So much for UR.

OK.

D: No, help me understand. You say...

If there is no "abiding qualitative difference", then God is "irresponsible' in taking such a risk as he has.

I don't see how what you are saying can be taken a different way. You don't seem to be saying that it's logically incoherent or metaphysically impossible. You seem to be saying that God makes UNJUSTIFIED, IRRESPONSIBLE RISKS from our perspective...right?

T: Of course that’s what I’m saying. But we ALL say similar things dude. Come on. We object to irrevocable ECT partly on the basis that we’re unable to conceive of it as “just” in any meaningful sense. We reject theological determinism for the same reason. We reject claims about God all the time on the basis of the objectionable nature of attributing this or that to God. We work within our categories and do the best we can, from our perspective. Do you have a perspective that makes the risk intelligible and loving? By all means. If not, what considerations are driving you to conclude God takes such risks?

I’m saying if God can get human beings into the relationship he desires, without any abiding qualitative loss in experience or glory for the creatures by the same means by which he renders infants into that relationship—without risk of evil or hell—then the risk is unattributable to God given ‘God is love’. If being love doesn’t rule out needlessly risking evil and hell, then I don’t know what love is.

D: How is the infant determined "by divine fiat" if it's indeed the case the "logos" in the child deal with free relationality via openness and responsiveness to God in it's "face/presence-to-Face/Presence" encounter with God? God is not forcing or determining anything. Rather, the infant's "logos" is doing WHAT IT DOES in human being...and the infant just didn't make it to the age of higher ego and personality development.

T: Logoi "doing what they do in a human being"? Dude, logoi arent’ sentient beings capable of choice. What are you thinking? There’s no way one’s ‘logos’ is fulfilled apart from the rational and free choice of the creature. Logoi aren’t creatures themselves. They don't "do" anything in terms of disposing a person Godward. They don’t perceive, reason, or make choices. They're just God's invitation to become this or that. They're like God standing within the creature saying "Become this" or "become that." But that "word" is an invitation and has to be answered. It must be chosen to become actual. The individual does that in becoming a person. And if the individual makes her significant choice to relate to God via some kind of beautific vision (like the context you seem to be imagining for infants), what happens to epistemic distance, free choice, and TWT1?

But regardless of that, D, you’re positing a risk-free context in which human beings can come into the fulfillment of all God’s purposes for them. If that’s possible, then why would a God of love risk the ugliness, pain, and hellish suffering of so many? What is gained by risking all this which is not achieved by the infant? So far you’re saying “Nothing. All human beings come into the fullest intended experience of God’s purposes for them. There’s no abiding qualitative loss. God just values the struggle that’s had in risking evil, ugliness, sin and hell. Running that risk doesn’t yield any abiding advantage or benefit.”

Dude, all that means is that the risk is for nothing. If not, then tell me WHAT God ‘values’ in the struggle? Is it just entertainment value? God just gets off on the struggle? Is he bored with the risk-free way and just wants to mix things up for a bit of variety? What? You won’t say because you don’t want to “judge” God? Well, what the hell. Let’s close up shop and shut down the board. Let’s just embrace determinism and party—if we’re not going to judge some actions as unbecoming of God. We make such judgments all the time, you included, and with respect to UR as well. Now you’re going to withhold judgment and say God risks all the evil and suffering of hell just because he enjoys watching us ‘struggle’ and sin and suffer? What’s the struggle yield that makes the risk worth it? On your score, nothing, since even infants who by-pass the risk have the same yield; they come into the fullest experience of God’s intentions. How can we avoid concluding then that God didn’t HAVE to take the risk to get us into the relationship he desired? Thus, risk is unnecessary to God’s purposes for human beings. If you don’t believe this, then you have to state what loss is incurred by infants who die and come into those purposes in a risk-free environment. If God is love, then I presume any risk God takes is both loving and worth it. But this means by definition there's loss for those who don't take the risk and gain for those who do. That's what it MEANS to say a risk is both loving and worth it (or justified).

That's from the point of view of those who reject TWT1 as you do in the case of infants, unless you want to say God accommodates infants who die in such a manner that they make the required choice under the relevant contextual factors post-mortem. But that's all I'm saying IS the case. In this case the risk is intrinsic to the project and there's no side-stepping it even if you die as an infant. It's a metaphysical rule governing created, loving becoming.

This is where you still are not on board with TWT1 as Greg (and I) conceive of it. You want to subject created becoming in SOME contexts (this risky world's self-conscious becoming) to TWT1 but not in other contexts (infants who develop risk-free through a post-mortem vision of God). For Greg, teh scope of TWT1 is all-inclusive of created becoming. There simply is no context in which created beings can come to be lovers of God outside the rules of TWT1, 2, 3, etc. And for all his defending of LFW and ranting against Calvinism, Laika also rejects TWT1 in some contexts (infants). Interesting.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 11/12/2008 5:43:17 AM (GMT-6)

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Honestly, dude.  I'm not on theodicy as much as I used to be.  I just ain't.

Post Edited (One Love) : 11/12/2008 8:11:49 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Tom) : 11/12/2008 9:00:58 AM (GMT-6)

D: Basically, I'm saying two things:
1) Human infants are wired to give and receive love.
and...
2) God is love.
Is this not true?

T: Depends on what you mean. I’d agree humans are wired to give and receive love. But to me that “giving” and “receiving” just means that the HUMAN, the creature, the created individual, chooses. They can’t be determined by the uncreated logoi. Logoi aren’t creatures. But that’s what you have with your infant scenario it seems to me.

D: If we want to see the risk of "hell", we have to look at the epitome of hell itself: Satan. Now, what has Satan lost currently? In despairing defiance against the Holy Spirit that constantly sustains his very being, he's currently lost the freedom from self-orientation (Self-transcendence) which makes him stuck in deep self-reflection and egoism, and incapable of the ability to will to use his own relatively independent will in synergy with God's will. If we want to see what the epitome of "heaven" itself, let's look at Jesus. In utter dependence on the Holy Spirit that sustains his very being, Jesus had the freedom from self-orientation to will to use his own relatively independent will in synergy with God's will.

T: I’ll stop you there, though I’m including the rest of what you say here as well. Don’t you see how circular this is? You keep assuming the risk and then reasoning from it TO why the risk was loving and necessary. That misses the whole point.

D: Satan self-consciously wanted to exalt himself above his "nothingness" as created being...and in so doing, kept trying to assert independence from God and God's Will in all things. "I will be like the Most High..." (Prideful self-refection) Jesus self-consciously understood and acceptance his "nothingness" as created being...and in so doing, kept a utter dependence on God and God's Will for all things. "If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing." (Humble self-transcendence) The "creational ingredients" that were needed for Jesus to be what HE was...enabled Satan to be what he became through free choice.

T: Dude, I’m saying that God could have had the emergence of contingent creatures in his image without ANY of this risk IF it’s the case that infants come to bear God’s imagine apart from that risk. And clearly you think the latter portion is so. All it takes is for ONE human being, one created being, to come into loving relationship with God in a risk-free context to dismiss ALL that you say here. All angels, all human beings, all created beings could have been plopped into existence in a risk-free context in which their logoi “did what logoi do” to guarantee the risk-free emergence of the divine image in those creatures. And the incarnation with ALL its goals of oneness with created being in the divine image, etc., would equally emerge in the same context. You keep ASSUMING the fall and sin and evil and a fallen Satan in your explanation for why risking that fall was necessary. But that’s to beg the question.

D: For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. Creation subjected to frustration.

T: What “frustration” do human beings (infants) face in whom the image of God emerges in a risk-free context, D? What can possibly frustrate the development of such persons who are, as you say, beholden to the very vision of God and whose logoi guarantee the emergence of personal becoming without risk of failure? I’m waiting.

This is my point. Once you posit a risk-free context in which human beings come to bear the divine image without risk of failure, you’re positing a “frustration-free creation” in which God DOES get what he wants from created beings with no risk. But what is this if not to claim that the subjugation of creation to frustration, etc., is NOT in fact necessary to the purposes of God for created being? With your infant scenario, you have created being becoming what God wanted created being to become without experiencing any subjugation to frustration or risk of failure.

Allllll the talk about Satan’s fall and his despair and how the incarnation is the positive (in created being) to all the negative (in created being) is utterly beside the point. I’m saying ALL this pain and evil might have been avoided quite easily had God decided to pursue his purposes of (a) created beings bearing his image, and (b) incarnation in that being, in just that manner in which he pursues it with infants—in a risk-free, frustration-free context.

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 11/12/2008 1:42:27 PM (GMT-6)

Tom, how do you derive at “risk-free”?   Do I need to post graphical images of infants and children in order to demonstrate the heartbreaking "risk" involved?  Furthermore, if God did not determine their death, then what about the potential of life that would entail further risk?  

Post Edited (Truth Aficionado) : 11/12/2008 2:25:47 PM (GMT-6)

Yeah, Mark. Post those graphical images of infants and children. Sure.

We're nowhere near being in the same discussion here.

I'm talking about the post-mortem environment. Deceased infants, so its being asserted, come to relate to God in love without risk of sin and failure (or so I hear D and Laika claim). It doesn't really matter HOW the infants die. They may have been brutally murdered. That's part of THIS present risky world, yes. But how they EXIT this world is inconsequential to the question of how they come to relate to God after they die. That's the issue here. Laika's saying that after death they wake up in heaven without having to choose (freely, and thus risking the possibility of failing to choose rightly) God the way the rest of us do. So for Laika, I'm deriving the risk-free nature of post-mortem infant glorification directly from him. I'm deriving it in D's case from D as well.

Having said that, my suggestion is that if such an environment is possible, an environment in which human beings can come to love God without risk of failing to love God, then God would have just made THAT environment THE environment for human existence--period. We'd all then begin our lives in that environment in which D and Laika think deceased infants begin their post-mortem lives, and we'd all grow into perfectly loving beings with no risk of evil and become all God wished us to be--just like infants do. God could even incarnate into such an existence and be every bit the incarnate image of God in created being that he now is.

The same could be said for angels. It goes all the way back. If 'created being' as such can become related to God as God desires without risk of sin or evil, then I'm presumming that that would be the environment of choice for a loving God. I don't have a concept of love that includes needlessly risking evil and sin. I guess D and others do. I'm trying to get somebody to make sense of such a notion of 'love'.

Post Edited (Tom) : 11/12/2008 3:02:27 PM (GMT-6)

Ohhhh… "post-mortem risk", well, why didn’t you say so?  You mean like the "risk" of your food getting cold if you show up late at the heavenly feast?

If D & Laika don't think there will be any "grave risk" showing up in heaven, well then, count me in.

Post Edited (Truth Aficionado) : 11/12/2008 3:28:32 PM (GMT-6)