The Divine Blogger.

Those readers familiar with Catholic exegesis - guess that’s you and me, Dave - will undoubtedly have been struck by the parallel between the internal workings of the godhead and the relationship of the blogger to his blog.

   To quote the theologian F. J. Sheed, the Trinity works as follows: 

        

‘The First Person knows Himself; His act of knowing Himself produces an Idea, a Word; and this Idea, the  perfect Image of Himself is the Second Person.  The First Person and the Second combine in an act of love - love of one another, love of the glory of the Godhead which is their own; and  just as the act of knowing produces an Idea within the Divine Nature, the act of loving produces a state of Lovingness within the Divine Nature … [the] Third Person of the Blessed Trinity … the Holy Ghost …‘

Rather hard going, particularly having to hack through that thicket of capital letters. The idea is put much more vividly by Milton - a covert Unitarian - in describing the relationship between Satan, Sin and Death in a brilliant parody of the doctrine of the Trinity. Satan arrives at the gates of Hell:  

… Before the Gates there sat
On either side a formidable shape;
The one seem’d Woman to the waste, and fair,
But ended foul in many a scaly fould
Voluminous and vast, a Serpent arm’d
With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark’d
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous Peal: yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb’d thir noyse, into her woomb,
And kennel there, yet there still bark’d and howl’d
Within unseen. …

What thing thou art, thus double-form’d, and why
In this infernal Vaile first met thou call’st
Me Father, and that Fantasm call’st my Son?
I know thee not, nor ever saw till now
Sight more detestable then him and thee.

T’whom thus the Portress of Hell Gate reply’d;
Hast thou forgot me then, and do I seem
Now in thine eye so foul, once deemd so fair
In Heav’n, when at th’ Assembly, and in sight
Of all the Seraphim with thee combin’d
In bold conspiracy against Heav’ns King,
All on a sudden miserable pain
Surpris’d thee, dim thine eyes, and dizzie swum
In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast
Threw forth, till on the left side op’ning wide,
Likest to thee in shape and count’nance bright,
Then shining heav’nly fair, a Goddess arm’d
Out of thy head I sprung; amazement seis’d
All th’ Host of Heav’n; back they recoild affraid
At first, and call’d me Sin, and for a Sign
Portentous held me; but familiar grown,
I pleas’d, and with attractive graces won
The most averse, thee chiefly, who full oft
Thy self in me thy perfect image viewing
Becam’st enamour’d, and such joy thou took’st
With me in secret, that my womb conceiv’d
A growing burden. …

Pensive here I sat
Alone, but long I sat not, till my womb
Pregnant by thee, and now excessive grown
Prodigious motion felt and rueful throes.
At last this odious offspring whom thou seest
Thine own begotten, breaking violent way
Tore through my entrails, that with fear and pain
Distorted, all my nether shape thus grew
Transform’d: but he my inbred enemie
Forth issu’d, brandishing his fatal Dart
Made to destroy: I fled, and cry’d out Death;
Hell trembl’d at the hideous Name, and sigh’d
From all her Caves, and back resounded Death.
I fled, but he pursu’d (though more, it seems,
Inflam’d with lust then rage) and swifter far,
Me overtook his mother all dismaid,
And in embraces forcible and foule
Ingendring with me, of that rape begot
These yelling Monsters that with ceasless cry
Surround me, as thou sawst, hourly conceiv’d
And hourly born, with sorrow infinite
To me, for when they list into the womb
That bred them they return, and howle and gnaw
My Bowels, their repast; then bursting forth
Afresh with conscious terrours vex me round,
That rest or intermission none I find.
Before mine eyes in opposition sits
Grim Death my Son and foe, who sets them on,
And me his Parent would full soon devour
For want of other prey, but that he knows
His end with mine involvd; and knows that
Should prove a bitter Morsel, and his bane,
When ever that shall be;

The blogger, like God before the creation, lives in a solipsistic dream contemplating his own thoughts and deeds. And being narcissistic gives birth to his blog, the distillation of his spirit. Unlike the Deity, though, having created no actual world his blog doesn’t go on to dwell within all people of good-will; both those within the visible structure of Christ’s Church and those - protestants, jews, moslems, buddhists, atheists  etc - who through invincible ignorance as it used to be called, or good-faith as it’s more tactfully put these days, have failed to sign up to the Catholic Church.  

    But it’s fun even though, like the concept of God, utterly irrelevant to the world at large.