On Sun, 31 Mar 2002 17:43:49 -0500 "Howard J. Van Till"
<hvantill@novagate.com> writes:
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." :)
I used a technical term from logic. I could have termed it
self-defeating, inconsistent, fallacy of many questions. But of course
there is an emotional reaction when the description is applied.
> 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.)
But here there is a covert suggestion that there had to be a time before
the creation.
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).
But, as a matter of fact, we have a world which necessarily has a
relationship to its Creator. The question is whether God is somehow
dependent on the creation or is independent--Creator or demiurge?
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)?
On this last, I suspect that Augustine's wisecrack in answer to the
question what God was doing before he created: "He was making hell for
those who ask such questions." I note that there is a relevant difference
between a timeless deity and one temporally eternal. The latter, which
panentheism demands, involves an infinite regress or sorts. The former
does not. I think Aristotle's eternal pair of Pure Form and Prime Matter
make better sense than the process view.
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.
But constrained by the "other," whence I refer to it as demiurge. Not
quite Plato's view, but akin.
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
But "coercive" does not necessarily imply supernatural intervention. It
may be just the way the world works.
Dave
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Mar 31 2002 - 18:35:09 EST