"Howard J. Van Till" wrote:
> 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.
The basic problem here is not the eternity of the world but
the statement
that God-and-World is the "Ultimate" reality. I think, e.g., of Tillich's
statements that God "is the name for that which concerns man ultimately" and
"[W]hatever concerns a man ultimately becomes god for him, and
conversely ... a man
can be concerned ultimately only about that which is god for him." (Systematic
Theology I, 211.) If the world posseses ultimacy in something like
this sense along
with God then I think there is indeed a First Commandment problem.
But perhaps you
meant something less strong than "Ultimate" here.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
>
> 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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