Celestial Infinitude and Divine Freedom

Down here, folks somewhat crudely divide reality into two broad dimensions, which is to say, down here and up there, or earth and heaven, immanent and transcendent, material and spiritual, profane and sacred,  terrestrial and celestial, etc. 

But who's to say the latter terms of these antinomies are simple and formless? What if they themselves contain distinctions and/or degrees? After all, In my father's house there are many mansions, and maybe they're not all in the same zip code. For example, purgatory is neither here nor there, but a distinct "degree of reality" or something. Saints don't live there. Only future saints, so it must include a time dimension as well.

But Christians should be accustomed to not thinking of God as a unitary monad, i.e., a blob with no distinctions. God has revealed his triune nature, but who says that's the only distinction? Perhaps there are others, but they aren't things the average believer needs to know about.

Jews, because of their radical monotheism, reject any talk of a celestial One-in-Three. And yet, as touched on yesterday, the Kabbalah makes even more outlandish claims of distinctions in God, e.g., between the absolute nothingness from which even infinity emerges, and the infinite potential of God before manifestation. Sounds like "two Gods," but for a Jew, this can't be. Therefore, it must be two sides of the one God. 

"Absolute nothing" and "infinite potential." Hmm. Why don't we just shorten these to Absolute and Infinite? In addition to the "horizontal" relations of the Trinity, this would imply "vertical" relations; just as Father and Son are complementary, so too are Absolute and Infinite. 

In fact, if not for Infinitude, the Absolute would indeed be a self-enclosed and immutable monad incapable of radiating -- of communicating -- outside itself. Apparently, Infinitude implies a principle of "otherness," analogous to the rays of the sun. It is completely arbitrary to assign a boundary to the sun and say we are literally "outside" it. In fact, we're always inside and outside it, depending upon our perspective. 

For Schuon, our intellect is conformed to the Absolute and indeed proof of the Absolute, as rays are self-evident proof of the sun. 

Now, Eckhart said the intellect is uncreated and uncreatable. Here he is not speaking of the lower intellect that senses and reasons about things herebelow, but a higher or deeper faculty that he likens to the divine spark or hidden ground of the human being. 

And I suppose you could say that the source of this spark is the Divine Fire itself, again, analogous to the sun and its rays, so, not exactly God, but not not God either, rather, a fragment of the divine essence that is present within the soul. Come to think of it, it is like a bit of the Absolute radiated and planted -- because of the divine Infinitude -- into our own ground. 

But why? Because, as Oldmeadow points out, "The Absolute is necessarily infinite Possibility, thus including the necessity of universal Manifestation." Which I think provides the esoteric wedge into which we may fit open theology, since the infinite possibility that is "built in" to the Absolute is impossible to reconcile with changelessness. 

Not only is possibility not necessity, it must be the principle of both divine freedom and of divine creativity. Conversely, absolute necessity could by definition never create -- whether applied to God or to us. Schuon goes so far as to suggest that

The relationship "God-world," "Creator-creature," "Principle-manifestation" would be inconceivable were it not prefigured in God, independently of any question of creation.

I'm picturing the absolute-infinitude scattering sparks of divinity everywhere and everywhen. Thus, for Schuon, "The separation between man and God is at one and the same time absolute and relative":

The separation is absolute because God alone is real, and no continuity is possible between nothingness and Reality, but the separation is relative -- or rather "non-absolute" -- because nothing is outside God. 

Now, just as Absolute entails Infinitude, I would say that freedom implies contingency, and ultimately for the same reason. Which, according to Rice.

creates a tremendous problem for the traditional concept of divine foreknowledge, because foreknowledge and freedom are utterly incompatible.... If God has absolute knowledge of future events, those events must have been planned by him, and that makes him responsible for everything that happens.

This is essentially a vision of God that makes him Absolute but strips him of his complementary Infinitude. Now what is in-finitude but in-definite and therefore not determined ahead of time? "Far from diminishing God," "this concept of divine knowledge enhances our view of God," for

It takes a far greater being to run a universe that involves changes not known in advance than one that has no unexpected occurrences. 

In other words, it takes a bigger Absolute to encompass Infinitude. But I suppose it comes down to a matter of temperament and preference. In my case, I can't help believing in genuine free will. Even if God didn't make me free, he sure made me someone who believes in freedom and contingency -- ours and his.