Corey: Here's a possible problem with denying (1), if we assume dipolar theism. It seems it would be necessary nature of "Order" to organize Chaos. It's not clear how God would be able to not apply his Order-ness to the Chaos for an infinite amount of time.

Jeff: Corey, I've been reading a bit on what process theists mean by dipolar. I think there is a sense in which they do assume (though I haven't seen it stated explicitly) the idea of an infinite god-world relationship when they talk about the dipolar nature of God. Consequently, I would assume that Greg reconstructs even the meaning of dipolar to mean something different than that. And I suspect this is possible simply because the godhead is a plurality of persons which can account for relationality (the relativeness or relatedness of God) independent of an extra-divine reality like the world.

That said, I don't see how God would have to apply order-ness to chaos, sans-creation. Since each person of the godhead acts harmoniously with the rest, order just is and continues to be in that relationality. Disorder, then, would only be possible in an extra-divine reality--which, to us, means a created reality.

On the other discussion board, you asked about this problem:

I don't have any good way to reconcile these three premises:

1. God is continually calling order out of chaos.
2. The past is infinite.
3. Yet God's ideal is still unrealized. (The Kingdom is "not yet".)

As you know, process thought has a more standardized form in the tradition of modern liberal protestant theology represented by Whitehead and Hartshorne and their students. One could probably chase this question in that environment and get reasonably consistent responses. But once you fundamentally change the system, the responses will change as well. To answer this question, we'd need to outline what version of process/open theology you want to apply.

Sponheim is interesting in this regard because he's a trinitarian, believes in the both the cross and the resurrection, believes that God acts in what would be considered miraculous ways (albeit rarely), beleives in creatio ex nihilo, etc... and yet he identifies with the classical liberal protestant stream of thought, probably more contextually than otherwise. His own sort of reintroducing Christ into Christianity.

 

The short answer to the question about perfection is simple. In a worldview like Sponheim's and my own perfection will not come in a linear fashion through the gradual improvement of humanity and creation. The cross demonstrates a radical interruption of the course of history and the return of Christ, whatever that means, will also be a radical interruption. The transformation from "as it is" to "ideal" will be the work of God, not us. In the mean time, God does indeed love and care for the world, and is working in the world to draw people to Godself. But the ideal comes as it says in 1 Cor. 13 when the old things pass away.

Suchocki's "End of Evil" is a nice attempt to envision this. I find her more compelling than most on the question. So, basically, I think of the cross as the breaking point where the old covenant is replaced by the new. I think of the relationship of the ideal to the real in terms of human activity as the real being our contribution and the ideal being God's contribution. And I think of the coming of Christ as an equally if not more radical interruption in the pattern beyond which only the ideal survives and we participate in that somehow by the grace of God.

I think if you go with a classical liberal process view an entirely continuous timeline is certainly problematic theologically and perhaps logically. But if we recognize these radical acts of God, creation of out nothing, interruption through the cross and resurrection, and final consumation of all things, it gives better definition to the overall story and offers possibilities for dealing with your questions.

I responded:

Okay, that works for me. We have to depart from the more standardized form in regards to the beginning (creatio ex nihilo), various points in the middle (the incarnation and resurrection and other miracles) and the end (the eschaton). Once we've done that, is it really Process any more? We've "fundamentally changed the system" as you say; it seems pretty far afield from Process orthodoxy. That's cool with me, but I still think my critique stands in regards to (what I understand to be) the more standardized form.

He responded:

The core intuition of process as a critique of classical metaphysics which states that time is illusory still holds true for both forms. This is the basic point of contact in my opinion: All process/openness folks affirm pansequentialism. So there's a substantial common denominator in that.

Post Edited (Corey) : 6/15/2007 10:15:34 AM (GMT-5)

So, to repeat myself... but with one further distinction...
The fundamental change I speak of is theological, not philosophical. Process to me is first a cosmology (a subset of philosophy), second a theology. This could be stated even weaker since there are definitely promanent process atheists out there. One could say process is a cosmology and like any cosmology it intersects meaningfully with any theology that understands God as Creator. So I do think we remain within the cosmology, but we deviate from the usual theological work done in that context (modern liberal protestantism).

The departure from Process we're considering here may be theological, but it's not due to conflicting special revelation (I'm not appealing to scripture here.) If I'm staying in the arena of natural theology, then I'm at least in the same neighborhood as Process. My argument is philosophic in nature, incidentally applied to a theological subject.

Post Edited (Corey) : 6/16/2007 9:10:00 AM (GMT-5)

Corey: I responded: The departure from Process we're considering here may be theological, but it's not due to conflicting special revelation (I'm not appealing to scripture here.) If I'm staying in the arena of natural theology, then I'm at least in the same neighborhood as Process. My argument is philosophic in nature, incidentally applied to a theological subject.

Tom: I wouldn’t know how to defeat (or depart) from process on purely philosophical grounds, admitting no special revelation. Doing JUST natural theology, a necessary God-world relationship is the most plausible way to ground the necessary relationality of the universe. We only come to posit this relationality IN GOD AS GOD (truinely) and so free ourselves up to posit a contingent and real choice to CREATE because of special revelation.

Am I misreading you Corey?

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

Tyler: So I do think we remain within the cosmology, but we deviate from the usual theological work done in that context (modern liberal protestantism).

Tom: Right. That’s how I see it too, except that the deviating means explaining the cosmology a bit differently.

Corey: Where I'm intending to go with my argument is simply to sort by order of confidence of the premises: (3) seems most assured, then (1), lastly (2). I'm highly suspect of the truthfulness of (2) for various of reasons. If I hold that (2) is false, then I've fundamentally departed from Process cosmology as well.

Tom: I guess I’d say that “remaining within the cosmology” means that of all the cosmologies on the market, the process cosmology is MOST compatible with a biblical worldview. It posits the necessary relationality of reality, indeterminism, presentism, gives change and process a valid and honored place in our ontology (changing reality was always “less real” than unchanging reality in Plato and Plotinus), the interconnectedness of all things, the constitutive nature of ‘relations’ (in defining a entity), and then also posits God as fully engaged on all levels of reality (which might explain a lot of funky stuff about the quantum world). If you go with all this but just disagree with your (2), I don’t think that means you’re wholly departing from a process metaphysic. You can reconstruct process panentheism as Greg does by embracing the Trinity and making the existence of non-God realities logically contingent (as opposed to necessary with Hartshorne) and still be holding onto enough of process insights about how the universe works to qualify as more process than anything else.

Tom

Tom: It posits the necessary relationality of reality, indeterminism, presentism, gives change and process a valid and honored place in our ontology (changing reality was always “less real” than unchanging reality in Plato and Plotinus), the interconnectedness of all things, the constitutive nature of ‘relations’ (in defining a entity), and then also posits God as fully engaged on all levels of reality (which might explain a lot of funky stuff about the quantum world).

Jeff: I would think that up to the part about God, virtually all scientists hold to those things. Yet I don't really see them as adhering to process metaphysics. Because nothing you mentioned, apart from God, has to do with LFW or intelligence or sentience. Naturalists can believe that all that other stuff was the case until intelligence and sentience evolved. I understand process folks to be saying that intelligence and possibly sentience is eternal, independent of God's intelligence and sentience. So I understand why Tyler could say that there is an atheistic branch to process metaphysics.