A God Who Believes in Me

What is difficult is not to believe in God, but to believe we are important to Him. --Dávila

On the one hand,

Only the theocentric vision does not end up reducing man to absolute insignificance.

On the other, certain theological visions absolutely reduce man to absolute insignificance. Just because you believe in God, it doesn't mean God believes in you.

I believe in a God who believes in me. After all, it's only fair. It's called reciprocity:

If we believe in God we should not say, "I believe in God," but rather, "God believes in me."

Conversely, 

He who does not believe in God can at least have the decency of not believing in himself. 

My point is, God and man are complementary. Of course, in all complementarities one is more primordial, in this case God. But God is the very Principle of individuality and personhood. And this Principle is itself substance-in-relation, meaning that irreducible Otherness is woven into the very substance of the Godhead.

For which reason it is also woven into us, in that we too are intersubjective persons, i.e., members of one another. If God is a person(s), then

That which is not a person is not finally anything. 

Or, one might say that a thing that doesn't reflect the Trinity isn't actually anything. It is not even a thing, since every thing in the cosmos is potentially related to the intellect, in other words, is intelligible. An unintelligible thing isn't anything. It doesn't exist. To say existence is to say intelligibility-to-intellect. The "to" is the relational link between terms.

As mentioned above, there are theological visions that reduce man to absolute insignificance -- which, in my book, makes them "untheological," in that they begin with a false premise of God. I'm thinking in particular of any form of radical determinism or predestination. Nor do I care if predestination is the orthodox view. 

Indeed, if predestination were true, then we could never actually know it, because truth is predicated on freedom. If we are predestined to know what we know, then we are machines, not persons. The same is true, of course, for a scientistic determinism: if it's true, it's false.

So, we are not determined. Nor is God, if I may be so bold. I say this on trinitarian grounds, for the Father gives himself entirely over to the Son, but if this is just a mechanical process, what's the point? If the Son isn't truly Other, then it's just another way of saying the Father is the Father by another name. It reduces the Trinity to a tautology.

Two contradictory philosophical theses complete each other, but only God knows how.

In this case, the contradictory theses are self and other. But the contradiction disappears if we see them as irreducibly complementary: no other, no self, and vice versa.

Now, I say Creation as such bears the stamp of this primordial complementarity. With Creation God creates another kind of Other, only situated in time instead of timelessness. 

And with the Incarnation, God intimately shares his own timeless being with our timebound being: the vertical becomes horizontal, so to speak. Just as the Father pours himself into the Son, the Son pours himself without reservation into human nature, which is to say, all the way down, even into suffering and death itself. 

Here again, if it's all inevitable, what's the point and where is the merit? Supposing a machine functions as it is supposed to, we don't ascribe merit to it.  

So, yesterday a book fell into my hands, called God in an Open Universe: Science, Metaphysics, and Open Theism, and I am pleased to report that there are others who share my suspicions about the nature of God. We no doubt differ in some of the details, but we do share a vision of the big picture -- which is to say that this is an open cosmos, and it is open because God himself is open. Again, God is not analogous to a causally closed machine, but to persons. Or, to be perfectly accurate, our personhood is analogous to his. 

Opponents will say this places limits on God. Which is correct as far as it goes, but it is more a case of God placing limits on himself, so to speak. In other words, he allows for the genuine autonomy and freedom of created persons, and of the creation more generally. 

Is this wrong? Is this frowned upon? Eh, I don't care, because again, I believe in a God who believes in me. If I'm just a mechanical appendage of God, then my beliefs don't even enter the equation. I'm just believing what I've been predestined to believe from time immemorial. But that's not my style.

Open theism is a style of theology whose fundamental commitment is to the relational character of God.

And this relational God has created a universe that includes creatures "with life, consciousness, and even with rationality and the desire and capacity to experience God and to relate to him" in return. 

Moreover, "having created such a universe, God is not indifferent or remote from it," but "involves himself in the lives of his creatures." You can say that God is still the "Unmoved Mover" if you like, but this can only be understood by way of its complement, which is to say "Most Moved Mover." Likewise, if God is First Cause, he is also always First Effect.

Here again, I suspect all of this is inscripted, so to speak, in the trinitarian Godhead: the Father gives to the Son and the Son gives back in the Spirit to the Father. I call this movement and effect, only in a preeminent manner. 

The larger point is that we -- let alone the Son --

are not mere puppets or automata, carrying out a divine plan which in every detail has been scripted for them in advance.

Which is not to say there is no plan. There's definitely a plan, except we genuinely, which is to say freely, participate in it. Free means free. If not, then I fail to see the point, or even the possibility of a point. 

Controversial entailments follow, but if the premise is true, there's nothing we can do about it. For example, 

if humans are to be genuinely free and self-determining, then the future itself must be "open" in the sense of containing genuine alternative possibilities -- different ways that things can turn out, depending on the different ways in which humans can choose to shape their own lives.

We can still say Thy will be done, and indeed, what is the point of saying it if it is done inevitably anyway? God still retains control of the outcome, and his will "will not in the end be thwarted." Thus, "The future is not open in an absolute, unqualified sense." It's just that the future -- not to mention the present -- is not identical to the past, which is to say, already determined ahead of time for all time. If the future is as set in stone as the past, then this reduces time to a nasty and pointless illusion.

God is still omniscient, in that he knows all the infinite possibilities -- which, in a way, is more impressive than just knowing the one inevitable outcome. And knowing us as he does, he no doubt has a pretty good idea of what we're going to do. 

Nevertheless, he he still grants us our genuine freedom, indeterminacy, and openness to the future. For me, this is actually a bigger God than the traditional one that micromanages everything -- just as it's the bigger and more magnanimous person who isn't a petty control freak.

I suppose this makes God more of a macromanager, and why not?

Macromanagement is a style of leadership that is hands-off or from afar, allowing employees to have more freedom and control over their own work.... Managers step back and give employees the freedom to do their job as they see fit, as long as the desired result is achieved.

Of course,  

The downside of macromanagement includes a potential disconnect between manager and employees.

A rupture. A fall, so to speak. 

To be continued...