Here is a passage from the philosopher Josef Pieper. When I first read it, I thought: this kind of talk could be found in American self-help or hippy New Age books or Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Unfolding being. Situated between different states of realization. We are not yet what we already are.
Here’s Pieper:
For example, whenever we speak of the ultimum, of the ultimate and last, we have already thought implicitly of a penultimate and first.
And with that, something has already been said about the human being: namely, that his everyday life is situated between these different states of realization, disposed toward his ultimate potential but not necessarily reaching it; that the human person is, at the core, someone becoming; in any case, that he is not simply made as this or that, not a purely static entity but an unfolding being, a dynamic reality — just as the cosmos is in its totality.
Of course, this is not a distinctly Christian notion. Two thousand years ago, the Greek poet Pindar expressed it in this famous statement: “Become what you are.”
This says something that seems truly astonishing, namely, that we are not yet what we already are. Theological wisdom in Christendom is convinced of this, too, when it grants true virtue to that person alone who realizes the utmost of his capacities.
Josef Pieper: An Anthology, p. 3-4
The ideas at the core of ordinary Christianity are weirder and more thrilling than many people give them credit for.
