Israel Centeno

No se nace para ser concepto. Se nace para ser. Y el ser humano no es un constructo, como pretendió la posmodernidad. No se reduce a discurso, a relato, a biología, a cultura, a clase ni a historia. El ser humano es. Es antes de cualquier narrativa. Antes de aprender, es. Antes de ser civilizado, es. Esa es la piedra que desecharon los constructores del siglo XX, y que hoy regresa como clave ontológica.

Toda ideología que intenta explicar al hombre desde fuera de su ser lo mutila. Y por eso fracasan las doctrinas que pretenden organizar al hombre como si fuese una pieza más en el engranaje de la civilización. No hay educación, estructura ni lenguaje que agote su misterio. Y si hay algo que prueba esta afirmación no es un dogma, sino el testimonio silencioso de cada conciencia cuando calla el mundo.

La ciencia explica el cómo, pero no puede explicar el qué. Sabemos cómo se comporta la materia, cómo se curva el espacio-tiempo, cómo reacciona un cerebro ante estímulos. Pero no sabemos qué es la materia, qué es el tiempo, qué es la conciencia. Esa es la grieta por donde se cuela el Ser. Lo que no puede ser explicado pero tampoco negado. Lo que está allí, ineludible.

Frente al auge de la inteligencia artificial, se hace más evidente que la inteligencia no es sinónimo de Ser. Podemos reproducir algoritmos, simulaciones, modelos sofisticados que imitan decisiones humanas. Pero no podemos generar Ser. Cuanto más avanza la IA, más resalta lo irreemplazable de la conciencia humana. Y en ese reflejo, queda al descubierto que lo esencial no puede ser producido, solo contemplado.

La tecnología, en lugar de desplazar la conciencia, la confirma. Porque todo artefacto nos recuerda que hay alguien que lo mira. Y ese que mira, que pregunta, que ama, que sufre, es más grande que todo lo que construye. La conciencia no es un subproducto, es una manifestación del Ser. No se explica, se experimenta. No se reduce, se afirma.

Ahora más que nunca, las preguntas tienen más valor que las respuestas. Porque el Ser pregunta. Pregunta en un universo contingente. Pregunta porque sabe que no se basta a sí mismo, pero tampoco se entrega a cualquier respuesta. El que se pregunta ya está más cerca de la verdad que aquel que repite fórmulas.

Y allí emerge la libertad. No como capacidad de elegir entre opciones impuestas, sino como la posibilidad de responder desde el núcleo del ser. La libertad auténtica no es deseo sin freno, sino consentimiento profundo al ser que somos. Amar es una forma superior de libertad, porque implica salir de uno mismo sin dejar de ser uno mismo. Y hacer justicia es amar a cada ser como portador del mismo misterio irreductible que nos habita.

Amar no es sentimentalismo. Es participación en la estructura misma del Ser. Es ver en el otro no un medio, ni un enemigo, ni una abstracción, sino una epifanía. La justicia, en ese sentido, no es castigo ni contrato. Es revelación. Cuando se hace justicia, el mundo se alinea —aunque sea por un instante— con lo que debe ser. Y ese deber no proviene de la ley positiva, sino de una luz anterior a todo sistema.

El sufrimiento humano, entonces, no es absurdo por sí mismo. Puede ser absurdo si se lo aísla. Pero integrado a la historia del Ser, se vuelve posibilidad de comunión. El dolor compartido no es menos doloroso, pero es más verdadero. Y en esa verdad, emerge una redención que no se compra ni se exige: se revela.

San Pablo lo comprendió con claridad cuando exclamó: “¿Dónde está, muerte, tu aguijón?” El yo no desaparece con la muerte del cuerpo. Se reafirma. El ser humano no se transforma en fantasma, no se disuelve en energía, no se pierde en una nada abstracta. Permanece. Continúa. Vive en un cuerpo glorioso, que no es opuesto al cuerpo terreno, sino su plenitud. El cristiano no cree en la aniquilación ni en el alma flotante: cree en la resurrección. Cree que lo que se siembra en ignominia, resucita en gloria.

Por eso morir a uno mismo, tomar la cruz, desprenderse, no es una alienación. Es una kenosis: una vaciamiento para que la plenitud de Dios habite en lo humano. “Ya no soy yo quien vive, sino Cristo quien vive en mí”, dijo Pablo. Y en ese decir, se condensa la gran revelación: que el ser humano no fue hecho para la nada, ni para el cálculo, ni para el consumo. Fue hecho para vivir en Dios. Lleva en su carne las marcas del Amor.

La libertad, el amor y la justicia no son valores añadidos a la vida. Son los nombres con los que el Ser se manifiesta. Quien los vive, habita en la verdad. Quien los niega, se aleja de sí mismo. Porque nadie puede dejar de ser, pero sí puede traicionarse.

Y en ese sentido, el hombre no debe civilizarse para ser humano. Debe ser humano antes de ser civilizado. El orden correcto no es cultura → ser, sino ser → cultura. No somos lo que el entorno produce. Somos lo que respondemos ante el misterio.

La posmodernidad falló en eso. Redujo al hombre a una construcción social. Pero el Ser no se construye: se descubre. No es un proyecto: es una presencia. Y por eso —aunque muchos nieguen su rostro, aunque quieran reemplazarlo por datos y deseos— el ser humano sigue preguntando. Y mientras pregunte, mientras ame, mientras sufra con verdad, seguirá afirmando que es.

No por derecho. No por mérito. Sino porque es.

Israel Centeno

“No hay rasgo alguno de la realidad humana que no haya sido asumido por Cristo, salvo el pecado. Así, la esperanza cristiana es la certeza de que el amor de Dios es más fuerte que cualquier mal, y que la victoria de Cristo es definitiva, aunque todavía no plenamente manifestada”

(cf. Catecismo, nn. 602-605, 1040-1041).

Iván Karamazov no niega a Dios: le devuelve el billete. No se rebela contra la existencia del Todopoderoso, sino contra el precio de entrada a un mundo donde un niño es torturado y asesinado. Si la redención universal requiere ese pago, él no lo acepta. El gesto es literario, pero encierra una de las objeciones más radicales jamás formuladas a la teología cristiana: la idea de un bien mayor que justifica todo sufrimiento.

Desde un punto de vista ontológico, el mal no posee ser en sentido estricto: es privación, una ausencia parasitaria de lo que debería estar y no está. Pero aunque sea metafísicamente secundario, su experiencia es devastadoramente primaria. El mal hiere, fractura, humilla. Que no tenga sustancia no lo hace menos real. Por eso, la pregunta no es solo qué es el mal, sino por qué duele tanto. Y más aún: ¿puede el mal, en su gratuidad infernal, tener un lugar en un mundo redimido?

La teología de Tomás de Aquino responde que sí. Dios permite el mal —dice— no porque lo quiera, sino porque, en su sabiduría, puede sacar de él un bien mayor. Para Tomás, lo que más importa no es la ausencia de dolor, sino la comunión de amor. La soledad elegida —esa negativa a abrirse al otro— es, para él, la peor condena. Y el sufrimiento, si nos une en amor, puede transformarse en medicina. La cruz de Cristo no fue la negación del mal, sino su carga asumida hasta el extremo, para que ya no sea absurdo sufrir solo.

Pero Iván no pregunta desde la metafísica. Pregunta desde el espanto. ¿Puede un mundo donde se ha quebrado la inocencia más pura —una niña muerta de frío en un sótano, un niño devorado por los perros frente a su madre— ser salvado? ¿Tiene sentido una felicidad eterna si está construida sobre la sangre de los inocentes? ¿Es justo el paraíso si en él reposa, junto al santo, también el verdugo, lavado en el último segundo por la misericordia?

Estas no son objeciones abstractas. Son preguntas que tocan la entraña de la fe. Si todo es perdonado, ¿qué significa la justicia? Si el amor de Dios puede salvar incluso al más abyecto, ¿no es eso una traición a las víctimas?

Frente a estas objeciones, la teología solo puede responder con temor y temblor. No hay respuesta racional que pueda consolar a la madre cuyo hijo fue asesinado. Pero hay una promesa: que en el corazón trinitario de Dios, cada lágrima será recogida, cada herida resarcida, y cada historia transfigurada sin negar el horror, sino abrazándolo con una compasión más honda que la lógica. La redención cristiana no es amnesia. Es transfiguración. No borra el mal, pero le roba su última palabra.

Ahora bien, esta promesa tiene un riesgo: el escándalo de la misericordia. Porque si Dios puede redimir incluso a quien ha encarnado el mal —Hitler, Stalin, o el más anónimo de los asesinos—, entonces el cielo no será un club de justos, sino un coro de rescatados. La lógica de la gracia no es distributiva, sino desbordante. La justicia divina no se mide en equivalencias, sino en reconciliación.

Por eso, el “no” de Iván, aunque desgarrador, es necesario: recuerda el precio que el mal inflige sobre la inocencia. Pero no puede ser la última palabra. Porque si la redención es verdadera, debe ser capaz de restaurar no solo el alma del pecador, sino también la confianza de la víctima en un amor que no la abandonó.

Devolver el billete es un gesto ético de enorme dignidad. Aceptar el misterio de la redención es un acto de fe que no niega el dolor, pero espera que, más allá de la muerte, incluso el horror pueda ser asumido, tocado, llorado y finalmente redimido por un Dios que no vino a explicar el sufrimiento, sino a sufrirlo con nosotros

israel Centeno

Thomas Aquinas understood that at the foundation of all reality lies not an object, nor even energy, but an act: the act of being. What exists does so because it actualizes its existence, because it participates in being. But nothing we see, touch, or think of exists by itself. Everything around us is limited, restricted to a form, and therefore dependent. It is not the cause of itself. If something has a particular way of existing—like an electron, a rock, or a person—that already indicates its being is bounded, that it is not total. And if it is not total, it does not suffice for itself. If it does not suffice, it must be caused. If it is caused, it exists through another.

Now, if we strip away layer after layer, if we move back from cause to cause, from being to being, we necessarily arrive at a point where the being in question cannot have been caused by anything else. Otherwise, there would be no sufficient explanation for the whole. There must exist, necessarily, a reality that does not receive being, but is being. A reality with no restrictions, no form that limits it, no accidents that modify it. A reality whose only content is to be. Thomas calls this ipsum esse subsistens—being itself, subsisting. Not one thing among others, but the very foundation of all that is possible.

This act of being through itself, by its very nature, has the power to actualize every possible form. Because it is not limited by any of them, it can grant them all. But it is none of them. It is distinct from everything it causes, like white light is distinct from the colors it generates when refracted, yet contains them all in potency. Thus, every limited form of being—every thing that exists—is not being through itself. It is not self-sufficient. Therefore, it must be caused. And all that is caused depends. All that depends is not truly free. It is bound to its cause.

That is why, when Christ says “the truth shall set you free,” He is not merely speaking of intellectual knowledge that frees us from ignorance. He is revealing that there is a truth which does not depend, which is not caused, which is not limited by any form: a truth that is being itself without restriction. And then He says: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” That is: He not only teaches the truth, He is the truth. If He is the truth, and if the truth is that which is uncaused, unlimited, and immortal, then He is the very source of being. In Him there is no mixture, no limitation, no dependency. His being comes from no one else: I am.

To be free, then, is to participate in that being which is not caused. It is to be liberated from contingency. It is to step out of the realm of limitation, where everything breaks, fades, corrodes, or contradicts itself. It is to enter into communion with the only One who can say “I am” without adjectives, without conditions.

And here a common objection arises: why assume that this first cause is simple and not complex? The answer is both simple and profound: complexity is a property of what is composed, of what has parts, of what needs elements to be joined, to cooperate, to be organized. And anything with parts is, by definition, dependent. Each part needs the others, and the whole needs a principle of unity. Therefore, the complex cannot be the ultimate explanation of reality. The complex is caused, conditioned, fragile.

The first cause cannot be like this. It cannot have parts. It cannot be a mechanism or a system. For then it would depend on something that unites its parts, on a law that structures it, on an energy that holds it together. The cause of all that is real cannot be structured like the things it causes. It must transcend all structure. It must be absolutely simple.

Only what is absolutely simple can be truly necessary, truly eternal, truly free. Only what is one without mixture can be the source of all multiplicity. Absolute simplicity is the mark of divinity—not because it lacks richness, but because it is fullness without division. It needs nothing to be complete, because it is all in act. It does not divide into parts because it is totality without limit. It does not change because it lacks nothing.

God is not complicated. God is simple. And in His simplicity lies the source of all things. In His simplicity lies freedom. In His simplicity lies truth. And that truth, which depends on nothing, which does not change, which cannot die, that truth will set us free.

Israel Centeno

Playing Clever: The Enduring Intelligence of Thomism

— A brief defense of metaphysical clarity in the age of confusion

In an age dazzled by novelty and exhausted by contradiction, embracing Thomism is not a retreat to medieval nostalgia. It is, rather, the most intellectually strategic move one can make. To be a Thomist today is to be clever in the highest sense: to think with precision, argue with integrity, and live with metaphysical depth in a world that has forgotten the meaning of both truth and being.

Where contemporary philosophy often chases symptoms—identity, language games, subjectivity—Thomism strikes at roots. As Eleonore Stump has argued in Atonement and Wandering in Darkness, Thomistic thought offers a deeply unified vision of the human person, one that bridges metaphysics, moral psychology, and narrative understanding. Stump doesn’t merely repeat Aquinas; she shows how Thomism speaks meaningfully to the broken, to the suffering, to those wounded by both sin and secularism. That’s clever: to bring a 13th-century framework into dialogue with 21st-century wounds—and have it make more sense than any therapy manual.

Thomism is not simply systematic theology. It is a metaphysical realism so robust that it can absorb the best of modern thought without being swallowed by its confusions. As philosopher John Haldane puts it, Thomism is “the Aristotelian grammar of being refined by Christian metaphysics and elevated by revelation.” It does not fear reason, nor does it idolize it. It lets reason climb as far as it can go, and then allows faith to illumine what lies beyond—without contradiction, without coercion.

This is why being a Thomist is not simply clever but courageously intelligent. In a world where meaning is flattened to preference and truth is sacrificed to consensus, Thomism reminds us:

That esse (being) is not the same as essence. That causality includes final causes, not just efficient ones. That the soul is not a ghost in a machine but the form of the body, capable of reason, love, and grace. That God is not a being among beings, but ipsum esse subsistens—pure Act, the ground of all that is.

This isn’t cleverness in the smug sense. It’s the sobriety of someone who sees that the emperor of postmodernity has no clothes.

Indeed, one of the most compelling traits of Thomism is that it anticipates and outlives its critics. It survived Ockham’s nominalism, resisted the Cartesian ego, endured the Kantian divide, and now smiles gently at the deconstructionist obsession with difference. All these movements offered fragments. Aquinas offers a cosmos.

But above all, Thomism is clever because it has no need to panic. Its confidence lies not in academic fashion but in the clarity of its principles. That is why, as Étienne Gilson once wrote, “Thomism is not a philosophy among others. It is the metaphysics of the real.”

In a time when “deep” often means obscure and “complex” means confused, Thomism is both luminous and sane. It dares to say that truth exists, that the soul is real, that freedom matters, and that reason—when not mutilated—can lead us to the threshold of the divine.

To be a Thomist, then, is not to be passé. It is to be ahead of the game.

It is to play clever—with eternity in mind.

A critique of redemptive dialectics and the progressive myth of history

by Israel Centeno

“History has no meaning. It has memory.”

— Hannah Arendt

Yale philosopher Jacob McNulty has recently proposed a new political reading of Hegel that discomforts both Marxists and liberals. His proposition: to recover a tougher, more grounded Hegel—one who cannot be reduced to Marx’s historical engine, nor swallowed whole by globalist social democracy. For McNulty, even if Spirit and Reason have ultimate priority, this does not cancel the real force of ideology, the State, law, and—let us add—conflict as a structuring drive of history¹.

What McNulty subtly implies is that human history is not made of theses, antitheses, and syntheses, but of states, wars, betrayals, ambitions, and limits. It is not a logic textbook, but a field of force.

And yet, from Hegel and Marx to Fukuyama and his heirs, many have believed otherwise: that history is a narrative with a happy ending. That we are progressing—painfully, yes, but irreversibly—toward liberty, equality, and human fulfillment. That whatever opposes this path is merely a leftover of the past, and whatever advances is meaningful.

The myth of the happy ending

But history does not behave like a straight line. It looks more like a scribble drawn by a sleepless child. Democracy was not a final destination—it was an ancient experiment that collapsed, rose again, and now prostitutes itself. Empire was not overcome, it rebranded as global hegemony. The republic coexists with tribalism. Dictatorship has morphed into hyper-technological emotional control.

History does not advance: it circles. It returns. And when it is domesticated by redemptive ideologies, it becomes a landscape of extermination. Because happy endings lead to hell.

The fruit of the earthly paradise

Every ideology that promises earthly redemption ends up sacrificing real people in the name of an abstract future. The 20th century was its cruelest theater:

The USSR promised social justice, and delivered mass famine, ideological purges, and gulags. China proclaimed peasant liberation, and launched the Cultural Revolution: millions died in “re-education.” Nazi Germany vowed to restore national dignity, and built extermination camps. Cambodia, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela… the list goes on.

Every time an elite claims to understand the ultimate meaning of history, what follows is not freedom, but totalitarianism disguised as virtue². As Leszek Kołakowski put it with biting clarity: *“The promise of redeemed history is the threshold of mass graves.”*³

The end is not political

Against this machinery of secular redemption, we must propose an active skepticism—one that doesn’t fall into cynicism, but also refuses to worship new utopias. Eric Voegelin diagnosed it sharply: *“The fatal error of modernity is the immanentization of the eschaton”*⁴—that is, trying to bring the final destiny of man (judgment, fulfillment) into the temporal and political realm.

The end of history will not be socialist, liberal, or technocratic. It will not be a contract or an algorithm. It will not come by evolution, nor by revolution. It will come—if it comes—by judgment. Until then, what we have are fragile institutions, struggling souls, and a freedom that must be exercised without idols.

Against redemptive dialectics

Dialectics, when used ideologically, promises that every conflict has a higher meaning. That all suffering is part of the Spirit’s labor pains. That History justifies everything—even the unjustifiable.

But this vision, so seductive to intellectuals and tyrants alike, has failed to account for the only thing that truly matters: the irreducible dignity of each human being, not as a means, but as an end. History is not a doctoral thesis. It is a valley of tears with flashes of grace.

Only theological hope—the kind that expects no fullness here, but elsewhere—can save us from hell in the name of heaven. Everything else is idolatry of the future.

Notes

Jacob McNulty, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, Yale University Press, 2023. See also his IAI article: “Hegel vs Marx: ideas change the world, not economics.” Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951. Arendt reveals how ideology annihilates moral judgment. Leszek Kołakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, vol. III, “The Breakdown.” Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics, 1952.

Israel Centeno

Cosmic-Type Complex

An Essay on Lucifer’s Rebellion and the Oedipal Mythology of the Modern Soul

“If there is a God, how could I bear not to be Him?”

—Friedrich Nietzsche

I. The Eternal Suspicion

There is a suspicion that runs through all myths, all religions, and all systems of thought:

Man is not simply trying to understand the world—

he is trying to usurp its throne.

From the beginning, the desire was not merely to know, but to rule without origin. It is not enough to exist: the fallen soul desires to exist without having been created, to be without having been called. In the depths of the modern soul, even in its most secular forms, dwells the shadow of an ancient rebellion.

That rebellion has a name: Lucifer.

The most beautiful of the angels did not fall out of mere disobedience, but for something more grave:

He could not bear to be a creature.

He wanted to be like God—not by participation, but by usurpation.

The founding cry of his fall —Non serviam— is not the lament of a slave yearning for freedom, but a metaphysical declaration of independence from the One to whom he owes his very being.

And in that same logic—proud, dazzling, irreverent—lies the tragic structure of modern thought: the desire to be transcendent without having been transcended, to possess consciousness without having been breathed into.

Like Oedipus, the modern soul kills the Father and possesses the Mother. And like Oedipus, it cannot bear that stolen glory without paying the price: the blindness of meaning and the sentence of spiritual exile.

II. The Rebellion of Lucifer: Non serviam

Lucifer’s sin is not passion—it is metaphysical pride.

Not moral disorder, but ontological rebellion.

He cannot bear to be second. He cannot accept that love came before. He rejects inheritance: he wants authorship.

He does not want to serve: he wants to reign over being.

Thus he becomes the first nihilist, the first autonomist, the first technocrat of the abyss.

And that cry of absolute autonomy —“I will not serve”— still echoes in countless modern forms:

In the scientist who seeks immortality without a soul. In the philosopher who reduces consciousness to the brain but believes in the power of his own mind. In the ideologue who replaces nature with self-perception. In the politician who promises redemption without a redeemer.

Lucifer’s rebellion is not over.

It has simply been technologized.

It has become system, discourse, program, algorithm.

But it remains the same: to not be a child, to not be a creature, to owe nothing to anyone.

III. The Oedipal Complex: Freud and the Inheritance of a Broken Soul

Freud, though a materialist, uncovered a truth deeper than his own system could bear.

The Oedipal complex—killing the father and possessing the mother—was meant to explain neurosis, but it revealed something far greater: a structural rebellion of the human soul.

Modern man, like Oedipus, commits a symbolic double crime:

He kills the Father-Creator: erasing Him from the story, denying Him, replacing Him with chance, evolution, or statistical necessity. He possesses Mother Nature: manipulating, dominating, exploiting her while simultaneously worshiping her body and denying her mystery.

And now he reigns—yet reigns over interior ruins.

For the soul that usurps the throne of origin cannot bear the weight of its own desire.

He sought freedom,

and found loneliness.

He sought sovereignty,

and lost the earth.

Like Oedipus, the modern soul will gouge out its eyes once it realizes—too late—that it has built its world on the denial of the Love that made it possible.

IV. Mother Nature, the New Faceless Goddess

Without the Father, man does not become an orphan—he becomes an idolater.

His new goddess is Mother Nature, both adored and exploited.

She is venerated in ecological discourse, yet violated by genetic mining and climate manipulation. She is called “life,” but reduced to chemical processes. She is exalted as a fertile goddess, but denied all true sanctity.

The modern soul no longer sees nature as a gift, but as a faceless womb, a mother without voice, a source to be manipulated at will.

In this new ecological religion, the Earth is sacred but godless, and man is her priest and her engineer.

We have turned creation into a system, fertility into code, and the cosmos into a mirror where only our will is reflected.

The result: the mother falls silent, the child becomes lost, and the Father has been erased from the Book.

V. Consequences of the Cosmic Oedipus: Sovereignty Without Redemption

Today’s most accepted theories in cosmology and neuroscience are not neutral—they are responses to the vacuum left by the Father.

The multiverse: infinite possible universes to avoid confronting the improbable precision of this one. Cyclical models like Penrose’s: eternal returns to evade a beginning that smells of design. Quantum consciousness: a soul without soul, a spark without source.

All of these models avoid the direct question:

Who called me into being?

They accept that consciousness may not be reducible to the brain—but not that it might have an Author.

They accept the soul, but deny the Spirit who breathed it forth.

Thus man reigns—in solitude.

A king without inheritance.

A sovereign without a kingdom.

A god without an altar.

VI. Epilogue: Science as an Escape from the Father

Science, born of wonder and humility, has in many cases been hijacked by the same impulse that condemned Oedipus: the desire to know without being known, to understand without being understood.

Theories like Penrose’s, the multiverse, string theory, quantum consciousness—they are not false by virtue of being unprovable.

They are ontological evasions, dressed in mathematical elegance.

Because a universe with a finely tuned beginning is a problem for the soul that refuses to kneel.

Because a mind capable of understanding the universe, but that did not invent itself, implies the trace of Another.

And that, for the modern ego, is intolerable.

It prefers to invent ten thousand worlds than bow to a single Creator.

But there is a more noble path:

Not to renounce reason, but to follow it to the threshold of Mystery.

To accept that I am transcendent—yes.

But also to accept that I did not give myself being.

That there is a Thou who thought of me before I ever thought of the world.

And that to recognize the Father is not slavery—it is the beginning of all redemption

Israel Centeno

Spanish and English version👇

Una de las tensiones más profundas en la cosmología moderna surge cuando se intenta reconciliar dos categorías que, por definición, se excluyen mutuamente: lo finito y lo eterno. Algunos modelos especulativos —como los de inflación eterna o el multiverso— intentan postular un universo eterno, sin origen ni fin. Pero, si tomamos en serio esta afirmación, entonces enfrentamos una paradoja lógica y ontológica de primer orden: un universo eterno no puede contener en su interior fenómenos verdaderamente finitos sin contradicción.

Una hipótesis científica rigurosa no puede autonegación. Decir que un universo es finito y eterno al mismo tiempo equivale a postular una cuadratura del círculo. Si el universo es eterno, todo lo que contiene debería, de algún modo, participar de esa eternidad. Pero nosotros, los seres humanos, somos finitos en cuerpo, y temporales en experiencia. ¿Cómo podemos, entonces, existir dentro de un universo eterno sin ser nosotros mismos eternos?

Desde la filosofía cristiana —especialmente en las voces de Santo Tomás de Aquino, Edith Stein y otros pensadores del realismo metafísico— se da una respuesta coherente a este dilema. Se reconoce que el ser humano, en cuanto creado por Dios, es eterno en su alma, pero no en su cuerpo. El cuerpo nace, cambia y muere; pero el alma, al haber sido creada directamente por el Logos divino, no se extingue. Su existencia no es infinita hacia atrás (como Dios), pero sí inmortal hacia adelante. En otras palabras: el alma humana no es eterna por naturaleza, pero es hecha inmortal por participación.

De allí se deduce que la eternidad no es el escenario del universo material, sino el horizonte de destino del alma. Solo por la acción transformadora de Dios —en la muerte, en el juicio, en la gloria o la condena— puede el ser creado cruzar el umbral de lo eterno.

Esto nos lleva a una conclusión radicalmente contraria a la especulación física impersonal: no existe un universo eterno que contenga seres finitos, sino que existe un universo finito que puede ser transfigurado por Dios en una nueva creación eterna.

Desde esta perspectiva, la paradoja cosmológica no se resuelve con más matemáticas, sino con metafísica:

Lo eterno no puede contener lo finito sin absorberlo. Lo finito no puede habitar lo eterno sin ser transfigurado. Y el único puente posible entre ambos órdenes no es una ley física, sino una Persona que llama al ser desde fuera del tiempo: el Logos

English 🇺🇸🇬🇧

A Rigorous Scientific Hypothesis Cannot Self-Negate: Can the Finite Inhabit the Eternal?

The Cosmological Paradox from a Christian Perspective on Being

One of the deepest tensions in modern cosmology arises when it attempts to reconcile two categories that, by definition, exclude one another: the finite and the eternal. Some speculative models—such as eternal inflation or the multiverse—seek to postulate an eternal universe, without beginning or end. But if we take this claim seriously, we are faced with a first-order logical and ontological paradox: an eternal universe cannot contain truly finite phenomena without contradiction.

A rigorous scientific hypothesis cannot contradict itself. To say that the universe is both finite and eternal is akin to proposing the squaring of the circle. If the universe is eternal, then everything it contains must in some way participate in that eternity. But we human beings are finite in body and temporal in experience. How, then, can we exist within an eternal universe without ourselves being eternal?

From the standpoint of Christian philosophy—especially in the voices of Thomas Aquinas, Edith Stein, and other metaphysical realists—a coherent response to this dilemma is offered. The human being, as created by God, is eternal in soul but not in body. The body is born, it changes, and it dies; but the soul, having been created directly by the divine Logos, does not cease to exist. Its existence is not infinite backward (like God’s), but it is immortal forward. In other words, the human soul is not eternal by nature, but it is made immortal by participation.

From this follows the idea that eternity is not the stage of the material universe, but the horizon of the soul’s destiny. Only through the transformative action of God—in death, in judgment, in glory or condemnation—can a created being cross the threshold into the eternal.

This leads us to a conclusion radically opposed to impersonal physical speculation: there is no eternal universe containing finite beings, but rather a finite universe that can be transfigured by God into a new eternal creation.

From this perspective, the cosmological paradox is not resolved through more mathematics, but through metaphysics:

The eternal cannot contain the finite without absorbing it. The finite cannot inhabit the eternal without being transfigured. And the only possible bridge between these two orders is not a physical law, but a Person who calls being from outside of time: the Logos.

Israel Centeno 

“The so-called sex recession is puzzling in part because sex has seemingly never been less stigmatized or easier to procure. As Jia Tolentino of The New Yorker observes, “The electronic devices in our pockets contain not only a vast universe of free porn but also apps on which casual sex can be arranged as efficiently as a burrito delivery from DoorDash.” In today’s society, desire is no longer shameful. Kinks are considered healthy. Mutual pleasure is prioritized. People are free to do what they want in the bedroom—as long as all parties are pleased.”

So why aren’t young people hooking up?

There’s a deeper contradiction that the mainstream media refuses to confront. Younger generations have been caught in a tortured dance between backlash and progress. On one hand, we live in a world filled with instant gratification—bukkake, dick pics, and hookup apps. On the other, conservative institutions enforce invisibility or punishment for any sex outside of marriage and procreation. “

Tolentino rightly notes this duality.

But what she fails to note—either out of bias or convenience—is the influence of progressive moralism. Yes, the Right has its puritanical tendencies. But the Left has weaponized shame under new names: consent protocols so strict they kill spontaneity, identity politics that pathologize desire, and an intellectual environment where sex is a minefield. One wrong move, one misunderstood message, and you’re a social pariah. You’re canceled. Advised. Silenced. Or sued.

It’s not just the right-wingers. In fact, under the Biden and Obama administrations, we saw more censorship and suppression than in decades prior—soft censorship by publishers, platforms, and cultural gatekeepers. Eroticism had to sneak into the mainstream as sanitized romance novels. Anything too explicit, too raw, too male, too female, too binary, too real—was exiled.

Meanwhile, woke culture and the market merged into an unholy alliance. Pop stars like Sabrina Carpenter are transformed into symbols of feminist “progress” by committees that couldn’t define femininity if their grants depended on it. We live in an airless bubble where sexuality is constantly discussed, but rarely lived.

This is the spiritual sterility of our age. The desexualization of a supposedly sexually liberated culture. People are alone, afraid, and hyper-aware. The real issue isn’t sex—it’s fear. Fear of judgment. Fear of misstep. Fear of genuine intimacy.

So yes, the sex recession is real. But no, it’s not the fault of a law, or a court decision. It’s not Roe v. Wade. It’s the result of a culture that uses freedom as branding, while policing desire with more algorithms, more labels, more surveillance, and more shame.

This isn’t liberation. It’s bureaucratic puritanism.

And until we face that, there won’t be a renaissance of eros. Only more hashtags, more confusion, more control