Selah:  BUt D wants to say IN satan, doesn't he? Satan's not a container, but he IS a spiritual being.

D:  

Tom: Yeah, she walked into that one. Mmmmwwwahhahahahaa!

Selah says “Satan is the cancer, pure privation,” and “Satan is a spiritual being.” That looks to me like Selah believes that “Evil--pure irreducible privation--is a spiritual being.” That’s that problem.

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To Larry (Laika), Moe (Jeff), and Curly (Mark), hi guys!

It’s not about control at all, Laika, and it’s not similar to meticulous providence. You seem to believe that wherever God's presence is, God cannot but control things meticulously, that created freedom is not possible in the presence of God. But why think that? Why think that God can’t be fully present to some reality and also give it space to behave freely? That seems far preferable to me than imagining God ‘disconnected’ from the world (ala Laika) so that it can be free to self-determine, in which case God finds out just a bit ‘later' and 'after the fact’ (Jeff) what creation actually did with its freedom. That’s like saying God’s present is the world's past, that God's present experience of the world is really God experiencing the world's past, that God has no access to the world’s present at all, that he can't be present to the 'moment of becoming'. He’s always one step behind.

I believe in omnipresence, guys. For me that puts God at the scene of every actuality (from subatomic events to the birth of stars, from sentient processes to free will choices). Until somebody offers me an understanding of this ‘disconnected omnipresence’ of yours that makes sense (biblically especially) of God’s not being present to all things, I’m going to stick with God’s sentient presence being universally present to all realities, apprehending them in their actuality without needing to tag-team with any mediators, so that there’s never a time at which realities are not fully apprehended and truths known in one and the same present moment.

Any one of you three can offer us a two-story understanding of Col. 1’s “in Christ all things consist/hold together” and Heb 1’s “he holds all things together by his powerful word” if you like. I’m all ears. As I read it, it’s the case that nothing occurs in the created realm that does not occur in Christ by virtue of his powerful word. But that word IS what gives created beings their space to freely determine themselves. We are free in this sense BECAUSE God is present SAYING, “Tom, be free to determine yourself” and not because God decided to disconnect and remove himself.

In Gen. 6, Mark, God takes out the trash in the sense of removing people from the earth. God ends their journey of life here on earth. Who’s saying God can’t do that? Is that an analogy (or an example) of God consigning people to hell irrevocably? It’s the final destiny of created beings we’re discussing. It’s taking out the trash ULTIMATELY and IRREVOCABLY that I’m interested in, not God ending somebody’s earthly journey. So maybe I'm missing your point, but I didn't see the relevancy of Gen 6 either to the question of divine omnipresence or the question of UR.

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 10/31/2008 4:29:49 AM (GMT-5)

From Trinity and Process, pages 394-395

God's Relationship to Non-Divine Reality

The disposition of God to create a non-divine reality--which is itself a contingent feature of God's necessary disposition to be God--is thus a disposition to create experiential centers of, and contributors to, non-divine beauty. It is a disposition to create a matrix of relations with ordinal centers, each of which enjoys and/or contributes to an approximation of divine beauty. The divine disposition "diffuses itself" (Edwards) into a multiplicity of dispositions which "aim at" a unique actualization, a unique perspective on reality, which is defined either as an contribution to, and/or an experience of, beauty.

It is at this point of this "diffusion" that the distinction between God and the non-divine world occurs. The multiplicity of dispositions towards non-divine realities are themselves non-divine in their concrescence. The "termini" of God's creative act is not (as with Neville) the creature act itself, but the beginning of the (not wholly determined) disposition of the creature which shall act. The non-divine disposition arises out of God--it is an aspect of God's self-disposition to delight in Godself--and results in what is not God.

As with Edwards, we can in this way assert that God's creativity is, in one sense,"the substance of bodies", the "ens entium" of all things, without thereby endorsing pantheism. But this in our scheme carried through more consistently than was possible in Edwards because we have not held that this creativity toward non-divine realities is in any sense necessary. (One's note: With Doc's view, there is NO necessary God-world relationship at all) The relative autonomy of the non-divine dispositions is manifested in their autonomous--viz. not divinely determined--creativity, though their relative dependence is manifested in their tie to the primordial disposition of God as the ground of their creativity. The divine ground defines the parameters within which the preordained role of the entity within the matrix of being can be played, through exactly how this creativity is in particular actualized is their own doing. The divine ground thus defines the essence of the non-divine creature without thereby undermining the autonomous integrity of the creature: indeed, it is the divine ground of the creature's essence which allows the creature space to be autonomous.

Post Edited (One Love) : 10/31/2008 6:26:08 AM (GMT-5)