Dogmatic Universalism - it's easy to count the ways that misplaced concerns arise

regarding pantheism, theopanism & theological determinism

In response to Fr Rooney, who wrote:

Interestingly, many of those caught up with the strange theories of Hart hold God to be akin to a substantial form, prime matter, or act of existing of every object. If God were like a metaphysical part, we would compose a whole with God; He would then receive being from us.
end of quote

In my view, a few things are especially contributing to some unnecessary misunderstandings, talking past one another & inadvertent caricatures.

1) I haven't encountered such God-conceptions, as described above, but I have seen many category errors by those who critique certain interpretations of Maximian & Neo-Platonist cosmologies, for example. It seems that they often misconceive Logos & logoi - talk, for example, as if it's about universals, thoughts or ideas, i.e. abstractly, in essential or formal terms. Rather, one should think of them in the concrete terms of freely loving acting divine Persons with intentions or wills, reasons or purposes, to Whom some end is “fitting,” such that we could then apply the Anselmian principle (potuit, decuit, ergo fecit, i.e  twas possible & “fitting,” ergo accomplished) to the Trinitarian missio ad extra. See note below.

2) Attend, therefore, to the differences in each other's root metaphors (substance, process, society, experience, relation, psyche, etc). While those systems often employ the same words, in different categories (contexts), their meanings can change in degrees large & small.


3) References to our human divinity, then, aren't meant as a denial of the analogy of being, participatorily, vis a vis our human - divine differences. Rather, they go beyond the analogia to extend its logic, perichoretically, in order to locate our divine samenesses, as located in just what we might be about in our manifold & multiform concrete acts as persons.

4) In the same way that accounts of Divine Simplicity by Aquinas, Scotus & Palamas can be - not only reconciled & shown compatible, but - synthesized to more felicitously & robustly defend the doctrine, I have long suspected that much could be gained by both searching out the conceptual compatibilities of other diverse systematic accounts as well.

5) In my studies, due to the above misunderstandings, I have found misplaced concerns regarding pantheism, theopanism & theological determinism.

Expanded Remarks:

Whether in the gratuity of creation or of grace, various contingent effects would not be attributed to a *necessity* as would be grounded in God’s nondeterminate nature, divine esse naturale, but, instead, to an *inevitability* grounded in God’s self-determinate will, divine esse intentionale.

References to our human divinity aren't meant as a denial of the analogy of being, participatorily, vis a vis our human - divine differences. Rather, they go beyond the analogia to extend its logic, perichoretically, in order to locate our divine samenesses, as located in just what we might be about in our manifold & multiform concrete acts as persons. Its precisely because our potencies are divinely limited that their reductions to acts by us can be authentically free & can grow our freedom!

Without denying that human & divine persons differ in what we are, essentially, then, we affirm that what we concretely do per intentionale is noncompetitive & how we concretely do it per energeia (sometimes monergically, other times synergically) can be co-creatively co-operative with exactly what God does (love) & how (w/a loving Helper), ultimately enjoying the very same communal love that the Persons do, i.e. a love that includes each for his own Self as well as for each Other.

In the same way that accounts of Divine Simplicity by Aquinas, Scotus & Palamas can be - not only reconciled & shown compatible, but - synthesized to more felicitously & robustly defend the doctrine, I have long suspected that much could be gained by both searching out the conceptual compatibilities of other diverse systematic accounts as well as by using any "apparent" incompatibilities as foils in order to better articulate (or reformulate, if needed) certain notions in ways that might enhance each respective system's idiomatic facility for communicating the faith.

In my studies, I have found misplaced concerns regarding pantheism, theopanism & theological determinism. I have come across nominalist tendencies (which seem thick in Whitehead, thin in Hartshorne).

While Hegel can be (mis)approriated with "apparent" nominalist tendencies & seem too deterministic and Bulgakov (mis)approriated with a supposedly “latent” nominalism & seem too pantheistic, those whom I've seen with affinities for these thinkers might better be characterized as having been influenced by them, idiomatically, while otherwise articulating some doctrinally defensible form of a kenotic panentheism as their theological leitmotif.

Bracken’s panentheism is perhaps most consistent with Classical Theism. Gelpi similarly employs a doctrinally-compatible social, relational metaphysics of dynamical experience & expression. In my view, they can readily be placed in dialogue with the thought of folks like Polkinghorne and Zizioulas, even Bulgakov. Then, with great facility, such dialogue can clarify any ambiguities or correct any deficiencies in those respective systems. Bracken & Gelpi's strength, in my view, derives from their appropriations of Peirce (no nominalism) & possibly, even if indirectly, of Schelling (more personalist, more freedom).

Diverse systems that I believe can all be appropriated in doctrinally-compatible ways, some more felicitously than others: Neo-platonist (Eriugena), Neo-Chalcedonist (Maximus), Franciscan (Scotus, Bonaventure), German idealist (Hegel, Schelling), Russian
sophiologist (Bulgakov), American pragmatist (Peirce, Royce), neo-Whiteheadian (Bracken, Gelpi), Peircean panentheist (Brier), Semiotic Trinitarian (Robinson, Southgate), Pneumatological emergentism (Yong), Neo-Thomist (Clarke - personalist, Arraj - existential), Process (Keller, Griffin), Open (Oord) & Open
Panentheist (Clayton).

Last, but not least, aside from any controversial historical claims & interpretations which are descriptive (beyond my ken) & controversial, so many of the normative theological stances of Radical Orthodoxy, especially as articulated by Milbank, seem spot on.

All of these idioms are compatible with suitable conceptions of human freedom (nuanced beyond any mutually exclusive compatibilist-libertarian dichotomy), with defensible conceptions of divine simplicity and with an analogia entis, while avoiding pantheism, theopanism, theo-determinism, nominalism or voluntarism.

Therefore, the internal logical consistency of these systems, metaphysically and/or theologically, doesn't lead to either the majoritarian or dogmatic universalist eschatology. It's not a matter of logical validity but of evidential soundness that separates our post-mortem anthropologies.

Rather, it's an appeal to one's common sense & sensibilities regarding what is good, what is evil, what degree of suffering is proportionally justifiable & did Jesus sufficiently reveal Abba's goodness or not. It’s not a syllogism but a reductio ad absurdum.

Note

Logos - logoi  & tropoi don't facilely map to universals per se but, when placed in our exploratory heuristics, can be shown to be integrally related to same. For example, in my cosmotheandrism, which is just a vague phenomenology of theophanic expressions, I do use a modal ontology to properly translate them into

1) past, present & future "natures" (further distinguished as primary vs secondary & virtuous vs vicious) with
2) various limiting potencies which will have been reduced by
3) inter/personal concrete acts, which will have been
4) variously monergic, autogenic and/or synergic, hence, also variously expressed as
5) possibilities, actualities, probabilities and/or necessities.

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