Mephi: The MOST that could happen ad extra is for all of God's Creation(s? Why just stop at one universe???) to partake in the divine life. If this were to happen, NOTHING would be added to the complete aesthetic satisfaction found in God's necessary ad intra life. The WORST that could happen is for God's Creation(s) to all fall into hellish fragmentation and chaos away from the divine life. If this were to happen, NOTHING would be taken away from the complete aesthetic satisfaction found in God's necessary ad intra life. This means that neither universal salvation nor universal damnation of Creation would affect God's deep inner tranquility, joy, and bliss.

Tom: Reword “neither universal salvation nor universal damnation of creation would affect God’s deep inner tranquility, joy, and bliss” to “…would affect God’s enjoyment of himself” and I’m fine. But it’s not accurate to define God’s enjoyment of himself qua God as the ONLY “deep and inner” divine reality. Just because God has contingent attributes and experiences doesn’t locate them to some “shallow, outward realm” (as opposed to your “deep inner” realm). What God experiences contingently he experiences deeply and inwardly, as deeply and inwardly as anything.

Mephi: The question is...given that God's ad extra experiences in NO WAY condition God's ad intra constitution of God's bliss, joy, and tranquility...AND given that God's ad intra experience is so MUCH of God's aesthestic appreciation (God had no emotional, psychological, aesthetic, or physical NEED for any ad extra expression)...How can any being in Creation actually feel like they have significant meaning to God in any real way?

Tom: Because God suffers for us so we can experience (as far as we are able) God’s own delight and joy. The Cross isn’t a rational and purposeful choice God makes otherwise. This doesn't mean the Cross isn't a choice God makes with regard to himself. It just means we don't have to assume his acting with regard for himself and with regard for us as contrary purposes and that the latter is at least part of why he suffers. But of course your spring on the top of a hill that only flows in one direction can't absord this.

Mephi: How can said beings NOT feel relativized into virtual meaninglessness? Think about it, Tom. God's emotional existence will not be SIGNIFICANTLY affected by your going to heaven or your going to hell. It would be like the mosquito biting the "enthralled" person. It would be felt, but relativized unto meaning nothing.

Tom: Here is where, again, you are assuming God’s capacities to feel are finite, as if God’s only got so much heart to go around. Why OF COURSE my going to heaven or hell matters significantly enough if he’d suffer the Cross to make the former possible. But because you draw a line topping out God’s emotional capacities and then fill it up with God’s enjoyment of himself (which we can’t take away), well of course I get relativized into meaningless. But if you didn’t draw the line and assume God can process BOTH utter bliss and utter grief, you wouldn’t be in this mess!

Mephi: Speaking of value...let's try something...just go with this for sec...
Creation = 100 trillion hedons of value
Individual human beings IN Creation = 1 million hedons
birds = 0.15 hedons
God's valuation of Godself ad intra= 100 trillion to the hundred trillionth power hedons of value.

Tom: There ya go again. All your values only prove your point IF God has a finite capacity for evaluating, or experiencing value.

Tom

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 10/16/2005 5:30:25 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 10/16/2005 5:33:37 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 10/16/2005 11:05:27 AM (GMT-5)

Forgive the typos. Don’t have time to check!

Mephi: So, when Tom says this: “You’ve got this picture of God somehow ‘overwhelmed’ by himself, so blown away by his own bliss that he can’t find anything outside of himself ‘really’ wonderful and valuable.” he's more right than he realizes!

Tom: Right about YOU having this idea, yeah. Not an idea I share, but I recognize you do.

Mephi: This IS what is being said. God is "so blown away" by God's experience by Godself that God doesn't NEED to experience any value outside of himself in order to reach God's "goal" of ultimate satisfaction in the beautiful experience of loving relationality. At all.

Tom: No problem here. God doesn’t ‘need’ the world.

Mephi: Any and all value experienced by God outside of God's unsurpassable intensity within Godself is ultimately superfluous! Doc says this in no uncertain terms. THIS is how the doctrine of God's aseity is held.

Tom: Superfluous to God’s “existing,” sure. But not absolutely superfluous, since supporting his existence is not what creation contributes.

Mephi: Now does Doc say that God CANNOT or DOES NOT experience or appreciate any value outside of God's necessary, triune existence. Absolutely not. He clearly states: "God enjoys the world--the world "means something" to God--not as an essential element in God's necessary self-constitution, but as an expression of God's self-constitution."

Tom: God for Doc, except to note that God’s enjoyment of the world is not an expression of what’s necessary about God’s self-constitution. And not everything about God’s constitution is necessary and immutable.

Mephi: All this was cool. However, there was a point, in my view, where Doc screwed up...and screwed up big! He never, EVER really delved into the utter SUPERFLUITY of Creation, given his views...or what this entails for the ultimate meaningfulness (or ultimate meaninglessness, rather) of Creation.

Tom: Where’s the grounds for the utter superfluity of creation? I don’t see it. I really am reading you closely here, Mephi. But you’re just choosing to make this assumption. It doesn’t follow. We are utterly superfluous with regard to God’s aseity, yes. But it’s NOT true that God’s aseity is what we need to affect if we are to be at all meaningful to God.

Mephi: It's an entirely different thing to say that God's bliss and joy is linked to God's experience of unsurpassable beauty which is IN NO WAY linked to any contributions that could ever be made by Creation.

Tom: But we’re not saying this. We’re not saying God’s bliss and joy are entirely grounded in God’s experience of his own beauty. They are sans creation. But if God’s infinitely capable of surpassing himself (Hartshorne), he can ‘make room’ for the appreciating non-divine realities. It’s nothing but pure assumption on your part to claim God is incapable of doing this.

Mephi: It's a totally different thing for your spouse to tell you that they will be completely, utterly, supremely satisfied with life regardless of anything you did, positive or negative.

Tom: No Bro. A thousand no’s. It’s NOT that you will be completely satisfied WITH LIFE regardless, since LIFE now includes others. God couldn’t be satisfied WITH THE WORLD regardless of what the world does. He will however be satisfied WITH HIMSELF regardless of what the world does. God won’t be any more satisfied WITH HIMSELF is we all go to heave or all go to hell. But he will be relatively satisfied WITH THE WORLD depending on which turns out to be the case. You just assume that God’s incapable of making the distinction between his necessary and unimprovable self-relations and his contingent and improvable world relations.

Mephi: This statement effectively says that NOTHING you do will ever really matter to this person's hightened level of satisfaction. You could have ten affairs...and it woudn't matter. You could be as faithful as all get out...and it wouldn't matter.

Tom: Again, not at all. What would be said is “You can have ten affairs and it wouldn’t make me doubt myself, wouldn’t make me disappointed in myself, wouldn’t make me grieve myself,” though it would of course affect me in terms of my experience of the world.

I don’t see anything to discuss here really. Set up an evening on Doc’s back porch and we’ll hash it out, with the Houka!

Mephi: They may display negative or positive feelings to you, depending on what you do...but you could NEVER "break their heart" or diminish their utter satisfaction with life.

Tom: Again, not what’s being claimed. You could diminish their satisfaction WITH LIFE (since life includes others). What you couldn’t diminish is their opinion of themselves.

Mephi: You'd probably wonder (and rightfully so) how in the world you influence them meaningfully at all because you don't touch them in the part of themselves that really matters, the depths of their hearts. You'd wonder where the mutual influence really was.

Tom: Of course you’d touch God in the depths of his heart. You just wouldn’t infringe upon his self-existence. You could ‘cause’ God to exist. That’s aseity. God is self-existing. He doesn’t depend for his existence upon anything outside himself.

Mephi: If we are talking about being in a MUTUALLY INFLUENTIAL relationship of love with God, it seems to me that the main thing we'd be looking for is the ability to genuinely contribute to God's ultimate level of aesthetic satisfaction by being an active part of helping to constitute God's unsurpassable experience of beauty. But, if what Doc's been arguing is true, we can never do this.

Tom: In terms of defining God’s own opinion of himself, Doc’s right.

Mephi: Do you see the implications of this? God would experience the EXACT SAME amount of unsurpassable beauty that satisfies Godself if the whole world went to heaven or if the whole world went to hell. If this doesn't relativize creaturely moral autonomy, I don't know what does!

Tom: God would continue to have the same self-opinion, the same satisfaction THAT brings, regardless of what happened in the world. But his opinion and affections for the world would be felt. This isn’t self-contradictory provided we view God as a generally healthy emotional being. What’s up Mephi?

Mephi: Paul: "If we accept what your saying, it's a catch-22. Either you end up perserving the aseity of God and, in turn, relativizing creaturely moral autonomy to a HUGE extent

...or...

you preserve creaturely moral autonomy such that we really CAN "break God's heart" (as it were) and diminish God's joy, and, in turn, end up with an inevitable unto necessary God/world relationship.”

Tom: Paul’s making the same mistake you are—insisting that genuinely mutual God-world relations have to affect divine ‘aseity’ if they’re to be real. That’s just way wrong.

Mephi: And if people like SK are right about God being love, we'd have every reason to think that this is what's going to happen. Can you think of a better ad extra EXPRESSION of God's ad intra infinitely intense love and beauty than for God to redeem ALL sentient beings and place all of Creation "in Christ"?

Tom: I’d have NO reason whatsoever to believe God would give a damn one way or the other on your view. Tell me what it is about God, Mephi, that makes you think his saving everybody would be a “better” expression of God than his dumping everybody into hell? What MAKES the former a BETTER expression of God?

Mephi: Doc agreed with Hartshorne (and process theism as a whole) that accepting the traditionally held Church view of God's aseity necessarily lead to a severe relativization of creaturely autonomy...such that human religious devotion would be meaningless to God. Catch that. Doc AGREED with Hartshorne that there was indeed a serious problem there!

Tom: The problem is with “the traditionally held view on divine aseity” with all the extra baggage the Church added on. Traditionally understood, I think everything about God does more than severly relativize creaturely autonomy. It positively vaporizes it. Now, I don’t have a problem agreeing that God’s ASEITY (properly understood) relativizes creaturely existence to meaninglessness. By that I mean just that the meaning of our existence is NOT found in our ability to determine whether or not God exists and whether or not he likes himself. In terms of THAT determination, we ARE meaningless to God. But none of this means God is limited in his emotional capacities to evaluating us visa-a-vise his own self-existent nature. In other words, when deciding what we 'mean' or 'matter' to him, God doesn't measure our contribution to that of his own contribution to himself.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 10/16/2005 1:04:46 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 10/16/2005 1:56:05 PM (GMT-5)

Jeff: I would say that it does make sense that God is sentiently satisfied with His relationship with the "Son." To that extent I understand aseity.

Tom: That’s not what aseity is you guys. Come on. Aseity is simple. It says nothing about about God’s knowledge, affections, dispositions, blah blah blah. All aseity means is “self-existing.” Lit “aseity” – “of one’s self.” It just means that God isn’t dependent for his existence upon anything other than God. It doesn’t itself mean God is happy, sad, knowing, sentient, or anything else. It’s a very specific claim that begins and ends with the question of ‘existence’ qua existence.

Jeff: But once created beings come into the picture, all bets are off. For by definition, the frustration of intentions implies lack of sentient satisfaction. Whether that is INSIGNIFICANT in degree would have to be proved. I don't see how philosophy can prove it and scripture seems to DISPROVE it.

Tom: This all has nothing to do with aseity.

---------------

Mephi:  Let me make it simple for you. Just go with me here. Let's say that God's teleological "bullseye" was to have the most intense experience of beauty via loving sociality that God could have. That's the target of God's aesthetic satisfaction.

Tom: I'm not sure the idea that God purposes God's own existence to hit any bull's eye makes sense. I think it's out of the question. To tell you the truth I don't think God purposes himself for his own pleasure because I don't think he purposes himself, period. Why should God be thought of as having to purpose his own existence to some end? That he can purpose some non-divine creation for himself makes perfect sense. But that he should set his own existence a goal to be achieved? Maybe I'm not following your analogy.

Mephi: For God to actualize and participate in this "unsurpassably intense" qualitative experience of beauty will fulfill or SATISFY God's disposition. Now, ask yourself, Tom: does God have to go outside of God to get that? Does God have to go outside of Godself to have this "unsurpassbaly intense" experience? Hartshorne would say yes. Doc would say no.

Tom: I perfectly understand this and have sided with Greg in affirming God’s aseity.

Mephi: Stop thinking of "aesthetic satisfaction" as self-opinion, self-concept, or healthy self-love.

Tom: I’m not boiling it down to that. I’m just suggesting that the divine aesthetic satisfaction is, so far as God own experience of himself is concerned, fulfilled. Why should this mean God cannot relate personally and mutally to others?

I asked some questions too. Any answers?

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 10/16/2005 3:07:48 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (jefscott) : 10/16/2005 5:02:23 PM (GMT-5)

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