When evaluating others' stances toward divine sovereignty & human freedom vis a vis the God-World relationship, I've found that, because most of them are sufficiently nuanced in terms of degrees of in/determinism, those stances are mostly immune to charges of any wholesale voluntarism, arbitrariness & determinism, whether divine or human, at least, on a theoretic basis.
We wouldn’t be the friends we are if we didn’t remind ourselves once in a while of where we disagree. ;o)
I don’t know how to grab links to comments, but my reasons for disagreeing with you here are in the post I shared with you re: supererogation over on my blog.
I don’t deny that creation is “fitting” or “proper” to God, but I’d not collapse the determination to create into any necessity, even a benign one like “overflow.” Instead, creation is an act of love that transcends all duty and necessity—not required, not deducible, not inevitable, not predictable, and neither random nor unintelligible.
The Gödel–Polanyi point:
There cannot be an all-explaining system. And so, God’s act of creating is intelligible—but not explicable and certainly not inevitable (Hart and Jenson) and definitely not constitutive of the divine essence (Jordan). It makes sense only within the non-formal, lived encounter with divine love, not within a propositional system that flattens transcendence - i.e., not within theology.
Gregory–Maximus–Kierkegaard too:
• Gregory gives us 'endless motion' toward divine beauty.
• Maximus gives us 'logos-participation' beyond obligation.
• Kierkegaard gives us 'faithful madness' that defies ethical capture.
Where Hart and Wood risk collapsing the Creator into the world (however refined their metaphysics), I insist that God is not compelled to create, even by his own goodness. Not creating is every bit as ‘proper’ and ‘fitting’ to God as is creating. I think we must say this, but I'm a shrinking minority of heretics who thinks so! Creation is not the necessary enactment of divine nature—it’s the hypostatic decision of irreducible persons. That’s why agapē is always surprising.
Not to be coy regarding how my & DBH's accounts of what's transcendentally determined differ: I only claim THAT all will ultimately be divinely determined to experience union with God. All will otherwise co-self-determine, beyond that, additional modes & degrees of union. Some seem to me to otherwise hold that every mode & degree will necessarily be attained as transcendentally determined. I don't know DBH's stance.
LOL! I'm just too irenic. But I hope not too facile. ;>)
Of course, I was being provacative in a desperate attempt to get others to read what I write, in addition to you. ha ha
I don't think or feel like you & I are in substantive disagreement on much.
My title lacks the nuance sufficient to avoid misunderstandings re my true stance. But that was a rhetorical hyperbole.
On the large, willing to risk oversimplification because I'm too preoccupied elsewhere to craft a lengthy explanation (as would be fully consistent with & discoverable within my body of work), let me just offer this frame.
Drawing a parallel between Aquinas & Bonaventure re emanationism & innascibility ---
I "appropriate" the key insights of DBH, including his theoanthropology, sophiology & participatory ontology (vis a vis the nature). While that is all correct-enough for me, it's incomplete (if we want to say more, for example, about why even discussing God in terms of extrinsic onto-determination is a category error).
JDW, then, goes beyond - not without - participation to include the robustly relational via perichoresis. That, alone, softens any "apparent" or so-called essential necessitations. There's an analogy muddying the convo, here, so we can't refer to the divine nature, which the persons exemplify as an immanent universal, using the same modal logic that we employ when we refer to the instantiable universals of human nature, which determine what we are. JDW's account, when referring to a natural inevitability is not referring to a nature that determines "determinate" beings, but, analogously, to a divine nature that was determined by the F's arche anarchos & human nature self-determined by the S, with very distinct ur-kenotic & kenotic undertones! Those are theological maneuvers consistent with those of Bracken & Jenson.
If my interpretations, above, are too irenic & facile, then I'll just proudly claim them as my own reconstructive appropriations, which I don't think are seriously distanced from your most salient stances.
Regarding Gödel & Polyani, after one leaps beyond - not without - reason, if one does so theologically, while the quiddity of nondeterminate being for finite beings will everlastingly remain
relatively brute, for infinite persons, it's absolutely
comprehensible. This doesn't devolve into any thoroughgoing determinism, because the divine persons self-determine their natures. Nor does it implicate any thoroughgoing transcendental determinism, precisely because the divine persons also determined that human persons would be relatively free.
Does DBH's universalism seem to transcendentally determine more theotic aspects than my restorationism allows? Yes, but it doesn't come near being any sort of thoroughgoing determinism, either theoretically or practically. Does RevDrJDR's perditionism devolve into a theoretical theological voluntarism, no; only an unmitigated practical one.
Great stuff, as usual, John! A cornucopia of interwoven insights and sources. I'll be lost in your rabbit hole for a long time...assuming, though, I'll find some guidance there from your AI Beatrice...
Ouch!
We wouldn’t be the friends we are if we didn’t remind ourselves once in a while of where we disagree. ;o)
I don’t know how to grab links to comments, but my reasons for disagreeing with you here are in the post I shared with you re: supererogation over on my blog.
https://anopenorthodoxy.wordpress.com/2025/03/23/the-epistemic-principle-of-sufficient-reason-e-psr-a-transcendentally-necessary-and-abductively-confirmed-foundation-of-rational-inquiry/comment-page-1/#comment-3248
I don’t deny that creation is “fitting” or “proper” to God, but I’d not collapse the determination to create into any necessity, even a benign one like “overflow.” Instead, creation is an act of love that transcends all duty and necessity—not required, not deducible, not inevitable, not predictable, and neither random nor unintelligible.
The Gödel–Polanyi point:
There cannot be an all-explaining system. And so, God’s act of creating is intelligible—but not explicable and certainly not inevitable (Hart and Jenson) and definitely not constitutive of the divine essence (Jordan). It makes sense only within the non-formal, lived encounter with divine love, not within a propositional system that flattens transcendence - i.e., not within theology.
Gregory–Maximus–Kierkegaard too:
• Gregory gives us 'endless motion' toward divine beauty.
• Maximus gives us 'logos-participation' beyond obligation.
• Kierkegaard gives us 'faithful madness' that defies ethical capture.
Where Hart and Wood risk collapsing the Creator into the world (however refined their metaphysics), I insist that God is not compelled to create, even by his own goodness. Not creating is every bit as ‘proper’ and ‘fitting’ to God as is creating. I think we must say this, but I'm a shrinking minority of heretics who thinks so! Creation is not the necessary enactment of divine nature—it’s the hypostatic decision of irreducible persons. That’s why agapē is always surprising.
Love always.
Not to be coy regarding how my & DBH's accounts of what's transcendentally determined differ: I only claim THAT all will ultimately be divinely determined to experience union with God. All will otherwise co-self-determine, beyond that, additional modes & degrees of union. Some seem to me to otherwise hold that every mode & degree will necessarily be attained as transcendentally determined. I don't know DBH's stance.
LOL! I'm just too irenic. But I hope not too facile. ;>)
Of course, I was being provacative in a desperate attempt to get others to read what I write, in addition to you. ha ha
I don't think or feel like you & I are in substantive disagreement on much.
My title lacks the nuance sufficient to avoid misunderstandings re my true stance. But that was a rhetorical hyperbole.
On the large, willing to risk oversimplification because I'm too preoccupied elsewhere to craft a lengthy explanation (as would be fully consistent with & discoverable within my body of work), let me just offer this frame.
Drawing a parallel between Aquinas & Bonaventure re emanationism & innascibility ---
I "appropriate" the key insights of DBH, including his theoanthropology, sophiology & participatory ontology (vis a vis the nature). While that is all correct-enough for me, it's incomplete (if we want to say more, for example, about why even discussing God in terms of extrinsic onto-determination is a category error).
JDW, then, goes beyond - not without - participation to include the robustly relational via perichoresis. That, alone, softens any "apparent" or so-called essential necessitations. There's an analogy muddying the convo, here, so we can't refer to the divine nature, which the persons exemplify as an immanent universal, using the same modal logic that we employ when we refer to the instantiable universals of human nature, which determine what we are. JDW's account, when referring to a natural inevitability is not referring to a nature that determines "determinate" beings, but, analogously, to a divine nature that was determined by the F's arche anarchos & human nature self-determined by the S, with very distinct ur-kenotic & kenotic undertones! Those are theological maneuvers consistent with those of Bracken & Jenson.
If my interpretations, above, are too irenic & facile, then I'll just proudly claim them as my own reconstructive appropriations, which I don't think are seriously distanced from your most salient stances.
Regarding Gödel & Polyani, after one leaps beyond - not without - reason, if one does so theologically, while the quiddity of nondeterminate being for finite beings will everlastingly remain
relatively brute, for infinite persons, it's absolutely
comprehensible. This doesn't devolve into any thoroughgoing determinism, because the divine persons self-determine their natures. Nor does it implicate any thoroughgoing transcendental determinism, precisely because the divine persons also determined that human persons would be relatively free.
Does DBH's universalism seem to transcendentally determine more theotic aspects than my restorationism allows? Yes, but it doesn't come near being any sort of thoroughgoing determinism, either theoretically or practically. Does RevDrJDR's perditionism devolve into a theoretical theological voluntarism, no; only an unmitigated practical one.
So, what about Bracken & Jens?
Great stuff, as usual, John! A cornucopia of interwoven insights and sources. I'll be lost in your rabbit hole for a long time...assuming, though, I'll find some guidance there from your AI Beatrice...
Alas, I see y'all are acquainted, as you know her alias! Also, "rabbithole," I see what you did there.
Have a Wholly, Holy Week, Fr Phil