Journeeman.

Introduction: Two Directions of Being

At the heart of human existence lies a fundamental distinction: the vertical and the horizontal.

• The Vertical points toward Being-Itself — the eternal, unchanging source and end of all reality. For classical Christian thought, this is Absolute Esse (Ipsum Esse Subsistens): pure, subsistent existence itself, revealed not as an abstract principle but as the Triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; perfect, relational, and self-sufficient. Here, being comes before doing; rest and fulfilment are possible because the goal is not endless motion, but union with the One who is the source of all life, truth, and love.
• The Horizontal describes movement within time and change: activity, progress, relationships, and production in the created world. In itself it is good and necessary — the world is given to us to cultivate and steward. But it becomes destructive when it replaces the vertical: when temporal activity becomes the ultimate meaning and security that only the eternal can provide.

This framework, drawn from Aristotle, Aquinas, and Paul Tillich, reveals that our modern struggles are not merely social or economic — they are rooted in a metaphysical choice: to live as if the created order is all there is, or to live in right relation to the Creator. As Scripture reminds us: “What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them… so they are without excuse” (Romans 1:19–20). To forget the vertical is not neutral — it is the beginning of idolatry.

I. Progress: From Fulfilment to Endless Motion

All change follows the pattern of potentiality and actuality — what something can become moving toward what it actually is. But how we understand this movement defines our whole view of life.

The Classical View: Vertical Progress

For Aristotle and the ancient world, this movement was vertical. Every being has a fixed nature and purpose. An acorn grows into an oak; a person matures in wisdom and virtue. Progress meant reaching one’s intended form — arriving, completing, and finding rest. The path led upward toward the unchanging ground of existence.

Thomas Aquinas deepened this insight: all created things participate in Being-Itself, and their true end is to reflect and return to their Source. This aligns with the biblical vision captured by Augustine: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you” — a truth echoed throughout Ecclesiastes and the Psalms.

The Modern Shift: Horizontal Progress

Modern thought retained the language of potential and actuality, but flipped its direction. Progress became horizontal: temporal, future-oriented, and open-ended. As Tillich writes:

“In every action in which something is produced beyond what was already given, a progress is made… But the belief in progress as a universal law of inevitable improvement cannot be proved.”

No longer is there a “highest end” or final goal. Every achievement opens new possibilities; every solution raises new questions. The cycle becomes endless: potential → actuality → new potential, with no natural stopping point. This is the “vanity” described in Ecclesiastes: “All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing” (Ecclesiastes 1:8).

The Illusion of “History’s March”

This idea reached its fullest expression in G.W.F. Hegel’s philosophy, which secularized the Christian hope of redemption into an immanent, automatic process: history itself unfolds dialectically toward greater freedom and reason. From this came the modern mantra: “being on the right side of history.”

As Eric Voegelin and C.S. Lewis observed, this is a false eschatology — it takes the Kingdom of God, which lies beyond history, and attempts to establish it within history, promising perfection through human effort alone. But Tillich’s warning holds: there is no inevitable law of improvement. Every gain brings a corresponding loss: technology brings comfort but creates dependency; freedom brings opportunity but brings fragmentation; knowledge brings power but brings new risks. Progress is not guaranteed — it must be worked for, and if effort ceases, what has been built will decay.

II. The Trap: When Means Become Ends

When the vertical dimension is suppressed or forgotten, the horizontal becomes the only sphere in which to find meaning. What was meant to serve life becomes what defines it — creating three familiar patterns of bondage, each a form of idolatry: elevating created goods to the place of God.

1. The Bondage of Work and Productivity

Without inherent identity given by creation, tradition, or relation to the Creator, worth must be earned. The rule becomes: “I am what I produce and achieve.”

We see this clearly across many cultures, especially in East and Southeast Asia: diligence and loyalty — once virtues that supported family, community, and worship — have become obligations without limit. Long hours are called “honorable,” yet they erode health, relationships, and social cohesion. It is no longer work for life, but work as life. To pause is to risk losing one’s sense of value. This is the treadmill Jesus warns against: “Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life” (John 6:27).

2. The Bondage of Consumerism

Consumerism is the mirror image of production. If we are not defined by what we do, we define ourselves by what we have or experience: “I am what I own, visit, and share.”

Here too the horizontal logic prevails: satisfaction is always temporary. Every purchase brings brief relief, then the desire for something newer or better returns. Possessions were meant to serve our needs; now they are expected to give our lives meaning. As the Apostle Paul writes: “Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction” (1 Timothy 6:9). It is a cycle of endless chasing, with no final arrival.

3. The Bondage of Ideology and Collective Identity

When individual striving leaves us isolated or unfulfilled, we turn to groups for belonging and purpose: “I am who I stand with and what I oppose.”

Tillich calls this neocollectivism. Unlike traditional community — which grows from shared faith, history, and place, and upholds the dignity of each person made in God’s image — these movements offer security on one condition only: surrender your independent judgment and conscience. Dietrich Bonhoeffer described this as a kind of moral stupidity: not a lack of intelligence, but the voluntary choice to stop asking “Is this true?” and only ask “Am I on the winning side?”

It appears wherever activism outruns understanding, and identity becomes reactionary — defined against an enemy rather than rooted in the Logos, who is Truth itself. As Bonhoeffer learned, this is the opposite of biblical courage: true loyalty belongs first to God, not to the shifting tides of history.

III. The Root: Being Suppressed, Not Lost

What connects all these patterns? It is a fundamental spiritual and metaphysical shift: the suppression of the knowledge of Being-Itself.

In the modern secular view — most clearly expressed by new atheism and materialism — human beings are reduced to biological machines: accidental products of matter, chance, and natural selection. There is no Creator, no inherent nature, no eternal purpose. We exist, but we are not called to anything beyond ourselves.

But as Romans 1 makes clear, this reduction is not a neutral discovery — it is a deliberate choice: “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened… They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:21, 25). This is the noetic effect of sin: we choose to see ourselves only horizontally, and in doing so, we sever ourselves from the very source of our dignity and meaning.

The result is what Tillich named the anxiety of meaninglessness: the quiet, persistent fear that behind all our activity, nothing has final significance. We work, buy, and belong not to truly live, but to hide this anxiety — what we may call false courage: acting as if we have purpose, while building our lives on shifting sand.

IV. The Way Forward: Recovering the Vertical

The solution is not to reject work, progress, or community — but to restore them to their proper place. The only stable foundation is to reconnect with the vertical dimension: to know and participate in Being-Itself, the Triune God.

God is Absolute Esse — Being-Itself in its pure, subsistent reality — existing eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: a communion of love that is the pattern and source of all true relationship.

This reality changes everything:

✅ Inherent Worth: We are before we do or have. Made in the imago Dei, our identity is given, not earned. As Paul affirms: “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

✅ True Purpose: Activity and progress remain good — but as means, not ends. Our work becomes vocation: a calling to steward creation and love our neighbour, not a way to justify ourselves. “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters” (Colossians 3:23).

✅ Freedom from the Treadmill: There is a true end. We can rest not because we have achieved everything, but because we belong to the One who holds all things. This is why Sabbath rest is not optional — it is a weekly reorientation: stopping to remember we are creatures, not gods, and that our worth does not depend on output.

✅ Healthy Community: Belonging reflects the Trinity — unity without uniformity, participation without losing oneself. We find security in the Body of Christ, not in ideological tribes.

Tillich’s framework is valuable for diagnosis, but true courage goes deeper: it is the courage of faith described in Scripture. “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). It is the courage to stand firm even when the world calls us irrelevant, because we are rooted in the One who never changes.

Practically, this recovery begins in the ordinary habits of faith — those sacred actions and expressions that connect us, both individually and in community, more deeply into the vertical reality. Here we do not just think about Being-Itself — we participate in the life of Christ, the true Vine: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (John 15:4).

Conclusion

The story of modern life is largely the story of what happens when we try to live only on the horizontal plane. We have replaced being with doing, purpose with progress, and truth with ideology — leading to endless motion, deepening anxiety, and subtle forms of enslavement.

The vertical dimension is not outdated or irrelevant; it is the only dimension that gives the horizontal its true meaning. When we reconnect with Being-Itself, we find what we have been searching for all along: an identity beyond performance, security without conformity, and peace that remains even when everything around us changes.

To give our attention to the vertical is not to escape life — it is to truly live: active yet restful, involved yet free, moving forward while standing firm in the One who is, and who was, and who is to come.

📚 Sources & References

• Aristotle, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae
• Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be
• G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of History
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
• Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism
• C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, Mere Christianity
• Holy Scripture: Old and New Testaments