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| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Theological Q&A > Creation is Etch-a-Sketch | Forum Quick Jump
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 10/29/2009 10:49 AM (GMT -6) |   | Very quickly, gotta run. But D, Jeff and I aren’t talking about mutually exclusive options where the choice is between facing reality or not facing reality (i.e., between loving and unloving ends). We can do that. God can’t. Agreed.
We’re trying to figure out whether and how God’s choice between supposedly equally loving mutually exclusive options (like ‘creating some world’ and ‘not creating any world’) is made. God doesn’t ‘deliberate’ the relative ‘value’ of the options relative to his own dispositional aim toward aesthetic satisfaction because THAT subjective aim is necessarily and unsurpassably met. So then, how DO we explain God’s MOTIVATION to create. That motivation can’t be AS IT IS IN US in the believed improvement of our aesthetic satisfaction that the choice will provide. On the other hand, when we’re faced with two or more equally satisfying options, the choice can be motivated, yes (because any choice will achieve the same desire aesthetic satisfaction), BUT what can’t be explained is why we chose one option OVER the other. Why does God choose to create over not creating at all? If we say “Because some aesthetic satisfaction gained in creation motivates God” then we’ve undermined the necessary unsurpassable satisfaction definitive of God.
Jeff wants to work this out by limiting the unsurpassably intense satisfaction definitive of God TO JUST THE FAHTER as Arche and say the SON has the capacity for improvable satisfaction, and this is capacity in the Son is grounded in the fact that he is NOT omniscient. There are forms of aesthetic satisfaction the Son does not know (or know about) but which the Father does. So for Jeff the motivation for creating comes from the Father’s desire to increase the scope of the Son’s experience of aesthetic satisfaction. Is that basically it Jeff?
I don’t think it works, but I DO think we need to explain how the divine choice between equally loving mutually exclusive options can be motivated.
Tom
"Man is a person not by nature but by spirit. By nature he is only an individual." Nicolas Berdyaev | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 10/29/2009 10:51 AM (GMT -6) | | Hmmm...this may be the ONE PLACE where playing the "divine mystery" card makes the most sense.
Heh.
"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
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One Love
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| Posted 10/29/2009 10:53 AM (GMT -6) | | | Perhaps it doesn't EXPLAIN it more than it gives a REASONABLE CONTEXT for it. Without the idea of dispositions, theological determinism follows divine providence pretty easily.
There was "room" for freedom.
"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
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Similitude
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| Posted 10/29/2009 7:00 PM (GMT -6) | | D: A Question, Jeff.
Does the power and capacity of choice require "one or more mutually-exlusive NATURAL desires" to be what it is? I don't know about that.
J: If we always had only one natural implulse at a time, how would there be a choice involved? I think because of our experience, we "recognize" natural impulses as being directed to less than optimal ends. That recognition then creates a new natural impulse. E.g., I might want to get something out of a fire that has fallen into it, but then I remember the pain caused by heat. So I now have two mutually-exclusive impulses. The latter arises because of my store of knowledge from experience that "comes" to mind. But as long as there is only one natural impulse, I see no possibility of a choice. IOW, even RESTRAINT is a choice based on an impulse that arises from contemplating CONSEQUENCES. But we have to strategically allocate conscious energy to that impulse that we want to prevail at times, or a worse impulse (with respect to over-all consequences) will prevail by mere NATURAL strength.
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Tom
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| Posted 10/30/2009 2:23 AM (GMT -6) | | So, D, we can say that where God faces mutually exclusive options where one is more loving than the other that God chooses the more loving option. But where both are equally loving, in what sense is there a CHOICE. Now, if we say that God is unsurpassable aesthetic satisfaction, then 'creating' and 'not creating at all' don't affect him on that level and thus its difficult to see what there can be in either option to motivate God to choose it over the other. There is not better choice, no more loving choice, no more aesthetically pleasing choice. So how are we to understand God's creating over not creating AS A CHOICE.
1) We can suppose that God's unsurpassable aesthetic satisfaction only obtains vis-a-vis the triune relations but that God is open to fluctuating intensities of pleasure with respect to all his relations outside the trinity.
2) We can conceive of God's unsurpassable aesthetic satisfaction as infinitely intense the way an infinite set of numbers is infinite while remaining open to additions and withdrawals. The set of all even number has an infinite number of members. But if I make a withdrawal, say, take out numbers 2, 4, and 6, the number of members remains infinite. In an analogous way we might say that God's aesthetic satisfaction remains unsurpassably intense triunely but that God genuinely/essentially feels the grief and consequence of the world.
3) We can divide up the trinity a bit and suppose the Father is unsurpassably intense in an absolute sense but that the Son is not. The Son, sans creation, is unsurpasably intense in a Hartshornian fashion, i.e., as intense as all actual occasions permit, but improvable in the sense that when new and diverse actual occasions occur, their beauty is assimilated and the Son's intensity of aesthetic satisfaction increases, though relative to all reality it remains 'unsurpassable'.
Each option will attempt to explain the MOTIVATION for creating in a different way.
Or
4) We don't attempt to view God's choice as motivated and try to develop a view of 'choice' that doesn't require motivation OR a view of creation as a free act which isn't a 'choice'.
Tom
"Man is a person not by nature but by spirit. By nature he is only an individual." Nicolas Berdyaev | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 10/30/2009 2:37 AM (GMT -6) | | I'm tempted to go with (2), or a combination of (1) and (2). "Creating" and "not creating" are not equal in their potential to contribute to aesthetic value. But that's because "not creating" is compared with the only other reality around, and that's God's own self-defining, triune love relations. That's the "infinite set" as it were. It makes sense to suppose that the withdrawal of any members from this set constitutes a REAL withdrawal (there are the numbers 2, 4, and 6, we just took them out) even though the infinite intensity of the set hasn't been AFFECTED.
God can know that if he creates, he will suffer. He doesn't know what suffering FEELS like (because that's a withdrawal from the set). But he knows creating will mean SOME withdrawals (for God and for us; suffering, hell, etc.), and he knows that creating cannot impinge upon the Father-defining, Son-defining, Spirit-defining intensity of knowledge, love, and acceptance that God is. So not knowing what suffering feels like doesn't threaten God. God knows the difference between 'necessary' and 'contingent'. The latter cannot threaten the former.
Then I think we have to figure in Greg's analogy of a painter. He uses this, Jeff, to explain how the contingent world can MEAN something to a God whose essential/necessary defining attribute is an infinitely intense interpersonal experience. I'll try to find the passage.
Tom
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