Wow, how am I gonna respond? Too much.

Down the line…

1) I’m not smart. Much of this escapes me.

2) Greg’s brilliant, but regarding the nature of matter, or the precise nature of the relationship between the human spirit to the Holy Spirit, or the irreducible nuts and bolts of the act of creation and the nature of the distinction between God and the world, he admitted that none of us really knows or can claim certainty.

That doesn’t mean we consigned to ignorance about everything (as One may want to suggest in response). For me it must means that it doesn’t follow that because I cannot give One an engineer’s blueprint account of “non-God” reality that it just follows that One’s view wins by default.

3) I’m profoundly disquieted by pantheism, don’t think it biblical, think it has two serious difficulties (which I’ll try to work out in due time) and can no longer see a difference between pantheism and One’s panentheism.

4) Jeff asked about panentheism. Greg IS a panentheism, and I think I am. I won’t remain one though if it turns out that there’s no REAL distinction between it and pantheism.

5) The final authority on what Greg means is Greg, and he was pretty clear the other night that he believes in a real, objective “non-divine” or “non-God” reality. I thought One was arguing Greg meant to say this or that. That’s what I responded to. But since Greg’s on the record, it’s a done deal. If he wishes, One can argue that metaphysical commitments essential to Greg’s thesis, unbeknownst to him, logically entail the non-reality of anything other than God, that “only God exists.” Maybe that’s what One is doing. If so, cool. Go for it.

6) What was that about Greg being bi-polar?

7) I summarized One’s view as essentially saying that “Creation just is the divine energies of God.” One replies, “Correction. Creation is a contingent web of relationship that is grounded in the Uncreated Energies of God.” But D, dude, you haven’t escaped my summary. Yes, creation is contingent. Yes, creation is a web of relationships. But in the end it’s JUST the energies of God in a contingent web of relationships. It’s all MERELY God, i.e., the energies of God limiting herself in “human” ways, in “plant” ways, etc. But what it IS, is God.

8) I said One denies that there is any “non-God reality,” that all is God, that creation is divine self-relation, and asked how Greg is saying this? D asks how Greg is NOT encouraging this idea with his own statements? But D, surely Greg’s use of “non-divine” to describe creation explains Greg’s use of “diffusion.” Sure, YOU can use the word “diffusion” to mean what you want, or you can say Greg’s essential thesis entails what you’re now say but that Greg didn’t realize this, but you can’t say Greg intended what you’re now saying.

9) One, can you think of a logical contradiction that’s generated by the supposed existence of a “non-God” reality? I can't.

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

I don’t think Greg would mind my posting this. Just a bit of response from an email:

“We're created TO BE ‘contingent expressions of God.’ Our disposition is toward being ‘a contingent expression of God’ -- but then again, part of our disposition is to be self-disposing. And when I say ‘contingent expression of God’ I'm not thinking SUBSTANTIVALLY but dispositionally, the way we dispose ourselves is to reflect God's self-disposition -- which is , of course, to manifest perfect love and beauty.”

and

"If you read disposition like a substance, then I can see how one could come to an idealistic/pantheistic conclusion. But that is precisely why I used the category of disposition."

Gotta run! Guests in the house!

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 4/14/2007 2:42:40 PM (GMT-5)

Here are two reasons I have for being suspicious of One’s idea:

(1) The relationship between God and me is a mutually personal one. By that I mean (a) a relationship between “two persons” (two or more, but we’re just talking about God and me) wherein (b) both persons engage in a loving exchange of thoughts, feelings, and desires.

On One’s view, the relationship between God and me is not a relationship between two distinct persons. On his view, I am God relating to himself. True, in his view, on the “me” side of the relationship God is contingent and limited. But as he says, ‘contingency’ and ‘limitation’ are the ONLY distinctions between God and the world. It’s all “extended SELF-relationship,” not a relationship between two “persons.”

Do we have relationships with our “selves”? I suppose so. Our minds even fracture into multiple-personality disorders. Hardly an analogy for the sort of mutually personal relationship that I imagine myself engage in with God and others. In the end, I think One’s view dissolves the “personal” distinction (that is, the distinction between “persons”) who are supposed to be engaging in mutually personal relationships.

(2) God, qua God (sounds spooky), has necessary and contingent attributes. Whatever is true about God “necessarily” is true about God at all times, places, circumstances, i.e., all possible instantiations. It’s that which can be truthfully said of God in all possible worlds. If we are contingent expressions of God in the sense One is arguing, then whatever is necessarily true about God is necessarily true about us. That is, whatever attributes of God that could not possibly be absent because they’re definitional, have to be attributes of any contingent expression or instantiation of God, including us.

Can God limit the exercise of his power? Scripture makes it clear that he can. So the actual exercise of all dispositional capacities possessed by God isn’t a requirement for divinity. But an actual exercise of all those definitional dispositional capacities requisite to divinity WOULD have to be possessed and actualized by us, on the assumption that we are contingent expressions of God. That we are contingent expressions of God doesn’t mean God can lay aside what is necessary to BEING God. So if all things are God, all things possess what is essentially or definitionally true of divine BEING. All being IS divine being. Thus, whatever one can say about God in all possible worlds has to be said about humans.

Admittedly, Christians have never completely agreed on what is necessary to divine being. Unfortunatley for me, I think omniscience and holiness are at least two such attributes. But on One’s view, both these have to go since both fail to characterize humans as contingent expressions of God. D wants to say that God “negatively prehends” (i.e., limits his perspective on reality, chooses ignorance) and that this accounts for our being free to choose and in turn accounts for our sin.

If you don't want to say God is necessarily omniscient, surely God is necessarily SOMETHING. Whatever that something is, on One's view, human beings are.

But it follows then that God, who is ‘necessary existence’, is not everywhere and at all times omniscient and holy. Necessary existence, in fact, becomes privated on One’s account. God is sinful inasmuch as we are sinful. There is no distinct “we” (over and against God) which is not an embodiment of all that God necessarily is. So in effect, we constitute the fallenness of God, the privation of God. And that contradicts the fundamental claim that necessary existence just IS perspectival loving relationality and unsurpassable aesthetic enjoyment, etc., for in the case of humans God fails to instantiate these qualities insofar as he is privated. If we are contingent expressions of God, remember, then whatever can be said about God in all possible worlds can be said of us, and whatever can be said of us can be said of God.

Tom

Post Edited (jefscott) : 4/14/2007 4:20:48 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One) : 4/15/2007 1:56:38 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (jefscott) : 4/15/2007 8:15:37 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (TGB) : 4/15/2007 9:13:25 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (jefscott) : 4/15/2007 10:04:03 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (jefscott) : 4/15/2007 1:54:51 PM (GMT-5)