I mentioned a couple of posts ago that the theologian W. Norris Clarke often takes positions that reflect what I think, but thought I was the only one.
I'm just flipping through the remainder of The Philosophical Approach to God, and here is an example that goes to the problem of omnipotence which most Christians don't seem to find problematic, but really bugs me. Doesn't mean I'm right, only that I am bugged.
Clarke suggests that God really and truly gives us "a share in his own power" -- the mysterious power of free will -- such that we "determine the use to which this power is put, even to use it against the express conditional will of God (= sin)."
This "free self-limitation of God's exercise of His own unlimited power" solves at least two of my big problems, 1) the otherwise inexplicable but self-evident existence of free will, and 2) of God's responsibility for literally everything, including evil.
There are Christians who will say that anything that happens is a result of God's Plan, but -- no offense -- some plan. Why blame him for our own stupid dreams and schemes?
The point is that God can still have a plan, but that he has given man the power to mess up the plan. The following extended passage is another example of my thoughts in Clarke's words: "All that an orthodox Christian"
must hold today with respect to predestination is that God determines the general set of goals He wishes to achieve, the goals at which He aims the universe, and knows that in general He will be able to achieve by his suasive power, but does not determine ahead of time in detail whether or how each particular creature will achieve its share or not in this overall goal.
I can live with that. Problem solved. I am no longer bugged. The Cosmos is not a pre-written classical composition, rather, jazz, baby:
Divine providence unfolds by constant instantaneous "improvisation" of the divine mind and will -- from His always contemporaneous eternal now -- precisely to fit the actual ongoing activities, especially the free ones, of the creaturely players in the world drama.
Couldn't have said it better. As suggested a few post back, the immanent Trinity is much like a jazz trio, and why not? If the Father knows exactly what the Son will play, what's the point?
God does not "foresee," from His point of view, anything: He only sees what is going on, and acts accordingly. In a word, predestination does not and should not imply total predetermination. It leaves a large dose of indetermination, to be made determinate -- not ahead of time, independently, but only contemporaneous with the actual ongoing development of the world.
Otherwise it's not jazz, it's a cosmic muzak that could be produced by a machine. But God is no more a machine than is man, and for the same reason.
Back to Gödel for a moment, he proved that, whatever our minds are, they cannot be machines, i.e., formal system reducible to mathematical knowledge. We cannot be "thinking machines":
the mind, being in fact "alive," can always go one better than any formal, ossified, dead system can. Thanks to Gödel's theorem, the mind always has the last word (in Goldstein).
A trinitarian metaphysic has certain extremely important entailments, otherwise -- truly truly -- why bother? If it's just a radical monism in disguise, then Christianity has added nothing fundamentally new to our understanding of how God rolls.
Another thing that bugs me -- as you know -- is how this squares with the radical immutability of God. The next chapter addresses this problem, which again, doesn't seem problematic to most Christians.
In this chapter Clarke critiques Whitehead's process philosophy, which I agree goes too far in the other direction, equating God with pure change, so to speak: as the old gag goes, ask a process philosopher if God exists, and the answer is Yes, but not yet.
That can't be right, so how to reconcile change and changelessness?
[O]ur metaphysics of God must certainly allow us to say that in some real and genuine way God is affected positively by what we do.
After all, if we can receive love and knowledge and God can't, this would seem to imply that we have a perfection that God lacks. Clarke suggests that
God's "receiving" from us, being delighted at our response to His love, is really His original delight in sharing with us in His eternal Now His own original power of loving and infinite goodness which has come back to him in return.
Is it going Too Far to say that "God is not only the universe's great Giver, but also thereby its great Appreciator, its great Receiver?"
This was essentially Hartshorne's position -- that God is both ultimate cause and ultimate effect. Curiously, he doesn't ground this in the Trinity, but the first thing that occurs to me is that the Son is a kind of eternal and "ultimate effect" (and relation) of the Father.
Is this wrong? Is this sort of thing frowned upon? Because I have another book by Clarke called The One and the Many, and it says that God
might be said -- in an at first perhaps shocking, but to me illuminating metaphor -- to be the Great Jazz Player, improvising creatively as history unfolds....
The complete script of our lives is not written anywhere ahead of time, before it happens, but only as it actually happens, by God and ourselves working it out together in our actual ongoing now's.
Problem solved. In another essay, he writes the following, which is pretty much my favorite meta-idea:
God as the ultimate One now appears as both the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, at once the Source and the Goal of the restless dynamism of all of nature, of all finite beings.
The structure of this "total journey" is "in the form of a circle," the Great Circle of Being, whereby
In the emergence of creatures from their first source is revealed a kind of circular movement, in which all things return, as to their end, back to the very place from which they had their origin in the first place (Thomas, in Clarke).
Having said that, the completion of the Great circle still "needs a mediator that can take it up into itself and somehow carry it back Home with itself," AKA the accomplice -- or straight arrow, as it were -- alluded to in yesterday's post. Indeed, one who will even go to hell and back in order to complete the circle.
3 comments:
He will be able to achieve by his suasive power, but does not determine ahead of time in detail whether or how each particular creature will achieve its share or not in this overall goal.
Explains beautifully The Man's observation that it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!
In other words, somebody somewhere was going to have the absolute audacity to sell Christ to the authorities, but Judas was absolutely responsible for the choices he made.
"Having said that, the completion of the Great circle still "needs a mediator that can take it up into itself and somehow carry it back Home with itself," AKA the accomplice -- or straight arrow, as it were -- alluded to in yesterday's post. Indeed, one who will even go to hell and back in order to complete the circle."
Indeed, Happy Easter eve (joebiden not withstanding).
Hello Dr. Godwin, Julie, Van, and readers unseen: Let us rejoice, for Jesus lives.
The post reads in part "As suggested a few post back, the immanent Trinity is much like a jazz trio, and why not? If the Father knows exactly what the Son will play, what's the point?"
I like the way this post lays a number of vexing points to rest, namely how free will works, and how events can be improvisational and therefore unknown a-priori.
However, there is a black swan in the mix which cannot be dismissed. Jesus well knew the future before it happened, down to the provision of the animal Jesus rode into Jerusalem, aa place to have the last supper, and how he would be betrayed and by whom; down to the last detail. This is documented unambiguously in the Gospels. No metaphors here. Jesus flat out knew the future, in depth and in detail.
One has cause to say the Father knew precisely what and how the Son would play one Thursday so long ago.
Now, one can say this was an exception to the general rule. But amen, I tell you, Jesus is not the only one to possess such foresight. Do not make me say how I know this.
Therefore I ask you to consider again, is the cosmic play improvised as it goes along, to the surprised delight of God the receiver? Or perhaps some of the time it is thus, with other parts of the play with more fixity?
So then, is nature of free will entirely solved to everyone's satisfaction?
There I leave it with the panel.
Love from someone far far away, long long ago.
Post a Comment