FredP

Not a chisel, just a good hearty knife. Oh, and it's not so hard to cut through if it's thoroughly saturated with brandy either.

Don't know why, but I had a flash on Monty Python as I read that. Could have been a great scene in The Life of Brian. The one featuring the great line: "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government"? If so, that's Holy Grail.

Long live fruitcake! Down with the anti-fruitcake propaganda that infests commercials all throughout the Christmas season!

Yes, Confessions VII deals specifically with his conversion from Manicheanism to Neoplatonism. You might be especially interested in Confessions XI after the discussion we've been having, as he deals with "The Eternal Creator and the Creation in Time."

It is faith. All certainty is faith. I can't even be sure that you exist.

I didn't mean migrate the whole topic, just the aspect of it where I started taking it over.

There's no reason, in principle, why God as creator must be distant. Emotional distance is a human response to power that we project onto God. Actually, if God is the transcendent ground of all that exists, then God is in a uniquely good position both to know and to care about you personally. If God were just another being fumbling around inside the universe, he may never happen to run across you at all in his travels, or have the time and energy to be of much help to you. In my mind, a "helper" God is just another being in the world, ultimately subject to the same limitations we are. I don't really understand what's so inspiring about that. Maybe it touches our sense of pathos, and gives us a warm fuzzy feeling in a cold, heartless universe, to know that somebody out there is trying his darndest to look out for us. But even this is just another "creature" in a universe with no ultimate ground or purpose. Maybe this is really the way the world is; but in that case I'd just say the universe has a helper, and there is no God. At that point, yes, I'd say we're definitely not talking about the same God.

No, no, that's Virginians. It's a mistranslation, there are no vowels in the original manuscripts.

Yes and Yes! If anybody out there still has yet to grab the new Gabriel (Up, 2002), I personally rate it as one of the best albums I've heard in about two decades.

I think it is both. I think being both changeless and changing is what makes God perfect and what makes God transcendant. Both, in an immanent sense, and neither, in a transcendent sense. In an immanent sense, the tiniest grain of sand or puff of breath expresses the fullness of God, without lacking anything. In a transcendent sense, the entire cosmos is a barely perceptible glimmer in the mind of God. (I think Cynthia beat me to this in her last post though!) And then, the kicker: the immanent and the transcendent are the same God! Can you pass me that Advil now? Yes, I think we're definitely approaching this in the same kind of way, and with a large helping of paradox. But it's all fun. I don't get the opportunity to do mental sit-ups much these days.

Well, our intelligence involves the ability to change and adapt, because the universe contains other beings, things, and experiences than us. We change precisely because we are limited. Anyway, I've been trying to explain a VERY transcendental, very platonic, view of God, which is very different than just about anything out there now.

That in itself is a good enough reason to look her up! Jodie is just awesome.

I very much appreciate your view, and your willingness to put my ideas to the test. These explorations always help me to clarify my concepts and words, and to come to a better understanding of what I mean. And hey, occasionally I even change my mind. I know what you mean. OTOH, my intuition tells me that it's impossible to make God too transcendent or too immanent -- so lately my approach has been to make God as transcendent and as immanent as I can possibly hold together in my mind at the same time! So my view probably sounds pretty "classical" -- Platonic, to be exact -- when I'm talking transcendence, and pretty "process" when I'm talking immanence. That's ok. An infinitely transcendent God ought to be able to empty himself as much as he likes. There are definitely limitations to relativity that require some correction. I was only introducing the idea of the relativity of space-time to the cosmos, which seems to be a pretty uncontroversial claim. This is one area where you're really helping me to get a better handle on my terminology, and even my comprehension of the issue -- even if we ultimately turn out to disagree. It's true -- I have leaned toward the classical conception of changelessness in my description of transcendence; but the more I try to explain it, the more I realize that the problem is more complicated than that. Classically speaking, change is described as a feature of flux and manyness, while changelessness is a feature of eternity and oneness. But I'm thinking, what are "change" and "changelessness" but ways of describing the difference between scenarios in flux between two moments in time? So the notions of sameness and differentness are equally based on flux! It is just as incorrect to say "God is changeless" as it is to say "God changes"! Obviously I disagree with you that change is perfection, but I now agree with you that changelessness is not. Being "beyond change" -- and "beyond changelessness," as I'm coming to see -- isn't what makes God perfect, but it's part of what makes God transcendent. I've used the phrase "eternal dynamism" of God before as a really, really fuzzy and paradoxical way of describing this; but this was definitely something I needed to work through further. Thanks!

Science alert. As far as the flux of time, space, change, etc., is concerned, I find it almost impossible to avoid conceptual confusion without at least a cursory introduction to the theory of relativity. If anyone has already had an informal (or formal) introduction, don't take this as an insult to your intelligence. Most people know of the theory of relativity as a sort of brain-teaser, where you can go away on a really fast spaceship for a year, and return to Earth only to find that your twin brother has been dead for a century. While this happens to be one implication of the special theory (it's called time-dilation), the REAL mental messer-upper about relativity is that the passage and perception of time is part of the fabric of the universe itself; there is no independently running clock. Without universes, time doesn't exist. And each universe (in theory) is its own completely self-contained space-time system; there is no such thing as a "moment" that an event in universe A and another event in universe B occured "simultaneously." "Before" and "after" literally have no meaning "outside" or "across" universes. I take all this under heavy advisory when I set out to comprehend, in my own ridiculously small way, the relationship of God to the flux of time, space, dimensionality, etc. Eternity isn't "an infinitely long time" -- some sort of meta-timeline in which all the comings and goings, emptyings and returnings, in all the universes God sees fit to create, happen to play themselves out. There is no such thing as an infinitely long time, or a meta-timeline. As I understand it, God transcendentally comprehends the cosmos from beyond-time, as a singularity -- a single, undivided act of creation, perception, coming, going, emptying, returning, etc. Transcendentally, God does not experience the cosmos as a passage of time. There is no "moment" at which God plunges into the emptiness to create it, and after which God has "changed" with respect to it. The relationship of God to the cosmos as a self-emptying, somehow, just eternally IS. And with that, I can only take a silent bow. Take that for whatever you think it's worth....

Yes, we do use the language of time, hence any -- err -- time we try to talk about God's relationship to the universe, we have to realize our words are ultimately inadequate to the task. At the same time, we hope they help a little. You know, five minutes after I posted that, I bet myself a hundred bucks that you were going to call me on it. Anyway, no, I don't mean this in a process sense at all. For process theology, there is no transcendent, infinite God at all -- God only exists within the flux of time, because there isn't any other place for anything to exist. What I'm trying to express is, there is no "before" and "after" the creation of the cosmos in a chronological sense; but the cosmos does stand -- eternally -- in a relationship of ontological dependence ("createdness") on God. If God really is transcendent, undivided, nondual reality, then -- in a sense which I wholeheartedly admit is paradoxical to the extreme -- God's creative activity must somehow transcend the flux of time and change. Lest the criticism be raised that this makes God static -- I guess I'd answer that God transcends even the polarity between static and dynamic. What could that possibly mean? I have no idea. But at the very least, I suppose it means that however far God may be beyond our conventional notions of change, he's just as far beyond our conventional notions of sameness. Welcome to the via negativa! Here's your eraser...

I was also thinking that this whole topic should be continued on the old Fundamental Theology thread or something...

I don't think there's any "has done"; I think for God the cosmos just IS -- the passage of time is a property pertaining to events inside it, not of God. What that means as far as the universe "playing out" with respect to God is utterly beyond me. I don't THINK the cosmos is what is because of logical necessity... Perhaps some sort of grand unifying thing that transcends the apparent duality between free will and necessity in God. There are obviously senses of "freedom" and "necessity" that apply to God, that are on a completely different order of reality than the freedom and necessity that apply to us. I think here we're in a place where our words have become just about meaningless! I need to eat more Wheaties before I think about this any more.

I don't know, Flow, I'm kind of an alt prog rock/metal guy myself. Tight and loud. My newest obsession is Porcupine Tree, kind of a modern alt/metal take on Pink Floyd. Brilliant.

Omnipotence and absoluteness have nothing to do with "going poof" and making things happen. Omnipotence means that God is the ground and source of all power in the universe -- there is no power that comes from somewhere other than God. Absoluteness means that God is, by definition, contingent on nothing other than himself -- as opposed to everything else, which is, by definition, contingent on God. For me, God's absoluteness is a matter of logical necessity, not a neurotic need to bow down before something all-powerful. I think the conception of God I've been describing addresses your concerns quite well, actually. By emptying himself out into the cosmos, God voluntarily divests himself of transcendent power over it, allowing it -- from atoms to cells to persons to societies -- to make its own discoveries and its own mistakes, and to come into its own self-realization "from the inside," as it were. There is no all-powerful monarch God who looks "down from Heaven" and says, "Gee, I could prevent this hurricane, but Billy down there needs to learn the value of cooperation, and Kelly there needs to learn about how economic injustice affects the ability of certain demographic groups to cope with disaster...." This is Sunday School theology. Suffering, disaster, and death participate in their own cosmic form of karma; they create their own punishments and rewards as long as they stay immersed in the delusion of separateness. Anyway, that's my $.02, take it for what it's worth.

Makes me think of an Indian proverb: Call on God, but row away from the rocks.

If I understand the research correctly, even alcohol dependency is far more emotional and psychological than chemical -- like heroin, for example. But in any case I think addiction is more than merely chemical dependency. (I guess some would say it's still chemical dependency, because they would reduce emotions to serotonin imbalance anyway, but that's not where I was going with it.)

Grr, I meant to hit "Edit," not "Reply." Pls ignore the double posting.

Hmm, this is a really good idea. I'm actually envisioning a more interactive setup where people (with varying levels of authorization, perhaps) can manage content and links without a dedicated "data entry" team. (Naturally, we'll need admins to keep the content on track.) Somewhat like the early Yahoo! concept, and if you've seen Wikipedia, or other Wiki sites. If you've got quite a bit of content to begin with, there are also lots of ways of scraping and breaking it down automatically, to avoid the tedium of data entry work. I've got quite a bit of experience with all this stuff, on both the design and development sides. In fact, I run LOTS of web services tools on my Linux server at home, so we could play around with some things there. Might be less locked down than a "public" website where you just pay for space and manage it through some limited web interface. I don't know how far down a particular path you've gone, but if this sounds like something worth investigating, let me know. Fred <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Heh. Well, I have said "Nay," but probably never backed it up well enough to cement it in your mind. Incidentally, the conventional model of God also views God as an individual being -- who in this case, just happens to decide to create a world of other individual beings. This view is false for the same reason monism is, which is that it requires the concepts of individuality and multiplicity to be ontologically prior to God, which is by definition, impossible. How can people not love philosophical theology as much as I do?! Yes, I meant to tell you I liked that analogy, but I forgot. God creates a space "within" himself to give birth to the world. But of course this "in," as you said, is symbolic, and can't be thought of spatially, or chronologically, or in any other conventional sense of "in" that we know how to talk about! The world is within God's transcendental "view," yes, but in the sense of a direct causal relationship with God as transcendent, I'm not sure whether or how that works -- so it's nothing I'd get into a big argument over.

Hmm, this is a really good idea. I'm actually envisioning a more interactive setup where people (with varying levels of authorization, perhaps) can manage content and links without a dedicated "data entry" team. (Naturally, we'll need admins to keep the content on track.) Somewhat like the early Google concept, and if you've seen Wikipedia, or other Wiki sites. If you've got quite a bit of content to begin with, there are also lots of ways of scraping and breaking it down automatically, to avoid the tedium of data entry work. I've got quite a bit of experience with all this stuff, on both the design and development sides. In fact, I run LOTS of web services tools on my Linux server at home, so we could play around with some things there. Might be less locked down than a "public" website where you just pay for space and manage it through some limited web interface. I don't know how far down a particular path you've gone, but if this sounds like something worth investigating, let me know. Fred