Open Theism Discussion Board

Ok, I've had a chance to think some of this over. Here's some of my thoughts.

There are, perhaps a few, or even a lot, of things God has not experienced and cannot experience until He creates the environment for it. God could never experience. In another thread, Meph said, "But it would be impossible for a necessary, self-existent, ESSENTIALLY SOCIAL, fully-satisfied Being to FULLY identify with the subjective perceptions of a radically particular existent. How could God empathize fully with the terror and pain of BEING IGNORANT of something? or of being SEPERATE from ultimate reality? There's no way God could do that." This was the case until Jesus was incarnated. So, it takes God's creating to open up the avenue for relating in various ways in which God cannot relate if He does not create.

Now, moving on to some dialogue here...

Meph: 1. If you are a God-believer who thinks that YOUR particular praise, adoration, love, obedience and esteem of God somehow affects God's self-perception such that God would say "I am feeling more loved, more esteemed, more delighted, and more satisfied because My servant is living for Me"...you are wrong (emphasis Starkman's).

Starkman: That God is self-satisified only means to say that when it comes to God, He doesn't have to create in order to find a more of anything, including a fuller, higher or better expression and enjoyment of love and beauty, as if He were incomplete or imperfect in love and beauty if He did not create. That He did create means that IN RELATIONSHIP TO THAT CREATION He will experience what He otherwise would not have experienced. This does not add "more" to what God already experiences in and of Himself with regard to who and what He is. "More here is not extra stuff that was lacking (and thus making God incomplete) before creating anymore than an open future becoming known by God is not "more" stuff added to God's omniscience, as if He were lacking or incomplete in knowledge prior to the future becoming known.

God's relationship with Himself is essentially necessary. His relationship with contingency is not essentially necessary—it is therefore not true that creation is "necessary," even if we were to say that God's aseity was in question—God's ad intra is affected by His relationship with contigencies; regardless, God wouldn't still not HAVE to create. He could simply choose to go without.

As soon as God creates (particularly a sentient being made in His own image), He opens the door for a relationship other than within His Trinitarian self. Two distinct ontologies now exist: one being the Divine self-satisfied; the other being the contingent and needy. The concentration of that relationship is now other than with God Himself. Two worlds, so to speak, exist. The contingent world is worth something because it is begotten by One Who is of the epitome of worth and value. The contingent creation is worth something, because it was created by a being who put the worth into the creation.

When that creation goes amuck, it is ONLY between that creation and Creator where relationship is expressed in terms of love, hate, joy, pain, better, worse, etc. It is not an issue of whether God's internal ad intra is affected. It is not an issue of whether God gets "more" from His relationship with creation (again, as if "more" is to add something that would make God perfect, complete or close to either, in love and beauty). Using the marriage example...

I am who I am, regardless of who I marry. My essential core—all of who and what I am—is appreciated by myself for what it is. All of who and what I am cannot be added to or subtracted from whether I marry or not. Thus, all of who and what I am can be (and should be) appreciated fully, without the assistance of marriage. Marriage, therefore, cannot add to or subtract from the essentials of who and what I am as a person. NEVERTHELESS, I am still able to relate to and be affected by another outside of who and what I am. When "another" is brought into the game, a whole other world is created, one in which the ontology is not about my core essential existence, but the dynamics of what takes place between to individuals as they EXPRESS who and what they are between each other. This expression in no way adds to or subtracts from either party's essential core. But without the core, there is no way to relate, for there is nothing there to relate with.

So, I can marry and find in my partner many aspects of relationship that are of deep matters and significance AS REGARDS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN US, and not as regards to who and what I am and how I enjoy who and what I am. All the affairs in the world that my spouse may commit can never affect who and what I am. Were it not for who and what I am, however, there would be no relationship, as I noted above. But this secondary, separate world finds definement within the ontology that is created in the dynamics of relationship. The category of Self is not added to or subtracted from as regards its self; it merely expresses itself as the tool to connect to another.

Within the Godhead, there is eternal connection; for this is how God exists. This connecteness can never be altered. It's value is not affected by anything outside. It's contents are undisturbed for who and what the Godhead is. But when the Godhead creates and expresses something of Itself with it's creation, the results (sythesis and becoming) of relationship is its own entity and of value and worth.

Meph: 2. If you are a BACKSLIDEN God-believer who thinks that YOUR particular sinful behavior, disobedience, and unloving activity towards God somehow affects God's self-perception such that God would say "I am feeling less loved, less esteemed, less delighted, and less satisfied because My child is far from Me"...you are wrong.

Starkman: This cannot mean that God is feeling less loved in His essential self, as if He is lacking or incomplete if the contingent creation does not love Him. Rather, He can sense/feel the less-loved OF THAT CONTINGENT CREATIONAL RELATIONSHIP. In regard to the value that contingent creational relationship has as a whole separate entity, disturbance or non-disburbance to this entity is an issue.

Meph: 3. If you are a God-believer who really thought that you influence God's level of happiness, joy, peace, and delight IN THE SAME KIND OF WAY that God influences your level of happiness, joy, peace, and delight...you are wrong.

Starkman: I think we do influence God's level of happiness in the same way He influences our happiness INSOFAR AS WE KEEP THE PLACE OF INFLUENCE WITHIN THIS PARTICULAR BI-DIRECTIONAL RELATIONSHIP AND NOT WITH REGARD TO GOD'S NECESSARY ESSENTIAL SELF-COMPLETENESS AS REGARDS.

In other words, just because God can be completely self-fulfilled within Himself does not mean He cannot know and experience pain and sorrow as it regards that which is outside Himself (incarnation), but this doesn't change who and what God is. It doesn't add or subtract from that; it adds or subtracts from the relationship that is CREATED by two beings expressing who and what they are

Meph: 4. If you believe that God's inner ecstasy would EVER be affected by the reality of people enduring eternal punishment...you are wrong.

Starkman: I don't know that it's "ecstasy" that God is experiencing, like the high of a drug or some euphoric state. It is that God is self-assured in God's certainty that He is the epitome of love and beauty, perfect and complete as regards His essential nature. There is nothing to add to or subracted from it. We, WITHIN THE CREATIONAL RELATIONSHIP, can so-to-speak make God out to be less than what He is. We can hurt him IN THIS RELATIONSHIP. We can love Him less or more...IN THIS RELATIONSHIP. But none of this HAS to affect who and what God essentially or necessarily is, and none of this has to affect what God experiences within Himself, anymore than what I experience with my wife has to ultimately affect who and what I am at core and with what I experience with myself.

Meph: Insofar as you cannot affect God in the ways that I've mentioned above, your relationship to God demonstrates INSIGNIFCANCE in the scope of those ways.

Starkman: Insignificance ONLY as it relates to the core essential necessary existence of who and what God is, but that's a different ball game in which we are not invited to participate. God can be who He is within His Trinitarian Self, and relate accordingly, but at the same time EXPRESS who and what He is as is required when He relates within a contingent relationship without God's necessary and essential nature being affected.

Meph: This is why I kept saying that we are meaningless where it really counts, given the belief that loving relationship is the CENTRAL REASON for Creation.

Starkman: Where it really counts in regard to our meaningfulness is NOT within the core of who and what God is. That is a self-contained, self-running, ad intra affair. It is (and get this, please) the same FOR ME! In other words, if God Himself were to tell me that I am of no value and have no worth, I could not believe Him; for I am made in His image; I have to be of worth. Plain and simple. There's nothing that can add to or subtract that (as I exist at this moment). My meaningfulness is a given whether I like it or not, and whether God were to say differently (and that could never be by virture of my having been made in His image. God's committed. Nothing can change that!). Now, in that I do not possess this necessarily, I may find that my temporal worth causes me depression, but this can never happen within the Godhead. That's the only difference here.

Again, to use the marriage example, It'd be like saying that if my wife cannot affect who and what I am at core—the person to whom I relate to as myself and solely by myself—than my wife's life is meaningless to me and hers is meaningless. Doc's preached that God does God the way God does God, and we do ourselves the way we do ourselves. Our spouses become part this process of how we do ourselves, yet Doc was clear to state that our spouses do not become us nor do we become them; we retain our individuality—that core that cannot be infringed upon by another. That individuality for God is the essential perfection of completeness of love and beauty. That individuality in us is our core. We simply do not HAVE to have significance defined by how far we penetrate the Divince essence of love and beauty as it constitutes God.

Well, I've probably bumbled this up, but good, because I don't have the time to edit real well. I hope it's clear.

For keeping ourselves in tact,

Starkman