Only have a moment to jump on and post stuff I've written offline. I'm on another base en route to HOME!!

Haven't read your last to posts, D and Jeff.

D, I appreciate your experience. You know I’m big on how important experience is. After all, none of us can stand outside his/her own experience. But I’m just not seeing CC in the experiences you describe. Indeed, I can’t even see how one could experience the difference between creatio continua and something like an infusion model, not if we also claim enduring identities and creaturely causation. The experiences you mention—

·         the apprehension of all creation as grace

·         the dependency of all things upon grace

·         the fulfillment of all things via contemplation of their created ‘logoi’

·         the realization that our “somethingness” has no independent reality of itself apart from the grace and presence of God

·         experiencing God as the boundary of our very existence

·         experiencing that ‘point of nothingness’ as the truth about our created finitude apart from God—

…are all important to and affirmed by me too. So there doesn’t seem to be anything in the experience of all this that’s incompatible with the infusion model’s being the truth behind those experiences.

The important point for me, D, is that there is no necessary link between experiencing this sort of dependency upon divine grace (on the one hand) and understanding the nuts-and-bolts of HOW God sustains the created order (on the other hand). I don’t think we’ll EVER plummet the whole truth of the exchange between God and the world at its MOST fundamental and irreducible level where the “word of Christ’s power carries all things.” But even if we shall one day be enabled to perceive it, it’s just not the case now that the experiences you listed somehow entail a CC understanding of the relationship, unless my experiences are fake or deceptively partial and you have an ineffable experience of God that actually confirms the truth of CC, something that precludes the infusion model. If you have that, then that’s a show stopper ‘cause I can’t argue with that. I only have MY experience plus the rational consideration of abstract concepts to go on.

D: All we are really talking about is the CONTINUAL REMEMBRANCE OF DEATH (non-being)....along with the continually REMEMBRANCE OF RESURRECTION HOPE and POWER (God). We just thinking of it in the most expansive terms. Contemplating the "futility" that has been laid within Creation (not by it's own choice) by the One who subjected it, IN HOPE.

Tom: Then you don’t need CC to be true. Someone who goes with something like an infusion model can continually contemplate the futility of creation and its utter dependency upon God. Our finitude has to be faced and embraced. But in my own experience, this futility and death are gotten beyond, so to speak. When I contemplate my ‘logos’ I’m apprehending the fullness of my particular existence as God intends it. So it’s not part of our ‘logoi’ as our fulfilled selves to forever contemplate the futility of the present moment. Death has no place in the uncreated ‘logoi’. To contemplate them is to contemplate life and love and possibilities. Will we always know and recognize that we have no existence apart from God? Sure. In what sense? It’s impossible to say, really. Will this constitute a meditation on ‘death’ and ‘nothingness’ forever, so that “non-being” forever qualifies the fullest expression of our being in God? I don’t think so. But it doesn’t really matter, since neither you nor I nor any of the Eastern saints has stood on the other side of glorification and eschatological redemption to describe its fulfillment from that side. So WE’RE ALL JUST GUESSING based on our present experience and our ability to map-make based on that experience.

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Jeff: Why, again, can’t the “in” in those verses be instrumental?

Tom: Fine by me, though I think the locative makes better sense of the “offspring” analogy in Acts. I think the ‘locative’ would tell us that everything that occurs in the created order constitutes a portion of God’s experience. There’s no worldly experience that isn’t an experience God is having, so that the scope of the world’s experience (all taken as a whole) lies within the scope of God’s experience.

But I don’t disagree that God acts providentially and teleologically to keep creation ‘on course’. I just think that the ‘instrumental’ is possible because of the ‘locative’. Maybe that’s our difference. For you, a providential ‘act’ undertaking on some occasion is an ‘initiation of’ some relationship. God is conceived as stepping into the created order from outside. For me it’s quite different. As I see it, God is able to ‘act’ providentially in the world on occasion because God’s presence is everywhere ‘in’ the world (or the world is ‘in’ him, whichever you wish), so when God ‘acts’ his acts are a function of an already present God, a unique function of the God who is already present sustaining the world, and not the arrival of an absent God who steps back into a creation he wound up to function on its own. Providence is a function of omnipresence, the latter being the means of teleology.

For you providential/teleological acts are each an establishment of a distinct point of contact or relation, something new and discrete. For me those acts are an extension of an unbroken point of contact or sustaining relation. Besides, once I affirm a correspondence type view of omniscience (where God’s knowledge of the world supervenes upon the world’s being) I have to put God’s presence at the scene of every event—macro and micro—in the world. Once you posit that kind of intimacy, I don’t see the point in trying then to posit the sort of ‘distance’ that the conservation model requires. But neither can we collapse the two and have ‘no’ distance (like CC), assuming that undermines creaturely causation.

I guess it’s just how language strikes you too. You seem to be taking the “things” of “all things” in passages like Col. 1 and Heb. 1.3 to signify “events” or “world occurrences” over against the sheer existence of the particular entities themselves. But when I read Col. 1 about Christ and the “ta panta” (the “all things”—creating all things, being before all things, sustaining all things, redeeming all things) and see those “things” defined in terms of the sheer existence of particular entities (things in heaven and on earth, whether seen or unseen, etc), I don’t get the sense that “ta panta” signifies something like “events” or “occurrences.”

Jeff: How much more relational can you get?

Tom: Well, wouldn’t a presentist model be more relational if everything in the model were a function of some relation between God and the world? But on the conservation end of the spectrum, an entity exists without any ongoing present ‘relation’ mediating life or existence to created entities or even sustaining its existence. Things literally exist “on their own” even though God started them out.

Tom

Jeff: How much more relational can you get?

Tom: Well, wouldn’t a presentist model be more relational if everything in the model were a function of some relation between God and the world? But on the conservation end of the spectrum, an entity exists without any ongoing present ‘relation’ mediating life or existence to created entities or even sustaining its existence. Things literally exist “on their own” even though God started them out.

Jeff: They exist on their own, though, only because they exist FOR God. Our origin and continued existence is only explicable in terms of divine teleology. So there is still, for me, the sense that God is our sustainer in the sense that His providence is what assures our continued existence by keeping it on-track, teleologically speaking. Making the instrumental mode BE due to locative-ness doesn't buy anymore relationality that I can see. Because whatever that instrumentalism entails, it clearly leaves volitional beings to themselves at least insomuch as they ARE volitional. Thus, all we need to explain is God's teleological competence in terms of a BENEVOLENT purposing. Teleological competence = all the divine intimacy necessary to account for divine relationality. Because we can only exist so long as we are pleasing Him or so long as we are part and parcel of the movement UNTO His patiently awaited and worthwhile pleasure.

It is of little or no avail, IMO, to say to someone who is alienated from God that their alienation from God is nevertheless intimate because he/she only exists in God, locatively. How does that help them conceive of their spiritual need and despair more clearly? Either alienation is a real state of affairs or not. And all the locative intimacy in the world can not undo the fact that God requires benevolent, voluntary results of those to whom He imparts benevolent, voluntary capacity. Consequently, that KIND of intimacy is not the harmonious kind of intimacy that gives people a warm fuzzy.

Let me find a book I have on divine attributes and I'll quote the passage on omnipresence. It explains sufficiently, IMO, why omnipresence can not explain omniscience. As for positing the conservation of position, I don't see that it IS posited. As I see it, the other positions need to be posited.

As Alan said, to even synthesize according to a teleological relation (final cause->means->end), we seem to believe in something like natural causality to conceive of MEANS. Thus, seemingly, we apprehend beings that we believe have causal capacities to behave in certain ways under certain conditions, analogically. To go beyond that and say that presentism is what explains their existence doesn't seem to be particularly intuitive to most people. I think most people would find presentism a completely novel idea that never had occurred to them.

Teleology alone gets us to God, independently of presentism. For presentism without teleology is theologically bankrupt. The only reason why I see presentism needs to be posited is to explain, possibly, omniscience. So I'll find the book and quote the passage that seems, to me, to argue against that position sufficiently.

Post Edited (Similtude) : 8/2/2009 5:35:27 PM (GMT-5)

I've not yet read your last post, Jeff. I'll try to do so and then reply when I get on next. Hopefully this will keep you busy! Ha! We keep punishing each other with long posts. Sorry.

Jeff: But you and I agree, also, that there is something about this temporal lead up to the time when all have the divine nature that is essential in the way God gets pleasure from creation. But we conceive of that differently.

Tom: Right.

Jeff: As I understand you, you are saying that the telos of creation is the final state of ultimate reconciliation--a reconciliation which was not really necessary since the probability of sin was less than 1. Indeed, the Colossians passage you posted says that that reconciliation is done IN THE BLOOD of Jesus. There we have the idea of redemption from a NON-intended, alienated state of things.

Tom: I think the telos of human beings is union with God and the unending exploration and discovery of the beauty, glory and life of God which is that union. That’s our purpose, our telos, the end for which we were created, the end-state toward which our freedom and the whole created order was intended, and simultaneously it is that which constitutes the pleasure of God for which God creates.

Jeff, you seem to drive a wedge between ‘grace’ (what God ‘gives’ to us, all the goodies we get to enjoy) and what God ‘gets’ that ‘for which’ God ‘gets’ from us (i.e., what about creating constitutes God’s having created “for” God’s own self, that “for which” God creates). You separate this. I don’t separate them. I wouldn’t know HOW to separate them in the case of a being who “is love.” To me they’re co-constituting events. Our living in God and enjoying the life of God ‘gives’ us really IS that about creation which God ‘gets’, that which constitutes God’s own pleasure. In other words, the pleasure God GETS is the love God GIVES. God creates to give himself the pleasure of loving a contingent and unnecessary world. I see no problem here.

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Jeff: But you explain the necessity of the temporal lead up to the divine nature in terms of the supposed impossibility of a created being partaking of the divine nature by pure grace--that such a partaking for a created being requires a volitional becoming INTO that state with the help of God, but not by the pure GIFT of God, in the sense of a purely divine imparting of that divine nature.

Tom: Right.

Jeff: I don't know why God couldn't truly just create beings with the divine nature…

Tom: Because God doesn’t want robots? Not fair, sorry! Ha.

But haven’t YOU already declared your intuition on this? God must have created for the unique pleasure that God gets from our freely loving him (as opposed to God’s determining that we love him).

Jeff: So to my mind, it is not the final state that God is most interested in with respect to WHY He created this particular creation. Otherwise, I have to wonder why He didn't just create it in that final state and avoid all the suffering.

Tom: Like I just said, haven’t you declared your intuition on this already? God must get a unique pleasure from volitional love that he doesn’t get from non-volitional love. There’s your explanation.

Jeff: The only way I know to get around that conundrum is to look for something about the KIND of pleasure the Son derives from the specific kind of love entailed in SIGNIFICANT freedom--freedom we won't have once we partake of the divine nature.

Tom: And that pleasure is? You’ve pinned it down pretty much—it’s the “pleasure God gets from our freely loving him which God does not get if he determines us in love.” There ya go!

This is where your view reduces to mine. What? How? Yep. In the end you have to say with me that God creates this KIND of world (a volitional, free, and risky one) because the freedom and risk were the ONLY way God could get a unique pleasure he doesn’t get otherwise. Forget the fact that you don’t want to take my route of saying there only way to get finite creatures into loving personhood AT ALL is for them to freely grow into such. It dudn’t matter. You still suppose that Christ gets SOME kind of unique pleasure from freely chosen love.

Here’s what I think you don’t appreciate, Jeff. Take the supposition that there are at least two possible forms of personal loving finite human being—one that’s created ready-made loving and personal from the get-to (which I deny is possible and you suppose is possible), and a second that’s freely chosen (which we both agree is possible and is the world we live in). You believe God could have gotten unfailingly loving finite partners either way, but that God went with the latter because it gives him a unique pleasure. Ask yourself, Jeff, WHY would the latter give God unique pleasure? Wherein does this uniqueness lie? Surely it’s because the former and the latter types of world are distinct ‘loves’. It’s the latter CREATION that uniquely and distinctly pleases God. What’s that mean if not that this latter form of freely determined love IS a unique love, a unique form of love, and that whatever ‘love’ the former (necessary or ‘given’) love might be, it is in fact NOT the SAME LOVE achieved a different way. Our being ‘given’ (in the one case) and our ‘choosing’ (in the other) each DEFINES the resulting love so that they’re NOT the same thing after all; not the same end, the same relationship, or the same love. It’s not true that God can give a ‘love’ from the get-go which is exactly that ‘love’ which we choose our way into, not if  the latter pleases God in a way the former does not. So in my view your concluding that God went with the latter reduces to my view—which is just that the creaturely love that uniquely pleases God and which God desired from us for his own sake could only be gotten by our freely choosing it.

Welcome aboard.

If you want to suppose there is another way, or that there are a hundred other ways, God could have ‘determined’ us by fiat into an unfailing love from the get-go, go ahead. It doesn’t really matter to me. For I know that in the end you suppose exactly what I suppose—that God gets unique pleasure from love that’s free chosen and he creates for this love. It is in fact NOT the exactly same thing that would be determined for us by fiat were God to go that route. The latter is more pleasing to God in the present because of its history, because of HOW it was formed, which just means that the love that pleases God in this unique way COULDN’T BE GOTTEN apart from our choosing it this way. You might think that God gets the very same outcome in both cases because you want to call them both “love.” Call it whatever you want, but it can’t be the case that they ARE the SAME THING, not if one pleases him more than the other. They differ in pleasure to God precisely because they’re not the exact SAME outcome achieved different ways. They’re different outcomes.

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Jeff: So the final state of all being at peace with God is, to me, what a loving God does once He creates.

Tom: So you think God starts with the final state and moves from that to telos? If that explains things better for you, OK. I find that strange. I call the state God begins with the beginning state, not the final state. “Final” in all these discussions means just that—eschatological, final, crossed the finish line, arrived, done, and that means it’s fulfilling its ‘logos’, it’s ‘telos’, its purpose, it’s providing ALL the pleasure to God which God intended for it.

Jeff: Because I would have to explain, consistently with my intuitions, why He couldn't create us with the divine nature in the first place without the risk. And I don't know how to do that. For all I know, God actually has created that way before. I have no intuition that says He isn't capable of it.

Tom: It doesn’t matter if God HAS created another hundred worlds we don’t know about. We’re not trying to explain those worlds. Nothing about my view changes if there are in fact 100 other worlds we don’t know about. We’re trying to explain ours. And to date you have not produced a single example of a finite, created person being ‘given’ a necessarily loving nature from the get-go, or anything analogous to such determinism. On the contrary, every attempt to imagine a device, mechanism or means by which one might determine another’s love fails. You have strong intuitions indeed if in spite of this absolute analogical silence you can still manage to ‘imagine’ God doing such a thing. I just can’t imagine what experience you’ve had that tells you such a thing is possible. All my experience, and all human experience I’ve observed ever—uniformly conforms to the patter I’m suggesting, namely, that creatures must share freely in determining themselves in love.

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Jeff: Thus, the significant freedom entailed in this temporal lead up to that final reconciliation IS what renders this creation fit for its original purpose.

Tom: Absolutely.

Jeff: It’s this temporal part that provides to the godhead those kinds of relationality (with their associated KINDS of sentient pleasures) that they don't already experience between themselves WITHOUT a creation….

Tom: …AND which, on your view, they CANNOT experience from creation were God to have created us necessarily loving from the get-go. As I said, you end up saying what I say, viz., that there is a form of interpersonal loving relationality between God and humans that can’t be ‘given’ to humans but which they must choose their way into, and God creates for the pleasure he gets from THIS relation, not any other (possible or impossible) form of relationship.

Jeff: Thus, it is our day-to-day sinless living that is our TELOS, as I see it. Not a future state.

Tom: I don’t necessarily disagree, Jeff. I’m not gonna say our being ‘sinless’ isn’t part of our ‘telos’. Of course it it. But there are forms of ‘sinless’ living. Christ was sinless in a mortal, unglorified body. But obviously our future glorification is part of our ‘telos’, part of the WAY God wants us to be sinless. So there’s more to our ‘telos’ than JUST being sinless.

Jeff: To sin IS to miss our TELOS.

Tom: Sure. But that doesn’t mean that being sinless simpliciter is the FULNESS of our ‘telos’. You can’t just invert the order and still speak truthfully. If I go a full day without sinning, it would not be the case that all God’s full intentions (intentions area just expressions of our ‘telos’) would be without remainder actually experienced by me on that day. There’s more to our ‘telos’ than just “not sinning.”

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Jeff: Likewise, God is trying to maximize the satisfaction of the Son. But that will be done with contingent degrees of success.

Tom: Well, the day will come with all contingent beings will please God will 100% success—no misrealtion, no sin, etc. I don’t know why you don’t believe this (if you don’t, it doesn’t sound like you think all creation will someday be free of sin and perfectly please God with no degree of displeasure). I guess I’m a dunce and still can’t follow your explanations or figure out just what it is you’re saying.

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Jeff: There can be other KINDS of satisfaction derived from this creation. But those KINDS of satisfaction didn't necessitate the existence of volitional beings as far as I can tell.

Tom: I like to speculate too. If there are kinds of satisfaction God gets from us over which we have no volitional influence or contribution to make, who cares? God shall extract it from us whether we will it or not, whether we know about or not. Do you know what these KINDS of satisfaction are? Do you see them in Scripture? I don’t understand why they even appear in the argument. If they’re not in your power to determine or shape or grasp or contemplate, what’s the point?

I feel like after so many words I haven’t the foggiest idea what we’re even debating or discussing. Everything has become a tangent.

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Jeff: What is NOT contingent, is that the DEGREE of that success will be WORTH the suffering.

Tom: I agree. I don't know how to agree though IF we don't say the degree of success will some day be unfailingly full.

Jeff: As I see it, Christ considered the JOY set before him to render his suffering WORTHWHILE. I think that JOY is the KINGDOM that he will have as he who is ALL in ALL. Once he delivers the kingdom to the Father, the Father will be ALL in ALL. IOW, the joy set before Christ was never some eternal state.

Tom: Then we’re on very different pages and using language very differently. The perfected Kingdom, in all its glory, IS the people of God, perfected and glorified, a people in whom God fully reigns and rules. That IS a final state, i.e., a state creation finally reaches. It wasn’t ALWAYS so, not even prior to the fall was it so. It’s the life of God fully aflame in the hearts of humankind who in turn rule with God over all the cosmos. That IS eschatology, i.e., end-state. But if you think the ‘kingdom’ you’re describing isn’t MY ‘end state’, then you’re using language differently than I am. We may be too far into this to back out and even nail down all our linguistic differences now.

Jeff: It was the kingdom he OBTAINED by being Christus Victor. And that is a TEMPORAL kingdom that he will deliver to God at some point. That temporal kingdom will, of itself, render his suffering WORTHWHILE.

Tom: What’s “at some point” mean if not that the Kingdom turned over just IS the “end state”? You’re describing an “end state” Jeff, whether you call it that or not.

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Jeff: Again, I think the godhead derives pleasure from the ultimately reconciled creation. I just don't think that explains why significant freedom was risked. Because, unlike you, I don't see it as intuitive that God can't create without the risk. You may be right, I just don't know how to rule out the contrary.

Tom: Jeff, you’ve already described plainly what you think explains why significant freedom was risked. You said it’s because of the “unique pleasure God derives from freely determined love.” You suppose there to be form of creaturely love that’s NOT freely determine (unlike me), but forget that. I’ll grant that it’s a possible world. But the fact is you grant that “freely chosen risky love” PLEASES GOD MORE that “sovereignly determined from the get-go risk-free love.” There’s your answer. There’s a UNIQUE pleasure that God derives from our freely loving him that he doesn’t derive from his determining us to love him. So what’s the problem?

God creates for the sake of the greater pleasure, which means the GREATER BEAUTY, which means “love freely determined” and your supposed “loved determined for us by God” are NOT one and the same ‘love’. Imagine 100 other genuine forms of loving relationality that God could have determined us in if you want. It dudn’t matter. By your own clearly stated intuition, there is “a” pleasure God gets from our freely loving him that he doesn’t get from any other the other 100 forms of contingent love he could have produced on his own by just pushing a button. God went with THIS option because it pleases him more.

See when we say God gets a unique pleasure from our freely loving him, we HAVE to ground the pleasure in the difference between ‘freely chosen love’ and ‘divine determined creaturely love’. The difference isn’t IN GOD irrespective of the two options, as if the two options are absolutely identical. They’re NOT identical. And it’s FROM THE OBJECT in its unique form and history that God derives pleasure. So like I said, on this point all you’re saying reduces to what I’m essentially saying.

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Jeff: In short, Tom, I think we reverse the place where God acts in pure grace. To you, creation, PER SE, is an act of PURE grace (i.e., creation is NOT FOR God)…

Tom: Dude, how could you possibly think I believe this? O unbelieving generation! How long shall I be with you? Ha! Just kidding.

First of all, that creation is “for” God is the explicit doctrine of the Scriptures. How can ANYBODY committed to the Scriptures believe otherwise? But secondly—and more importantly—why do you think it impossible for creation itself to be “an act of grace” AS WELL AS “for” God? That doesn’t follow.

Jeff: To my mind, God might very well be able to create beings with a divine nature, though He may not be motivated to do so, and scripture SAYS that creation is FOR God. So to me, the place for pure grace (i.e., divine actions that are not FOR Himself) is AFTER the temporal ends are attained.

Tom: We gotta get something straight about ‘grace’ bro, ‘cause it’s just NOT true that any act of God that God performs in any respect “for” Godself cannot also be an act “of grace.” God can act for himself in showering creatures with grace.

But let’s let that slide. It dudn’t matter to what concerns me now—which is this: Why are you still wondering how to explain WHY God went with the risky love instead of the no-risk love? You’ve declared your best intuition on this very point—God gets a unique pleasure in our freely loving him that he doesn’t get in any other form of love (assuming with you that there are other forms of genuine, creaturely love). So creaturely love of risky world 1 and creaturely love of risk-free world 2 are NOT the same love, not the same ‘thing’. God perceives the difference, values freely determined love more because of the pleasure it brings him, and thus creates for that love. It just so happens that this is exactly what I believe too—that the pleasure God decided he wants from creatures can ONLY be had via freely determined love. There were no other metaphysical options open for getting THIS unique pleasure. You’re admitted as much.

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Jeff: I'm not talking nuts and bolts. I'm meaning that to ACTUALLY beckon is to APPEAL to a motivation of a being that is conscious and VOLITIONAL. If beckon means something other than that, I'm wrong on the definition.

Tom: Think poetry and not, say, electrical engineering, alongside theology. Try just a bit of figurative language. When I say, “The vast sea beckons sailors to explore her…” do you REALLY not understand anything at all since, according to you, the very ‘definition’ of the word “beckon” involves conscious, sentient, volitional communication. Come on Bro! The sea ‘beckons’ the sailor in the sense that the sea IS what the sailor was made for. The sea IS the sailor’s purpose. So when the sailor whose very BEING was designed for the sea (to notice it, apprehend it, explore it) encounters the sea, there’s a certain affinity or likeness to which the ‘spirit’ in the sailor responds. It’s a sailor’s ‘nature’ to sail the sea, and that ‘nature’ is that in the sailor to which sea beckons, the way a square hold beckons a square peg and not a round peg. The shape of a thing’s being (it’s ‘way’ of well-being) presume a certain shape in that which alone can make it well, fulfill its being.

Jeff: This is why I never could get Process. It doesn't seem to posit enough to make it coherent—

Tom: All can offer is poetry.

I love you guys. Love the site and appreciate the conversations.

Tom

Post Edited (One Love) : 8/3/2009 10:41:29 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Tom) : 8/3/2009 10:44:31 AM (GMT-5)

I misread you here Jeff. You said:

Jeff: There can be other KINDS of satisfaction derived from this creation. But those KINDS of satisfaction didn't necessitate the existence of volitional beings as far as I can tell.

And I replied:

Tom: I like to speculate too. If there are kinds of satisfaction God gets from us over which we have no volitional influence or contribution to make, who cares? God shall extract it from us whether we will it or not, whether we know about or not. Do you know what these KINDS of satisfaction are? Do you see them in Scripture? I don’t understand why they even appear in the argument. If they’re not in your power to determine or shape or grasp or contemplate, what’s the point?

But you were talking about pleasure God gets from non-volitional entities, which of course he does. I thought you were talking about pleasure God gets from us through means other than our volition. My bad. Sorry.

But I really wonder whether I’m understanding you much at all. A sentence here or there comes along that makes perfect sense, but I seem unable to construct the larger picture. Just not getting it.

Sorry bro.

Tom

Tom: Something like the infusion model is my view, with the exception that I don't see what's infused as being a tertium quid (a third thing that neither God nor a created entity needing to be sustained). So when Alan says "sustaining requires a constant energetic or existential input or some sort", I'm cool.

D: This still places you in the CC camp, as far as Alan is concerned.

Tom: That’s OK I guess. But I know how I differ from the claim that each present state of the universe is entirely created ex nihilo just as the first initial state was.

[Alan’s 3 Options:

CC: There is no fundamental difference between God's work in creating and sustaining. As long as creation endures, there must be a continuous activity on God's part that efficaciously “brings about” the entire being of every existing created thing. This model is committed to something like an anti-conservation of being principle: contingent beings cannot continue to exist for even an instant if God should stop the sustaining input.

Infusion: There is a fundamental difference between God's work in creating and sustaining. Creating brings about the entire being of the creature. Sustaining does not. But sustaining is not mere conservation. It is a positive activity on God's part without which created things either (a) would gradually dissipate or (b) would not function optimally (even if they could persist indefinitely on their own), or (c) both. This model is committed to something like a limited conservation of being principle: contingent beings can continue to exist for a time apart from divine sustaining, but they either cannot persist indefinitely or cannot function optimally apart from divine sustaining.

Conservation: There is a fundamental difference between God's work in creating and sustaining. Creating brings about the entire being of the creature. Sustaining is merely God's refraining from annihilating something. Created things obey a conservation of being principle: things that exist automatically continue to exist unless something else destroys or annihilates them.]

D: See what I'm saying? In Alan's mind, you are just as CC as I am.

Tom: Maybe so. But when I laid it out my teleological approach, with the logoi and all, to Jeff, Alan said my view was PLAUSIBLE. But he doesn’t think CC is a plausible explanation of a free creation. So that must mean he sees me fundamentally in the infusion camp, not the CC camp.

I guess we need Alan to reengage and tell us where he’s at.

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Tom: But I'm equally uncomfortable with CC IF CC requires us to say creation constantly passes out of existence and is recreated in Genesis fashion.

D: Maybe saying that creation continually passes out of existence is the wrong way to say it. Rather, creation is continually “brought into” being from nothing by God. The latter more describes the continuity of origination and dependence in the Creator/Created relationship.

Tom: What continuity? “Brought into being” implies “no previous being,” and that implies a continually repeated ex nihilo. I don’t see the difference between what you just fixed and what you were trying to fix. From my point of view, something is “brought into” existence (from nothing) and THEN it’s “sustained” (or “carried on” or “maintained”). So the “from nothing” applies ONLY to the initial/first state. Because if it’s continually “brought into existence from nothing,” then what’s being “sustained”? To sustain something implies its identity “endures.” But nothing “endures” if everything is “brought into existence from nothing” on a continual basis.

D: This way, Creation never ACTUALLY passes out of existence at any time, but only because God continually keeps it in existence.

Tom: That’s what ‘I’ want to say, yeah. But you just said above that “creation is continually ‘brought into’ being from nothing by God.” That sure looks like it conflicts with “sustaining.” It implies former actualities DO pass out of existence and a new created is “brought into existence ex nihilo” over and over again.

Why don’t we just use “sustain” and leave it at that? Then the first line of exposition comes from Scripture. What do we mean by “sustain”? We mean that the Logos ‘carries’ (Heb. 1.3) all things by his “powerful word.” We mean that all things “hold together” (or “cohere”) “in whom” we live and move and literally “are.” Whether the “in” is locative or instrumental doesn’t really matter. You still have God at the scene of all created beings in their actuality.

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D: Again, this doesn't dodge Alan and Jeff's issues, because it's still claimed that “contingent beings cannot continue to exist for even an instant if God should stop the sustaining input.” Keeping in step with my idealism, I will say that Creation is LESS like a motion picture's discontinuous movie frames sped up incredibly fast...and more like an active, consciously-held, continuously-sustained visualization/thought of a thinking person.  Yeah, that works.

Tom: Please do your PhD on this. I’m serious, dude. Sign up and start in on it! If you can unpack the ‘how’ of creaturely causation within a idealist framework, you’ll be the first to have ever done so. None of the great idealists managed to avoid sinking ultimately into pantheism and/or determinism. If you can do it, they’ll be talking about you for a thousand years to come!

D: So, now, we should be in agreement. Right?  We are BOTH CC adherents because we BOTH believe that “contingent beings cannot continue to exist for even an instant if God should stop the sustaining input.”

Tom: I agree that contingent beings would immediately cease to exist were the Logos to stop “bearing/carrying” them via the “rehema of his dunamis.” I don’t think (as you do) that creation is “brought into being from nothing” by God on a continual basis. I think creation’s continual being is maintained or sustained. That’s different.

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Jeff, on the omnipresence thing. I checked out that link to the book. Yeah, I have their book. It’s really helpful isn’t it? Very handy. Can’t believe that packed so much into it.

I’m not sure I see the problem though. Sure, God isn’t a physical substance, so he can’t be extended in space or located “at” some location in the material cosmos as other physical entities are. All I need is for God to ‘know’ all present reality. God knows what’s going on in the universe—micro and macro level stuff—throughout the entire cosmos. I’m not going to argue precisely ‘how’ God knows this. I’m not a determinist, so I can’t say that God gets his knowledge of the changing universe from just knowing himself, i.e., from knowing his own will. I have to suppose that God gets his knowledge of a thing FROM his own experience of that thing. And I think it’s very plausible (even necessary to make sense of the passages we’ve been discussion) to suppose that God experiences us (and the world).

We can dance around ‘how’ this occurs, but if you want to say God knows even ONE worldly event by observing or experiencing it, then it can’t be problematic just to expand this to the entire cosmos. In the end you and I both have to suppose the immaterial and material dimensions touch and related via cause/effect. We have to assume there can be immaterial causes of material effects (whatever matter is, nobody seems to really know!). That’s just what creation is anyhow, right? So what’s the problem?

All I would insist on is that God’s apprehension of created actualities is immediate (not mediated by a third party), infallible, and exhaustive of (or co-terminous with) all reality. That’s all I mean by omnipresence. God is omnipresent just in case God is part of the definition of all things. If no actual entity in the universe can be defined without mention of its being apprehended by the sentience of God, then that’s all I mean by omnipresence. Wherever you go in the universe, on however large or small a scale, God knows where you are, and all God necessarily is and all he potentially can be is present as part of what defines your world.

I forgot that you denied this. Sorry. I think you prefer to say God isn’t actually apprehending all realities throughout the universe, but he “could” be on Alpha Centauri “if he wanted to be.” God “could” know what is occurring there “if he wanted to know.” But it doesn’t HAVE to be.

I know better than to argue with you on this. ;o) If saying this really explains things to you, that’s great. It creates problems for ME, but that’s just me.

Tom

The Logos "carries" Creation by the same "powerful word" he used in Creation's origination.  Christ the Logos says about Creation... "Let there be...such and such!"...and it is set to be such and such. 

"And God said "Let there be light and there was light."

I suggest that this "powerful word" never stops being spoken by Christ the Logos...and if it ever did, we would immediately cease to exist.

Tom said:

Basically, when I say God “sustains” the world (and when I interpret Heb. 1.3’s grammar to express this in terms of the Logos continually uttering that “rhema of dunamis”) all I’m saying is that the ‘logoi’ of created things are always held out to those things by the all-present Spirit of God who constantly mediates to a thing it’s possibilities for becoming. Simply put, the ‘telos’ of a created thing is ever before that thing as a necessary part of that thing’s teleological becoming, defining the scope of its possibilities for becoming. Assuming teleology is universal at both macro and micro levels—basically at all levels of being and becoming—and the divine ‘logoi’ of created beings define the aim or ‘telos’ of all things, then all we’re saying is that you don’t have purposeful becoming, becoming that tends and aims itself in a particular direction, without that direction being present. That's probably uncontroversial. But I'll want to say that this 'logos' (it's content) isn't something God can offer a thing apart from himself, apart from his personal presence. Because those 'logoi' in a sense (I'm tip-toing) ARE God's presence. There’s no severing ‘logoi’ from ‘Logos’--speach from speaker; or speach-act from actor. Created beings can't determine their own directionality, their own purpose, can't sustain their own becoming apart from God. So what better explanation is there of the constancy and purposefulness of creation’s becoming than that the Logos, the author of every entity’s ‘logos’ (or ‘telos’), standing in and at the moment of becoming by means of the “rhema of his dunamis” (the word of his power) calling, beckoning, creation toward fulfillment?

It’s elegant. It’s beautiful. And it’s simple.

Yes, it is.  Can't separate the spoken-enacted "letting-be" of the created order from the Uncreated Person who "lets be."  Without God letting me be, I can't be.  Period.  Do you see how the Uncreated Logos' "Let it be..." both sets parameters for becoming and calls forth (origination) and implies the inherent no-thing-ness of that which is called forth (dependence) at the same time?  As Kallistos Ware would talk about, this is the "Bridge of Diamond"...which IS the "creative word of God", continually being spoken by God.

All things exists in this grand "Letting Be"

Make sense?

Post Edited (One Love) : 8/4/2009 5:30:04 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One Love) : 8/4/2009 5:53:34 AM (GMT-5)

"Upholding all things by the power of his word [φέρων τε τὰ πάντα τῷ ῥήματι τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ].  Not only is the Son the agent through God created the world (Heb 1.2c), He is also the sustaining agent of all things.  Paul refers to the Son in Col 1.17 (which has similar thematic and theological concepts) as the one who holds all things [τὰ πάντα] together in Himself.  The sustaining of everything is through, or by the means of the powerful word of the Son [τῷ ῥήματι τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ].  The very same word of power that created the world is the same powerful word that sustains all things."

"Let there be!" --God

Post Edited (One Love) : 8/4/2009 6:03:06 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One Love) : 8/4/2009 11:22:05 AM (GMT-5)