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This entry continues the line of thought in Is Classical Theism a Type of Idealism?
God freely creates beings that are both (i) wholly dependent on God’s creative activity at every moment for their existence, and yet (ii) beings in their own own right, not merely intentional objects of the divine mind. The extreme case of this is God’s free creation of finite minds, finite subjects, finite unities of consciousness and self-consciousness, finite centers of inviolable inwardness, finite free agents, finite yet autonomous free agents with the power to refuse their own good, their own happiness, and to defy the nature of reality. God creates potential rebels. He creates Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus. He creates Lucifer the light bearer who, blinded by his own light, refuses to acknowledge the source of his light, and would be that source himself even though the project of becoming the source of his own light is doomed to failure, and he knows it, but pursues it anyway. He creates Lucifer who became the father of all perversity. The “Father of lights” (James 1:17) creates the father of lies.
God creates and sustains, moment by moment, other minds, like unto his own, made in his image, who are yet radically other in their inwardness and freedom. He creates subjects who exist in their own right and not merely as objects of divine thought. How is this conceivable?
An initial nit: God doesn’t *think* us into, or maintain, our existence: he *wills* it.
All talk about God necessarily proceeds by analogy, and by that token, God *thinks* about all of the things He might do, and then chooses one and *wills* it into actuality by divine volition.
I am well aware that, by classical theism, all of God’s attributes are identical, but, again, we can only speak analogically, and *omnis analogia claudicat*.
From there, I have suggested Aquinas’ answer to your dilemma in a response to one of your previous posts: once God creates something with a specific nature, He is no longer free to defy that nature.
In your previous post, the subject was the destruction of souls in hell: by Aquinas’ lights, God cannot make humans (or angels) cease to exist, because human and angelic natures are sempiternal. In the same way, God is not free to get rid of the number 7, or triangularity, *und so weiter*.
And THAT is how we are “independent” of God, and how the charge of idealism is escaped.
On pretty much the same tack, Oderberg has a great paper on how our wills can still be free, despite relying on God’s will/power for their exercise.
Bill, >How is this conceivable?<
Let's try this. On some interpretations of the existence-essence distinction, our thoughts about existing being are not identical with that being. For God, however, thought and being are identical; he thinks of ontologically independent being and that thought-consciousness of being is identical with what we call creation of an ontological independent being. I think this is what Joseph Ratzinger is saying when he declares that God's creative freedom "on the one hand, it is the being-thought of a consciousness and yet, on the other hand, is true being itself." Thought and being are identical – for God.
2nd: God's creative activity would not be a deism. God's creative and sustaining activity are the same act because God acts from eternity – it is an a-temporal act that is therefore present in all temporal moments. In creating, God is every bit involved in his creation during the course of its journey through time as he was in its beginning.
3rd: As for the creative activity itself, I see God's creation as a kenosis, a self-emptying (or sacrifice, if you will) of his Divine Simplicity. In divine freedom, God holds himself back to allow his ontologically independent creation to be what he has created, with God's sustaining hand on the tiller, so to speak, to insure that his creation remains what he willed it to be.
Thanks for the comments. Your second point shows that you did not carefully read what I wrote. I stated explicitly that divine creation is not to be understood along deistic lines. Your third point is a very interesting theological speculation. Call it kenotic creation. I cannot see that it makes much sense, however. If, as we both hold, God is simple, then that is not a contingent fact about him; hence he cannot sacrifice his divine simplicity. You also beg the question when you speak of God’s ontologically independent creation. That’s precisely what is at issue.
As for your first point, I agree that for God, to be = to think. That is a consequence of divine simplicity. Beyond that I don’t know what you are saying. I don’t think you understand the problem. The problem is to square the radical alterity of other minds with their being created/conserved by divine mind.
Bill, >you did not carefully read what I wrote … I don’t think you understand the problem … You also beg the question<
In the interest of brevity (not my strong suit), I plead nolo contendere on those charges, so as to move on to what really interests me, kenotic creation.
<I cannot see that [kenotic creation] makes much sense, however. If, as we both hold, God is simple, then that is not a contingent fact about him; hence he cannot sacrifice his divine simplicity.<
I agree that kenotic creation doesn't make sense within the context of the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity. However, on the interpretation of the existence-essence distinction I noted in #1, the thought-consciousness about God in DDS is not identical with the real being of God. This can also be expressed that God as he is in himself is transcendent and not limited by immanent logical categories of human thought. According to Lev Shestov (who reads like an angry Old Testament Prophet), the affirmation of God's absolute freedom goes all the way back to Tertullian (albeit due to a possible misquotation) and up to and through the likes of Peter Damian, Duns Scotus (in a different but similar context), and Kierkegaard: "For God, nothing is impossible."
Remember, all you asked above is, "How is this conceivable?" I place kenotic creation as conceivable within that tradition of Christian thought. Kenotic creation has the added advantage that we have another case (on some interpretations) of the self-emptying of Divinity in the Incarnation. If the latter kenosis is conceivable, then no less is God's kenosis in creating and sustaining ontologically independent beings, including those with a radical alterity of independent minds who have the possibility (not the necessity, not the requirement) to be rebels.
The conceivability of kenotic creation, however, does not resolve the paradox, it only places it explicitly within a framework that affirms God's transcendence and absolute uniqueness as Other.