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Corey
Five with a Four-wing

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893

Posted 6/13/2007 10:06 PM (GMT -6)

D mentioned on another thread, "The idea of progressive, dynamic perfection...or perfection AS process," which reminded me of something that I've been meaning to bring up ever since we read through Modes of Thought last summer. I even asked Dr. Sponheim about this and didn't receive a satisfactory answer (I think he didn't get my question; I probably didn't state it well), maybe you can help.

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

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

If Process thought is correct, I don't have any reason to think that the future will be any better than it is RIGHT NOW. Giving it more time ain't gonna help; an infinite amount of time has already been given. By definition, we are already AT perfection.

Post Edited (Corey) : 6/14/2007 8:12:21 AM (GMT-5)

Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968

Posted 6/14/2007 7:46 AM (GMT -6)

I don't think UNISON was agreeing with the whole process theology (i.e., the necessary god-world relationship, etc). He was just saying that reality entails process (even in the form of pre-creational disposition), just like they say. True process theology gives no hope for future perfection for the very reasons you articulate.

Corey
Five with a Four-wing

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893

Posted 6/14/2007 7:52 AM (GMT -6)

Do you agree that the three premises are incompatible? If so, which ones(s) should be modified in order to explain our present state of affairs?

Similitude
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Posted 6/14/2007 8:53 AM (GMT -6)

I think what renders our "SOFA" different than the standard process theology view is two things:

1) God can forgive in such a way that the past is irrelevant to Him in the pertinent senses (this is not necessary in standard process theology because we are not created per that view and, hence, owe God nothing), and

2) God can do more than influence--i.e., He really can literally impart to us His divine nature unilaterally. That way, we don't have to assume that we must literally fully attain to the divine nature volitionally (though scripture does seem to indicate that we are called to, and hence it is possible to, grow into the fulness of Christ in this life).

Post Edited (jefscott) : 6/14/2007 9:07:33 AM (GMT-5)

Corey
Five with a Four-wing

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893

Posted 6/14/2007 9:14 AM (GMT -6)

Fine. But be plain about it: which of the three premises ought to be modified?

Similitude
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Total Posts : 4968

Posted 6/14/2007 9:53 AM (GMT -6)

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

We would disagree with 1. Because we wouldn't claim to know that God has been "calling order out of chaos" for an infinite past. The original process theists would say that, though, since they believe there is, and has always been, a necessary god-world relationship. The world is eternal with God, per that view. That's why your originally stated problem is right on the money, to my mind.

What I hear D. saying is that there has always been process--it's just been in the form of a dispositional relationship between persons of the godhead, sans creation. Maybe I'm misunderstanding him. But I don't think he is suggesting that process necessarily entails the concept of perfecting. The godhead was perfect sans creation even though it experienced process.

Tom
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Posted 6/14/2007 10:10 AM (GMT -6)

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

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

Tom: As it stands, the three props are totally compatible. There’s no logical contradiction generated by all three being true. I think if (2) follows from (1) (because 1 defines God necessarily), then you’re right on about (3) always being the case. I can’t imagine what sort of eschatology process theism offers.

However, I think (1) and (3) are in fact false. If (2) is true, its truth is independent of (1) and (3).

I recently read an interesting paper by Dean Zimmerman that you’d enjoy, Corey. It’s a chapter in a book entitled God and Time: Essays on the Divine Nature , ed. Ganssle and Woodruff (Oxford: 2002). Kinda pricey if you decide to buy it. As long as there are smarter people than me (like Zimmerman and Wolterstorf) who believe an infinite past isn’t contradictory, I don’t feel so bad hanging on to the idea (so long as it explain things)! So if reality (including divine reality) is by definition a process of some sort, I would argue it’s NOT the process described by (1) above, but rather an ongoing realization (process) of relational loving exchange that’s compatible with (1) and (3) being false. That is, process or movement doesn’t have to imply unrealized ideals. It could describe the perpetuation of perfections that just are constitutive of God's being and life.

Tom

One Love
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Posted 6/14/2007 10:18 AM (GMT -6)

Tom:
I can’t imagine what sort of eschatology process theism offers.

Right.

*************

Tom:
It could describe the perpetuation of perfections that just are constitutive of God's being and life.

In my mind, this is why aseity is crucial. It grounds the perpetuation of which you speak.

"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete UNIty. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to SONship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Tom
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Posted 6/14/2007 10:24 AM (GMT -6)

I agree with (3) if what's meant is the Kingdom is not yet fully realized. That's obvious, and that's what eschatology is about. But I'd disagree with (3) if what's meant is that there's a necessary God-world relationship which is never fully perfected. If (1) is false and God is triune and self-sufficient, then God IS necessariliy fulfilled ideal.

Tom

Similitude
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Posted 6/14/2007 10:28 AM (GMT -6)

I would add this, too. Standard process theology (no divine coercion, only influence) doesn't rule out the possibility that some utopia might occur. It just can't guarantee that it will abide--as our current reality proves. But I understand scripture to claim that the divinely-intended utopia will abide forever after some point in time.

Corey
Five with a Four-wing

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893

Posted 6/14/2007 10:30 AM (GMT -6)

I do have that book, but I'll have to review it again.

I agree that the truth of (2) is independant of the other premises.

Tom, you said both (1) and (3) are false. I understand denying (1), but haven't followed you on why you deny (3). Do you really mean to affirm that God's ideal is in fact realized? This is as good as it gets?

Corey
Five with a Four-wing

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893

Posted 6/14/2007 10:34 AM (GMT -6)

Tom: I agree with (3) if what's meant is the Kingdom is not yet fully realized. That's obvious

Corey: I made the last posted without having seen this. Yes, that's what I meant. So you're down to only denying (1), right?

Help me clarify somthing else, then. The picture seems to be something like this: God eternally temporally existed without calling order out of chaos. This may be a denial of dipolar theism, or may be an affirmation, but a denial of the ongoing call to order. How do you see it?

Post Edited (Corey) : 6/14/2007 10:38:44 AM (GMT-5)

Similitude
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Posted 6/14/2007 10:42 AM (GMT -6)

I think we have to deny (1) in the sense that God has not continually been (in the sense of an infinite past) calling order out of chaos in our world. Our world had a beginning. Even if God has continually been calling chaos out of order in other created worlds, it still wouldn't preclude the possibility that each of those worlds had a beginning and a perfected end.

Standard process theology doesn't posit creations of worlds, though, since God, per that view, can't create. They only posit one non-divine reality that exists in a necessary relationship with the deity.

Similitude
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Posted 6/14/2007 10:49 AM (GMT -6)

Question, Corey. What does the term "di-polar" in di-polar theism even refer to. I'm clueless as to what it signifies.

Tom
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Posted 6/14/2007 10:49 AM (GMT -6)

In denying (3) I only meant to deny the process belief that God is not self-sufficiently independent of a less-than-perfect world (which would mean that GOD's being is less-than-fully-perfected). So I agree that God's ideals for the world aren't yet realized, but God's ideals for Godself (that triune loving exhange of life) don't logically require a world. Thus, God can be perfect independent of a world.

Tom

Corey
Five with a Four-wing

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893

Posted 6/14/2007 10:53 AM (GMT -6)

I agree, Tom, with what you're saying about God's aseity. My problem with Process is in regards to the Kingdom, i.e. the eschatological implications.

Post Edited (Corey) : 6/14/2007 11:22:52 AM (GMT-5)

Tom
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Posted 6/14/2007 10:55 AM (GMT -6)

Ooops. Just saw your last post there Corey. Get back to ya in a bit. Gotta run.

Di-polar is process jargon meant to express the belief that there is are two necessary ASPECTS or dimensions to God's being, the "primordial" God (which house his perfections [a bad way to express it maybe]), and the "consequent" nature of God (God in relationship to some world). Just like the globe is ONE thing with two poles, God is one reality with two poles.

Tom

Corey
Five with a Four-wing

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893

Posted 6/14/2007 11:22 AM (GMT -6)

Actually, I have issues with both beginning and end times. If the there is an infinite past and chaos has continually been in the process of becoming ordered, God's had more than enough time to call his ideal order out from the chaos. By definition, we've "arrived"... but I don't at all like to think of the present state of affairs as being as good as it's gonna get.

If we affirm (3) (in terms of Kingdom) we MUST deny (1) and/or (2).

Post Edited (Corey) : 6/14/2007 11:27:35 AM (GMT-5)

Corey
Five with a Four-wing

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893

Posted 6/14/2007 11:45 AM (GMT -6)

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.

PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 6/14/2007 11:59 AM (GMT -6)

MANY said...
Ooops. Just saw your last post there Corey. Get back to ya in a bit. Gotta run.

Di-polar is process jargon meant to express the belief that there is are two necessary ASPECTS or dimensions to God's being, the "primordial" God (which house his perfections [a bad way to express it maybe]), and the "consequent" nature of God (God in relationship to some world). Just like the globe is ONE thing with two poles, God is one reality with two poles.

Tom

So THAT'S what that means to say.

I don't think at all that such a construction would square with the patristic statement that "there was a cross in the heart of God before the foundation of the world."

I don't think that such a patristic statement contains or requires "di-polarity."

Yet patristics do not, either, present a "static God."

Other than that, this is way beyond me. So I'll politely shrink back to lurking.

(o)

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 6/14/2007 2:14:15 PM (GMT-5)

Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
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Posted 6/14/2007 12:09 PM (GMT -6)

Corey, why can't we say that a process is ordered so long as each component of it works harmoniously with all the others? This is what I've always thought T. and D. are saying about sans-creation, divine relationality. I.e., the continuing actions of each divine person are either harmonious with or conducive to the continued sentient satisfaction of all of them. This is a kind of order that doesn't assume any chaos to act upon.

Post Edited (jefscott) : 6/14/2007 12:16:11 PM (GMT-5)

Corey
Five with a Four-wing

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893

Posted 6/14/2007 1:17 PM (GMT -6)

Jeff: This is a kind of order that doesn't assume any chaos to act upon.

Corey: That's fine, but this would be a denial, then, of dipolar theism, which is a central tenet of Process (assuming I'm understanding it correctly).

Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968

Posted 6/14/2007 1:25 PM (GMT -6)

Are we talking about process theology or Greg's reconstruction of it? I haven't read Greg's book, so I don't know if the term "di-polar" applies to both or not. Nor do I know if it means the same thing in both. I don't see how it could, given Tom's description of it. Cause one of the things Tom would call a "perfection" is God's power--which is denied by standard process theism. Help us out, Tom/D.!!

Tom
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Total Posts : 10353

Posted 6/14/2007 4:22 PM (GMT -6)

This'll help: http://www.ctr4process.org/about/process/GodUniverse.shtml

D is more up on this than I am.

Process theology (PT) insists, as we do, that God is necessarily relational, but instead of positing the necessary ‘other’ to which God relates within a Trinitarian metaphysic (where the relationality is constitutive of the one divine being, unsurpassably beautiful and fully satisfied), PT posits it within a God-world relationship. They’re attempting of course to accomplish the same thing we are, i.e., ground reality’s essential relationality. But since PT is not a biblical theology but strictly a natural/rationalistic theology (and since you can’t get to the Trinity apart from revelation), PT accounts for what we CAN reason through to independent of revelation (viz., that reality is essentially relational) in terms of what’s immediately present to our rational experience and observation, and that means locating the essential relationality in the God-world relationship (since the existence of both God and the world is knowable to rational thought and experience independent of special revelation).

So in PT’s view, there’s no NEED to posit a trinity. First, believing in the Trinity requires revelation (and that seems to be outside the purview of PT), and second, the essential relationality of all reality can be accounted for by just positing the necessity of the two relata whose present existence is logically undeniable—God and World.

Thing is, if one limits one’s self to exegeting non-revelatory texts, i.e., human reason and rational experience, then PT is perfectly understandable. That’s as far as one can get on one’s own, unaided by special revelation. And it perfectly explains why PT is without an eschatology.

But if the Bible, and more fundamentally, Jesus Christ, reveals truth about God and the world, truth otherwise unavailable to us, then one can accept the basic intuitions of PT, quite a bit of it in fact, but reconstruct it like Greg did to accommodate the basic insights within a biblical worldview and theology.

I think the notion that God is “di-polar” is meant to be a way to express aspects of God’s perfections that seem on the surface of things to be incompatible (the “One/Many” duality for example). Something along this line of reasoning should remain part of a Trinitarian Process metaphysic I think. But instead of locating it in the God-world relationship like PT does, we locate it in the Trinitarian relationships.

Tom

Post Edited (MANY) : 6/14/2007 6:51:39 PM (GMT-5)

Tom
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Posted 6/14/2007 10:35 PM (GMT -6)

Just for you Corey! Well, for everybody. I haven't read it yet. Looks interesting (on process eschatology).

http://www.ctr4process.org/about/CoDirectors/clayton/papers/Process%20Eschatology.pdf

You have to copy the URL onto the search line for some reason. Just clicking on the link doesn't work.

Tom

Post Edited (MANY) : 6/14/2007 10:39:37 PM (GMT-5)

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