A quote which expresses a key error: “….since God knows what each of them would do in every possible situation, he gets to decide, so to speak, what the upshot will be – which world will be actual….”
We’ll get to the errors in that and why it is not accurate a few paragraphs down but first the general ((…and fallacious…)) Frame/Syllogism off of which that error springboards:
A— If P were in S1, P would do A.
B— If P were in S2, P would not do A.
1— If Adam were in S1, he would obey God.
2— If Adam were in S2, he would not obey God
But First — The Wider Framework:
By which metrics will we Ask/Answer the question of Why Create If Evil Is Possible? Will we employ the metrics of love, reciprocity, self-giving, and so on? Well yes – of course. But then how does the Critic rationally damn love’s begetting of love within The Trinitarian Life as there we find that God Freely Chooses not to create — and so we have [Not-Creating]?
By which metrics will we Ask/Answer the question of Why Create If Evil Is Possible? Will we employ the metrics of love, reciprocity, self-giving, and so on? Well yes – of course. But then how does the Critic rationally damn love’s begetting of love within and through the Divine Decree of the Imago Dei as there we find that God Freely Chooses to Create — and so we have [Creating]?
Is it Good of us and is it Logical of us and does it sum to our factual Valuing-Of-Love on our part if we FAULT God for begetting love vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life wherein we discover Timeless Reciprocity vis-à-vis Ceaseless Self-Giving with respect to Being in totum? How is it that one can rationally claim (there) that “God Is Un-Loving?
Just the same if we turn it 180 degrees: Is it Good of us and is it Logical of us and does it sum to our factual Valuing-Of-Love on our part if we FAULT God for begetting love in the Creative Act vis-à-vis the Decree of the Imago Dei wherein very Blueprint of “Reality” and hence of All Available Options is ((all over again)) Self/Other in and of Timeless Reciprocity vis-à-vis Ceaseless Self-Giving with respect to Being in totum?
Clarity is aided by illuminating fundamental distinctions between the metaphysical “Content & Yield” ((…and so necessarily then distinctions in our metrics…)) of the “Pre-Edenic” vs. that of the “The Edenic” vs. that of “Privation” vs. that of “Perfection” ((…specifically regarding the ‘Category’ perfection of our very being as the Adamic…as opposed to the very different ‘Category’ of Perfection which refers to God/Necessary-Being…)). However, before we do that it will be helpful to clear up a few common misunderstandings:
MISUNDERSTANDING 1 — The Fallacy Of The-Greater-Good Theodicy
There is NO such thing as The Greater-Good “thing” for anyone to appeal to. See the following three items:
1— [Gratuitous Evil] Is A Metaphysical Impossibility which is at http://disq.us/p/1vc9vwd and also linked with https://randalrauser.com/2018/08/can-violence-ever-serve-a-redemptive-purpose/#comment-4071850429
Begin Excerpt:
Evil and the Goodness of God:
[1] The Greater Good reality (with respect to [All Things]) is true and is a valid statement about [All Things].
[2] Scripture affirms possible but not necessary evil given God’s decree of the Imago Deiwith respect to the Adamic’s volitional authority to choose possible *worlds*, much less actions… See both [5] and [7].
[3] Minus God: [All Things] whether good or evil or any amalgamation thereof which stream out of The Adamic in number [2] *are* fundamentally and ontologically gratuitous “at bottom“. Indeed, but for God and His Hand, “purpose” finds no grounding, and hence “Minus God” leaves all lines gratuitous.
[4] But God. Full stop. And God is the Necessary Being. Hence, this [4] *necessarily* subsumes [3] which *necessarily* subsumes [2] which *necessarily* subsumes [1].
[5] Creating and decreeing a coin is not decreeing or creating two separate faces, so to speak. It is creating *one* ontological reality with multiple sides. It is *one* creative act, *one* decree. Trinity is like that. Love is like that. God’s decree guarantees that, grounds that.
[6] In all directions, there can be no such thing, no such creation, no such decree, as a one sided coin. God cannot do nonsense. It is no insult to God to state that He cannot do nonsense.
[7] God cannot, ever, create and decree and by creating and decreeing lose control should He grant (any number of) possible worlds to volitional agents.
[8] God uses [All Things] for good and yet greater good and yet greater good. Glory to glory, as it were. He does not “only” use evil. But [All Things].
[9] *God* is our guarantee and our sure anchor in all these things, whether we speak of our own frail attempts at good, or whether we speak of horrific evil, or whether we cannot speak at all but can only pray for we know not what. All appeals start and stop in His Decree, and He has decreed and declared His love for us.
[10A] God is reality’s Anchor. Literally. And therefore our Anchor. Literally. God is our A and our Z. “You are my hope Lord, in you do I trust.”
[10B] As describe earlier, [All Things], not “only” evil things, are used by God, purposed by God, for The Good, the Greater Good, and so on. That reality grounds purpose throughout reality wherever the “Adamic’s” feet shall traverse. There is no number of possible worlds which God can grant the volitional being which can cause God to lose control. (It’s unfortunate that that last sentence even has to be stated).
[10C] That which exists by God’s Decree is that which cannot be otherwise. Hence, such cannot be charged with being gratuitous simply by sheer definition and sheer necessity, else we must call God’s Decree pointless. If God values, and decrees, the Imago Dei, well then we come upon what cannot be a one sided reality there in Eden amid Self/Other, Man/God, but rather we come upon that which is by necessity a two sided reality with respect to God and the Adamic, or the Adamic and God.
[11] Therein, again from earlier:
[A] God uses [All Things] for good and yet greater good and yet greater good. Glory to glory, as it were. He does not “only” use evil. But [All Things].
[B] *God* is our guarantee and our sure anchor in all these things, whether we speak of our own frail attempts at good, or whether we speak of horrific evil, or whether we cannot speak at all but can only pray for we know not what. All appeals start and stop in His Decree, and He has decreed and declared His love for us.
[C] God is reality’s Anchor. Literally. And therefore our Anchor. Literally. God is our A and our Z. “You are my hope Lord, in you do I trust.”
End copy/paste.
In the above “list” notice that some of it requires methodical distinctions and that is so because Causality and God are often confused and we find all sorts of bizarre “Maps” in “Theodicies” which amount to nothing more than incoherent mixtures of the error of Occasionalism and the error of Utility. The error of Occasionalism is obvious and layered over that we’re reminded by A. Stanley that “God will use what He chooses not to remove.”
MISUNDERSTANDING 2 — The Blueprint for the Imago Dei
There is only one Divine Decree of only one Singularity to appeal to, and that is the Decree of the Imago Dei. That Singularity forces what love necessarily entails and what love necessarily leaves out as impossible. The Why/How of that stems from the Blueprint for the Imago Dei which is as follows:
In the Divine Decree of the Imago Dei we come upon Timeless Reciprocity vis-à-vis Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-à-vis Being Itself vis-à-vis Self/Other vis-à-vis the Blueprint vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life. In the Christian metanarrative we find the Trinitarian metaphysic and, therein, love’s timeless Self-Giving and irreducible Diffusiveness of the Ontic Self with respect to …being itself… and, thereby – once again – The Always and The Already, that which is ceaselessly Beneath and Above – namely “Love & Necessity” as an ontic *singularity*. It is there that we find in the Christian metaphysic the intellectual and moral grounds for affirming the term, “Love Himself” vis-à-vis the A and the Z of the Trinitarian Life / Trinity with respect to the Decree of the Imago Dei, and all that comes with “that”. That is to say, it is there that we find nothing less than the immutable love of the Necessary Being – and all that comes with “that”. That is to say, it is there in nothing less than Being that we find The Always and The Already constituting love’s timeless reciprocity and Self-Giving diffusiveness of the Ontic-Self in totum, and all that comes with “that”. It is *that* explanatory terminus which is reality’s rock-bottom, reality’s irreducible substratum – the A and the Z of every possible ontic, of every possible sentence.
The Misunderstanding of WHAT the Blueprint is for the Imago Dei and what that logically necessitates vs. makes logically impossible will be looked at in greater detail as that is perhaps one of the Key “problems” with respect to our approach to the question of Create?/Not-Create?
MISUNDERSTANDING 3 — Terminal Closure
We must ask if our Non-Theist friends or Critics are demanding eternal unending life and wholeness? Perhaps even void of Suffering? If so then they’ve only three options, none of which help them:
1— If they are NOT asking for such an End then they are stopping short of coherence for suffering must enter somewhere and finds only its own eternally open-ended contradiction – leaving their claims finally fallacious. Note that there is no cryptic mystery here as of course we all still “recognize” the Christian’s terms vis-à-vis the moral terms in play here.
2— If they ARE demanding such an end of suffering then again they are demanding what Non-Theism can never give them vis-à-vis the Final Good as per Eternal Life as per Unending Wholeness…. and so on.
3— [Death] is the #1 Killer in the World. Therefore [Eternal Life] and nothing less is the #1 dissolution of our #1 problem. In fact, BUT FOR [Eternal Life] there is no Ontic Resolution of the #1 killer in the World.
So again we ask, what does “Ending Evil” necessarily “look like”? The following “To Create / Not-Create” discussion is (…in part…) a brief observation of that as per a. http://disq.us/p/1xv6v4f and b.http://disq.us/p/1slxh6k and c. http://disq.us/p/1xr6yav
MISUNDERSTANDING 4 — Free Will Is Not The End-All Good Or The Goal Full Stop
Just as we discussed the fallacious nature of The Greater Good theodicy ((when used in certain ways)) so too do we find a problem if and when the polemic of so many of our Non-Theist friends pretends that it is Free Will which is the End-All/Be-All in the Imago Dei. That is in fact wrong about the Greater Good. It is not Free Will “Full-Stop” which is “Necessary” but rather it is love’s topography and unfortunately for those Non-Christian Straw-men we find that there is Free Will v. the Adamic in Heaven. AND YET it is still logically impossible for God to create the Imago Dei by creating the “Adamic” perfect (complete) in Heaven from the Get-Go.
WHY? Whence the necessity of Eden given the Decree of the Imago Dei? Whence the necessity of love’s Groom/Bride? Whence the necessity of love’s Proposal/Reply? Recall that we are dealing with The Trinitarian Life vis-à-vis that landscape of Self/Other vis-à-vis the Decree of the Imago Dei vis-à-vis all terms/definitions vis-à-vis the Christian Metaphysic. To “Cherry-Pick” is to get “The Greater Good” wrong even as it is to get “Eden” wrong even as it is to get “Privation” wrong – and so on.
Non-Christian versions of all such vectors comprise too much of the content of the polemics of our Non-Theist friends and that they employ such premises reveals that they clearly don’t recognize what is in play and cannot answer the question as to the necessity of all things ‘Edenic’.
However, the Christian Metaphysic just is the Metanarrative of that topography vis-à-vis the topography of the Immutable Trinitarian Life (God).
Those Four/4 “Misunderstandings” are further conceptualized by an excerpt from Objective And Irreducible Evil Exists Therefore Objective And Irreducible Good Exists Therefore God Exists at — https://metachristianity.com/objective-and-irreducible-evil-exists-therefore-objective-and-irreducible-good-exists-therefore-god-exists/
Begin Excerpt||Preliminary Framework
“…all theodicies fail because they provide a possible explanation for which we have no independent reason to believe is true….or the explanation is not probable on the assumption that theism is true…..” (J. Lowder)
—&—
“…since God knows what each of them would do in every possible situation, he gets to decide, so to speak, what the upshot will be – which world will be actual…” (..other..)
—&—
“Every worldly good that permits or requires evil is greatly exceeded by a pure good of the same type existing in God prior to creation…. What it forces us to notice and take seriously is that since (say) instances of courage and compassion presuppose evil or its permission, these goods cannot exist in God prior to creation. And yet God is then unsurpassably great!” (Schellenberg)
Seven Observations:
Ob-1 The part which says “…a possible explanation for which we have no independent reason to believe is true…” hinges on the explanatory power of Identity/Logical Necessity afforded by Theism over the Identity/Logical Necessity afforded by Non-Theism.
Ob-2 The part which says, “…the explanation is not probable on the assumption theism is true….” hinges on both Law of Identity and the logically necessities and logical impossibilities which arrive given this or that Theistic Metaphysic ((…the Hindu’s Pantheism vs. the Christian Metaphysic and so on…)).
Ob-3 One must account for the fact of the Law of Identity and of Logical Impossibility and of Logical Possibility all converging and forcing Possible but not Necessary Evil. Should one encounter an Irreducible state of affairs ((…forced by said convergence…)) in which the [Highest Good] in fact logically necessitates [Possible but not Necessary] Evil then one’s only possible rebuttal is to turn one’s semantic intent 180° and damn the [Highest Good] by calling it Evil “…in this World but not that World…” Notice the self-negation which the Non-Theist must posit — for he must posit something akin to, “The highest Good is in fact the Highest Good and so my Non-Theism has Non-Illusory Moral Facts but The Highest Good is NOT The Highest Good in and through [All] [Sets] of [Possible Counterfactuals] || [Possible Worlds] and the Proof of that is that in THIS mutable and contingent world or [Set] it is the case that The Highest Good is NOT The Highest Good.” Notice that one is left without an actual Ontic with respect to an actual Metric of The Good even as one also forces a Reductio Ad Absurdum.
Ob-4 One is in need of one’s own logical proof for one’s Moral Realism vis-à-vis one’s [Highest Good]. If we discover that one’s semantic intent when one speaks of Good and Ought and Better and so on reveals that its ontological referents regarding this or that “X” in the end land on something that is Contingent & Mutable – as opposed to Necessary & Irreducible/Immutable – then one is not speaking of an actual Ontic with respect to Realism vis-à-vis reality’s rock-bottom. One is left in the Reductio described in Ob-3 ((…see also https://metachristianity.com/platonism-and-be-ing-and-do-ing-and-pure-act-and-counterfactuals-and-moral-facts/ …)).
Ob-5 Such an outcome as per Ob-4 leaves one with a “Good” which does not and in fact cannot Even-In-Principle retain Being and Identity and Irreducibility||Immutability through [All] [Sets] of [Possible Counterfactuals] || [Possible Worlds]. Any Moral Realism which cannot or will not speak of all Worlds and all Realities but instead must only be found within Contingent Sets of Counterfactuals vis-à-vis mutable and contingent metrics such as Time and Circumstance ((and so on)) is NOT rising to the level of Moral Realism and leaves one with the Arbitrary & Mutable. Additionally one therein affirms Hume all over again as Reason finds no Factual/Ontic contradiction against REALITY ((…un-reasonable as per contradicting [All] [Sets] of [Possible Counterfactuals] || [Possible Worlds] vis-à-vis reality…)) should she ((Reason)) pursue one Goal or some other Goal vis-à-vis Preference. It is uncanny but notice that we cannot avoid the fact that [Death] is the # 1 Killer in the World. To cure one’s spouse of cancer now only to lose them ten years from now is not “Ending Evil”. We find that Eternal Life — *and *nothing *less — is the # 1 Dissolution of our # 1 Problem. In fact BUT FOR Eternal Life there is no Ontic Resolution ((Closure)) for/of the # 1 Killer in the World.
Ob-6 One cannot posit Objective Closure vis-à-vis a logically necessary / logically compelled path to the End Of Evil until one posits the logically necessary / logically compelled Objective Evil. Similarly one cannot posit a logically necessary / logically compelled path In-To||Out-Of that which just is Objective/Irreducible Evil if one has no logically necessary / logically compelled path In-To||Out-Of that which just is Objective/Irreducible Good.
Ob-7 Should one fall short in ANY of the above observations then one’s Map is incoherent and following said Map only leads one into the pains of Circularity. The Objective/Irreducible End of Evil is either Illusion or else Noble Lies or else Autohypnosis without the Objective/Irreducible Good.
If and only if one has navigated and satisfied Reason’s relentless demands for logical lucidity vis-à-vis Observations 1—7 above can one then ask the pressing question which we all ask:
What is the most efficient path to the End of Evil?
On Christianity “Ending Evil” just is “Ending Privation”. What is it that will rise to the level of [Necessary & Sufficient] with respect to the “MEANS” to achieve that “END”? Well that depends on the nature of Evil ((…see Observations 1—7…)) and in the Christian Metaphysic that depends, then, on the nature of “Evil as Privation”.
Further, we find that we must speak of Worlds and Realities and not merely of Sets of Counterfactuals vis-à-vis mutable and contingent metrics such as Time and Circumstance. That is to say that we find that we must speak of Ending Evil vis-à-vis Ending Privation vis-à-vis the Privation of an entire Paradigm||World||Possible World. But of course for an entire Reality/World to be found IN Privation and/or to ascend OUT-OF Privation necessarily entails that The-Good be found OUTSIDE-OF||INDEPENDENT-OF any of those particular Possible Worlds or Sets of Counterfactuals. That Wider-Lens insists that we must avoid hijacked versions of the Greater Good theme which land in a surreal mixture of Utility and Occasionalism. The Greater Good umbrella does not find God allowing [ABC and/or the Possibility of ABC] “….in order to get to….” XYZ. Instead we find [ABC and/or the Possibility of ABC] not as a Means by which God is to gain or to get to some End but, rather, because it is a logical outflow/logically necessary given His Decree of the Imago Dei vis-à-vis His Decree of The Blueprint reducing to irreducible Reciprocity vis-à-vis Self-Giving vis-à-vis the singularity of Self/Other vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life. To (first) Decree “Square via World X” just is to (secondly) find “Round via World X” a logical impossibility/absurdity.
One more time for the sake of the logically necessary / logically compelled:
For an entire Reality/World to be found IN Privation and/or to ascend OUT-OF Privation necessarily entails that The-Good be found OUTSIDE-OF||INDEPENDENT-OF any of those particular Possible Worlds or Sets of Counterfactuals.
Our Non-Theist friends have no idea what such a thing looks like or even could look like. In fact they ((…perhaps willingly… perhaps in the light of logic’s Day…)) commit themselves to their own Ceiling beneath which they rummage about “Nothing-But” different “layers” and “arrangements” of frail and mutable contingencies.
If God heals my cancer today and I die in ten years from cancer is that “Ending Evil”? Is it Evil in all possible worlds/universes? Is it Evil in the Stasis/Non-Change of a 4D-Block Universe such that Evil is therein on ontological par with Good which is therein on ontological par with Indifference? If so then one finds David Bentley Hart’s “…metaphysical armistice of eternally colliding ontological equals….”
Evil is not a positive substance but is instead a deficiency of substance ((…deficiency of Being, of Good, of Life, of Mind, and so on…)) or we can say that Evil is a Hollow or Vacuum of said Substance/Ontic. That is what the Christian Metaphysic means when it speaks of The-Good and then in turn speaks of “The-Good-Minus-Something” which is to say “Evil is Good’s Privation” or “Evil is a privation of Good”.
The Christian Metaphysic posits a cure for Evil — for Privation. By force of Identity/Logic we find that the cure is nothing less than the *only* *logically* *possible* *Means* by which the aforementioned Hollow or Vacuum or Deficiency could be brought to Non-Existence. And what is that Only-Logically-Possible-Means? Well once we know what is MISSING we then know what must be POURED into said Hollow/Vacuum/Deficiency.
If we say that it is “X” which is missing in said Void/Hollow then we find that ONLY that which “Is Itself X” ((so to speak)) or we can say ONLY that which is “X Itself” ((so to speak)) can Pour-Out||Pour-Into and so thereby Fill-Up||End that Void/Hollow which is itself the Deficiency of “X” ((so to speak)).
Here Again Logical Necessity presses in through all possible worlds with respect to Evil as we find that said “X” amid said Deficiency by force of Identity/Logic *cannot* *be* anything less than Being Itself poured out — or Goodness Itself poured out — or Life Itself poured out — or All-Sufficiency Himself poured out — or God — vis-à-vis His Own Self-Outpouring — to the bitter Ends of Time & Physicality vis-a-vis all things Adamic — and that is Christ.
We can say it this way: Should one want to know what “all of the above” in fact “Looks Like” ((…from here within pains of Privation vis-à-vis our particular set of counterfactuals and logical possibilities…)) one need only turn one’s gaze towards Christ. Don’t worry about the question of “Fall or No-Fall” with respect to the necessity of “…nothing less than X Itself.…” as the Imago Dei vis-à-vis the Adamic finds the SAME Logically Necessary Means/Ends inside of “The Edenic” as the Imago Dei vis-à-vis the Adamic finds within “Privation” and in fact the Imago Dei vis-à-vis the Adamic finds the SAME Logically Necessary Means/Ends in [All] [Sets] of [Possible Counterfactuals] || [Possible Worlds] and in fact it is necessarily the case that it cannot be otherwise.
But of course all of that is the Groom’s Proposal amid His Beloved’s Reply. The beautiful Freedom called Permanence can only come later ((…again by force of Identity/Logical Necessity)) vis-à-vis the ontics of “Weddings” and “Births” — all of which is found in another Chapter up ahead — by force of Identity/Logical Necessity.
Closure — we cannot avoid the fact that [Death] is the # 1 Killer in the World. To cure one’s spouse of cancer now only to lose her ten years from now is not “Ending Evil”. We find that Eternal Life — *and *nothing *less — is the # 1 Dissolution of our # 1 Problem. In fact BUT FOR Eternal Life there is no Ontic Resolution ((Closure)) for/of the # 1 Killer in the World.
“No Good Reason For Possible Word X / Possible Worlds”?
The problem with the Non-Theist’s “No Good Reason For Possible Word X / Possible Worlds” is not difficult to see assuming one interacts with the Trinitarian Metaphysic and not some other, Non-Christian, Metaphysic. Basically that looks like the following:
Evil is a Deficiency of Being vis-à-vis Being Itself vis-à-vis Goodness Itself as per “Privation”. Evil is not a Positive Substance but is instead “The Good Minus Something”. That is one of the many reasons why the Non-Theist’s “Degrees Of X” somehow existing in a Reality which is necessarily void of X just won’t do. Non-Theism’s Necessary Conservation of [Irreducible Indifference] from A to Z affords it no concept of what Good/Deficiency might even “look like” — and therein no Metric or Tool to employ and by which to “Map”. The term “Suffering” has no Ontic Referent which can even in principle sum to “Evil” on Non-Theism.
Therefore our Non-Theist friends are forever self-negating here in between their own ontological “A” and “Z”. It is that simple. Again: it is that simple as Objectivism of ANY Good/Evil necessarily entails The-Good Full-Stop as one cannot find a coherent definition of “Evil” but for The-Good vis-à-vis Being vis-à-vis Closure. “Degrees of X” is gibberish in Non-Theism simply because we must finally end either with Being or with Non-Being — not with Degrees-Of-Philosophical-No-Thing ((…a Reductio…)).
The category of Moral Objectivism includes the category of Objective Evil and we rationally count Moral Objectivism — and hence Evil too — as one of the many positive ((Perceptible)) evidences of God ((The-Good as Being Itself)). That is also one of the reasons why we rationally & morally reject Non-Theism’s terminus of Indifference.
“No Good Reason For Possible Word X / Possible Worlds” Notice here that far worse than the Non-Theist’s self-negation and inexplicable belief in “Degrees Of X” somehow existing in a Reality which is necessarily void of X is the fact that the sum of Groom/Bride vis-à-vis Self/Other makes a metaphysical necessity out of the Edenic IF God Decrees the Imago Dei. The reason why is because the Blueprint for that just is Irreducible Reciprocity viz. the Trinitarian Life and the Map of any such Self/Other or I/You or Groom/Bride which houses the Contingent/Created must and does – from A to Z – subsume all Ontological Possibilities “therein” and therefore all Possible Worlds “therein” are necessarily found as Permissible/Possible yet not Necessary. There the full-on semantic intent of “Possible But Not Necessary” vis-à-vis the Contingent/Created arrives on scene and all of that Heavy-Weight Ontic Real Estate is ((so far)) found merely at the initial/start of the Christian Metaphysic vis-à-vis “Let Us Create” as per the Blueprint of the Trinitarian Life – never mind all that “Necessarily Can” ((then)) follow/actualize.
End Excerpt||Preliminary Framework
….So Let’s Further Unpack All Of That…..
To Create vs. To Not-Create
There’s more further down but first a brief reminder of the question:
A — By which metrics will we Ask/Answer that question? By Love’s metrics? Well yes. Of course. But then how does one rationally damn love’s begetting of love either within The Trinitarian Life (…God Not-Creating….) or within the Divine Decree of the Imago Dei (…God Creating…)?
B — Is it Good and Logical and Valuing-Of-Love on our part if we fault God for begetting love vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life wherein we discover Timeless Reciprocity vis-à-vis Ceaseless Self-Giving with respect to Being in totum? How is it that one can rationally claim (there) that “God Is Un-Loving?
C — Is it Good and Logical and Valuing-Of-Love on our part if we fault God for begetting love in the Creative Act vis-à-vis the Decree of the Imago Dei?
Again those questions are as per a. http://disq.us/p/1xv6v4f and b. http://disq.us/p/1slxh6k and c. http://disq.us/p/1xr6yav
To Create vs. To Not-Create? Any proposal of love that isn’t free amid “Self/Other” just isn’t a trinitarian love. The isolated Self or what we call Privation cannot not-exist, just as community in the Whole of Self/Other which we call love’s unicity cannot not-exist.
When love is proposed to all things Adamic, to the beloved, we come upon the logical necessity of all things Edenic – the logical necessity that the Edenic never was the Adamic’s Eternal Home combined with the logical necessity that there are only Two Options for all things Adamic within all things Edenic – those Two Doors within Eden facing Outward – one Door/Tree into Privation ((…that of the Isolated Self…)) and one Door/Tree into the Whole of Self/Other ((…Community/God-In-Man/Man-In-God/Eternal Life…)) – and all of that combined with the logical necessity that there is no “possible third option”. Why no third “Possible World” ((so to speak))? Because any contingent being necessarily lacks wholeness “in and of itself“, so to speak. That Pure-I, or that Isolated Self, or that lack of Community amid Self/Other – or that lack of unicity vis-à-vis [Contingent-Being||Necessary-Being] or [Man||God] just is the Outside. Privation as necessary in the Trinitarian Life? In the Blueprint?
Well of course. As in the following.
In the Necessary Being the freedom of Privation, of “I AM”, not only cannot not-exist but also just is [God] – just is The Great I AM – just is The-Good – given the Christian’s uniquely Trinitarian Metaphysic ((…perhaps https://metachristianity.com/define-god/ …)). Notice that no other metaphysic solves this. None. Notice that it is logically impossible for any Contingent Being to find that same Result/Yield should that Choice of “I/Self” be made. In any contingent being the Yield/Fruit of that specific Shout or Move or Motion ((…that of “I/Self”…)) just is “Privation” as it relates to Need and Lack and Necessary-Insufficiency. Whereas that same Progression within the Trinitarian Life necessarily and irreducibly lands within that which just is [God] – just is The Great I AM – just is The-Good.
From there we can say that to demand Universalism as desirable is not irrational as God Himself desires that all be saved and in fact it is logically impossible for God to “Desire” a “logical impossibility” and we therein know that Universalism is ((at the very least)) necessarily possible. However, to coerce/force it is to create a world with an Ethic that is not an Ethic of Love. Why? Simply because of love’s necessary landscape. Why? Simply because Ultimate Reality, or God, as in the Trinitarian Life, just “is” love – just “is” Timeless Reciprocity and Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-à-vis Being in totum. To preach love one must preach the Metaphysical Singularity that is “Love and Necessity“.
A bit of the esoteric:
This is more readily available than we think. As in: In marriage is it “I”? Well yes. Is it “her”? Well yes. Is there yet a third, a singularity? Well yes, in the uncanny unicity with the beloved in nothing less than Us vis-à-vis Self/Other ((…theologians don’t panic…it’s not positing Modalism/Sabellianism, …)).
We have to be careful about our definitions because all of “that” of course is the metaphysical landscape of love’s Proposal. That of Groom//Bride-To-Be. That of all things Edenic. The metaphysical content and yield of that Landscape is necessarily going to be irreducibly different than the metaphysical content and yield of a Wedding. And in turn that Landscape of Wedding is necessarily going to be irreducibly different than the metaphysical content and yield of the landscape of a Birth. That Trio of Landscapes reveals that Conflating and/or Equating any one landscape in said trio for any other landscape in said trio is NOT going to give us the definitions specific to the uniquely Christian metaphysic.
Briefly – The Notion Of Privation Within The Trinitarian Life
Because of the peculiarity of the Imago Dei, the transcendentals there are unavoidable, or cannot be otherwise. So, then, if “that” is our “source” then the question of freely choosing between “YOU/THY” (on the one hand) and “ME/MY” (on the other hand) is the core question. We come here upon Divine Freedom vis-à-vis Processions vis-à-vis Pure Act.
In the Trinitarian Life of course we find both “Processions”, as it were, and the various ways that can be described are numerous. Also, the shout of *I*/I AM finds (in a sense) the affairs of “Privation” but, of course, that lands in/on nothing less than Being in totum, which is God. The Necessary Being *cannot* be *divided* into *parts* such as [Being Minus Something] and hence (in a sense) no “Evil” (Privation proper) can be found in Him. Yet, given Trinity, that fact *cannot* erase the fact of those Processions which we find ((…in that other senses described so far…)) the affairs of “Privation”.
In Absolute Consciousness we come upon the map of “Being Itself” which begins to take shape amid the trio of the Infinite Knower and the Infinitely Known and all Processions therein vis-à-vis Logos – but of course that is just the start. As we progress amid the logically compelled Divine Freedom plus the logically compelled Divine Simplicity we come upon the uncanny real estate of something akin to the following:
[A] is not [B]
[B] is not [C]
[C] is not [A]
And: Each is Being in totum – each is *GOD*.
“Choice” within the Trinitarian Life (…to create.. to not create…and so on…) is therein irreducible within Pure Act as the “metaphysical wellspring of all ontological possibility” ((…see further down the section titled “Divine Freedom In Creating & “Does God Change If He Creates?“…)). The nature of that milieu is both the source of and the hard stop of our definitions here. With God there’s this:
A— God can freely choose to create
B— God can freely choose to not create
Both A and B are in fact Fully Good. In fact but for the embrace of the triune landscape of the Christian God there is no such freedom found *anywhere* in *any* paradigm. It’s a bit uncanny. Descending in the Downhill Ontic – down into the contingent being with the peculiarities of “Imago Dei”, or the Adamic, the necessary transcendentals follow suit in that consciousness is coterminous with reason which is coterminous with love which is coterminous with being. We find, there, those irreducibly volitional and intentional processions amid self/other — or can do otherwise — or choice.
Why Not Heaven / Perfection Of Being From The Get-Go?
In short: It is logically impossible for Omnipotence to Create the Already-Freely-Married-Beloved. A handful of key assumptions are missed in the question here and the syntax of A. Groom and B. (Potential) Bride and C. (His) Proposal and D. (Her) Can-Do-Otherwise-Reply and E. (Their) Wedding and F. (Ontic) Births and G. (Metaphysical) Lucidity all press in upon us here such that we find the following:
“IF” God should Decree and fashion the Imago Dei, “THEN” there can be no such reality as the creation of the “freely-already-married” and, therein, we begin to discover that His love’s Proposals are not the same (in content/yield) as her Replies and Replies are not the same (in content/yield) as Weddings, and, for all the same reasons, Weddings are not the same (in content/yield) as Gestations, and, also, Gestations are not the same (in content/yield) as Birth which themselves are not the same (in content/yield) as New Worlds as such relates to the Door into God’s Ideal, a Door which faces outward from both within Eden and from within Privation.
In fact we are carried into nothing less than both Groom/Bride – and – Proposal/Reply as the Simplicity of I-Thee-Wed presses in. For us to demand unending wholeness & no suffering is rational as both are Good and both sum to The Whole but *IF* we mean to say that God can Create such from the get-go by creating round squares akin to “The Already Freely Married” such that A. All-Things-Adamic are found bypassing B. All-Things-Edenic well *THEN* we are offering and/or asking for a mere absurdity, a round-square given the necessary contours of love amid self/other. Recall the Blueprint. Recall the necessary distinctions amid Proposal / Reply / Wedding and the necessary metaphysical differences amid those three both in content and in yield. Recall again:
[Death] is the #1 Killer in the World. Therefore [Eternal Life] and nothing less is the #1 dissolution of our #1 problem. In fact, BUT FOR [Eternal Life] there is no Ontic Resolution of the #1 killer in the World.
Again recall that to demand unending wholeness? No suffering? Well again yes but then the Metric is nothing less than Eternal Life and, therefore, our hand is forced and Non-Theism becomes its own contradiction even as the Christian Metaphysic retains lucidity.
The Basic Framework of the Christian Metanarrative:
- The ontological syntax of [Incarnation] inside & outside of “The Edenic“.
- Man is found lifeless outside of Eden. Made of the ground.
- The Breath of God births Life, the Imago Dei. Still outside of Eden.
- It is only then that the Adamic and the Edenic converge.
- Eden cannot remain, is not God’s Ideal, and has two *outward* facing Doors/Trees, each necessitating a radical “ontic-change”.
- The Edenic wasn’t Man’s Final Felicity — By Design.
- Everything from Genesis until “Now” is in a Downhill Ontic relative to the Edenic & sums to Privation.
- Sinai also wasn’t Man’s True Felicity — Man’s Final Good.
- The Two Roads leading “The Adamic” to the outside of “The Edenic” both necessarily traverse a. the Groom’s Proposal & b. The Beloved’s Can-Do-Otherwise Reply
- Both of those Trees / Doors / Roads converge in that *same* Interface amid Self/Other & thereby in both a. “My And Not Thy” and b. “Thy And Not My” ((with respect to God & Man))
- The Trinitarian Life is the Blueprint of said Interface
- Only in the Trinitarian Life do *both* a. “My And Not Thy” *and* b. “Thy And Not My” necessarily Land in The Great I AM — in [The-Good].
- For *any* Contingent Being to sum to the Imago Dei — to the Image of the Blueprint — said being must *Traverse* that *same* Can-Do-Otherwise-Procession vis-a-vis Self/Other which we find in the Trinitarian Life ((…Divine Freedom…)). Scripture brackets that “Traversal” in the syntax of [The Groom/The Beloved & The Proposal/Reply].
- Once there is a Marriage the Metaphysical Content/Yield necessarily and radically changes ((again — such is *necessarily* the case given the union/embrace of “Marriage”))
- The Free Reply of the Beloved into “Marriage” does *not* yield isolation or [The Self in Privation] ((…which is necessarily void of the Immutable Whole, of Community, of Self/Other, of God-In-Man//Man-In-God…))
- Instead what “arrives” in and of and by and through the “Marriage” is [Self/Other] — or Wholeness —or Community — as the Ontic of Marriage yields the Ontic of “Birth” which yields an Ontic of Immutability — and that Beautiful Freedom called Permanence vis-à-vis The End Of Days ((and so on)).
- Neither the Proposal nor the Wedding are “Complete” here/now within the pains of “Privation” ((…Evil as Privation…)).
- The necessary Means/Ends with respect to the perfection of our own being cannot sum to Sinai & Law & More Law & still More Law — ad infinitum.
- The necessary Means/Ends with respect to the perfection of our own being is the *same* regardless of which Road out of the Edenic is/was chosen by the Adamic ((…Marriage vs. Privation…)).
- Either Tree / Road Out of The Edenic *traverses* the necessary Means/Ends with respect to the perfection of our own being – and that is by logical necessity nothing less than God Himself — Poured Out.
- By logical necessity nothing less than All-Sufficiency Himself Poured Out *can* suffice — And such necessarily yields something referenced as “The-Cup”.
- Marriage necessarily houses “The-Cup” Freely Chosen/Drank by the Adamic.
- It is not possible for God to Bypass This-Cup because God Freely Chose this Cup when God Freely Chose “Himself/The-Good” as the Blueprint and so therein Freely Chose to specifically Decree the Imago Dei. It is there that Gethsemane Reveals God’s Free Choice as Decree within the Trinitarian Life Actualizes within Time & Physicality.
- But the Adamic *can* Freely Bypass The-Cup ((…see Groom/Bride and Proposal/Reply earlier…)).
- Incarnation With & Without The Fall Is Logically Necessary Given The Decree Of Imago Dei.
- That Necessity brings us to Supralapsarian Christology.
- We Spy Closure Only In & Through the Metanarrative/Metaphysic of God Himself Poured Out vis-a-vis God and His Beloved
- We discover that it is You & I & Us who are His Beloved — as we discover Community in and of Timeless Reciprocity & Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-à-vis Being Itself — First in the Blueprint — the Trinitarian Life — and Ultimately/Finally in all things Adamic
- 20/20 Vision is through Two “Eyes” and those Two Eyes ((so to speak)) sum to “Reason & Reciprocity” — or if it helps we can instead say “Logic & Love”
- See #32 after the following quote.
- The following quote is from the book, “Incarnation Anyway: Arguments for Supralapsarian Christology” by E. Van Driel
Quote:
“…..This book raises in a new way a central question of Christology: what is the divine motive for the incarnation? Throughout Christian history a majority of Western theologians have agreed that God’s decision to become incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ was made necessary by “the Fall” — if humans had not sinned, the incarnation would not have happened. This position is known as **infralapsarian**. A minority of theologians however, including some major 19th- and 20th-century theological figures, championed a **supralapsarian** Christology, arguing that God has always intended the incarnation, independent of “the Fall.” Edwin Chr. van Driel offers the first scholarly monograph to map and analyze the full range of supralapsarian arguments. He gives a thick description of each argument and its theological consequences, and evaluates the theological gains and losses inherent in each approach. Van Driel shows that each of the three ways in which God is thought to relate to all that is not God — in creation, in redemption, and in eschatological consummation — can serve as the basis for a supralapsarian argument. He illustrates this thesis with detailed case studies of the Christologies of Schleiermacher, Dorner, and Barth. He concludes that the most fruitful supralapsarian strategy is rooted in the notion of eschatological consummation, taking interpersonal interaction with God to be the goal of the incarnation. He goes on to develop his own argument along these lines, concluding in an eschatological vision in which God is visually, audibly, and tangibly present in the midst of God’s people.”
End quote.
The following also adds context:
“God will use what He chooses not to remove.“ Andy Stanley
Also, “The Incarnate Word: Selected Writings on Christology” — by John Williamson Nevin — as per that book’s Article 4: “Liebner’s Christology” and its Article 5: “Cur Deus Homo?” adds context:
“….The next two works included in this volume address the question of whether the Incarnation would have occurred even apart from the fall of humanity into sin. Though the question had been raised before at various times in the history of Christian theology, it was posed with particular insistence and acuity by the idealist-influenced theologians of the early and mid-nineteenth century. According to this way of thinking, the Incarnation is the goal of creation, as the always-implicit idea of divine-human unity is explicitly realized in the God-man. Thus the Incarnation is often seen as a metaphysical necessity rather than a contingent response to human sin….” — and also — “have rather affirmed that the Son of God would equally have taken man’s nature, though of course under very different conditions, even if he had not fallen—that it lay in the everlasting purposes of God, quite irrespective of the fall, that the stem and the stalk of humanity should at length bear its perfect flower in Him, who should thus at once be its root and crown….”
(“#32”) WHY THE CROSS? WHY NOT JUST FORGIVE?
How shall “You’re Forgiven” “cure” or “extinguish” that which is “Evil as Privation”? In fact we discover that in all Sub-Narratives the Meta-Narrative subsumes all definitions as Mt Sinai Necessarily Gives Way To Mt Zion:
#1 Sinai is defined in Scripture as The Ministry of Death
#2 Sinai is defined in Scripture as lacking the means to cure Evil and therein the pains of our Privation
#3 Evil is not a positive substance but is instead a deficiency of substance ((Being, Good, Etc.)) — Evil is therein a Hollow or Vacuum of said substance — and that is Evil as Good’s Privation — as “The Good Minus Something“
#4 The Christian Metaphysic posits a cure for Evil — for Privation
#5 That cure is nothing less than the only logically possible Means by which the aforementioned vacuum or deficiency or hollow described in # 3 above could be brought to Non-Existence.
#6 Only that which “Is Itself” that which is “X” ((so to speak)) can Pour & thereby Fill that Hollow which is itself but the void of “X” — again as described in # 3 above
#7 Such cannot be anything less than Being Itself poured out — or Goodness Itself poured out — or All-Sufficiency Himself poured out — or God — via His Own Self-Outpouring — to the bitter Ends of Time & Physicality vis-à-vis all things Adamic — and this is Christ.
Clarification: No Sin In “Heaven”
The question of “The Groom’s Proposal” in the “Edenic” is not a metaphysical terminus. It is rather a Beginning. Proposal births Marriage and Marriage births Unicity and Unicity births New Life / Offspring / Eternal Life / Permanence as we approach the topic of the perfection of being, and so on. We find that “Eden” is not “Heaven” neither in Means nor in Ends.
The Means and Ends of the following are, by logical necessity, identical:
“Exiting Eden & Entering Eternal Life”
“Exiting Privation & Entering Eternal Life”
Ravi Zacharias notes that Omnipotence has four options with respect to logically possible worlds:
- Create No World
- Create the A-Moral World
- Create the World where we only choose Good
- Create the World of Freedom ((Groom/Bride Marriage/Other))
Ravi Zacharias notes that only World 4 is love-permitting. He affirms Adam’s metaphysical wherewithal to Know/See/Freely-Choose from the get-go. That capacity is both informed and is actual and so then there is the real metaphysical possibility of [no sin/no-fall]. Hence sin can go un-actualized. Question: So who causes sin if the Adamic doesn’t sin? Answer: no one and nothing. That topography is again described in the following from “Who Made God?” by Ravi Zacharias and Norman Geisler:
Begin Excerpts:
Scripture indicates that the turn downward came the moment Adam and Eve used their God-given free will to choose to disobey God (see Genesis 3). Some people wonder why God couldn’t have created humans in such a way that we would never sin, thus avoiding evil altogether. The fact is, such a scenario would mean that we were not truly human. We would not have the capacity to make choices and to freely love. This scenario would require that God create robots who would act only in programmed ways — like a chatty doll whose string you pull and it says, “I love you.” …..Love cannot be programmed; it must be freely expressed. God wanted ((Willed/Decreed)) Adam and all humanity to show love by freely choosing obedience. This is why God gave Adam and all other humans a free will. Geisler is correct in saying that “forced love is rape; and God is not a divine rapist. He will not do anything to coerce their decision.” A free choice, however, leaves the possibility of a wrong choice. As J. B. Phillips put it, “Evil is inherent in the risky gift of free will.” In view of the scriptural facts, we may conclude that God’s plan had the POTENTIAL for evil when he bestowed on humans the freedom of choice, but the actual ORIGIN of evil came as a result of a man who directed his will away from God and toward his own selfish desires. Norman Geisler and Jeff Amanu note, “Whereas God created the FACT of freedom, humans perform the ACTS of freedom. God made evil possible — creatures make it actual….”
End Excerpts.
Christians affirm Adam’s metaphysical wherewithal to Know/See/Freely-Choose and to exit the Edenic and enter Eternal Life — from the get-go. The [If-No-Fall] arrives in God’s Ordered Will of God’s Incarnation & Self-Outpouring in All Possible Worlds viz. the Imago Dei — Fall or No-Fall. Again: The “Necessary & Sufficient” vis-à-vis “Means & Ends” vis-a-vis the Adamic’s “Fullness of Being” or “Eternal Life” CANNOT change (by Logical Necessity) between “Exiting Eden & Entering Eternal Life” and “Exiting Privation & Entering Eternal Life”.
God CAN Decree & Create the Narrative we see in the Adamic and therefore God’s “You May Freely Eat” is metaphysically coherent. However, *IF* the Adamic is of such a nature that God DID NOT create that Freely-Eat state of affairs *THEN* what do we do with God’s “You May Freely Eat”? The only option is a category of Ontic Noble Lies told by the Necessary Being.
Choosing Self: The Christian Metaphysic does not define “Self” as “Evil”. The Groom’s Proposal finds the Beloved’s ((The Adamic’s)) Reply landing in and at and within nothing less and nothing more than SELF/OTHER. Mackie’s challenge does what so many fallacies do which is to Forget/Expunge the actual Decree in play, namely that of the Imago Dei wherein the “Blueprint” of the Adamic is Timeless Reciprocity & Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-a-vis Self/Other vis-a-vis the Trinitarian Life. THAT is the Decree/Landscape and THAT is WHY all things “Edenic” are in fact logically necessary ((…to bypass Eden and create the Already-Freely-Married-Bride is akin to creating Round-Squares….)).
Choosing Self is choosing a Good. Loving Self is loving a Good. The Groom/Bride is Self/Other Full-Stop. Rock-Bottom. There are no other counterfactuals or fundamental forces. It is Self and it is Other. God & Man. It is not Evil to love Self. The only “issue” with “Self” is if one Starts/Stops “there” then one starts/stops in Contingency/Need and that is necessarily the case in all possible worlds for all contingent beings.
The Edenic’s Free Proposal/Reply does move forward into the immutability of Permanence. Why? The metaphysical content & yield of Proposal & Reply *Necessarily* precedes the metaphysical content & yield of Wedding & Birth. To create “The Already Freely Married Bride” is to create the Round-Square. The [If-No-Fall] arrives in God’s Ordered Will of God’s Incarnation and Self-Outpouring in All Possible Worlds vis-a-vis the Imago Dei — Fall or No-Fall.
While I disagree with the following, it does draw attention to the fact that “Creating The Already-Freely-Married” is a logical impossibility. While most define that from the standpoint of Logical Prior / Logically After vis-à-vis Identity and Non-Contradiction, the following looks at that impossibility through a different lens:
Abstract
“This article argues that, without being reducible to a version of the Free Will Defense Aquinas´ theodicy and philosophical theology can offer contemporary versions of the Free Will Defense stronger metaphysical and theological foundations from which a response to Mackie´s compatibilistic challenge – probably the most serious challenge against this defense – can be derived. Mackie´s challenge to the Free Will Defense is the argument that the possibility of evil is not a necessary condition for the existence of free will, for God – if He existed and was omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient – could have and would have created rational and free agents such that they would always freely choose the good. I claim, following Aquinas´ hylomorphic ontology, that the creation of such a will is logically impossible as it would require the creation of a will containing naturally and invariably the formality of the universal and perfect good, and so the creation of a will indistinct from God´s, which is by nature uncreated.” ((….from Aquinas on Evil and the Will: A response to Mackie – by Facundo Rodríguez https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nbfr.12579 …))
Eden? Fall? Freedom? Counterfactuals Within The Edenic:
A quote which captures the error: “….since God knows what each of them would do in every possible situation, he gets to decide, so to speak, what the upshot will be – which world will be actual….”
We’ll get to those errors a few paragraphs down but first the fallacious Frame/Syllogism off of which that error springboards:
A— If P were in S1, P would do A.
B— If P were in S2, P would not do A.
1— If Adam were in S1, he would obey God.
2— If Adam were in S2, he would not obey God
That formula is ALMOST correct. But not quite:
P = Adam and we can add that G = God and S1/S2/Etc. are various other variables and counterfactuals. The key is that the Rock-Bottom of what the Adamic “Does” or “Chooses” within the Edenic reduces to the Interface of the Adamic with God – or we can say that the entire affair is that of P/G and NOT that of any litany of S1, S2, S3 and so on vis-à-vis other heavier ontics or more weighty ontics which define the Seat of the Soul vis-à-vis Self/Other. The proverbial “Buck Stops Here” as it were. The Seat is the Self and that means exactly that – the “i” vis-à-vis “i-am” vis-à-vis “i-reason” vis-à-vis the Intentional Self and the “How/Why” that can be ontologically Concrete is found in what Non-Theism never can provide – and that is what is found in and through the Ground of Being as such and the Principle of Proportionate Causality ((….not the PSR which is different…)).
In short the above formula is almost right but it assumes there is something at the bottom of the whole show which wins-out or decides or moves OTHER THAN the Seat that is “Self/I-AM” vis-à-vis the Adamic. But that assumption is based purely in Materialism or Physicalism or some other paradigm and NOT in that the paradigm of the Trinitarian Life || Imago Dei. “P/G” therefore in fact over-powers and out-reaches and “out-ontics” the ten thousand variations of the fallacy of P|S1+S2+S3+S4|G
Whether Man is Fully Dualistic such that “I”/“Me”/“Self” ((and so on)) CANNOT be Alive With God//Absent From The Body or whether Man or “I”/“Me”/“Self” CAN in fact be Alive With God//Absent From The Body makes no difference to the Core Fallacy within P|S1+S2+S3+S4|G and the reason why is because there is NO POSSIBLE MAP in the form of [Material Full Stop] or [Covalent Bonds Full Stop] which can “in fact” or “in principle someday” Map the Whole of The Adamic ((….the defense of the map of the philosophy of mind and refuting eliminative maps and fallacious “non-reductive” equivocations and so on is not / are not the topic here….)).
Keeping “P/G” in mind, and keeping the Principle of Proportionate Causality in mind, and keeping in mind the topic of Where/How all such Ontics in fact overpower and out-reach the fallacy of P|S1+S2+S3+S4|G – there is ((if interested)) more on how that “cashes out” so to speak over within the following somewhat tedious/lengthy items:
A— The Adamic, The Edenic, Free Will, God’s Will, God’s Decree, Incarnation, and Possible Worlds – Part 1 – at https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/free_will_makes_sense_in_the_christian_story/#comment-3538979858
B— The Adamic, The Edenic, Free Will, God’s Will, God’s Decree, Incarnation, and Possible Worlds – Part 2 – at http://disq.us/p/1zvghk8
C— With Or Without The Fall vis-à-vis All Possible Worlds – at http://disq.us/p/1zxdloe
Counterfactuals Within The Edenic & The Irreducible Face-To-Face
God’s Decree of, Creation of, the “Y” that is the entire Adamic Landscape (…the trio of Eden, Privation, & God’s Eternal Ideal…) is not a Decree of, Creation of, three separate created realities but is *one* created landscape the blueprint for which is the Trinitarian Life amid love’s Self/Other vis-à-vis the Divine Decree of the Imago Dei. It is the case that The Adamic cannot find Eternal Life, God’s Eternal Ideal, other than by traversing that landscape of God’s / His love’s Proposal amid the Adamic’s Reply amid the syntax of a Wedding. More specifically, we arrive at the Decreed Imago Dei within 1. a proposal, 2. a reply, 3. a wedding, and the necessary *distinctions* between those three. They are all constitutions of *one* landscape and yet they are irreducibly distinct. The causal ecosystem in 2 is not, either in content or in yield, that of 3, and, everything in 2 is *necessary* (…or cannot be otherwise, by Decree…), and, nothing in 2 is *sufficient* (..by force of logical impossibility…).
We come to that Face-To-Face amid God/Man and the blueprint for the Adamic just is the irreducible contours of the Trinitarian Life and, given said Decree, we find that in the earlier formula ((…soaked through with P|S1+S2+S3+S4|G …)) we come upon the following errors/disqualifiers:
[1] The absence of the stand-alone interface amid God/Man (… the proverbial P/G…) within the narrative of Self/Other
[2] An endless litany of unwarranted additions to that same “God/Man” interface of counterfactual S1, S2, S3, Etc.
[3] There is no case in which Adam’s “S1” becomes and is “God” and/or where “S2” becomes and is “The Adamic” ((so to speak)) and so we always/only find Adam-AND-S1-Etc. and we never find that Face-To-Face that *is* P/G
[4] The unwarranted premise that those additions ((…S1, S2, Etc…)) are ontologically heavier than and so “out-ontic” the irreducible I/Self amid that same Decreed Self/Other as per the Decree of the Imago Dei
Yield/Result: All of that forces one to expunge half of Scripture’s metanarrative. That is to say that the following is valid IF and only IF one expunges the Trinitarian Life and thereby invents some sort of Non-Christian Paradigm. Here it is again:
A— If P were in S1, P would do A.
B— If P were in S2, P would not do A.
1— If Adam were in S1, he would obey God.
2— If Adam were in S2, he would not obey God
Again notice the Non-Existent P/G and the overriding fallacious ontic of P|S1+S2+S3+S4|G. Also notice the Immaterial/Immaterial vis-à-vis the Face-To-Face vis-à-vis the P/G. The Physicalist’s reduction does not apply here and in fact cannot apply here. Our terms and referents need to be precise.
Man inside of that blueprint is necessarily and unavoidably amid “Self/Other” vis-à-vis God/Man and, therefore, we find Man in Eden – or – we find the Adamic in Eden moving and motioning and thereby choosing from *that* terminus, and *that* equates to God presenting “the Adamic” with neither S1 nor S2 nor S3 nor….. and so on, but, rather, with “G”, with Himself, with *GOD*.
Then, from there:
When the Adamic motions *there*, in *that* interface, it is *not* amid S1/Adam, nor S2/Adam, nor S3/Adam, but, rather, between Self/Other vis-à-vis [The Adamic] / [GOD] vis-à-vis which world will actualize and recall that *this* is by Decree and the reason the Decree takes *this* form and makes *this* landscape is *not* because God could not make some other type of world, but, rather, because God’s Decree of, Creation of, the “Y” that is the entire Adamic Landscape (…the trio of Eden, Privation, & God’s Eternal Ideal…) is not a Decree of, Creation of, three separate created realities but is *one* created landscape the Blueprint for which is the Trinitarian Life amid love’s Self/Other vis-à-vis the Divine Decree of the Imago Dei.
In and by *that* Decree by *that* God – the uniquely Trinitarian God of the uniquely Christian metaphysic – we discover Man motioning [into/out of] that which is [God / Person] and the *error* is to think that God places Man before something besides Himself such that:
A— If P were in S1, P would do A.
B— If P were in S2, P would not do A.
1— If Adam were in S1, he would obey God.
2— If Adam were in S2, he would not obey God
A quote which captures the error: “Since God knows what each of them would do in every possible situation, he gets to decide, so to speak, what the upshot will be – which world will be actual.”
There is another key in that error:
It is okay to say that God foresees S1 along with S1’s outcome, and, it is okay to say God foresees S2 along with S2’s outcome.
So far so good.
However, *that* is *not* what makes the Sum of the Adamic for, what God presents to the Adamic, and we mean by Decrere, in that peculiar World termed all things Edenic is God Himself. In that sense then we find that, per the formula above as it’s written there, S1 and S2 are not possible and the reason why…
….and the reason why…
….is that, by Decree, whatever we want to make of Eden’s status (…physical vs immaterial vs. some sort of pre-fall paradigm – or whatever…) it is the case that God presents the Immaterial / Adamic – not with a wad of neurons-full-stop – but with something both Uncreated and Immaterial – namely Himself (…for one thing…) which we can call here in this proper formula “G” to replace any “S”, and, then, (…for another thing…), we also find the [1] “outcome/option” of the isolated Self vis-à-vis Privation – and/or – [2] the “outcome/option” of the eternal life or community or unicity of Self/Other vis-à-vis God’s Eternal Ideal for all things Adamic.
That metaphysical landscape constitutes the “what” which God has Created and it constitutes the “what” which is “in-play” there within the “Y” that is *one* Created Landscape. Notice the Immaterial/Immaterial vis-à-vis the Face-To-Face vis-à-vis the P/G.
What we discover happening in Eden and what we discover happening in Privation – given that “G” – is All-Sufficiency’s Own Self-Outpouring – Christ – in all available worlds and that interface amid “Necessity/Contingency” – or if it helps amid “All-Sufficiency / Total Insufficiency” – or if it helps amid “Creator/Created” – or if it helps amid “God/Man” – is that which sums to Love’s Proposal and what is in-play is, as with all weddings, the landscape of the Privatized Self (…on the one hand…) and the landscape of community, of that singular “Us” (…on the other hand…), the latter there of course being “Heaven” or “Eternal Life”, or “God’s Eternal Ideal for all things Adamic” or, in the First and Last Adam, this: Man in God, God in Man.
See With Or Without The Fall vis-à-vis All Possible Worlds – at http://disq.us/p/1zxdloe — Also, overlapping content is found while unpacking some of the key missteps in J.L. Schellenberg’s “A New Logical Problem of Evil” …that is unpacked in “Objective And Irreducible Evil Exists Therefore Objective and Irreducible Good Exists Therefore God Exists” which is at https://metachristianity.com/objective-and-irreducible-evil-exists-therefore-objective-and-irreducible-good-exists-therefore-god-exists/
Permanence & Freedom & Yet No Sin In Eternal Life
Notice that the Blueprint logically necessitated all things Edenic and that the Edenic logically necessitated not permanence ((…in the Edenic or in the Proposal…)) but rather Two Options and only Two Options ((….amid Self/Other…)). Notice also that we find three irreducibly distinct Metaphysical Landscapes with respect to Content and Yield regarding all things Adamic – namely all things Proposal ((…all things Edenic…)) and all things Wedding ((…from within Eden or from within Privation makes no difference…)) and all things Birth.
That which is necessarily “Insufficiency Itself” (…in our case all things Adamic…) free falls into “All Sufficiency Itself” (…as in Being Itself / God…) such that wherever Insufficiency shall turn its eyes, whether above its head, or beneath its feet, or into its own chest, in all vectors it shall find not its own insufficiency but instead the All Sufficiency of He Who fills Within Himself by His Own Self-Outpouring as the Triune God and He Who Fills All In all by necessity of Being and He Who therein through Proposal and through Life-Or-Death and through Wedding and through Birth glorifies The Frail & Created Other — His Beloved — all things Adamic —by the peculiar Debasement of Himself and thereby gifts to His Bride that beautiful freedom called Permanence.
It is those necessary distinctions amid those necessary Contents and those necessary Yields which begin to unravel the Mystery as to How/Why all things Adamic arrive at that Beautiful Freedom called Permanence ((…all things Eternal Life….)). Recall the Blueprint – that of the Trinitarian Life. It is THOSE Progressions/Contours which in fact constitute the entirety of the Christian Metaphysic. To say that God CAN/OUGHT Create the Already-Freely-Married-Beloved is to insist that God Bypass the Irreducible Progressions of the Trinitarian Life AND YET STILL bring about the irreducible Content and irreducible Yield of Timeless Reciprocity vis-à-vis Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-à-vis ((Divine)) Freedom amid Self/Other is to say that God CAN/OUGHT Create Round-Squares.
The Blueprint which God uses to fashion the Imago Dei is just that – the Imago Dei – and that makes it logically impossible to fashion Man in anything akin to the “Already-Freely-Married-State“ from the Get-Go. There are reasons why the terms and syntax of Groom and Bride and Her-Reply and Wedding are found in Scripture’s Metanarrative just as there are reasons why the syntax of Birth populates the Christian Metanarrative even as there are reasons why we find the syntax of Agency and Reciprocity as all things Edenic therein become necessary with respect to all things Adamic given the necessary premises/conditions which arrive in and by the uniquely Trinitarian Paradigm. The Critic can do as he wishes but he must take the Christian’s premises on their own terms in order to meaningfully interact with it Pro or Con ((….but that’s another story…)).
As we move out of the ((unique and seamless and necessary)) metaphysical Content & Yield of the Landscape of the Groom’s Proposal and begin to move into and unpack the ((unique and seamless and necessary)) Content & Yield within the Landscapes of Wedding and then from there as we begin to move into the ((unique and seamless and necessary)) Content & Yield of the metaphysical Landscape of Birth we begin to come upon thy syntax of Eternal Life and of Afterlife or we can say we come upon the syntax of Man’s Final Good or of Man’s True Felicity – that Beautiful Freedom called Permanence.
The brackets of ontological possibilities in the Possible Worlds under review ((…Imgao Dei…)) are logically constrained by the Blueprint of the Trinitarian Life. Given, that is, the Decree of Imago Dei. At the end of the line all counterfactuals ((S1/S2/S3/Etc.)) beyond the Rock-Bottom that is Self/Other ((…beyond Man/God…)) within the Edenic are unnecessary and irrelevant while The Edenic itself or the Face-To-Face itself or that Immaterial/Immaterial Interface itself is in fact Necessary both Logically and Metaphysically ((…given the Blueprint…)).
Heaven or Eternal Life begins to arrive within the contours of a discussion about the perfection of love which of course necessarily entails the perfection of reason, which itself entails the perfection of consciousness, which is the perfection of being – as that beautiful freedom called Permanence is (then) actualized or birthed. Indeed we are inherently relational beings and there is a reason for that.
While the Edenic is necessary, the affairs of Privation as anything more than a full-on Ontic-Option are not necessary ((…the Ontic-Option is…the Ontic-Motion into that is not…)). Notice again that what was impossible then is that all things Adamic would remain eternally within all things Edenic. From there we find, here, now, from within Privation, it is the case that it is impossible now that all things Adamic remain eternally within all things Privation. Conditional Immortality vs. Universalism vs. Hell as ECT are Christendom’s trio of viable/live Maps and, as C.S. Lewis observed, there is “THAT” and then the only other viable option coming in at “2nd Place” so to speak is the Hindu’s Pantheism ((…although that fails for various reasons…which is another discussion…)).
[…Note several segues with respect to “….God Ought Put An End to Evil…” and “…Ending Evil…” are at http://disq.us/p/1y85jdc which is also linked with https://randalrauser.com/2018/06/okay-so-laura-ingalls-wilder-was-a-racist-now-what/#comment-4246327632 …]
[…Note that several segues are in “With Or Without The Fall vis-à-vis All Possible Worlds” at http://disq.us/p/1zxdloe which is also linked with https://randalrauser.com/2018/08/can-violence-ever-serve-a-redemptive-purpose/#comment-4349160446 …]
[…J.L. Schellenberg’s “A New Logical Problem of Evil” is unpacked in “Objective And Irreducible Evil Exists Therefore Objective and Irreducible Good Exists Therefore God Exists” which is at https://metachristianity.com/objective-and-irreducible-evil-exists-therefore-objective-and-irreducible-good-exists-therefore-god-exists/…]
What About Pre-Eden & Evolution & Cosmic Fairness & Cosmic Justice & Hell?
Yes, in a moment. But first, an excerpt from another essay to summarize the content so far before moving onto “What About Pre-Eden & Evolution & Cosmic Fairness & Cosmic Justice & Hell?“. Note the excerpt is a bit long so it is sandwiched “Begin Excerpt For Summary” and “End Excerpt For Summary” beginning here:
Begin Excerpt For Summary:
The “lens” of the following is “from within” our privation, and yet should we find ourselves in Eden, in Sin-less-ness, all the same definitions, means, and ends arrive in full force. Which is what we expect given that — on force of logic — it is not our choice in Eden with respect to its two outward facing Doors which defines reality, but, rather, it is the Divine Decree which defines not just reality, but all realities:
The résumé and the proposal and the wedding and the begetting……..
With respect to the premise of “…..Sin A or Sin B or Sin C or Sin D or Sin E, and, well, “IF” Sin A or B or C or D or E, “THEN” one will not ultimately see Man’s final felicity – Man’s true good….”, a few points of clarification:
Our syntax has to be precise. Sin matters. The purpose of man and reality matters. “The Good” matters. *Yet* our sins are not what decide our fate or inheritance. Not ultimately. The résumé which we freely and volitionally hand to God is what decides what we inherit.
[A] If on said résumé we find any created-self, any derived-being, the “I” / Myself ((…Self… Privation… “My & Not Thy”…)) am listed as the landing place of Hope or the landing place of Sufficient, then I’m given my preference, my preferred heaven, my first love – the isolated or privatized self – the “Pure-I”, that which is Me/Man minus Fullness of Being, that which is Me/Man minus Fullness of Goodness – and so on.
[B] If on said résumé the all-sufficient Other, the un-created Other, and so on, is instead listed as the landing place of Hope or the landing place of Sufficient then we find on the résumé the content of the immutable love of the Necessary Being – Who Himself Pours Out, and Fills – and thereby if the all-sufficient is found in Christ – then I am given my preference, my preferred Heaven, my first love – the community or unicity or wholeness amid self/other – of God in Man / Man in God – and therewith – through Wedding – through Birth – finally into immutable love wherever I shall motion, whether above my head or beneath my feet or into my own chest – ad infinitum.
Neither our sins nor our righteousness can win the day. Only God’s righteousness wins the day. Only Christ. Our condition does not matter in the sense being discussed here which is what will decide our fate or inheritance.
“That” aqueduct through which the Living Water flows is neither our sin nor our biology nor by logical necessity ANY other Frail & Contingent & Created Any-Thing but is instead that which is given in some measure to all men – namely trust as it relates to our volition and will to freely embrace Life, to freely embrace The Good, to freely embrace Wholeness in Being, to freely embrace Christ, to chase after the Good vis-à-vis love’s acquiescence to the All-Sufficient-Other.
We find in God His Own Self-Outpouring within the Trinitarian Life Trinity and so too by His Own Free Choice to Create & Decrees His Own Image in a World and thereby God utters to us, to His beloved, His Own “You and not I” ((…Logos in Pure Act revealed as Logos in Gethsemane…)) so too we, the beloved, should we so choose, will in like manner join in love’s timeless reciprocity as our own “You and not I” finds our voice – finds THAT voice – finds HIS voice.
Changes will come following that interface, but we all change at different paces and through different degrees. Just ask Peter and others in the book of Acts and in Corinth ….and so on all the way up through modernity and the Christian journey.
It’s the résumé which the applicant submits. It’s not the applicant.
Reason and logic press in and compel our definitions:
This difference between the résumé and the applicant cannot be some other way in any possible world given the two facts of [1] the Decree of the Imago Dei and [2] the fact that we are contingent beings. We cannot rise to the level of being our own means given the end that is the immutable love of God – the immutable love of the Necessary Being.
That’s on the pure force of logic – and Scripture’s metanarrative comports with that is as expected. Going one step further we find that the same goes for love and contingent beings with respect to what necessarily cannot be otherwise within love’s topography as it relates to contingent beings in relationship with the Necessary Being. Man “cannot not” interface with / interact with what D.B. Hart describes as “Being, Consciousness, & Bliss” vis-à-vis “The Experience of God”.
That is *why* Eden was neither Privation nor Heaven but instead found Man between two possible worlds, and, as John 3 is promised in Genesis 3, that is *why* still today Man finds himself between two possible worlds — God’s is an unstoppable love.
The relational nature within Trinity necessarily occasions the metaphysics of love’s reciprocity when God creates Man and that fountainhead shapes all ontological possibility. When God first approaches Man we find, not Heaven, not Privation, but love’s proposal to the beloved, as in:
It is logically necessary that the metaphysics of reciprocity and of self-giving and of self/other vis-à-vis Man/God vis-à-vis love house the triune God’s (…who is love…) free and volitional proposal to His beloved just as it is logically necessary that the metaphysics of love’s proposal house two possible outcomes amid self/other with respect to the contingent being’s free and volitional reply, just as it is logically necessary that the metaphysics of that proposal are not and cannot be the same metaphysics which we will find in the free and volitional Wedding which follows the proposal as “proposing” and “begetting” are not identical.
Being careful with terms: We must always delineate some of the necessary differences with respect to the metaphysics when one is within (….on the one hand…) the arena of “God” or “Trinity” as opposed to when one is within (…on the other hand…) the arena of contingent beings in relation to the Necessary Being (…God/Trinity…).
Conclusion: One of the reasons I am a Christian is that in that paradigm alone reason and logic are satisfied that love’s timeless reciprocity is in fact a contour of reality’s irreducible and immutable substratum and is thereby seamless with the rational. What the rational mind claims as ontic-truth is thereby in fact the highest ethic vis-à-vis love’s timeless reciprocity. Reason as truth-finder is compelled by the unrelenting demands of both logic and love to chase after Christ, and after His Means, and after His Ends.
A Proposal Is Not A Wedding & A Wedding Is Not A Birth
Our Non-Theist friends often say something like, “God should have bypassed Eden and just made the Bride/Groom “already freely married” so to speak….” That is because the skeptic does not realize the logically impossible False Identity Claims he is foisting there with respect to, say,
[A] mutable innocence is identical to [B] immutable perfection (Eden = Heaven/Eternal Life)
….or such as, say,
[A] a Bride and a Groom diving into amalgamation on the volition of one and the annihilation of the volition of the other somehow sums to or is identical to [B] love’s landscape there within the Trinitarian Life
To reason perfectly is to find the perfectly moral, and this in turn is the perfectly loving – perfect reciprocity – and this in turn is the perfectly volitional. Divine Simplicity awaits us there at the end of all of syntax and there is no such thing as “…some faint contour thereof or some part thereof…” which Man perceives and which houses a part-of but not the whole-of as one’s syntax ascends.
Eden’s Innocence is found in Gethsemane’s sinless Adam – and whether it is Man in wholeness or Man in fragmentation does not change the landscape as Man cannot fail to behold not only his own necessary need (…he is a contingent being….) but also he cannot fail to behold full-on reciprocity and self-giving whether in sin or in acquiescence or in glorification. Marriage cannot be something other than Marriage. That which is necessarily “Insufficiency Itself” (…in our case all things Adamic…) free falls into “All Sufficiency Itself” (…as in Being Itself / God…) such that wherever Insufficiency shall turn its eyes, whether above its head, or beneath its feet, or into its own chest, in all vectors it shall find not its own insufficiency but instead the All Sufficiency of He Who fills Within Himself by His Own Self-Outpouring as the Triune God and He Who Fills All In all by necessity of Being and He Who therein through Proposal and through Life-Or-Death and through Wedding and through Birth glorifies The Frail & Created Other — His Beloved — all things Adamic —by the peculiar Debasement of Himself and thereby gifts to His Bride that beautiful freedom called Permanence.
The metaphysical content & yield of [A] The Groom’s Proposal ((…Eden…)) as compared to [B] the metaphysical content & yield of that which sums to Wedding. Notice that the means and ends of all things Edenic and also of all things Privation constitute all things Adamic amid all things Proposal – and – simultaneously – all of that is a radically different category than we find in the metaphysical content & yield of Wedding.
From within Eden we find two outward facing doors as both Eternal Life and Privation sum to a radical change in “ontic-status” and – similarly – from within Privation we find God down here in our Hell – with us – as again we find two – count them – outward facing Doors as both Eternal Life and the End of the frail and mutable contingency we call “Time & Becoming” presses in – as Presentism gives way to Eternalism ((….physics is slowly catching up….)).
Any proposal of love that isn’t free amid “Self/Other” just isn’t a trinitarian love. While it is the case that Universalism is necessarily possible (…given the volitional nature of love vis-à-vis Christianity’s trinitarian metaphysic…) even as in seamless lucidity Universalism is not necessarily actualized (…given the volitional nature of love vis-à-vis Christianity’s trinitarian metaphysic…). Given, that is, the Decree of Imago Dei. We have to be careful about our definitions because all of “that” of course is the metaphysical landscape of love’s Proposal. Which is necessarily going to be irreducibly different than the metaphysical landscape of love’s Wedding. Which is necessarily going to be irreducibly different than the metaphysical landscape of a Birth.
The content & yield of A is necessarily distinct from the content and yield of B such that “B = A” is a metaphysical absurdity. Conflating and/or equating one landscape for another isn’t going to give one the definitions specific to the uniquely Christian metaphysic – planet Earth’s only thoroughly Trinitarian Metaphysic
End Excerpt For Summary.
And, so, now….
What About Pre-Eden & Evolution & Cosmic Fairness & Cosmic Justice & Hell?
Scripture lacks the provision of logical certainty with respect to a. Eternal Conscious Torment vs. b. Universalism vs. c. Conditional Immortality. It is here where the Non-Theist must not over-reach as we discover Scripture’s lack of logical compulsion into logical certainty there. In fact we find obvious and even necessary reasons for that ambiguity ((..briefly http://disq.us/p/1z06rze..)) — as per 1. http://disq.us/p/1z00vz7 and 2. http://disq.us/p/1xvkoyr and 3. http://disq.us/p/1yd9lxj and 4. http://disq.us/p/1z7j4cr and 5. http://disq.us/p/1z06rze and 6. http://disq.us/p/1z4bl75 and 7. http://disq.us/p/1z4ce3b and 8. https://metachristianity.com/heaven-hell-cosmic-fairness-ethic-love/
One of those reasons for Scripture’s Designed Ambiguity is the fallacy of Necessity or Goodness to any sort of “Threat-Of-Bad-Outcome-Full-Stop” as any sort of paradigmatic necessity or as a kind of Meaning-Maker in any body of premises dealing with the interface of God/Man ((…that shows up within silly straw-men akin to “…but the Bible is all about THREATS….!” and so on….)) — as per the provided links above.
Okay That Makes Sense But What About Hell? Where love itself is concerned and where the highest ethic is concerned, we find self-giving love and it is the Non-Theist’s painfully necessary metaphysical reality that all his own explanatory termini are constituted of tediously complex self-negations amid ultimately fictitious “As-If’s” ending in the pains of metaphysical elimination immersed within auto-hypnosis wrapped up inside of Noble Lies as Irreducible Moral Facts independent of Contingent Abstractions are never retained in the end and as such they factually fail to do the necessary “ontic-work” when needed.
Regarding Pre-Eden vectors, as noted elsewhere in this essay there are the following obvious facts:
- Man is found lifeless outside of Eden. Made of the ground.
- The Breath of God births Life, the Imago Dei. Still outside of Eden.
- It is only then that the Adamic and the Edenic
- Eden cannot remain, is not God’s Ideal, and has two *outward* facing Doors/Trees, each necessitating a radical “ontic-change”.
- The Edenic wasn’t Man’s Final Felicity — By Design.
- Everything from Genesis until “Now” is in a Downhill Ontic relative to the Edenic & sums to Privation.
Regarding Hell again ((…also see https://metachristianity.com/heaven-hell-cosmic-fairness-ethic-love/…)) there is the following:
Begin excerpt:
With respect to (…actual, metaphysical, cosmic, ultimate…); fairness, and justice, and injustice, there are very important differences of course (…and that work will have to be done further downstream…), but, the only players with ANY possible claim to rational (…actual, metaphysical, cosmic, ultimate…) resolution of evil, of injustice, of unfairness, are:
A — Hell defined as ECT (hence Christianity)
B — Universalism (hence Christianity)
C — Conditional Immortality (hence Christianity)
D — Hinduism (not Spinoza’s pantheism for many reasons, and not Buddhism’s equivocation upon Metaphysical Naturalism)
Indifferent and Casually Inert “Platonic Moral Facts” are one option but ((again another discussion)) they too fail within the contours of Intentionility || Self-Other || Self-Giving ((and so on)).
End excerpt.
Regarding Christendom’s internal discussions surrounding the box called Pre-Eden and as for Christendom’s internal discussions surrounding the box called [ECT vs. Conditional Immortality vs. Universalism] — well those are fun discussions to have but those two boxes are irrelevant to the Necessity of Logos vis-à-vis Incarnation regardless of “The Adamic’s Path” out of The Edenic and, also, those two boxes are irrelevant to the content which forces the necessity of all things Edenic ((…recall the trio of Landscapes amid Proposal/Reply & Wedding/Traversal & Birth/The Eternal and so on…)).
W.L. Craig’s “Could God Create a Morally Perfect Being?” is at https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/could-god-create-a-morally-perfect-being-revisited/ and makes the following observation:
Quote:
“My reply is based on the idea that moral perfection is a uniquely divine property. To be morally perfect is to embody goodness itself, to be maximally good. If you agree… that being the Supreme Good makes a being worthy of worship, then it immediately follows that that being is God. For by definition God is a being worthy of worship. Nothing else but God is worthy of worship (as opposed to just admiration). So if a being is morally perfect and therefore God, it must have all the essential properties of God, including omniscience, omnipotence, eternity, necessity, and so on. My answer implies that a human person cannot be a morally perfect being, or he would be God. Dave asks, What about Adam? In Christian theology, Adam is not morally perfect. He is morally innocent prior to the Fall but not morally perfect. Even in heaven, free from sin, our righteousness will be finite, not like the infinite goodness of God. So I suspect that people’s reservations about my claim were based on a different understanding of “morally perfect.” Perhaps they interpreted it to mean something like “sinless.” In that case God can (and did) create a sinless human being. But sinlessness should not be equated with moral perfection, which is a positive quality of infinite magnitude.”
End quote.
Okay That Makes Sense But What About Either-Or?
Either Indifference Or Else Joy At Lost Souls?
Once we land at A/B/C/D we find another problem of a Strawman or Misdirection of concern, and that is found in a kind of either/or amid Either Pity Or Indifference with respect to Lost Souls or we can say Either Evil-Indifference Or Evil-Joy at the Good of the Many should my beloved in fact refuse All-Sufficiency/Community and be a Lost Soul.
There are several problems with that approach. For one thing it is an obviously false dichotomy. One has both Joy at Justice & Fairness ((Etc.)) and Grieves at the harm of one’s beloved — and — note that IF those Sentiments press on one’s moral intuition to affirm/deny or to somehow go farther/higher THEN one must say Good-Bye to all Non-Theistic Fates/Paradigms as one is left with —again — A/B/C/D described above. For another thing recall the fact Non-Theism’s own demands for Justice and Joy and Goodness betray Non-Theism itself as we just saw earlier with respect to any full-on Ontological Closure given the following: [Death] is the #1 Killer in the World. Therefore [Eternal Life] and nothing less is the #1 dissolution of our #1 problem. In fact, BUT FOR [Eternal Life] there is no Ontic Resolution of the #1 killer in the World.
There are no other players on the stage with the sort of currency required here (…see “Hell, Cosmic Fairness, & The Ethic of Love” – at https://metachristianity.com/heaven-hell-cosmic-fairness-ethic-love/ …).
Another problem with the complaint…. IF ECT troubles us (…and it should, in one sense because we may be one of those who think it true and want to find closure there — or – in another sense because we may be one of those who think it false and yet reject Non-Theism’s rock-bottom of Cosmic Indifference…) and IF we value Cosmic Fairness and Goodness and so on THEN we are still left with only four viable options wrt available vectors and all available vectors are outside of Non-Theism (certainly) and inside of Christianity (certainly) and/or Hinduism (possibly). Again the appeal to [Causally Inert Non-Self Platonic Abstract Objects] fails in key areas as again that is another discussion.
That carries forward into 2000 years of internal dialogue within Christendom with respect to the Trio of ECT vs. Universalism vs. Conditional Immortality and, then, quite seamlessly, to the following:
“To demand of the loveless and the self-imprisioned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven…Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye’ll accept no salvation which leaves one creature in the dark outside. But watch the sophistry or ye’ll make a Dog in the Manger the tyrant of the universe.” (…by C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce…)
I often ask the Non-Theist which of the following vectors he is going to embrace as he trades away his now obviously immoral/amoral Non-Theism when discussing this topic:
A — Hell defined as ECT (hence Christianity)
B — Universalism (hence Christianity)
C — Conditional Immortality (hence Christianity)
D — Hinduism (not Spinoza’s pantheism for many reasons, and not Buddhism’s equivocation upon Metaphysical Naturalism)
The reply is typically a refusal to embrace the very thing they are opining about with respect to what ought be present. It’s quite peculiar.
Again recall that it is the case that Scripture lacks the provision of logical certainty with respect to Eternal Conscious Torment vs. Universalism vs. Conditional Immortality. It is here where the Non-Theist must not over-reach as we discover Scripture’s lack of logical compulsion into logical certainty there. In fact we find obvious and even necessary reasons for that ambiguity ((…briefly http://disq.us/p/1z06rze …)) — as per 1. http://disq.us/p/1z00vz7 and 2. http://disq.us/p/1xvkoyr and 3. http://disq.us/p/1yd9lxj and 4. http://disq.us/p/1z7j4cr and 5. http://disq.us/p/1z06rze and 6. http://disq.us/p/1z4bl75 and 7. http://disq.us/p/1z4ce3b and 8. https://metachristianity.com/heaven-hell-cosmic-fairness-ethic-love/
Covalent Bonds & Body & Pre-Eden & Eden’s Immaterial/Immaterial Fact-To-Face
A bit more on the P/G or that Immaterial/Immaterial or that Face-To-Face amid God/Man with respect to freedom amid the Edenic / Adamic:
Whatever “Nature” Pre-Eden was/is and whatever “Nature” the Edenic was/is and whatever the nature of the map of the Adamic’s journey of having been created outside of Eden, and, then, placed inside of Eden and, then, found amid genuine ontic-possibilities with respect to Eden’s Two Outward facing Doors/Trees ( Privation / Eternal Life ) and, then, found freely moving into, now, Privation – and so on – is all, specifically, irrelevant to the actual Means and the actual Ends which we find “in-play”. The question of “Define Human” cannot “Begin & End” in Covalent bonds but THAT questions is not THIS question of all things Adamic/Edenic/Prvation Etc. In fact THAT question is one of Theism/Non-Theism. With respect to “Define Human” there is more to that specifically in Imago Dei And Closure In An Actual Human Nature And Rejecting The Eternally Open Ended — at https://metachristianity.com/imago-dei-and-closure-in-an-actual-human-nature-and-rejecting-the-eternally-open-ended/
No amount of mapping of material particle cascades in motion from dirt to man can account for the whole of The Adamic given the metaphysical baggage of Materialism or Non-Theism (…or whatever…) and given the necessary means for the convertibility of necessary transcendentals.
Or, we can say: After all, there is more to the Adamic than the corporeal and that is WHY is we can and do say that the “ontological history of becoming” with respect to the Body proper (the corporeal) is not convertible with the “ontological history of becoming” of the whole of The Adamic. The irreducible I/Self houses an ontic which outdistances or outreaches the purely corporeal. Scripture finds God using dust and, then, that which is Dirt-To-Man finds the Lifeless Adamic outside of Eden, and so on ((…hence the bizarre and irrational nature of the claims which our Non-Theist friends make about Dirt-To-Man or evolution somehow being a “problem” for the Christian metaphysic…)).
Eden’s two outward facing Doors are not a kind of tacked-on-forget-for-now reality but in fact force our hand given that Eden’s Non-Culpable Non-Perfect landscape is NOT God’s Ideal for Mankind forever as each of Eden’s two Outward facing doors necessitate a radical “ontic-change” in all things Adamic ((…one Door/Tree is the Adamic’s Privation ((in Self)) while the other Door/Tree is God’s Eternal Ideal for the Adamic ((namely God’s Own Self)) and so on…)).
The Adamic cannot find Eternal Life, God’s Eternal Ideal, other than by traversing that landscape of God’s / His love’s Proposal amid the Adamic’s Reply amid the syntax of a Wedding.
The wording of “Eden’s non-culpable / non-perfect” juxtaposes the wording of Eden’s “innocence plus non-perfection-of-being” alongside the wording of our own current Privation’s “non-innocence plus non-perfection-of-being“.
IF in fact it was the case ((as per Ontic-Fact)) that the Edenic Adamic was free to do “otherwise” THEN in fact that “otherwise” cannot sum to “An Option-Without-Being” ((as in a Fake Option)) or we can say that it cannot sum to “Ontic Non-Entity” nor can it sum to a kind of Ontic Noble Lie told by the Necessary Being.
In fact God / Omnipotence cannot create a being that is in fact free to do Non-Entity – or we can say that God cannot create a being that is in fact free to do Non-Being. We cannot equate “IN FACT Free-To-Do-No-Thing” to “IN FACT Free-To-Do-Otherwise”. And we can just agree that the Necessary Being has not told us any sort of Ontic Noble Lie there in the Edenic. ANY epistemic which cannot contain Eden and Eden’s possible worlds has, from the start, a suspicious ontic already in jeopardy.
Do we have an epistemological frame which can contain the ontological frame of Eden’s possible worlds?
The Christian metaphysic subsumes all of it and, therefore, any epistemology which self-negates as it moves within/amid Pre-Eden, Eden, Privation, and God’s Eternal Ideal (Eternal Life, Etc.) is somehow straying — especially if such moves are taken at the expense of readily available, more lucid epistemological and ontological alternatives.
Scripture defines reality by FAR more than Privation and its various contours. That is because CHRIST is FAR more expansive than the boundaries thereof.
Should Privation/Fall NOT Have Actualized
Then Incarnation nonetheless, then Christ and thereby God meeting the Adamic not in metaphorical gibberish for Christ *is* God meeting all things Adamic not in metaphor but in fact Fact-To-Face within Time and Physicality. We are STILL left with the Landscape of the Edenic and of Proposal and of Wedding and of Birth. Any metaphysic which does not account for the whole-show becomes anemic.
Yes, SURE we DO have a kind of Lens or Vantage point from a “one-side-of-the-coin” sort of epistemic in describing what God and God’s Will at times LOOKS LIKE from WITHIN the pains of our Privation and that is understandable. But too often in Scripture far too much breaks through, leaks through, and reminds us from whence we have come — which is NOT from Eternal Life and not God’s Eternal Ideal for the Adamic but, rather, from The Adamic’s journey of having been created outside of Eden, and, his Lifeless Body, then placed inside of Eden and, then, found amid genuine full-on Possible Worlds vis-à-vis full-on Ontic-Possibilities with respect to Eden’s two Outward facing Doors/Trees ((…Privation vis. Self || Eternal Life vis. Self/Other…)) and, then, found freely moving into the pains of Privation and, then, in “The Now”, those same fateful Landscapes remain ever Within & Around us. We must remember that we are *seeing* all of it from *within* Privation, and, we must remember that the Christian metaphysic DOES have the means to an epistemology which captures BOTH the sightlines from WITHIN Privation AND the sightlines from OUTSIDE of Privation. How uncanny.
With & Without The Fall — Must the Necessary Being, or All-Sufficiency vis-à-vis Good vis-à-vis Being in fact Pour-Out and Into all that is Insufficient, all that is Contingent, all that is The Adamic?
In fact it is logically impossible for the perfection of being to come by any lesser means and therein the only rational Means to the End that is Unending Wholeness is nothing less than All Sufficiency Himself vis-à-vis Goodness Himself vis-à-vis Being Himself and His Own Self-Outpouring into and through to the bitter ends of all things Adamic – as all the syntax of Logos in descent pushes through.
Whence can the Contingent Being find Eternal Life but for the Necessary Being?
Whence can the Contingent Being’s necessary insufficiency with respect to self-sufficiency find Eternal Life but for that which sums to Necessary All-Sufficiency as the Necessary Being’s Self-Sufficiency?
There we come to that unavoidable Immaterial/Immaterial interface amid love’s Self/Other as it relates to “Contingent-Being / Necessary-Being” and our own acquiescence to God wherein we find “Eternal Life” and that arrives in and by nothing less than God or All Sufficiency Himself timelessly pouring out and the Adamic or Insufficiency Itself timelessly filling.
All the necessary content is there and we find in all accounts – and this is key – that whether we speak of pre or post privation, or whether we speak of with privation or without privation – the Adamic finds himself before that fateful Tree called Life.
If the Cross is 1. mere gesture, then it isn’t 2. All-Sufficiency’s Self-Outpouring. In a world of Time & Physicality, “2” will traverse Time & Physicality to the bitter ends of The Adamic. And nothing less than Incarnation has that *reach*.
Notice the progression:
If love, then Eden. Eden is not Heaven. The fact of the *radical* “Ontic Change” via the “Door” termed “Eternal Life” demonstrates that. Therefore: Incarnation becomes unavoidable regardless of our choice in Eden. Once again we find unavoidable syntax:
IF in fact it was the case ((as per Ontic-Fact)) that the Edenic Adamic was free to do “otherwise” THEN in fact that “otherwise” cannot sum to “An Option-Without-Being” ((as in a Fake Option)) or we can say that it cannot sum to “Ontic Non-Entity” nor can it sum to a kind of Ontic Noble Lie told by the Necessary Being.
In fact God / Omnipotence cannot create a being that is in fact free to do Non-Entity – or we can say that God cannot create a being that is in fact free to do Non-Being. We cannot equate “IN FACT Free-To-Do-No-Thing” to “IN FACT Free-To-Do-Otherwise”. And we can just agree that the Necessary Being has not told us any sort of Ontic Noble Lie there in the Edenic. ANY epistemic which cannot contain Eden and Eden’s possible worlds has, from the start, a suspicious ontic already in jeopardy. Again there is context in With Or Without The Fall vis-à-vis All Possible Worlds – at http://disq.us/p/1zxdloe
Why Create If Evil Is Possible? What about Eden & Possible Worlds?
What about faulting God for begetting love as such relates to God Creating? Most of what has come up to this point is looking at Ending Evil vis-à-vis Ending Privation but of course Fall Or No Fall we find the SAME unavoidable interface amid God/Man or amid Necessary-Being/Contingent-Being and that is because Sin Or No Sin we find in Man, quite obviously, that which sums to the Necessary Insufficiency of ANY Contingent Being vis-à-vis its own Self-Existence. Obviously the seamlessness which we find here in the syntax of Fall-Or-No-Fall adds context and reach and so the following are a few items added only for context (…and not to give any full-on argument….) with respect to “The-Necessity-Of-The-Edenic” and so on:
- True In All Possible Worlds —PART 1— True Pre-Eden – True In Eden – True In Privation Pre/Post Christ – True Until Wholeness / Heaven – True After – True Always & Alreadywhich is at http://disq.us/p/1zzs59j
- True In All Possible Worlds —PART 2— True Pre-Eden – True In Eden – True In Privation Pre/Post Christ – True Until Wholeness / Heaven – True After – True Always & Alreadywhich is at http://disq.us/p/1zzy8ml
- The Adamic, The Edenic, Free Will, God’s Will, God’s Decree, Incarnation, and Possible Worlds —PART 1— at https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/free_will_makes_sense_in_the_christian_story/#comment-3538979858
- The Adamic, The Edenic, Free Will, God’s Will, God’s Decree, Incarnation, and Possible Worlds —PART 2— at http://disq.us/p/1zvghk8
- The Adamic, The Edenic, Free Will, God’s Will, God’s Decree, Incarnation, and Possible Worlds —PART 3— at http://disq.us/p/1zzsxyp
- With Or Without The Fall vis-à-vis All Possible Worlds — at http://disq.us/p/1zxdloe
- The Question of Causality vis-à-vis Causes of Evil: Did God Create Evil? — at http://disq.us/p/1zxdq9v
[…J.L. Schellenberg’s “A New Logical Problem of Evil” is unpacked in “Objective And Irreducible Evil Exists Therefore Objective and Irreducible Good Exists Therefore God Exists” which is at https://metachristianity.com/objective-and-irreducible-evil-exists-therefore-objective-and-irreducible-good-exists-therefore-god-exists/…]
From those links above we have a few brief samples of possible claims that may or may not push through:
A — God created possible worlds vis-à-vis creating the Edenic and therefore God created Evil.
B — God created possible worlds vis-à-vis creating the Edenic and therein God did not Create Evil.
C — Given the Sum of Evil it is the case that God’s Reasons for permitting said Evil are inscrutable, even unintelligible.
D — It is the case that [Gratuitous Evil] Is A Metaphysical Impossibility.
E — Reality’s Blueprint finds Timeless Reciprocity and Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-à-vis Irreducible Being
As we work through those it turns out that the claim, “God’s reasons for allowing evil are inscrutable & unintelligible…” is incoherent and even demonstrably false as all vectors converge within “D” and “E” in our discovery of the fact that it is the case that Gratuitous Evil is a metaphysical impossibility and, also, as all vectors land in in a full-on contradiction of the the fallacy/error of Occasionalism (…found in “A”….). For example, recall from earlier that the following is NOT quite accurate:
“…..God allows various evils to occur because they will result, ultimately, in a surfeit of goods which outweighs the evils endured. Perhaps the simplest way to put the idea is as follows: no pain, no gain…..”
The reason that is not quite accurate is as follows:
The Greater Good umbrella does not find God allowing [ABC and/or the Possibility of ABC] “….in order to get to….” XYZ. Instead, God allows [ABC and/or the Possibility of ABC] not to gain or to get to some End but, rather, because it is a logical outflow (it is logically necessary) given His Decree of this or that World or Reality (…or etc.) — and it is remarkable how so many can muddy the waters with this concept which is no more complicated than the following:
To Decree “Square v. World X” is to find “Round v. World X” an impossibility (and so on).
Man’s final good, his true felicity, his Terminus or End is, given the Decree of the Imago Dei, nothing less than God Himself and therefore the options/possibilities regarding Man’s Ends are never ultimately between Ends vis-à-vis world-contingent possibilities or counterfactuals outside of the immediate interface of Man/God as per Self/Other — but — instead — all options/possibilities regarding Man’s Ends are always inside of / between one’s Self and God — between Self/Other – and why? Well that is obvious once we realize that the only Ontic Blueprint for Ceaseless Self-Giving streams from the Trinitarian Life.
Specific to Gratuitous Evil there is the earlier discussion in this essay. Recall that the why/how it is impossible given that such requires that we find some part of [All Things] which God’s Hand either does not or else cannot Hold/Use for Good (…see http://disq.us/p/1vc9vwd …).
There again we find the incoherence within the Non-Theist’s claim that the Moral Paradigm of what God counts as Good is somehow Unintelligible and/or Inscrutable. Additionally we must again recall Reality’s Blueprint. In all of this we come upon Reality’s only Blueprint of love’s timeless reciprocity and upon reason and upon the fullness of ontological Means and Ends within the eternal Processions of the Trinitarian Life (God / Trinity / Being Itself ). All of that provides us with the following ontology:
The irreducibly rational just is ontologically seamless with the irreducibly beautiful which just is ontologically seamless with the irreducibly moral which just is ontologically seamless with love’s indestructible self-giving — which is itself seamless with the Divine Mind — which is itself seamless with Infinite Consciousness amid Divine Simplicity – which compels us into a thoroughly Trinitarian Metaphysic – and we are thereby compelled into an Adamic landscape wherein the perfection of Reason just is the perfection of Consciousness, which just is the perfection of Love, which just is the perfection of Being.
Before Closing — That Beautiful Freedom Called Permanence – Once Again
Part 1 of 4: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/can_genuine_love_only_be_a_product_of_free_will_video/#comment-3591259515 That will open to (…should…scroll if not…) the comment which opens with: “Continuing — A Qualification: Addressing a fear which some seem to have with respect to losing Permanence or with respect to losing Irresistible, which, as we’ll see, is unwarranted……”
Part 2 of 4: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/can_genuine_love_only_be_a_product_of_free_will_video/#comment-3591342407 That will open to (…should…scroll if not…) the comment which opens with: “Continuing – Permanence: That beautiful Freedom called Permanence is still to come, up ahead. The syntax of such Freedom and such Permanence houses some, not all, but some, of the syntax of Irresistible but such has less to do with TULIP proper and much more to do with the fact that, on the other side of that radical ontic change which is yet to occur (…in the blink of an eye as Scripture puts it…) we find, well, we find several contours. First, we find…..”
Part 3 of 4: https://randalrauser.com/2018/11/do-bad-children-go-to-hell/#comment-4224953310 That will open to (…should…scroll if not…) the comment which opens with: “Whence Free Will in Heaven? Whence that beautiful freedom called Permanence? To begin with: A Proposal ≠A Wedding……”
Part 4 of 4: The Simplicity of I-Thee-Wed as per the content of https://randalrauser.com/2018/05/if-god-wants-to-save-us-why-isnt-salvation-simple/#comment-3906669116 That will open to (…should… Scroll if not…) the comment which begins with: “The Simplicity of I Thee Wed [1] Why The Cross? [2] What Is The Minimum Requirement For Salvation? [3] Why Not Create Perfected Man From The Get-Go? All of those source to the same misunderstanding about the nature of what it is that God Decrees when He Decrees “His Own Image”, as in the Imago Dei. As in “Adam”. As in “Mankind”. Many of the…..”
Divine Freedom In Creating & “Does God Change If He Creates?”
The following are quotes which speak to questions which naturally arise in this areas and most are from Dr. D. Bonnette who is Thomistic in his approach while one quote is from E. Feser (also Thomistic) and one from Dr. W.L. Craig. The topics deal with Divine Freedom and “Can God Create X / Not Create X?” and “Does God Change If He Creates?” and also with “Cambridge Properties” in God. Following this section of quotes is a list of hyperlinks looking at “Metrics of Pre-Eden vs. Eden vs. Privation vs Perfection” and so on.
Quote 1: “My reply is based on the idea that moral perfection is a uniquely divine property. To be morally perfect is to embody goodness itself, to be maximally good. If you agree… that being the Supreme Good makes a being worthy of worship, then it immediately follows that that being is God. For by definition God is a being worthy of worship. Nothing else but God is worthy of worship (as opposed to just admiration). So if a being is morally perfect and therefore God, it must have all the essential properties of God, including omniscience, omnipotence, eternity, necessity, and so on. My answer implies that a human person cannot be a morally perfect being, or he would be God. Dave asks, What about Adam? In Christian theology, Adam is not morally perfect. He is morally innocent prior to the Fall but not morally perfect. Even in heaven, free from sin, our righteousness will be finite, not like the infinite goodness of God. So I suspect that people’s reservations about my claim were based on a different understanding of “morally perfect.” Perhaps they interpreted it to mean something like “sinless.” In that case God can (and did) create a sinless human being. But sinlessness should not be equated with moral perfection, which is a positive quality of infinite magnitude.” ((W.L. Craig))
Quote 2: “With respect to goods less than his own being and goodness, God is completely free to create or not create. Is there a particular problem? The whole point of divine freedom is that it is not necessitated! It was the Neo-Platonists that got involved in God having to create by some sort of necessary emanation. As you know, that logically entails forms of pantheism, since you cannot then define God without reference to creatures on whose creation his very nature depends.” ((Dr. D. Bonnette / http://disq.us/p/22lafgm …))
Quote 3: “By “prior,” do you mean ontologically or temporally prior? My suspicion is that you mean temporally prior, which is the standard understanding of causation among those who follow physics, rather than metaphysics. For the metaphysician, the only true causality must be such that the influence of the cause on the effect is immediate, which means that anything happening at a time prior to the effect cannot actually be the cause. Generally speaking, the cause is said to have to be simultaneous with its effect. If that is the case, then prior efficient and material causes are not true causes of the effect needing explanation.”((from https://strangenotions.com/how-cosmic-existence-reveals-gods-reality/#comment-4512590847 ))
Quote 4: “This is the same error we had on this site some months back — and the refutation of it remains the same. This view assumes that whatever God wills he wills of necessity because he is the Necessary Being. But God’s necessity pertains solely to the necessity of his existence and certain essential properties, since his essence and his existence are identical. This view also arises from the belief that God’s unchangeable eternity is identified with his own will and will act, such that if his will were otherwise he would be a different God.
But, as I said above and as St. Thomas also says, God’s necessity pertains solely to those things that are essential to his nature, such as his own goodness. Thus, God wills his own goodness of necessity, while lesser goods are the object of his free choice, such as to create this world or some other world or no finite world at all. It is true that God is eternal and unchangeable. But what the critics miss is that he is identical with his own eternal free choice, including the choice to create this world and no other. I find Christians have little trouble understanding this simple truth, while atheists find it a mortal stumbling block.
While it is true that God cannot change his will to create this specific world, it is, as St. Thomas points out, a suppositional necessity. That is to say, given that God chose to make this particular world, it is true that he must make this particular world. But nothing makes him have to have chosen as he did. (Note here the misunderstandings that can arise from our need to speak in tensed predication, while God is entirely outside of time in his eternal now in which all his activity is timeless.)
Suppositional necessity means no more than something like the fact that I have chosen to rob a bank means that I now necessarily am choosing to rob this bank — but nothing makes me rob the bank in the first place. So, too, once God in timeless fashion chooses to create this world, it is true that he must choose to create this world — simply a matter of the principle of identity.
Still, Christians easily grasp that God is his own eternal absolutely free choice and that whatever he chooses less than his own goodness can be chosen freely by him. God remains absolutely free with respect to his having created and continuing to create this world.” ((Bonnette // http://disq.us/p/1qskyk5 …which is also linked to with https://strangenotions.com/how-cosmic-existence-reveals-gods-reality/#comment-3796910069 …)).
Quote 5: “I had determined not to add further comments to this thread, but will make one last attempt to address what I see for some of you is a serious question: How can God’s free creation avoid flatly contradicting the principle of sufficient reason? Then I will leave further comments to others. I think I grasp the essence of the objections several have raised. Simply put, the argument is that, if God freely wills to create the world, either:
1— This is a brute fact, having no sufficient reason, and therefore shows that the PSR is not universally true.
—OR—
2— There is a sufficient reason for this choice and God is not actually free, but rather this “choice” flows from his nature necessarily.
St. Thomas argues that God being a necessary being does not entail that his choices flow from his nature necessarily :
“Although God necessarily wills His own goodness, He does not necessarily will things willed on account of His goodness; for his goodness can exist without other things.” Summa Theologiae I, q. 19, a. 3, ad. 2.
The key objecting insight seems to be that, if the free choice has a sufficient reason, then it cannot be really free. While St. Thomas shows that such a free choice need not flow necessarily from the divine nature, one still wonders then from what it does flow, unless there is some sufficient reason for this choice rather than that one, and then the “freedom” appears to be illusory.
The answer lies in the fact that God is truly the First Cause and that his eternal free choice is not moved to act at all. It is never not in act. So, there is no problem of reduction from potency to act. There is no unfolding “decision process” to be gone through.
God exists necessarily because his essence is one with his act of existence. He is his own sufficient reason for being. In light of the divine simplicity, God’s nature is one with its acts. This perfect unity entails, as St. Thomas says, both necessary and non-necessary aspects. Therefore, his non-necessary act to create is no more lacking a sufficient reason than is God himself. Since a brute fact is defined as something that has no sufficient reason, there are no brute facts here.
What flows from that eternal Pure Act flows necessarily with respect to necessary things and non-necessarily with respect to non-necessary things, which latter aspect of the divine being means the same thing as being free and acting freely. The sufficient reason for both necessary and non-necessary aspects is the same divine nature. God’s will flows necessarily from his nature in that he has a will. By definition a will is free with respect to what it can choose, and God can freely choose non-necessary goods.
God’s choice to create this unique world is not random or without reason, since good reasons for this particular world can be posited and God would certainly know them. But why are these reasons selected as the basis for this actual creation as opposed to other possible ones – or even the choice never to have created anything at all? The sufficient reason for that selection is the free choice that necessarily flows from God’s non-necessary relation to goods that are inferior to his own necessarily willed divine goodness.
The demand for a God A vs. God B explanation is not legitimate, since it assumes that all that is in God must flow necessarily from his nature. This misses the non- necessary choice of lesser goods. To demand to know whether God acts necessarily or not is to demand a yes or no answer to a question requiring a complex answer. God acts necessarily with respect to those things that he wills necessarily, such as the divine goodness, but he acts non-necessarily with respect to those things that are not necessary, such as goods less than the divine goodness — including creation of the world.
As St. Thomas points out, the only necessity respecting God’s free creative act is a suppositional necessity. If God has freely chosen to create this unique world, then it is necessary that he has made this choice as opposed to any other. But that does not mean that he had to make this choice, since from all eternity, he has freely chosen this particular creation in a non-necessary manner.
There is but one true God. Any hypothetical “God B” may sound like a logical possibility, but it is not a real possibility. You cannot prove any conclusion against God if one of your premises entails the hypothesis (God B) of something that does not and cannot actually exist, and is in fact metaphysically impossible — given that the one true God can be proven already to have existed from all eternity and that his free will choice to create this unique world is already manifest. You can only have one God at a time — and eternity had no “time” at which this unique God did not exist! No other “God” was ever even an hypothetical possibility in fact.
God necessarily exists and necessarily is free with respect to creating lesser goods than his own goodness. We now know what choice he makes, since we are among the creatures he has elected from all eternity to make and we now see his creation in act.
But this in no way affects the fact that his choice to create this world of lesser goods is both perfectly free and perfectly in conformity with the principle of sufficient reason.
I was taught always to give the best possible reading to any text. I can understand how hard that must be in this case for those who think the Christian God is absurd to begin with. Still, a careful reading of the above depiction of how God can freely create this world without any violation of the principle of sufficient reason should find it coherent, unless it is misread.” ((Bonnette // http://disq.us/p/1lpy1cn …which is also linked to with https://strangenotions.com/are-metaphysical-first-principles-universally-true/#comment-3490150487 …))
Quote 6: “…a thing might be its own reason for being. But that is not to say that it lacks any reason for being. If a thing is not fully self-explained, then it needs something else to complete its explanation. That is the classical meaning of “cause,” not to be confused with the ignorant errors of David Hume. That every being must have a reason for being or becoming does not say whether the reason must be intrinsic or extrinsic to that being. If it is extrinsic, it is called a “cause.” But that in no way rules out the possibility that the reason for being is intrinsic to the being itself. Metaphysicians advance a concept of God in which his essence or nature is identical with his own act of existence, making him the Necessary Being. But a brute fact has no reason at all, which is entirely other than for something to be its own reason…” End quote ((~by Dr. Dennis Bonnette))
Quote 7: See “Divine Necessity And Created Contingence In Aquinas” by Peter Laughlin – at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-2265.2009.00476.x
Quote 8: “…God can know and cause to be a kind of creation in which there is a beginning and an end, and in which reality progresses through the passage of time in such fashion that at every moment of that passage, the past no longer exists and the future does not yet exist. If such a reality itself is possible, then God can create it and know it as such….” ((Bonnette))
Quote 9: “Once again, despite my intention not to re-argue the metaphysical first principles, you have raised the claim that somehow the “logical possibility” that God could have made some other choice for creation than he did as a proof that a brute fact exists, since there is no reason why he would have made this choice rather than that one. And, since the divine simplicity implies that God’s very essence is identical to his own choice, this would be tantamount to allowing that we would have a God B as opposed to a God A with no reason why one existed rather than the other. Hence a brute fact exists.
A single brute fact undoes the universal validity of the principle of sufficient reason. Or else, you argue, if there was a necessity that forces that there be only God A with his choice to create this particular world, then God’s creation would be necessary, which contradicts the Christian dogma of free creation.
Your whole argument is based on pseudo-logic. Notice, it starts with “logical possibility,” not a real or ontological possibility. Logical possibility is the weakest form of possibility, ruling out nothing but self-contradictory claims. As long as the terms of the hypothesis are not evidently self-contradictory, something is claimed to be “logically possible.”
By this standard the following claim is “logically possible:” The Ringling Brothers Circus will hold an encore performance in the atmosphere of Jupiter on next Christmas Eve.” Nothing in the terms appears evidently self-contradictory, but would you really think any of it is possible? No, because the reality implications are clearly impossible and contradictory – not the terms themselves. The standard of real possibility is not playing with words, but presenting an hypothesis that is metaphysically possible, that is, it could really happen.
You try to spin a web of seemingly logical terms, like “necessary” and “contingent,” as if they had the same signification and referents in each and every case, ignoring ontological complexities, such as how God is necessary with respect to his existence, but not necessary with respect to the choice of lesser goods than his own goodness. Reality is not just a game of logic, but must conform to the real being of the world and of God as they actually exist.
If you look back at my article on Metaphysical First Principles as well as the first of my comments in the newest order, you will see that the traditional concept of God is entirely coherent. You use the term, “necessary,” in a logically sloppy manner, trying to conflate God’s necessity of existing with an exclusion of freedom, but this was fully explained by me on the First Principles web page in terms of him being necessary with respect to existence and the divine names, but not necessary with respect to creation of goods lesser than his own infinite goodness. The distinction between necessary and non-necessary objects of his will pertains solely to a diversity in the objects of his will, not to a composition or contradiction in his own essence. Hence, God is properly conceived as eternally identical to his unchanging free choice to have created this particular world.
As an eternal free choice to create this world, it becomes suppositionally necessary that he has eternally made this choice and no other, but that supposition in no way inhibits his true freedom. It is merely a matter of noting that, since he did in fact make this choice, it is necessary that this choice is made.
Since there is one and only one true God whose eternal act of free will is factually identical with his eternal being, it is metaphysically impossible that God could ever have existed in any other manner. That is, the so-called “God B, C, D, or whatever” is not a metaphysical possibility at all – even less so than the Ringling Brothers Circus on Jupiter I described earlier. In fact, to suggest that such an “alternative God” or “alternative choice for God” is a logical possibility is, in fact, a logical impossibility – given the factual existence of the one and only true God with his one and only free act of will – since the supposition of another God contradicts the factual existence of only one possible God, the one who exists in actual fact. His existence as the only true God is not a mere assertion, since it is the product of careful demonstration in the science of metaphysics. I postulate its validity for purposes of this argument.
You claim, “Since multiple wills are logically possible, multiple gods are logically possible.”
This is a perfect example of the logical sloppiness of treating God like a logic lesson for beginners. Multiple wills sound “logically possible,” but they are not ontologically possible, since God has de facto and eternally exercised his will in a specific way with respect to the willing of lesser goods than his own goodness. It is a done deal. So, the fact that the “wills” do not contradict each other does not make them all equally related to actual existence. Solely the one that actually exists is real, and therefore, possible. No other act of will is ontologically possible. Since no other will is really possible, the same applies to your “multiple gods.” One will, one true God. No other “Gods” are actually possible. Remove them from your assumptions.
Moreover, there is no need for a reason why God A exists as opposed to God B, since God B was never possible at all, and you don’t need a special reason to be different than something that does not exist. God is his own reason for existing, and his free will is its own reason for his free choice.
God being his own sufficient reason for existing does not violate the principle of sufficient reason. The principle merely affirms that there must be a reason, not where it must exist. Metaphysically, God is his own reason for existing because he is the only being in which essence is identical to existence. Hence, he exists necessarily. Again, this is the classical concept of God that you are attacking as allegedly “logically” incoherent.
Incidentally, how do we know God exists? That is not the proper topic of this web page, but it is the product of the entire subject of metaphysics applying the principle of sufficient reason, among other principles and truths, to the evidence presented by the world in which we live. I strongly suspect that the reason why atheists so vehemently wish to reject the principle of sufficient reason is simply because they realize that, once you grant its validity, it becomes much more difficult to prevent the human mind from being led from the evidence of this world back to the existence of an Ultimate Sufficient Reason for all that exists, namely, the traditional God.
And it is perfectly kosher to use the PSR to prove God’s existence and properties, since your argument against him here fails if we can use reason to prove that he can exist as is proposed by classical metaphysics. I have shown that his existence is not a brute fact, since it is your logic that has proven false as show above. Hence there was no exception to the PSR and it can be used freely to prove God’s existence.
Moreover, in intellectual honesty, you should face the fact that once you destroy the principle of sufficient reason in any single instance — as you falsely claim you have, you can never be sure that it applies anywhere or at any time. You don’t get to pick and choose. The entire order of science and common sense and human thought becomes Alice in Wonderland, since you can never know when anything has a reason or not. No convenient assumptions that it works for just science when you think you need it. It can never be trusted again.
I made the case for this in my previous OP on first principles, but it needs to be faced squarely by those who would deny it. Never again can the mind ask “why” of anything and be confident that a reason exists. The logic of all mental inferences becomes useless, since reasons need never be given or even expected. And if the real world does not conform to the way the mind works, then we have a name for that: psychosis.
The price for abandoning the principle of sufficient reason is to abandon reason itself, since the human mind reasons by giving reasons for all its truth claims. No reasons given, no reason to take any claims seriously. No reasons needed, no need or ability to reason. Atheists are literally willing to abandon reason to get rid of God.
See my original article on the Metaphysical First Principles and first comment as ordered by “newest” mentioned above.” ((…from Bonnette // ((http://disq.us/p/1lz8b5h …which is also linked to with https://strangenotions.com/what-is-the-true-understanding-of-causality/#comment-3505746293 …))
Quote 10: “I will respond for now only to the first two arguments given above. I am sure many more are to be forthcoming anyway – but I would point out that a careful reading of my entire paper above should answer most of them. The claim that everything must be either necessary or contingent respecting God has been refuted by me several times before and with sufficient distinctions needed to clarify the matter.
God is the Necessary Being, but that means solely that his existence is necessary. It does not mean that everything he does he must do of necessity. Yes, his essence is identical with his act of existence which is why he must exist. And yes, he necessarily must will his own infinite goodness. But, with respect to lesser goods, such as the creation of a finite universe, he is perfectly free, as St. Thomas Aquinas points out, since none of these lesser goods add to or detract from his infinite perfection and goodness. And it is the finite creation that is contingent with respect to its existence, not God.
While there are other aspects which I have explained at length previously, the only thing one needs to know here is that the distinction between what he wills necessarily and what he wills eternally and freely lies in that these acts of divine will are specified as to different objects. As long as God does not will necessarily the same objects as he wills contingently, there is no contradiction involved. So what on earth is the problem?
The real problem appears to be that some simply cannot admit the clear distinction made above and therefore reject the Christian God because he does not fit perfectly into a preconceived logical trap designed to preclude his existence.
The claim that the only two possible choices are either an infinite regress of contingent explanations or a brute fact is simply a false dilemma. There is a third choice, namely, a being who is his own reason for being and is therefore (1) not contingent, but necessary, and (2) not a brute fact either, since a brute fact has no reason at all.
Again, this is simply a matter of trying to force a false logic on the Christian God who is his own reason for being. For some reason, the logic being used appears blind to the possibility of a thing or being being its own reason for being (and for choosing freely) – otherwise why isn’t this logical possibility included in the choices? After all, “sufficient reasons” are logically divided into intrinsic or extrinsic. As I said in the OP, if a being’s reason is extrinsic, the extrinsic reason is called a cause. The Uncaused First Cause is not his own cause, but rather is his own reason for being.” (( http://disq.us/p/1nccip3 …which is also linked to with https://strangenotions.com/brute-facts-vs-sufficient-reasons/#comment-3588243879 …))
Quote 11:
J.N. said,
“You cannot believe all three of the following at once:
1. God is necessary.
2. God is identical to his free choices.
3. God didn’t have to make the choices that he did.”
Dr. Bonnette replied:
“You see, you are imposing certain preconceived notions to your understanding of what it means for God to be necessary. He is the Necessary Being, meaning he cannot no exist. But this does not mean that he is lacking free will and free choice.
Yes, his free choice is eternally identical with his nature or being. From your conflating “necessity” with “determinism,” you have imposed a false notion of what “necessary” means in God.
God is necessary in that he must exist. But it is also necessary that he exist with freedom of choice. What you cannot understand is that, being Eternal, God does not sit there, and then later on, decide to do something — so that his later “choice” is somehow determined by his prior state of existence. It is hard for atheists or agnostics to “get” this, but God is an eternal substantial act of free choice, so that while his existence is necessary, he is also eternally freely determining the things that he chooses to create or not create.
Once again, you are imposing your very faulty metaphysical assumptions into your “flawless” logic about God so as to come up with your desired conclusion — which happens to be totally invalid.” ((…from https://strangenotions.com/existential-inertia-vs-almighty-god/#comment-4981973447 …)) [….bold mine….]
End quote 11
Quote 12:
“….It seems to me that Davies’ point about negative theology here is correct as far as it goes, though incomplete. (In general, it seems to me that Davies’ work perhaps overemphasizes negative theology a bit – as I argue in Aquinas, I think this is true, for example, of his reading of Aquinas’s doctrine that God’s essence and existence are identical.) More could be said in response to the claim that divine simplicity and freedom and incompatible. For example, as I explained in the earlier post on divine simplicity, God’s creating the universe (or just Socrates for that matter) is what Barry Miller (following the lead of Peter Geach) calls a “Cambridge Property” of God, and the doctrine of divine simplicity does not rule out God’s having accidental Cambridge properties. (In fairness to Davies, though, he does make similar points in his other writings on this subject.) There is also to be considered the Scholastic distinction between that which is necessary absolutely and that which is necessary only by supposition. For example, it is not absolutely necessary that I write this blog post – I could have decided to do something else instead – but on the supposition that I am in fact writing it, it is necessary that I am. Similarly, it is not absolutely necessary that God wills to create just the world He has in fact created, but on the supposition that He has willed to create it, it is necessary that He does. There is this crucial difference between my will and God’s, though: Whereas I, being changeable, might in the course of writing this post change my mind and will to do something else instead, God is immutable, and thus cannot change what He has willed from all eternity to create. In short, since by supposition He has willed to create this world, being immutable He cannot do otherwise; but since absolutely He could have willed to create another world or no world at all […no Good is added to / subtracted from God…] He is nevertheless free…..”
End quote 12 ((……from http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/05/davies-on-divine-simplicity-and-freedom.html || [brackets mine] || bold mine……))
Christ Is The Thematic Melody Uniting All Scenes And Acts:
“The Scriptures are an opera, with Christ as its central leitmotif. He is the thematic melody uniting the scenes and acts of the various books together. This is what the Christ meant when He said “they are they which testify of me.” And this inspiring melody is what ignited the passion in the disciples saying “did not our heart burn within us when He opened to us the Scriptures?” The text is opened like a curtain call. In operas the curtain call occurs at the end of a performance when individuals return to the stage to be recognized by the audience. And this is precisely what Christ does. He comes before us the reader upon the stage of thematic narrative to be recognized as the main actor. To put this into perspective, when you read about Jonah coming out of the whale, or Lazarus coming out of the tomb, the paschal melody of “Christ is Risen” should be ringing in your ears. Scripture has an instrumental soundtrack, except for when Christ the lyric enters the scene. For hundreds and hundreds of years, mankind sought the meaning of this melody, and what words would be inserted therein. Man wished to know this melody. Christ, the “Word made flesh,” is both the melody itself and its meaning.” (By Ambrose Andreano)
Context & Segues & Links
Two Notes On The following links:
Firstly: about half go to STR’s (Stand To Reason’s) older format and will come up as Status-Error pending some time in the future in which I can redirect the hyperlinks.
Secondly: the links are to comments in Disqus format (for the most part) and therefore should land on a specific comment within a comment section and not at the top of a page. If the latter occurs then A. refresh the page and/or B. simply begin scrolling down as that often triggers the page to jump to the specific target comment and/or C. go to the bottom of any comment (or the page) which shows a “see more” button and click it as that too, like ‘B’, often triggers the page to jump to the specific target comment.
So with that said:
Metrics of Pre-Eden vs. Eden vs. Privation vs Perfection:
- http://disq.us/p/1ne4r2z
- http://disq.us/p/1ne4ujz
- http://disq.us/p/1ne55kr
- http://disq.us/p/1ne6xjb
- http://disq.us/p/1n9dmru
- http://disq.us/p/1slxh6k
- http://disq.us/p/1goq9gy
- http://disq.us/p/1gou9pj
- http://disq.us/p/1gp6lkj
- http://disq.us/p/1gy65me
- http://disq.us/p/1gsltgs
- http://disq.us/p/1hbm03p
- http://disq.us/p/1xv6v4f
- http://disq.us/p/1xvfeu6
Metrics of “The Adamic” in “The Edenic”
- http://disq.us/p/1n9y1rc
- http://disq.us/p/1nb8gxs
- http://disq.us/p/1ne4r2z
- http://disq.us/p/1ne4ujz
- http://disq.us/p/1ne55kr
- http://disq.us/p/1ne6xjb
- http://disq.us/p/1n9rf6h
- http://disq.us/p/1n166pv
- http://disq.us/p/1m6h46p
Metrics of To-Create and Metrics of To-Not-Create
- http://disq.us/p/1hblyts
- http://disq.us/p/1hbm03p
- http://disq.us/p/1hbmpdy
- http://disq.us/p/1hbnm37
- http://disq.us/p/1swp74f
- http://disq.us/p/1w4hreq
- http://disq.us/p/1hbplub
- http://disq.us/p/1dw41zz
- http://disq.us/p/1vcbs4m
Following Through:
- http://disq.us/p/1n88dze which carries forward to
- http://disq.us/p/1n9dmru which carries forward to
- http://disq.us/p/1n9feuh which carries forward to
- http://disq.us/p/1n9fawe which carries forward to
- http://disq.us/p/1n9rf6h which carries forward to
- http://disq.us/p/1mj0mc2 which carries forward to
- http://disq.us/p/1zvghk8
—END—
More Generally Speaking…
Scripture’s© Singular® Metanarrative© & Its Thematic® Lines©
Divine Command Theory Collapses Into A Metaphysical Absurdity — at https://metachristianity.com/divine-command-theory-collapses-into-a-metaphysical-absurdity/
Amalekites? Conquest? Sinai? Condone? Moral Excellence? Means & Ends? — at http://disq.us/p/1z50shs with a few items for context at http://disq.us/p/1z5th9q
“Kill All That Breathes”?? “Divine Command Theory”?? — at http://disq.us/p/1z5vlo5
For the Half-Narrative — http://disq.us/p/1lrhj88 and http://disq.us/p/1wq4x70
For the Full-Narrative — http://disq.us/p/1knyg3u
Prototypical John Newton v. Everyman — at http://disq.us/p/1kgunj1and also at http://disq.us/p/1z7vifq
For the Non-Theist who tries so hard to agree — at http://disq.us/p/1kj2q0b
“God Ought End Evil?” Ending Evil? Ending Privation?” — at http://disq.us/p/1y85jdc
The Four Overlapping Circles of Racism — at http://disq.us/p/1z71xpg
Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. on Being, Non-Being, & The Summum BonumOf Life — at http://disq.us/p/1z49fop
Shouting “Disagreement Exists!” Is Not An “Argument” — at http://disq.us/p/1z72rat
War is evil? Well yes. And? It’s ugly and on **all** fronts comes up short of The Good? Well yes. And? You’re correct. But agreeing with Scripture’s definitions like that isn’t enough. One has to show that one has one’s OWN Non-Theistic rational justifications for holding such a belief. But you don’t seem to. By that we mean as per a. http://disq.us/p/1y84cou and also as per b. http://disq.us/p/1wq43ok and also as per c. http://disq.us/p/1w6epee and (again) for the Non-Theist who tries so hard to agree — http://disq.us/p/1kj2q0b
Israelite Conquest?
- http://disq.us/p/1tapp70
- http://disq.us/p/1ti6tts
- http://disq.us/p/1t61aef
- http://disq.us/p/1t61uz6
- http://disq.us/p/1t6929l
- http://disq.us/p/1t69vjj
Old Testament Wars? — at http://disq.us/p/1u7o9ku
“What does that verse **SAY**??” — at http://disq.us/p/1vepymf
Canaanite (Gentile) and Jew and Crumbs and Dogs Eating Crumbs and Basic Reading Comprehension — at http://disq.us/p/1uxge1w
Ancient Israel & War & Syntax & Sinai & Basic Reading Comprehension — at http://disq.us/p/1vec6vg
Tolerance & Society? — at http://disq.us/p/1thty95
Sinai and looking for Moral Excellence:
a. http://disq.us/p/1tgseh0
b. http://disq.us/p/1tgriz7
Leviticus 12 & Sin Offering For Childbirth? Unclean Woman? — at http://disq.us/p/1wutrpn
Male, Female, Egalitarianism, Misogyny, Slavery, Metanarrative, Subnarrative, Bias, Views, & Ontic Definitions — at http://disq.us/p/1u5ej8p
Moral Facts? Non-Theism? To be clear it is NOT Non-Theists who cannot / do not find Moral Facts but — rather — it is their own Non-Theism which cannot find Moral Facts WRT Racism Or Anything Else. How so? Well first we have 3 Narratives as per 1. http://disq.us/p/1mxt9q0 and 2. http://disq.us/p/1mxstu8 and 3. http://disq.us/p/1mxto3s
And secondly we have still more content as per a. http://disq.us/p/1z61v1f and b. http://disq.us/p/1wq43ok and c. http://disq.us/p/1y84cou and d. http://disq.us/p/1w6epee and e. http://disq.us/p/1w3l3fn and f. http://disq.us/p/1titjw1 and g. http://disq.us/p/1j5ioqb and h. http://disq.us/p/1sozwi7 and i. http://disq.us/p/1u9rudl
—END—
