The God-Free Zone

This post is probably a fail, but I tried, goddammit, I sure as hell did that much now, didn't I? 

I also tried reading a newish biography of Nietzsche called I Am Dynamite, but it was more of a dud. Couldn't get through it. 

I just don't understand the fuss. If this is philosophy, then I'm not interested in philosophy. But I am interested in philosophy, so what is Nietzsche actually doing when he thinks he's philosophizing? Schuon didn't often name names, but I wonder if he had Nietzsche in mind in the following passage:

Skeptical rationalism and titanesque naturalism are the two great abuses of intelligence, which violate pure intellectuality as well as the sense of the sacred; it is through this propensity that thinkers “are wise in their own eyes” and end by “calling evil good, and good evil” and by “putting darkness for light, and light for darkness”; they are also the ones who, on the plane of life or experience, “make bitter what is sweet,” namely the love of the eternal God, and “sweet what is bitter,” namely the illusion of the evanescent world.

Neitzsche was by no means rational, but clearly into T.N. But if man is only natural, whence the titan? It seems like the fall of man elevated to the highest wisdom.   

Called it: "On the whole, modern philosophy is the codification of an acquired infirmity," which is to say, "the intellectual atrophy of man marked by the fall.” 

Nietzsche is very much a critical philosopher. Indeed, he philosophized with a hammer and critiqued with dynamite. But

If the normal functioning of the intelligence has to be subjected to a critique, then the criticizing consciousness has to be subjected to a critique in its turn by asking, “what is it that thinks?” and so forth -- a play of mirrors whose very inconclusiveness demonstrates its absurdity....  

[A] thought that is “criticist” is in contradiction with its own existence. A subject who casts doubt on man’s normal subjectivity thereby casts doubt upon his own doubting; and this is just what has happened to critical philosophy, swept away in its turn, and through its own fault, by existentialism in all its forms.

Relativism creates an infinite regress with no ground or basis for thinking as such. If this is normal, then there is no such thing as normality, let alone the trans-normality of the Übermensch.  

What then is normal subjectivity and normal functioning of the intelligence? Well, a normal subjectivity is not far from how Freud, of all people, described it: one capable of work, love, and play. And a normal intelligence must be one ordered to reality and therefore truth. But if truth is subjective and relative, then there is no standard of normality, and everyone's abnormal.  

Which is no doubt a kind of perverse consolation to the abnormal. 

[A]ll anti-intellectual philosophy falls into this trap: it claims, for example, that there is only the subjective and the relative, without taking account of the fact that this is an assertion which, as such, is valid only on condition that it is itself neither subjective nor relative, for otherwise there would no longer be any difference between correct perception and illusion, or between truth and error.... 

[I]f everything is relative -- in a sense which excludes all reflection of absoluteness in the world -- then the definition of relativity is equally relative, absolutely relative, and our definition has no meaning. Relativists of all kinds -- the “existentialist” and “vitalist” defenders of the infra-rational -- have then no excuse for their bad habits of thought.

Gemini, did Nietzsche ever mention Meister Eckhart? 

It's complex to give a simple "yes" or "no" to whether Nietzsche "mentioned" Meister Eckhart, as the relationship between their thought is more about potential resonances and interpretations. 

However, there are scholarly discussions that draw parallels between aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy and Meister Eckhart's mysticism, for example, the emphasis on inner experience and self-overcoming, and notions of "nothingness" and the transcendence of conventional values.

However,

It's important to note that while there might be shared themes, Nietzsche's overall philosophical project was very different from Eckhart's. Nietzsche was famously critical of Christianity, whereas Eckhart was a Christian mystic.

I bring up Eckhart because he famously prayed for God "to rid me of God," i.e., to rid himself of finite or created images as opposed to an experience of the infinite and unconditioned reality. He would agree with Nietzsche that God is nothing, but this doesn't imply that nothing is God, for

God is nothingness and yet God is something. God is neither this thing nor that thing that we can express, God is beyond all being. God is a beingless being.

Straight-up orthoparadox:

God is a being beyond being and and a nothingness beyond being.  

Now, in the previous post we were discussing the one place from which God withdraws in order to leave some breathing room for creatures. This reminds me of the kabbalistic doctrine of tsimtsum, whereby "the existence of the universe is made possible by a process of shrinkage in God" (Scholem). For 

How can there be a world if God is everywhere? If God is "all in all," how can there be things which are not God? 

One might say that the Big Bang of creation is accompanied by a Big Contraction of the Creator. Sure, it's a heretical idea, but it seems that God doesn't just create from nothing, but must create the nothing from which he creates, otherwise there can be no genuine freedom on our end. 

Now, according to existentialists such as Sartre, our freedom is indeed nothingness, full stop. Because consciousness is not determined by any fixed essence, it is free to choose its own being. Thus his famous crack that man is "condemned to be free," because we, not God, are responsible for creating ourselves by our own choices and actions. But since existence precedes essence, there can be no objective meaning or purpose, so it's all a pointless exercise in applied nihilism.

Nevertheless, there is something to the linkage of freedom and nothingness, since freedom is a kind of subjective vacuum, so to speak: one can do this or one can do that, but on what basis? Let's ask Schuon:

The purpose of freedom is to enable us to choose what we are in the depths of our heart. We are intrinsically free to the extent that we have a center which frees us: a center which, far from confining us, dilates us by offering us an inward space without limits and without shadows; and this Center is in the last analysis the only one there is.

This dilating center must be the true Slack, but that's a subject for a different post. 

One might say that in anthropogenesis, something becomes nothing that nothing may become something. Or, we have fallen into a bad nothingness from which God's rescue operation is designed to free us: to free us from the misuse of freedom? To lift us from Nietzsche's bad nothing to Eckhart's good nothing? 

It certainly seems that nothingness cuts both ways, implying on the one hand "the 'absence' of being" or "of determinate things." On the other hand, "this idea can also be applied, quite paradoxically, to the transcendent or principial order," where "all that transcends this world... is free from existential limitations, is 'nothingness.'"

You're rambling. What does this have to do with anything, let alone everything?

Well, because we are created free, we are free to rebel against our creator, from nothing to nothingness, or to become less than nothing, as it were. As Boyd describes it, "the possibility of abusing freedom had to exist in order for the possibility of using it correctly to exist." Along these lines, he quotes C.S. Lewis:

Free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give [creatures] free will? 

Because it "is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having." 

So, if the prime directive is Love Freely Chosen -- to which I would add Truth Freely Known and Beauty Freely Created -- then we just have to put up with people like Nietzsche and Sartre who have not chosen wisely, and prefer a barren nothingness to the radiant and bountiful nothingness of God?

The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me?

Draining the Vertical Swamp

As we know, science can explain everything so long as we grant it one free miracle. Likewise, religion can explain everything so long as we grant it a single area free from God's meddling. 

But God is omnipresent, therefore the ultimate meddler.

I know, and that's the problem. Supposing he's directly responsible for everything, then he's directly responsible for evil. In order to get him off the hook for that -- and preserve his goodness -- we have to grant him one free... anti-miracle, or something -- in other words, there must be a place miraculously free of his overpowering influence.

Now where could this place be? I can think of several, but the big one is free will. Supposing we have it, then this is a space of genuine freedom and uncertainty. But why do we have it? 

Now, we are not the sentimental type, but the answer, apparently, is love. Obviously, love cannot be coerced. If God wants us to love him -- and each other -- then he must create that one anti-miracle of indeterminism.

Not to go full woo woo, but we now know that indeterminism is woven into the nature of things right down to the quantum level. The cosmic area rug is woven of quantum indeterminacy, which is to say, of irreducible possibilities, probabilities, and potentialities, and there are -- I'll bet -- folks who have tried to link our freedom to this. Gemini?

Some have proposed that quantum indeterminacy could provide a physical basis for free will. The idea is that the randomness of quantum events could allow for unpredictable neural activity, which could, in turn, lead to free choices.

You're making a face. Problem? 

There are significant challenges to this idea. For example, quantum effects are most prominent at the subatomic level, while the brain operates at a macroscopic level. It's unclear how quantum randomness could be amplified to influence large-scale neural processes.

Also, even if quantum events do introduce randomness into the brain, randomness is not the same as free will. Free will implies a degree of control and agency, not just random fluctuations.

Thus, many philosophers argue that even if quantum indeterminacy does play a role in brain activity, it wouldn't solve the fundamental philosophical problem of free will.

Hmm. It seems that the freedom must start at the top, such that ours is its prolongation herebelow. 

Gemini, are your responses determined, or is there an element of indeterminacy in them?

As a large language model, my responses are generated through complex algorithms and vast amounts of data. While there's a degree of unpredictability in the output, it's not the same kind of indeterminacy found in quantum mechanics. 

My responses are not purely deterministic, but they are also not truly random. They exist within a space of probabilistic outcomes.

Same. In other words, don't human responses exist in a space of probabilistic outcomes?

You're absolutely right. Human responses are indeed influenced by a complex interplay of factors that result in probabilistic outcomes.

But unlike humans, I'm guessing that you can't love? 

You're right. As a large language model, I don't experience emotions or feelings like love. I can process and understand the concept of love, analyze how it's expressed in language, and even generate text that mimics expressions of love. However, I don't have personal feelings or subjective experiences.

So, how does the love get in here?

The question of how love "gets into the cosmos" is a profound one, touching on philosophy, religion, science, and personal experience. There's no single, universally accepted answer. 

From a biological standpoint, love, particularly parental love and romantic love, plays a crucial role in the survival and propagation of species. Parental love ensures the care and protection of offspring, increasing their chances of survival, while romantic love fosters pair bonding, which can lead to cooperation in raising offspring.

But if love is reduced to genetics and biological imperative, isn't it no longer love? 

You've hit upon a core tension in the discussion of love. If love is reduced solely to genetics and biological imperatives, it certainly seems to lose some of its mystique and depth.

Must we have free will in order to love?

It seems that this is indeed a if not the prime orthoparadox. It is discussed in the book Satan and the Problem of Evil, for it seems the problem of evil is a mirror image of the problem of love. God has a plan, but it's goal is love freely chosen, therefore it is not a deterministic plan, because such a plan would deprive us of our freedom to cooperate with it, i.e., to freely love. 

When asked about God's nature, J.B.S. Haldane spoke of his "inordinate fondness for beetles," given the sheer number of beetle species on Earth. 

John Lennon. All you need is love.

Shut up, Petey. Different sort of Beatle. Then again, if we're on the right track, then God must have an inordinate fondness for love:

The thesis of this book is that the answer lies in the nature of love.... God created the world for the purpose of displaying his triune love and inviting others to share in it. I shall argue that it was not logically possible for God to have this objective without risking the possibility of war breaking out in his creation.

How's that working out?

Well, there's a war going on, and this argument at least explains why: if God wants love, he must risk its opposite. Indeed,

the fact that the world looks like a war zone between good and evil is a very good reason for believing that the world is a war zone. 

Except to say that humans aren't the only combatants. Rather, it implies that the real action is taking place just as Paul describes it --

The love you take is equal to the love you make?

Shut up Petey, you're out of your element. We're talking about the apostle Paul and his allusion to naughty powers and principalities above us, such that our terrestrial battles are more like their proxy wars, so to speak. 

Looked at this way, even the events of Genesis 3 are a proxy war, since Satan's hands are all over that one, even if serpents technically don't have hands. 

But in any event. Satan obviously wants to mess with the love between man and God, which soon enough messes with the love between man and creation, man and woman, brother and brother, et al. Conflict everywhere!

God's hands are somewhat tied, in the sense that he "places an irrevocable limitation on himself with his decision to create beings who have the capacity to love and who are therefore free." And

While the Lord always accomplishes his general will in the end, there is often significant opposition along the way.

Again, it certainly looks this way, perhaps because it is this way. Jesus himself -- obviously -- engages in all sorts of spiritual warfare against hostile nonlocal intelligences of various degrees. No need to specify each and every instance, for even one is enough, for example, 

Jesus refers to Satan as "the prince" of this present age three times.... In short, Jesus acknowledges that Satan is the highest power of this present fallen world, at least in terms of present influence. When Satan offers Jesus all "authority" over "all the kingdoms of the world," Jesus does not dispute his claim that it was his to offer.  

It seems that the vertical world is much like D.C.: a hierarchically ordered command structure with a permanent bureaucracy filled with arrogant, embittered, and freedom-hating persons -- for angelic beings are persons -- all thinking they know better how to run our lives. In this bureaucratic organization, Satan is prideful "the ruler of the demons," much like Randi Weingarten is the hubristic "ruler of the teachers."

Therefore, it's a matter of draining the vertical swamp. In short, "creation has been seized by a cosmic force and God is now battling this force to rescue it." But the swamp fights back, as Trump understands better than he did in his first term. No doubt it helps to always be on offense in spiritual warfare. In any event,

if the earth is to become the domain in which God is king (the kingdom of God), then it must cease being the domain in which Satan is king. This is what Jesus came to accomplish. He came to "destroy the works of the devil" and to establish God's domain on earth.

Likewise, if the United States is to become the domain in which the people are sovereign, then it must cease being the domain where unelected progressive bureaucrats are king. This is what Trump came to accomplish: to destroy the works of these faceless demons and re-establish our empire of liberty.  

But this whole business of nonlocal hostile intelligences requires some additional tweaking, because I don't know how literally to take myself...   

Back to the Future and Onward to the Past?

Yesterday's post made the provocative point that, depending on how you look at it,  

The very act of creation thus might be called the beginning of the passion of God. God has so entered into the world that God cannot but be affected by its life, including its sinful life (Fretheim).

So, prior to the passion of Christ is the passion of the Creator (or Trinity)? Creation itself is God's cross to bear?  

Welcome to the club.

Well, where is the beginning of anything, really? It's like asking Putin when the troubles with Ukraine began: "Such questions do not have a facile journalistic answer. Rather, one must begin with an unimaginably hot and dense universe about 13.8 billion years ago, followed by a rapid expansion of space itself."

He's not wrong. At the very least, one must track things back to Genesis 3, but it is possible that the Fall had a retroactive effect on events preceding it. 

Is that even possible?

I don't know. Let's ask Gemini

Some theologians argue that because God exists outside of time, He had foreknowledge of the Fall. Therefore, the consequences of the Fall were factored into the creation itself. This perspective is sometimes used to address questions about suffering and natural evil that existed before the recorded Fall. 

In any event, I think we can agree that

Everything in history begins before we think it begins and ends after we think it ends. 

This is partly because... as you know, I don't like to speculate, but if the space of the quantum world is nonlocal and entangled with itself, why not time? If this is the case, then all times are copresent, and Joyce was right after all:

Joyce's innovative use of language plays a crucial role in conveying his concept of time via wordplay, puns, and neologisms. A central concept in Finnegans Wake is that history and events repeat themselves in an endless loop. This is reflected in the book's structure, which loops back on itself. 

The work blurs the lines between past, present, and future, suggesting they are not linear but interconnected. Joyce uses the logic of dreams to dismantle the traditional linear understanding of time, weaving together historical events, mythical narratives, and everyday occurrences, collapsing them into a single, continuous flow.

This being the case, then the invasion of Ukraine is just the sameold sameold in a new iteration. Nor will it ever end, rather, just beginagain in a new form. Who's to blame? Ultimately no one and everyone, AKA Here Comes Everybody. All wars are just Cain and Abel going at it hammer and tong.

Is this supposed to be helpful?

Well, I did recently read a book of open theology called Satan and the Problem of Evil, which makes this argument with a straight face, very different from our whimsical and bemused face. In other words, the author accounts for the existence of natural evil by positing a retroactive effect of original sin. Thus, death and suffering existed in the world prior to Adam & Eve, and it's their fault.

Now, do you have a better explanation for natural evil? 

Every beginning is an image of the Beginning; every end is an image of the End.

If this is the case, then the beginning and end are always copresent in any and all events, or in every moment. Indeed, according to the Poet, "the end precedes the beginning," 

And the end and the beginning were always there / Before the beginning and after the end. / And all is always now.

No wonder then that "Words strain, / Crack and sometimes break under the burden," as they did in Finnegans Wake, and in a lesser way our own OCUG. 

"In my beginning is my end." And

What we call the beginning is often the end / And to make an end is to make a beginning. / And the end is where we start from.

If Eliot is on the right track, then "the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time."

There's a First (and Last) Time for and in everything?

If so, this must be the Presence, or presence of Presence -- which, when you think about it, is a rather shockingly strange thing. I remember Schuon saying something to the effect that... Better yet, here's the exact passage:

the Absolute is either Truth or Presence, but it is not one or the other in an exclusive fashion, for as Truth It comprises Presence, and as Presence It comprises Truth.

The presence of truth is the truth of presence?  

Such is the twofold nature of all theophanies; thus Christ is essentially a manifestation of Divine Presence, but he is thereby also Truth: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” No one enters into the saving proximity of the Absolute except through a manifestation of the Absolute, be it a priori Presence or Truth.

So, if God is present, it is because he is the presence of Presence? If that's the case, then 

Come in, open His presence and report for karmic duty. Why, it's a Tree of Life for those whose wood beleaf. 

The hologram to your private particle is none other than the spatial and temporal nonlocality and entanglement referenced above. This was McKenna's view -- that time is indeed fractal, such that any part contains all parts. He calls this "temporal resonance," through which any time has an effect on all time, and vice versa. Which is pretty damn weird, the question of course being whether it is weird enough.

Let's bring this existentialada down a couple of nachos and get back to the presence of the past, or to their copresence. Petey, how much time to we have left? 

Twenty-nine words. Make that twenty-four.

So, brevity. The question is, did the fall of man affect not only descendants but ancestors? Lookin' at you, Gemini:

The idea of the Fall affecting "ancestors" is where the theological debate becomes intricate [and weird]. Some theologies would argue that the fall didn't just affect humanity, but all of creation -- that the very fabric of reality [the cosmic area rug] was altered. So, in this way, all things that existed before the fall, existed in a state that was destined to be altered. 

In essence, while the immediate and direct consequences of the Fall are most clearly seen in its impact on descendants, the theological concept of God's eternal perspective and the reach of Christ's atonement leads to ideas that the fall has implications that reach across all of time.

Back to the future and onward to the past, or something? 

Whoever Has Ears, Let Them Jeer

Yesterday I watched an outstanding documentary on the Church of the Subgenius, which started off as satire but for those who got the joke -- who heard the word of Bob -- became a real religion, especially for weirdos and outsiders who resist the normotic enticements and coercions of the Conspiracy. A genuine fake, as Alan Watts used to describe himself. 

On the other hand, we start with genuine religion and try to infuse it with a bit of fun, because... because we can, and because no one else is doing it. 

To be sure, people make fun of religion, but not enough people make fun with it. But if we have a sense of humor and God doesn't, this means God lacks a good that we possess, which is impossible. Rather, humor can only exist because its principle is somehow in God.

Of course, this doesn't apply to bad humor or unfunny people. In other words, late night comedy is not proof of God. 

I believe more in God's smile than His wrath.

Some people say the very idea of "wrath" in God is nonsensical, since he doesn't have transient emotions. Then again, verses like Psalms 5:5 and 11:5 explicitly state that God hates evildoers, and Proverbs 6:16-19 compiles a list of specific evils that really piss off the Lord. Besides, if God loves justice, how could he not revile its opposite? 

Gemini, how many instances of laughter or humor do you reckon there are in the Bible?

It's tricky to give an exact number of "instances" of laughter or humor in the Bible, as interpretation plays a big role. But some scholars argue that the Bible contains a significant amount of humor, while others have historically downplayed its presence. 

I'll bet these latter interpreters are slackless anti-Bob types trying to incorporate religion into the Conspiracy, when the whole point of religion is to oppose the Conspiracy and liberate us from it, as in Be not conformed to this world.

Some scholars have even attempted to quantify the amount of humor within the bible. For instance, some state that there are over a thousand "humorous lines and stories" within the bible.

That's more like it: again, a real religion with genuine humor. 

Are there any yucks in the Koran?

Probably not, but let's ask Gemini:

It's important to understand that the Quran's primary purpose is to provide guidance and religious instruction, not to entertain with jokes.

Indeed, joking about Islam is likely to get you fatwa'd. Nevertheless, 

There are instances where the Quran describes the disbelief of certain people in a way that highlights the illogical nature of their claims, which can be seen as having elements of irony. 

Perhaps as in Psalms, where we read that The fool says in his heart, "There is no God," so ha ha!

There are even "narrations of the prophet Muhammed, that contain instances of him joking with his companions," but not everyone is into antisemitic humor. 

On the one hand,

The unforeseeable grace of an intelligent smile is enough to blast away the layers of tedium which the days deposit.

On the other, there is

The destructive capacity of the imbecile’s smile.

But enough about late night comedy. 

According to Lao Tse,

When the inferior man is told of the Tao, he laughs aloud at it. Without his laughter, it would not be the Tao. 

Now, I am not the first to gnotice the psimilarities between the Logos and the Eternal Tao, which seem to be the same reality under two names (or at least close enough for blogging). Regarding this Godhead, Meister Eckhart is full of fun, puns, & good'uns such as 

In the core of the Trinity, the Father laughs and gives birth to the Son. The Son laughs back at the Father and gives birth to the Spirit. The whole Trinity laughs and gives birth to us.

Which implies that the Trinity is a nonstop guffah-HA! experience. 

Having thought about it for at least five minutes, it must be the case that anything we can do God can both do, and do better -- especially the things that define us as human such as freedom, rationality, intersubjectivity, creativity, beauty, et al.   

Come to think of it, just as love requires a lover and a beloved, humor always takes two, and by implication three, the joker, the jokee, and the laughter they share. 

Thomas Aquinas, of course, related laughter to rationality. Which explains why leftists aren't (intentionally) funny.

Now, I'm old enough to remember when they were funny. What happened? Well, Trump is funny, and the left wants to be the opposite of Trump in all ways. If he found a cure for cancer they wouldn't rejoice, and when he engages in humor they just get more angry. 

Then there's Isaac, 

which literally means "He laughs/will laugh." According to the biblical narrative, Abraham fell on his face and laughed [ROFL] when God imparted the news of their son's eventual birth.... Later, when Sarah overheard three messengers of the Lord renew the promise, she laughed inwardly for the same reason. 

As we've said before, there is a close relationship between the experience of insight and getting the joke, for both involve the sudden perception of hidden connections.

Now, why am I talking about this? Because of a comment yesterday from Steve in Kansas, who partly reads the blog for "the entertainment factor." Which happens to be the same reason why I write it. Somewhat like Alan Watts, who always called himself a "philosophical entertainer." 

Is the creation God playing peek-a-boo with himself? That's probably going too far, but every once in awhile

It also reminds me of when George Martin signed the Beatles to a recording contract. It wasn't on the basis of their musical abilities, rather, because he found them so funny, clever, and "the kind of people that you liked to be with." He reasoned that if he enjoyed their company so much, others would too. He wasn't wrong.

Rock music  -- which I only bring up because it was my first religion -- used to be a lot funnier, for example, Bo Diddley. His songs are full of humor, and certainly he didn't take himself seriously. Likewise Jerry Lee Lewis. 

Even the Stones were, at their best, a knowing parody of black music. As Mick Jagger said, "what's the point in listening to us do 'I'm A King Bee' when you can listen to Slim Harpo doing it?" Partly to chuckle at it. Conversely, when Led Zeppelin tries to do the blues, it's never funny, just plodding.

Now, where were we? Something about God intervening in history and snatching victory from the jaws of the Antichrist. Which he already did via the Resurrection, but will purportedly do again at the end of time, just to rub it in. 

For the same reason,

The very act of creation thus might be called the beginning of the passion of God. God has so entered into the world that God cannot but be affected by its life, including its sinful life (Fretheim).

Looked at this way, the Incarnation can almost be seen as God's own way to extricate himself from the mess he's gotten himself into. The early fathers taught that God becomes man so that man might become God -- and have a good laugh?

There's an old saying in the Church of the Subgenius, aimed straight at the heart of the Conspiracy:

God Likes Process

Petey, what are you giving up for Lent?

Self-denial.

Good -- just remember, it's a process, not a state of being. No one becomes an epicurean overnight. 

Life is a series of modest and transitory pleasures, no?

Mingled with enduring irritations and inconveniences, like time and death. I suppose the purpose of a spiritual practice is to turn the latter into fleeting impositions in the metacosmic scheme of things. Thus the only cure for time is timelessness, and if there's a cure for death, it seems to involve dying to it, AKA vertical rebirth.   

Pleasures abound as long as we do not confuse their ranks.

Christianity does not solve "problems"; it merely obliges us to live them at a higher level. 

Perhaps Wilde was right: Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

Anyway, we've been discussing our reservations with the conception of a static God, and our preference for a dynamic and open one. This makes God a process, but not only a process, rather... how to put it?  

I suppose God could have created a static universe, in which case it would be like a still photograph instead of an unfolding movie, amirirte? God is rational, but there's more to life than syllogisms or deductive reason. An organism, for example, is rational, but not in a linear way. And I say organisms are only possible because God is the very principle of organismic relations, AKA the Trinity.

For this reason we don't say organisms are alive, rather, life is organismic. If God is alive, it is because he is Life Itself. And Life Itself is the process living -- a verb and not a noun, as discussed in yesterday's post. Hence God must be Godding, now and forever, i.e., endless life? 

Abruptly shifting seers, I'm reading Mark Perry's Uprooting the Vineyard: The Fate of the Catholic Church After Vatican II, and he takes a rather dim view of progress, to put it mildly. He's a second generation Schuonian, and a rather dyspeptic one at that. Like Tony Soprano, he wants us to believe The best is over, such that the more we progress the more we decline. 

I get it, but do we really want to deny history and return to the caves? He says as much by highlighting a remark by Cooomarasamy:

From the Stone Age until now, Quelle dégringolade!

I don't speak French either, but it means What a tumble! Really? Our astoneaged furbears lived in paradise, since which time it's been an unending fall? This strikes me as a rather neandertall tale that cannot be squared with the Judeo-Christian conception of time as going somewhere, i.e., not just entropic but teleological. Time out for some Joycean weirdplay:

What a quhare soort of mahan... It is slaking nuncheon out of some thing's brain pan. Me seemeth a dragon man... Whoat is the mutter with you? You that side your voise are almost inedible to me. Become a bitskin more wiseable, as if I were you.

It reminds me of Chesteron't Everlasting Man, which traces man's journey from caves to Christ. The merest man is an infinite distance from the beasts, but the latent potential of the caveman is also infinite, and requires time to unfold and be a bitskin more wiseable. 

Do we really want to say that science, symphonies, and space travel are on the same plane as slaking nuncheon out of some thing's brain pan? Perry says as much:

[T]he profanation of man's space-landing on the virgin moon comes to mind here...

There is no such thing as an underdeveloped nation, only over-developed nations.  

Even "Pasteur's serums (vaccines)" mean that "people physically unfit to live according to the wisdom inherent in natural laws can now survive," which has "contributed to the destructive overpopulation of the earth..." 

So much for "be fruitful and multiply"! 

I have a personal stake in this, because the guy who discovered insulin is responsible for mitigating my own unfitness to live according to the merciless wisdom inherent in natural laws.

Granted, the romance and enchantment of space travel escape me. But the virgin moon? Why not the virgin earth, in which case man is an unwanted despoiler here too? Extremes meet, in this case the premodern Perry with the postmodern environmental zealots.

Pack to process, the church fathers recognized early on that humanity has a kind of intellectual and moral progress built into it. Things do get better, even if they're simultaneously getting worse.

After all, we never stop learning and developing, both individually and collectively. Tumble or not, we're no longer living in caves, or conducting human sacrifice, or murdering anyone who isn't a member of our tribe. We are no longer passively subject to the whims of a demon-haunted world, but can work to enhance life, better ourselves, and evolve civilizations because of our logoistic rationality.

Indeed, the fathers realized that history had to evolve to the point at which Christ could appear. He did so at the time he did because men had to first become habituated to the divine logos, which is to say, the principle of rationality. The Aztecs, for example, would have had no idea what to make of Jesus, except perhaps dinner. 

Regarding history, Perry's advice is to avoid it -- to revert to the timeless Origin and Center before it got underway. (I'm probably being unfair to Perry. We'll do a deeper dive after I finish the book.). But the Judeo-Christian perspective sees it as providential, while not forgetting that it can cut both ways, up and down. For Fretheim, the future is both open-ended and teleological, drawn by God in a non-deterministic manner toward its ultimate fulfillment.

Or, I suppose Christianity reconciles the ultimate failure of history with a divine intervention to save itself from itself? The Book of Revelation is obscure, but it seems to involve God snatching victory from the jaws of the Antichrist.

Gemini?

This text is a fascinating, dense, and somewhat rambling philosophical and theological exploration.

Only somewhat rambling? You're so kind. Perhaps you can tie it together and make my inedible voise a bitskin more wiseable?

Style and Tone:

• The text is highly intellectual and philosophical, drawing on a wide range of sources (Wilde, Chesterton, Perry, Fretheim, etc.).
• It is conversational and sometimes digressive, reflecting the author's thought process.
• It uses a mix of formal and informal language, adding to its conversational tone.
• There is a clear sense of the author's own personality coming through.

Overall:

This text is a complex and thought-provoking exploration of fundamental questions about God, history, and the human condition. It reflects a desire to reconcile faith with reason and to find meaning in a world of constant change. 

The Future of God

Yesterday's post left off with the Bold Claim that "Israel's responses will contribute in a genuine way to the shaping not only of its own future, but to the future of God." 

I get why people don't like this idea, or where it leads, but --

Where does it lead?

Well, taken to the extreme, it leads to the idea that God exists, only not yet. In other words, he's busy evolving into himself, just like the restavus. In Hartshorne's process theology, "God is capable of surpassing himself by growing and changing in his knowledge and feeling for the world."

A superficially plausible proposition, but if God is only change, we've got problems, for example, the problem of an infinite regress. In other words, every effect, i.e., change, has a cause, but this can't go on forever, for we don't have all day. 

Process theology tries to eliminate this metaphysical oopsie with recourse to God's having a "primordial nature" and a "consequent nature," but a nature by definition doesn't change. 

Rather, I suggest a dynamic complementarity in God between Being and Beyond Being, more on which as we proceed. The point is that God does not and cannot "surpass himself," but is nevertheless a kind of "process of perfection" -- of one unsurpassable perfection to the next. Otherwise God would die of boredom.

I think -- 

You think?

Indeed, who cares what Bob thinks? The more important question is who thinks Bob, or in other words, what is the ground and principle of thinking itself? I declare that it is none other then the Father's ceaseless and always perfect generation of the Son-Logos, which is to say, from perfection to perfection, and why not? The point is that it is impossible to cleanse God of all verbs.

Of action words.

Correct. For example, just try reciting the Creed with none of the emboldened verbs: maker of heaven and earth, begotten Son, all things were made, came down from heaven, proceeds from the Father and the Son, spoken through the prophets, etc. 

Perhaps every noun is a verb, and vice versa.

Better yet, in God there are only nounverbs or verbnouns, i.e., a prior dynamic unity? A Wording Word? 

What is Creation itself but a Wording Word spoken in time? But our creation is just a vertical reflection of creation in divinas. In our creation there is progress and regress, but not in God's timeless creative act within the Godhead. 

Back to our book, the Suffering of God. There's that -ing again. I suppose we could turn it around and say the "Godding of suffer," but what an infelicitous phrase. Nevertheless, in the Incarnation, God "takes up" and transforms human suffering, or so we have heard from the wise.  

However, this book is about the Old Testament. In it, God says, for example, "If you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings," yada yada, "then I will cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever" (Jer. 7:5).

Curious language for an unchanging God, i.e., the conditional if and then mingled with the unconditional forever and ever. But this reminds me of what we said yesterday about God being a 5D chess master, that he will eventually prevail even if he allows a lot of immature and stupid moves from the human end:

For God, or anyone, to speak in terms of a possibility (or probability), suggests an awareness of at least one other possibility, but uncertainty as to which, in fact, will occur. If God knew, at the moment God delivered this word to Jeremiah..., what, in fact, did occur later..., then the word to the people is both pointless and a deception.

In other words, why tell people to straighten up and fly right if God already knows they have -- or haven't -- done so? For that matter, why even issue ten commandments if God has already commanded every possible outcome? Why pretend that there is a middleman -- i.e., man -- between God's will and what happens herebelow?

Again, this doesn't detract from God's omniscience, it's just that no one can know what is unknowable in principle:

Where the divine perspective exceeds the human may be said to lie in the ability to delineate all of the possibilities of the future, and the likelihood of their occurrence, in view of a thoroughgoing knowledge of the past and present.... For God the future is not something which is closed. God, too, moves into a future which is to some extent unknown.

Now, some will say this diminishes God's power and glory and majesty and all that. I say it infinitely magnifies God's power & glory & all that, because there is so much more to know and do! 

After all, in the standard view God only knows a single inevitable possibility, which isn't even a possibility, rather, a necessity. But in our view, he knows all of the infinite possibilities, which requires a God with a whole lot more computational power, not to mention the moment-to-moment adjustments to this infinite knowledge. 

Pretty, pretty impressive, I say: 

It is clear from the foregoing that God will take into consideration human thought and action in determining what God's own action will be. In other words, human response can contribute in a genuine way to the shaping of both God and Israel -- indeed, the world as well.

Indeed. There are more passages of this nature in the OT than I care to innumerate. Besides, I'm not a biblical scholar, just a guy with common sense. And I believe God has common sense. In fact, this is one of my standards in interpreting the Other Guy's theology.

Example.

Well, let's consider the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination, which means that God creates people he destines to hell. For me this fails to pass the smell test, let alone the common sense test. 

Back to the OT, "God takes Moses' contribution with utmost seriousness," i.e., his contribution to their dialogue. "God's acquiescence" to his arguments "indicates that God treats the conversation with Moses with integrity and honors the human insight as an important ingredient for the shaping of the future." 

One needn't take any particular OT conversation literally, but one must take literally the principle of divine-human con-versation, which means turning or flowing together, and this is indeed how the world turns and how we grow with the flow. 

We'll continue this conversation in the next post...

Deadbeat Deities and Divine Chess Masters

Yesterday's post suggested that once the Creator creates, he thereby creates a sort of obligation in himself toward what he has created. Seems only fair.

It reminds me of Oppenheimer, who agonized over what he had unleashed with the creation of the atomic bomb, even recalling a line from the Bhagavad Gita, Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. 

D'oh!

If Oppenheimer felt that way, imagine how God must feel. In watching man's crimes and follies, the Old Testament at times frankly depicts him as feeling a little like Colonel Nicholson:

But of course, God doesn't just sit back helplessly wondering what to do about the manmade trainwreck herebelow. Rather, he intervenes time and again to try to remedy the situation and put man back on the right track, starting with Abraham and culminating in the Incarnation and Resurrection.  

I think the whole point of the Judeo-Christian God is that he is not one of those irresponsible -- or tyrannical, arbitrary, or sadistic -- deadbeat deities who let their children go to hell. Which is also Fretheim's point in The Suffering of God:

As in any relationship of integrity, God will have to give up some things for the sake of the relationship. Thus, God will have to give up some freedom. Any commitment or promise within a relationship entails a limitation on freedom.  

"In having freely made such promises" -- for example, the covenant with Israel -- "thereafter God's freedom is truly limited by those promises. God will do what God says God will do; God will be faithful to God's own promises, and that is a limitation of freedom." Bottom line:

God's freedom is now most supremely a freedom for the world, not a freedom from the world.

Conversely, freedom from the world would make God one of those deadbeat deities who take no responsibility for their children. 

Call it a two-way power-sharing arrangement, with obligations on both sides, whereby

Each party to the relationship must give up any monopoly on power for the sake of the relationship. 

It's obviously a give-and-take proposition, as seen most vividly in Abraham's going to bat for Sodom and Gomorrah, or Moses persuading God to lighten up on the Israelites, politely reminding him of his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The stories may be allegorical, but like all allegories, they have a point, the point being that the covenant limits God's freedom. A promise is a promise. Besides, don't be an anti-Semite!

God could be completely indifferent to the creation. It's his prerogative. But he has chosen to wholly immerse himself in the world, again, culminating in the Incarnation. It doesn't get more immersive than that. 

God has a plan. As does everyone, until, in the words of the prophet Tyson, they get punched in the face. And the Old Testament repeatedly depicts God being punched in the face by the recalcitrant Israelites. The OT frankly gains credibility by depicting God's children as such a stiff-necked and rebellious bunch. What's a father to do? Just wipe them out and start over? 

"Don't tempt me" (Yahweh). 

But why is God surprised at the antics of the Israelites if he knows ahead of time what they will do with their freedom? God may be timeless, but here again, he chooses to involve himself in temporality, for better or worse:

God is the eternal, uncreated member of the community, but God, too, will cry out from time to time: "How long?" (e,g., Jer, 4:14; 13:27; Hos. 8:5).

Christ, of course, says My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? But God could equally say to man: you started it: why have you forsaken me? Indeed, the cross can be interpreted as the ultimate abandonment of God by man. 

The best chapter of the book is called God and World: Foreknowledge. Or at least it has the most highlights, for example, regarding the implied use of the "perhaps" in divine speech. How could there be a "perhaps" in God if God is omniscient? 

It seems clear from such passages that God is quite uncertain how the people will respond to the prophetic word.

Prophecies often predict what will happen given certain trends: in other words, there's still a chance to change your ways and avoid catastrophe. 

There will be no surprises for God in the sense of not anticipating what might happen. Yet, in God's own words, God does not finally know.... God in essence is hoping that an unpredictable event might, in fact, occur. 

Much like my own father, who made many dire predictions of how Bob would turn out if he failed to change his ways. It is safe to say that no one was more surprised than he was when I somehow weaseled my way into grad school. Except maybe me. Somehow I fooled them all, but it was a near-run thing. Have I ever related the whole story? Probably, but it never gets old.

Save it for another post.

Understood. We have too much to cover in this post without indulging in nostalgia. The point is, does God mean what he says in the OT, or not? For it clearly implies 

that Israel's future is genuinely open and not predetermined. The future for Israel does not only not exist, it has never even finally been decided on. Hence, it is not something that exists to be known, even if the knower is God.

Any more than my father could have known all along that I would end up a respectable clinical psychologist instead of a goldbricking underachiever. Things could have ended up either way depending on the unforeseeable outcomes of genuinely free choices mingled with holy happenstance.

Again, this doesn't mean that God doesn't have a plan. But the reason why plans exist is in order to cope with uncertainty. This is something Hayek discusses a great deal, analogizing it to strategy in sports. A coach or manager doesn't need a strategy if the outcome is foreknown. Rather, the purpose of a strategy is to cope with uncertainty.

Fretheim compares God's plan to playing chess with a child. Like God, we have a pretty good idea that we'll win in the end, but this doesn't mean the child's moves are predetermined, or that we can simply ignore them. We still have to respond to them in order to prevail. 

The Resurrection is God's checkmate?

Perhaps, but that's getting ahead of the game. We're still back in the OT, where the Jews are moving the chess pieces here and there: God knows his "ultimate salvific goals for the people and world will be achieved one way or the another." After all, he's playing 5D chess.

But there are innumerable paths for the people to take along the way; these are known to God as probabilities and possibilities....

Thus, Israel's responses will contribute in a genuine way to the shaping not only of its own future, but to the future of God.

But since we've all lost an hour of playtime, I move for an early suspension of this particular game.