Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 2/25/2010 5:26:27 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/25/2010 9:53:05 AM (GMT-6)

D, in providing an account for the relationship between God and the world, Hart’s concern (and with him the EO; you know, check of Denys and Greg of N) is to avoid placing both within a univocal third realm of ‘being’. This is what’s behind Deny’s description of God’s “super-essence” (the υπερουσιος θεαρχια, or superessential godhead). There can be “no ontological or natural continuity of identity between God and the world,” no “univocal ontology,” no “univocity of being” that embraces both God and the world. God is not “a being among beings,” not just another ‘being’ writ large, a really big version of us. For however large you wanted to make him, he would remain “a” being among beings, in which case God would be subsumed (as are we) under the larger more fundamental category of “being.” And if that’s the case, then God ‘participates’ (as do we) in being and is not self-sustaining. Thus God stands outside of ‘being’ as such.

And much of Hart’s book is an argument for how we are nevertheless to think of this God as related to the world, indeed, as incarnate ‘as’ the world. I’m not convinced he’s successful. But I do value what he values—that is, I want to avoid subsuming God and the world under a ‘third’ category of being and I’m not sure how we avoid doing this if we think of the being of God and the being of the world as univocal. But this univocity is the heart and soul of Process AND Greg’s view too. Remember, the only difference between God and the world for Greg is surpassability of beauty and limitation of perspective. Other than that, for Greg, God and the world both live/exist on the same ontological street, have the same ontological address.

Hart’s approach (and that of the EO) is opposed to this. He insists on an “analogical interval” between God and the world. This permits us (with Denys) to “name God from the world” and affirm all created entities as the vestigia of God, but this ‘analogical interval’ must NOT be collapsed and violated. But how the similarity necessary for analogical attribution obtains escapes me IF God is wholly and absolutely ‘other’ than us. Without ANY shared ontology I don’t see how such “analogy” gets off the ground. Analogy (or any similarity at all) requires that the analogues be sufficiently different AND sufficiently the same. The latter is necessary too. This similarity is that on which the analogy travels as much as anything else. But Hart won’t have any ontological similarity. The ontology of God and the ontology of the world have ZERO in common. They are absolutely other and different.

What he does is argue that the world is divine “expression,” in musical or rhetorical terms. The world is God’s music. And the analogy between the two is essentially aesthetic. We perceive beauty, are drawn to it, and progress forevermore in it, yes. But this is only ‘like’ God. It isn’t what God is or experiences. Not even theosis collapses this analogical interval.

I like the analogy of music and art, of course. I think they work, but they work because as far as I can tell there IS some shared ontology—unless we want to say that a Bach sonata is utterly and absolutely ontologically different than Bach. But can it be? I don’t think so. But Hart says it has to be in the case of God and creation. But he spends a lot of ink ‘saying’ this over and over in different ways, but there’s less ‘argument’ there than I thought the first time I read it.

Take ‘time’ for example. We’re finite temporal beings. We participate in being (even in our eschatological fullness) temporally, successively. So ‘time’ has to be ‘presupposed’ (ontologically presupposed) as the context or medium (or sorts) for our participation in being. Hart objects that if God is temporal, then the same thing would be true of God, i.e., that there is some ‘thing’ (i.e., ‘time’) which is presupposed to account for God’s life. But the whole idea of divine aseity and necessary existence is that nothing is ‘presupposed’ (ontologically) to ‘account for’ God’s existence. God needs no ‘context’ or ‘medium’ other than Godself in order to exist.

I really do appreciate the concern here, but it seems to me that to deny that God is temporal is make the same failure to see God as transcendent as Hart supposes is made if God is seen to be temporal. Does it follow that if God is temporal, if God’s life is extended in time, that we are necessarily presupposing ‘time’ as the medium in which God participates in some third term (‘being’) and therefore saying God derives his being through time like us? I don’t at all see that this follows. Hart wants to presuppose God as the context in which time exists (so to speak). As he says, “God is not temporal, but time flows from him.” Now, I agree that God is that which we are to presuppose to explain time (and all our experience and all our categories) and not the other way around, and expressing this in terms of “…time flows from God” is perfectly fine with me. But this does not get you a God for whom there are no temporal intervals, whose experience (especially his experience of the temporal world) is not temporally extended. True, it’s not extended (as ours is) “as participation.” That’s important. But it makes sense to say the triune relations of love, of infinite address and response, ‘generate’ time. That ‘time’ is an attribute of these relations. This avoids presupposing time to explain God’s existence.

See what I’m saying? I’m not claiming just now that God IS temporal. I’m saying God’s being temporal doesn’t entail the disadvantages Hart thinks it does. But in the end Hart will say God’s being temporal collapses the “analogical interval” by asserting that the being of God and the being of the world are univocal at least in this respect—they’re both temporal (even if one ‘generates’ time without ontologically presupposing it and the other ‘presupposes’ it by participation).

Other than this, everything that Hart says gels with open theism’s three core convictions—love, freedom, and EVEN risk. It’s just the ‘foreknowledge’ issue. There’s no way he’ll break with Tradition here, but the traditional view of foreknowledge (at least as presented by Hopko) adds nothing to safeguarding the infinite self-sufficiency or providence of God. Greg of N’s attempt to USE divine foreknowledge to explain providence (in his letter “On the Death of a Child”) is unintelligible (almost as bad as his ransom view of atonement where God buys us from Satan).

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 2/28/2010 1:52:02 AM (GMT-6)

here's my intuition, based on

http://www.svspress.com/pub/.lvwhvuzwkfwowjfrm/2006-0629-behr.mp3

i noticed Tom writing: "Not even theosis collapses this analogical interval.

Behr, on death, points to how we continually try to live on the basis of our own 'being' (as if we have any of our own) and that ultimately it is only in our own death that we finally, finally submit to God as the sole source of our life and being.

Until then we are on a rollercoaster where we rise and fall (like a soda straw being lifted by bubbles), into and out of theosis, following our virtue into vice,and back to repentance.

Behr's talk is slow but rewarding. I got it FREE as a download from SVSPress. you may have to go through the online 'purchase' and 'checkout' -- which is free.

If anyone has difficulty getting Behr...

http://www.svspress.com/product_info.php?products_id=3108

Death in the Fathers [MP3] [MP3-DEFABE] Fr John Behr

Fr John Behr, professor of patristics at St Vladimir’s Seminary, discusses death as understood by the Church fathers in his talk “Death in the Fathers.” This talk was given at the 2006 St Vladimir’s Seminary Summer Liturgical Institute. Other titles by this author: The Way to Nicea The Nicene Faith The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death This lecture is presented as a free download. Once you add this item to your shopping cart and checkout, you will be given a link to download this audio file in MP3 format. There is no cost for this item. You may listen on your personal computer, download to an iPod or other similar device, or burn it to a CD for your personal use. Price: US $0.00

Post Edited (Similtude) : 2/27/2010 11:30:20 AM (GMT-6)

We have this problem of assuming that smart people don't say silly stuff. And that, therefore, we are to take seriously silly stuff said by otherwise smart people. Let's say the really smart Big-Bangers are right. That means that space CAME INTO BEING. Space has a minimum of 3-dimensions per these guys. It is thus a 3-D extended BEING. But then how do we conceive of how other 3-D extended beings exist IN IT? It ain't doable. Because we've annulled, by the Big-Bang assumptions, the only way to distinguish the identity of any PLURALITY of 3-D extended beings. Which means every time we do distinguish, thus, we are contradicting the Big-Bang assumptions. Lorentzian relativity seems to be the only conceivable way to explain our observations consistent with our categories. That alone renders it true to me until someone is smart enough to think of another explanation consistent with our categories.

The Big-Bangers are really good at math. But math isn't metaphysics. It can only model what can be THOUGHT BY OUR MINDS. Apart from that, it is nothing more than rules deductively and axiomatically known to describe quantitative relationships. Those rules don't CREATE our other categories of time and space or our intuitive modes of thinking about time and space. Math is just the language that expresses those relationships to one another. They don't GENERATE our ideas of space and time, though. Einstein thought he could prove something about time and space FROM math. THat's putting the cart before the horse. Really smart people can be pathetic metaphysicians. We can't go about constantly re-creating what is apriori. That's pure non-sense. It implies we're not DESIGNED TO APPREHEND in the first place. If nothing is obvious, nothing can be proved. 

Remember, these really smart scientists ADMIT that Einsteinian relativity and QT are COUNTER-INTUITIVE. They think we can KNOW what contradicts our natural apriori modes of thinking. Let's just chunk the LNC while we're at it. Embrace Eastern mysticism and suppose all is illusory. There's no bottom to that abyss.

I do want to get Greg's thesis. But I want to catch when I find a good price. I've got too much to read already to pay more than necessary.

Post Edited (Similtude) : 2/27/2010 11:57:06 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Similtude) : 2/28/2010 2:45:00 PM (GMT-6)