Post Edited (MephEternal) : 10/25/2005 7:03:43 AM (GMT-5)

Mephi: 1) How in the world could Doc talk about TWT 1 being a metaphysical principle that ONLY applies to contingent reality? That's doesn't work. Ask Whitehead and Hartshorne.

Tom: Whitehead and Hartshorne are both dead! But maybe in your metaphysics not even THAT matters. I should still be able to ask them!  

Something is a metaphysical law if it’s true always and everywhere, so to speak. I take TWT1 to express that contingent sentient beings must determine themselves with regard to love. That is, no OTHER being may determine any OTHER being with regard to love. It’s being a metaphysical law means only that it has to be true FOR God, not that it has to be true OF God (since he’s not a contingent being).

Sure, Father and Son and Spirit are, you and I agree at least, necessarily loving. The necessarily determine themselves in love. This is self-love, Mephi. God constitutes love. God is love. But when we come over to us vis-à-vis other ontologically autonomous beings, we’re in a completely different world. But we’ve gone round and round on this. This metaphysical rule is true OF God in the sense that if some being other than God were to determine God with respect to love then God would (in my view) not be a loving personal being but rather a properly functioning machine (in respect to love and personhood). But the rule is not true OF God in the sense that God isn’t a contingent being. It doesn’t describe how God actually is.

Mephi: 2) Even if we were to accept it as being SOLELY for contingent loving sociality, it would still be problematic. All Tatian's argument says a contingent being cannot be necessarily loving. Well, big duh. We are saying that contingent beings can be unchangably loving…

Tom: GIVEN the contingency, I see Tatian’s point. When he says “Contingent being cannot be necessarily loving” I don’t think that by “necessarily” he means “logically necessary” as say, we claim of God. He obviously means necessary in the assumed sense. I mean, once certain things are assumed, or given, other things follow. So I think Tatian is talking about the same thing you’re talking about when you say “unchangeably.” But even it HE’S not, I am. I personally haven’t read Tatian, so I could be wrong. But it would be too obvious a truth to just argue that admittedly contingent being cannot love in absolutely necessary ways. That’s self-contradictory. It’s obvious that there’s NOTHING whatsoever that is ‘necessary’ in this sense about contingent beings. So I doubt that’s what Tatian had in mind by ‘necessary’. He’s probably thinking of just what your thinking about by ‘unchangeably’ loving, and so denying that contingent human being can be given an unchangeably loving nature by some being other than the human being herself. She must choose her own way into love.

Mephi: A person would have to argue that God COULD NOT accept love from an unchangably loving being. God would not consider it genuine.

Tom: You’re assuming it IS love and that TWT1 means GOD is unable for some metaphysical reason to accept it. But that’s not at all what’s going down. It’s not that there’s genuine love being expressed by humans that God would be metaphysically incapable of accepting because of TWT1. It’s that there’s no love to speak of in the circumstances you’re describing. It can’t exist, and it God isn’t an example of it. It’s not about God. It’s about us.

Mephi: Given what we've talked about, on what basis would a person argue this? We know that God can accept "unfree" love as genuine...

Tom: God can love himself. Big deal.

Mephi: This means that we've NO aesthetic grounds upon which to say that God can't appreciate loving activity from morally "unfree" beings.

Tom: I don’t think TWT1 relies on aesthetic grounds for its truth. Maybe I’m wrong, but I never thought of God’s aesthetic satisfaction as having anything to do with TWT1. It was completely the “stuff” of contingent sentient being that required TWT1.

Mephi: We know that Creation's contributions of beauty are relativized unto meaningless...and only given meaning by God and God's purposes. This entails that it doesn't even make SENSE to say that God values a world with moral freedom "more than" a world without.

Tom: Really? When it comes to arguing to universalism you’re not going to argue on the basis of God’s appreciation of subjective aims that we ought to conclude God would determine all human beings in loving sociality eventually? Hmm.

In any case, I think you’re improperly using the relative meaninglessness of creation, vis-à-vis God’s existence, to argue the relative meaninglessness to God of his own purposes for creation. That is, it seems to me you’re assuming that since every logically possible contingent world is equally meaningless to God in ONE respect at least (namely, that it can’t improve upon God), that it’s equally meaningless to God in EVERY respect, that no logically possible purpose we may conceive of God having for creation is any more valuable to God than any other purposed world. Your idea is that since everybody’s frying in hell for ever is as meaningless to God as everybody’s rejoicing in hell IN ONE RESPECT (their impact upon divine aseity), God would be just as consistent with himself as unsurpassable loving relationality were to determine that everybody fry in hell as he would be were he to determine, say, our sort of world, a libertarian world were people determine themselves in love with respect to God.

We agreed on something basic about God’s aseity. We can’t improve upon God. But we’re not agreeing on how this ought to be used.

Mephi: There's simply no reason to say that God just COULDN'T accept "unfree" love from Creation.

Tom: If such a thing could in fact exist contingently. I don’t think it can. God’s not an example. Any other examples you know of? Didn’t think so.

Tom

I think you, Mephi, are incorrectly arguing from the meaninglessness of all worlds with respect to God’s aseity to the idea that there’s nothing about God that makes any one possible world more appreciable to God than any other possible world, that God would be equally able to choose just any old possible world and decide, whilly nilly, to allow any or all to matter equally to him.

I disagree. God’s subjective aims are the aims of unsurpassable LOVE, not aims of “unsurpassability” per se. Anything God chooses to appreciate and value he does so graciously, yes. But it doesn’t follow that there aren’t some things God can’t, constitutionally, choose to appreciate or value.

So I think there are some logically possible worlds God could not choose in grace to appreciate. I suppose that makes them logically impossible worlds. Fine. But I don’t believe unsurpassable triune love is capable of all things just because all things are equally meaningless with respect to aseity.

Tom

Mephi: Oh, NO, you don't. Skip the "necessarily" and "determine themselves" Bad language usage. No one here is saying that God creates his own dispositional reality causa sui. We are affirming a primordial divine actuality with a continously actualization disposition towards experiencing beauty via loving sociality. None of the persons of the Godhead DETERMINE their own sense of love. And the "necessary" thing has nothing to do with it on this score.

Tom: Can you say that in plainer English? I’m a bit confused.

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Tom: That is, no OTHER being may determine any OTHER being with regard to love.

Mephi: Nope. TWT 1 is MUCH stronger than this. I'll bring Doc's book to lunch. It says that if there are ANY situations such that the "want is outside of one's control", then the love is not free. God would definitely fall into this camp.

Tom: Of course God falls into this camp. God’s choice to be loving is not a libertarianly free one. Duh. I see Doc’s point though, and agree. So let me revise: “That is, no being or state of affairs or situation outside of the control of some other beings’s will, may determine that other being’s will to choose love.”

Sheesh. It’s not that difficult. Why is this so important to you? What's the deal man?

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Mephi: We CANNOT ignore that the loving relations between the members of the Godhead are seen as genuine, even though (even WITHOUT considering the "necessary" thing) there is no viable way that they could REFUSE to have longing for loving sociality. You can't get away from this, Tom.

Tom: Why would I want to “get away” from this? I agree, there’s no way they could REFUSE to have loving sociality.

Mephi: And it cannot be circumvented by just calling it God's "self-love". This is a gross reduction of the internal sociality that is the Triune God.

Tom: Well, it IS self-love. I don’t want to reduce God to JUST that. But the point remains, when God does God lovingly, God is loving Godself and not some ontologically autonomous contingent OTHER, and were some OTHER being or circumstance other than God to render God’s will compatibilistic with regard to LOVE (even if God were left free to determine the ways in which he expressed his determined-for-him love), I’d hold that God would not be loving.

Tom