Capacity/Incapacity
摘要
The ‘hermeneutical transcendental’ of divinity poses the question of the capacity of the self (and indeed of nature) to realise itself. This question is at the core of the myth of the fall and in this chapter this myth is examined through three (or in fact four) attempts to interpret it. These are those of Kant (two distinct attempts), Hegel and Benjamin. It is shown how despite their differences these four accounts all show the fall as an ambiguous event: both a falling away from nature and an assertion of the human self as a reasoning being. This shows the human as being in tension with both the natural and divine modes of being. The way this tension has been discussed in Christian theology is through the motif of grace and the chapter explores the manner in which the question of grace threatens to set up a chasm between the natural and the supernatural. However, within the notion of grace is the idea that grace is itself graced, i.e., that the human recognition of incapacity is a turning towards a source traced in itself and in nature, but irreducible to either. The chapter closes through an attempt to think this relation through an account of the Incarnation as the becoming material of the divine. Such an understanding can give an account of the relation of self, nature and divinity as aspects of world, in tension, but never separate. Leading in the end to a kind of pantheism.