For one thing, it's going to FORCE an important issue. Choosing between being orthodox (Believing in a self-existent, triune, necessary, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, omnibenevolent Being)...and really having that love relationship you always THOUGHT that you had.  Unless you are going to be like a double predestination Calvinist affirming outright contradictions as mysterious truths (ala God has aseity...but in such a way that, God can still genuinely have mutually-influential, interdependent love relationships with sentient creatures!), you've got a decision to make!

This is a HUGE deal!  Can I get a witness??? 

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 10/19/2005 6:21:51 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (TGB) : 10/19/2005 7:56:39 AM (GMT-5)

Mephi: With respect to being an aspect of God's contingent expression that God's experiences and appreciates, we are SUPERFLUOUS, YET SIGNIFICANT.

Tom: If he can aesthetically appreciate my loving you, he can aesthetically appreciate my loving him. But look, it’s silly to say we are superfluous yet significant in the same way. It does make sense we are superfluous to God in one way yet significant to God in others.

Mephi: With respect to contributing to God's aesthetically satisfying body of beautiful experience via loving, interdependent relationality, we are SUPERFLUOUS and INSIGNIFICANT.

Tom: Well, you haven’t in my view demonstrated this. I agree, of course, with respect to the necessary pole. But with Greg, I don’t see a logical contradiction in maintaining that a being can be self-content on one level, and yet suffer at another level.

Mephi: NO.

Tom: Ouch.

Mephi: There is ONLY ONE REALM where aesthetic satisfaction takes place...and that's intensity. The intensity CANNOT GO any higher. This is part of why IT is the defining aspect of God's nature. God surpassing Godself in contingent expression exists as INEXHAUSTIBILITY. There is no upper limit to it.

Tom: Does God appreciate contingent expressions of beauty and value? You’ve said he does. If so, does his “appreciation” have an intensity to it? If not, then what the hell does it mean to say he “appreciates” or “values” the fulfillment (or not) of his own subjective aims?

In any event, I’m happy to concede (if I’m following this argument anymore!) that there’s one REALM where AS takes place and that it is intensity, though this is pushing the envelope by almost claiming to be observing God from the inside. But what this doesn’t rule out is a variety of intensities on different levels, which is (as Greg argues and as far as I can see) not logically impossible.

Mephi: Translation: God doesn't try to get "satisfaction" from Creation. He's got that already. God just gets aesthetic APPRECIATION from the broadening of complexity in God's contingent expressions. Get it?

Tom: Make the distinction for me in God between “God’s not getting satisfaction from creation because he can’t” and “God’s appreciating creation because he can.” I think I can account for this to satisfy myself (because I don’t limit God’s aesthetic satisfaction to necessary categories) but I wouldn’t know how YOU would account for it given your views now.

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

Tom: My hunch is that you’re assuming incorrectly that “contingent, mutually influential, loving God-world relations” implicates God’s sans-creational aesthetic satisfaction in being somehow sub-par or defective because God’s experience of loving relationality is concretely different post-creation than it is sans-creation, suggesting that something must be defective with the former since the latter includes concrete experience of value that the former doesn’t. But I don’t see that that follows.

Mephi: No, I'm not saying this at all.

Tom: Oh but you are. You say: “All this being the case, how can their ever be anything but a one-way flow of love and goodness FROM God TO others? Answer, it can't. And this would take out the idea of God participating in mutually-influential LOVING relationships with non-God beings.” The italicized portion demonstrates the “defect” you assume would obtain in God if he were to truly engage in loving relations with others.

Mephi: NO LEVEL of loving sociality that contingent beings extend to God (or lack thereof, for that matter) can EVER contribute to God's aesthetically satisfying experience of beauty.

Tom: By your count, they can’t even be interpreted or view by God as “love extended to God,” never mind their contributing to God’s experience of beauty. But I just fail to see the logic of your argument.

Mephi: God will not feel "more loved" because we love God. AT ALL!

Tom: True. But he will feel loved-by-me (which is differnet than being loved by himself) even if my loving him doesn’t increase his understanding or appreciation of love per se or enhance his already complete Trinitarian sociality per se.

Mephi: What we can do is increase the VARIETY OF WAYS that God experiences Godself. That's it.

Tom: Mephi, Mephi. Put on the breaks! Drop the landing gear! Get it on the ground dude. We are not God. If God experiences us as a non-divine, personal, reality (forget the love part) then he is experiencing a variety that doesn’t boil down in the end to self-experience.

Without Doc in here I’m not sure how much farther I can go. It’s his argument after all.

Mephi: 1. If you are a God-believer who thinks that YOUR particular praise, adoration, love, obedience and esteem of God somehow affects God's self-perception such that God would say "I am feeling more loved, more esteemed, more delighted, and more satisfied because My servant is living for Me"...you are wrong.

Tom: Then tell me what it means for God to experience “appreciation” for our worship. To appreciate is to ascribe value to something.

Mephi: 2. If you are a BACKSLIDEN God-believer who thinks that YOUR particular sinful behavior, disobedience, and unloving activity towards God somehow affects God's self-perception such that God would say "I am feeling less loved, less esteemed, less delighted, and less satisfied because My child is far from Me"...you are wrong.

Tom: Then tell me what it means for God to grieve our loss. To ‘grieve’ is to attribute value to what is lost.

Mephi: 3. If you are a God-believer who really thought that you influence God's level of happiness, joy, peace, and delight IN THE SAME KIND OF WAY that God influences your level of happiness, joy, peace, and delight...you are wrong.

Tom: Agreed, with qualifications to clarify. My level of happiness, as a contingent being contingently related to the world, is wholly derived from and dependent upon God. God’s happiness, as a necessary being—break—necessarily related to himself but contingently related to the world, would be necessary in some respects and contingent in others. I don’t imagine I am able to affect whatever is necessary about God. But I don’t imagine the intensity of God’s experience of aesthetic value is limited to necessary experience and cannot also make room for contingent experience.

Mephi: 4. If you believe that God's inner ecstasy would EVER be affected by the reality of people enduring eternal punishment...you are wrong.

Tom: Inner ecstacy? Sure, I agree. Trinitarian loving relationality Father to Son, Son to Father, Spirit to Father, etc., will continue to be as necessarily intense as it by definition must be. But why equate "inner ecstacy" to "necessary ecstasy"? Isn't God's appreciation of something experienced by God inwardly? Where else? And how is it appreciation of creation if it doesn't involve his attributing value to it? And how can God's appreciation of the value of creation be contingent if the intensity of God's experience of beauty and value (accross the board) is unchanging?

Mephi: 5. If you believe that God's inner ecstasy would EVER be affected by the reality of people living with God forever...you are wrong.

Tom: Ditto the above.

Mephi: Insofar as you cannot affect God in the ways that I've mentioned above, your relationship to God demonstrates INSIGNIFCANCE in the scope of those ways. This is why I kept saying that we are meaningless where it really counts, given the belief that loving relationship is the CENTRAL REASON for Creation.

Tom: But where it really counts was never, in my estimation, in my being free to get in between Father and Son, Son and Spirit, so to speak, and affect God’s Trinitarian sociality. But where you view the intensity of God’s value-appreciator to be constant and impenetrable (because you limit the relations that affect it to the Trinitarian relations), I see the possibility that this intensity vary (because I see the appreciation of value to be a continuum that spans both necessary and contingent poles in God).

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 10/19/2005 9:24:24 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (jefscott) : 10/19/2005 7:55:50 PM (GMT-5)

Mephi: I'd like you to open up to the possibility that, in a VERY IMPORTANT dimensions of our lives, we are meaningless to God.

VFG: Just to clarify, do you mean “in some important dimensions in God’s life we are meaningless to God”?  

Yeah, I agree there are some things about God that we have absolutely no impact, such as on the Triune love that is shared.  

But I have a sad question to ask.  Could you define “aseity” for me?  I’ve looked at different online dictionaries, but they all just define aseity as being self-sufficient and non-contingent… or something like that.  I think that may be part of the problem I may not be fully following what you’re saying.  I’ve just never encountered the word before.

I’m wondering if this is part of the “issue” at hand… is the following what you’re seeing somewhat?  The Triune love among the Godhead is infinite.  This infinity trumps any sort of affect that we may have on this love if there were no ad intra/extra distinction.  Reason for this conclusion is: infinity plus or minus anything is still infinity, thus the “infinite” love and joy still unaffected by anything that comes in externally.  So there are only two ways of resolving this: 1) coming to the conclusion that everything we do is ultimately meaningless, or 2) there must be some ad intra/extra distinction in order for us to have any meaning.  But then Tom mentioned (if I understand it correctly-I.I.U.I.C.) that this would lead to a further conclusion that there are two separate Gods, or I guess like two minds in One.  So you’d say (IIUIC) that it’s not two separate minds, but one aspect of God that is untouchable (among the Trinity and the basic unalterable qualities of God –the Omni’s) thus unreachable, while another is open to influence by us.  Am I getting warmer or colder???

VFG: Just to clarify, do you mean “in some important dimensions in God’s life we are meaningless to God”?

Tom: Oh my oh my oh my. Excellent point Violin. If God truly experiences the contingent world as meaningless, then there are dimensions of God’s own life that are meaningless to God. Mephi will say God only experiences the contingent world as relationally meaningless. I’ll try in the “Note” below to reply a bit to this.

VFG: Could you define “aseity” for me? I’ve looked at different online dictionaries, but they all just define aseity as being self-sufficient and non-contingent… or something like that.

Tom: That’s all the “word” means. Just as “omniscience,” which open theists, traditional Arminians, Calvinists and Molinists all may agree MEANS “God knows all and only truths” but which each group ends up unpacking differently because they believe there are different truths that constitute the set of truths known by God, so also “aseity” just means God is self-sufficient (not depending for his existence upon anything other than himself). But there is disagreement over just which attributes a self-sufficient God would have and about which Thomists, open theists, and Process folk disagree, though they agree THAT God is self-sufficient.

Mephi is arguing (via process metaphysic) that “aseity” logically rules out mutually influential loving God-world relations not mutually influential relations. God can’t experience any more ‘love’ than he already has in and of himself as a self-sufficient being.

VFG: The Triune love among the Godhead is infinite. This infinity trumps any sort of affect that we may have on this love if there were no ad intra/extra distinction. Reason for this conclusion is: infinity plus or minus anything is still infinity, thus the “infinite” love and joy still unaffected by anything that comes in externally. So there are only two ways of resolving this: 1) coming to the conclusion that everything we do is ultimately meaningless, or 2) there must be some ad intra/extra distinction in order for us to have any meaning. But then Tom mentioned (if I understand it correctly) that this would lead to a further conclusion that there are two separate Gods, or I guess like two minds in One. So you’d say that it’s not two separate minds, but one aspect of God that is untouchable (among the Trinity and the basic unalterable qualities of God –the Omni’s) thus unreachable, while another is open to influence by us.

Tom: I’ll tell ya what I think, which will give Mephi an opportunity to correct me as well if I’m wrong. Mephi has agreed that there’s one divine value-appreciator (Ooo, let's call it the Flux-Capacitor), one God who experiences, whether he experiences himself or the world. So Mephi HAS to account for any God-world relationship in terms of its partly constituting the ONE body of divine experience. So far we agree. But since (so Mephi’s argument goes) God’s one body of divine experience is already “unsurpassably lovingly relational” by virtue of Trinitarian sociality, Mephi argues there can be no OTHER lovingly relational contribution to God’s body of experience, for if it were true that we genuinely contribute to God’s experience in ways God viewed as “loving” and “personal” and “relational,” then it can’t be true that God’s own Trinitarian sociality is unsurpassably loving and relational, for our contribution to God’s body of experience just broadened God’s field of loving and relational experience and so surpassed what that experience was prior to our contribution.

Note: I said Mephi doesn’t want to admit that we influence God in ways GOD views as “loving,” “personal,” and “relational.” As far as I know Mephi’s only claimed the first (“mutually loving relations”), but the other two are also entailed in God’s “unsurpassably loving relationality.” God wouldn’t be able to stand in “mutually personal (forget loving for the moment)” relations with us either since God is unsurpassably personal as well. That’s entailed in his being an unsurpassably loving relationality. So not only do we not relate in mutually loving ways with God, we cannot relate in genuinely personal ways either. I think Mephi would agree with this now. In fact, I think he has to.

One simple objection I’d offer quickly is this: We can relate personally to someone only if we genuinely believe that person is relating personally to us. We can be mistaken in this belief of course. I can believe my wife truly loves me and receives from and responds to me personally but then later discover her every move has been programmed via computer chips by someone else. I could not then avoid concluding that all I thought was behavior of a personal nature between my wife and me was in fact a sham so far as the personal-relational nature of the behavior is concerned including all MY behavior towards my wife! So Mephi’s argument (if I'm undersanding it) that we-as-persons can give to God but God-as-person cannot receive from us-as-persons just cannot make sense. We cannot embrace this existentially. We can’t ourselves deny that God engages in mutually personal relations with us and then intend our actions (whether worship, obedience, prayer, whatever) as persons with respect to God. To do that we have to believe God-as-personally-related is on the receiving end.

If I someday the math of Mephi's argument convinced me that a mutually personal relationship between God and me was incompable with the belief that God may exist independent of the world, I believe (at this point at least) that I've embrace process theism. Mephi would reject process theism and embrace living a life completely void of any personal significance to God.

Now, what's interesting is, how much of my choice and Mephi's choice is already determined by MY being an INTP and HIS being an INTJ? Hmmm?

What up Mephi?

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 10/20/2005 10:00:57 AM (GMT-5)

O, tre bien. Se bon! Tous parles france?

TGB

C'est la vie (or Selah Vie!): Two years back in High School?

Tom: You were in High School two years ago? Wow.

Tom