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One Love
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| Posted 8/5/2011 8:33 AM (GMT -6) |   | Textbook...
In saying that God is Creator of the world, we do not mean merely that he set things in motion by an initial act "at the beginning", after which they go on functioning by themselves. God is not just a cosmic clockmaker, who winds up the machinery and then leaves it to keep ticking on its own. On the contrary, creation is continual. If we are to be accurate when speaking of creation, we should not use the past tense but the continuous present. We should say, not "God made the world, and me in it", but "God is making the world, and me in it, here and now, at this moment and always". Creation is not an event in the past but a relationship in the present. If God did not continue to exert his creative will at every moment, the universe would immediately lapse into non-being; nothing could exist for a single second if God did not will it to be. As Metropolitan Philaret from Moscow puts it, "All creatures are balanaced upon the creative word of God, as if upon a bridge of diamond; above them is the abyss of divine infinitude, below them that of their own nothingness."
Kallistos Ware
The Orthodox Way
Page 45
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Similitude
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| Posted 8/5/2011 8:36 AM (GMT -6) | | D: ... matter is nothing more than God working on behalf of Creation.
J: But matter IS part of creation. So it is not something apart FROM creation that can serve merely as a means ("on behalf of" ) to a proper SOFA of creation. It is only a means in terms of its BEHAVIOR. For apart from changes of states, there is no "behalf of" explicable in terms of any teleology/eschatology at all.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 8/5/2011 8:41:45 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 8/5/2011 8:42 AM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
Whether or not CC is required for beings, qua beings, has no recognizable practical implication that I can grasp.
The practical implication, as I see it, reinforces the "transcendent immanance" of God Himself within all aspects of Creation. There is absolutely no way that a person can truly believe that God is the continous, active ground within of all things in Creation, including one's own being...and live "at a distance" from God's Presence.
I mean, I KNOW for a fact that no one in my home church believed in CC. We all believed EXACTLY what Ware described: God "set things in motion by an initial act 'at the beginning', after which they go on functioning by themselves." And that perspective FURTHERED our two-storey belief.
Ask yourself this, Jeff. How many evangelicals do you know that believe that God "set things in motion by an initial act 'at the beginning', after which they go on functioning by themselves."?
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 8/5/2011 8:55:35 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 8/5/2011 9:08 AM (GMT -6) | | J:As for Ware's comments, he seems to be talking radical deism. That view seems to be as epistemologically bankrupt as atheism to me. Indeed, it explains nothing worth explaining. And by implication, it is therefore as a-rational as atheism. We need BENEVOLENT, COMPETENT teleology to render the order RATIONAL.
1) Hmmm...radical DEISM?? In reading the "Bridge of Diamond" section of Ware (particularly pp.44-46), I definitely wouldn't come away with deism. Here's another quote...
"On the level of scientific inquiry, we discern certain processes or sequences of cause and effect. On the level of spiritual vision, which does not contradict science but looks beyond it, we discern everywhere the creative energies of God, upholding all that is, forming the innermost essence of all things."
2) I don't think the concept of CC seen in EO is primarily about teleology. I think it's more about the general relationship of Creator and Creation.
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One Love
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| Posted 8/5/2011 9:15 AM (GMT -6) | | J:
I would say matter, by its BEHAVIOR, generates the kind of temporally continuous order that is "gift"ish to our inductive/aesthetic nature. But insomuch as it is the behavior of matter that does this, my view of causality coupled with teleology works identically with the CC (for beings, qua beings) version of causality coupled with teleology. I see neither as providing practical implications. All the benevolent and competent stuff has to do with BEHAVIOR of the teleological system/orientaion. Apart from humanly-recognized BEHAVIOR, existence per se is of no value to us.
If I hear you right, you are saying that the behavior of matter, filtered through our rational/intuitional observations, gives us reason to see it as "gift" from a benevolent, competent Source. I'm with that. also hear you saying that as long as the benevolence and compentent pieces are there, then that's the main thing, right?
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Similitude
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| Posted 8/5/2011 9:43 AM (GMT -6) | | D: 1) Hmmm...radical DEISM?? In reading the "Bridge of Diamond" section of Ware (particularly pp.44-46), I definitely wouldn't come away with deism. Here's another quote...
"On the level of scientific inquiry, we discern certain processes or sequences of cause and effect. On the level of spiritual vision, which does not contradict science but looks beyond it, we discern everywhere the creative energies of God, upholding all that is, forming the innermost essence of all things."
J: Sorry bout that, D. I thought you meant Ware had said God "set things in motion by an initial act 'at the beginning', after which they go on functioning by themselves."
D: 2) I don't think the concept of CC seen in EO is primarily about teleology. I think it's more about the general relationship of Creator and Creation.
J: I would say that if CC is true for beings, qua beings, then it's just a proper understanding (a fuller one) of the principle of causality.
D: also hear you saying that as long as the benevolence and compentent pieces are there, then that's the main thing, right?
J: Well we have to have causality per se to even get conceptually TO teleology, because teleology is distinguishable from mere causality. So we need CC or what I'm saying to have a principle of MERE causality. But I'm saying the teleology of the order is what needs to be benevolent and competent to render the order rational. It could be merely causal or a-sympathetically teleological and still be a-rational. Because it would still leave us with an infinite set of logical possibilities we couldn't rule out with any knowable normative criteria for plausibility, etc.
We have to get to that knowable, normative criteria for beliefs. But without teleology, normativity is inconceivable for any class of sensibilities, intellectual or otherwise.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 8/5/2011 9:46:31 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 8/5/2011 12:20 PM (GMT -6) | | D,
Have I ever steered you wrong on a book recommendation? OK then. Get this book and you’ll thank me for a long time:
Stephen A. Mitchel’s Relationality: From Attachment to Intersubjectivity (Routledge, 2003).
This actually is the first secular (non-theist, not a-theist) book length treatment that I think supports something like CC. You’ll see what I mean. This guy is the secular version of Loder.
I don't understand the expensive price. I thought I bought mine much cheaper. But I tend to buy only used books through amazong. But even the used ones listed are expensive. Just borrow my copy when I see you in a couple weeks.
Tom
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Tom
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| Posted 8/5/2011 12:45 PM (GMT -6) | | Jeff,
Do you accept the principle of sufficient reason? (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sufficient-reason/)? It’s a very widely accepted but controversial concept about causality. Many process folk and other indeterminists (e.g., Hartshorne) reject it. Greg does a good job saving it as an indeterminist, but I tried to show him that in its standard (‘strong’) version it entails determinism. But a ‘weaker’ version is compatible with OV. Alan agreed. Basically it says that no SOFA is ‘causeless’. All actualities have a cause. Never mind for the moment how God as a causeless, necessary being figure into this; he’s categorically different qua necessary, or, given EO’s approach, God transcends our categories. We’ll get to God later. But for now I just want to consider what we know (intuitively and empirically) about the observable (created) world, for in this world all present actualities ARE related to their immediately preceding Sofas as effect to cause. Don’t read determinism into this. If we’re libertarians, and if we think our free choices are neither random nor absolutely determined by antecedent causes—i.e., they’re ‘caused but free’), then we can’t also say that the world continues to exist “without all cause.” Each Sofa sustains a causal relationship to antecedent Sofas that caused the new Sofa to come into being. This causal relationship is why we’re able to argue the integrity of the present’s relationship to the past. Present Sofas don’t pop into being uncaused. So at the very least the present world (considering it as a single complex Sofa) IS caused by immediately preceding Sofas which define the scope of possible becoming for the next moment of realization. That’s just what temporal becoming is. But to say the world at any present moment is “uncaused” denies the integrity of the world’s ‘continuity’ and thus its enduring identity.
How does that sit with you?
Tom
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One Love
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| Posted 8/5/2011 2:47 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 8/5/2011 4:10 PM (GMT -6) | | | Tom: If we’re libertarians, and if we think our free choices are neither random nor absolutely determined by antecedent causes—i.e., they’re ‘caused but free’), then we can’t also say that the world continues to exist “without all cause.”
Jeff: If the view I've defended is true, it is always true that the only reason I'm still in existence is because my origin was CAUSED. My changes of state is what requires on-going causation.
Tom: So at the very least the present world (considering it as a single complex Sofa) IS caused by immediately preceding Sofas which define the scope of possible becoming for the next moment of realization.
Jeff: An old-time physicist might would contend that God could send a particle on its way without further causality to explain its motion.
Tom: But to say the world at any present moment is “uncaused” denies the integrity of the world’s ‘continuity’ and thus its enduring identity.
Jeff: I agree. But even so, I have no idea what a dead animal soul is doing just after death that requires CC. IOW, we agree that matter is probably always in motion and virtually never moving in a straight line, even. So that part of the world obviously seems tied causally to rather immediate causality. But a recently died animal soul? Don't know why its existence would require CC nor do I know it necessarily annihilates.
That's why I think that CC for beings, qua beings, works as parsimoniously and therefore is not problematic on THAT ground. Whether it creates a problem for God, don't know. But I see no practical implications either way. It's literally just one's belief about the principle of causality per se, nothing more.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 8/7/2011 7:59:10 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 8/6/2011 8:02 AM (GMT -6) | | |
Reading one of the linked articles, something occurred to me. CC implies that material entities, though beings per se, have no causal capacity. But human souls/spirits supposedly do, to account for free-will. This DOES seem to create a less parsimonious situation in one sense. It implies that there are two classes of created beings with respect to mere causality per se, rather than the one implied by the view I'm defending. Indeed, the view I'm defending means all beings are causal due to their own causal capacities while their continued existence, qua beings, is not caused.
So I'm back to seeing the view I'm defending as more parsimonious. And I don't know what else to go by other than parsimony since I see no practical implications from either that would change how we would do science, evaluate normatively, etc. In either case, teleology grounds normativity, our belief in the regularity of event sequences, and, therefore, our inferences to SPECIFIC causes and ends. Mere causality, by itself, doesn't help us a bit in these regards.
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