1713. Whether strictly ultimate reality is defined as . . .

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Whether strictly ultimate reality is defined as "personal" in anything like the sense of classical Christian theism, or is defined, instead, as "impersonal" in any of the senses, say, of Hinduism or Buddhism makes very little difference, religiously speaking, since both definitions yield something like the same paradoxes. If strictly ultimate reality is related to all other realities externally only; and if it is "pure actuality" in the sense of the actualization of all possibilities of value, "the perfection of all perfections," then whatever I am or do makes and can make no more difference than if strictly ultimate reality is said to be "emptiness," "nothingness," "formlessness," and so on. Conversely, if there is at least one thing that is of ultimate significance—namely, how I decide the fundamental option facing all human beings—then strictly ultimate reality, as the only conceivable measure of such significance, cannot be said to be actus purus or related to all other realities only externally—except by falling into radical self-contradiction.

13 June 2009