Post Edited (Namaste 2.0) : 12/1/2006 10:52:21 PM (GMT-6)

Namaste: It's a both/and, B. God is "in time"...but God is also NOT "in time"

Tom: I’m cringing…but open-minded…

Namaste: The Primordial "hypostasis" of God (Father) CANNOT be temporal in the sense of being LIMITED to succession of information or experience. The Father prehends ALL POTENTIALITIES for reality. All "eternal objects" Think about what this means. This means that God has EVERY POSSIBLE CONCEPTION in his mind at one time. If the Father prehends all of these potentialities, and does so as one big "feeling"... then, there's no way that the Father could experience temporality in any real way. No way. And this explains why the Primordial hypostasis of God CANNOT be affected in any way by what happens in Creation.

Tom: OK…

(1) You’re conflating two different issue: temporality on the one hand and the inability to be affected by contingent creation on the other. You’re arguing God’s being the latter on a primordial level (aseity) entails the former. But that doesn’t follow. God may just be eternally temporal given the triune relations irrespective of creation.

(2) Comprehending every potentiality doesn’t entail timeless existence. If anything, it suggests temporal existence. In what sense does an atemporal mind apprehend an even as “potential”? That would seem to entail temporality.

(3) I don’t think God timlessly has “every possible conception” in his mind. There are a lot of possible conceptions about contingent actualities he couldn’t have eternally in his mind, like “knowing the incarnation is actual” or “knowing atonement is accomplished.” God would know these as potential experiences and so potential states of knowledge, but he wouldn’t have the conception ‘of the actuality’ in his mind eternally. And since conceiving of actualities as actualities are “possible conceptions,” God can’t have “every possible conception” eternally in his mind.

Namaste: Only the Consequent and Superjective hypostases of God can do those things!

Tom: I hope you’re not going to argue that the Father is atemporal but that Son and Spirit are temporal. That’ll be quite impossible. The Father can be unchangingly what the Father is, yes. But that’s true with respect to what Son and Spirit “essentially” are as well and you aren't arguing that since the Son and Spirit do not change "essentially" (Son is always Son and Spirit is always Spiirt) that they're timeless. Why suppose the Father has to be atemporal because the Father doesn't change "essentially."

The whole question of divine temporality/atemporality is a thorny issue I know. But so far I don’t see any overwhelming reason to view God (Father) as atemporal. In fact, the notion of atemporal personhood is a huge reason, in my mind, for rejecting atemporality on all levels (since all the persons of the trinity are fundamentally personal and lovingly related; unsurpassingly intense, yes, but not necessarily atemporally).

Post Edited (Namaste 2.0) : 12/2/2006 12:25:20 PM (GMT-6)

A friend wrote -- and I'll leave this here, on the side of the discussion, for comparison however it may be made...

. . . That whole Augustinian idea of foreknowledge is fishy to me, in that time is conceived as a "thing" or a dimension, and a simplistically linear one at that. I'm not into "open theism," God forbid. Rather, it seems to my neuronal epiphenomena that an event is "foreknown" by God simply because it is logoi, residing in His energies, in the eternal council of the Trinity (you know, "let Us make Man in Our Image"). That which is logoi will be realized, don't you know.

Hint: The "logoi" part is why I put this here, on the side.

- B

P.S.   D, with what you are coming to, do you need OT?

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 12/2/2006 3:57:35 PM (GMT-6)

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http://jbburnett.com/resources/lossky/lossky-createdbeing.pdf

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His will for us is a mystery, for the

will is a relationship with another, and there is nothing which is 'other' to God:

creation ex nihilo is in comprehensible to us. We only know the will of God in so

far as it is His relationship to the world which is already created; it is the point of

contact between the infinite and the finite, and in this sense the divine 'willings'

are the creative ideas of things, the logoi, the 'words'. In spite of the

terminological identity, these 'words' have little in common with the logoi

spermatikoi or 'seminal reasons' of the stoics. Rather they are the 'words' of

creation and of providence which are found in Genesis and the Psalms (Ps.

cxlvii). Every created thing has its point of contact with the Godhead; and this

point of contact is its idea, reason or logos which is at the same time the end

towards which it tends. The ideas of individual things are contained within the

higher and more general ideas, as are the species within a genus. The whole is

contained in the Logos, the second person of the Trinity who is the first principle

and the last end of all created things. Here the Logos, God the Word, has the

'economical' emphasis proper to antenicene theology: He is the manifestation of

the divine will, for it is by Him that the Father has created all things in the Holy

Spirit. When we are examining the nature of created things, seeking to penetrate

into the reason of their being, we are led finally to the knowledge of the Word,

causal principle and at the same time end of all beings. All things were created

by the Logos who is as it were a divine nexus, the threshold from which flow the

creative outpourings, the particular logoi of creatures, and the centre towards

which in their turn all created beings tend, as to their final end. For creatures,

from the moment of their first condition, are separate from God; and their end

and final fulfilment lies in union with Him or deification. Thus the primitive

beatitude was not a state of deification, but a condition of order, a perfection of

the creature which was ordained and tending towards its end.1

 

Revealing himself through His creative 'thought-wills', God can be known in

creatures and by means of creatures, but He can also be known immediately in

mystical contemplation, in His uncreated energies which are the splendour of His

face. It is thus, in His Godhead, that Christ appeared to the apostles on Mount

Tabor, and it is thus that He makes Himself known to the saints who detach

themselves from all created things, renouncing all finite knowledge in order to

attain to union with God. And we see here why, when they have abandoned all,

the saints receive in the end perfect knowledge of the created world, for in being

lifted up to the contemplation of God, they possess in the same instant the

knowledge of the whole world of being in its first reasons which are the

'thought-wills' of God, contained in His simple energies. We are reminded here of

the ecstasy of St. Benedict of Nursia, who saw the whole universe as

if it had been gathered together into a beam of the divine light.1

POW: Seems to me that you are trying to craft a PHILOSOPHY to match your theology; that this is not a theology but is a philosophical construct.

Tom: Close. We’re trying to map our theological commitments in Process-philosophical categories. Just as Lossky seems to me to be doing in terms of Greek philosophical categories in the quote you provide. We’re mapping core theological commitments in contemporary categories.

But…

The lines of influence move in both directions. It’s not that our theology is formed entirely through Scripture alone and then a philosophy is independently crafted to “match” that. Nor do we wholesale adopt a philosophy and understand Scripture through it. It’s both. Process has useful categories because process has useful ‘insights’. It’s the insights we’re after as much as the sheer ‘language’. In picking up the Process ‘map’ we pick up the Process ‘territory’. We then explore the compatability of these insights with Scripture. Might Scripture support such insights? Might Scripture contradict them? Might Process be expressing the same biblical insights in different categories? What’s the relationship? In turn, what would the theological commitments we’ve been expressing in non-contemporary categories look like if mapped out in process terms?

When the gospel moved inside Hellenistic culture it influenced and was influenced by their philosophical categories. I mean, look at us, we’re still expressing our theology today in Greek philosophical categories, 2000 years later. And the influence was absolutely not all one-directional: from the gospel to Hellenistic culture. The Church’s understanding was adversely affected as well. It happens. All the more reason for remaining vigilant AND for strengthening our conversation with tradition.

We’re suggesting that the same thing basically happens (heck, HAS happened) when the gospel moves inside Process. It does transform Process. It has already done that. Read Greg’s thesis. But it also takes up otherwise unique Process insights and doctrines that are compatible with the gospel and dresses itself up in those categories. This is good and useful for the same reason it was good and useful 2000 years ago when the gospel moved into the Greco-Roman world—it helps communicate the gospel to people who see the world in those categories.

Tom