I had said:
> The question is, Did God have a choice in setting those principles [by which
things exist and
> function] , or is God bound by God's own being and the nature of the God/world
relationship?
Dave replied:
> This strikes me as a nonsense question.
hvt: "The first thing I note from the quotation from [Dave] is that its
language is emotionally loaded." :)
> Of course God is consistent with
> his own being. But "the nature of the God/world relationship" suggests that
> the Eternal was constrained by the temporal. In other words, it fits the
> notion of pantheism or panentheism, not the notion of theism.
Consider three concepts of what constitutes "Ultimate Reality":
1. Traditional Christian Theism: UR = God alone, no World. (It is not
essential to God to be in relationship to a World; the existence of a World
is optional to God. Hence, creatio ex nihilo.)
2. Maximal (or ontological) Naturalism: UR = World alone, no God. (The
World is self-existent and needs no relationship to God for its being.
Hence, no creation.)
3. Panentheism [briefly stated: the world is in God, but God is more than
the world] :
UR = God + World (It is essential to God to be in relationship to a World;
in order for a world to have being it must be in relationship to God; the
relationship need not be symmetric, but neither could be what it is without
the other).
Note that for panentheism, some form of World (not necessarily this
particular universe, which may be only one of many possible worlds to which
God could be related) is always present within God. This particular world
may be "temporal" but the larger sense of "World" need not be. Given that
possibility, it appears to me that the problem of the Eternal being
constrained by the mere temporal disappears. It also suggest an answer to
the question, What was God doing before the Big-Bang (the temporal beginning
of this particular universe)?
Dave again:
> I may take an
> analogy from some current cosmological theories, that ours is only one of
> an infinite number of universes. On this view, there is no constraint that
> all the universes observe the same physical laws. Similarly, God could have
> made a different type of universe, one with different principles--and
> perhaps has. He is sovereign. Put a different way, what determines God and
> his will? Only himself. Otherwise he would not be the Creator.
If I understand correctly, panentheism, although it rejects creatio ex
nihilo, nonetheless retains the concept of God as Creator in the sense of
God choosing and maintaining the 'being' of this particular universe.
On a related matter Dave asks:
> Is gravity coercive? It certainly does not give me any choice if I am not
> adequately supported, and it does not allow me to change my weight except
> by finding a different gravitational field. Is my need for air, food and
> water coercive? Or is this something that Satan introduced because God
> would not be that stiff?
In the original context of this discussion, the term "coercive" denoted the
idea of a transcendent God, by supernatural intervention, overpowering a
creature (thereby coercing it to behave in a manner inconsistent with its
being). Gravity is an interaction between two creaturely entities, each of
which is acting in a manner entirely consistent with its creaturely being.
That makes comparisons of this sort difficult.
Howard
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