Decreation is Counterfactual

by Mark Phillips on December 1, 2024

Proximity to divinity requiring decreation implies the self is foreign to holiness, distant. Unredeemable, even, save through escape and destruction. At the least, an impediment to evade (hard pressed to say to over come with it’s Nietzschean tones, which are less Christian in conception of the self – though is it? Does Critchley’s framing frame Nietzsche (or allow for such framing) as a Christian mystic who sees the self, the current self, as a step to a human beyond? More than human?)

Decreation, a godhead, implies a universalism where a name doesn’t matter. The specific is for erasure. For the divine and for the author. Yet we see this isn’t true. Wars are fought over the name of God. Even say the named God is not the true name. Wars are fought over the stories that lead to the unnamed God. The stories are paths more comfortable to some than others. More true feeling to some than others. More the real, more the holy. Worth fighting for.

In terms of authors, identity matters much at different times. Whether belonging or historically unbelonged. Part of the story or part of the described as untold story, the included or unincluded, has mattered. And seems to do so now.

Of Christianity and wars, say what you will, Christianity has allowed for conversation. Has been part of the conversation. Has been in conversation in ways other religions don’t permit. People have died, for sure, for picking up one side or other of the talk. Could Nietzsche have been something other than an AntiChrist? An anti____? Though from a Nietzschean mantle is this not saying that it is also all so Socratic? There wouldn’t be an anti anything without the bait of position opposition.

Art defies single defining requirements such as needing to burn entirely, be consumed. Eliot held a job. Olds a job, has a daughter. Notley has sons. Williams was a physician. Stevens an insurance company man. Dylan a rock star, with kids. And the many many writers and artists every day who create. And the many people who pray every day, who are close to the divine, as they go about their lives. Divine, in their lives. Especially when happy.

CATALYST