Dwelling on the Fringes of Eternity

As usual. 

The annoying part is that I misplaced the book we were discussing -- The Openness of Being -- and I don't have a backup plan. It's not that big of a house, so I am prepared to believe that Satan himself has hidden it from me.

Let's not get carried away.

Maybe, but I'm looking it up anyway. Here, chapter 8:III:C, p. 257: Oppression Related to Work, Finances and Property.

Since demons can affect people's perceptions as well as influence physical things, they can cause damage to one's work or job, finances, or even property.

Oh? Please continue.

They can cause loss or damage to property.

Okay, but how can we tell?

demons are essentially thieves and human beings are those who own the exterior goods.... it is necessary to communicate to the demon that is afflicting the particular external goods that those goods by right belong to [us] and not the demon. Then he must command the demon to depart since he has no right over these exterior goods.

DEMON DEPART FROM ME BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO THAT BOOK!

At times, the demon does not necessarily depart immediately, but as long as a person is persistent, in most cases the demons will leave the exterior goods alone.

GET BEHIND ME, DEMON, AND GIVE ME BACK MY BOOK! READER(S) ARE WAITING, AND WE DON'T HAVE ALL MORNING!

Found it. Don't ask.

Back to our coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. Whitehead apparently couldn't make the leap to a God transcending the eternal process of the universe, but rather, saw God as a consequence of Creativity. It reminds me of the old joke about asking the process philosopher if God exists: Yes, but not yet.  

Nevertheless, in positing creativity as the ultimate principle, he's on to something. In the past, we've discussed how, based upon scripture, this is the very first thing we know of God: In the beginning, God created.... 

But that's just one way of translating the passage, For example, 

What are the very first words of the Bible? Everyone knows that: In the beginning God created.... But for the Zohar, which insists on interpreting the original Hebrew words in their precise order, the verse means something radically different: With beginning, It [Ein Sof] created God (Matt).

Which comes close to what Whitehead is saying -- as if God is a consequence of some sort of primordial creative principle. But God, who is necessary being, cannot be an accident of creativity... unless. 

Unless what?

Unless I consult an essay by Norris Clarke called A New Look at the Immutability of God, which I discussed in a previous post and will republish below: 

Mutability... in the Aristotelian metaphysics of change, necessarily involves imperfection. 

But what if change is a perfection? Or rather, what if it can be construed in such a way that there is something analogous to change in God? 

Recall that the analogy of being means that our similarities to God are always dwarfed by the dissimilarities, since He is infinite and we're not. So we can say that everything and anything is a more or less distant reflection of the Creator, but we cannot turn this around and say that God is limited by these analogies, for this would merely be a projection of our own finite categories. 

You get it. The point is that since God is a person, and a relationship of persons, and therefore interpersonal, this cannot imply "the unqualified immutability in all domains which seems to have been the ideal of the classical Greek mind" -- as if God is a static object. Rather, 

the immutability which must be affirmed of God is the unchanging, indefectible steadfastness of an infinite plenitude of goodness and loving benevolence, but a benevolence which also expresses itself in a process, a progressive unfolding of mutual interpersonal relationships, spread out in real temporal succession at our receiving end... in terms of which he is truly related to us....

I think of it this way: the very Principle of "time," of "change," and of perfection is located in the non-distant "distance" or "gap" between the First and Second persons. How to put it....

This is from another book, The Philosophical Approach to God: "God is the supremely perfect Being, surpassed by no other, yet constantly surpassing Himself, as He both gives and receives" -- both to and from the world, as the Father gives to, and receives from, the Son. This latter is the Principle of -- in my opinion -- time, change, and relation: "To receive love as a person"

is not at all an imperfection, but precisely a dimension of the perfection of personal being as lovingly responsive. What remains fixed as the constant point of reference in our concept of God is Infinite Perfection. 

"Perfect change," not from the imperfect to perfect, but rather, "from perfection to perfection," so to speak. Which shouldn't be any more difficult to reconcile than a strict monotheism in three persons, and indeed, this is the whole durn point of the Trinity:

God's "receiving" from us, being delighted at our response to His love, is really His original delight at sharing with us in His eternal Now His own original power of loving and infinite goodness which has come back to him in return.  

Again, it is only an analogy, but "God is not only the universe's great Giver, but also thereby its great Appreciator, its great Receiver" -- in a qualified way and a manner of speaking, and with all due yada yada.