Abstract theology

this post is in regards to a discussion in which Brendan Harkin typed: 

"Despite appearances, Deleuze would ultimately like to reduce the world to a
single formula, one great abstract diagram, a single fundamental equation
>from which everything else unfolds, a single word - GOD."

and produced this response from dominic: 

"One will not find deleuzian theology in the abstract machines.  But a
deleuzian God is not so distant and leibnizian as you suggest. the abstract
machines are not created; they are not aggregates or assemblages of their
parts, nor do they carry the code for such aggregation. God does not have a
moment of monadic origin that seeks temporal reification. Rather, the
theologic machine, the concept of difference Herself, marks the becoming of
the entire (total as actual/infinate as virtual) plane of immanence and all
of its heterological inscriptions (Adam & Eve).  the inscriptions and
reinscriptions mark and caress an immense becoming that is both
incarnate and known as a causal result--not as history, but as 
manifestation: heirophany.  Thus, multiplicity constantly undoes 
itself(s) not "in spite of God" but because of God. 
   A Deleuzian theology is always a theology of immanence. 

THIS IS WHY SPINOZA IS THE CHRIST

---dominic"

Where to begin?

Perhaps by reinscribing this "immense" immanent "becoming" in the various
abstract machines outlined in the concluding plateau

"Singular and immanent abstract machines" are the multiple connections drawn
on the plane of consistency between "heterological inscriptions" ("unformed
matters and non-formal functions" i.e.: matter-functions in general or "a
plane of single liberated matter that contains no figures, is deliberately
unformed and retains in expression and in content only those cutting edges,
tensors and tensions" atp 109). "They constitute becomings". This
deterritorializing plane of inconsistency or Planomenon is, however, always
hemmed in by an abstract machine of organization or Ecumenon which operates
in terms of "substance-form" and "content-expression" (atp 45). This is the
"properly st[r]atic abstract machine" or what D&G call the Judgements of God
(mais il faut en finir avec le jugement de dieu!!!) and could be opposed to
the glory of God sung on the Planomenon (holy cow! primary matter figured as
a choir or is it a contemplation?...to cut-up D&R-p.79-and ATP). But to
continue on, and speaking of anthropomorphisms, third we have alloplastic
and anthropomorphic-axiomatic or overcoding abstract machines:
"an order-word machine overcodes language, a faciality machine overcodes the
body and even the head, a [capitalist] machine of enslavement overcodes or
axiomatizes the earth: 
these are in no way illusions, but real machinic effects"
Amen!
Now even though there is "no abstract machine, or machines in the sense of a
Platonic Idea, transcendent, universal eternal" this does not preclude the
possibility of  'the' abstract machine serving as a transcendent model. This
is something like a "worldwide intensity map" which relates concrete
assemblages to their components (territory, D(eteritorialization), RT,
earth, Cosmos), to the lines that constitute the "map" (molar/molecular
lines, lines of flight). In other words, it traces the relations between
phylum and diagram (as in pages 89-91 of atp). The assemblage comes closer
to 'the' "abstract idea of the Machine" the more deterritorialized,
disjunctive and inventive the lines that it draws between things are and the
more this deterritorialization draws it towards "a power of metamorphosis
(transformation and transsubstantiation)...corresponding to the matter function"

three machines and an Idea-Machine then (just to begin)
these can, it seems to me, be effectively explicated in terms of the "four
forms of D" ("negative D" which blocks or obstructs D, "relative D" in which
RT is directed by D, but in such a way that D becomes "segmented",
"limitative absolute D" in which D is threatened by "something
'encompassing', something totalizing" tending towards death and destruction
and the "absolute line of D": "the creator of a new earth-of a new land: a
universe"). #1 or the Planomenon and the Idea-Machine are more D than # 2
and 3 but on different levels. #1 is "surround(ed)", the concluding
paragraph tells us, by the organizational machine (#2). It is thus
characteristic of the "limitative absolute D" in which D is constantly in
tension with RT (as D&G constantly remind us one is not possible without the
other: this is the irreconcilable condition of possibility for the warped
evolutionism of The Refrain plateau)but here D appears in terms of an
apocalyptic petit recit:earth ("the absolute of the earth" atp 145) "as the
object of a mortuary and suicidal organization surrounding it on all sides".
Negative D could apply to the obstructing stratic machine and relative D
could apply to the "segmentary" social machines or vice versa;  for strata
function like segments (atp 208). In other words, the bio-social can be
demarcated along the lines of the corporeal-incorporeal distinction for it
implies the indiscernible passage from one level to the other: Organize'em!
what does seem clear, however, is that "absolute D" corresponds to the "idea
of the Machine" as the ne plus ultra of what the earth is and desires to be:
WHO DOES THE EARTH THINK IT IS? asks plateau three
    
Earth=D
or 
"the earth...is Deterritorialization par excellence" atp 509
or 
the earth returns dressed in the stage-props of the subject, but enough of  that

so in a sense I agree with Brendan though I think I have shown that C&S is
much too subtle to reduce the de trop of the "worlding of worlds" to God
The God in the machine is not, in the meantime, "total as actual/infinite as
virtual" as Dominic suggested (or "abstract, singular and creative, here and
now, real yet nonconcrete, actual yet noneffectuated" atp 511). This is the
Archon-God limited by the Judgements of his higher-ups, circumscribed by his
own machine. God is rather 'the' abstract machine as a pure beam of light,
an "absolute line of flight", a "power of metamorphosis" that never remains
in place and can never be trapped by the interpellated position of the
"subject supposed to know": this is the deleuzian trap--the scientistic trap
of total explanation...4 forms of D, typology of 3 abstract machines, 3
types of BwO, etc.
heuristic fiction or transcendental model
you choose

rojan josh

ps: dominic i would be, despite appearances, in'narested in hearing an
expanded take on a theology of immanence perhaps taking into account the
crucifixion of Christ-difference him-herself (Erigena's androgynoos Christ
if you will  pg 138 D&R) by representation and-or even the "never-lived
reality of the Virgin" (pg 85 D&R)