The System of God

Talking about process philosophy is an exercise in gnostaliga for me, because this was the subject of my doctoral dissertation, which in part tried to reconcile developmental psychology with Prigogine's theory of dissipative structures. Now I'm wondering if the latter could also be reconciled with spiritual development. 

First let's skim to see if anything has changed with regard to the science of dissipative structures over the past 35 years. Yada yada,

A dissipative system is a thermodynamically open system which is operating out of, and often far from, thermodynamic equilibrium in an environment with which it exchanges energy and matter....

Back in the day, I understood it to be matter, energy, and/or information -- for example, the system of the economy, which is one big exchange of information centering around price signals.

If we're talking about far-from-equilibrium conditions, I suppose the conditions don't get further than Creator and creation, or man and God, finite and infinite, absolute and relative. However, at the very least, the vertical ingression (↓) of grace -- or something like it, e.g., shakti, shekinah, barakha, etc. -- implies  an open system between these terms.  

Or, more experience-near are the ubiquitous phenomena of truth and beauty to which man is always properly open. Likewise, when we understand something it is because we abstract the form from the matter -- in other words, the intellect qua intellect is open to the abstract essences that in-form it.

In the Orthodox east they talk about the distinction between God's essence and energies, the latter available to us herebelow.

It's hard to think of a more concrete example of vertical exchange than communion. Prayer too presumes an open system between man and God. In fact, all of the sacraments are vehicles of grace, therefore presupposing an open cosmos. 

We might also compare the tension between immanence and transcendence to the far-from-equilibrium conditions necessary for a dissipative system. Collapsing this disequilibrium kills the system. This is what Voegelin calls CLOSED EXISTENCE or CLOSURE:

the mode of existence in which there are internal impediments to a free flow of truth into consciousness and to the pull of the transcendental. Contrasts with "open existence."

So man is quite literally an open system, open to truth, love, beauty, unity, in a word, transcendence. 

Now, the Trinity is -- in a manner of speaking -- a sort of open system, is it not? Bracken touches on this, writing, for example, that "the essence or nature of God is not in the first place an entity but an activity," i.e., perichoresis. 

It seems to me that it is also analogous to the particle/field complementarity in physics, such that the Persons are the "particles," the shared substance the "field," two complementary sides of a single reality. One can also discern a kind of discontinuity-within-continuity, i.e., the Persons are distinct but not separate. 

For our purposes, 

if the Trinity is a community of divine persons, then the Trinity is a relational reality with the consequence that creation as made in the image of God is constituted by finite entities in dynamic interrelation.

And why not? As above, so below. 

I suppose this would be the last word in vertical openness:

human beings who attain close personal union with God retain their finite identity as creatures even as they enter into an I-Thou relation with the three divine persons.

In conclusion,

The triune God as the all-comprehensive system of the divine communitarian life is both the transcendent origin and ultimate goal of the cosmic process as a vast network of dynamically interrelated and hierarchically ordered finite systems whose progressive growth in order and complexity began with the Big Bang and will ultimately end with full incorporation into the divine life.

Works for me.