The Motion in the Ocean of Being

A bold claim about the Angelic Doctor: "His doctrine of God is partially but not fully baptized." I don't even like to go there, and I don't know if I would put it that way, but if the principle of noncontradiction holds -- which it must -- then God is either immutable or he isn't, and that's all there is to it. No fudging.

By the way, the principle of noncontradiction isn't spelled out in scripture. Rather, it's an example of something we work out from our side -- one of those self-evident truths without which there could be no truth. Must it apply to O? Can't God violate it if he wants and do whatever he feels like doing? Isn't he the God of pure Napoleonism, doing

No, because that would be the voluntaristic God of Calvin or Mohammed, one of pure will if not willfulness, impervious to reason, and eating all our steak.  

I doubt if readers are as enthusiastic about my symbols as I am, but let's review: there is natural theology (↗O) and there is supernatural revelation (O↘), but also a complementary relationship between them (↔). 

Someone like Luther would say that (↗O) is worthless if not diabolical, and that all we can know of God is what he reveals to us: to say sola scriptura and sola fide is to say sola (O↘), even if it makes no sense to us and cannot be reconciled with reason.

For us this is a nonstarter. For we have to have some conception of O or we could never speak or know of it at all, even if it were hand delivered to us from God himself. 

But man qua man is always seeking God, or in other words, man has the dynamic form of (↗O), which is why when the shepherd calls, the sheep know his voice; it must sound like God or we couldn't distinguish it from spam.

To put it another way, man is not only the image and likeness of O, but is conformed to it. Nevertheless conformity takes time. I want to say that the time it takes is the timelessness it takes for the Father to generate the Son, but that's getting ahead of ourpost.  

Here at One Cosmos we are all about... one cosmos. What I mean is that we insist that there is a harmonious and fruitful relationship (↔) between (↗O)  and  (O↘). Once we receive the latter then we can apply it to the former and adjust it accordingly.

A classic example of this comes from Thomas himself. Natural theology cannot prove whether or not the universe had a beginning or is eternal. But Thomas accepts from revelation that it did have a beginning. Therefore he adjusts his metaphysic accordingly.

Now, the first thing revelation reveals about God is that he is a Creator, and this too is full of implications. In fact, the next chapter of the book we're looking at is called Creator, and let the flipping commence. Speaking of eternity,

If God-as-Creator is identical to God-as-God, perhaps creation is eternal. On the other hand, if creation is not eternal, it seems God "becomes" Creator...

Leithart asks, "is the doctrine of creation compatible with the belief that God is absolutely simple and unchangeable?" (as maintained by Thomas). More to the point, "Could a simple God create in the way Genesis 1 says God created?"

Here again, this is an example of how we must harmonize our metaphysic via (↔). 

Either a creator is always creating, in which case he will be an actual creator, or he is merely a potential creator until he begins to create. 

Now, scripture tells us nothing about any potential creator. Rather, only about the Creator who creates. It is not as if we can seek some extra-scriptural entity who is the real God behind and above the one revealed to us in scripture.

I suppose we could do that, but that would be an unauthorized use of (↗O) -- as if we can override God with our own conception of him.

In short, idolatry, which is to say, Genesis 3 All Over Again. Back to the critique of Thomas,  

If the Creator is fully actualized in every respect, without any form of potency, and if the Creator is incapable of change, then it seems the world must be eternal and the Creator must create.

But how can this be reconciled with the doctrine that God freely creates -- in other words, that the world is a contingent gift that need not have been given? "In my view, Thomas's efforts to reconcile absolute simplicity and free creation fail." This is what we might call illegitimate (→), which is to say, forcing God into our own conception of how he must roll.

Let's reverse imagineer this cosmos: God wills to create it. But "Can a simple God create?" For a "simple God is always already fully actualized, whether or not creation exists." Thus,

Thomas's doctrine of God cannot get past the first verse of the Bible before slamming into incoherence. Something has gone wrong.

But what?

THE ABSOLUTE RELATIVE.

Thaaaat's right, Petey, that is the orthoparadoxical answer to all our existential questions and ontological conundrums. In fact, it is the subtitle of the next section. Let us dive in.

"God" is a relational term, describing the relation of the Absolute to the world.... it is not enough for God to be Absolute, "self-enclosed and all-exclusive."

Again, how would it be "possible for an absolute, simple, self-contained, immutable God to create?" 

For Leithart, the Absolute "is no more than a conventional placeholder," much like our symbol O. But "the Absolute-relative is the only God with whom we have to do," and "Who God is inevitably follows from the fact that he created." And Genesis "begins with God establishing that relation in the act of creating a world that is other than himself." 

In Scripture, there is no God without interplay with creatures, without a created playground.

Scripture knows nothing at all about a God who might-or-might-not create. Scripture reveals only the God who has in fact created.

Penultimate line: 

A non-Creator is, in the strictest possible sense, a nonentity. God-without creation is an idol. No such God exists, because the only God who is is the God who created... 

Thus,

"Creator" is an inherently relative term. If "Creator" is the first name of God, then our theology must be, from top to bottom, a theology of the related God.

Bottom line, at least for this morning: the Creator himself -- or selves, rather -- "is internally related," and "This internal relationality is the condition of the possibility for creation.... this God is always already related to what is other than himself."

So, not only does God move, he never stops moving. Loose ends will be tied up in the next post.