The Mystery of One

Yesterday was the commencement solar daytime of a novel decade. The icon of 2 overlapping circles in addition to 10 triangles is a geometrical way of representing the interplay betwixt numbers - Ten emerging from One via Two. Thus One is the commencement seat out inward the Decad. Or is it? In p. 56 of the mass I elevate that, according to the Pythagorean tradition, One is non a seat out but the "number beyond number". Saint Maximus the Confessor inherits in addition to explains this tradition, according to this passage past times Hans Urs von Balthasar, taken from his mass Cosmic Liturgy (pp. 113-14):

Thus the unity that lies beyond the created globe is the ultimate regulation of every number: "God is the creator in addition to the inventor fifty-fifty of number." Therefore "every seat out participates inward unity - that is, inward God.... Even if you lot start counting alongside two, you lot at to the lowest degree accept one two equally your starting point." Thus it is true, on the 1 hand, that the transcendental unity "cannot live on added, inward a natural way, to another, equally tin the seat out one"; it is non affected past times seat out at all.... On the other hand, this unity is in addition to thence immanent inward every seat out that 1 must speak, alongside Pseudo-Dionysius, of a "multiplication of God".

Of course, this is a misleading aspect - but in addition to thence is whatever speak of "number" inward relation to God, fifty-fifty "Trinity" if this is understood equally "numbering" God inward some way. (As Timothy McDermott puts it on p. seventy of his "Concise Translation" of St Thomas's Summa, "In God the iii is non counted past times the ones. Number that counts quantity arises from sectionalization of a continuum, exists alone inward fabric things, in addition to tin live on applied to God alone metaphorically".) Balthasar goes on:

At this dot the whole theory of unity returns to the unproblematic system of an analogy of beingness betwixt God in addition to the world: to the absolute transcendence of God in addition to his immanence inward created being. God is, on the 1 hand, "beyond unity"; on the other mitt "unity, equally the displace of numbers, includes all numbers inward itself inward a unitary way, exactly equally the oculus or dot contains the instantly lines of the circle."

Thus equally Balthasar concludes, nosotros cannot "grasp the Trinity conceptually", because seat out is alone a "sign". Maximus says the numerical unit of measurement "does non limited a reality but points inward a direction" (p. 113). In a sense, I think, 1 tin nation this of all the forms in addition to realities of the world, which holler for God non past times expressing him but past times pointing towards him.

The human beingness is said inward Genesis to live on made inward the icon in addition to likeness of God. The unity of anything, which makes it identically itself, its oneness, is a grade of its participation inward being, the grade of the Creator. But the commencement in addition to firstly way inward which nosotros deport God’s likeness is inward non but inward being, but inward beingness “I”. Not alone are nosotros “one” inward ourselves, but nosotros are the oculus of our globe inward the something of the same way that God is the oculus of all worlds. Each of us looks out at such a world, in addition to everything appears to revolve exactly about us. I am a consciousness, in addition to that agency that I tin nation “I”. This is a resemblance to the Creator, who is the One exactly about whom everything revolves. For those who possess got eyes to see, my real selfhood is a proof of God.

In our notation, the resemblance betwixt the commencement of numbers in addition to the symbol for the self are virtually identical: “I” = “1”. It is a vertical stroke, which describes the creation, the making of something other than God nevertheless subject on God. Each depicts an axis or radius linking myself, or the affair inward question, to its transcendent Source.

See also before posts "The Beauty of Mathematics" in addition to "Sacred Geometry".

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