I will frequently be using illusively symbolic language on this blog. While many folks have an aversion to philosophical language, sometimes words like “being” “real” “truth” “virtue” simply can’t be defined in any plain, simple, way. To do so is to tame them, domesticate them, and to trade in a thoughtful life for one that makes us comfortable, or what Plato would have called, “the unreflective life.” Meaning, however, is lost in definition…just as paranormalchrist is here taking on a totally different meaning than popular parlance might suggest, so too some redefintion of terms is necessary at the origins of this blog.
One of the interesting terms I will employ is the term Real. One should not misunderstand my usage of Real with what is ordinarily “real”. In fact, what is ordinarily “real” is precisely not the Real that is guiding the ParanormalChrist. It is not the real of ordinary usage of which religion and faith speak. When one says “God is Real” this is not to confuse God with what we know of the “real” world; rather we are describing another paranormal form of reality…a REAL alongside what we live as real. Religion and faith testify to “otherness” that profoundly shapes who we are. We attempt to be in relation to such “otherness” via ritual expressions of faith…but we NEVER see the Real that initiates our liturgy; God is Real, but the Real God is never “found” or “harnessed”…so the rituals continue, the worship is endless, our bodies find brief connection with the Real through these things…but not really getting any closer to the reality that instigates the act or belief. The Real is what stands behind the symbols, on the other side of the imaginary world built through symbols, but cannot be confused with those symbols. So it is this Real, this primal Cause of our being, our speaking, our praying, that I wish to define. I will define Real via the neo-Freudian reading of Lacan.
My usage is predominately taken from the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan (please see the menu link for contemporary Lacanian theory). I make no claims to originality here. But I find Lacan’s theory of how reality is structured via the psyche as the most probable way to speak about languages, and their byproducts: human relationality and the subsequent construct we call culture/soceity/religion, etc. I will also give brief explanation as to how the idea of Real is also related to the concept of God.
The real is that which is unattainable. It is the part of life that is no longer near due to ones introduction to the symbolic order via the imaginary. However, the Real is always that which shapes one’s behavior and drive. It is, to use an ancient philosophical symbol, the primal Mover of being, yet without being bound to the category of being. It is an is that is not. Thus, it is always located beyond being, yet near enough to being to impact it. It is that which intrudes into our existence, almost without notice, yet non-localizable. It is the only part of existence that is unadulterated by the symbolic order. Precariously, however, it is the Real that gives rise to the symbolic order. It is that which needs to be signified, but that which always escapes signification in the process of discourse. Its naming is its loss.
Lacan, in an interesting theoretical turn, equates that which needs to be signified as the subject’s lack (which is expressed in the subject’s desire to “fill-in” the gap of lack that is an inherent byproduct of using a universal medium language) to express a repressed desire that can never fully be attained because it is not fully present-able. Hence, its presence is the incarnated forms of dreams, intonations, and slips. In this respect, Lacan can talk about the Real in a fashion that is similar to the unconscious.
The unconscious is not Real; what is beneath it and resides therein IS. The real, then, is that which is beyond and may exist and function on several planes. It will be necessary to focus on the real as that which commences the drive, pursuing one in one’s quest to fill the gap of lack represented by the symbolic order; In other words, the Real commences the drive and quest for belief and faith. The Real may be likened to an Nietzschen eternal return of repetition, wherein the drive continues to reel in the subject but the real of the drive is never found. To use Mark Taylor’s language, one could say we are always after what’s Real, After God. The drive perpetually returns to its secondary position creating substitutive objects (objet petit a) rather than catching the reel/real thing. It will be argued that this real is that which is not only beyond, but the place from which ultimate otherness arrives. The place from which this comes is the unconscious. The real, then, is the repressed unconscious reality that seeps outside the bounds of the psychic self and makes its invisible self visible…shaping our world. The concept of Real gives representation to that which cannot be re-presented or presented.
In Christian grammar, this is not called real, but God. God is the symbol that is used to represent what is beyond, but creatively brings one into the symbolic discourse of the subject. It is the symbol that controls the grammar of lack as humanity searches for the bridge that never was. The supreme example of a substitutive object that sits in the place for the real, that represents the lack, pacifying our religious symptom is the Eucharist; the body we break without ever accessing the body…Sorry Aquinas. For Lacan, however, God is unconscious, residing as the master of the “horrible house of truth” wherein signification is the true and only form of sovereignty. And as such, only God is Real…and the real is God. This sounds awefully familiar to a famous Bible verse in the Gospel of John, “In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and what God was, the Word was” [my translation] The Word is God, God is the Word…and the Real is because we speak, we speak because God is Real.
ParanormalChrist 
And the Word became flesh.