for
these principles to answer to or
give an account of themselves
before the "dread judgment seat" of
the Unlimited, if you will. Instead,
they pay "recompense to one
anotherfor their injustice." If we
think carefully about the problem
presented to us by this "fragment,"
it will, I believe, become clear that
the "injustice" spoken of by
Anaximander has nothing to do
with the transgression of a fixed,
primordial law, but rather with the
manner in which the immanent
power of the apeiron is utilized by
all those existents that have come
to be through it. And since
the apeironis precisely that which is
ever flowing and boundless, only
that which strives for fixity, or
reposeful, static Being, can
possibly find offense in the
utilization of a given possibility for
the purpose, not of ek-sistence or
persistence in externality, but of
eternal and
autonomous establishment. This
point is made explicit by the very
first line of Anaximander's
statement, where he tells us that
both the birth and destruction of all
things occur in and through the
apeiron, the "from out of which ...".
Since all things flow back into
the apeiron, and out of it again, for
all eternity, the injustice spoken of
must itself be something that
passes away, and is therefore not
an injustice against a metaphysical
or cosmological order. The injustice
is rather an injustice committed
against existing beings by existing
beings, and is made possible by
the fact that all beings carry with
them, as their ownmost possibility,
the unlimited potential of/that is
the apeiron. The injustice is the
very attempt, by these beings, to
utilize this eternally productive
principle for the purpose of
establishing their own existence for
all eternity, and over-against
the apeiron, as Being, the Limited
(peras): the same metaphysically
static 'entity' that later onto-
theology came to equate with God.

Anaximander's understanding of
the primal source, which I feel we
are correct to refer to as the
Divinity, theios, "the ever-flowing,"
is such that he is able to leave
room, in the cosmos, for the
manifest reality of injustice and
strife, while never abandoning a
belief in the eternal power and
fecundity of the Deity. As Werner
Jaeger has pointed out, this
doctrine of Anaximander "is
something more than a mere
explanation of nature: it is the first
philosophical theodicy." [20] It was
only later, with the advent of the
Platonic conception of God as the
eternal and immutable source
orarkh situated "beyond being"
(epekeina ts ousias), [21] that the
problem of how to account for the
presence of evil in the world
became a radically difficult
question. This was all the more
marked precisely because the
Platonic conception of God did not
allow any negative predicates -
indeed, it was limited. The Platonic
God could only be the Good, the
Eternal, the Just, etc.
Anaximander's dynamic conception
of the Deity was completely left
behind. The issue becomes even
more complex when we realize that
the metaphysical conception of
God developed in Platonic
philosophy was the concrete
representation of the very injustice
mentioned by Anaximander - that
is, the principle of staticity, of
Being, was given absolute primacy
over the productive force of
Becoming, to the extent that the
visible, sensible - i.e., changeable
and "flowing" - world was degraded
to the status of a mere illusion.

This metaphysical conception of

the Deity, and the philosophy that
came to be based upon it, held
sway throughout the centuries, and
exercised its influence upon the
Hellenistic mind to a profound
degree. By the time of the
emergence of the Christian
kerygma, this Platonic philosophy
was already firmly entrenched, and
provided the language and
concepts with which theologically
minded individuals conceived of the
Deity. It is therefore no accident
that the New Testament came to
be written, as Jaroslav Pelikan has
remarked, "in the Greek of
Socrates and Plato, or at any rate
in a reasonably accurate facsimile
thereof." [22] However, we must
ask whether the mere use of
philosophical or metaphysical
language, in the New Testament, is
evidence that the conception of the
Deity expressed through that
language is also, itself,
metaphysical.

The 'Myth' of the

Incarnate Logos

Rudolph Bultmann, in his

Existentialist analysis of the Cross
and the Resurrection, has shown
us that the deeper meaning of
these events, as expressed in the
New Testament, although in
mythical language, is not itself
mythical, and can indeed survive
the process of "demythologization."
[23] It must be kept in mind,
however, that the events or
doctrines that Bultmann was
demythologizing are not strictu
sensu "metaphysical" events; they
are events of an historical
character, albeit expressed
mythically. By removing the
mythical language from the
explanation, or expression of the
meaning, of these events,
Bultmann was able, all the more
easily, to fall back upon the
Existentialist interpretation that he
was already prepared to employ.
But what of the Incarnation? The
task of "demythologizing" that
supremely metaphysical or 'cosmic'
doctrine is rendered all the more
difficult precisely because
Existentialism does not possess
the language to describe it. That is
to say, this event is not of an
existential nature; it is not historical,
precisely because it exceeds
history, belonging, as it does, to a
process originating and culminating
in the godhead. It is perhaps for
this very reason that Bultmann did
not attempt to demythologize the
Incarnation, but rather left its
mythical meaning intact, by
describing it as an article of faith.
He of course recognized the
mythical character of the doctrine
of the Incarnation, as expressed in
the New Testament, but he also
recognized, tacitly, that it need not
be understood mythically. When he
wrote, toward the end ofJesus
Christ and Mythology, that "[w]hen
we speak of God as acting, we do
not speak mythologically in the
objectifying sense," [24] Bultmann
was referring to a manner of
perceiving God's activity in our lives
that is not metaphysical, in the
sense of a transcendent being
acting uponus, but rather personal,
in the sense of a divine power
acting or manifesting
itself within us, in the course of a
life lived, and dependent upon our
own decision to either tend to or
ignore the promise of this divine
presence.

The problem with this interpretation

is that it places the power of the
divine logos at the mercy of the
human being, and, as I said of Carl
Raschke's notion of the "kenotic
consummation of thelogos," leads
to the secularization of the Deity.
For when we demythologize
the logos, by refusing to speak of
the act of God apart from the
human reception or recognition of
that act, we are not only removing
the myth from the logos, but
the logos from the myth! The
question we must ask is whether
the Incarnation of the Logos, as
expressed in the New Testament,
can be 'de-mythed,' while leaving
the logos intact. To answer this
question, we must first discover the
relation between mythical thought
and metaphysical philosophy.

The development within ancient

Greek philosophy, which led from
Anaximander's dynamic conception
of the deity to the purely
metaphysical conception that we
find in Plato, is as varied and
complex as the thinkers who
contributed to it; however, one
thing is clear: that Plato, more than
any other thinker, is responsible for
the birth of metaphysical thinking,
and the theology that came to
depend upon it for so many
centuries. When we reflect upon
the scientific rigor and critical
thought with which Aristotle
approached the doctrines
contained in his own Metaphysics,
it may seem striking that Plato
relied heavily on myth in order to
express his own metaphysical
doctrines. Yet this is only striking if
we fail to recall, or to appreciate the
fact, that Plato was not, himself,
returning to an earlier mode of
mythical thinking that had now
become outmoded or obsolete in
the face of the 'scientific' approach
of the Pre-Socratic thinkers, but
was rather positing a brand new
way of thinking about the Deity.
That Plato permitted himself
recourse to myths and mythical
conceptions in those parts of
his Dialogues that deal with these
'theological' issues, serves to show,
I believe, that he was utilizing the
language of the earlier mythic
mode of thinking in order to better
explain or elucidate his own entirely
new conception of the Deity.

We have already seen how for

Anaximander the divinity was
conceived in dynamic, productive
terms, and described as being
thoroughly immanent in the realm
of existence. Plato entirely
abandoned this way of thinking,
and presented us with a view of the
Deity (still prevalent today) in which
God is described as changeless,
eternal, static, at rest with Himself -
and hence Limited. The reasons for
Plato's conceiving of God in this
way are complex, and I shall not
discuss them here; however, it will
suffice to say that with Platonism
two important changes occurred in
humankind's thinking about God.
These changes are: (1.) the spatial
positing of God or the Divine Realm
as outside the cosmos (as opposed
to the immanence of the
Anaximandrean apeiron) and
therefore "beyond being"; and (2.)
the idea that the thoughts in the
mind of God, the Forms, are
essences that precede substance,
and that all reality is comprised of
the images produced or rendered
possible by these eternal,
intellectual 'seeds'. [25]

The result of these conceptions are

two distinct realms, that of the
senses or matter, where human
existence plays itself out, and the
realm of the Deity, which the
human mind can only grasp or
understand after it has ceased to
be human - that is, when it has
become like that upon which it
gazes. [26] No longer is the Deity
experienced in/as immediacy; in
order to know God, according to
Plato, one must abandon the realm
of the immediate, that is, of the
senses. Whereas the Pre-
Socratics, for the most part, saw in
the immediate manifestations of
productive power a direct
theophany (which is why Thales
could say that all things are full of
gods, i.e., water, his productive
principle), for Plato, the direct
display of productive or natural
power was of a lower order, since it
involved change - albeit change
following a fixed law, but change
nonetheless, and hence un-divine.

It is important to note that Plato's

ideal was salvation through
knowledge, and all of his myths, in
the Dialogues, are concerned with
the various aspects of this journey
of the soul, or else with the
structure and nature of the cosmos
containing this soul. Therefore, the
mythologizing of Plato is done from
an existential standpoint, and not
from a strictu sensu theological
one. It is safe to say that, for Plato,
there is no point in directly
discussing God, since He or It is
changeless, and so there is nothing
to talk about! However, with the
rise of Christianity, all the talk was
not only about God, but about the
way He acted in history, and
became wholly human, for the
salvation of all humans. When this
divine event, the Incarnation, is
understood within the limited
confines of the Platonic conception
of the Deity, then it is truly a
'mystery' or, depending upon one's
attitude, "foolishness," a "stumbling
block." However, when we think the
Incarnation along the lines of
Anaximander's conception of
the apeiron as productive
possibility, we find, in the notion of
the "Logos made flesh" the very
possibility of a return to a manner
of thinking about God as the
immanent possibility of existence,
while preserving the necessity of
the Platonic notion of supreme - if
not absolute - transcendence that
is so necessary for the Christian
kerygma.

When St. Paul wrote, in his Epistle

to the Philippians, that Christ
"emptied himself" (eauton ekense;
Phil. 2:7), and in 2 Corinthians 2:9
that He "became poor" or lowly
(eptkheuse), we are being told
that Christ, the Logos, relinquished
His divinity when He became
human. When these passages are
read with the Platonic conception of
the Deity in mind, we cannot help
thinking, even if only fancifully, that
God emptied Himself of His divine
substance, and that this substance
somehow became scattered
throughout the material realm in the
form of logoi spermatikoi, and that
our salvation consists in our
rendering back to God these lost
seeds of divinity. This idea is only
farfetched to us, because we have
had the benefit of two thousand
years of largely Platonic-
Aristotelian exegesis of the New
Testament, much of which has
served to soften the bold mythical
attitude of this early utterance of
Christian faith, without ever coming
to question the notion of God that
lurks behind the language. The
early Gnostics, of course, thought
about salvation precisely in this
crude - to us - mythical manner.
Early in the Christian era this
doctrine of the "redeemed
redeemer" was quite popular,
especially within the highly
mythological Manichaean religion.
[27] In fact, it is quite easy to
'blame' Christianity for the gradual
lapse of the Platonic philosophy
into a highly mythical attitude,
replete with ritual magic or
"theurgy," which became the rule
by the time of Iamblichus in the
fourth century. The reason for all of
this is to be found in the supreme
paradox that the language used by
the New Testament writers (almost
without exception) to describe God
is derived from Platonic
metaphysics, [28] and yet the
underlying message is thoroughly
un-Platonic and indeed 'mythical,'
insofar as it involves a doctrine of a
purely divine force or entity, the
Logos, becoming entangled, as it
were, in history - in that ever-
flowing realm known as Becoming
which, to the Platonists, had always
held the character of, if not an
outright illusion, at least - and
especially among Gnostics - of
something inferior to and ever
separated from the Divine.

The affront to reason,

the skandalon, of the Christian
kerygma, was its key doctrine that
one is not required to ascend to
union with God, but rather to
accept God as He has descended
to humanity - in the form, not only
of a man, but of a servant
(morphn doulou; Philippians 2:7).
The mistake, made by the Gnostics
and others, was to think that the
purpose of this divine descent was
to raise human beings up to the
Deity; it was impossible for these
early exegetes, so steeped in the
Platonic philosophy, to understand
that God Himself chose to incline
towards humanity, giving Himself
as a gift that would restore
humanity to its primeval status as
the image (eikona; Gen. 1:26 LXX)
of God. This meant, not that human
beings would be transformed into
gods, as the Gnostics believed, but
rather that they would come to be
"sharers in the divine nature"
(theias koinnoi phuses; 2 Peter
1:4). The method of salvation
described in the New Testament,
then, does not involve a once-for-
all cosmic act of God, but a
receptivity and decision on the part
of humanity - to dwell with/in God.
As St. Paul wrote: "in Him all the
fullness [plrma] was pleased to
dwell" (Colossians 1:19).

What is being broached here is a

union of humanity with God in
which the human is not only
preserved, but perfected, and
rendered capable of persisting not
as a self-willed and finite human
being, destined for death, but as a
human being who is an image of
God, and hence destined for an
eternally fecund persistence in
Becoming. The fact that humanity
as a whole is implicated in this
schema, as evidenced by the use
of the term "fullness" (which was a
common Gnostic term for the
totality of spiritual beings, with
which the redeemed human being
was believed to join), shows that
there is no notion, in this schema,
of a cosmic - i.e., spatio-temporal -
division between the material or
human realm, and the realm of the
divine, as Platonic philosophy
taught, but only of an existential or
'psychological' division between
human and Deity.

According to the Christian

kerygma, this breach both occurred
and was healed within history, as
part of a divine process, with the
result that God, the Logos, is now
immanent within His creation as the
possibility of all existence, just as
Anaximander's apeiron was
immanent as the possibility of
generation and decay, and the
possibility of Becoming as the
eternal Good, over-against Being,
which is, in itself, the merely static.
The fact that this movement or
return from a static conception of
God as Being, to a dynamic
conception of God as the eternal,
and immanent, possibility of all
Becoming, was made possible by
and through the doctrine of the
Incarnation of the Logos, shows
that, far from being the supremely
mythical idea that it has often been
taken to be, the Incarnation was,
itself, an attempt to
"demythologize" the Platonically-
derived idea of salvation, which
held that the human being must
rise to God, and, by so doing,
relinquish his or her humanity or
personality in the process. This
latter, Platonic conception of
salvation presents a 'myth' of a
wholly different order - that of the
heroic quest for the homeland.
Indeed, this myth goes back to
Homer's Odysseus. However, by
the Late Hellenistic era, the
"homeland" was no longer Ithaca,
an idyllic island within the world,
but an hypostatized Pleroma held
to exist "beyond being," to which all
souls would rise only after leaving
behind the body and all its
accretions.

The Platonic or metaphysical view

of salvation, then, is not really a
salvation of the human being, but
rather, and paradoxically, a
salvation of the human
being from Humanity! The Christian
idea of salvation, which can only be
comprehended and experienced
through the Incarnation, is truly a
salvation of Humanity, for it brings
all human beings together, as the
"fullness," within God as the image
of God - but also as a
thoroughly human Humanity.

Conclusion

My purpose here has been twofold:

to show that it is still possible to
speak meaningfully of
transcendence in general, as well
as, more specifically, to speak
meaningfully of the Incarnation. I
felt obliged to accomplish the latter
task by showing in what way the
doctrine of the Incarnation -
understood as the response, on the
part of an early community of
believers to an historical, revelatory
event - served the perhaps
unintended purpose of 'de-mything'
the earlier Platonic notion of a
human ascent to God by turning
the attention of individuals to the
immanent manner in which
God inclines toward us. To
experience this inclination of God
toward humanity is to
actuallyexperience transcendence,
to understand or grasp the
transcendent not as an abstraction,
but as an ontologically or
existentially valid event.
Anaximander's idea of the infinite
yet always immanent possibility for
existence opened up by and with/in
the apeiron serves as a
philosophical or ahistorical basis
upon which to speak of the
incarnationality of the apeiron itself,
which is brought before human
understanding in the historical
'event' of Jesus Christ. My success
in accomplishing the former task, of
course, is completely dependent
upon my success is carrying out
the latter task.

One unintended consequence of

this endeavor has been the
opening up to thought of the
possibility that, due to the
immanence of the apeiron and its
incarnationality, there may be
multiple incarnations, or at least
more than one. [29] This is a very
important matter for further
thinking, since it threatens not only
to take us beyond the confines of a
strictly Christian philosophical
theology, but to actually undermine
my purpose in this undertaking. In
conclusion, therefore, I will merely
add a few words that will, I hope,
lead us, not to an immediate
answer, but to a larger arena for
thought.

It is my belief that, philosophically,

Anaximander's apeiron represents
an originary moment in thinking - a
moment more pluralistic than
Heidegger's altheia, and not as
delimiting - a moment that, once
thought, is not repeated,
but remembered, held close in
thought as the uncanny
immanence of the eternal flow of
Becoming. Was
this apeiron forgotten, then, or lost
in later conceptualization,
like altheia, according to
Heidegger, was lost behind the
idea of truth as correctness in
representation? We may only say
that the apeiron was forgotten if its
nature is such that it should be
remembered - i.e., if we think of
remembering as conceptualizing. If
that is the case, then surely any
attempt at conceptualizing
the apeiron would lead to its loss
within Being, which would, of
course, be an injustice, on
Anaximander's terms. However, the
loss of the apeironwithin Being
would also open up the possibility
for another incarnation, for what is
lost and forgotten is always
capable of (re)appearing for the
first time. Let us say, rather, that
the apeiron requires constantly to
be brought to our attention, so that
we may utilize and "partake" of this
immanent and infinitely powerful
source of existence. In that sense,
there can only be one presentation
or incarnation of the apeiron, which
must, of necessity, take on an
historical character. Historical
events or persons are never really
forgotten or lost; they simply
require to be brought to attention,
or re-presented, in ever new ways
and contexts. There is only ever a
single presentation, which then
makes possible all subsequent re-
presentations. The Incarnation of
Christ was the unique presentation
of God within history, with the result
that any further re-presentations or
re-incarnations of the unique
Godhead must be understood or
interpreted in light of the initial
presentation - the Incarnation.

End Notes

[1] An earlier version of this essay

was presented at the 53rd Annual
Northwest Conference on
Philosophy, held at Washington
State University, October 12-13,
2001. I would like to thank
Professor Michael W. Myers, of the
Department of Philosophy at
Washington State University, for
his challenging and insightful
commentary on that earlier version,
which has aided me greatly in my
subsequent revision, and has led
me to new paths of thinking on this
subject.

[2] Bultmann's program of

"demythologization" was introduced
in his 1941 essay entitled "New
Testament and Mythology"
(published in Bartsch, ed. Kerygma
and Myth, New York: Harper and
Row 1961).

[3] Kerygma and Myth, p. 3.

[4] Jacques Derrida, Of

Grammatology, tr. Spivak
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press 1974). Cf. esp.
Part 2, "Nature, Culture, Writing."

[5] Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of

the Idols, tr. Kaufmann, in The
Portable Nietzsche (New York:
Viking Penguin 1968), p. 483.

[6] Cf. Plato, Phaedrus 275d-276a

ff.

[7] Carl A. Raschke, "The

Deconstruction of God,"
in Deconstruction and
Theology (New York: Crossroad
Publishing Company 1982), p. 14.

[8] Deconstruction and Theology, p.

14.

[9] Deconstruction and Theology, p.

31.
[10] ex n de genesis esti tois
ousi kai tn phthoran eis tauta
ginesthai kata to khren. didonai
gar auta dikn kai tisin alllois ts
adikias kata tn tou khronou taxin.
Anaximander, fragment B 1 (Diels),
my translation. The fragment is
preserved in
Simplicius' Commentary on the
Physics 24.13-25.

[11] Martin Heidegger, "The

Anaximander Fragment," in Early
Greek Thinking (New York: Harper
and Row 1984), p. 13.

[12] Simplicius lived to witness the

closing of the Platonic Academy in
Athens, by the Emperor Justinian,
in 529 CE.

[13] Cf. Heidegger, "What Calls for

Thinking?" in Basic Writings, ed.
Krell (New York: HarperCollins
1993).

[14] Although Heidegger is not

often referred to as a philosopher
of the 'concept,' I believe that his
notions of 'being-toward-death,'
'Care' (Sorge), and most of all, his
understanding of Being as that
which conceals as it reveals (based
on his analysis of the Greek
term altheia) together produce a
'concept-world' that may or not be
ultimately metaphysical. For an
articulate and sympathetic
challenge to some of Heidegger's
ideas, from a Christian and 'post-
metaphysical' viewpoint, see
Bultmann, "The Historicity of Man
and Faith," in Existence and
Faith (New York: Meridian Books
1960), p. 92 ff.

[15] Cf. Werner Jaeger, The

Theology of the Early Greek
Philosophers (London: Oxford
University Press 1967), p. 24.

[16] F.M. Cornford, From Religion

to Philosophy: A Study in the
Origins of Western
Speculation(New York: Harper and
Row 1957), p. 145.

[17] Cornford, From Religion to

Philosophy, esp. ch. 2, "The Origin
of Moira," p. 40 ff.

[18] This belief is attributed to

Thales by Aristotle, in De
Anima 411a7-8.

[19] Cf. G.M.A. Grube, Plato's

Thought (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company 1980), p. 150.
In this important study, Grube
reminds us, referring to
Wilamowitz, that for the ancient
Greekstheos "is primarily a
predicative notion." He goes on to
explain that 'the divine' (theios), as
an adjective, referred to anything
that was felt to exceed the human
being.

"Any power, any force we see at

work in the world, which is not born
with us and will continue after we
are gone could thus be called a
god, and most of them were.

It was not only the adjective divine

(theios) that could be applied to
anything greater and more lasting
than man, but even the
noun theos was constantly used in
such a vague way that it cannot be
translated god without making
nonsense. The Milesian
philosophers, for example,
called theosthe substratum of the
physical world for which they
sought, so that when Thales said
the world was full of gods he may
only have meant that it was full of
water!" (Grube, pp. 150-151).

But even if that were all Thales

meant, he would still have been
referring not to the simple element
of water, but rather to the power or
force inherent in water. For water,
according to Thales (as his thought
has come down to us) was
a generative principle, not a mere
substratum or foundation - i.e., this
'primal substance' was not
considered to be static.

[20] Jaeger, The Theology of the

Early Greek Philosophers, p. 36.

[21] Plato, Republic 509b.

[22] Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity

and Classical Culture: The
Metamorphosis of Natural
Theology in the Christian
Encounter with Hellenism (New
Haven: Yale University Press
1993), p. 3.

[23] Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth,

esp. pp. 34-44.

[24] Bultmann, Jesus Christ and

Mythology (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons 1958), p. 62.

[25] While Plato, in the Dialogues,

never systematically explains or
posits this conception of the Deity,
we know that his immediate
successor in the Academy,
Speusippus, taught that Plato
posited a One that is beyond being
and wholly changeless. In fact,
Speusippus went so far as to deny
this One the status of a 'first
principle' (arkh); rather, he
bestowed this distinction upon the
Dyad, or the Unlimited Principle,
which is ordered or governed by
the One, the principle of Limit. The
belief that the Forms are "thoughts
in the Mind of God" is first
attributed to Antiochus of Ascalon
(fl. 110 BCE). It is, however,
possible that this notion was so
commonly accepted, that it did not
require any explicit formulation by
the teachers of the Old Academy -
such is my conjecture. For more
information, see John Dillon, The
Middle Platonists (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press 1977).

[26] Cf. Plato, Republic 508c-d, and

518a-d. The idea that the self is
lost in this vision of the Good is
problematical. For an alternative
interpretation, see my essay,
"Salvation and the Human Ideal:
Plato, Plotinus, Origen," in
the Proceedings of the First Annual
Conference of the Ancient
Philosophy Society, Villanova
University 2001.

[27] Cf. my article on "Gnosticism,"

in The Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, esp. the section "Mani
and Manichaeism."
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/g/
gnostic.htm
[28] This does not necessarily
mean that there was a self-
conscious usage of Platonic
language on the part of the New
Testament writers. Indeed, the
most striking examples of
Platonism in the New Testament -
e.g. the Gospel of John and the
Epistle to the Hebrews, as well as
numerous sections of the Pauline
Epistles where the spirit-soul-body
distinction is broached - are filtered
through Gnosticism. This serves to
show, however, how prevalent the
Platonic conception of the Deity, in
its various historical forms, had
become by the time of early
Christianity.

[29] This possibility was brought to

my attention by Professor Michael
W. Myers, in his commentary on an
earlier draft of this essay (see note
1).