Is there is a difference between God Absolute and God the creator?

[Ben Dhyan]

Hi Rolling Stone,
Thank you for your post, my head hurts when I try to follow your train of thought though.
A few comments...

"understand what you're getting at (I think), but there is the Trinity doctrine in Christian thought (though not all) which is not entirely dissimilar to Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu (the Sustaining aspect)."
"Edit: the monistic I AM is the philosophical equivalent of Brahman."

I agree. Brahma and Shiva represent the complementary opposites which are aspects of the Brahman, much the same as yin and yan are complementary aspects of the Tau, and Good and Evil are complementary aspects of the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis. Incidentally, it is my understanding the Vishnu represents the reflection of Brahman on the level of Brahma and Shiva.

"Many theological difficulties are consequent to the dislocation of creatorship".

A very astute observation,... if some degree of consensus could be attained concerning the relationship of the Absolute and the acts of creation and destruction taking place continuously within It, it would free up a lot of resources presently tied up in arguments arising from misunderstanding.
Can you imagine Christian theologians reaching a consensus that Brahman is the same as I AM and that the emanated complementary aspect of Brahma and Shiva are the equivalent God and Satan? Before that can happen, Christian theologians will need to understand that it really only the Absolute that is worthy of the name God if it to establish credibility among the learned of other religious traditions as having a true monotheistic religious pedigree.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Hi Orontes,

Orontes
"You have misunderstood. I didn't ask about pantheism, but panentheism. These are distinct notions."

Orontes, this is not a word that is in any dictionary that I know of, but I googled it and came up with these two definitions..
Panetheism: Idea that God is more than nature, while nature is part of God.
Panetheism: The belief that the universe is entirely contained within a deity
I would generally be inclined to agree with the gist of these ideas as far as they go, but there is much more to it than that. The unknown can never be known by using the known as a means of defining it, nor can its Infinitude be ever determined by measurement using calibrated finite instruments, etc.,etc..

"This doesn't address the logical problem: atemporality and temporality are mutually exclusive. You assert:

1) God Absolute is atemporal.
2) All other things are temporal
3) All other things have their being in an atemporal God (God Absolute)

The problem is the meaning of atemporal and temporal are antithetical. Your point 3) asserts a connectivity. This connectivity that from base rational grounds is absurd. This would indicate one would either have to abandon reason to hold the view or abandon the view to hold to reason."

I don't see the meaning of atemporal and temporal as being antithetical or mutually exclusive,.. as I don't see 'endless duration' and a passing 'moment' as being antithetical or mutually exclusive.
Atemporal is endless duration, whilst temporal implies finite duration.
All temporal finite events are taking place continuously in the atemporal continuity of renewal and destruction.
Temporal events should not be seen as 'loose cannons' having no connection with the deck of the ship on which they are rolling about on, they are happening in a cosmic drama known as God absolute.
Orontes, are you trying to apply Boolean algebraic logic or Venn diagrams to get to the logical truth here? If so, please understand that Boolean algebraic and/or Venn diagram logic only produce correct results in the background/context of an appropriate universal set. In this case the Atemporal in Venn would be considered the universal set or in Boolean, it would be represented by One,.. so each Temporal function that is a part of the universal set/One will have its complementary opposite.,...e.g. good and not-good, within it. However there is no complementary opposite of the universal set/One under consideration when applying Boolean and Venn logic to problem solving. Any and all variables ANDed or ORed with the universal set results in the answer of the universal set!..in this case Atemporal.
I know that Atemporal appears to be the opposite of Temporal due to prefix 'A', but in the context, the semantics if you like in which we are using these words, they are not on the same playing field and are not opposites but one is contained in the other. So as to not create any further confusion, let us agree to use Eternal or a word of your choice instead of Atemporal....OK.

"I don't understand your reply. You state we are created of the "stuff of God Absolute" and that "it reveals itself to those who love the truth" but you said God Absolute cannot be known by any knowledge or imagined. This seems like another contradiction."

Yes, I understand your question and will answer you as succinctly as I can, but to understand it you will have to put aside your mental faculty for dualistic discernment for a moment and put on your intuitive 'mystical' hat.
God absolute can only be revealed by God absolute, and the medium through which this revelation takes place is God absolute, and the one who receives the revelation is God absolute.

A sufi mystic put it this way...

I thought of You so often,
I finally became You,
Little by little You drew nearer,
Slowly but slowly I passed away.

It seems to me that conceptual thinking, is natural and necessary for functioning in this world, but when applying it to the great unknown, it can only give us a mere 'taste' of true understanding, so perhaps the meditative process will eventually need to be developed and practiced if one really has the thirst to drink of the water of life?
Or...you can not serve two masters without serving one second best!

 

[Rolling_Stone]

The Hindus have a saying: In the beginning God (Brahman) was one. Being one, he became lonely and sp he became many.

I take a lot my understanding from The URANTIA Book, so my understanding of the Trinity is perhaps more than a little odd by Christian standards. While the I AM is equivalent to Brahman (at least in my understanding), the Christian Trinity are functionally different. The primary differentiation is the deifiable and the undeifiable or spirit and matter. Mind is the technique of unifying the ever-widening divergencies. The Trinity consists of the Father-I AM, Spirit-Personality (which is the personality of the I AM divested of non-personal realities), and Mind-Personality. This is the simple version, but it is enough to see that it serves the same purpose as what you present; i.e., to get from the One to the many and back.

 

[Orontes]

Not really. The logic you are using is "A" cannot be both "A" and "not-A" at the same time in the same relationship. This is true, however, "A" can be both "A" and "not-A" at the same time and same place in a different relationship. I know it's not quite the same, but it has been demonstrated in the laboratory that one object can exist in many places at the same time (space being the relational difference).

The issue, is not perspectival (as a relationship may indicate) but tied to identity statements. It is definitional. For example, were one to say a square is comprised of four right angles, accepting that notion excludes the assertion a square is not comprised of four right angels. Further, one cannot say a square is comprised of four right angles and not comprised of four right angels.

Edit: the monistic I AM is the philosophical equivalent of Brahman.

This idea is problematic as the I AM necessarily indicates individuation and thus is pluralistic. The Old Testament follows a metaphysical pluralism.

 

[Orontes]

Orontes, this is not a word that is in any dictionary that I know of, but I googled it and came up with these two definitions..
Panetheism: Idea that God is more than nature, while nature is part of God.
Panetheism: The belief that the universe is entirely contained within a deity
I would generally be inclined to agree with the gist of these ideas as far as they go, but there is much more to it than that. The unknown can never be known by using the known as a means of defining it, nor can its Infinitude be ever determined by measurement using calibrated finite instruments, etc.,etc..

Hi ben d,

I thought your stance had a panentheist bent to it. Paul Tillich would be a simple example of a panentheist positioning.

"This doesn't address the logical problem: atemporality and temporality are mutually exclusive. You assert:

1) God Absolute is atemporal.
2) All other things are temporal
3) All other things have their being in an atemporal God (God Absolute)

The problem is the meaning of atemporal and temporal are antithetical. Your point 3) asserts a connectivity. This connectivity that from base rational grounds is absurd. This would indicate one would either have to abandon reason to hold the view or abandon the view to hold to reason."

I don't see the meaning of atemporal and temporal as being antithetical or mutually exclusive,.. as I don't see 'endless duration' and a passing 'moment' as being antithetical or mutually exclusive.
Atemporal is endless duration, whilst temporal implies finite duration.
All temporal finite events are taking place continuously in the atemporal continuity of renewal and destruction.

Atemporality is the absence of time. It is not simply an endlessness, but an erasure of any notion of time. The prefix acts as the negation of time. There is no duration as there is no measure. There is no "taking place continuously" as there is no present: no now.

Orontes, are you trying to apply Boolean algebraic logic or Venn diagrams to get to the logical truth here?

I am simply applying basic material conditionals to identity statements.

Note: Given atemporal and temporal are opposite, by definition, I don't think one can opt for a set/subset regimen unless one has previously established contectivity.

So as to not create any further confusion, let us agree to use Eternal or a word of your choice instead of Atemporal....OK.

I think eternal is a less problematic term as the focus then becomes duration and not the absence of time.

"I don't understand your reply. You state we are created of the "stuff of God Absolute" and that "it reveals itself to those who love the truth" but you said God Absolute cannot be known by any knowledge or imagined. This seems like another contradiction."

Yes, I understand your question and will answer you as succinctly as I can, but to understand it you will have to put aside your mental faculty for dualistic discernment for a moment and put on your intuitive 'mystical' hat.
God absolute can only be revealed by God absolute, and the medium through which this revelation takes place is God absolute, and the one who receives the revelation is God absolute.

This leaves the question: can the Absolute be known and/or imagined or no? You appear to be saying the answer is yes and referencing a mystical epistemic. Is this right? If so, how are you understanding mystical experience? Is the view you are opting for the erasure or extinction of self (per the Sufi reference)? Is it an intuition and thereby unmediated knowing without subject extinction (i.e. St. Paul)?

 

[Willamena]

The issue, is not perspectival (as a relationship may indicate) but tied to identity statements. It is definitional.

Bed said: "I know that Atemporal appears to be the opposite of Temporal due to prefix 'A', but in the context, the semantics if you like in which we are using these words, they are not on the same playing field and are not opposites but one is contained in the other. So as to not create any further confusion, let us agree to use Eternal or a word of your choice instead of Atemporal..."

This describes a perspectival issue.

 

[Willamena]

My understanding is that God absolute is immanent in the universe but simultaneously transcendent.

This is panentheism.

 

[Orontes]

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Bed said: "I know that Atemporal appears to be the opposite of Temporal due to prefix 'A', but in the context, the semantics if you like in which we are using these words, they are not on the same playing field and are not opposites but one is contained in the other.

This describes a perspectival issue.

Hello,

One can't subsume the one into the other simply by assertion. Further, perspective would necessitate a viewing subject. No such subject is referenced (nor indeed can be given atemporality is not an empirical category). What one has are two posits: temporality and atemporality as idenity statements. Now Ben has now qualified atemporality to eternity or endlessness, which is a different beast.

 

[Willamena]

Hello,

One can't subsume the one into the other simply by assertion. Further, perspective would necessitate a viewing subject. No such subject is referenced (nor indeed can be given atemporality is not an empirical category). What one has are two posits: temporality and atemporality as idenity statements. Now Ben has now qualified atemporality to eternity or endlessness, which is a different beast.

Subsumation need not be the relationship that he is talking about. And eternity need not be subsumed in time.

 

[Rolling_Stone]

The issue, is not perspectival (as a relationship may indicate) but tied to identity statements.

I know where you are coming from because I've been there (I was raised Mormon). I mutated and continue to evolve on another branch.

Unity and diversity are not mutually exclusive, but cannot be understood in the absence of internal relationships. The I AM symbolizes the the oneness of the Absolute; the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are co-eternal internal relationships.

My perspective is that of a finite being looking to the threefold nature of the Infinite as ONE; my relationship is ever-evolving (which is identical with the Mormon idea of eternal growth). Jesus said, "I and my Father are one." I say the same, but acknowledge a difference in degree.

 

[Orontes]

Subsumation need not be the relationship that he is talking about. And eternity need not be subsumed in time.

Ben's statement seems quite clear: "one is contained in the other". Therefore, one is a subset of the other. If this were applied to the mutually exclusive posits 'A is temporal' and 'B is atemporal' there is a base incoherence just as if one were to assert 'A = bachelor' is a subset of 'B = married'. The two notions are distinct and this cannot be erased by any fiat. Even so, it appears Ben means for temporal to be juxtaposed with eternal. So, the issue is not time and no time, but what may end and what does not have an end.

If eternity entails any temporal predication (before, after, now) then it is time laden (subsumed by time).

 

[Orontes]

I know where you are coming from because I've been there (I was raised Mormon). I mutated and continue to evolve on another branch.

Unity and diversity are not mutually exclusive, but cannot be understood in the absence of internal relationships. The I AM symbolizes the the oneness of the Absolute; the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are co-eternal internal relationships.

My perspective is that of a finite being looking to the threefold nature of the Infinite as ONE; my relationship is ever-evolving (which is identical with the Mormon idea of eternal growth). Jesus said, "I and my Father are one." I say the same, but acknowledge a difference in degree.

Raised Mormon: that's interesting! I'm sure we all mutate on one level or another. Actually, my position isn't concerned with any Mormon appeal, but the base meaning of identity statements.

Per I AM: I wasn't thinking of any trinitarian formulation, but the meaning as YHWH, particularly the contradistinction between creature and Creator. God simplicitur is not Moses on the mountain.

As to any notion of unity and/or diversity: such are mutually exclusive unless one wishes to equivocate or somehow qualify terms. For a Trinitarian this is the only option unless one falls into a modalism or polytheism. I think the same applies for Mormon Divine conceptualizations: the meaning of God is equivocal.

 

[Rolling_Stone]

Raised Mormon: that's interesting! I'm sure we all mutate on one level or another. Actually, my position isn't concerned with any Mormon appeal, but the base meaning of identity statements.

Per I AM: I wasn't thinking of any trinitarian formulation, but the meaning as YHWH, particularly the contradistinction between creature and Creator. God simplicitur is not Moses on the mountain.

As to any notion of unity and/or diversity: such are mutually exclusive unless one wishes to equivocate or somehow qualify terms. For a Trinitarian this is the only option unless one falls into a modalism or polytheism. I think the same applies for Mormon Divine conceptualizations: the meaning of God is equivocal.

Here's my take:

Intellectually, we have to account for the necessary unity of infinity and the diversity we experience (assuming, of course, the Absolute is truly infinite). The observer cannot be the thing observed; evaluation demands transcendence of, or separation from, the thing evaluated. Accordingly, the concept of free will can arise only where the agent (man) is separate from its environment; man is the agent in which the Infinite escapes the finality of the infinity of perfection and becomes the object of worship. Now, I can go into details about the self-differentiated God and why the internal relationships are necessarily co-eternal if you want me to, but I think it is sufficient to say that the hypothetic and undifferentiated al I AM (or Brahman) is the light on the other side of the cosmic prism and in the spectrum we live, move and have our being.

To me, religious experience is an amalgam of something that is rationally insoluble, but philosophically expressed in Trinitarianism. Trinitarianism gives philosophical expression to the One (the Father) while allowing the manifestation of Personality (Sonship) in the presence of a non-personal other (matter), and a solution to the divergence in a coordinate Third Person.

While all this is clear in my own head, my sister, who is VERY Mormon, is completely befuddled by my ideas. :rainbow1:

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Orontes
"Atemporality is the absence of time. It is not simply an endlessness, but an erasure of any notion of time. The prefix acts as the negation of time. There is no duration as there is no measure. There is no "taking place continuously" as there is no present: no now."

Again, this is another word (atemporal) that is not in any dictionary I have been able to check and assumed you were using it as being synonymous with 'eternal'.

"I think eternal is a less problematic term as the focus then becomes duration and not the absence of time."

Good, so we can move on.

"This leaves the question: can the Absolute be known and/or imagined or no? You appear to be saying the answer is yes and referencing a mystical epistemic. Is this right?"

No, so long as an entity is using their self reference "I" (ego) to attempt to know the Absolute, no union can take place, because such an attempt implies a present understanding that they are not all knowing. Nothing that imagines itself separate from the Absolute can ever enter into it because the Absolute is already whole and all knowing,...it's already complete!
If I may put it this way, the Absolute (all knowing) already knows the knowing of the disciple, but the knowing of the disciple does not include all knowing. So long as the disciple imagines that by self effort it can know all knowing it can never enter into union with the Absolute.

"Is the view you are opting for the erasure or extinction of self (per the Sufi reference)? If so, how are you understanding mystical experience?"

No, it is not my view, the self knowing is not erased or extinguished, but is transformed from the self reference perspective form of knowing to a non-local or spiritual mode. In this elevated state, a physical body is no longer required,..being born of the spirit.

"Is it an intuition and thereby unmediated knowing without subject extinction (i.e. St. Paul)?"

Intuition predominantly in the earlier phase (per Sufi reference,..first and third line) and unmediated knowing predominantly in the latter phase (..second and last line).

 

[Katzpur]

A God that is absolute, in that it is eternal (can't be regulated by any concepts of time) , infinite (can't be delimited by any space) and unknowable (can't be defined by any knowledge) is what I understand Monotheism to be.

Monotheism refers to a belief in one God. The term itself has nothing to do with the attributes of that God.

 

[Willamena]

Ben's statement seems quite clear: "one is contained in the other". Therefore, one is a subset of the other. If this were applied to the mutually exclusive posits 'A is temporal' and 'B is atemporal' there is a base incoherence just as if one were to assert 'A = bachelor' is a subset of 'B = married'. The two notions are distinct and this cannot be erased by any fiat. Even so, it appears Ben means for temporal to be juxtaposed with eternal. So, the issue is not time and no time, but what may end and what does not have an end.

If eternity entails any temporal predication (before, after, now) then it is time laden (subsumed by time).

Is coffee subsumed by the cup that contains it? Not saying that's the relationship he's referring to, but a good example of how something contained is not inherently subsumed.

And if "eternal" is taken not as "endless" time, as would subsume it to the concept of time, but as "timeless", then it is atemporal.

 

[Rolling_Stone]

Atemporality is the absence of time. It is not simply an endlessness, but an erasure of any notion of time.

Atemporality is time-transcending. It is not the absence of time any more than the life of a flower is absent of matter.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Willamena
"Originally Posted by ben d 'My understanding is that God absolute is immanent in the universe but simultaneously transcendent.'

This is panentheism."

OK,...it appears as though I've been outed then!

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Monotheism refers to a belief in one God. The term itself has nothing to do with the attributes of that God.

Hi Katzpur,
Thanks, the reason I mention the attributes of God absolute is so that there is clarity as to what God absolute is not. It is possible that some theologians and laity of the monotheistic religions are sometimes referring to the higher order powers and principles of God absolute as one and the same as God absolute, and so to be aware these inherent attributes will help to expose that error.

 

[Willamena]

Willamena
"Originally Posted by ben d 'My understanding is that God absolute is immanent in the universe but simultaneously transcendent.'

This is panentheism."

OK,...it appears as though I've been outed then!

Heheh