¹ Examples of contemporary metacriticism can be seen in the work of Firth (meta-ethics), Gadamer, deWaehlens (meta-language), Russell and Whitehead (meta-mathematics), White (meta-history), Söhngen (meta-jurisprudence), Scheler (meta-sociology), Abel (meta-theater), and Dumery (henological theory).

² The institutional parallel to metacriticism and henology is management, a novel contemporary institution. The work of management is to oversee the unity of the many specialized social functions, and it is concerned simply with the unity of these functions and not with their technical aspects. Hence, management is not politics in the classical sense; and whereas politics may be an “art,” management is a “meta-art.”

³ I follow Duméry's “henology” rather than Gilson's “énology.” For the contrast between ontology and henology see Duméry, Henry, The Problem of God in Philosophy of Religion, tr. Courtney, C. (Evanston, 1964), esp. chap. 3.Google Scholar

⁴ In this essay the terms “being” and “existence” will be used interchangeably. This usage will be justified by the position developed in this essay.

⁵ For the Greeks (and Plotinus) “one” was not strictly a number, but it was the means by which all other numbers were defined and generated. This conception of “one” is related to the fact that the Greeks also did not understand zero, or “nothing,” to be a number. The modern “positional” notion of zero came into Europe from the Arabic world, and it made possible a reunderstanding of “one” as a number beside other numbers.

⁶ Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones quodlibetales, Quod. VI, q.i, a.i.

⁷ Thomas Aquinas, Expositio in librum Boethii de hebdomadibus, II.

⁸ Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super libros sententiarum magistri Petri Lombardi, Lib. I, d. 24, q.i, a.i.

⁹ James, William, Essays in Radical Empiricism (New York, 1912), 42.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Boethius, De Trinitate, 3.

¹¹ Anselm of Canterbury, Epistola de Incarnatione Verbi, ch. 13; tr. G. Peck in Anselm of Canterbury, Theological Treatises Vol. II, ed. J. Hopkins and H. Richardson (Cambridge, 1966), 99–101 (my italics).

¹² Weiss, Paul, Modes of Being (Carbondale, 1958), 366f.Google Scholar

¹³ Frye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism (New York, 1966), 72.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Sillem, Edward, Ways of Thinking about God (London, 1961), ch. 7.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I, 3; tr. W. D. Ross in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. R. McKeon (New York, 1941), 936. For its continued use in the tradition of classical philosophy see Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, I, 3; and fn. 4 to this text in the Marietti edition (Rome, 1961), 4.

¹⁶ J. A. Quenstedt, Theologia Didactico-Polemica, II, 7; cited from Schmid, Heinrich, Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, 1899), 228.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Secularism and Faith, The Current 6^2–4 (1966), 26–30.

¹⁸ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Letters on the Inspiration of Scripture, II.

¹⁹ Augustine, Confessions, XI, esp. 14–30. (The sentence under discussion is not found verbatim in the Confessions, but is composed by the present writer in accordance with the third level of meaning in language.)

²⁰ Peirce, Charles Sanders, Collected Papers, ed. Hartshorne, C. and Weiss, P. (Cambridge, 1960), VI, para. 452, p. 311.Google Scholar

²¹ Ibid., I, para. 332, p. 166. Although it is fashionable today to disparage faculty psychology as a vestige of medieval thought, we should note that Peirce held a somewhat analogous position. “The triad, feeling, volition, cognition, is usually regarded as a purely psychological division. Long series of experiments, persistent and much varied, though only qualitative, have left me little doubt, if any, that there are in those elements three quite disparate modes of awareness. That is a psychological proposition; but that which now concerns us is not psychological, particularly; namely the differences between that of which we are aware in feeling, volition, and cognition” (my italics). My position is similar to Peirce's, although I distinguish the three modes of awareness as different ways in which the self is one. This allows me to acknowledge that “feeling, volition, and cognition” (psychologically considered) can all be present in each of the modes of awareness — though in different orders.

²⁹ This solution for the problem of the unity of the unities will hold true even if there are more than three hypostases of unity. For if there are four hypostases, then the unity of the unities will be “the four themselves”; if five, then “the five themselves”; etc. This is why the argument of this essay is independent of the question of the number of kinds of unity that must ultimately be accounted for.

²³ In this essay I am proposing a special determination of the concept of transcendence, namely, that this concept is meaningful even though we cannot express it through a model or an analogy. In place of a “model” of divine transcendence, I am suggesting that the meaning of this concept is specified in conjunction with (and as the terminus of) a method. Hence, the concept of God is inseparable from the (natural and universal) method by which this concept is attained.

²⁴ Tillich's revised position can be seen in the contrast between the following two statements: “The statement that God is being-itself is a nonsymbolic statement. It does not point beyond itself. It means what it says directly and properly.….” Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. I (Chicago, 1951), 238. “Thus it follows that everything religion has to say about God, including his qualities, actions, and manifestations, has a symbolic character and that the meaning of ‘God’ is completely missed if one takes the symbolic language literally. But, after this has been stated, the question arises (and has risen in public discussion) as to whether there is a point at which a non-symbolic assertion about God must be made. There is such a point, namely, the statement that everything we say about God is symbolic.” Systematic Theology, Vol. II (Chicago, 1957), 9.

²⁵ For the difference between Eastern and Western conceptions of the essence of Christianity, see the discussion of The Basis of the World Council of Churches in The New Delhi Report (New York, 1962), 152–59. The Orthodox defended the trinitarian addition to the WCC basis as “… no attempt at confessionalism, but a short and scriptural statement of the basic truth of the Christian faith.”