Teleology, Modified Omnipotence, and the Open Cosmos

Yesterday's post touched on an irreducible principle of openness in the cosmos. Perhaps this shouldn't be surprising if the cosmos itself is open to something transcending it. Which it either is or isn't. But supposing it isn't, then nothing makes sense.

Literally, since sense -- i.e., meaning -- is only possible if something refers to something else. Now, in this cosmos, literally everything refers to something else. 

For example, take quantum physics. Turns out that every little itsy, no matter how bitsy, is interrelated and entangled with the whole, which prompted Whitehead's remark that "Biology is the study of the larger organisms; whereas physics is the study of the smaller organisms."

This being the case, cosmology must be the study of the largest organism this side of God. By which we do not mean some form of animism, rather, that the cosmos has features of organicity, which include wholeness, interiority, and openness. And if this weren't the case, then biology as such would be strictly impossible. It could never get off the otherwise sterile ground.

In other words, there is no way to account for the features of living organisms if they aren't' already implicitly present in the ground of being. 

For example, if the ultimate basis of the world were radically separate and externally related atoms, there would be no way for them to subsequently develop interiority and part-to-whole interrelation. This would be like expecting billiard balls to spontaneously become interior to themselves and begin relating to one another. 

No, it's organicity all the way down. And up. Where Whitehead goes off the rails is situating God within this organismic process instead of transcendent to it. 

Which does not mean God isn't "in process," so to speak, for what is the Trinity but an eternal dance, i.e., perichoresis? 

As we said yesterday, the Godhead shares all of the features of a living organism, including interiority, openness, relationality, intelligence, verticality, freedom, and creativity. None of these features just pop into the cosmos out of nowhere. Rather, they are sown into the very ground of reality. Again, if they weren't already here, they could never "evolve" into existence.

Darwinism, for example, just assumes the existence of living things. How they got here, no one knows. But they certainly couldn't have gotten here in the absence of wholeness, interior relations, and openness.

So anyway, I've been dabbling with what is called open theism, or rather, have come to find out there is a name for what I already believe. And what I believe is that God himself is not only open, but cannot not be open. Which implies that the cosmos isn't only open to God, but -- this is the controversial part -- vice versa.

We've actually discussed this in the past -- the idea that an utterly immutable and unrelated God is a Greek import, and certainly not something implied in scripture, which, for example, often depicts God as reacting to his own creation. The immutable God crowd will say that these are crude anthropomorphisms, but we're not the ones who anthropomorphize God, rather, God who anthropomorphizes us.

In other words, God is a person, or rather, persons, which again implies openness and relationality. Now, we are persons made in his image, which is to say persons, period. Which is precisely why we too are irreducibly open, intersubjective, and relational.

Fun fact: yesterday I read an article that touches on the "big five" personality traits, one of which is openness. Everyone is at least a little bit open, but it turns out that the most open are musicians and artists. Which surprises me not one bit, since what is art but open and creative engagement with the transcendent? Where do you think all the creativity comes from? From below?

Sometimes. Maybe you didn't see the Grammys.

Now, "mystic" -- that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. It's not an occupation, although it is a calling. For me it's a pre-occupatition, since I'm just built this way. It's also an a-vocation, since no one's going to pay you for doing nothing, dude. But the mystic is the most radically open of all, even more so than the artist. In fact, if you combine artistry and mysticism, then you've really got something -- a Bach or Coltrane or Arvo Pärt or Van Morrison. 

Yesterday I began reading a book on mysticism called Logos and Revelation, which says that "in order to be conformed to pure being or existence, we must be completely open to its revealed character" (emboldenment mine). However, humans can "become enclosed in and attached to their own finite subjectivity," or "stuck" in "our created concepts about being or beings." 

For both Eckhart and Ibn 'Arabi, the point "is to destabilize and de-center the self, for only then can the human being become open to truth as such" (my boldness again). 

Or you could say restabilize and recenter, in the sense that man tends to live on the periphery of being, far from Celestial Central. But the mystic's stability is a kind of "metastability" that is a feature of all dynamic systems, which have to change in order not to. Much like the Trinity, come to think of it. 

Now, as alluded to above, everything in this cosmos refers to something or someone else, hence the possibility of meaning. What about human life. Does it have meaning? Only if it refers to something transcendent to itself. Otherwise we are sealed in immanence and tautology.

But it turns out we are sealed -- or unsealed rather -- in teleology. This is because we are situated between immanence and transcendence. We never actually arrive at the latter, but that's our proper direction, our true north. Vertically speaking, it is "up," and why there's even an up to begin with. Here again, teleology isn't something that could just magically appear in the cosmos if it weren't already here.

In open theism, this is how God rolls, or exerts his influence herebelow. Rather than determining everything in a mechanistic way, he genuinely bestows upon human beings in particular a

power to make decisions of their own, including decisions as to whether or not to cooperate with God's loving purposes toward them (Hasker).

For example, what could Genesis 3 possibly mean if Adam were foreordained and absolutely determined by God to be naughty? Obviously, that would be on God. It would frankly be insane -- and certainly unjust -- to blame Adam for what God caused him to do.

In open theism, God surely could have caused Adam to fall. But again, he chooses to give us freedom. Or maybe it's not even a choice, but rather, simply an artifact of creating persons in his own image and likeness -- which is to say, open and therefore free.

Yes, Paul? Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Boom. Maybe a good place to pause...