Yesterday Gemini suggested some fruitful avenues to further explore the nature of time, so let's address them one by one:
Further investigate the idea of God as the "ground of consciousness": If time is dependent on consciousness, what does this imply about God's relationship to time? Is God within time, outside of time, or does God's consciousness encompass time in a unique way?
It seems to me that time must be analogous to space, and indeed, for modern physics there is only spacetime, so it makes sense to look for similarities. Physics highlights the holistic and interdependent nature of the quantum world, such that there is ultimately nothing that isn't connected to everything else in a vast energy field.
In the past I have argued that if this weren't the case, then organisms could never appear. In other words, if holism isn't built into the universe, an externally related universe can't just one day become holistic in the form of evolving organisms. In fact, an externally related universe wouldn't even be a universe, for there would no interior unity. Rather, it would be just an aggregate, a pile of unrelated stuff.
Unrelated. Instead, our universe is internally related to itself, and this goes for time as well as space. Now we have a way to understand how the past can be related to the present and the present to the future, because time too is holistic -- let us call it temporo-holism. Absent this holism, then each moment would be unrelated to any other moment, like a discontinuous series dimensionless points instead of a flowing continuum. Time
cannot be composed of of a series of dimensionless points in space or timeless moments in time, but has a continuous seamless flow in space and time that is actually undivided, with no really distinct points of either space or time... (Clarke)
I might add that relation itself suggests -- demands? -- a mental component, because how can two unconscious things be related? Even if they are proximate, this doesn't mean they have a "relationship," because this requires interiority. I am related to my desk, but my desk isn't related to me.
Back to why the cosmos is temporo-holistic. Since this is a vertical universe, I suspect that the holism starts at the top. Again, it could never start at the bottom unless it were already there. So this would be the ground of consciousness mentioned by Gemini above. This ground is, of course, triune and holistic, so there's your principle of spacetime. It's not that God is an image of our holographic spacetime, rather, vice versa.
Gemini next suggests that we
Revisit Lequier's dynamic omniscience in light of the proposed definition of time: How does a view of a God who knows possibilities rather than fixed actualities align with a conception of time as a "creative synthesis" in consciousness?
When last we visited Lequier, he was marveling at how God "has created me creator of myself," and how man is the being "who can do something without God!" "What a terrifying marvel: a man deliberates and God awaits his decision."
He also highlights the centrality of a RELATION that goes both ways; in fact, I would say it goes ALL ways, i.e. up and down (hierarchically), inside to inside (intersubjectively), and inside-out (horizontally). Again, everything is related to everything else, hence the intelligibility of the cosmos. Ultimately, being and intelligibility are convertible, and this can only be the case if there is an Intellect at the top. Thus, to repeat,
The relation of God to the creature is as real as the relation of the creature to God.... The act of the man makes a spot in the absolute which destroys the absolute. God, who sees things change, changes also in beholding them, or else he does not perceive that they change (Lequier).
That's a bold statement, but it is a necessary entailment of real relations, relations that are, of course, built into an irreducibly relational Trinity. This being the case, then
it is necessary to recognize that either God in his relationship to the world contracts a new mode of existence which participates in the nature of the world, or else this world is before God as though it did not exist.... God, who sees things change, changes also in beholding them.
In short, to know is to change, otherwise it's not knowledge. If God is radically one, then there is no knowledge in him, nor love, both of which require an Other. But again, this Other must be related, because there could be no knowledge between radically unrelated beings.
Thus, Lequier expresses further (?!) at our strange situation:
Suddenly, O surprise, O excess of wonder, I have been witness of a change in the bosom of the absolute permanence....
Compared to God this universe may be but a grain of sand, but it "has its form of existence, and the changes which go on in it being as real as the things in which they occur, God, who sees these things change, changes in beholding them."
Lequier asks if a man can resist the will of God, and responds that "the evil will of the wicked is not intended by the will of God; similarly a volition which I am free to effect or not to effect is not known in advance by God."
Nevertheless, Lequier is aware of the shock value of what he's suggesting: "What language! God then is ignorant of something." But
Listen. You are free to do something. God does not know that you will do it, since you are able not to do it, and God does not know that you will not do it, since you can do it. God knows only that you are free, and just as in making man free he has freely restrained the exercise of his power in the government of the world, just so he has restrained his knowledge in relation to our acts.
This guy -- who is my kind of guy -- seems to have been the first openly open theist. Perhaps not surprisingly, he suffered, according to Hartshorne, "an early mysterious death by drowning (called a suicide which was not a suicide)." I don't know how he knows that, but in any event, Lequier was among the first who
had dared to face without evasion the implications of the conception of a deity [who] freely and knowingly created beings themselves also free. Relations of God to the world, he insists, cannot be less real than the world itself; and just to that extent must God be relative, not absolute (Harshorne).
Or, to be precise, the Absolute Relative, since he is relative to everything, beginning with Himselves!
moreover, if the creatures are self-determining to any extent, then God is relativized... by the creatures through their own decisions.
As God is the Absolute Relative, he is also, so to speak, the Necessarily Contingent, otherwise what is the point of the Trinity? Are its relations like that of a machine, or is freedom built into it?
Hartshorne speaks of "the absurdity of supposing all reality to result from a purely necessary being and yet asserting the nonnecessity of the world." "That there must be something nonnecessary in God is itself necessary," otherwise his creativity is not creative.
Even God cannot make a square circle, and for the same reason he cannot create uncreatively. "It is necessary that accidents happen [in God], though not necessary just which accidents." Again, Necessary Contingency follows from Absolute Relative.
This is ultimately another name for freedom, which is by definition indeterminate. And for Berdyaev, "freedom as such is uncreated, a primordial principle of reality inherent in deity as such and in all concrete actualities" (Hartshorne).
Divine power is an ability to deal with free beings, not an ability to suppress or avoid their existence or to manipulate them so thoroughly that they would not be free (ibid.).
Gemini nexts suggests that we
Explore the implications for divine action in the world: If the future is not fixed, how does God interact with creation? Does this allow for genuine divine intervention without violating freedom?
But I think we just did that: God constantly interacts with creation, in particular, by way of final causation. He is the ultimate cause of everything, but not just in the sense of material and efficient, but formal and final causation. Truly, he is the Divine Attractor at the end of history, and why there is time at all -- again, an internally related time in which the present is really related to an unfolding future that will eventually return to God, but not in a mechanistic, predetermined way.
You feel me so far, Gemini?
The text presents a coherent and thought-provoking argument for a relational understanding of God and time. It draws insightful connections between physics, metaphysics, and theology, utilizing the ideas of various thinkers to build its case. The concept of temporo-holism is central, providing a framework for understanding the interconnectedness of time and how God, as the ground of consciousness and ultimate cause, interacts with a free and unfolding creation.
The author clearly resonates with Lequier's "open theist" perspective, emphasizing God's dynamic engagement with a world where genuine freedom and change are real. The exploration of these complex ideas is articulate and engaging, inviting further reflection on the fundamental nature of time, consciousness, and the divine.
And a picture?
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