Dave Marshall

Perhaps grounded was the wrong word for what I meant. I think of creation as only having existence in our now, with the past being 'simply' an imprint on the present. So 'temporal reality', if the time-slice we consider to be 'now' is infinitely short, is just a plane of space that has no meaning of itself for what it is logically contained by. It's only those of us that exist within this continuity of plane recreation (what we experience as spacetime) and that also have some 'external', ie. eternal, point of reference (to give us self-awareness) that find meaning here. Or something like that. Whether it's another species elsewhere in the cosmos, or Flow's one yet to evolve on earth, or a brain-damaged one of us, this eternal component of these persons' being does not seem dependent on their biology for it's significance. Perhaps we can only know them when we're no longer bound by the limitations of our humanity. I suspect there's a lot of stuff like that.

I get to this by assuming that anything bound by time is by definition destined to end. Only those things within time that have an eternal connection can of themselves have eternal significance. Which as far as my thinking goes limits that to humanity. We appear to be the only life-form in the universe with the capacity for self-awareness. Other animals have consciousness and may know as much about their worlds as we do about ours, but they don't seem to know that they know. This suggests to me that some facet of ourselves, the 'soul' perhaps, is grounded in eternity. It's what gives us the ability to think about ourselves from an outside-of-ourselves viewpoint, what we call self-awareness. The impact of the rest of the cosmos on each of us gives it considerable indirect influence because it's our primary source of information about the Creator. But the only eternal significance of this 'book of nature' is I think in the changes it inspires in that part of us with the potential to continue beyond physical death.

I didn't. Don't know that sharing a name is enough to make me want to join though.

Thanks for the clarification, Fred. I wasn't meaning to appear critical of anyone, just unsure (again ) of quite what flow was getting at.

Is this a reference to my original post? If so, I'm not sure how the rest of your post relates to it. I was hoping that if this tentative statement of faith was in fact making unsupportable claims about God, people might want to say how and why. To look at some specifics rather than go round the houses simply in order to be dogmatically unspecific.. If you're saying we should say nothing whatever about God, I'm not sure how God or G-d can have any meaning.

That's a connection I not considered before. I knew I'd learn stuff here... Yeah, you're right. And the encouragement is appreciated. Thanks.

I'm cautious about labels like process. If I look up process theology on Wikipedia I get a list of concepts, most of which don't match my current understanding. I'd not want to say I limit God at all, merely that I exclude from my concept of God what appears inconsistent with our experience of being created. From a very brief look around, this seems to rely on prior assumptions about God other than as creator. I'd be interested to hear more from someone familiar with the ideas. The Original Post or Original Poster. It's an abreviation common on another board that I assumed was widespread. Sorry about that. I think my approach is essentially practical. The reality of God and what we don't know about creation is so mind-bogglingly vast it can never be contained by anything as limited as our thought processes. But if there's to be any point in our consideration of such things, if they are to have any relevance to how live, I think we have to at least attempt to crystalise out something to give form to the vague impressions we have. As long as we keep these tagged 'provisional', in indelible day-glo marker, they seem like a necessary part of any shared thinking about God. But thanks for the welcome. I've not come across a verbal zoo before.

I hope I haven't given the impression that I don't think God is real or anything like that. The statement of faith is only something that was written because it seemed useful, one concrete alternative I could point to that reflected God as creator that was not the traditional Christian sin and salvation story. I'd be interested in specific comments/critcisms of the OP (however many worms might crawl out), but is this the kind of thing TCPC does? I wonder if the organisation as a whole is more about reflecting the views of those churches and groups that have affiliated.

Thanks for the thoughts, flow. I understand I'm new here, but I have no idea what you mean. Can you give any examples of the kind of thing you see God saying to you? Or is everyone who posts here dealing with hurricane-survival issues? If so, I apologise for being insensitive. I am however genuinely confused by your post.

I was hoping that perhaps a few people here might want to agree/disagree/object to some of these statements, but no interest so far. In particular, I'm aware that statements 4 and 5 clash somewhat with traditional Christian theology. Do such beliefs cross some boundary that TCPC considers it's theological limits? Or have I posted on the wrong board? I'd appreciate your thoughts.

I don't like creeds in general, but was provoked recently into writing one I'd be willing to sign up to if I had to. A bit more prodding to expand on it slightly, and I ended up with this. It's obviously nothing more than an outline, but the statements in bold do I think mark out a theological position that relies only on the assumption that we are being created. I wonder how compatible this is with progressive Christianity? 1. The universe is being created. This is how it seems to me, based on my 50-odd years experience. 2. The creator can be known to the extent that we can imagine an entity with the capability and willingness to sustain life as we experience it. This entity is God. If we want to think about the creator, we have to imagine a God and fit that concept around what is and can be known. It's important to retain the underlying unknowability in order to determine the limits of how we can reasonably use our concept of God. 3. The nature of the universe shows God to be absolutely consistent and selflessly committed to its completion. This seems to be the limit of what we can in general positively infer from God as creator. If either the consistency or the commitment were missing, there would be no universe. Its completion, whatever that means, seems inevitable in the light of the consistency and commitment. 4. God does not remember the past or know the future but is with us in the present, inspiring and enabling us to become fully human. This ties God's involvement in history to the only time we experience - the present. Nothing else follows from God as creator. 5. Human life alone has eternal significance. The compatibility with eternal values of the values we adopt in this life determines if the identity forged in our humanity continues after death. Sin and salvation, heaven and hell, have no basis in the universe as we experience it. It's more consistent to imagine that a similar kind of process to the one that controls life within time also applies when life and time separate. 6. The nature of the universe and the good we see in humanity provide grounds for hope that all will at the end be well. However much humanity in general screws up, however devastating a natural disaster, there always seems to be something to inspire hope. We only have to look in the right places. Why should the end be any different?