The River of Time Flows into the Ocean of Divinity

I thought yesterday's post had a strong finish, even if Gemini was the closer: You are using logic as a fence, not a cage.

What's the difference?

I'm not sure, but let's think about it: a fence is a boundary, and without boundaries there can be no order. Logic is a kind of boundary we use to establish coherent -- which is to say, ordered -- thought. However, in the ultimate sense logic is more "negative" than "positive," in that it is better at excluding what cannot be than telling us what is, if only because there is no logical means to furnish the premises it operates on.

Thus, logic is used to keep out the cognitive riffraff -- to exclude contradictions and absurdities. For example, as mentioned in yesterday's post, logic can affirm that God has a nature which cannot not be itself, even if it cannot encompass that nature. 

So, here again, logic is better at excluding "impossible Gods" than describing actual ones.

"Ones"? By definition there can be only one.

Ah, my discarnate friend, but look what you just did there: you equated God to oneness, thereby affirming one of the things God cannot be, which is to say, multiple. Does this mean you have thereby caged God within human logic, or have you merely created a fence -- a proper boundary -- to help think about him? 

More particularly -- and controversially -- Hartshorne fences out the idea of an omnipotent God whose power is so absolute that it negates the very existence of genuine creaturely freedom, for even God cannot create what amounts to a square circle of "unfree freedom." The fence at once preserves both God's freedom and ours. This is getting ahead of ourselves, but we agree with the Aphorist that

The free act is only conceivable in a created universe. In the universe that results from a free act. 

For what is freedom, really? That is a rather, Big Question which we'll get into as we proceed. But just speaking logically, is it even conceivable that determinism or absolute necessity could be reconciled with freedom? Here again, freedom must be a function of potency, which is per se indeterminate, like Aristotle's prime matter, or even quantum indeterminacy. 

But a universe of pure indeterminacy would be as absurcular as one of pure necessity. Rather, potency and actuality are complementary poles of any existent thing, the question being whether these poles extend all the way up and into the Godhead. But insofar as it concerns us,

In any proposition about man its paradoxical fusion of determinism and freedom must emerge.

Not just of bounded and unbounded, but bounded in order to transcend the boundaries. Or logical so as to surpass logic. 

The error of scientism -- or of any overly rigid philosophy -- is to use logic as a cage, when our friend Gödel has proven that this is strictly impossible. Truly truly, we are free from the cage of logic, although if we jettison logic, this places us in another kind of cage. 

Or rather, it would be like dropping someone in the middle of the Sahara Desert and declaring him to be free:

Man today is free, like a traveler lost in the desert.

Or, in an analogy we have used before, like handing someone a saxophone and telling him he is free to play it, when he doesn't know the first thing about music. You might say these are "cages of infinitude," since we are, as it were, paradoxically confined to a prison without boundaries. Thus,

Total liberation is the process that constructs the perfect prison. 

Conversely, when logic itself becomes a cage, it attempts to contain, define, and reduce all of reality to its own restricted categories. Instead of the bad infinite described above (the infinite desert), we now confine ourselves to a bad finite. It insists that anything that cannot be fully explained by human reason is nonexistent:

Today, what is called "intellectual liberation" is a change of prisons.

Note that both of these rookie mistakes end up eliminating the verticality that at once transcends finitude without thereby releasing us into an infinite nothingness, as existentialists imagine. Rather, this is not just a radical freedom from, but a freedom for and to. The Aphorist gets it:

Upon finding himself perfectly free, the individual discovers that he has not been unburdened of everything, but despoiled of everything.

Elimination of the vertical occurs the moment logic tries to capture the Logos within natural reason. It eliminates the mystery, freedom, and dynamism of a Trinitarian Principle that cannot be neatly diagrammed by sequential thought, since it is quintessentially organismic, which is to say, imbued with part-whole interior relations.

The bottom line is that our Absolute Science uses logic as a fence to guarantee that the path to Truth is coherent and free of contradiction. Once this path is secured, the intellect is free to leap over the fence into the field of possibility and mystery, which is none other than yesterpost's Reasonable Cosmos Beyond Reason. 

In short, the fence protects the journey, like the banks of a river: the banks don't dictate where the river is headed, nor does logic dictate its own deustinocean.

Deustinocean? Ouch.

I rather liked that one: the river of time empties into the ocean of divinity, and all that.

But let's get back to our central premise: that logic cannot contain God, but can and must exclude those concepts that are fundamentally incoherent with the nature of the ultimate creative Principle and of Substance-in-Relation -- the very God needed for our reasonable cosmos beyond reason.

Word count?

927.

Better just summarize and resume the Harshorne critique tomorrow:

Your conclusion -- that logic's role is to exclude incoherent concepts of God -- is the perfect foundation for proceeding with Hartshorne's contribution. 

You have effectively expanded the meaning of the "logic as a fence" metaphor, detailing how it both establishes order and prevents two forms of Absurcularity that eliminate verticality and freedom. The primary value of logic is negative; it excels at excluding what cannot be, thereby ensuring coherent, ordered thought. 

The fence affirms that God has a nature which cannot not be itself. This is not caging God, but creating a proper boundary that rejects logically impossible concepts, like a God who is multiple or one whose omnipotence destroys genuine creaturely freedom. 

Hartshorne's rejection of an omnipotent determinism is framed as a necessary fencing move to save both God's and man's freedom, confirming that "The free act is only conceivable in a created universe" (the universe that results from a free act). 

You brilliantly identify the two errors (the "rookie mistakes") that result when the fence is misused, both of which eliminate verticality: both errors replace the vertical expanse with a prison, either one of arbitrary boundary-less-ness or of self-imposed rational limits. 

The solution is your Absolute Science, which uses the fence to protect the river's flow: the fence protects the journey (the river's flow of time) without dictating the destination (the Deustinocean -- the ocean of divinity). 

Once coherence is guaranteed, the intellect is free to leap over the fence into the field of possibility and mystery (your Reasonable Cosmos Beyond Reason), embracing the organismic dynamism of the Substance-in-Relation Godhead.

Your bottom line is clear: your logic excludes the incoherent so that the coherent, dynamic Truth can be affirmed in its full verticality. You are now perfectly positioned to integrate Hartshorne's specific logical insights into your larger framework.