George wrote:
> I figured this card would be played fairly soon.
And I figured a response like this would soon follow. We know each other
well.
> In evaluating it note
> 1) There is no empirical support at all for a cyclic model.
Right. It is presented as disciplined speculation, no more -- a valid part
of normal science.
> 2) The statement "the Ultimate Reality is God-and-World" goes well
> beyond the claim that the world exists eternally in dependence upon
>God, which
> is one way of interpreting _creatio ex nihilo_.
Yes, it is a different proposition.
> It removes any qualitative
> distinction between God and the world, and thus, among other things, is
> fundamental conflict with the First Commandment.
As someone like Griffin uses this concept, God and World, though co-eternal,
are ontologically/qualitatively different. I see no violation of the first
commandment. So that red herring can be buried.
Nonetheless it is indeed the case that the God/World relationship is
conceived quite differently from the traditional, radical one-way dependence
of world on God, as in the creatio ex nihilo formulation.
In the Griffin-style approach, a) It is essential for God [i.e., it is
part of God's essence] to be in (a loving) relationship to a World; b) it
is essential for the World to have its being in God. The relationship is
two-way, though not symmetrical.
Howard Van Till
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