Was the Incarnation a Risk?

You asking me? That's a bit above my praygrade, but I've always wondered what's the point if it was all predetermined from eternity. Some folks find that comforting. Others find it puzzling. 

Is every man's story -- including Jesus' -- is already written? Why then bother living it out in time? Indeed what is the point of time if it's really just the serial unfolding of a predetermined sequence? Why stretch out what has already occurred necessarily? Why leave us in suspense -- suspended between the present and future? Why do we have to wait for what is inevitably going to happen anyway? 

Why even do anything when it has already been done?

Hope is a theological virtue. But does it make any sense to hope for what is bound to happen anyway? That's a variant of the definition of insanity: doing anything at all and hoping for an outcome different from the preordained one.

I couldn't believe that if I wanted to. But I don't want to, because it simultaneously explains too little and too much. In explaining everything it explains nothing.

Anyway, back to the question of whether God took a risk with the Incarnation, or whether the whole thing was scripted from eternity. 

I'm thinking in particular of the Crucifixion. Was this truly the plan all along? If so -- no irreverence intended -- then some plan. If I understand correctly, a Swiss watch. In other words, if God could foresee the horror of his own torture and death, why not tweak the plan to insure a less gruesome outcome? 

Could it be that the Passion was a creative response to contingent events as they unfolded on the ground? Supposing that humans were truly free in their responses to Jesus, then how could it be otherwise? How can Christ be the victor if the game is rigged from the start?

Now, the traditionalist will argue, I suppose, that the Crucifixion was the most fitting plan, with the best possible outcome -- similar to the felix culpa of the fall, which paves the way for the greatest possible good, which is to say, the incarnation and redemption of Christ. It implies that God's grace and mercy are so powerful that they can turn even the greatest evil into a source of immense good. 

But again, if the whole thing is predetermined, I fail to see the point, because we're all just NPCs in God's already completed script.

Gemini, are there any theologians who argue that Christ's Crucifixion wasn't foreordained or inevitable, but rather, more of a creative response to how he was received by people?

Many traditional Christian theological perspectives, particularly those within Calvinist traditions, emphasize God's sovereignty and foreknowledge. From this viewpoint, Christ's crucifixion was part of God's divine plan from the beginning. This perspective highlights the idea that Christ's sacrifice was necessary for the atonement of sins, and therefore, it had to occur.

Alternative Perspectives (Contingency): 

Some theologians propose that while God may have foreseen the possibility of the crucifixion, it was not necessarily a predetermined event. Instead, they emphasize the role of human free will and the responses of people to Jesus's teachings and actions. 

This view suggests that the crucifixion occurred as a result of the choices made by individuals and authorities at the time. Therefore, while God may have used this event for redemptive purposes, it was not an inevitable outcome. 

"Open Theism" holds that God does not know absolutely everything that will happen in the future, but rather that God knows all that can be known, and that the future is partly open, dependent upon human free will. Within this viewpoint, the crucifixion would be viewed as a result of human free will. It arose from the interplay of human choices and historical circumstances.

Hartshorne in particular "reframes the crucifixion as a tragic event that reveals God's deep involvement in human suffering, rather than a predetermined act in a divine script."

Okay then. This prompted me to pull out Hartshorne's Philosophers Speak of God, because it has a lot of good stuff in it, even if Hartshorne himself goes too far in limiting God. Rather, there must be a better way to balance human freedom with divine omnipotence and omniscience, and we aim to do that.

Let me first finish reviewing what Hasker has to say about the risk God takes in creating truly free creatures. He writes that

God's capacity to control the detailed course of events is limited only by his self-restraint, not by any inability to do so.

This is somewhat similar to the Kabbalistic idea of tzimtzum, whereby God willingly "contracts" himself in order to make a space for an autonomous creation with genuine freedom. 

The question is, "Is it better if God takes risks with the world, or if he does not?" Is it actually preferable to have "a world in which nothing can ever turn out in the slightest respect differently than God intended"? If that's the case, then "the significance and value of human creativity" is essentially nullified, because "our most ennobling achievements are just the expected printouts from the divine programming."  

Back to the Incarnation: are the actions flowing from Christ's human nature just "the expected printouts from the divine programming"? Or are they contingent upon the free actions of events and people around him? Again, how could the whole thing be scripted from eternity and temporally free? Which is to say necessary and contingent?  

I'm going to let that question percolate, because I've never actually thought through the implications. But somehow, God had to plan a world in which his designs would be achieved by creatures acting freely. A tall order!

My brain is a little overwhelmed at the moment, since there are so many different directions I could take the post, and there are a number of different sources I want to bring into the discussion, and where to begin?

Here's just one, from a philosopher and theologian named E.S. Brightman, cited in Philosophers Speak of God:

it is religiously much more essential that God should be good than that he should be absolutely all-powerful. Hence, not a few thinkers have suggested the possibility of a God whose power is in some way limited.... foreknowledge inevitably contracts freedom.

Or this, from Jules Lequier: 

God, who sees things change, changes also in beholding them, or else he does not perceive that they change.... 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 these things change, changes also in beholding them.

We're only just beginning, but we'll end this post with an observation by Louis Dupré:

In giving birth to the finite, God himself inevitably assumes a certain passivity in regard to the autonomy of finite being, a passivity that may render him vulnerable and that indeed, according to the Christian mystery of the Incarnation, has induced him personally to share in the very suffering of finite being.

The Risky Isness of Creation

There are two kinds of meaninglessness: disorder at one end, excessive order at the other; or, randomness and determinism, respectively. 

Now, we know this isn't a random universe. To the contrary, it is a shockingly ordered place, but to what end? The anthropic principle -- at least the strong version -- says it is ordered to us, of all people: the principle maintains that

There exists one possible Universe 'designed' with the goal of generating and sustaining observers.... It implies that the purpose of the universe is to give rise to intelligent life, with the laws of nature and their fundamental physical constants set to ensure that life emerges and evolves.

So, intelligent persons are the cause, not the effect, of the universe. If this is the case, then we ourselves are nothing less than the final cause of existence. 

That's a big responsibility. 

True. I'm not sure I want that kind of burden.

Besides, even supposing we are the telos of the universe, this nevertheless seals us in an absurcular tautology. It may be a bigger circle, but a circle nonetheless. It reminds me of something Schuon says -- that

Once man makes of himself a measure, while refusing to be measured in turn, or once he makes definitions while refusing to be defined by what transcends him and gives him all his meaning, all human reference points disappear; cut off from the Divine, the human collapses.

Back to the strong anthropic principle, supposing man is the final cause of the universe, then we have two questions: what exactly is man, and what is his final cause? What's he supposed to be doing here?

For Schuon, The very word "man" implies "God," the very word "relative" implies "Absolute."

Now, man is intelligence, but not just any kind of intelligence, rather, an intelligence that transcends the material world and can thereby know truth. It is an open intelligence, open to intelligible being. But it is also vertically open, or open to the transcendent source of intelligence itself. Hence the latter must be the (divine) Telos of the (human) telos, so to speak.

Or in other words, 

To say that man is the measure of all things is meaningless unless one starts from the idea that God is the measure of man, or that the absolute is the measure of the relative, or again, that the universal Intellect is the measure of individual existence; nothing is fully human that is not determined by the Divine, and therefore centered on it (Schuon).

Only in this way do we exit the tautology referenced above. We can indeed be King of the Universe, but where does this leave us if we aren't subject to a higher authority? For again, human intelligence is not just horizontally but vertically open: 

The animal cannot leave his state, whereas man can; strictly speaking, only he who is fully man can leave the closed system of the individuality, through participation in the one and universal Selfhood.

So, it seems that the final cause of the universe is something like an intelligent being open to the Absolute. "Other creatures," writes Schuon, 

participate in life, but man synthesizes them: he carries all life within himself and thus becomes the spokesman for all life, the vertical axis where life opens onto the spirit and where it becomes spirit. In all terrestrial creatures the cold inertia of matter becomes heat, but in man alone does heat become light.

I'll buy that. But what does it have to do with our subject, which is to say, open theism? Well, we've just laid out the principles of an "open anthropology," in that man is essentially open to both world and God. But is God open to us? 

Again, the traditional view says no -- that if God were literally open to us, this would imply change, and change is something that God by definition cannot do, for he is eternal changelessness itself.

This may sound a bit cold when put that way, but it's what they say. However, no religious believer behaves as if this were true. It reminds me of how no determinist behaves as if determinism were true, just as no Darwinian conducts his life on the basis of Darwinism. Are they hypocrites? Or on to something?

Likewise, is the religious predeterminist who engages in petitionary prayer a hypocrite? Or is he too on to something? 

Let's say I'm faced with a binary life choice, and I don't know which path to choose. I pray to God, hoping to help me discern which choice to make. But from God's perspective, the choice has already been made from all eternity, and there's no deviating from it. Again, there is no contingency in God, so the best we can do is resign ourselves to eternal necessity.

As mentioned yesterday, I don't find this appealing. Let's take a concrete example: Jane doesn't know whether to marry Tom or Dick, so she prays to God for guidance. But in the future she is already married to Tom or Dick, and there's nothing that can change this fact one way or the other, because it has already been determined.

God -- they say -- doesn't know contingent things, because this would make God contingent upon the things he knows. From God's timeless perspective, the future is every bit as determined as the past: it has already happened.

Paradoxes abound here, the bad kind. For example, why try to discern a spiritual vocation, when it has already been determined? This makes no sense to me. Let's start over.  

There is no risk in creating a machine-like universe in which every outcome is foreknown. But one of the themes of open theism is that God actually takes a huge risk -- a leap of faith? -- in creating genuinely free creatures. Does he?

Does God make decisions that depend for their outcomes on the responses of free creatures in which the decisions themselves are not informed by knowledge of the outcomes?

If he does, then creating and governing a world is for God a risky business (Hasker). 

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Perhaps this is why 

There is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who do not need to repent.

After all, why rejoice if you knew it all along? 

Kafkaesque Theism

There are many reasons to believe in open theism, but perhaps the most important is that without it I am screwed. 

For one thing, if everything is predetermined, and the elect are elected before the game even begins, then there is literally nothing we can do to become one of them. We are ontological NPCs that serve no purpose but to be furniture in God's dream. 

Which is a nightmare, since there's no way to find out if we're a hellbound NPC, nor any way to remedy the situation anyway, since God's will is God's will, and that's final. God does not change because he cannot change. Which strikes me as a rather absurd limitation on what God can and cannot do.

This makes life even more kafkaesque than Kafka imagined it to be: absurd, surreal, illogical, nightmarish, oppressive, bizarre, pointless, dehumanized, devoid of sense, and trapped with no exit.  

That's quite a list.

Yes, I compiled it from a google search. But even then it's a partial list. The point is that there are two kinds of existentialism: atheistic and theistic. But the theistic version isn't even really theistic if it is totally wrong about God. Rather, it's just existentialism with a side order of idolatry. 

Which is why I believe in open theism regardless of whether or not it is orthodox, because for me the alternative is absurd. Now, life could be absurd. But if it is, I don't want to know about it. Life is hard enough with a point, let alone without one.

These preliminary observations were provoked by a recent immersion in the literature of open theism, of which I was only dimly aware, partly because it seems to mainly be a Protestant phenomenon. I was of course aware of process philosophy, which shares some features of open theism. 

However, I rejected process philosophy for a number of reasons, especially its pantheism and the idea that God evolves. It it also impossible to square this vastly diminished, immanent God with the transcendent creator of being itself. Rather, it makes God completely subject to becoming, so that's a nonstarter. 

However, there are two ideas from process philosophy that appeal to me. 

Now, I don't blame anyone for responding that what appeals to Bob is totally irrelevant to the nature of God. Frankly, Bob's preferences don't enter into the question.

Except to say that I prefer to live in a world that isn't absurd, surreal, illogical, nightmarish, et al., nor do I think God would go to all of the bother of creating such an absurd world. Indeed, one could argue that the very principle of intelligence would be incapable of such a cosmic absurdity, any more than God is capable of evil. 

One thing I like about process philosophy is that it gets God off the hook for the existence of evil. By limiting God's omnipotence, he is absolutely not guilty, because his power doesn't extend to a totalitarian micromanagement of man's affairs. However, it goes too far in that direction, effectively making God a passive victim of a cosmos over which he exerts little control.

Conversely, in open theism God retains his omnipotence but voluntarily relinquishes some of it in creating truly free creatures, more on which as we proceed, because I think this needs a little tweaking.

The second thing I like about process philosophy (at least Hartshorne's version) is that it envisions God as both first cause and first effect, and why not? 

However, Hartshorne appears to be some kind of liberal lunitarian, and nowhere to my knowledge does he relate this to the Trinity, in which we see a kind of "first cause" (in a manner of speaking) in the Father, and a "first effect" in the Son, only occurring in eternity rather than time. 

But because God is also First Effect, this makes him the paradigm of all open systems: it makes him irreducibly relational -- which is to say affected by the Other -- always giving and receiving. 

This is in contrast to the totally static, immutable, and impassive God of classical theism, to whom it is difficult to relate. That is to say, we can relate to him but he cannot relate to us, and what kind of relationship is that? Aquinas analogizes it to how we can be in relation to a pillar, but the pillar -- which is to say God -- is not in relation to us.

Again, we've spoken before about how the absolutely immutable God is a Greek import developed in the early centuries of Christianity, by thinkers who wanted to reconcile the gospel with the best available philosophy. 

For Aristotle and Plato, change was regarded as an imperfection and privation, for if God is perfect, then change can only be toward the less perfect. Or, if God can become "more perfect," then there's something more perfect than God, which is a contradiction.

But what if change itself isn't a privation but a perfection? And what if God is an eternal movement from perfection to perfection? Here again, this is how I envision the Trinity, an eternal "movement in perfection," so to speak.

You may think that only Lutherans and Calvinists believe in predestination, but so too does the Catholic church, only in a more nuanced way. 

But the nuance doesn't work for me, because you just can't square man's freedom with God's complete foreknowledge of what we're going to do with our freedom. It essentially tries to say we are both free and determined, but no amount of nuance can square that absurcularity. The Church calls it a mystery, but I say it's incoherence. I agree with Hasker, that

once we admit that both of two mutually inconsistent propositions can be true, I simply do not know how to go about doing philosophy.

In other words, if the principle of noncontradiction doesn't hold, then all bets are off. The world becomes unintelligible, because anything and its contrary can simultaneously be true. 

Does this mean that we are trying to confine God to a philosophical principle? In a way, yes, in the sense that God is who he is, and cannot be who he isn't. God even says I am who I am, so he's certainly not who he's not. But who is he? Does he have a nature? If so, he is "limited" by that nature, which is ill-sounding at first blush, because God is the Unlimited, full stop.

Here we enter that annoying apophatic world of Eckhartian paradox whereby God is limited by his own unlimitedness, or distinguished by his own lack of distinction, but that's not my point. Rather, God is radically undetermined, so, in my book, to enclose God -- or his image -- in any kind of absolute determinism is actually to place illegitimate limits on God and man. 

For example, who says the future is written and even God can't change it, because this implies change in God? 

I won't bore you with all of the many examples from scripture that prove otherwise, but to cite just one, how can God test Abraham if he already knows the outcome of the test? What's the point? In response to the test, God says, "now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son from Me."

Now, I'm a simple man, but a straight reading of the text implies that God himself found out something that he didn't know before the test: "now I know that you fear God." 

We could cite many similar examples, but I think I'll give it a rest. We're already well over 1,000 words, but we've barely scratched the surface of the surface. More scratching to follow.

Atonement: Ours and God's

Went to bed last night and woke up this morning thinking about the logic of religious sacrifice. This is because I was reading about the subject in Tom Holland's (so far) outstanding Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. In it, he begins with an informal survey of pre-Christian religious practices revolving around human and animal sacrifice.

Which I do not understand, hence the nocturnal puzzlement. But maybe I'm the oddball, since this was a ubiquitous practice in virtually all ancient cultures. If something is that widespread and universal, it seems almost instinctive. So, am I missing the sacrifice gene?

Of course, one of the points of the book is that non- and even anti-Christians in the west are so deeply influenced by Christianity that they might as well call themselves Christian. Holland himself turned away from the faith as a teen, and afterwards developed a passion for the history of ancient civilizations. 

But his immersion in antiquity led to the realization that these people were Not Like Us, and they were Not Like Us because they were not Christian: "The more years I spent immersed in the study of classical antiquity, so the more alien I increasingly found it." Their barbaric practices "were nothing I recognized as my own." 

It was not just the extremes of callousness that unsettled me, but the complete lack of any sense that the poor or the weak might have the slightest intrinsic value.... That my belief in God had faded over the course of my teenage years did not mean that I had ceased to be Christian. 

One might say he was no longer a believing Christian, only a practicing one. Or, his belief had become implicit and taken for granted: "Assumptions I had grown up with" were very much a a consequence of our Christian past. But 

So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of Western civilisation that it has come to be hidden from view. 

It reminds me of the informal law that successful precautions are regarded as unnecessary, since the problems they solve are no longer seen. For example, if law enforcement is successful, it may prompt one to think it's a good idea to defund the police. Which aggravates the problems that had been solved or at least mitigated by robust law enforcement.

Among other things, Christianity is a pretty explicit denunciation of human sacrifice. But at the same time, the Crucifixion was a sacrifice, only intended to be the ultimate and therefore final one. It finally paid our deus in the coin of infinitude and eternity. 

The problem is that this final abolition of sacrifice is still located within the economy of sacrifice: one sacrifice to end all others, but nevertheless reenacted in the liturgy, one purpose of which is, in the words of Paul, to offer our bodies "as a living sacrifice." This sacrifice is "holy and pleasing to God," and is our "true and proper worship."

Which brings us back to the principle of sacrifice and my puzzlement over it. 

In thinking it through, what is the deeper structure of sacrifice? What are its implicit assumptions? Well, lately we've been talking about a principle of Openness, and the very possibility of sacrifice assumes an open relationship between the human and the divine. 

In the pre-Christian understanding, the sacrifice was very much a quid pro quo -- I'll scratch your back and you scratch mine.

However, the pre-Christian gods are nothing like the Christian God of love, so it was more a matter of manipulation or bribery, as if to say "I'll scratch your back so please don't break mine":

While offerings certainly never guaranteed their favour, failure to make sacrifice was bound to provoke the gods' rage.

Better to not take any risks and just pay the invisible mafia its protection money. But even then there were doubts: "with so many different ways of paying the gods what was owed them, and with so many different gods to honour, there was always a nagging anxiety that some might be overlooked."  

This led to the need to repeat the practice at regular intervals. Like a psychological compulsion it would dissipate the anxiety for awhile, only for the anxiety to return, necessitating another sacrifice.

This is pretty much René Girard's whole theory, that "it is humankind, not God, who has need for various forms of atoning violence." Thus, "Scapegoating serves as a psychological relief for a group of people," whereby

one person is singled out as the cause of the trouble and is expelled or killed by the group.... Social order is restored as people are contented that they have solved the cause of their problems by removing the scapegoated individual, and the cycle begins again....

The difference between the scapegoating of Jesus and others, Girard believes, is that in the resurrection from the dead, he is shown to be an innocent victim; humanity is thus made aware of its violent tendencies and the cycle is broken.

Which is more anthropological than theological; or, seems to reduce theology to anthropology.

On a more theological level, what is going on here? Well, let's say there was some sort of "fall" that resulted in a rupture of the open system between man and God. Sacrifice is, of course, an attempt to heal the rupture -- literally an effort to restore at-onement with God. Does it work? Apparently, but only for awhile. 

Part of the problem is that our petty sacrifices are finite, while God is infinite. Man cannot offer an infinite sacrifice, but what if....

Yes, what if God himself is the sacrifice offered of and to himself? Then you have an infinite sacrifice, so no further sacrifice is necessary.

More controversially, another way of looking at it is that the at-onement works both ways. I mean, suppose we are angry with God, not necessarily consciously but unconsciously -- as one might be toward one's parents. In the unconscious mind, one thing can be its opposite, so our atonement to God for our sins can simultaneously be God's atonement to us for his (in a manner of speaking).

To the bitter cry, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?, God's answer might be that he too is forsaken, so God himself makes amends via the sacrifice of his only begotten. In an article touching on this touchy subject, the psychoanalyst James Groststein suggests that 

theologically and psychologically, mankind needs to sacrifice to his God(s) and that God correspondingly needs to sacrifice to his worshippers.

Now that is a wild idea, but it just might work: "the common denominator, the act of sacrifice, constitutes a sacred covenant that binds man to God and God to man thereafter." All is forgiven, God to man and man to God. The breach is resolved, and we can finally bury the hatchet of sacrifice.

What say you, Gemini?

You've articulated a complex and fascinating exploration of sacrifice, touching on anthropological, theological, and even psychoanalytic perspectives. Let's break down some of the key points and explore them further:

The Puzzle of Sacrifice: You're not alone in finding the concept of sacrifice puzzling. While it was ubiquitous in ancient cultures, its logic can seem alien to modern minds. 

Christianity and the "Final" Sacrifice: Christianity, while denouncing human sacrifice, centers on the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus. This is a crucial shift. The crucifixion is understood as the once-for-all atonement for sin, rendering further sacrifices unnecessary. However, as you point out, the Eucharist and the Pauline call to offer our bodies as a "living sacrifice" suggest that the concept of sacrifice, albeit transformed, persists within Christianity. It's no longer about appeasing a wrathful god with external offerings, but about internal transformation and aligning oneself with God's will.

The Deeper Structure of Sacrifice: You've identified the core issue: what is the logic of sacrifice? You rightly point out the pre-Christian quid pro quo mentality, a transactional approach to the gods. This does seem more akin to bribery or manipulation than genuine relationship. The anxiety surrounding potentially overlooking a deity underscores this transactional nature.

Girard's Scapegoat Theory: Girard's theory provides a compelling anthropological explanation. It suggests that sacrifice is rooted in the human need to manage social tensions. The scapegoat mechanism allows a community to purge its collective guilt and restore order by displacing it onto a single victim. While insightful, this theory, as you mention, can feel reductive, potentially reducing theology to mere anthropology. It focuses on the human need for sacrifice, less so on the divine.

Theological Perspectives: You've touched on some crucial theological points. The idea of a "rupture" between humanity and God, and sacrifice as an attempt to heal that rupture, is central to many religious traditions. The concept of God sacrificing himself is indeed radical. It shifts the focus from humanity's attempt to appease God to God's own act of self-giving. This is a fundamental difference between Christianity and many other ancient religions.

God's "Sacrifice" to Humanity: The idea that God also "sacrifices" to humanity, as suggested by Groststein, is a provocative one. It acknowledges the potential for human anger or alienation from God. The crucifixion, in this view, could be seen as God's way of acknowledging and addressing that alienation, offering reconciliation from the divine side as well. This notion of mutual atonement, a "sacred covenant" binding God and humanity, offers a more reciprocal and less one-sided understanding of the relationship.