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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
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| Posted 10/14/2005 3:18 PM (GMT -6) |   | Simple questions:
1) Is it true that God would have been just as well off (meaning God would have had just as much aesthetic satisfaction within Godself) had I never existed at all.?
2) If #1 is true, how can I in any meaningful way be significant to God?
Let me dismantle something here. I already know about Doc's old "contingent expression of necessary essence" thought. In other words, Doc has tried to say that EVEN THOUGH, God is completely "satisfied" within Godself, he nonetheless STILL gets aesthetic satisfaction from Creation. But this seems like hogwash to me. This is like saying Infinity plus any finite number adds something to Infinity! If God is already infinitely satisfied in Godself, then NO contingent, finite aesthetic appreciation can either add or take away from that expererience of infinite satisfaction.
Let's use another example. Let's use one that is a variation of one that Doc does in Trinity and Process. An artist who creates. Let's say that the artist gets SUPREME satisfaction from pondering her own creative ability. She creates works of art in her mind...and REALLY gets off on it all the time. This satisfaction exists such that it cannot be surpassed by ANYTHING or ANYONE but her and her ever-developing creativity. (This would be analogous to how God appreciates Godself ad intra.) Now, for no particular reason, she decides to give concrete expression to her art and paint some pictures. She figures it would be cool for someone else besides her to enjoy her work. She expresss herself through her art...then displays it on the side of the road. (This would be analogous to how God operates ad extra)
When she does this, some people "oooh" and "ahhh", marveling at her work. Others actually spit on it, think of it as hoopla, and some even paint OVER some of the works.
Now, if the artist truly gets SUPREME satisfaction out of the creative process she experiences within herself, regardless of whether or not she actually paints anything, would she really give a damn HOW people ended up relating to her work??
Really, REALLY, think about it.
Would she genuinely appreciate those admirers of her work...while feeling sad about those who didn't? Would she really get ONE IOTA of increased or decreased satisfaction from how people related to her work.
OR...
Would there be a definite aloofness there such that, regardless to what, her chief satisfaction is ALWAYS in play...and the reactions of other people were ultimately MEANINGLESS to her?
Where is all this going?
Simply this.
It is possible to posit an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God who orders and sustains the universe...whom is ULTIMATELY indifferent to our existence.
In other words, to say that God loves anyone as an omnibenevolent being is NOT to say that that makes any sentient being SIGNIFICANT to God. Just like saying that the artist expresses her art is NOT to say that appreciation of her art is significant to her.
See the issue?
Now, Doc has already tried to face this beast a little bit. But there's a problem. To say that God DOES get aesthetic value from Creation that enhances God's overall satisfaction ends up leading to a necessary God/world relationship. Why? Because, just like dipolar process theism says (and a more consistent Jonathon Edwards WOULD have said), for God to increase God's experience of goodness and beauty would NECESSARILY mean creating other non-God entities for God to enjoy. Keeping with the artist analogy, to say that the artist does get more overall satisfaction from other people appreciating her art is to say that the artist is NOT supremely satisfied by her own creative abilities. To maximize her satisfaction would necessarily REQUIRE her to paint for others
What all this does, ladies and gentlemen, is relativizes our meaning into utter meaninglessness. If we contribute no real significance to the life of God (who is the Ultimate Reality and Aesthetic Appreciator), then our lives have no true meaning. Notice that this is true even if subjective immortality of sentient beings is posited! God would theoretically have been JUST AS HAPPY and FULFILLED within Godself had none of us had ever existed...as God would if every being in Creation were to experience salvation. Just as the artist would have been just as happy if EVERYONE who saw her pictures loved them or if NO ONE who saw her pictures appreciated them at all. But here's the crazy part. God would be just as satisfied within Godself if every sentient being in existence went to an everlasting burning hell. Uh huh.
This is a subtle return to the description we find in Ecclesiastes. Why? Because ultimately, from God's perspective, it wouldn't matter if we were a Mother Teresa in the highest enclave of heaven or an Adolf Hitler in lowest pit in hell. It would still all be essentially meaningless. One may try to say...
Well, it sure matters to the person who goes to heaven or hell! Even if our endstates are ultimately meaningless to God, they do mean something to US and we make decisions accordingly.
But let's notice two important things:
1) This is NOTHING MORE than what atheistic existentialism will tell you. We act according to our own whims and choices in the face of absurdity and meaninglessness.
2) This would betray one's true self-serving intentionality for religion: the securing of everlasting bliss for oneself. It wouldn't have to deal with honoring God as much as it would be fire insurance. Can you imagine how things would be if one were to posit no afterlife? Or even IF we were to posit an afterlife...but just an UNDIFFERENTED state of affairs where everyone, regardless of what, ended up in the same, exact state.
[Digression: I've posted on this before. I am utterly convinced that you could posit an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, self-sufficient, self-satisfied, omnibenevolent God...without the idea of an differentiated afterlife...and watch people head for the hills. They wouldn't like it. If it were truly the case that ALL people got exactly the same end whether they lived for God or not (whatever that end was), do you really think that the average Joe or Josephine would give a damn about serving God. Nope. Not really. How does this NOT show the blatently selfish motivations behind many people religious searches? Remove ultimate meaning and remove differentiation of eternal states...you have significantly removed a HUGE CHUNK of people's religious motivation!]
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I've rambled enough. Here's the deal. If you've answered the 1st question "Yes", but yet come to the conclusion that my existence is NOT ultimately without significance to God...I would like a detailed post about how this is not so. Please don't use the old "Well, Jesus gave his life for you so that should so you how significant you are" line. This misses the point. The whole creation/redemption process, including Jesus's sacrifice, does NOT necessarily entail that the Triune God received significantly more aesthetic appreciation than God would have without Creation. No more than would the lady artist filling an entire art gallery by herself would necessarily entail that she received more aesthetic appreciation from doing so.
So, fellow believers, show me how my life has ultimate significance to the self-sufficient, self-satisfied, necessarily-existing God. Love to hear from you.
 Post Edited (MephEternal) : 10/14/2005 4:03:42 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 10/14/2005 3:33 PM (GMT -6) | | Let me anticipate something else.
The old "having a baby" thought.
"Well, Meph, think about a couple who are really enjoying their lives together just fine...but then decide, just out of the joy they have in their own lives, they want to have a kid. Even though the couple were doing just fine before WITHOUT the kid, and probably could have went one living just fine as a couple, that doesn't mean that they don't get any signifcant joy from the new kid...OR that the kid is insignificant to the couple."
Hmmm..nope. I would argue that in cases of people having babies, couples have NOT reached a state of SUPREME satisfaction prior to the having children. As a matter of fact, I'd be willing to wager my next check that for those couples who DO have intentionality about having children, it is rarely a disinterested expression of love emerging in new created children. More often than not, it is the couples intention to fulfill something in themselves that is found in being parents. The yearn to be a mom or a dad. The yearn to continue one's family line. The list can go on and on. None of this is the same as what I'm talking about with God.
For the analogy to remain consistent with what I'm saying, you would have to unqualifiably say that the couple had reached a state of SUPREME satisfaction such that any choice to have children would NOT come from ANY inner needs or sense of incompleteness from either member of the couple. And such that there would literally be NO DIFFERENCE, satisfaction wise, between them having one kid, 3 kids, 10 kids...or no kids.
I don't think there's any human couple on the planet that would fit this bill. But this is what would have to be conceptualized for the "having a baby" thought to be relevant.
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Similitude
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| Posted 10/14/2005 4:19 PM (GMT -6) | | Meph: So, fellow believers, show me how my life has ultimate significance to the self-sufficient, self-satisfied, necessarily-existing God. Love to hear from you.
Jeff: Good questions, and ones that definitely need answered. Once upon a time (since I started posting here, even) I used to think that the fact that all things are for BOTH the Father AND the Son meant that the creation served to enhance the satisfaction of BOTH in some parallel way. Recently I've been wildly speculating thus: The Father gets satisfaction from creation BECAUSE it enhances the sentient satisfaction of the Son. And that would seem to mean that God's increased satisfaction from this creation is a result only or primarily of His ability to "feel better" by enhancing the Son's sentient satisfaction--i.e., it's due to the dynamism of their relationship.
In that sense, God's love for us is CONDITIONED by that first and fundamental love of the Son. Therefore, I think there's a kind of truth to both sides of the coin. On the one hand, to the extent that there is compliance on our part to the Son's sentient enhancement (i.e., we live according to the purpose that actually DOES enhance the Son's sentient state), God's love for the Son can naturally flow to us, because we are then loveABLE. Otherwise, we are like the insignificants your post talks about.
Punishment, in that case, may exist to make the post-fall moral order rational, not so much because of how significant we are. For good and ill-desert are, in a sense, correlative. But good-desert may exist ONLY because post-fall'ers must suffer to enhance the sentient well-being of the Son. For his brethren are counted WORTHY because they suffer WITH him. And his suffering is necessitated by the fall.
So, turning that around,
1) instant death may have been the original price of sin, rather than suffering;
2) but because the Fall included the FIRST TWO PEOPLE and instant death would have terminated the whole project, God chooses to glorify the Son anyway IN THIS CREATION, without starting a new one;
3) but this necessitates the suffering of the Son;
3) and the post-fall order entailed, inevitably, the forebearance of continual evils by humans and angels, rather than immediate death--hence, ill-desert and punishment;
4) those who are Christ's ALSO have to suffer to inherit with him, thus, we have good-desert--for in the same way Christ has a JOY SET BEFORE HIM to endure the cross, it is rational for US to have an analogous joy set before us also.
Perhaps, when John says God is love, he is interpreting God's benevolence in light of the new revelation that there was a person (the SON) for whom this whole creation existed, other than the Father, Himself. And that changes the perspective of God's glory. For by this new testament perspective, God gets glory BY GLORIFYING THE SON--it all flows from their pre-creation relationship. Compare Phil. 2:11, which seems compatible with this.
Wild speculation, but it kind of addresses the fact that in one sense, God doesn't NEED this creation for anything. On the other hand, it ADDS to Him by ADDING to Christ.
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One Love
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| Posted 10/14/2005 5:01 PM (GMT -6) | | Jefscott,
Thanks the the engagement. The question seems to come then...
How can it be the case that the Son can be SUPREMELY satisfied by his relationship with the Father and the Spirit...but genuinely receive significant increase of that satisfaction from any other source? The only way that the self-existent, necessarily triune God could be supremely satisfied within Godself is for the interpenetrating relationships of the Godhead to be completely sufficient for the said supreme level of satisfaction God experiences. To say the Father uses something outside of Godself to make the Son "feel better" than what was already experienced by the Son in the perichoretic dance is to implicitly undermine the idea of the Son indeed being supremely satisfied. Again, this seems to me like truly believing that finite numbers truly CAN be added to infinity.
Also, the essential question remains. Would you say that God is IN ANY WAY "better off" or "worse off" because of my existence than God was without my existence...while at the same time, saying that God was supremely satisfied in Godself? | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 10/14/2005 7:37 PM (GMT -6) | | Meph: Would you say that God is IN ANY WAY "better off" or "worse off" because of my existence than God was without my existence...while at the same time, saying that God was supremely satisfied in Godself?
Jeff: My tentative answer to your question is "no." The only way I can resolve the dilemma posed by your original question(s) is to suppose there is something like a dynamic relationship between the Father and the "Son" prior to creation that allows for new imaginative possibilities. Whether this implies process thought, I don't know. The only human analogy I can think of is our enjoyment of, and desire for, novelty. If God has the ability to imagine NEW things (don't ask me how the divine imagination works!), then maybe God can contemplate NEW ways to experience satisfaction.
If so, then from some new imagined possibility, the Father conceives a new way to LOVE the Son. I guess this really IS process thought, in it's own way. But the eternal omniscience view is one wherein I can't account for how God purposes things. For if God knows about all His purposes from eternity past, what triggers the implementaion of them, all of a sudden? Unless, of course, God's intents and purposes are not volitional in the first place. But this just raises a different dilemma to me. The dynamic idea is the only one that I can conceive of. Of course, the other possibility is that these questions are just irresolvable by us. It's confusing!!
Post Edited (jefscott) : 10/14/2005 7:49:16 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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JEE
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| Posted 10/15/2005 12:40 AM (GMT -6) | | Jesus said there was MORE joy in heaven over ONE sinner that repents, so I guess I don't agree with the premise that God's aesthetic enjoyment is unable to be improved upon in some way.
Meph said: "Would you say that God is IN ANY WAY "better off" or "worse off" because of my existence than God was without my existence...while at the same time, saying that God was supremely satisfied in Godself?"
I believe each soul is a special creation of God, endowed with the profound ability to either bless God's heart or break it. So I suppose I'd say God does in fact gain, as you call it, "aesthetic appreciation" (or joy) from all who enter into a loving relationship with Him, and that God does in face LOSE joy from those who spurn His love. I guess I just don't have enough information to say whether God has ever been "supremely satisfied in Godself" yet, though I would think that in the final state of things, He will then be as satisfied as he can be, all things considered. As far as God being "better or worse off" because of your existence, I would say that basically depends on what you do to God's heart.
Perhaps it's due to the very warm, loving experience of God that I feel was very essential to the Pentecostal environment in which I was raised, but I really have never been able to think of God as the "Unmoved Mover," dispassionate (emotionless), Spock-like being that some seem to want to paint Him as. I guess I just must be reading a different Bible than the cold rationalist reads. (Not saying you're necessarily trying to look at Him this way, Meph).
I just don't see why we must say God's experience of himself prior to creation has to render all other non-God existences aesthetically meaningless. Even a finite human being can be very satisfied with life and yet desire to have more qualitatively different experiences than he has, to get to know more people than he presently knows, and to share love more fully than he has.
...And I say to myself...what a wonderful world...
John
P.S.: This discussion reminds me of a sermon I once heard in a Word-Faith type church. The preacher said we should always be smiling and happy, "because God is always happy." I had to wonder what Bible this joker had been reading. (Again, not saying you necessarily are doing this, Meph)
And I say to myself...what a wonderful world...
http://www.revivaltheology.netPost Edited (JEE) : 10/15/2005 1:42:43 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 10/15/2005 8:04 AM (GMT -6) | | JEE:
This discussion reminds me of a sermon I once heard in a Word-Faith type church. The preacher said we should always be smiling and happy, "because God is always happy." I had to wonder what Bible this joker had been reading. (Again, not saying you necessarily are doing this, Meph)
For this particular case, that preacher's probably reading the same bible that Jonathon Edwards and John Piper have been reading. The very foundation of Piper's "Christian Hedonism" is INDEED the fact that God is overflowing with joy, peace, and happiness over Godself that it not only flows towards Creation but actually forms the ultimate BASIS for the joy of Creation. Though his way of saying this is slightly different from what Doc says, make NO mistake that they both DO say the same thing: God is supremely satisfied in God's intense enjoyment of God's perichoretic Triune relational self.
www.desiringgod.org/dg/id6.htm
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JEE:
Jesus said there was MORE joy in heaven over ONE sinner that repents, so I guess I don't agree with the premise that God's aesthetic enjoyment is unable to be improved upon in some way.
Hmmm...I'm NOT saying that God doesn't express joy for a sinner who repents. What I'm saying is that, all things considered, this expressed joy is in no way significant to God's own tranquility and joy of being.
This is so weird to me. Seriously. It seems patently obvious that orthodox Christians have wanted to say that God has aseity, that Creation was a COMPLETELY free decision by God (such that God didn't create out of ANY need or desire to gain anything), and that God enjoyed everlasting, unimaginable joy within God's eternal perichoretic, triune relationality. All of this adds to one conclusion:
If God had never created anything at all, God would be JUST AS HAPPY, FULL OF JOY, and LIVELY withing Godself than if God had created a Creation.
I don't know how many theology books I've read this in. But it seems that many people want to have their proverbial cake and eat it too. This is straight up logical. You cannot add any finite number to infinity. There IS no "infinity + x". Any finite number becomes insignificant before infinity. In the same way, any measure of joy that we could try to contribute to the divine life would absolutely PALE in comparison to the joy that God ALREADY has been eternally experiencing within Godself.
Here's a series of analogies and thoughts to help this...
Again to the ice cream analogy. Imagine, John, that you are in the midst of a enduring, pleasure and happiness filled experience where every sense of sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing were experiencing things such that you were aesthetically "maxing out" on the level of pleasure and happiness you were having. Really imagine it. Now...imagine that in the very middle of that deep experience...someone gives you a half-tablespoon of your favorite ice cream. Do you mean to tell me that this would add ANY meaningful aesthetic appreciation to what you are already experiencing??
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Now, let's go the OTHER way. Pain. God forbid that something like this would EVER happen, ok? Let's say that you have 3rd degree burns all over your body to the point that every part of your body almost screams out in agony all the time. Now, let's further imagine that a mosquito comes up to your hospital bed and bites you. Do you mean to tell me that this would significantly ADD to the pain you already feel??? Or would that mosquito bite be neglible to meaningless in light of the immense pain you were already feeling?
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I have heard SO MANY pastors say stuff like this...
Our heavenly, glorified experience with God will be SOOO good, that it will pretty much relativize EVERY EXPERIENCE that we've had in the 70+ years of life in our temporal life.
The premise being that glorified existence is a qualitatively different experience that our current existence...one that effectly relativizes our current one. Even PAUL says something to this effect...
Romans 8:18-21
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. 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 glorious freedom of the children of God.
If all this is true, that our glorified HUMAN experience will be so great as to relativize any of our earthly experiences...how much MORE so would our experiences be relativized before the eternal, perichoretic experience of the Triune God?
Hmmm...
No, I want to hammer this home. Just one more example. Let's go even more concrete...maybe something you can identify more with, John. Imagine a time in your past when you were in the most MYSTICAL state with God that you can remember. A time when you may have been so lost in the worship or presence of God that it seemed like time itself stood still. Everything has seemed to float away but God's holy presence in your mind. The sense of God has flooded all our your faculties. Really put yourself back in that state. Now imagine in the middle of that state, at it's deepest level...that someone begins playing softly your favorite song on the radio where you can hear it. Now, remember this is where you are "lost in God", as it were. Do you mean to tell me that this would add ANY meaningful aesthetic appreciation to your then-current experience with God?? Do you actually mean to say that your hearing your favorite song on the radio would make your earth-shaking experience of God even better?
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Hopefully, these analogies have given you all the intuitive information you need to see what I'm trying to convey here.
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JEE:
Perhaps it's due to the very warm, loving experience of God that I feel was very essential to the Pentecostal environment in which I was raised, but I really have never been able to think of God as the "Unmoved Mover," dispassionate (emotionless), Spock-like being that some seem to want to paint Him as. I guess I just must be reading a different Bible than the cold rationalist reads. (Not saying you're necessarily trying to look at Him this way, Meph).
I just don't see why we must say God's experience of himself prior to creation has to render all other non-God existences aesthetically meaningless. Even a finite human being can be very satisfied with life and yet desire to have more qualitatively different experiences than he has, to get to know more people than he presently knows, and to share love more fully than he has.
Let's get this clear. I'm not advocating that God is dispassionate. Actually, I'm saying that God is VERY passionate. So passionate is his experience of Godself that any OTHER experience is relativized according to that everlasting pleasure and happiness fest.
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Catch this, y'all.
What I'm not saying:
God is uncaring.
God is dispassionate.
God doesn't love people.
God doesn't express happiness to people.
God doesn't express unhappiness to people.
God doesn't express passion to people.
What I AM saying:
God's experience of Godself is so intense and all-satisfying for God that any other outside experience is absolutely relativized into being meaningless. In other words, our human experiences don't contribute significantly to God's overall state of blissful being at all! All things considered, God would have been just as well off if Creation had never existed.
I really, REALLY don't see how an orthodox (read: trinitarian) Christian can say anything different. It's absolutely mind-boggling to me that it's even being attempted. This is not to say that I don't appreciate your engagement, John. (Your's too, Jeff) I genuinely do. It's just amazing to me that this is not catching on...Post Edited (MephEternal) : 10/15/2005 8:28:25 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 10/15/2005 8:16 AM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
My tentative answer to your question is "no." The only way I can resolve the dilemma posed by your original question(s) is to suppose there is something like a dynamic relationship between the Father and the "Son" prior to creation that allows for new imaginative possibilities. Whether this implies process thought, I don't know. The only human analogy I can think of is our enjoyment of, and desire for, novelty. If God has the ability to imagine NEW things (don't ask me how the divine imagination works!), then maybe God can contemplate NEW ways to experience satisfaction.
Something like this is what Doc says. That Creation was a novel way for God to EXPRESS his eternally-experienced,overflowing truine bliss to Godself...and insofar as this happens, God "gets something" out of Creation. This would be like saying the lady painter "gets something" out of the ACT of painting. But Doc makes very clear that this doesn't do ANYTHING to how God's joy and happiness is constituted. In other words, Creation does absolutely nothing to change how happy God is within Godself, either positively or negatively.
He trips up here, though. He never answers an important question:
If God is the ultimate experiencer of all aesthetic appreciation...AND if God is supremely satifisfied by God's own ever-increasingly intense experience of God's triune love and life...how does this not make the "something" that God gets out of ALL of creation absolutely RELATIVIZED into MEANINGLESSNESS...like a single molecule of water would be before the entire ocean!
See where I'm at, Jeff? | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 10/15/2005 8:24 AM (GMT -6) | | Let me say this.
I realize that the implications of what I'm saying may be existentially wrenching for some. No one likes to feel utterly meaningless in the scheme of things. No one likes to feel like they don't ultimately contribute to ultimate reality. No one enjoys feeling that they don't really matter in life. Got all that.
But I don't see how we as Christians can be intellectually honest with ourselves by sticking our proverbial heads in the sand and NOT looking squarely at these implications. What is this about anyway? What really matters more? Our sense of personal meaning and signficance...or truth about God's glorious, self-existent, triune nature??
Perhaps that's what all this comes down to.
Tom. Where YOU at?
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One Love
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| Posted 10/15/2005 8:35 AM (GMT -6) | | Yo, let's get some more people on this, too.
Violin
Alan Rhoda
Selah
Starky
Anybody and e'rybody.
Help me out with this.  | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 10/15/2005 8:50 AM (GMT -6) | | One last thought.
Some people may say something like this:
"Well, if God loves us with the SAME LOVE that God loves the Son when we are in Christ, then surely THAT has to mean something important to God!"
Well, let's think about that. Let's go back to the "water" thought.
Creation = molecule of water
Triune God = ocean
Waterness = Aesthetic appreciation
Now, let's assume that God swirls Creation up into the "triune dance" like Doc says. So, God effectively brings the "molecule of water" into his "oceanness" such that the molecule of water experiences being part of the ocean. Participation in the divine life of God. Whohoo! That's great for the molecule of water. But is it contributing SIGNIFICANTLY to the oceanness that it God's appreciation for Godself? Does the Creation's participation in God's triune love meaningfully affect God's experience of God's own triune supremely satisfaction? Who REALLY benefits from the trinification of Creation?? Who REALLY loses out if it doesn't happen? You may as well say something like this...
God's "love train" has been slowly but surely chuggin' along since eternity past and it will keep on movin' forever more! God's gonna be just as happy whether or not YOU are on it. If you know what's good for you, you'll get onboard.
How this doesn't make religion ULTIMATELY self-serving rather than God-serving, I don't know.
Hmmm.
We...are...ultimately...relativized...into...meaninglessness.
Post Edited (MephEternal) : 10/15/2005 9:01:12 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 10/15/2005 9:30 AM (GMT -6) | | |
I want to clarify something I said earlier. When I said that humans can be "insignificants," I meant that more in the sense that, since I'm conceiving of God's intelligence as being somewhat dynamic, I think once the non-elect humans and angels have been judged, God's mind may be such that He can thereafter forget about them (in the same way He says He can forget sins) and be unsorrowful and unangry about the past. If their very existence had been "known" to God from eternity, either as contingent or otherwise, this view seems less plausible.
Meph: He trips up here, though. He never answers an important question:
If God is the ultimate experiencer of all aesthetic appreciation...AND if God is supremely satifisfied by God's own ever-increasingly intense experience of God's triune love and life...how does this not make the "something" that God gets out of ALL of creation absolutely RELATIVIZED into MEANINGLESSNESS...like a single molecule of water would be before the entire ocean!
See where I'm at, Jeff?
Jeff: Yep, I'm agreeing with you that Greg is tripping up. That's why the only non-contradictory solution I can think of is to allow for God's mind to be dynamic. I.e., it has no ETERNAL, omniscient perspective of all things future--either definite or open. If God can truly IMAGINE new possibilities in time, then God can FEEL things from NEW experiences in time. So while the created order we live in has very real design parameters and boundaries, the actual THOUGHT of our created order may not have existed in God's mind eternally.
Then we can explain God's purposes analogously to ours. We make purposes because of how we think they will increase our satisfaction. Indeed, it's hard to imagine why an intelligent being would ever ACT volitionally UNLESS there was some conceived SATISFACTION that would result from the ACTION. The two ideas--foreseen sentient satisfaction and voluntary action--seem correlative.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 10/15/2005 10:39:50 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 10/15/2005 9:44 AM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
Yep, I'm agreeing with you that Greg is tripping up. That's why the only non-contradictory solution I can think of is to allow for God's mind to be dynamic. I.e., it has no ETERNAL, omniscient perspective of all things future--either definite or open. If God can truly IMAGINE new possibilities in time, then God can FEEL things from NEW experiences in time. So while the created order we live in has very real design parameters and boundaries, the actual THOUGHT of our created order may not have existed in God's mind eternally.
Then we can explain God's purposes analogously to ours. We make purposes because of how we think they will increase our satisfaction. Indeed, it's hard to imagine why an intelligent being would ever ACT volitionally UNLESS there was some conceived SATISFACTION that would result from the ACTION. The two ideas--foreseen sentient satisfaction and voluntary action--seem correlative.
So are you saying that God created IN ORDER TO gain more aesthetic experience? That God's aesthetic experience within Godself could be significantly improved upon...and that God sought to do so?
If this is the case, then I don't see how this doesn't lead to saying...
1) Creation was NOT a completely free decision, but came from a drive in God to heighten God's own experience (EXACTLY what process theism would say)
2) Because of #1, there is a necessary God/world relationship. (Again, just what Hartshornean process theism says)
To posit a necessary God/world relationship is to deny orthodox Christianity...AND to say that God was not completely satisfied by God's own divine life within Godself.
In short, Creation fulfilled a compelling "deep desire" for heightened aesthetic appreciation in God that God's own experience of Godself could NOT fulfill!
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Similitude
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| Posted 10/15/2005 10:38 AM (GMT -6) | | Meph: So are you saying that God created IN ORDER TO gain more aesthetic experience? That God's aesthetic experience within Godself could be significantly improved upon...and that God sought to do so?
Jeff: I'm not sure I would call it aesthetic, necessarily. I'm wondering if the Father's satisfaction is positively affected (maybe only qualitatively as opposed to quantitatively) by positively affecting Christ's sentient satisfaction. The distinction between qualitative and quantitative may be important to incorporate the idea of the value of NOVELTY. I'm saying that apart from what seems to be correlative ideas--anticipated sentient satisfaction and final cause--I can't even CONCEIVE of purposeful action.
Granted, God's purposeful activity might be completely non-analogous to ours. But if so, I'm not sure we can speak intelligibly about it.
Meph: If this is the case, then I don't see how this doesn't lead to saying...
1) Creation was NOT a completely free decision, but came from a drive in God to heighten God's own experience (EXACTLY what process theism would say)
Jeff: How else can we even account for the phrase "all things are created FOR Him?" Ephesians, also, talks of God's purpose being related to His GOOD PLEASURE. To me, these ideas are unintelligible without some notion of God's sentience being affected somehow in a positive way. Free decisions imply alternatives. If alternatives don't affect sensibilites, how can we conceive of a choice as other than random?
Meph: 2) Because of #1, there is a necessary God/world relationship. (Again, just what Hartshornean process theism says)
Jeff: It might be necessary in the sense that God loves the Son in every way He knows to do so, by His very nature.
Meph: To posit a necessary God/world relationship is to deny orthodox Christianity...
Jeff: I don't know enough about what orthodox Christianity says on the matter. You're probably right. Maybe I'm wrong to posit anything about these matters. Maybe these things are truly beyond our comprehension. But I'm just trying to take analogy as far as I can before giving up.
Meph: AND to say that God was not completely satisfied by God's own divine life within Godself.
Jeff: I would say if God is "alone" with Godself, that implies He is completely satisfied. But that if He acts purposefully with respect to creating OTHER realities, then He might have IMAGINED a NEW way to experience satisfaction. So my process-like thinking is PRE-CREATION. Once creation is begun, the parameters are set--at least for OUR creation. I must think this way about our creation because my own categories of thought impose parametric constraints on my worldview for OUR world.
MePH: In short, Creation fulfilled a compelling "deep desire" for heightened aesthetic appreciation in God that God's own experience of Godself could NOT fulfill!
Jeff: Yes, I'm saying if God's range of intellectually-imagined possibilities is DYNAMIC (not static, as eternal omniscience would imply), God's experience of Godself is ALSO dynamic. I'm just contemplating this as a possibility. I've been through the wringer with Tom on his, Alan's, and Doc's view of omniscience. As far as I can tell, eternal omniscience has the same grounding problem that EDF has. So I'm pretty much scuba-diving.
Meph: Do you really want to say that??
Jeff: I'm uncommitted right now. So I don't WANT to say anything. I'm just trying to play out scenarios in my mind and see if our categories can even get there from here.
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MrIndifference
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| Posted 10/15/2005 11:31 AM (GMT -6) | | God = Father
Christ = Son
Holy Spirit = Mother?
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God + Holy Spirit = Covenental Relationship/marriage
Christ + Church = Covenental Relationship/marriage
Man + Woman = Covenental Relationship/marriage
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God + Holy Spirit + Christ = Divine Family
Man + Woman + Child = family
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Divine Family + Church = x
Hmmm... what if we were to take the marriage between Christ and the church as being more than just a metaphore? What if we were to let ourselves see the Trinity as being the Divine Family? What if we were to actually imagine what it would mean if we, as the Bride of Christ, were actually created as being a compatible mate/helper for Christ and through our marriage to Christ we were meant to bring forth the next branch in God's family tree?
MrI. :| | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 10/15/2005 11:38 AM (GMT -6) | | | Mr. I: Hmmm... what if we were to take the marriage between Christ and the church as being more than just a metaphore? What if we were to let ourselves see the Trinity as being the Divine Family? What if we were to actually imagine what it would mean if we, as the Bride of Christ, were actually created as being a compatible mate/helper for Christ and through our marriage to Christ we were meant to bring forth the next branch in God's family tree?
Jeff: OK. But what are you suggesting with respect to Meph's question? Are you saying God is multiplying His family thru time because it ADDS to the sentient satisfaction of God-self, or not? Or are you saying that we BECOME part of Godself by BEING incorporated into the family? And if the latter, does our existence, prior to becoming part of God-self, ADD sentient satisfaction to the CURRENT God-Self? I think that's what Meph wants to hear from us.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 10/15/2005 11:44:43 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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MrIndifference
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| Posted 10/15/2005 12:24 PM (GMT -6) | | | I believe that when God created us, we were created in such a way tha we could comprehend him. If He truly wants to be in relationship with us then we would have to have the ability to comprehend Him. He first revealed himself to the Hebrew people. Since through His law, He gave them their system of worship, government, etc. it seems logical that through those beliefs and the culture that He built for them, He would reveal Himself to them.
I believe that through the bible, God does show us an image of Himself of being a loving God and the relationship that He has with the other members of the trinity are that of a family. Just like humankinds desire to continue the family line and Satan's desire to destroy it, I believe that God's intent and the Bible shows that through Christ He wants to continue the family line through us. Think for a minute about how God grafted the gentiles into Israel, His chosen people. Couldn't that actually be an extension of His plan to graft a created people into His divine family? Just think about how often the bible referes to the Church or Israel as the bride of Christ in one form or another, in the OT and the NT.
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Similitude
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| Posted 10/15/2005 1:15 PM (GMT -6) | | MrI: Couldn't that actually be an extension of His plan to graft a created people into His divine family?
Jeff: Yes. I agree. More explicit is Paul's statement about the called being pre-marked-out in such a way that Christ would be the firstborn among many brethren. And I could see how you could interpret that consistently or inconsistently with orthodoxy. And I'm no dogmatic defender of orthodoxy on equivocal matters. But I'm still not sure how your post answers what I think Meph is asking--about how it affects God's sentient satisfaction. Are you saying that you see the extension of the divine family according to a process-theology view as opposed to an orthodox view? And that, accordingly, God DOES have the potentiality to ADD to His sentient satisfaction in this on-going process?
But I would like to express my agreement with you on the issue of God's intelligibility to us. I think that always becomes a crucial epistemological issue. Once we posit what has no connection to any analogical or otherwise rational human thought process, we may have gone further than God intends for us to speculate about. And I think orthodoxy tends to want to do that. about EDF and other subjects as well.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 10/15/2005 1:28:16 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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JEE
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| Posted 10/15/2005 3:11 PM (GMT -6) | | It is hard for me to imagine how ANYONE can read the same Bible we all do and come to the conclusion that "God is ALWAYS happy." To say that is to deny God's own self-revelation in scripture. Biblically speaking, it is clear that God gets mad, glad, and sad, depending upon factors outside himself--the freewill choices of moral agents. That's what I meant, regardless of what Edwards or Piper may think.
Such a perspective (the ever-jolly God) belies a philosophical pressupposition about God that appears to absolutely deny the "negative" emotions of God as they are CLEARLY expressed in scripture. To say God is always happy is to say God is always happy about EVIL: Death, sin, child abuse, murder, rape, etc. How can anyone who has read even the book of Genesis believe God is HAPPY with how things have turned out?
I suppose my input on this thread must seem rather pointless to those who hold to the Mr. Spock concept of God or the Santa Claus ever-jolly view of God. I honestly don't get how God it presents us with a more biblically faithful picture of God to say that His joy is ALWAYS so intense that it cannot in any case be either expanded upon, augmented or decreased due to any external factors like the choices of freewill agents.
Also, am I the only one who is left absolutely cold by the attempts to reduce God's EMOTIVE EXPERIENCES down to MATHEMATICAL and PHILOSOPHICAL TERMS?!?! (Like infinity, finity, aseity, etc.)
In creating a world that God said was "good" (and that God obviously spent a lot of time and caring effort to bring into existence) by definition, He IMPROVED upon reality as it had been. To say otherwise is to deny the goodness of creation that God himself affirms in Gen. 1.
With every newborn baby's cry, God's heart is gladdened and His experience of reality augmented and improved upon, all for the wonderful hopefulness which each newly created expression of personhood in God's image brings into the world.
John
And I say to myself...what a wonderful world...
http://www.revivaltheology.netPost Edited (JEE) : 10/15/2005 3:29:10 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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