Philosophical Theology of Vocation

The proposal that the unique form of Socrates has its exemplar in God’s own essence leads us to a discussion of the concepts of exemplarity and analogy. This leads us to distinguish three modes in which the same unique essence of the “myself” may be presenced by God and philosophical theologians: a) as inherent in the divine essence; b) as exemplars of creation; c) as created beings. We then address the problems of the divine awareness of the unique essences in terms of the phenomenological distinction between non-reflexive and reflexive self-awareness, the latter being the occasion for the introduction of “otherness” in God’s own awareness as well as the condition for the possibility of divine knowledge of exemplars. The philosophical theology of vocation here finds its focal consideration: The “myself” as an inherent ingredient of the divine self-awareness and as exemplar for the divine self-awareness are the foundation for the “immemorial” essence of myself that is also my future. This opens up a reflection on a center of the person deeper than Existenz and is the ultimate context for the earlier claim that the “myself” is the person’s entelechy. In regard to the fundamental issues like omniscience and indexicality we wrestle with some of the familiar issues but ultimately appeal to Robert Sokolowski’s notion of “The Christian Distinction,” which we call “The Theological Distinction,” to provide the appropriate “optic” or “logical space” for the conundrums that classically emerge out of thinking inappropriately about the mystery of creation. In as much as all properly intelligible distinctions emerge within the world, The Theological Distinction is an odd distinction with the world as one of the terms and God the Creator the other terms. God is understood as conceivably, but contrary to fact, all there is. God is absolutely self-sufficient, utterly incommensurate and transcendent to the world, and yet more intimate to the world than the world is to itself. God plus the world is not greater than God alone, and the diminishing of the world is in no way a diminishment God. Faith is the way this distinction emerges and therefore nothing in the world, as the ultimate setting of intelligibility, can motivate The Distinction. The basic positions of the Theological Distinction are contrasted with alternative positions of correlationism, monism, and process philosophy.