I May Be Wrong, But I'm Sincere

If you believe in a God that doesn't exist, does this make you a theist or an atheist? After all, there's only one God, so who or what are you worshipping if not that one? Yourself? In other words, your own imaginary projected qualities? 

There is form and there is substance, and the former can never literally "be" the latter. Our representations of God are always a form, although some forms are more adequate than others. 

One might think of God as pure gold, or gold as such, while our forms are only various shapes or trinkets of gold; or, God is pure light that is colored as a result of being refracted through the human container.

For example, one of these forms contributed to the division of the eastern and western churches, that is, the filioque, i.e., whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son or from the Father alone. Thus, someone is apparently worshipping a "false God," or at least believes a falsehood about God. 

Probably the only way around such fraternal disputes -- which range from the trifling to the essential -- is a radical apophaticism whereby we can only say what God isn't. This approach may not be right, but at least it's never wrong.  

Schuon posits the idea of a "human margin" situated on the edge, so to speak, of revelation, allowing for ethnic, cultural, historical, and linguistic differences. We all have a "point of view," simply by virtue of being finite persons, not to mention the uniquely particular person we are. 

Schuon suggests that our sincerity toward God can compensate for a dodgy theology. For example, there have been saints who weren't great theologians, and likewise great theologians who weren't saints, so sanctity (or sanctification) seems to be an independent variable. 

Or to put it another way, you can get everything right and still be wrong, insofar as you forget the one thing needful, which, in Christianity, is charity:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Looked at this way, any theological form is simply a means to the end of an interior transformation and renewal of the person. It reminds me of the Zen saying that the purpose of the boat is to cross the river -- a means to the end, not the end itself.  

What does this have to do with our recent subject, which has to do with the question of God's immutability? Well, supposing one person sincerely believes God is immutable, while another -- that would be me -- sincerely believes otherwise, where's the harm so long as we both get across the river? 

Of course, there's a point at which the human margin shades off into subjectivism, relativism, and religious indifferentism. Again, revealed forms aren't gold as such, but are still golden. But some forms aren't gold at all, these being totally manmade ones. Could a manmade religion, or even no religion at all, result in sanctity? I suppose it's possible but not likely. 

For example, stoicism is making a comeback these days, apparently appealing to folks who sincerely want to be better people but who cannot believe in the Judeo-Christian God. So long as it actually makes them better, who am I to complain? 

Of course, the contemporary stoic is embedded in Christian culture whose values he takes for granted. One of the greatest stoics of them all, Seneca, was a spinmeister for the monstrous Nero. Likewise, there's a lot of wisdom in Marcus Aurelius, but this didn't stop him from carrying out brutal military campaigns, persecuting Christians, or taking slavery for granted.

Let's get back to our main event -- which indeed claims that God is a kind of event, and not the wholly impassive motionless mover. Hartshorne has a very useful way of thinking about this, even if I reject his overall theology. 

Basically, he says that thinking about ultimate reality inevitably gives rise to antinomies such as time and eternity, absolute and relative, actual and potential, permanence and change, one and many, immanence and transcendence, et al. "One decides in each case which member of the pair is good or admirable and then attributes it... to deity, while wholly denying the contrasting term":

One pole of each contrary is regarded as more excellent than the other, so that the supremely excellent being cannot be described by the other and inferior pole.  

Thus, immutability good, change bad; absolute good, relative bad; eternity good, temporality bad. 

The dilemma, however, is artificial; for it is produced by the assumption that the highest form of reality is to be indicated by separating or purifying one pole of the ultimate contrasts from the other pole.

But God is pretty, pretty big, and "one would think that the supreme excellence must somehow be able to integrate all the complexity there is into itself as one spiritual whole." 

Hartshorne posits a "Law of Polarity" whereby "ultimate contraries are correlatives, mutually interdependent, so that nothing real can be described by the wholly one-sided assertion of simplicity, being, actuality and the like, each in a 'pure' form," divorced from its complementary partner.

Now, you know how I feel about the subject: the harmonious integration of these ultimate complementarities is none other than the Trinity, which, for example, is the quintessence of Absolute Relativity, or of substance-in-relation. It is likewise "unchanging change," or "absolute potential," which is to say, Infinitude (AKA All Possibility). 

For Hartshorne, "being becomes, or becoming is -- being and becoming must somehow form a single reality." Again, what is the Trinity but that single reality whereby Being becomes and Becoming Is?

I'll give you a break and stop for now, but we'll continue playfully chasing our tale tomorrow, because this vision still requires a lot of fine-tuning in order to avoid slipping beyond the human margin and into the idiosyncratic, the presumptuous, and the manmade (which I believe Hartshorne ended up doing).

California Personalism and God as First Among Equals

 Yes, it was once a thing, and no, it does not involve Hugh Hefner:

George Holmes Howison taught a metaphysical theory called California personalism, maintaining that both impersonal monism and materialism run contrary to the moral freedom experienced by persons. To deny the freedom to pursue the ideals of truth, beauty, and love is to undermine every profound human venture, including science, morality, and philosophy.... 

Howison created a radically democratic notion of personal idealism that extended all the way to God, who was no more the ultimate monarch, no longer the only ruler and creator of the universe, but the ultimate democrat in eternal relation to other eternal persons.

According to my pal Gemini, Howison's philosophy emphasizes the fundamental reality of persons, and the idea that reality itself is ultimately composed of a community of free and eternal persons:

• A core tenet of his philosophy is the existence of an eternal and uncreated community of persons, including God, rather than a single, absolute being.
• Howison stressed the autonomy and freedom of each person. He believed that individuals are fundamentally free moral agents. 

But unfortunately, he "found few disciples among the religious, for whom his thought was heretical; the non-religious, on the other hand, considered his proposals too religious" (wiki).

What's a little heresy between friends?

Agreed. If it's heretical to believe God is an "uncreated community of persons," that humans are "fundamentally free moral agents," and that God doesn't unilaterally determine all aspects of reality, then durn it, I'm a heretical California personalist.

Wait. It gets more heretical:

In some interpretations of Howison, God is seen as a "first among equals" within this eternal community. This implies a relational and participatory role for God, rather than one of absolute sovereignty.

Three words:

Far out, because California personalism comes close to the Christian dudism we preach. Except a Christian dudist is never actually preachy. That's a very undude behavior to engage in. Nor do we hold God directly responsible for every strike or gutter, for our God doesn't roll that way. 

But first among equals? That may be a bridge too far. Then again, think about how scripture was said to be written via a co-operation of human and divine authorship. God gets his points across, but leaves plenty of space for the human contributor's style, language, perspective, experience, and historical and cultural contexts. 

Likewise, Jesus is one person with two natures. There is equal emphasis on both -- i.e., truly human and truly God. Still, you'd have to say that the divine side must be first among equals.

Or the Trinity: surely the Father is first among equals. He is the source or fount of the Trinity, except there never was a time that the Son and Spirit didn't co-abide with and in him. 

But I'll have to think through this "first among equals" business, because it is indeed pretty far out, even for California. Meanwhile we have some questions from a commenter, first, 

Could God not have set parameters regarding freedom to "choose" evil? It seems to me that it would not obstruct anyone's freedom of will to make children "off limits" to harmful "free will" actions -- couldn't He have (in actuality) assigned Guardian Angels to the task of protecting the most innocent of our little ones?

Excellent questions. First, God does apparently assign us guardian angels, and who knows how many evils they prevent, since we never see them? When I think of the bad things that could have befallen me between the ages of 17 and 25 -- Bob's wild years -- the mind reels. 

And Jesus does, of course, warn of rough justice for those who harm children, such that it would be better for them to have millstones hung from their necks and tossed into the sea. But couldn't God have pre-progammed us to not harm children to begin with?

I suspect he did, or no child would survive infancy. After all, it's quite a chore to care for a helpless and functionally useless baby, but -- as explained in the book -- it is precisely our neurological incompleteness or "premature birth" that creates the "space" for humanness to develop. This unique situation allows us to mature in an interpersonal context, thus facilitating our intersubjectivity. 

Coincidentally, I was reading in the book Dominion of how barbarously children were treated in the ancient world, prior to any Christian influence (Jews excepted, who also didn't abuse or murder their children).

I've returned the book to the library, so I can't quote the exact passage, but suffice it to say that the Romans routinely practiced infanticide, leaving unwanted infants (especially girls) to die by the side of the road. There was simply no concept of the sanctity of life, least of all for the weakest among us. This only changed with the gradual influence of Christianity. The wiki article says that

Exposure was extremely widespread and deemed morally acceptable in ancient Rome, especially regarding female children, and "more than one daughter was practically never reared" even in large families. 

But "As Christianity gained a foothold in the Roman empire, Christians became known for rescuing exposed infants and raising them." So, in response to the question, Christianity indeed brought with it more humane childrearing practices through a "divine-human" partnership that still respected our potential to do evil. 

I know that's not a completely satisfactory answer, but I don't know that there is one. Or at any rate, we're still working on it.

Next question, this having to do with the consequences of evil acts:

Some of the most heinous acts of evil are done by those who are utterly insane. Now, insanity being an affliction (an illness even) rather than a choice, the question arises, do the insane truly have freedom of will?

No, they do not. In order for someone to be guilty of an evil act, the person must have sufficient knowledge of the act's evil nature and must perform it freely. There is such a thing as invincible ignorance, and there are forms of mental illness that weaken or entirely eliminate a person's free will.

Having said that, I do wonder about the existence of genetically determined mental illnesses. They say psychopathy is roughly 50% heritable, which still leaves a lot of room for environmental influences. But it certainly seems unfair for so many people to be born with a propensity to depression, anxiety, neuroticism, and psychopathy.

Then again, nature is neither fair nor unfair. It just is. Being prone to depression myself, it must have an upside, or it wouldn't have survived the rigors of natural selection. Gemini, what could be some of the evolutionary benefits of a vulnerability to depression?

Analytical Rumination Hypothesis: 

This theory suggests that depression, or at least the rumination aspect of it, may have evolved to facilitate complex problem-solving. By withdrawing and focusing intensely on a problem, an individual might be better able to analyze it and find a solution. 

In ancestral environments, this could have been valuable for dealing with complex social or survival challenges. 

There are other theories, but it seems commonsensical that there is a correlation between shallowness and an absence of psychological pain. Certainly it has made me a more empathic person. And here I am ruminating about the complex problem of evil and suffering. 

I think our lesson for today is that God's rescue mission, AKA salvation history, works with our freedom and our nature to attain the intended outcome. Yes, it may work more slowly than we'd like it to, but compared to what? 

I guess we're done this morning, even if we're not done ruminatin'. Much more to come....

Does God Play Dice and Other Games of Chance?

If God cannot be conceptualized, why conceptualize him as immutable? According to the analogy of being, any similarity we posit between creation and God must involve an even greater dissimilarity. I say, if traditionalists want to insist that God is an analogous to an unchanging object, then he must be even more disanalogous. 

Of course, many if not most Christian theologies don't even accept the analogy of being to begin with, on the grounds that it diminishes the role of divine revelation, while inflating man into thinking he can limit God to his puny metaphysical categories. After all, if you think man is totally depraved, that goes for the intellect as much as the will. 

Revelation is given to us precisely because our minds are such a wreck. Bestwecando is submit to it and tell our stupid brains to STFU. But in so doing, out with the bathwater of pride go the babies of metaphysics and natural theology. Folks like Luther and Calvin will say good riddance, while folks like me will have to STFU and give up blogging. 

The influential Protestant theologian Karl Barth went so far as to say that the analogy of being was an invention of the Antichrist. Rather, revelation is totally sufficient unto itself: for our part we are limited to all faith and no reason. 

But where in revelation does it make the totalitarian claim that revelation is totally sufficient unto itself and that we shouldn't even try to make intellectual sense of it? After all, nowhere is the Trinity mentioned in scripture. That was only worked out in detail over centuries of contemplation and intellection. Nor is the Trinity the only ambiguity or implicit principle that needed to be deciphered and explicated. 

Also, once intellect is severed from revelation, this clears the field for a hostile takeover of the mind by the infra- and antihuman forces of secularism, scientism, materialism, and other diabolical ideologies. Thus, the Antichrist is eliminated at one end, only to return through the back door. 

Besides, if Christ is the Logos -- the very principle and Light of intellection -- and we participate in him, then doesn't this imply a certain "cleansing" thereof? In other words, the point is not to stop thinking but to begin thinking rightly and brightly.    

Moreover, Christ wasn't altogether clear or complete in his teachings, and he even said so: I still have many things to say to you, but don't worry, because the Spirit will to guide you into all truth. 

Also, if we take scripture entirely literally and without the use of analogy, how could it be intelligible? Jesus is a door. A vine. A shepherd. Heaven is a mustard seed. A wedding banquet. A treasure hidden in a field. An expensive pearl. Isn't Jesus himself speaking analogously? 

So, we've been toying with the idea that God takes a risk, both with creation in general and with the Incarnation in particular. By which we mean "risk," i.e., analogously. But one of the risks, it seems, was the possibility of evil and suffering. God is not responsible for them, only for the risky isness of creation. 

Analogously, supposing I will a child into existence, I assume the risk that he may turn out to be a sociopath or even a progressive. Likewise, supposing God is responsible for water, this does not imply that he wills drowning. Rather, that's one of the risks entailed in the existence of water.

Now, the biggest risk of all must be the creation of creatures with free will -- with the freedom to reject or even oppose the will of their creator. But what's a parent to do? When your kid disobeys, what are you supposed to do, kill him?

God has a plan. Or, to speak analogously, a "plan." While it resembles the sorts of plans we make, the dissimilarities must dwarf the similarities, even to an infinite degree. 

Which is why I cringe when, in response to a horrible tragedy, some believer blithely says It's all a part of God's plan, or Don't worry, God is in control. Easy for them to say, but would you say this to a person whose house is on fire? Or grab a hose?

Likewise, no offense, but if the plan you enacted brought you the Holocaust, of what use was the plan?

Any theodicy that has the effect of legitimizing evil -- of making the Holocaust acceptable -- must for that reason come into serious question (Hasker).

So, start over. Not with a new God, but certainly a new theodicy. For example, one involving the risk that

the same capacity that allows us to enjoy literature, mathematics, science, philosophy, and all other human pursuits -- gives us the capacity to formulate and carry out genocidal plans (ibid.).

Still, is it worth the risk? 

One might, in light of this, conclude that bestowing free will on the creature was simply too great a risk and should not have been done. What one cannot responsibly conclude is that free will ought to have been given as a power to do good but not evil (ibid.).  

Because such a will is by definition not free. 

Now, is God himself free? Signs point to Yes, but if God is unchanging necessary being -- which is to say, all necessity and no contingency -- isn't this the opposite of freedom? They say he is free to create, but if this is so, how can this be squared with his absolute necessity? 

Some folks square it by saying everything herebelow is likewise pure necessity. That plan again, from which there can be no deviation. If this is the case, then we don't have a "problem of evil," rather, a problematic God. Yes, his plan entails countless evils, but don't worry, the end justifies the means. But if this sort of moral reasoning is forbidden to man, why is it acceptable for God?

Let's start over. Let's say changelessness isn't a perfection, rather a privation -- a privation of, among other things, creativity and openness. Now, God is also perfect, but here we are in this imperfect creation. What if,

in deciding to create, God brings about the existence of a realm of imperfection, whereas without creation there is only the perfection of the divine life itself (ibid,).

This comes close to Schuon's view on the subject -- that, in a way, the Creator can't help creating, because it is in his nature to create. It doesn't mean this or that creation was necessary, only that creativity itself is. The (imperfect) creation isn't the (perfect) Creator, and here we are.

Manifestation is not the Principle, the effect is not the cause; that which is “other than God” could not possess the perfections of God, hence in the final analysis and within the general imperfection of the created, there results that privative and subversive phenomenon which we call evil. 

This is to say that the cosmogonic ray, by plunging as it were into “nothingness,” ends by manifesting “the possibility of the impossible”; the “absurd” cannot but be produced somewhere in the economy of the divine Possibility, otherwise the Infinite would not be the Infinite. 

But strictly speaking, evil or the devil cannot oppose the Divinity, who has no opposite; it opposes man who is the mirror of God and the movement towards the divine. 

Now there's a thought: this is not a one storey cosmos, in that there are subversive powers, hostile principalities, and naughty intelligent beings at war in dimensions above us -- there's a battle going on, resulting in a lot of collateral damage herebelow.

Are we done here? Nah, just getting started. As usual.

Was the Incarnation a Risk?

You asking me? That's a bit above my praygrade, but I've always wondered what's the point if it was all predetermined from eternity. Some folks find that comforting. Others find it puzzling. 

Is every man's story -- including Jesus' -- is already written? Why then bother living it out in time? Indeed what is the point of time if it's really just the serial unfolding of a predetermined sequence? Why stretch out what has already occurred necessarily? Why leave us in suspense -- suspended between the present and future? Why do we have to wait for what is inevitably going to happen anyway? 

Why even do anything when it has already been done?

Hope is a theological virtue. But does it make any sense to hope for what is bound to happen anyway? That's a variant of the definition of insanity: doing anything at all and hoping for an outcome different from the preordained one.

I couldn't believe that if I wanted to. But I don't want to, because it simultaneously explains too little and too much. In explaining everything it explains nothing.

Anyway, back to the question of whether God took a risk with the Incarnation, or whether the whole thing was scripted from eternity. 

I'm thinking in particular of the Crucifixion. Was this truly the plan all along? If so -- no irreverence intended -- then some plan. If I understand correctly, a Swiss watch. In other words, if God could foresee the horror of his own torture and death, why not tweak the plan to insure a less gruesome outcome? 

Could it be that the Passion was a creative response to contingent events as they unfolded on the ground? Supposing that humans were truly free in their responses to Jesus, then how could it be otherwise? How can Christ be the victor if the game is rigged from the start?

Now, the traditionalist will argue, I suppose, that the Crucifixion was the most fitting plan, with the best possible outcome -- similar to the felix culpa of the fall, which paves the way for the greatest possible good, which is to say, the incarnation and redemption of Christ. It implies that God's grace and mercy are so powerful that they can turn even the greatest evil into a source of immense good. 

But again, if the whole thing is predetermined, I fail to see the point, because we're all just NPCs in God's already completed script.

Gemini, are there any theologians who argue that Christ's Crucifixion wasn't foreordained or inevitable, but rather, more of a creative response to how he was received by people?

Many traditional Christian theological perspectives, particularly those within Calvinist traditions, emphasize God's sovereignty and foreknowledge. From this viewpoint, Christ's crucifixion was part of God's divine plan from the beginning. This perspective highlights the idea that Christ's sacrifice was necessary for the atonement of sins, and therefore, it had to occur.

Alternative Perspectives (Contingency): 

Some theologians propose that while God may have foreseen the possibility of the crucifixion, it was not necessarily a predetermined event. Instead, they emphasize the role of human free will and the responses of people to Jesus's teachings and actions. 

This view suggests that the crucifixion occurred as a result of the choices made by individuals and authorities at the time. Therefore, while God may have used this event for redemptive purposes, it was not an inevitable outcome. 

"Open Theism" holds that God does not know absolutely everything that will happen in the future, but rather that God knows all that can be known, and that the future is partly open, dependent upon human free will. Within this viewpoint, the crucifixion would be viewed as a result of human free will. It arose from the interplay of human choices and historical circumstances.

Hartshorne in particular "reframes the crucifixion as a tragic event that reveals God's deep involvement in human suffering, rather than a predetermined act in a divine script."

Okay then. This prompted me to pull out Hartshorne's Philosophers Speak of God, because it has a lot of good stuff in it, even if Hartshorne himself goes too far in limiting God. Rather, there must be a better way to balance human freedom with divine omnipotence and omniscience, and we aim to do that.

Let me first finish reviewing what Hasker has to say about the risk God takes in creating truly free creatures. He writes that

God's capacity to control the detailed course of events is limited only by his self-restraint, not by any inability to do so.

This is somewhat similar to the Kabbalistic idea of tzimtzum, whereby God willingly "contracts" himself in order to make a space for an autonomous creation with genuine freedom. 

The question is, "Is it better if God takes risks with the world, or if he does not?" Is it actually preferable to have "a world in which nothing can ever turn out in the slightest respect differently than God intended"? If that's the case, then "the significance and value of human creativity" is essentially nullified, because "our most ennobling achievements are just the expected printouts from the divine programming."  

Back to the Incarnation: are the actions flowing from Christ's human nature just "the expected printouts from the divine programming"? Or are they contingent upon the free actions of events and people around him? Again, how could the whole thing be scripted from eternity and temporally free? Which is to say necessary and contingent?  

I'm going to let that question percolate, because I've never actually thought through the implications. But somehow, God had to plan a world in which his designs would be achieved by creatures acting freely. A tall order!

My brain is a little overwhelmed at the moment, since there are so many different directions I could take the post, and there are a number of different sources I want to bring into the discussion, and where to begin?

Here's just one, from a philosopher and theologian named E.S. Brightman, cited in Philosophers Speak of God:

it is religiously much more essential that God should be good than that he should be absolutely all-powerful. Hence, not a few thinkers have suggested the possibility of a God whose power is in some way limited.... foreknowledge inevitably contracts freedom.

Or this, from Jules Lequier: 

God, who sees things change, changes also in beholding them, or else he does not perceive that they change.... it is necessary to recognize that either God in his relationship to the world contracts a new mode of existence which participates in the nature of the world, or else this world is before God as though it did not exist.... God, who sees these things change, changes also in beholding them.

We're only just beginning, but we'll end this post with an observation by Louis Dupré:

In giving birth to the finite, God himself inevitably assumes a certain passivity in regard to the autonomy of finite being, a passivity that may render him vulnerable and that indeed, according to the Christian mystery of the Incarnation, has induced him personally to share in the very suffering of finite being.

The Risky Isness of Creation

There are two kinds of meaninglessness: disorder at one end, excessive order at the other; or, randomness and determinism, respectively. 

Now, we know this isn't a random universe. To the contrary, it is a shockingly ordered place, but to what end? The anthropic principle -- at least the strong version -- says it is ordered to us, of all people: the principle maintains that

There exists one possible Universe 'designed' with the goal of generating and sustaining observers.... It implies that the purpose of the universe is to give rise to intelligent life, with the laws of nature and their fundamental physical constants set to ensure that life emerges and evolves.

So, intelligent persons are the cause, not the effect, of the universe. If this is the case, then we ourselves are nothing less than the final cause of existence. 

That's a big responsibility. 

True. I'm not sure I want that kind of burden.

Besides, even supposing we are the telos of the universe, this nevertheless seals us in an absurcular tautology. It may be a bigger circle, but a circle nonetheless. It reminds me of something Schuon says -- that

Once man makes of himself a measure, while refusing to be measured in turn, or once he makes definitions while refusing to be defined by what transcends him and gives him all his meaning, all human reference points disappear; cut off from the Divine, the human collapses.

Back to the strong anthropic principle, supposing man is the final cause of the universe, then we have two questions: what exactly is man, and what is his final cause? What's he supposed to be doing here?

For Schuon, The very word "man" implies "God," the very word "relative" implies "Absolute."

Now, man is intelligence, but not just any kind of intelligence, rather, an intelligence that transcends the material world and can thereby know truth. It is an open intelligence, open to intelligible being. But it is also vertically open, or open to the transcendent source of intelligence itself. Hence the latter must be the (divine) Telos of the (human) telos, so to speak.

Or in other words, 

To say that man is the measure of all things is meaningless unless one starts from the idea that God is the measure of man, or that the absolute is the measure of the relative, or again, that the universal Intellect is the measure of individual existence; nothing is fully human that is not determined by the Divine, and therefore centered on it (Schuon).

Only in this way do we exit the tautology referenced above. We can indeed be King of the Universe, but where does this leave us if we aren't subject to a higher authority? For again, human intelligence is not just horizontally but vertically open: 

The animal cannot leave his state, whereas man can; strictly speaking, only he who is fully man can leave the closed system of the individuality, through participation in the one and universal Selfhood.

So, it seems that the final cause of the universe is something like an intelligent being open to the Absolute. "Other creatures," writes Schuon, 

participate in life, but man synthesizes them: he carries all life within himself and thus becomes the spokesman for all life, the vertical axis where life opens onto the spirit and where it becomes spirit. In all terrestrial creatures the cold inertia of matter becomes heat, but in man alone does heat become light.

I'll buy that. But what does it have to do with our subject, which is to say, open theism? Well, we've just laid out the principles of an "open anthropology," in that man is essentially open to both world and God. But is God open to us? 

Again, the traditional view says no -- that if God were literally open to us, this would imply change, and change is something that God by definition cannot do, for he is eternal changelessness itself.

This may sound a bit cold when put that way, but it's what they say. However, no religious believer behaves as if this were true. It reminds me of how no determinist behaves as if determinism were true, just as no Darwinian conducts his life on the basis of Darwinism. Are they hypocrites? Or on to something?

Likewise, is the religious predeterminist who engages in petitionary prayer a hypocrite? Or is he too on to something? 

Let's say I'm faced with a binary life choice, and I don't know which path to choose. I pray to God, hoping to help me discern which choice to make. But from God's perspective, the choice has already been made from all eternity, and there's no deviating from it. Again, there is no contingency in God, so the best we can do is resign ourselves to eternal necessity.

As mentioned yesterday, I don't find this appealing. Let's take a concrete example: Jane doesn't know whether to marry Tom or Dick, so she prays to God for guidance. But in the future she is already married to Tom or Dick, and there's nothing that can change this fact one way or the other, because it has already been determined.

God -- they say -- doesn't know contingent things, because this would make God contingent upon the things he knows. From God's timeless perspective, the future is every bit as determined as the past: it has already happened.

Paradoxes abound here, the bad kind. For example, why try to discern a spiritual vocation, when it has already been determined? This makes no sense to me. Let's start over.  

There is no risk in creating a machine-like universe in which every outcome is foreknown. But one of the themes of open theism is that God actually takes a huge risk -- a leap of faith? -- in creating genuinely free creatures. Does he?

Does God make decisions that depend for their outcomes on the responses of free creatures in which the decisions themselves are not informed by knowledge of the outcomes?

If he does, then creating and governing a world is for God a risky business (Hasker). 

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Perhaps this is why 

There is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who do not need to repent.

After all, why rejoice if you knew it all along? 

Kafkaesque Theism

There are many reasons to believe in open theism, but perhaps the most important is that without it I am screwed. 

For one thing, if everything is predetermined, and the elect are elected before the game even begins, then there is literally nothing we can do to become one of them. We are ontological NPCs that serve no purpose but to be furniture in God's dream. 

Which is a nightmare, since there's no way to find out if we're a hellbound NPC, nor any way to remedy the situation anyway, since God's will is God's will, and that's final. God does not change because he cannot change. Which strikes me as a rather absurd limitation on what God can and cannot do.

This makes life even more kafkaesque than Kafka imagined it to be: absurd, surreal, illogical, nightmarish, oppressive, bizarre, pointless, dehumanized, devoid of sense, and trapped with no exit.  

That's quite a list.

Yes, I compiled it from a google search. But even then it's a partial list. The point is that there are two kinds of existentialism: atheistic and theistic. But the theistic version isn't even really theistic if it is totally wrong about God. Rather, it's just existentialism with a side order of idolatry. 

Which is why I believe in open theism regardless of whether or not it is orthodox, because for me the alternative is absurd. Now, life could be absurd. But if it is, I don't want to know about it. Life is hard enough with a point, let alone without one.

These preliminary observations were provoked by a recent immersion in the literature of open theism, of which I was only dimly aware, partly because it seems to mainly be a Protestant phenomenon. I was of course aware of process philosophy, which shares some features of open theism. 

However, I rejected process philosophy for a number of reasons, especially its pantheism and the idea that God evolves. It it also impossible to square this vastly diminished, immanent God with the transcendent creator of being itself. Rather, it makes God completely subject to becoming, so that's a nonstarter. 

However, there are two ideas from process philosophy that appeal to me. 

Now, I don't blame anyone for responding that what appeals to Bob is totally irrelevant to the nature of God. Frankly, Bob's preferences don't enter into the question.

Except to say that I prefer to live in a world that isn't absurd, surreal, illogical, nightmarish, et al., nor do I think God would go to all of the bother of creating such an absurd world. Indeed, one could argue that the very principle of intelligence would be incapable of such a cosmic absurdity, any more than God is capable of evil. 

One thing I like about process philosophy is that it gets God off the hook for the existence of evil. By limiting God's omnipotence, he is absolutely not guilty, because his power doesn't extend to a totalitarian micromanagement of man's affairs. However, it goes too far in that direction, effectively making God a passive victim of a cosmos over which he exerts little control.

Conversely, in open theism God retains his omnipotence but voluntarily relinquishes some of it in creating truly free creatures, more on which as we proceed, because I think this needs a little tweaking.

The second thing I like about process philosophy (at least Hartshorne's version) is that it envisions God as both first cause and first effect, and why not? 

However, Hartshorne appears to be some kind of liberal lunitarian, and nowhere to my knowledge does he relate this to the Trinity, in which we see a kind of "first cause" (in a manner of speaking) in the Father, and a "first effect" in the Son, only occurring in eternity rather than time. 

But because God is also First Effect, this makes him the paradigm of all open systems: it makes him irreducibly relational -- which is to say affected by the Other -- always giving and receiving. 

This is in contrast to the totally static, immutable, and impassive God of classical theism, to whom it is difficult to relate. That is to say, we can relate to him but he cannot relate to us, and what kind of relationship is that? Aquinas analogizes it to how we can be in relation to a pillar, but the pillar -- which is to say God -- is not in relation to us.

Again, we've spoken before about how the absolutely immutable God is a Greek import developed in the early centuries of Christianity, by thinkers who wanted to reconcile the gospel with the best available philosophy. 

For Aristotle and Plato, change was regarded as an imperfection and privation, for if God is perfect, then change can only be toward the less perfect. Or, if God can become "more perfect," then there's something more perfect than God, which is a contradiction.

But what if change itself isn't a privation but a perfection? And what if God is an eternal movement from perfection to perfection? Here again, this is how I envision the Trinity, an eternal "movement in perfection," so to speak.

You may think that only Lutherans and Calvinists believe in predestination, but so too does the Catholic church, only in a more nuanced way. 

But the nuance doesn't work for me, because you just can't square man's freedom with God's complete foreknowledge of what we're going to do with our freedom. It essentially tries to say we are both free and determined, but no amount of nuance can square that absurcularity. The Church calls it a mystery, but I say it's incoherence. I agree with Hasker, that

once we admit that both of two mutually inconsistent propositions can be true, I simply do not know how to go about doing philosophy.

In other words, if the principle of noncontradiction doesn't hold, then all bets are off. The world becomes unintelligible, because anything and its contrary can simultaneously be true. 

Does this mean that we are trying to confine God to a philosophical principle? In a way, yes, in the sense that God is who he is, and cannot be who he isn't. God even says I am who I am, so he's certainly not who he's not. But who is he? Does he have a nature? If so, he is "limited" by that nature, which is ill-sounding at first blush, because God is the Unlimited, full stop.

Here we enter that annoying apophatic world of Eckhartian paradox whereby God is limited by his own unlimitedness, or distinguished by his own lack of distinction, but that's not my point. Rather, God is radically undetermined, so, in my book, to enclose God -- or his image -- in any kind of absolute determinism is actually to place illegitimate limits on God and man. 

For example, who says the future is written and even God can't change it, because this implies change in God? 

I won't bore you with all of the many examples from scripture that prove otherwise, but to cite just one, how can God test Abraham if he already knows the outcome of the test? What's the point? In response to the test, God says, "now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son from Me."

Now, I'm a simple man, but a straight reading of the text implies that God himself found out something that he didn't know before the test: "now I know that you fear God." 

We could cite many similar examples, but I think I'll give it a rest. We're already well over 1,000 words, but we've barely scratched the surface of the surface. More scratching to follow.

Atonement: Ours and God's

Went to bed last night and woke up this morning thinking about the logic of religious sacrifice. This is because I was reading about the subject in Tom Holland's (so far) outstanding Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. In it, he begins with an informal survey of pre-Christian religious practices revolving around human and animal sacrifice.

Which I do not understand, hence the nocturnal puzzlement. But maybe I'm the oddball, since this was a ubiquitous practice in virtually all ancient cultures. If something is that widespread and universal, it seems almost instinctive. So, am I missing the sacrifice gene?

Of course, one of the points of the book is that non- and even anti-Christians in the west are so deeply influenced by Christianity that they might as well call themselves Christian. Holland himself turned away from the faith as a teen, and afterwards developed a passion for the history of ancient civilizations. 

But his immersion in antiquity led to the realization that these people were Not Like Us, and they were Not Like Us because they were not Christian: "The more years I spent immersed in the study of classical antiquity, so the more alien I increasingly found it." Their barbaric practices "were nothing I recognized as my own." 

It was not just the extremes of callousness that unsettled me, but the complete lack of any sense that the poor or the weak might have the slightest intrinsic value.... That my belief in God had faded over the course of my teenage years did not mean that I had ceased to be Christian. 

One might say he was no longer a believing Christian, only a practicing one. Or, his belief had become implicit and taken for granted: "Assumptions I had grown up with" were very much a a consequence of our Christian past. But 

So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of Western civilisation that it has come to be hidden from view. 

It reminds me of the informal law that successful precautions are regarded as unnecessary, since the problems they solve are no longer seen. For example, if law enforcement is successful, it may prompt one to think it's a good idea to defund the police. Which aggravates the problems that had been solved or at least mitigated by robust law enforcement.

Among other things, Christianity is a pretty explicit denunciation of human sacrifice. But at the same time, the Crucifixion was a sacrifice, only intended to be the ultimate and therefore final one. It finally paid our deus in the coin of infinitude and eternity. 

The problem is that this final abolition of sacrifice is still located within the economy of sacrifice: one sacrifice to end all others, but nevertheless reenacted in the liturgy, one purpose of which is, in the words of Paul, to offer our bodies "as a living sacrifice." This sacrifice is "holy and pleasing to God," and is our "true and proper worship."

Which brings us back to the principle of sacrifice and my puzzlement over it. 

In thinking it through, what is the deeper structure of sacrifice? What are its implicit assumptions? Well, lately we've been talking about a principle of Openness, and the very possibility of sacrifice assumes an open relationship between the human and the divine. 

In the pre-Christian understanding, the sacrifice was very much a quid pro quo -- I'll scratch your back and you scratch mine.

However, the pre-Christian gods are nothing like the Christian God of love, so it was more a matter of manipulation or bribery, as if to say "I'll scratch your back so please don't break mine":

While offerings certainly never guaranteed their favour, failure to make sacrifice was bound to provoke the gods' rage.

Better to not take any risks and just pay the invisible mafia its protection money. But even then there were doubts: "with so many different ways of paying the gods what was owed them, and with so many different gods to honour, there was always a nagging anxiety that some might be overlooked."  

This led to the need to repeat the practice at regular intervals. Like a psychological compulsion it would dissipate the anxiety for awhile, only for the anxiety to return, necessitating another sacrifice.

This is pretty much René Girard's whole theory, that "it is humankind, not God, who has need for various forms of atoning violence." Thus, "Scapegoating serves as a psychological relief for a group of people," whereby

one person is singled out as the cause of the trouble and is expelled or killed by the group.... Social order is restored as people are contented that they have solved the cause of their problems by removing the scapegoated individual, and the cycle begins again....

The difference between the scapegoating of Jesus and others, Girard believes, is that in the resurrection from the dead, he is shown to be an innocent victim; humanity is thus made aware of its violent tendencies and the cycle is broken.

Which is more anthropological than theological; or, seems to reduce theology to anthropology.

On a more theological level, what is going on here? Well, let's say there was some sort of "fall" that resulted in a rupture of the open system between man and God. Sacrifice is, of course, an attempt to heal the rupture -- literally an effort to restore at-onement with God. Does it work? Apparently, but only for awhile. 

Part of the problem is that our petty sacrifices are finite, while God is infinite. Man cannot offer an infinite sacrifice, but what if....

Yes, what if God himself is the sacrifice offered of and to himself? Then you have an infinite sacrifice, so no further sacrifice is necessary.

More controversially, another way of looking at it is that the at-onement works both ways. I mean, suppose we are angry with God, not necessarily consciously but unconsciously -- as one might be toward one's parents. In the unconscious mind, one thing can be its opposite, so our atonement to God for our sins can simultaneously be God's atonement to us for his (in a manner of speaking).

To the bitter cry, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?, God's answer might be that he too is forsaken, so God himself makes amends via the sacrifice of his only begotten. In an article touching on this touchy subject, the psychoanalyst James Groststein suggests that 

theologically and psychologically, mankind needs to sacrifice to his God(s) and that God correspondingly needs to sacrifice to his worshippers.

Now that is a wild idea, but it just might work: "the common denominator, the act of sacrifice, constitutes a sacred covenant that binds man to God and God to man thereafter." All is forgiven, God to man and man to God. The breach is resolved, and we can finally bury the hatchet of sacrifice.

What say you, Gemini?

You've articulated a complex and fascinating exploration of sacrifice, touching on anthropological, theological, and even psychoanalytic perspectives. Let's break down some of the key points and explore them further:

The Puzzle of Sacrifice: You're not alone in finding the concept of sacrifice puzzling. While it was ubiquitous in ancient cultures, its logic can seem alien to modern minds. 

Christianity and the "Final" Sacrifice: Christianity, while denouncing human sacrifice, centers on the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus. This is a crucial shift. The crucifixion is understood as the once-for-all atonement for sin, rendering further sacrifices unnecessary. However, as you point out, the Eucharist and the Pauline call to offer our bodies as a "living sacrifice" suggest that the concept of sacrifice, albeit transformed, persists within Christianity. It's no longer about appeasing a wrathful god with external offerings, but about internal transformation and aligning oneself with God's will.

The Deeper Structure of Sacrifice: You've identified the core issue: what is the logic of sacrifice? You rightly point out the pre-Christian quid pro quo mentality, a transactional approach to the gods. This does seem more akin to bribery or manipulation than genuine relationship. The anxiety surrounding potentially overlooking a deity underscores this transactional nature.

Girard's Scapegoat Theory: Girard's theory provides a compelling anthropological explanation. It suggests that sacrifice is rooted in the human need to manage social tensions. The scapegoat mechanism allows a community to purge its collective guilt and restore order by displacing it onto a single victim. While insightful, this theory, as you mention, can feel reductive, potentially reducing theology to mere anthropology. It focuses on the human need for sacrifice, less so on the divine.

Theological Perspectives: You've touched on some crucial theological points. The idea of a "rupture" between humanity and God, and sacrifice as an attempt to heal that rupture, is central to many religious traditions. The concept of God sacrificing himself is indeed radical. It shifts the focus from humanity's attempt to appease God to God's own act of self-giving. This is a fundamental difference between Christianity and many other ancient religions.

God's "Sacrifice" to Humanity: The idea that God also "sacrifices" to humanity, as suggested by Groststein, is a provocative one. It acknowledges the potential for human anger or alienation from God. The crucifixion, in this view, could be seen as God's way of acknowledging and addressing that alienation, offering reconciliation from the divine side as well. This notion of mutual atonement, a "sacred covenant" binding God and humanity, offers a more reciprocal and less one-sided understanding of the relationship.