First, how the word came to be. I'm a theology student. I'm in a class called "The Ground of Being/The Horizon of Hope: Creation, Time and Eschatology." Kind of a long title, but if you knew my prof (Nik Ansell), you'd understand. He has a certain fascination with titles. Oh, I should probably say that I'm a full time Master's student at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto. Just in case anyone who doesn't know me ever reads this.
In this class (TGoB/THoH:CTaE) we're reading a book called The Face of the Deep: a theology of becoming by Catherine Keller (Routledge, 2003). So far in the book, Keller is basically saying that there is/was a chaos that is pre-existent, that was never created. God didn't create it, but formed it. James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (which I have not read) apparently coins the word 'chaosmos', putting together 'chaos' and 'cosmos'. I liked this. It's playing with language, in much the same way as Lewis Carroll does. I also like the idea of an uncreated chaos, but that's a story for another day.
So why not stick with 'chaosmos'? I could well have, but there were some in the class (esp. Jeff H.) who didn't like it - chaos is impersonal, neutral, completely non-ordered. Any forming out of chaos must be the ending of it, the death of it, the domination of it so that it becomes order. Good critiques, and I agree. So I had to move on. The chaos had to lose its neutrality and vulnerability. I couldn't go about my entire life seeing the forming of order to be (completely) destructive. It just didn't right true.
Which is how I came up with 'plaosmos'. This combination (of 'play' and 'chaos' and 'cosmos') takes away the neutrality. It introduces play. I'm a big fan of play. Play is infused with joy, with creativity, and with exploration. Hopefully, this blog will contain these and inspire these in others.
Another thing I joyously note is that Google comes up with no results for 'plaosmos'. And since google can't find it, it can't exist - you heard it here first! Just as proof:
I hope you enjoy reading this blog. I hope I continue to enjoy posting on it. And please, feel free to leave your comments.
Welcome to the blogging world, my friend--and thanks for linking to us--we will be sure to return the favour. Interesting word creation--though it doesn't leap off the tongue like one would imagine--I have been playing with it in my mouth--it first wanted to be two syllables ("PLASmos") and making it three ("PLAos-mos") was a bit more difficult. Anyway, it provokes reflection, so thanks for that!
ReplyDeleteI pronounce it play-os-moss. The 'os' could well be an 'oz' for a slightly more English pronunciation. But anyway, I'm glad someone's read it. :)
ReplyDeleteWhy would forming chaos be the same as destroying chaos? Isn't it just ordered chaos?
ReplyDeleteWe are called to continually order the chaos. Chaos is not originally evil, but when we are called to order chaos and we fail, then it is evil. In the garden when we fail to order the Serpent, to keep the serpent in its place. God's curse on the serpent is the ordering of the chaotic encounter, something that Adam and Eve were called, but failed, to do.
Just a thought.
Have you read "Olthuis' Risk: A Heretical Tribute" by John Caputo in "The Hermeneutics of Charity"?
Good stuff.
I'm out.
I think that if the task we are called to do (the good) is to order chaos, then there has to be some inherent evil in chaos (as the chaos has to be reduced or overcome).
ReplyDeleteChaos is generally seen/defined as non-order, so ordering chaos is the end (destruction) of it. But I guess that's arguable.
Thanks for the comment tho. And no, I haven't read that book.
I don't think this means there is originally inherent evil in chaos (or perhaps, with Genesis, the tohu wa bohu, the formless void into which God spoke the creative words, "Let there be..."). Is khora (chaos) created? If it isn't created, then it is neither good nor evil (nor could I imagine how it could be good or evil), but neutral.
ReplyDeleteHowever, since God ordered the chaos and called it very good and then subsequently called us to continually order the chaos, now the disorder of chaos is evil, disordered chaos breaks through were we have responded unfaithfully to God's call to order the chaos.
The chaos is not something evil that is destroyed, this is Manicheism (a rival, evil god or principle that a good God must dominate). It is neutral and God forms it into something good (and this presents the possibility of evil as the corruption of good). Chaos is neither orderly nor disorderly, but is what is ordered. Therefore, the chaos is not destroyed, but formed, and as such remains a part of things, embedded in things, from which they are formed. It remains in things in a different manner, in an ordered manner, as the stuff they are made of. Allowing the chaos to become disordered is evil, to continually order it is good.
I don't know, what do you think?
I like you comment Chris. I'm not sure if uncreated means neutral, because God is uncreated, and my hope is that God is good. Now God is different from the chaos, and you could put anthropocentric language of God having consciousness or responsibility or something, and say that the chaos doesn't have that. But then, is the chaos not called to respond to God, or does God only call that which is formed from the chaos?
ReplyDeleteI don't want to say that now chaos is evil. I'd prefer misunderstood. A fortress is ordered rock, but chances are, living things in the area were better off before the stone was quarried (creatures living around the quarry were unharmed and they still had their habitats, the local poor human population was not oppressed so badly from such a distance, etc.) The stone was in a more chaotic state and was ordered, but that ordering wasn't good. Or is there both good and bad ordering? So sin is either not-ordering and wrong-ordering?
The purpose of 'plaos' is to say there is an inherent goodness to the chaos - inherent creativity, inherent playfulness, inherent birthings, even inherent joy.
Maybe we'll get on to talking about Moltmann's contradictory monism too? And the 2 directions of time. Maybe this will become my paper for the theology lass?
So yes, your comments are appreciated. :)