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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/17/2005 2:13 PM (GMT -6) |   | Let me say this.
One of the MAIN THINGS that process theologians and process philosophers have always tried to combat was the doctrine of God's aseity. And hopefully everyone here can now see why. It naturally lead to ideas of impassibility, immutability and other stuff. In order to make God more relational (read: interdependent) process theists have posited (following Whitehead) the necessary God/world relationship. Why?
Because it's the ONLY METAPHYSICALLY SOUND WAY out of the problem
Doc tried to get away from it, but he couldn't.
I'm just being more consistent than he is about it.
To all heresy-hunters and general lames...
"I'm connected nationwide, but from the South...
Respect game, and keep my name outcha mouth!"
--adapted from T.I. From P$C's "I'm a King"
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/17/2005 2:18 PM (GMT -6) | | Corey:
Maybe then I'm not understanding the idea of aseity. I'm talking about God's aesthetic satisfaction, which I take to be contingent. Aseity, as I understand the term, speaks to God's self-sufficiency, which of course is necessary. Am I misusing the concept?
On the other thread, I explained in detail how, speaking in process categories, God's aesthetic satisfaction was inextricably linked to God's aseity. The main connecting point is God's aesthetic appreciation of God's necessary triune sociality of love and life. The way this works out, God's aesthetic satisfaction (that is, God's experience of unsurpassably intense beauty) is NOT contingent, but necessary. It's a part of God's necessary nature via God's dispositional reality. The quotes again...
"God's essential and necessary existence is most basically defined by the unsurpassable intensity of aesthetic enjoyment which characterizes the triune sociality of God. God experiences Godself with an intensity with which can under no circumstances conceivably be improved upon. As with Hartshorne, we are here most fundamentally defining God's transcendence in terms of God's aesthetic satisfaction."
"Against Hartshorne, we are also affirming that this aesthetic satisfaction is the same whether or not there is a non-divine world for God to enjoy. God is no 'greater' for fellowshipping with the world, for it is God's fellowship with Godself, not the world, which constitutes and characterizes the necessary unsurpassability of God's aesthetic satisfaction. God's gracious fellowship with the non-divine world simply expresses this primordial eternal fellowship."
See? It's not contingent.
****************
Corey:
This is kind of twisted, but my mind is playing the sound of a wood-chipper, humming along at full rpm until a branch is fed into it and it dips down for awhile before revving back up. That's God's aesthetic satisfaction dealing with creation.
Hmmm...no. That's not really how it works. Check it, the speed of the wood-chipper would be DEPENDENT on the size of the branch fed into it. There's a direct relationship between rpm speed and the branches. The situation would more represent aseity if there was absolutely NOTHING that could slow down the rpm of the woodchipper.
I really think that "PAT" thing I did really explains the situation very well.Post Edited (MephEternal) : 10/17/2005 2:22:31 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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selah
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1210
| Posted 10/17/2005 5:09 PM (GMT -6) | | Mephi:
Let me say this.
One of the MAIN THINGS that process theologians and process philosophers have always tried to combat was the doctrine of God's aseity. And hopefully everyone here can now see why. It naturally lead to ideas of impassibility, immutability and other stuff. In order to make God more relational (read: interdependent) process theists have posited (following Whitehead) the necessary God/world relationship. Why?
Because it's the ONLY METAPHYSICALLY SOUND WAY out of the problem.
selah:
If I learned anything from all this, it's that I better finally break down and buy Doc's book. (OR someone
should gift me with said book  )
Get on board Tom, lets become neo-process eastern orthodox baptists or something... Anything goes these
days - come on. We can make it up! | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/17/2005 6:19 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Asher
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 477
| Posted 10/18/2005 12:52 AM (GMT -6) | | This is a passage from "The Creative Suffering of God" by Paul Fiddes. We're jumping in on page 66, 67 and then on to page 74 of a heavy theological text, so I really wish you all just had this book:
3.Traditional theology has insisted that for God to be God, the explanation for his existence must lie only in himself. God must be the reason for God; he is "the one who is himself" (ipsum esse). This basic affirmation seems at first sight to be disturbed by the claim that the world can change and condition the being of God. This is the crucial point for any theology of a suffering God, whenever it dares to face the logical conclusion that the world is in some way necessary for God. How can the world be necessary for a self-existent God? We can not begin to answer this until we make an important distinction: self-existence is not simply the same thing as self-sufficiency. Traditional theology assumed that if God were the ground of his own being, then he must be unconditioned by anything else in every conceivable way. But this does not have to follow. To affirm that God is "self-sufficient" for the fact of his existence (or self-existent) does not necessarily mean that he is self-sufficient for the whole mode of his divine life. We can think of a God who determines himself, and yet also allows his creation to participate in the causes of his own becoming. The essential point is that God should play the decisive or sovereign role in this process, as he does in a co-creation of the world.
(skipping over a bit...)
One way in which self-existence might be ascribed to God without self-sufficiency is i nthe form of the will of God. The freedom of God is not a matter of freedom from conditioning, but freedom of his will. God is free to be what he chooses to be. This principle has received its most majestic enunciation in the work of Karl Barth, who asserts that the highest designation for God is not "the One who is necessarily", but "the One who loves in freedom" He is self-existent (a se) in the sense that he has absolute freedom to choose himself and his relationship to others. He is unconditioned only in the sense that he is free to choose whether to be conditioned or not:
According to the biblical testimony, God has the prerogative to be free without being limited by His freedom from external
conditioning, free also with regard to His freedom...God must not only be unconditioned but, in the absoluteness in which
He sets up this fellowship (i.e. with mankind), He can and will also be conditioned.
(skipping over a few pages to page 74...we're really missing much in these pages, but I'm trying to follow a train of thought...and I'm not typing them all in!)
God desires us because he chooses to be like that; his desire is his will.We have come back to Barth's conviction about the freedom of God's will, but with an important modification. Understanding God's will as desire indicates that there can be no "otherwise" in the love of God for mankind. Because he thirsts and longs for fellowship with his creatures it makes no sense to say that he need not do so. But if we ask why he so thirsts, we cannot get back behind the choice of God.Each aspect, will and desire, defines the other. Barth has made the crucial point that in the choosing of his own being, God's freedom consists in his being free to be God, not in being free to be otherwise than he is. Unlike Barth, we may include within this kind of freedom his choice of mankind.God is what he chooses to be, and as a matter of fact he choosesto be not just for himself but for us. It has then as little meaning to say that "he need not have loved us" as it has to say "he need not have been himself".
(skipping a few lines)
Barth actually insists that "in the free decision of his love God is God in the very fact...that he does stand in this relation, in a definite relationship with the other", so that "we cannot go back on this decision if we would know God and speak accurately of God." Again, he underlines that "we cannot go back behind this event" of God's gracious choice of man as covenant partner. The primordial choice of God is the final fact, and we must surely add that there can therefore be no otherwise, though in Barth's own view this can only be said of God's choice of his own being as Father, Son, and Spirit.
(skipping some more lines)
This equation of will and desire in God also provides a strong theological foundation for the idea that the material universe coexists eternally with God, though of course this does not apply to any particular form it takes (such as in our own world). For process thought, the coexistence of God and the universe derives from the ultimate value of creativity-rather like Freedom in Berdyaev. The absolute factor of the creative process requires both God and the other actualities as necessary component parts. It is for this reason that there can be no literal creation ex nihilo.But if we follow through the clue of the desire of God, then there is a different basis for an eternal coexistence of God and the universe; it derives from the good pleasure of God, in which there can be no otherwise. Creation is ex nihilo, but only in the sense that it is ultimately "from nothing except" God's will and love, not in the sense that there ever "was nothing except" God. This means that there was no "point", often defined as marking the beginning of time, when realityexternal to God began. The universe then is dependent upon God as existing and being held above nothingness by his will, but God also is dependent upon the universe by his own desire. That primordial will or desire means a longing for a cooperative enterprise at all stages of creation, including a fellow-working with humankind in due time, so that in another sense creation is "from" God and creatures. To this conjunction we may apply the words of the wedding rite, suitably adapted: "What God joins together let no man put asunder".
The mystery whose curtain we can never finally lift is not the mere self-existence of God, but his "yes" to himself which includes his "yes" to us and the suffering we cause him as his creatures. We find ourselves in a situation of faith where we want to affirm that God suffers; by following through this affirmation consistently we arrive at the belief that as God chooses himself as Father, Son, and Spirit he also chooses us in an act of will in which there can be no otherwise. The mystery of God is not an act of will for which there is no reason, which would be the case with the utter aseity of God, but an act of will which is desire for fellowship with another. If it be objected that this lifts mankind beyond the status of creature, we might ask what would have the greater religious value of humbling us. Is it the belief that we are totally unnecessary to God, that we can neither contribute to his life nor wound him? Or is it the amazing thought that God is so humble that he wants us as much as he wants himself?
Now, please comment on this, Meph especially. I'm struck dumb in awe and reverence of God by this, and I don't, as of yet, have the skills to critique all of this. But I sense profoundness here. I grok (who gets this reference?) that it's right, at least parts of it, maybe all.
I'll check back in tomorrow evening.
Rob | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/18/2005 4:21 AM (GMT -6) | | Sup, Asher.
SOME BACKGROUND THOUGHTS
I love the Internet, yo. You can find ANYTHING on here. I haven't read "The Creative Suffering of God" or heard much about Fiddes, so I went doing some brief research on both. I came up with some interesting stuff. I even browsed a couple of pages of the works. (Questia.com and Amazon.com) All of the information kind of dovetailed in the same direction. I'll post this as a sort of synopsizing thing to what I've seen. I feel like this quote accurately lays out what I've been looking at. From "Religion in an Age of Science" by Ian Barbour under "II. Some Alternatives, 1. God's Self-Limitation" ( http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=2237&C=2073 ) All emphases mine.
[Digression: Barber's article is pretty good, in and of itself. Religion Online has rarely failed to provide good material, in my view. Particularly it's discussion of process theism as a whole. The criticisms Barber cites against Process Theism are the very reasons I REALLY dig "Trinity and Process". I feel that Doc dealt significantly with all of those challenges!]
A final example is Paul Fiddes’s The Creative Suffering of God. Of all these authors, Fiddes is the most sympathetic to process thought, and he draws extensively from it, though in the end he departs from it. He gives detailed critiques of ideas of God’s immutability, self-sufficiency, and timelessness, and he accepts the process position concerning God’s relatedness and temporality. God is with us in our suffering but is not overwhelmed or defeated by it. But Fiddes does not agree with process thought that God’s involvement with the world is necessary or that God needs the world in order to be fully actualized. He maintains that God has freely chosen and accepted self-limitation for the sake of human freedom. Here he is indebted to Barth’s theme that God loves in freedom and chooses to be in relation to the world. Fiddes says that relatedness, fellowship, and community are already present within the life of the trinitarian God and do not require a world to be actualized.
Fiddes is impressed with the process understanding of how God’s suffering affects us. We feel another person’s sympathy with our feelings. In Christ’s death we experience judgment but also an acceptance that enables us to accept the truth about ourselves. Costly forgiveness can have a transforming effect. But Fiddes holds that this can be better expressed through trinitarian ideas: "Process thought, then, points in a valuable way to the powerful effect which an exchange of feelings between us and a suffering God can have upon us, but I believe this insight can be carried through better with the more thoroughgoing personal analogy for God which is offered in Trinitarianism."
After reading all I read about Fiddes, I cannot help but to wonder what would have happened if he'd have read either Greg's "Trinity and Process" or Bracken and Suchoki's "Trinity in Process" (wherein Doc has a section among other process theologians) Would he have accepted the a more trinitarian variation of process...ESPECIALLY one that would have given God signficantly more ability for unilateral action? Perhaps. But at this point, we don't know. At any rate, some of the parts of the things you quoted hinted that he had been exposed to process thought...
This equation of will and desire in God also provides a strong theological foundation for the idea that the material universe coexists eternally with God, though of course this does not apply to any particular form it takes (such as in our own world). For process thought, the coexistence of God and the universe derives from the ultimate value of creativity-rather like Freedom in Berdyaev. The absolute factor of the creative process requires both God and the other actualities as necessary component parts. It is for this reason that there can be no literal creation ex nihilo.But if we follow through the clue of the desire of God, then there is a different basis for an eternal coexistence of God and the universe.
Here's what I'm thinking. Fiddes obviously believes that a suffering God is NECESSARY in order to have a God of Love. To posit a God who in no way feels the world is to remove an important foundation for any meaningful theology of the Cross. Fiddes really seemed to jive with the thrust of Process theism in this regard, as it placed primacy on the interdependence of God with the world. It also seems that Fiddes was largely sympathetic with process. However, he noticed that, in Process theism, God's willing is a lot less "effective" (my term) than in classical theism. That is, God was the supreme influencer, but not a being who could really "do" anything unilateral. This tied to something else, too. The necessary God/world relationship. He didn't go with that either. The link between these two things seems clear: God's willing. Fiddes wanted to retain some power behind God's willing such that it would be the necessary AND sufficient ground with God's interaction with the world.
Now, within this admittedly fragmentary analysis of mine, I'd like to look at Fiddes' ideas as presented in the quotes.
*****************************
GETTIN' INTO IT
Ok. Fiddes is a trinitarian believer. That much is clear. Moreover, he wants the trinity to be an ONTOLOGICAL one, not merely vernacular for process categories (as one would seen evidenced in some of Bracken and Suchoki's "Trinity in Process" He follows Barth in Barth's conception, saying that God "chooses" God's own being as Father, Son, and Spirit. If we assume that Barth was not being a monarchial modalist here, it's clear that Barth seems to be a voluntarist of the highest degree...at least as interpreted by Fiddes. Look at how much force Fiddes places on "desire" and "will". Placing this with Barth's thought, it's obvious that Fiddes wants to say (with Barth) that God's WILLING is the grounding for not only God's self-existence, but also for God's very triune being. In other words, God is triune because God WANTS to be.
If one grants that God has the power to, by sheer will, determine every aspect of himself (even his triunity!), then of course it plain makes sense that one could claim that God could , again by sheer will from desire, have a fully interdependent relationship with Creation. Check it out...
God desires us because he chooses to be like that; his desire is his will.We have come back to Barth's conviction about the freedom of God's will, but with an important modification. Understanding God's will as desire indicates that there can be no "otherwise" in the love of God for mankind. Because he thirsts and longs for fellowship with his creatures it makes no sense to say that he need not do so. But if we ask why he so thirsts, we cannot get back behind the choice of God.Each aspect, will and desire, defines the other. Barth has made the crucial point that in the choosing of his own being, God's freedom consists in his being free to be God, not in being free to be otherwise than he is. Unlike Barth, we may include within this kind of freedom his choice of mankind.God is what he chooses to be, and as a matter of fact he choosesto be not just for himself but for us. It has then as little meaning to say that "he need not have loved us" as it has to say "he need not have been himself".
and...
Barth actually insists that "in the free decision of his love God is God in the very fact...that he does stand in this relation, in a definite relationship with the other", so that "we cannot go back on this decision if we would know God and speak accurately of God." Again, he underlines that "we cannot go back behind this event" of God's gracious choice of man as covenant partner. The primordial choice of God is the final fact, and we must surely add that there can therefore be no otherwise, though in Barth's own view this can only be said of God's choice of his own being as Father, Son, and Spirit.
It's all there. What I do find interesting is that Fiddes DOES affirm a "necessary" God/world relationship of his own variation...even though he didn't like process theism's version...
Understanding God's will as desire indicates that there can be no "otherwise" in the love of God for mankind. Because he thirsts and longs for fellowship with his creatures it makes no sense to say that he need not do so.
Translation: If God has eternally desired to be in love with human beings, then it could never be otherwise that God would NOT have created them.
This would probably be better stated as an INEVITABLE God/world relationship, so as to preserve the idea of God's freedom so important to Fiddes. Insofar as God wishes from eternity past that interdependence with human beings occurs, it was inevitable that it would occur in actuality.
Now, for those of you who've been here for any length of time, you will remember that we've talked about this in some respect. Remember the conversation we had about HOW God is omnibenevolent. And we ended up with two camps. The REALISTS and the VOLUNTARISTS. The REALISTS (Doc, Tom, myself) said that it was philosophically untenable that any reality can be utterly self-creating SHEERLY by will. That there must be some primordial reality and consciousness to do the willing. To say that will defines being is to place the cart before the horse. The VOLUNTARISTS (Iconoclast, JEE, etc) said that God's freedom is of the highest importance such that choice must to be primarily if God were to genuinely be free and morally responsible for God's all-good activities. And they were willing to accept an idea filled with philosophical problems (even unto talking about "eternal choice" [Iconoclast]) in order to keep God omnibenevolent by choice, and not by nature.
At any rate, historically, the realists have been the victors in this right. And process theism is decidedly REALISTIC with respect to the defining aspects of God. That is to say, process theism doesn't hold that God's will antidates God's nature, but vice versa. They would agree that to do otherwise has serious, if not nonsensical, implications. But obviously, Barth was not a philosophical theologian. We all knew that.
Here's the major deal...
Insofar as one rejects the idea of divine voluntarism (ie God defining his very nature and existence by sheer will alone) as being philosophically untenable, Fiddes' thought project will NOT be fulfilling.
This is the primary idea that grounds Fiddes' whole deal. I can tell you right now, no process philosopher worth their salt would go with this. Neither would Doc. Nor will I. I cannot conceive of what it means for God's existence to be a product of God's previous choice...a subject's will grounding their reality. Nor can I go with the idea that the Trinity is a choice by God. Following the logic, God could have just as easily chose to be FOUR divine participants rathe than three. Father, MOTHER, Son, Spirit. Or God could have just chose to be a monad. Think about it. Theoretically, there would be nothing stopping this. Problems, problems.
Personally, I think it's interesting that Fiddes' can take so much influence from process theism...but then negate one of the most important philosophical underpinnings of the same: God's metaphysical similarity with all other aspects of reality, which would directly counter the idea of divine voluntarism. At any rate, let's just say it's problematic.
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END ANALYSIS
Though I relate to Fiddes' sensibilities for wanting God to be a God of love, his perspective has overwhelming problems philosophically. Insofar as this is the case, If one wanted to play the proverbial "mystery card" here and just hold to this idea, I suppose that one could. I know I can't.
Hope this helps.
 Post Edited (MephEternal) : 10/18/2005 4:24:06 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 10/18/2005 6:57 AM (GMT -6) | | | Not trying to ignore you. Just busy with the rest of life.
My particular blend of INTP is weighted more heavily on the "N" and the "P".... so if you're asking me to come to closure at this time (do a "J" thing) on something that is completely counter-iNtuitive to my lived experience of God, I can't.
In general, I think I just don't have the theological/philosophical background necessary to deal properly with the nuances of aseity and aesthetic satisfaction. It's going to take me some time to steep in this thought before I can more fully engage.
It's my intuition that there's a bit of sophistry going on here, ala the proof that 1=0:
-----------------------------------
Let x=y. Then
x - y + y = y
x - y + y y
--------- = ---
x-y x-y
y y
1 + --- = ---
x-y x-y
1 = 0
-----------------------------------
In other words, I'm not justified at this point to discount beliefs which I hold (again, back to Plantinga) in a properly basic way. I know straight-up from my lived experience of God what it's like to be in a love relationship with him. It would be irrational and unjustified for me to not weigh that heavily in my consideration of this topic.
Preemptive comment: I'm not playing the mystery card here. It's just that there's more that contributes to my position that what I'm able to articulate at this point. Post Edited (Corey) : 10/18/2005 7:17:25 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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selah
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1210
| Posted 10/18/2005 7:16 AM (GMT -6) | | Corey, personally I think your insight is more valuable without the theological/philosophical background. When meph asks the following questions, what does your N and P tell you? Heck, what does Eph 4:30 - Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption, tell you?
(What are your answers to the following questions...
Does anything we do as Christians ultimately affect God's infinitely intense beautiful experience of loving relationality, either positively or negatively?
Would God be JUST AS HAPPY AND SATISFIED in God's heart SANS our existence as God would WITH our existence?
Would God be JUST AS HAPPY AND SATISFIED in God's heart if we all went to hell as if we all went to Heaven)
Incidentally, I noticed Mephi skipped Tom's final question.
Tom:
"Since scripture says pretty much the opposite of all this, I'm guessing you conclude scripture is wrong...again. What significant biblical claims are left that you think are true?"
How about it Meph? | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/18/2005 8:28 AM (GMT -6) | | 
I KNEW IT. I KNEW IT. I KNEW IT.
I can't believe that I did...but I did.
I KNEW someone was going to use the old 0=1 thing against me. I thought about it two days ago. I said to myself...
"Ya know, someone's gonna say something about this just being logical smoke and mirrors like the 0=1 thing."
But I shrugged it off. But it actually did happen. I'm staggered. It ACTUALLY happened. This ain't to say anything against anyone using it. I'm just really tripped out that it did happen. I'm tweakin' here.
Man...that is so trippy...
Anyways...
Corey:
In other words, I'm not justified at this point to discount beliefs which I hold (again, back to Plantinga) in a properly basic way. I know straight-up from my lived experience of God what it's like to be in a love relationship with him. It would be irrational and unjustified for me to not weigh that heavily in my consideration of this topic.
Hey, do what you have to do. I hear ya. I would like to remind you that, if I'm right, your lived experience of God (experiencing God's love to you, God speaking to you, Holy Spirit conviction, etc) would NOT be negated in the least. If anything, I've affirmed this over and over. Your experience...as well as all salvation history...would fall unto God's contingent expression of God's necessary existence which is a REAL thing. God REALLY operates in Creation ad extra Something which God REALLY DOES aesthetically appreciate. Remember the water in the bowl? All that's being said here is that that contingent expression has to be considered in light of what grounds God's aseity...and the logical implications must flow from that.
That's all.
So have at it.
**************
Corey:
Preemptive comment: I'm not playing the mystery card here. It's just that there's more that contributes to my position that what I'm able to articulate at this point.
Gotcha. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/18/2005 8:33 AM (GMT -6) | | Selah:
Incidentally, I noticed Mephi skipped Tom's final question.
Tom:
"Since scripture says pretty much the opposite of all this, I'm guessing you conclude scripture is wrong...again. What significant biblical claims are left that you think are true?"
How about it Meph?
Um...HOW many times now have I posted and reposted Doc's statement? The one I'm obviously AGREEING WITH?? Let's try it again...
--------------------------------
Doc again
The beauty of grace. The beauty of God's eternal sociality is expressed in the beauty of the unnecessary, radical act which shows the unthinkable extreme to which God will go to establish sociality with another--another who in sin wants nothing more than to be rid of this sociality! The intensity of the social union of the Trinity is, when it is turned outward, the suffering intensity of God's gracious love for social union with free and fallen humanity. The enormity of the gulf and the extremity of the sacrifice needed to cross it, all reveals outwardly in time the intensity of the love and beauty which defines God inwardly throughout eternity. The suffering intensity ad extra is an expression of the divine intensity ad intra.
The intense love manifested in the cross expresses in its own way the intensity of the love which binds the eternal Trinity. But it does not yet express the intense delight (emphasis his) of God ad intra. This is shall do, however. God does not, of course, delight in dying on a cross as a man. But God does delight in the harmonic sociality between God and God's creation which this act shall bring about and is already in the process of bringing about. The cross expresses the intensity of God's social love, and it brings about the expression of God's social delight in the ultimate victory of the Kingdom of God.
Ok. It seems to me that ALL of Creational and Salvation History falls in here. ALL of this is representative of God's contingent expression of God's necessary essential existence. In the sphere of this contingent expression, God does aesthetically appreciate and operate via subjective aims. Restated, God DOES express genuine grief, pain, rage, joy, relief, happiness, etc...as well as guide and direct...in the realm of Creation. On the level of God's contingent expression, God DOES CARE about human beings inasmuch as God relates to them. I am NOT denying any of this. PLEASE HEAR THIS!
and...
Again, I'm NOT negating scripture saying these things, for I acknowledge that God expresses emotion and commitment passionate to human being in God's contingent expression of God's necessary essential existence.
-------------------
I honestly don't know what to say more than this. What do you hear me saying here?  Post Edited (MephEternal) : 10/18/2005 8:57:03 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/18/2005 8:43 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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selah
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1210
| Posted 10/18/2005 8:46 AM (GMT -6) | | I think one problem is with the word "meaningless" If you agree that God cares for us AND if you agree with Greg that "God DOES express genuine grief, pain, rage, joy, relief, happiness, etc...as well as guide and direct...in the realm of Creation" then we can't be meaningless to him. Why would he express genuine anything toward some specific meaningless thing?
"On the level of God's contingent expression, God DOES CARE about human beings inasmuch as God relates to them."
And inasmuch as He doesn't relate to them??? This doesn't compute for me either meph. See, in my mind, I'm thinking hmmm
when and how does God relate to humans sometimes or in some ways if He is in them and they are in him?
It just seems to me that once someone has Christ in them he cares INTENSELY for them...as he does for himself. THAT is why there's no way I can imagine being meaningless. How do you separate this stuff and do it in your head? What does meaninglessness mean. Certainly I'm not meaningless to God. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/18/2005 9:11 AM (GMT -6) | | Selah:
It just seems to me that once someone has Christ in them he cares INTENSELY for them...as he does for himself. THAT is why there's no way I can imagine being meaningless. How do you separate this stuff and do it in your head? What does meaninglessness mean. Certainly I'm not meaningless to God.
I've tried to give analogy after analogy to explain. And quoted Doc to the hilt too. Check it.
If God's contingent expression CONSISTS OF an ad extra representation of the unsurpassably intense love experience of God, HOW could the ad extra itself NOT be a display of intense love??? This is Doc's whole point! Let's try it again...with some emphasese
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The beauty of grace. The beauty of God's eternal sociality is expressed in the beauty of the unnecessary, radical act which shows the unthinkable extreme to which God will go to establish sociality with another--another who in sin wants nothing more than to be rid of this sociality! The intensity of the social union of the Trinity is, when it is turned outward, the suffering intensity of God's gracious love for social union with free and fallen humanity. The enormity of the gulf and the extremity of the sacrifice needed to cross it, all reveals outwardly in time the intensity of the love and beauty which defines God inwardly throughout eternity. The suffering intensity ad extra is an expression of the divine intensity ad intra.
The intense love manifested in the cross expresses in its own way the intensity of the love which binds the eternal Trinity. But it does not yet express the intense delight (emphasis his) of God ad intra. This is shall do, however. God does not, of course, delight in dying on a cross as a man. But God does delight in the harmonic sociality between God and God's creation which this act shall bring about and is already in the process of bringing about. The cross expresses the intensity of God's social love, and it brings about the expression of God's social delight in the ultimate victory of the Kingdom of God.
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Do you see it now?
The contingent expression is GOING to be intense. We will see the INTENSITY of God's inner passion as we experience God...
But absolutely ALL of this is God's contingent expression in Creation which has NO EFFECT WHATSOVER on God's supreme aesthetic satisfaction level. And the aesthetic satisfaction level is what is related to the achievement of God's dispositional aim. Greg again...
"God's essential and necessary existence is most basically defined by the unsurpassable intensity of aesthetic enjoyment which characterizes the triune sociality of God. God experiences Godself with an intensity with which can under no circumstances conceivably be improved upon. As with Hartshorne, we are here most fundamentally defining God's transcendence in terms of God's aesthetic satisfaction."
"Against Hartshorne, we are also affirming that this aesthetic satisfaction is the same whether or not there is a non-divine world for God to enjoy. God is no 'greater' for fellowshipping with the world, for it is God's fellowship with Godself, not the world, which constitutes and characterizes the necessary unsurpassability of God's aesthetic satisfaction. God's gracious fellowship with the non-divine world simply expresses this primordial eternal fellowship."
I'm not intentionally trying to sound like a broken record. It's just that ALL the information is there. Insofar as we cannot affect God's inner life of receiving and enjoying beautiful experience of loving sociality, we 1) cannot be said to have a mutually-influential loving relationship with God and 2) are meaningless to the respect that God's ultimate happiness cannot be lowered or increased by us at all.
Now...what do you hear me saying? Let's do a feedback loop.
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/18/2005 9:18 AM (GMT -6) | | Selah:
If you truly believe in all this meph, how, how, HOW do you do worship in your head. Really, I have to know this before I can believe anything you say regarding meaninglesness.
For me, I think Christ is beautiful. I worship him because he came as a baby not as an giant. I worship him because he personally interacts with people and because prayer avails and is the very life and breath of the Body. Because our interaction with God sustains the momentum of the church to fulfill her calling and destiny by releasing God's anointing and power on behalf of His people, and for various other reasons...
In sharp contrast, this other picture of God (especially the way you begin to paint him on the meaninglessness manual thread) seems ugly to me.
God can be worshipped for FREELY choosing to express God's intense love towards us, giving ALL to us when we can give relatively NOTHING to God in return. Pouring into us KNOWING that we are broken, useless cisterns. God, by God's OWN work and grace, sweeping this water molecule of a Creation into the very ocean of love the Father has for the Son eternally. Allowing us to rest in and reflect the glory of God. Allowing us, dust mites that we are, to partake in the divine relationality not only here and now, but forever more.
And none of this has to deal with "personal meaning"
Do we really mean to say that such a God is NOT worthy of worship?
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selah
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1210
| Posted 10/18/2005 9:24 AM (GMT -6) | | Ok more...
Meph:
"God's essential and necessary existence is most basically defined by the unsurpassable intensity of aesthetic enjoyment which characterizes the triune sociality of God. God experiences Godself with an intensity with which can under no circumstances conceivably be improved upon. As with Hartshorne, we are here most fundamentally defining God's transcendence in terms of God's aesthetic satisfaction."
"Against Hartshorne, we are also affirming that this aesthetic satisfaction is the same whether or not there is a non-divine world for God to enjoy. God is no 'greater' for fellowshipping with the world, for it is God's fellowship with Godself, not the world, which constitutes and characterizes the necessary unsurpassability of God's aesthetic satisfaction. God's gracious fellowship with the non-divine world simply expresses this primordial eternal fellowship."
THIS is very clear mephi. I get it. Two things though. 1) how the %&^$. does Greg, Hartshorne, my mom, you or anyone claim to know these things? 2) So far as I can see, Greg is not using the word 'meaningless' anywhere in these quotes. I am having the biggest problem with that word. Does Greg say we are without meaning to God somewhere and I'm just missing it??? | | Back to Top | | |
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selah
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1210
| Posted 10/18/2005 9:43 AM (GMT -6) | | Selah:
1) how the %&^$. does Greg, Hartshorne, my mom, you or anyone claim to know these things? 2) So far as I can see, Greg is not using the word 'meaningless' anywhere in these quotes. I am having the biggest problem with that word. Does Greg say we are without meaning to God somewhere and I'm just missing it???
Meph:
1) What is metaphysics and revelation but human speculation about and human interpretation of divine reality, respectively?
selah:
What is transcendence but something above human speculation? What is faith but something that goes beyond reason?
Meph:
2) No, Doc doesn't use the word. Why would he?
selah:
Because the truth sets us free?
Meph:
Trinity and Process is a dissertation, not an existential treatise on the IMPLICATIONS of his work necessarily. And even if he DID write one, given his "F" tendencies and pastoral pragmatism in his more lay writings, do you think he would even then? How about nope.
selah:
How about nope. Ok, do you think there some wisdom in that? or is it just an "f" tendency?Post Edited (selah) : 10/18/2005 9:48:31 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 10/18/2005 10:15 AM (GMT -6) | | Mephi: Again, I'm NOT negating scripture saying these things, for I acknowledge that God expresses emotion and commitment passionate to human being in God's contingent expression of God's necessary essential existence.
Tom: Nice try. But though you’re not negating scripture in what you affirm, you are negating it in what you deny. It’s no negation of scripture to agree that God loves us and expresses emotion toward us. Sure. But that’s only half the relationship. But scripture also describes God as affected by us, touched by us, angered by us and I hear you denying this. Your analogy of God as a spring bubbling over the mountain side to form smaller springs that bubble over into other springs illustrates this. It’s good so far as it illustrates the SOURCE of all our blessing and joy. But it fails to illustrate the reality of affect running from us to God.
I tried to get Greg to check this discussion out (specifically the other thread you started “Theism and Ultimate Meaning”), but he’s busy. He read a bit and replied that he thought you were mistaken in thinking that God’s being necessarily and unsurpassably satisfied in himself meant he was indifferent to our existence or couldn’t engage in mutually influential personal relations with us. But you already knew that! And I have to say that as clearly as you appear to be convinced by all this, I’m as clearly unconvinced. I simply fail to see how it logically follows that since God is unsurpassably satisfied in himself he cannot find meaning in genuinely personal relations with us. You admit God loves us. You admit we love God. But you refuse to acknowledge the connection, except to say God’s loving is the cause and our loving the effect. But you’ve got no online real-time personal interaction. You’ve got God’s love bubbling over the hill and affecting us. And you agree that the lower springs are thankful to their source. But you deny that this ‘means’ anything ‘personally’ to the source spring. If you do, then by definition you acknowledge the mutually influential and personal nature of God’s relations with us. Your analogy demonstrates well the one-sidedness of God’s relations with us. What can the events along the banks of the Mississippi in Missouri or New Orleans MEAN to the far northern sources that feed the Mississippi? Nothing. And THIS is where your argument amounts to a negation of scripture.
Now, I’m inclined to agree (as I think Doc does) that whatever genuine effects of a personal nature we enjoy with God, it doesn’t amount to a material increase in God’s aseity or his enjoyment of triune, relational love. But there’s no reason to think that because we don’t substantially INCREASE what God is necessarily that we don’t matter to or affect God in a personal way. The seeds of this are still present in what you concede. You concede God cares about the fulfillment of his subjective aims. He rejoices and grieves in this respect. So let me ask again—where to do locate this in God? Consider all the contingent stuff God experiences: knowing, purposing, being grieved by (better than just “grieving”), being gladdened by (better than just “rejoicing”), being pushed to judgment (better than just “judging”), saving, having mercy, being moved to compassion (better than just “exercising compassion”), acknowledging prayer and answering it, speaking to us and guiding us, changing his mind in response to us, being worshipped by us, etc., and we could go on and on. These characteristic/actions are personal, relational, mutual in nature, contingent (since we are), AND loving. They are precisely what I take “God’s engaging in mutually influential love relations” with us to mean. God experiences our worship and obedience “as love” from persons to a person. How else would suggest he process such things?
Tell me, Mephi (because you understand the process vs Doc dialogue better than I do), where do you locate the God-side personal actions I’ve just described? Where does God DO all these actions of a personal nature in relation to us?
Tom
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