So this EO teacher suspects God suffers. What about you, Bruce? What say you?

When I read Greg's comments in T&P, it seems obvious to me that he, too, was arguing that God suffers. What Greg argued against was the idea that God suffers in such a way that the objectivity of His perspective is diminished BY that suffering. Indeed, I can't conceive of a volitional choice that doesn't involve at minimum that suffering caused by the non-fulfillment of a conflicting impulse. For were there are no objects of impulses in competition for voluntary instantiation, there seems to be nothing but compatibilism at work. Thus, even the act of creation itself, if it was a free act, seems to have involved the surrender of some other desired object (IMO, a riskless state of satisfaction).

Since volition, by this view, is essentially teleological in nature, it always involves an act of deliberation/adjudication that weighs mutually-exclusive future sentient states for the purpose of inferring the BEST long-term sentient state. But in the case of creating a world of volitional creatures, the risk must be foreknown to be WORTH it despite some worst case scenario allowed. The divine knowledge and power required to foreknow that is what renders God teleologically competent. Open theism is relevant here. God says He knows the beginning from the end because He SPOKE it. I.e., He determined He would BRING it about even if divine intervention was necessary. But God prefers that He need not intervene any more than necessary. Regardless, the worst case scenario, given that determination, will be WORTH it. In that sense, it doesn't follow that creation turn out better than non-creation for God. It need only be WORTH to God whatever it cost God.

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Post Edited (Similitude) : 7/11/2012 12:56:53 PM (GMT-5)

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

 

The only way that Creation can truly be a GRACIOUS, FREE act for God is if God doesn't need Creation to exist in the "best long-term" sentient state. The only way that can happen is if God HIMSELF already exists in such a sentient state.

 

J: What I'm saying is that the "worth it" of creation may be no better OR worse than having not created. It just needs to ultimately be AS good as not creating. In fact, God's teleological competence may be just that--that God sets the worst case scenario bar at the level of "as good as having not created." This way, being benevolent, He saves as many as He can given that constraint. And this in turn means He prolongs the project with as much longsuffering as that requires. But we can still say God MIGHT have come out better than that had man and angels not sinned. Note, by this approach, we are still in that sense relatively meaningless to God in terms of His choice TO create. It's only once we exist that God can't find us relatively meaningless. Once we exist, He must love us given His nature.

 

This gets us back to the past debates about the probability of sin. From a frequency theory of probability, there's no way for God to know the probability that man would sin. From the probability of mere logical possibilities, the probability that sin would occur would be almost 1. In that sense, we could say that the probability that God would turn out as net gain winner was very low. But it was possible for Him to be so, else I can't get around compatibilism for creation. But if the probability is low that God can exceed the satisfaction He would have apart from creation (via total sinlessness), the contemplated short-term probable suffering would cause an impulse to not create. IOW, if it's highly probable that you'll only break even, the suffering entailed in that break-even case can still act as a deterrent to the choice to create. This gives us a way to see how God can know that at worst He'll break even and still be deterred by the highly probable suffering entailed in the highly probable break-even SOFA. Moreover, it may be that the Father renders creation a net GAIN for the Son even WHEN it is a mere break even for Himself. That would be benevolence gone ballistic.

 

It seems to me that what you call libertarian freedom for God is not analogous to what we mean by libertarian freedom for us. For it seems to be non-motivated. I don't conceive of free choice as unmotivated choice. I'm glad you brought this up, though. Because now I see how precisely I've needed to make my argument all along. I had never realized it either. Your intuition is quite good.

 

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Post Edited (Similitude) : 7/11/2012 7:29:32 PM (GMT-5)

 

 

 

 

Thankyou for the invitation. (This is way more than I've typed in months.)

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Sim.,  can't say that I'd disagree with anything you wrote, as disagreeing goes. But I'd like to remark about what I clipped.

 

 

And, we should constantly be valuating free will, without thinking that (oooops..... sorry about disctractions at home.)

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I don't understand the second part.

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God is for us, and is one with us too.

 

 

SHOULD GREG WRITE A BOOK CALLED "INCARNATION AND PROCESS?"

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BUT, God's place of suffering looks not to be something to be avoided, or checked off on a spreadsheet so as to achieve a balance.

 

LET'S NOT EVER FIND US IMAGINING CHRIST SAYING "IT WAS ONLY BARELY WORTH IT"!!!!!!!

 

HE WEPT OVER A CITY THAT KILLED THE PROPHETS. HE PRAYED FOR FORGIVENESS FOR ENEMIES THAT IN HIS HUMAN-EMPTIEDNESS HE ONLY PROGRESSIVELY CAME TO UNDERSTAND THE COST AN ENORMITY OF HIS MISSION.

 

HE PRAYED "LET IT PASS" BECAUSE HE IS AND EVER MORE SHALL WILL TO BE ONE OF US.

 

But He said "not my will but Thine" because the suffering of God extends somehow to before the creation and to after the last trumpet (the 'having' suffered exceeds the suffering).

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Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 7/14/2012 12:13:51 AM (GMT-5)

 

 

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

 

J: I'm assuming Bruce is claiming God suffers and that the church reflects it in some sense. I would agree with that.

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