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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/18/2005 1:59 PM (GMT -6) |   | Just one more theological bomb, s'il vous plait?
With God necessarily experiencing triune loving sociality at all times...
Could God TRULY sympathize or empathize with RADICAL PARTICULARITY?
Is Divine Relativity Possible? Charles Hartshorne on God’s Sympathy with the World
by Henry Simoni-Wastila
www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2991
There was already an issue with this in Hartshorne's construction. With Doc's reconstruction, it seems intractable.
This fundamental religious problem can also be cast in philosophical terms as the problem of radical particularity. We are radically particular and individual. How can the Infinite relate to us? How can God have empathy with a radically limited being? How can something that sees beyond all boundaries know what it is like to be something that is within boundaries and by compassion to mirror in exactitude that entity’s experience? In this essay, I will argue that a major problem with the idea of divine relativity is that it assumes both God’s exact knowledge of the whole, which is thus the One as it is a unified act of knowledge, and also precise knowledge of the fragmentary, concrete Many of experience. How can the master know the slave? How can the unbounded assume the mantle of bounded life? In other terms, the question is one regarding the precise parameters of the sameness and otherness of God and the created (or emanated) world.
There are, as far as I can tell, two areas of possible inconsistency with the idea of divine relativity. In the first, the assertion that God knows the experience of one element of the world while also knowing the experience of a second element of the world having the opposite sort of experience (for example, horror instead of ecstasy) seems inconsistent. Here, the problem is the relation between two parts of the whole. This is a problem not only if the elements are having opposite experiences but also if they are having merely different experiences. The problem of unifying otherness or difference is, even at this level, problematic.
Secondly, it seems inconsistent to say that God has knowledge of fragments of reality with their limits and finitude while also being in possession of knowledge of the entire reality of the whole. In this case, the relation between a single part, a fragment of the totality, and the entire whole is the problematic area. Ironically; Hartshorne’s position does not seem to incorporate his own insight into fragmentariness:
To describe our difference from God as infinite by calling us ‘finite’ is far too little. We are much his than simply finite. The entire vast cosmos may be (and I believe is) spatially finite, as relativity physics has made clear it may be. We, however, are the merest fragments of finite reality. Fragmentariness, not simply finitude, distinguishes us from deity. (DR 131, see also CSPM 235)
Could God sympathize with radical fragmentariness -- not just know what it is, but know sympathetically what it means to exist fragmentedly as we undoubtedly exist? If not, the divine cannot be fully related to the world. Because of the problem of radical particularity, any resolution to the problem of the One to the Many seems logically and metaphysically impossible working from the presupposition of divine relativity. On the other hand, it is also ironically apparent that the denial of divine relativity obstructs a solution to the problem of the One and the Many because the Many would remain isolated and there does not seem to be another way of unifying them.
If, in fact, divine relativity should prove to be inconsistent, the implications are important for theology as a discipline. Not only would a demonstration of the inconsistency of divine relativity make Hartshorne’s thesis of divine relativity and all that depends on it incoherent and also make Whitehead’s famous portrait of God as the fellow sufferer who understands inadmissible, but philosophers of religion would have to accept a different picture of the world. It would be a world of distinct subjects or atomic acts of consciousness whose knowledge of God would be separated by a subject-object distinction. Even worse, God’s knowledge of other subjects would itself be objective and not alive to the nuances of subjectivity. The goal of providing any meaning whatsoever to unity or to the One, as that which does the All together, would be futile. Radical pluralism, then, would be the only possible metaphysical position because internal relations would, in the end, be impossible.9 The implications go beyond whether or not a specific theory of God’s interaction with the world is possible and reach to fundamental theological and religious questions: Can God empathize with my suffering? Am I alone?
Could a God that is NECESSARILY a loving sociality at ALL times experience radical particularity SYMPATHETICALLY or EMPATHETICALLY?
No.
Even if we were to use the Incarnation as an example, it still wouldn't work. (It REALLY wouldn't work if you used the Kenotic idea of the incarnation) Why? Because Jesus, being an integral part of the Trinity, would somehow NEVER experience total separation from said Trinity...and thus could never experience what it's like to be COMPLETELY ALONE, relationally speaking. To say otherwise would posit the radical contingency of God's triunity.
Uh oh.
The author posits a concluding thought...
Perhaps the way to resolve the contradictions inherent in the theory of divine relativity would be to give up the suggestion that God feels the feelings of the world in exactitude. This is, of course, one of the pillars of Hartshorne’s complex, admirable and justly influential theology. Nevertheless, such drastic surgery may be necessary to save the whole.
As a result of the problem of radical particularity, we are forced then to consider the possibility that God does not know our experience as it is. That would seem to be the most basic sort of knowledge that a worshipful God should have, since God’s knowledge is not sympathetic, then perhaps in some fundamental way we are alone. John McDermott suggests, in an extreme way, such a state of human existence when he writes: "In short, I believe that the being of being is to be disconnected, ontologically adrift, casting a net here, a hook there and all the while confusing a strategy with a solution" (PAPA 11). While I would not go that far, I think McDermott’s statement accurately describes what is at stake in deciding whether or not God has participatory knowledge of the world. The impossibility of divine relativity, should it in the end be shown to be inconsistent, would, I think, be theologically disconcerting.
Just a thought. | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 10/19/2005 3:57 PM (GMT -6) | |
MephEternal said...Starkman: So perfect empathy cannot be found in any other manner than to be contigent?No. Perfect empathy can be found in necessary Triune God. 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. The epistemic gap is even WIDER when we posit God allowing a relatively autonomous and free creation!
Sorry, I must have missed something. As I said, I've been rushed in reading these threads. Sorry 'bout that. I understand and agree.
Starkman
My teacher used to say that whenever he read Scripture, he would always ask the question, "What does this have to say about the character of God?" Working off his thinking, as I read Scripture, I have come to ask, "What does this have to say about the heart and passion of God's desire for relationship for us? | | Back to Top | | |
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Violin for God
Luke, I am your father. --Nooooooooo!!!!!
Date Joined Dec 2004
Total Posts : 690
| Posted 10/19/2005 11:39 PM (GMT -6) | |
No. Perfect empathy can be found in necessary Triune God. 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.
The epistemic gap is even WIDER when we posit God allowing a relatively autonomous and free creation! I'm wondering if we're making this "gap" wider than it actually is. Sure, God cannot "experience" things that contradict His nature qua God, but there is something to be said about Him "feeling" our tears and knowing our emotions intimately. God cannot BE us, but being the sustainer of all things, He could feel our emotions. But as we sin, that's the other side of the coin. We do have to admit some distance there... but an epistemic gap? There's a gap first-person-wise, but there is no gap third-person-wise. Additionally, the third-person familiarity covers first-person "feelings" completely, I'd say.
The question is, with determinism, is there even a gap there? God's doing all the acting in that paradigm... and perhaps all the "being" too.
Person x may say "God, you don't know what it's like to be controlled!" God may reply, "Yes I do, I'm essentially controlling myself via creation." But... hmm... there would be a distance regarding "being" contingent vs. necessary.
If you're going to be skeptical, be fair and be skeptical of skepticism. | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 12/5/2005 11:55 PM (GMT -6) | | (Presuming that I followed you correctly...)
Wow.
Good hunting Sir Meph-a-had.
Bingo.
Then...
1. So, what do you say of Augustine? 2. What say you of the filioque? Post Edited (rj1) : 12/8/2005 8:37:20 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 12/6/2005 12:01 AM (GMT -6) | |
MephEternal said...
No. Perfect empathy can be found in necessary Triune God. 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.
Hence the Incarnation: Christ died in his humanity--suffered the pain and terror of separation; but not in his divinity as Trinity. So..."One of the Trinity died."
The Cross is not a division in God, but a fulfillment of the Trinitarian will to love and share life and light with us.
Further, in His Body we participate in the Trinity through Him by the Spirit, according to the Father's will. We are his arms and feet, and hands... Post Edited (rj1) : 12/6/2005 5:51:16 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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selah
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1210
| Posted 12/6/2005 4:58 AM (GMT -6) | | meph, don't forget to call me/gimme a chance to set you straight...
again 
love ya,
T | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 12/8/2005 7:10 AM (GMT -6) | | God surely does not sin. But in Christ he "became sin" -- that is, took upon himself from conception to death the consequences of our sins. He also became tempted. He feared, became weak, collapsed, etc.
That is enough. | | Back to Top | | |
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