| Metaphysics, as it has been employed by Christian theology in the West, has historically been a dialectic between the Platonic (and Neo-Platonic) concept of harmony and the Aristotelian notion of substance with regard to understanding the enduring identity of a thing through time and change. Recent and contemporary theologians such as Paul Tillich and Robert Neville have outlined sophisticated theological systems built upon the idea of harmony (understood in various ways as Logos/pattern/order) as a means of bringing theology into greater dialogue with a wider body of intellectual disciplines. Their understandings, however, do not envision harmony in its fullest sense of dynamism and movement. In order to reflect our late-modern scientific understanding of the universe as comprised of energy transactions, expansions and concentrations, Christian theology needs to envision harmony in a radically fluid and dynamic manner. The philosophical task of metaphysics is to outline a coherent system disciplines that include scientific fields, such as cosmology, as well as more speculative fields of inquiry, such as theology. This project, therefore, is an effort to address a weakness in Western theology and metaphysics with respect to the notions of identity and endurance through change by reinterpreting the metaphysical concept of harmony, the deep structural pattern of reality, through the idea of rhythm. A rhythmic metaphysics, when proposed modestly within a pragmatist methodology of fallibility, offers contemporary theologians a viable and nonfoundational means of conducting cross-cultural theological reflection. This study argues for how rhythm, as harmony-in-time or “discursive” (dynamic) harmony, can be the essential glue of an “iterative identity”, allowing individuals as processes to enter into relationships without becoming wholly relativized. This idea of “iterative identity”, developed through the rhythmic metaphysics outlined in this project, is then applied conceptually to individual spiritual identity, the identity of a religious community, and the continuing identity of a worship service. Finally, iterative identity provides a Trinitarian notion of the divine life, as well as a Trinitarian understanding of the self-in-relation-to-God, that is compatible to the cultural and scientific sensibilities of late-modern Christian churches. |
