From: Ted Davis (TDavis@messiah.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 03 2003 - 19:20:02 EDT
Responding to Howard, much snipped:
Interesting. Can you cite the text in Hebrews?
Ted: Hebrews 11:10 (For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose
builder and maker ** is God.) I've starred the word.
Yes, process theology does speak of God -- as a consequence of the nature
of
God, World, and the God/World relationship -- working within metaphysical
limits. Not limits imposed by any other Being, but limits that are a
essential to the being/nature of {God + A World}. As I recall, however,
Griffin also speaks of the beginning of this epoch of {A World} (a t=0
event) as one in which God chooses the particular details of this
universe's
nature -- consistent, of course, with those more comprehensive
metaphysical
requirements following from the essential nature of {God + A World}.
Ted: We probably see this differently. I say, if the limitations on God
are derived somehow (and this "somehow" of course involves what we mere
humans think that it must involve, indeed we are the creators of these
limits) from the ultimate reality that is God/World, as vs the traditional
God alone, then I say that the limitations on God (as distinguished from the
world, which process theology implicitly does through its use of both words)
are in fact imposed by something other than God. And this IMO violates the
essence of monotheism as proclaimed in Genesis.
How does that compare with the relationship of Plato's Demiurgos with what
is usually referred to as an independently existing "recalcitrant
matter"?
I don't see the World of process theology as anything that could be
described as either "independent" or "recalcitrant." Looks to me as though
some elements crucial to Plato are absent from process theology.
Furthermore, the intimate and fruitful relationship between God and World
present in process theology is absent from Plato.
Ted: I mainly agree with this, I wouldn't reduce process theology to simple
Platonism (as I indicated earlier, lots of Aristotelianism is also here),
any more than I would reduce Christian Platonism of the Renaissance to
simple Platonism. But this leaves a crucial similarity: in Plato, the
recalcitrant matter that limits God is coeval with God--ie, uncreated,
without origination in God. Despite process language about God eternally
creating the world, I do see this as similar to Plato. In process, of
course, it's God's lacking omnipotence that means that God can't determine
the nature of nature; for Plato, it's also God lacking omnipotence: the
Demiurgos is unable to mold matter to his will, he hasn't got that power.
The "recalcitrance" of matter cannot be overcome. Process may not have
recalcitrant matter, but it does have something in the nature of matter that
can't be altered, so that matter acts as a given in the act of creation. In
other words, matter itself is not "created."
The bottom line does seem highly similar in both cases.
ted
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