Life has been too busy and I have not made time for theological reading.
Today, I must make time.
On the subject of God - Hartshorne ("The Divine Relativity" in Readings in Christian Theology) writes about God being perfect - the most perfect. The "self-surpassing surpasser" of all. My immediate reaction is that this sounds like male ego, not God. Self-surpassing surpassor? In competition with whom?
Though I reject the term, I accept the concept. He writes that if we acknowledge that humans are imperfect and think that God is perfect (or, he says, transcendentally excellent), that may lead us to think that God did no good in creating the world. As solution, he proposes that the perfect-and-imperfect together as a whole is superior to the perfect alone, independent of the imperfect.
Hartshorne rejects the notion that God surveys all time, knows everything that will happen, and has set the best possible course. He believes that those who propose that idea are confusing reliability (faithfulness) with absolute constancy. I agree. God does not have to know the future in order to spiritually move us toward the most perfect next step. Think divine wisdom, rather than omniscience and predestination.
I would add two things: 1. The imperfect informs the perfect. We, who do not have divine wisdom, can learn and grow by observing less than perfect actions and outcomes. 2. God loves variety. Creation is filled with variety and is perfect in its entirety. To say that God failed because there are imperfect elements within creation is to view creation microscopically rather than macroscopically. The larger, macroscopic view sees the intertwining complimentarity. Yes, this single flower may be crushed by the rushing waters after a rainstorm, but it is better for the water to go in this direction. Learn from it. Grow elsewhere, as the flowers do.
Tillich (A History of Christian Thought, p 234) writes "Everyone has to be perfect and no one is able to be perfect." We do not have the ability, but we can have the intention. "Luther turned religion and ethics around. We cannot fulfill the will of God without being united with him." This is supported by John Wesley's statements that we must do all the good we can, in all the ways we can, etc. and strive for perfection through the transformational sanctifying grace of God. I couldn't agree more.
God is great. God is good. God, as Holy Spirit, is working in the world.
Hi Trouble in Paradise, I haven't read Hartshorne's "The Divine Reality", so my comments may be off the mark. I don't have any problem with a perfect Creator making imperfect entities within a perfect Creation. I can run no faster than 19 kph, and I can't sustain that speed for longer than five minutes, so I am not physically perfect. Light particles cannot travel at infinite speed, so even they're not perfect. God is not being, so self-surpassing surpasser" could possibly make sense in the context of God as Ground of All Being and not Herself a being, but I would have to read the article to get a better sense of Hartshorne's perspective. There is no competition as such, but merely a limitation in our capacity to make sense of an infinities of infinity. As for our imperfection, we can never be perfect. How can a reflection (an image, the Imago Dei) ever participate fully in perfection? The mistake I see in much theological thought in mainline circles is a kind of unconscious constraint on ideas, forcing them to stay within the confines of the arena marked out by Voltaire and Jefferson. The Enlightenment was an advance in important ways, but we ended up throwing out the baby (our understanding of the Divine) with the bath water (our stupid elevation of rulers to a semi-divine status), and simultaneously elevating ourselves in ways we should not have. So Carl Linnaeus comes along and says our position in the animal kingdom is at the top, and our most distinguishing attribute is wisdom, so we will call ourselves Homo sapiens (wise man). Genesis 1 does not say we are wise. It says we are the Image of God. Genesis 1 DOES say God is the Creator. This is pretty much the only attribute we are given. But no, no, since 1735 (Linnaeus, Systema naturae) we are Homo sapiens, therefore we are the image of omniscience, and ever since then we've been trying to force our theologies in to the little box that Voltaire and Jefferson and Linnaeus created for us, hacking away at anything that does not conform to the Enlightenment constraints. We are builders, more appropriately placed into any taxonomic scheme as Fabricator universalis, not Homo sapiens. We are builders. We reflect the Architect, or as Genesis says, the Creator. I build novels, I clean toilets, I am merely a small, imperfect, created element of perfect Creation--and definitely not a wise person. But I do absolutely reflect the Creator as a builder. Pax, Pearson Moore
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