Bruce Charlton's Notions

I have had the privilege of reading in manuscript a collection from letters from William Arkle to a young friend and spiritual-disciple/ -colleague; spanning from the middle 1980s to near the end of Arkle's life (in 2000).  

These have provoked all kinds of thoughts on that vital matter which Arkle 'made his own': questions on the nature of God, and God's hopes and aims in creation. 

 

For all Christians; God is (or should be) a person, not an abstraction. 

We are God's children (that is related-to, descended-from God); and God loves us. 

Beyond this, there are differences of understanding; and there is indeed a difference in my understanding and that of Arkle. More precisely, in his early work, Arkle described what I believe is true: God is a dyad, Father and Mother in Heaven: God is our Heavenly Parents. 

This is also the understanding of Mormon thelogy; and it natually goes-with an understanding of each Human Being as - in his or her eternal primordial essence, and eternally in future - either a man, or a woman (never neither, nor both). 

This metaphysical reality does not necessarily map-onto what may happen to an individual man or woman in terms of biological sex and/or sexuality during this mortal, earthly incarnation - which has the nature of a temporary experience for us to learn-from. My understanding is that - whatever happens 'superficially' in mortal life - each of us eternally has been, and eternally will be, essentially (by the nature of our true and divine self) a man or a woman eternally. 

 

But by the 1980s, Arkle had apparently moved to a view of God as primarily both man and woman simultaneously (a He/ She); and this goes-with an idea of sex as relatively superficial to the essence of Human Being - and with reincarnation as potentially alternating (as 'required') between the sexes; neither being the essence of a Human Being. Or with sex (and marriage, and procreation) being 'discarded' when a Human Being has reached Heaven

(Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield also share this understanding of sex. And it also goes-with an understanding of spirit-form as both the past and future of Man: Man was a spirit, will become a spirit; and physical incarnation is an intermediate stage, for experience and learning only.)

Whereas by contrast; my view (and the Mormon view) is that physical incarnation is higher than spirit life: bodies are better. Including that God is embodied - i.e. God is physically-bounded and in the same as human form (or rather, causally vice versa); God is not an omnipresent spirit. 

So, for me, God is embodied, and indeed two bodies: God is a dyad: Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother.

This matter of "what God is like", whether God is One or Two, is a vital to our metaphysics; because it decides our understanding of why God embarked on creation. Our inferred motivation of a unitary, solo God is very different from that of two Heavenly Parents, distinct but united by their mutual love. 

 

(Traditional Christian theology has it that God was utterly self-sufficient, and without needs (or desires). Trinitarian theology makes the love of this unitary God also be (somehow) sub-divided into the mutual love of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. But either way, the creation of Men and everything-else by God is an ultimately gratuitous act - and Not a matter of God seeking greater satisfaction, Not a matter of God needing, wanting, desiring or yearning. I personally reject this line of reasoning on the basis that God is a person, like our-selves in an ultimate sense; and that God does have passions, wishes. In particular I regard Love as the primary passion of God, and I regard Love as having in its nature many aspects such as needing, wanting, desiring and yearning.) 

Arkle's inference, based on his understanding of God as unity and a real person - is that God before creation must have been lonely and bored. God's greatest need was for things to do, and people to do-things-with. 

From this, Arkle derives an understanding that creation is essentially a matter of overcoming loneliness and boredom; of creating Beings who can develop to become like himself, and of creating many other things 'for fun'. 

Arkle encapsulates this in the ideas that in making Men who can evolve towards full-deity God is literally Making Friends; creating Beings who - it is hoped - will become 'friends' at the same divine level as God. And secondly that all the other Beings of Creation are made as a kind of ultimate 'play'. So that for Arkle life is - at its highest, most divine - created life is about play with and among friends.  

It should be noted - and this comes through repeatedly in these late Arkle letters, that loneliness and boredom are negative motivations - therefore creation is a kind of cosmic therapy for the unitary God.  

My own view, based on God as the loving-dyad of celestial husband and wife, of Heavenly Parents; is that creation is a natural consequence of the existential nature of Love. Creation is the positively-motivated overflow and expansion of spousal love. 

This is nothing esoteric, but a motivation that has been experienced (albeit perhaps partially and temporarily, as is the nature of mortal life) by countless husbands and wives through Man's history. Parental love seeks its own increase through children; and through a creative attitude to life and living.

In different words, the spontaneous expression (consequence) of parental love; is to co-create (in harmony with God's already in-progress creating) an open-ended, expanding-and-harmonious world; in which the family lives creatively. 

In a nutshell, God is like the perfection of married love, and what God wants from creation is analogous to what a loving husband and wife want, given a husband and wife who are themselves members of loving families. 

Thus (in an eternal persepctive) God wants children, and loving-developing family relations; wants new family and friends (i.e. permanent friends, maintained in harmony by analogously-familial love); wants a whole created-world of other (increasingly creative) Beings of many kinds, natures, motivations - but (ideally, and in actuality in Heaven) all maintained in Harmony by their mutual love. 

 

I think it is necessary to assume that God had at least two goals in creation. 

The first was to create Heaven - which means to create a world ruled by love. I tend to think of Heaven as a place where all relations between beings are loving - love, not coercion, is what gives cohesion to Heaven. 

And I assume that any being can enter Heaven who is prepared to discard everything of himself which contradicts the primacy of love. 

But God wanted more than this.

As William Arkle describes it - God did not want to remain 'alone, but God wanted divine friends. 

God wants not just 'children' (immature, undeveloped sons and daughters of God, like most mortal Men) - but God wants some of these children to grow-up to become like himself: that is a fully creative being - a being able to continue and enhance ongoing divine creation.  

So divine creation makes this growing-up of men to gods a possibility. Everything is provided to enable this to happen for a Man - except the vital ingredient that a Man must want it. 

Overall, God wanted a Heaven in which dwelt other gods. (...As many as possible, each unique.)

That is what God is working-towards, by means of creation.

In other words, to summarize the argument; behind divine creation is God's desire for a loving Heaven that includes (but does not consist entirely of) many other gods, of the same nature and type as God-the-creator. 

To become a god, a Man must want to become a god - that is, a creator on a level with the prime creator, albeit working within God's prime creation... 

(Why must he want it? Because a god must be conscious to be free; God must be conscious to be an autonomous agent of creation. An un-conscious 'god' would simply operate as a tool for creation - he would not be a god.) 

But that is not enough. As well as desiring full divinity; a Man who wants to become a god must also want to enter Heaven. 

That is how God set-up reality. 

One can have Heaven without wanting to be a god - e.g. wanting to remain a child; but one cannot become a god without also wanting Heaven. 

To be a god outside of Heaven is forbidden, it was made impossible. 

Theosis is only made possible to those who want to become a god - i.e. by those who will enter Heaven. 

Salvation to escape sin and dwell forever in Heaven is available only to those who will make an eternal commitment to live by love.

Theosis and salvation are thus bound-together and made one by resurrection. 

It is only by resurrection that a Man is made both eligible to enter Heaven and takes a decisive step towards the eventual goal of becoming A-god, like-unto The-God. 

Therefore, salvation is primary and must come first, before full and permanent theosis is possible. But theosis is the reason for creation, the reason for Jesus Christ, and the highest desire of God. 

Notes: When I write 'God' in the above post, I mean the Christian concept of God. 

The God/s of other religions are differently motivated - and non-Christians do not intend that Man should be raised to the level of full-creator God: i.e. to that level of divinity which Christians believe was seen in Jesus Christ. This elevation of Man to god is the possibility of which Jesus offered to those who believed-on and followed him - an equivalence of status whereby Men are regarded as 'friends' of God, not as 'servants'. 

I have also deliberately left open the structural aspects of the Christian God: I personally believe (with the Mormons) that God is our Heavenly Parents - that God is a dyad of Father and Mother; but the above argument works also for the more common and 'traditional' Christian trinitarian monotheism - where the love of God originates from the triadic love of Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Also, I believe that the above scheme can be discovered from reading the Fourth Gospel ('John'); when that Gospel is assumed to be the primary and qualitatively most authoritative account of Jesus's life and teachings.  

In a sense the Big Problem about the whole business of God's supposed omniscience and omnipotence is Christians defining God in terms that contradict the basic stance of Christianity.

I have often written of the un-Christian, indeed anti-Christian, idea that God want, needs and demands propitiation. 

I have also often written about my conviction that the spontaneous and natural "spiritual knowledge" of young children was built-into us by God, for our guidance, and as the basis of that adult knowledge we develop from properly-interpreted experiences and (usually) increasing capacity. 

I was considering my own childhood compulsion to pray (I was aged about 5-6 years), and how such prayers were almost entirely propitiatory in nature: I would beg my god (who was, I think, conceptualized as Thor) for the safety and survival of those I loved; and these prayers "needed" to be specific for each person, were desperate, and were repeated over and over again to the limit of my endurance.

These prayers were a ritual (before sleep) needed to avoid the punishment of harm being visited on those I loved. 

And, although the ritual was done to avert harm, I was very unsure of its effectiveness. Partly this was because of a sense that if I said or did anything wrong, then this would at least negate the prayer; and it might even evoke a punishment for my mistake - such that just what I prayed against, would be inflicted as the punishment.

(This seems to have been a common view of religious ritual through much of history, e.g. in the European Middle Ages - i.e. that it must be done exactly correctly or else it would do more harm than good.)

My first thought was to wonder whether this childhood experience of spontaneous propitiatory prayer was a guide to the real nature of God. I wondered if the fact I prayed in this style and spirit without being told, might be evidence that this was the real nature of God and his relationship with us. 

But then it suddenly struck me that I never felt the same way about my own mother or father. 

I never felt that my parents wanted, needed or demanded "propitiation". Indeed, the idea never even crossed my mind. 

The reason was obvious: I knew that my parents loved me. 

And I knew this - it was my solid faith. 

Therefore, because my parents really loved me and I knew it; propitiation was utterly alien and inappropriate - and indeed would be hurtful to loving parents. 

The God of whom Jesus speaks is spoken of as his Father and our Father, as the ideal and perfect loving Father.

Of Course a loving Father does not want propitiation - certainly He does not demand propitiation, nor does God our loving Father punish his children for failing to perform sufficient or correct propitiations...  

Jesus is saying pretty plainly that the real God, the Creator, is our loving Father*; and asking us to have the same "faith" in God's love that a child may have in the love of good parents - as I had in the love of my parents. 

By talking of and to his loving Father; Jesus is saying that a God who is regarded as wanting, needing, demanding propitiation is a false God; because the real God (the "Christian" God, the true creator) is of an absolutely different kind - God is Jesus's actual loving-Father, and our actual loving-Father; and we should have absolute confidence that He loves us as the ideal and perfect Father. 

Many, most - perhaps all? - other religions conceptualize their God or gods in ways that make propitiation of such God/s natural and needful...

And there are plenty of Beings - including human-beings, as well as various spirit-beings, including demonic - that do demand propitiation...

But these are not who Jesus meant by God.

(It very often seems to me that many self-identified Christians {and especially those who profess ultra-orthodox or traditionalist convictions} are actually - albeit implicitly - worshipping the God of Judaism, and/ or of Islam, rather than the Father of Jesus Christ.)  

What this means is that self-identified Christians who believe that their God requires propitiation are making a very serious error. 

(There are many, many, such Christians - often among the most "devout" - and always have been.) 

And if they persist in this error of worshipping a propitiation-demanding God; and if they (for instance) build their core theology, their articles of faith, around the necessity for propitiation; then the God that such people are advocating is Not the same God whom Jesus was addressing. 

In a nutshell: The Christian God is a loving Father, and Jesus asks us to have the same kind of faith in God's love that a good child has in the love of his parents. 

Genuine parental love - by Man of Men, or God of His children - has nothing to do with propitiation. 

   

*Note: I should clarify that ultimately I personally regard God as a dyad of Heavenly Father and Mother for metaphysical (and intuitive) reasons explained elsewhere; but my argument applies the same both to God understood as Father only, and to God as Heavenly Parents. So, I have presented the above argument in traditional language.   

Most versions of Christianity - and indeed of world religions - do not have any metaphysical role - that is any ultimate, fundamental, essential, necessary role - relating to the role of sex differences (i.e. the division of Man into men and women) that are concerned with the ultimate metaphysical nature and destiny of God's creation. 

(It seems that) In the developmental history of Men, there were three broad phases of how the ultimate deity was regarded: Orinially God as Mother; then - for most of recorded history - as Father; and - now and in the in future - Parents.

Hunter Gatherers seem to regard 'God' as (or, since it is not fully conscious or articulated, as if) a nurturing Mother; who provides all that is needed; and gives birth to all Beings. This goes with a passive and responsive attitude to the world - God as everywhere and Men as children.

Agricultural societies (and traditional sedentary societies - from at least Ancient Egypt until the Industrial Revolution in the West) generally have a masculine concept of God, or the supreme god; and this especially applies to monotheisms. This was the case for the early centuries of Christianity, and until the past several generations.This goes with a Kingly image of God, with religion as rituals and laws; and Men as subjects.

From the period of modernity (and especially since about 1800) I believe that the understanding of God is destined (supposed) to be as Heavenly Parents - Mother and Father in a celestial marriage, as a distinct but inseparable dyad - a polarity. This is - I think - the proper future and correct understanding of God: as Heavenly Parents.


This is explicit and officially sanctioned in the Restored Gospel of Mormonism, although in practice - so far - Mormonism has been as much (or more) Patriarchal as mainstream Christianity; and there is very little reference to Heavenly Mother or to the dyadic nature of God.

However, my interpretation of this, is that it is a temporary and merely-expedient distortion caused by the rise to dominance of materialist-leftist and socio-political feminism; which (as a strategy) tries to subvert the assumed male nature of real-God and replace it with an insincere female image of not-really-God (i.e. 'liberal Christianity' in its various forms).

Another distortion is the (only semi-serious, not truly lived-by) idea of restoring tribal ideas of God as Earth Mother - a pantheistic idea of non-purposive Goddess divinity; which owes much to an eclectic partial-assimilation of Hinduism and Buddhism. As well as being undesirable (an attempt to become spiritually children again); this is impossible due to the large changes in human and societal evolution: it just will not happen.  


Another distortion is the abstraction of God. Instead of regarding God as an incarnate person (of whom the resurrected Jesus was the filial image); the process began soon after the ascension of regarding the sex and personhood of God as childish anthropomorphism.

So we get the idea that God is not really either male or female, but both-or-neither. This leads to a sexless abstraction of God's person. And leads to the idea that the sex of mortal Men is just a temporary aspect of mortal life (just as mainstream Christians usually regard marriage as merely an expedient of mortal life, dissolved at death and without any equivalent in Heaven) - and that after death we will move-on to becoming de facto sexless.

(I regard this tendency to abstraction, sexlessness and not-incarnation of God, as the deep reason why mainstream Christians have found themselves unable coherently to defend real marriage against the mind-warping yet officially-mandatory literal-insanity that is SSM and the trans-agenda - and whatever is planned to come next...)


Anyway, to pull the argument together; my contention is that the truth and future of Christianity is to regard God as a dyad of Heavenly Parents - and to regard the sexes - man and woman - as ultimate, metaphysical realities, which underpin all of creation from eternity.

There is one God who created this reality. That is the proper meaning of 'one' God - despite that I believe the one God consisted of the dyad of Heavenly Father and Mother. 

Beyond this, and apparently since shortly after the death of Jesus Christ, Christians often feel a need to argue monotheism - that there can only be one God, that the oneness of God is entailed, that God is an indivisible unity.

However, my metaphysical understanding is that the oneness of God is a simple matter of fact. The fact that one God created this reality within which we dwell. 

There is one God because there is one God. 

What about Jesus Christ? There was one Jesus Christ who - again as a matter of fact - was the person who made possible our resurrection and ascension to Heaven. 

Before Jesus, resurrection was not possible; after Jesus it was possible (including for those who lived and died before Jesus). 

But did The Christ have to be Jesus - or could it have been someone else? 

What 'qualified' the pre-mortal individual spirit called Jesus to become incarnated and become The Christ? 

My understanding is that Jesus was the first and only pre-mortal spirit who could become The Christ, who could do the job. God always knew there was this job to be done, presumably this was known among the pre-mortal spirits; and it was some time before any of the pre-mortal spirits were ready and capable of doing the job. 

Jesus was the first and (at the time) only pre-mortal spirit to be fully-aligned with God's plan of creation - to be willing to do the job in full accordance with the plan. 

So Jesus was - as a matter of fact, but not a matter of necessity - the saviour. 

But... if that particular personage of Jesus had not been the Christ, then presumably - later on - somebody else, some other pre-mortal spirit - might have been able to do the job. 

I regard it as a deep philosophical error that so many Christian, for so long, have felt the need to argue that the oneness of God and the oneness of Jesus are necessary in some kind of ultimate philosophical-metaphysical sense; rather than as matters of fact. 

This error apparently came into Christianity quite soon after the death of Jesus - but after the writing of the Fourth Gospel; which is our only written source of what Jesus did and said written by an eye-witness, and one of the closest disciples. 

I presume (but don't know) that what became the Fourth Gospel was not known by Paul or the authors of Matthew and Luke - who provided the philosophical basis of later theologians (plus their carry-over of fundamental assumptions from Judaism and/or Greek-Roman pagan philosophy).  

By my understanding, the explanations of God and Jesus ought to be much simpler and more common-sensical than they have since become. There is one God because one God made this creation and we dwell in a creation made by one God. And there is one Jesus Christ because he was the first pre-mortal spirit who could do the job and wated to do the job - and now the job has-been-done, so there will never be "another Christ": jesus was the one and only. 

This question (why some-thing, why every-thing; rather than no-thing) is - or ought to be - uniquely easy for Christians to answer; compared with any other religion that posits a creator-god.

The question arises from trying to understand why a god that is powerful enough to create everything should have any reason for doing so; since presumably such a god would be utterly self-sufficient.

The Christian answer relates to such facts that all men are Sons of God-the-creator; that God-the-creator loves all Men; and that Jesus was divine, was the ('only begotten') Son of God, and he told his disciples that in knowing Jesus they also knew his Father.

Thus: we are like God; God is like me and you and anyone else. In vital ways, God's primary motives are therefore understandable by you and me and anyone else. From this, we can infer that God created everything, including men and women, for the same basic reason that you or I or anyone else would create such a universe.

So if we imagine ourselves as God before creation (whether you regard God as a single being of no sex, or - as I do - regard God as a dyad of man and woman, bound eternally by love) the purpose of creation is 'for' making other gods, beings qualitatively like oneself - drawn and held together by eternal loving relationships, and working together - mutually aligned by this love - on the endless business of creation.

(God's creation just-is this state of loving creativity. Thus, creation is Not about 'making stuff' - it is instead establishing this 'process' of beings creat-ing.)

God wants a family, wants friends, wants others of his kind: the same kind as the Father and the Son, and more such people would be better: Sons of God bound by love, and doing the work of creation.

Why this - rather than eternal solitude and no creation? Do you really need to ask? To answer, all you need to do is imagine, to empathically-identify-with, to understand how-God-felt in that primordial divine situation.

 

*

One of the values of having a metaphysical stance which includes the possibility of It Just Is as an acceptable terminus to the demand for causal explanation - is that it ends the infinite regress, and the problems which that brings with it.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/three-ultimate-metaphysical.html

*

The Mormon belief is that we are in some literal sense the children of God. then there is the fact that on earth children are produced by two parents. Further, the Mormon doctrine is that all Men are either male or female from before mortal life - and the complete unity of Man is therefore the dyad - a couple sealed in eternal marriage.

Considered together, all these tend to imply that God the Father must also have a 'consort' specifically a Wife, and also a Father and Mother in infinite regress.

God's wife is termed Mother in Heaven.

http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Mother_in_Heaven

*

I would classify the belief in a Mother in Heaven as (on the whole) mostly a 'folk' belief among Mormons because it is not required of Mormons, and there is virtually nothing on the topic (explicitly) in Mormon scriptures, and the belief in a Mother in Heaven has from not-much to zero impact on the major aspects of Mormon life and discourse.

On the other hand, belief in a Mother in Heaven is not ruled-out by LDS authorities (as the linked entry in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism makes clear) - and the reality of a Mother in Heaven has apparently been a belief held by Presidents and other General Authorities (including, probably, Joseph Smith  - if the King Follett discourse is regarded as definitive rather than speculative thinking-aloud).  

*

The Mormon belief in a Mother in Heaven is therefore not so much a matter of revelation or teaching, as a matter of the logical extrapolation of implicit doctrine.

If the principle of parenthood is taken to be universal, then every person must have two parents - including God the Father - ergo God must have a Wife , and must have been the Son of another God.

But the principle of parenthood need not apply to God the Father.

If God the Father Just Is - eternally; then he may also be:

1. The unique instance of a parentless personage; and also

2. The unique example of a being neither male nor female, but one who alone is able to procreate spiritual children.

*

Indeed, if these two things are accepted as part of primary reality (they Just Are); then this disposes of almost all the most significant arguments that Mormons are not-Christian.

Because such a God is the One God - past, present and future; He is primary, unique, eternal, unbegotten, Father of all - and so on.

In sum, God the Father is not just the one God of this universe, but the one God of all reality - and He is unique in his Nature.

*

To assume that God the Father Just Is also disposes of any necessity for positing a Mother in Heaven.

My impression is that the Mother in Heaven is a long way from being central to Mormon doctrine - since it is possible to go for months, or even years, of reading books, articles, theology and journalism about Mormonism and not to come across any reference to Mother in Heaven: indeed, to forget about the idea altogether...

*

My interpretation is that some Mormons have been led, by their metaphysical assumptions concerning the universality of sex and parenthood, to generate theological modifications including infinite-regress of parents (and universes) and  a Wife for God the Father - but these additions have made very little (if any) difference to the actual 'popular' daily beliefs and practices of most devout Mormons.

*

In this respect, it seems that the Mormon Mother in Heaven has developed in a manner opposite to the Roman Catholic conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary - Mother of God.

In the Catholic tradition, the veneration of Mary was first established in the popular everyday practice of liturgy, prayer, iconography, art and devotional life generally - and only later, sometimes many centuries later - were theological modifications (e.g. the Assumption, the Immaculate Conception) introduced to justify and explain these practices.

So the Catholic Mother of God was venerated in practice primarily and long before theory; while the Mormon Mother in Heaven seems to be mostly (for most people) a projection of theological theory; and not much (or at all) venerated in practice.

*

It is essential to stop teaching morality in terms which can be mistaken for the philosophy of external and obvious valuation; of valuation which concedes that behaviour must be good if it is not ‘found-out’ to be bad. Rather must it be said that unless the inner aspect of one's attitude is healthy, the result of any behaviour will be psychological unrest and discontent.

One may succeed in the world and gain the adoration of many people, but if this is to fail to remain true to innermost nature it will mean failure in our own judgement of ourself and in the relating of our many parts to our whole nature. Since this is the root cause of unhappiness it is also where real success and failure lies and where one reaps and enjoys the real treasures of existence.

The essence of real religious and moral aspiration is not between ourselves and God but between ourselves and our Self. At the same time the monitoring activity of God and his many divine assistants is necessary, but not as a substitute for Self-confrontation, but rather to ensure that this condition comes about.

Aspirations towards God are therefore of the utmost value, not as a means of becoming a slave or servant of God, but in order that they can be directed towards the true goal which is the valuation of our True Self.

As we direct the love our children have for us in such a way that it enlarges their own nature and not in order to make them more devoted and servile, so our divine parents divert our love in such a way that it reflects back into our own essential nature again.

Love is therefore valued by God, not as something he wishes to possess, but as a positive expression of our highest attitude which he can receive in the spirit in which it is offered and then use for his creative work. This is the bringing of our individual nature to a condition of divine Self-consciousness.
Extracted from the close of the Chapter 'Education' in William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness (1974)

**

This is a passage which is easy to misunderstand but which I have found to be important. Arkle is clarifying the kind of God wants for us by examining the kind of love we want (or ought to want) from our growing-up children.

In other words, God wants us to give our love from our deep and true self, by an act of agency - and not from the kind of servile devotion that is implicitly based more upon terror than adoration. Arkle is saying that we ought not to fear God (any more than an adult Man ought to fear his father) - but to trust in God's love. 

Of course, a lot of our lives are spent growing-up - but it is important to know what is being aimed-at in full adulthood - not least so that we don't get into bad habits or have false structuring beliefs and expectations. 

Arkle here, as elsewhere, is suspicious of the traditional Christian emphasis on 'worship' as the defining quality of Man's relationship to God. While it is right and proper for a young boy to worship his father - this is not a suitable basis for a grown-up child's relationship with his father.

Arkle is suggesting that the same applies to religion - and he bases this on his intuitive understanding of the fundamental reason why God (who is in fact a dyad of Heavenly Parents) created Men (their sons and daughters) and everything else.

Arkle believes that the rationale for creation was ultimately in order that some (as many as possible) Men might 'evolve' and grow from our current partial and embryonic divinity to a full divinity on the same level as our Heavenly Parents. Therefore, our mother and father in heaven do not want us to get stuck in a stance that regards them as infinitely remote - but rather as finitely (albeit vastly) remote, and incrementally approachable over time. 

We probably tend to feel a superstitious anxiety about thinking or doing this; as if God was some kind of hyper-irritable and easily-offended tyrant; but Arkle is trying to reassure us that friendly affection and trusting confidence is exactly the attitude that God most wants us to have; as illustrated here:

http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-final-words-of-geography-of.html.   

See also a fuller excerpt of the above at:
http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-deep-nature-of-morality.html
        

If the primal reality of God is imagined before the beginning of creation, and if God is single and personal; then creation can be understood as God's 'play'.

This is made simple and explicit in God, the Player Friend; a rare 42 page booklet self-published by William Arkle in 1993, which I only discovered-about a couple of weeks ago, and which I am currently reading.


Typically (and valuably) Arkle boils it down to God alone becoming bored with a world in which everything was caused by himself; and from this dissatisfaction manifesting creation so that divine 'Friends' - that is, fully-developed men and women - could gradually evolve, and become genuinely independent sources of surprise and innovation.

As so often, much hinges upon the primary assumptions; and here Arkle makes the primary assumption that the beginning of everything - God - is a unity. When this is the assumption, then I think it is 'inevitable' that there is an 'arbitrary' quality of 'play' about everything in creation.

Reality is because creation is more 'fun' than no reality; as Arkle sometimes put it.


When creation is driven by something negative like boredom, and negativity is cured by the independent play of other agents or actors; then we get this kind of double-negative theology which I always regard as secondary.

Yet, if creation is dynamic, expansile (as I believe) then it must indeed be motivated by some kind of (negatively) discontent, or (positively) yearning.


My own understanding is different from Arkles, and is pretty-much the Mormon Christian theology; which is that 'in the beginning' God was two, a dyad, man and woman, Heavenly Father and Mother.

By this understanding there never was 'unity' - unless the unity is regarded as being divided in twain. The 'unity' comes from Love: love between our Heavenly Parents, which eternally 'binds' them (in a 'celestial marriage'). That is my primal reality.

The primal reality is therefore one that is dynamic, as love is dynamic; and it is one of yearning, as love contains yearning. By my understanding, then, creation is the result of an overflow of this yearning love; so that there be more autonomous, agent, independently-creative persons to love.

This is a familiar motivation arising between a loving husband and wife: the positive desire for children to expand the scope and possibility of love. The married couple's aspiration for pro-creation (and also to create a home, a family, ideally one that is ever-growing and inter-linking - with all that entails in terms of the context for such growth) is thus seen of a microcosm of the divine impulse to creation. 


The classical 'Trinitarian' formulation of Christian theology 'has it both ways' in asserting that God is both undivided-unity (with no sex) and hence of its nature static and self-sufficient; and also a triad of Father, Son and Holy Ghost (with no sex) - who are different enough to be bound together by love, hence dynamic and motivated to grow.

By this classical account; sexuality is secondary, temporary, inessential; whereas for Mormon theology sexuality is primary and causal; deriving from the nature of God - our Heavenly Parents. 

I can make no rational sense of classical Trinitarianism; but as a form of words, it covers all the bases!

However, for me, God must be either one or more-than-one; and my understanding is that God is (or rather was, primally) two. And these two were a man and a woman. And their love was the fount of creation.

As I have often written, but not recently, I believe that God is dyadic - consisting of a Heavenly Father and Mother, a man and woman who are (in some sense) incarnate and not spirits. 

This is the Mormon understanding, and reading about Mormon theology was where I first came across it. 

I am not trying to persuade other people that I am right; but I shall here consider why I personally believe this, and what it is that I believe. 

In the first place it is due to what might be termed intuition; in the sense that when I first encountered this idea, my heart seemed to jump and warm; as if I was discovering something true, good and with great possibilities of more-good. 

There was an immediate and positive sense... not so much that this was true, but that I wanted this to be true - this came before my conviction that it was true.  

Following this I read more about Mormon theology, and realized that the dyadic, man-woman nature of our Heavenly parents was just part of an entire metaphysical understanding of creation (including procreation - the creation of beings including people) as something dynamic, interactive, developing, evolutionary, open-ended, and expanding. 

In other words, that creation itself was creative (and therefore creation was not, as I had previously assumed, a done-thing, a closed accomplishment, a finished totality - once-and-for-always.) 

I then began to explore the implications of these ideas for myself; using concepts I got from William Arkle (and his reflections on God's motivations for creation); and Owen Barfield, including Barfield's accounts of the 'polar' philosophy of ST Coleridge. 

I was also building on a longer-term fascination with 'animism' - with the (apparently innate and spontaneous) tendency to regard the world (the universe) as consisting primarily of beings - all of whom were alive, purposive, conscious - albeit in different ways, at different scales and timescales etc.

The motivation for creation, and why God should have created this kind of creation, was something I had found difficult to grasp (none of the usual explanations made much sense to me). But when I conceptualized God as the loving dyad of a man and woman, then it seemed obvious why such a combination would have wanted to create - including others who might eventually become like themselves.   

Furthermore, it did not seem possible that creation had arisen from any state of oneness of self-sufficiency, since this would make creation arbitrary; nor could creation arise from a tendency towards differentiation, because that would lead to meaningless-purposeless chaos. 

There must (I felt) have been some kind of original 'polarity' - in abstract and physics-like terminology, there would need to be at-least two different kinds of 'force', the interaction of which would be creation. Coleridge (also Barfield and Arkle) saw this in terms of a 'masculine'-tendency for expansion and differentiation; and a 'feminine'-tendency for one-ness and integration.  

But in terms of my (non-abstract) preferred metaphysics of beings and animistic assumptions; 'masculine' and 'feminine' simplifies to just a primordial man and a primordial woman; this would mean two complementary, unlike-but-of-the-same-kind, beings; the love of whom would lead to a desire for creation.  

(In the same kind of way that - in this mortal life - love of man and woman usually leads to a desire for procreation.)

At some point I validated this understanding by means of meditative prayer; by refining and asking a simple question, feeling that this question had 'got-through', and receiving a clear inner response.  

In summary; the above account is something-like the sequence by which I desired, concluded, became-convinced-by, the metaphysical assumption of God as Heavenly parents; by some such mixture of feelings, reasoning, and 'feedback'. 

All this happened a good while ago (about a decade); since when I have been interpreting things on the basis of this framework, and it seems to 'work', so far.

What the real-life, this world, implications are; include a reinforcement of the idea that the family is (and ought to be) the primary social structure; on earth as it is in Heaven; and a clarification of the nature of creation - starting with the primary creation by Heavenly parents and also including the secondary creation of beings (such as men and women) within primary creation. 

This metaphysics has further helped me understand both why and how love is the primary value of Christianity; i.e. because love made possible creation in the first place, and is the proper basis of 'coordinating' the subcreative activities of all the beings of creation.  

And it helped me understand how creation can be open-ended and expansile, without degenerating into chaos; because it is love that makes the difference.

Also, it helped me to understand the nature of evil; and how evil is related either to the incapacity for love or its rejection. Without love, the innate creativity of individual beings is going to be selfish and hostile to that of other beings: non-loving attitudes, thinking, and actions by beings, will tend to destroy the harmony of creation.  

I don't talk much about this understanding, and I often use the generic term 'God'; because it is difficult to explain briefly and clearly that the dyadic God of our Heavenly parents serves as a single and 'coherently unified' source of creation

But God is two, not one, because only a dyad can create, and creation must-be dyadic. 

And the dyadic just-is the one-ness of God the primal creator.  

Note added: It may be said, correctly, that the above does not depend on the Bible; but then neither does the metaphysics of orthodox-classical theology depend on scripture. We can find resonances and consistencies within the Bible - but assumptions such as: strict monotheism - creation ex nihilo (from nothing) by a God outside of creation and Time, the Athanasian Creed descriptions of the Trinity, God's omnipotence and omniscience, original sin... These are ideas that would not be derived-from a reading of scripture - the most that can be said is that someone who already ideas can find Biblical references that can be interpreted as consistent-with these assumptions. They are (apparently) products of philosophically sophisticated theologians who brought these ideas to Christianity from earlier and mostly pagan (Greek and Roman) sources. Also, these kinds of metaphysical assumption are theistic - to do with a personal god - but not specifically Christian. The salvific work of Jesus Christ (principally: making possible resurrected life everlasting in Heaven) was done within already-existing creation, and Christianity is not therefore an explanation of creation-as-such.   

It is interesting - and not easy, I find! - to try and understand just how group souls might actually function. 

My personal definition of 'God' is The Creator. This entails that we inhabit a created reality - a created universe; and that this was created by a 'person'.

That definition is my understanding of what A God is.

While not universal, this basic definition is pretty widespread.


Then comes the nature of this personal God; which is perhaps unique to myself and has developed from a personal, intutive-revealed process. So I do not try to persuade others of the truth of it; it is up to each individual to discover such matters for himself. But for those who are interested...

My understanding is that God is not one individual but a dyad - specifically the eternal and loving creative relationship of Heavenly Father and Mother; our divine (actual, spiritual) parents.

This understanding also informs me of the motivation and method of God; in that the love of our Heavenly parents is what led to the purpose of creation being the procreation of spiritual children of God, and their developmental growth (via mortal life) into divine Sons and Daughters of God (as described in the Fourth Gospel). That is the motive.

The method is love: love is what makes creation possible, because it is love that transforms the primordial chaos into creation.

Many writers on theology (in many religions, including Christianity) believe that the masculine principle is primary in divine creation; the feminine being secondary, or perhaps inessential.  

Or else, they believe that such sexual differentiation is superficial, and that primarily/ originally there is no sex, no masculine or feminine - but a single creative principle that includes both. 

Others believe that sex is merely an earthly and mortal accident or expedient; and that the highest form of after-life entails loss of sexual differentiation (either as spirit, or as resurrected Man). 

But I regard God as a loving dyad of man and woman, masculine and feminine; and that original divine creation comes from this creative love. 

This dyadic quality is not a matter of 'equality' - it is simply that both man and woman are the actual basis of this divine creation that we all inhabit. 

A man and woman, who are coherent on the basis of love, were and are the true spiritual 'unit' of both divine and human creativity: thus God (the prime creator) is a Heavenly Father and Mother - both. 

The destiny of individual mortal men and women is a different question. Each person's mortal and resurrected destiny is unique - and we are not supposed to conform to a template, not be poured-into a standard human (or male, or female) mould. Love of God first, and fellow Man second, is mandatory for salvation - because only such persons want Heaven. 

Thus woman/ the feminine is Not subordinate to man/ masculine - both are absolutely spiritually necessary; just as (by analogy) both have been necessary for reproduction in this mortal life. 

We were not originally, nor will we ultimately become, de-sexed or a single sex. The dyad goes 'all the way down' to before creation; because dyadic love was what made creation possible. 

Ultimately; in absence of both - there cannot be love, therefore no real creation nor creativity. 

How do I 'know' this? Simply by having formulated the question; after which it 'answered itself' as these things do. I other words by 'intuition', by direct knowing. 

By contrast, when I asked other questions, when I formulated my understanding in other ways; I came up with answers that did not suffice - as became clear after a while.

This is not the kind of thing that anyone should accept from external sources - not from me, nor anybody else, nor institutions. 

We are supposed-to discern such matter for ourselves - and there is no substitute for this conscious choice. 

(Probably, it was not always thus - at times and among some peoples, it was right that Men be ruled spiritually by their environment or society or church - but here-and-now we must choose consciously.)

To know-for-ourselves, from experience, the nature and motivation of God is perhaps the primary task of Man here and now; given that almost-all external sources of such 'information' are deeply corrupted. 

At the very least, we need to exercise experiential direct personal discernment in relation to the external sources that we choose to accept as authoritative; for instance, choosing a denomination and church; and then choosing-between the conflicting views emanating from denominations and churches. The requirement for each individual person to discern is unavoidable. 

Having gone through this process of discernment - rooted in formulating a question such that the answer is coherently self-validating in ones actual and examined life - I don't really care what 'other people' say about the problem - and certainly will not abandon my direct knowledge of such matters on the basis of people pointing at 'authorities' whose authority to determine my spiritual life I do not acknowledge!

Others should do likewise. 

And what if/ when they come up with 'a different answer? What then?

What then depends upon each individual for himself or herself. Group-orientated policies and behavioural/ belief compulsions can have nothing to do with such matters. 

But whatever happens in each mortal life, we certainly should not attempt to avoid personal responsibility for deciding upon such matters. Salvation is between each Man and God (God would not have it otherwise!); and 'my' salvation depends on 'me' discerning the nature and motivation of God. 

'God' is a dyad of Heavenly Mother and Father, they are co-creators and parents of all. The metaphysical reality is that all persons are male or female and there is no-one who is neither or both.

The whole person is therefore neither man nor woman - each being incomplete - but a dyad of the two complementary persons man and woman; sealed in an eternal loving relationship.

Traditional Christianity - for good reasons - has focused on God the Father, but the time has come for change. While we might continue to refer to 'God' as tacitly implying the two personages, this is coming to seem evasive, and even dishonest.

Of course the potential for being misunderstood, and deliberately misrepresented, is vast - it is a hazardous, dangerous doctrine; but that applies to Christianity in general - and so, where there is need, hazard does not deter.

The key fact is the grounding in the dyadic and complementary metaphysics; this is the basic assumption, which is attested by direct intuitive knowing and coherence, not by empirical 'evidence'. It is thus metaphysical assumption rooted in faith and personal knowledge which clarifies and protects the concept of Heavenly Mother.

What she is, is a matter that need attention, now.

*

What she is not?... She is not the same as the Father, not another name for the Father, certainly not an equal to the Father. Complementarity means dissimilarity: two complementary things are not the same, are not equal - their quality is that both in combination are needed to make the whole, the unit.

Heavenly Mother is a part of the dyad of God - not a Goddess; she is not any kind of revival - because she has never been acknowledged nor known up to now. She is of the future, not the past.

She is nothing to do with feminism, and is indeed ultimately the opposite of feminism. She is not in any way 'for women' rather than or in preference to being for men (any more that the legitimate Queen of a nation is for the women of that nation more than the men! Or that mothers are for their daughters more than their sons. Nonsense!).

She is not a 'balance' yet not a take-over either... Heavenly Mother is a fact and a necessity.

*

Heavenly Mother is a mystery - because divine; but she is a person we already know, from our long pre-mortal lives as her sons and daughters; we have known her for as long as we consciously knew anything.

If, for good reasons, we have been focused on Heavenly Father (and the reality of our Mother awaited the Mormon revelations of the middle 1800s) - then why do we need her now?

We need her now because the unilateral focus on the Father is preventing our divinely-destined spiritual progression. Where we are now (culturally, individually) is nihilism, despair and death; but we cannot (and should not) go back (which is why all attempts have failed); yet going forward is blocked by a partial and distorted understanding which cuts to the root; progression entails acknowledging the fullness of fundamental understanding, and building-upon that.

At some deep and intuitive level we know this, or we can know it - each for himself or herself - for the asking (serious asking). And we can find out more, and as much as we need, by addressing questions in prayer and meditation and listening for the responses - observing the responses.

(This is not really a matter of 'worship' because the incremental collapse of that concept is representative of the reasons why our Heavenly Mother's time has come. It is instead a matter of acknowledged reality, followed by love; and of conversation, communion, communication.)

*

This is not a matter of capturing Heavenly Mother in definitions, any more than this is helpful for our Father; because persons are known, not defined.

There is no need and little value from dividing-up the powers and responsibilities of our Heavenly parents any more than our real parents - yes they are different, and rightly; but no, the difference is not a consequence of, nor captured by, legal categories.

Persons are primary; loving relations are the cohesion and source of organisation.

*

How important is this - is it necessary? Since the idea of Heavenly Mother is unsafe, will be deliberately and carelessly misunderstood and misrepresented, will be a reason for hatred and loathing... is she not better set-aside, down-played, kept-quiet about?

That is a decision you need to make for yourself. You need to feel that Heavenly Mother is something we need to know - now: urgently; and which honesty requires that we know - openly, explicitly; knowledge the lack of which is poisoning us in many ways.

The impulse is there, the impulse is in our hearts and unfolding in Western culture. If the impulse is refused and kept  unconscious; it will nonetheless emerge in distorted and inverted forms (like feminism, like misogyny, like resentment and competitive exploitation between men and women).

But if Heavenly Mother is acknowledged and takes her place explicitly and joyously as a completion of our knowledge of God and the basis of our mortal lives; then the destined new era of consciousness may commence.

When I recently read - line-by-line and with great concentration - Owen Barfield's What Coleridge Thought; I found myself completely convinced, in complete agreement, until the final two chapters concerning God and Society, when I blocked. I was no longer convinced, I lost the thread, I lost my interest...

It did not take long before I understood what had happened: Coleridge/ Barfield were mystical/ paradoxical Trinitarians in the sense of Classical Metaphysics and mainstream Christian theology - whereas I adhere to pluralistic Mormon metaphysics. For them, ultimately all is one and identified by God - for me, ultimately all is more-than-one; and indeed God is irreducibly multiple - God the Father and Mother in Heaven forming an irreducible dyad; The Father and the Son distinct personages, and the Holy Ghost another.

For Coleridge/ Barfield, everything fundamental is polar: everything irreducible is has distinguishable polarities that cannot be divided; and the ultimate polarity of God and Man. But for me God and each Man are divided - they are another dyad. Dyads are divided, and cannot be united: dyads are divided but related - and the ultimate relation is love.

For Coleridge/ Barfield the Trinity is polar, and love is the dynamism within that indivisible polarity; for me, the Godhead is divided but indissolubly related, and love is that dynamism which relates it: Love is, in fact, ultimately that which holds the universe together.

For me, the creation includes things that are dynamism within unity (i.e. polarity) - which are (I think...) Goethe's Archetypal Phenomena; but above that there are things that are dynamism-between unity (i.e. divinities). Ultimately, reality is multiple: a multiplicity consisting of dyads. 

The main point of creation is to make gods, as many as possible; living as a loving Heavenly family, and sharing the end-less work of creation.

The lesson of Christ's incarnation is that we Men are gods in our nature (albeit immature and flawed gods), and that God (the Father: prime creator) is a Man. So there is a continuum between mortal Men on the one hand; and creator gods such as the Father (who was the one prime creator) and the Son (Jesus Christ).

The Father is unique as prime creator, including being Father-creator of Men (including Jesus); and Jesus is the creator of this world (but not of the Men in it - as told and implied in the opening of the Fourth Gospel) - so creation is not restricted to the Father; creation has been done by both to Father and Son (at least).

Jesus tells us (clearly, explicitly, repeatedly in the Fourth Gospel) that if we know Jesus, then we know the Father; they are not the same person (else why would Jesus pray to the Father, defer to the Father, distinguish between himself and the father); but they are the same in nature: they are 'one' in love and motivation. And Jesus is a Man in his nature, therefore so is the Father.

Jesus is the Son of God, and tells us that we too can be Sons of God - we can be of the same kind as Jesus, and Jesus is of the same kind as God.

All this is perfectly clear and explicit in scripture; but it is obscured by the false (and wrongly-motivated) mania that Christianity 'must be' a monotheism. Yet it's a terrible and destructive error to try and argue that Christianity is a monotheism; because in a vital sense Christianity is an ultimate form of polytheism - maximum polytheism; (to repeat) that is the main point and purpose of Christianity.

Few, very few, errors have damaged Christianity as much as the attempt to insist that it is a monotheism: this was and is a primary error with often lethal and unavoidable consequences. It blocks understanding of the main purpose of mortal life. It puts an evasion at the heart of Christian theology. It institutionalises incoherence.

We need to be clear: the Father hopes for as many as possible of us Men to become gods and creators, like Jesus. That is what creation is for. There is only one God (capital g), one prime creator (albeit God may actually, factually, be - as I believe - a dyad of primary Father and Mother); but the plan is for there to be many gods (small g), many creators.

That's the main point of it-all.

I have often said that the big sins of these days seem to be resentment, fear and despair. 

But, although fear is the most obvious, it is not usually regarded as a sin. Similarly - resentment is frequently felt as a moral principle (social justice, entitlement), rather than an evil. And despair is mistaken for realism. So, the dominant sins of our times are too seldom noticed as such - even by Christians. 

At any rate; given the fact of accelerating spiritual war, and the global socio-political victory of the side of evil, nowadays a lot of people; undesirable negative emotions are seldom far away - and these need to be combatted.

I say combatted; because these emotions are themselves an element in the spiritual war - and as such we must but Not treat them therapeutically (to be analgesed or tranquillized); but instead need to learn from them and defeat them. 

(Therapy is this-worldly - treating sin with 'healing' is a demonic snare.) 

We need courage not therapy; we need hope not analgesia.

And since The World of Men is now substantially in the hands of the Enemy - we need to take-our-stand outside of this corrupted world. 

Therefore, when assailed by resentment, fear or despair; I find that sometimes I am able to induce myself to a wider and longer perspective; providing a bigger context for present dysphoria, and angst about the future.  

This by reminding myself of certain truths. Sometimes one works, sometimes another - depending upon my current state and mood. Here are some of them, in no particular order, which might perhaps be of value as a kind of 'checklist' when the mind is clouded or oppressed:

1. Reality is ultimately created by God - and continually being-created by God; and I participate in this creation (as a sub-creator) insofar as the world is understandable to me. I look around and remind myself of this. 

2. The world is Not dead, mechanical or random; the world is alive and conscious: this is a world of beings. Every 'thing' is actually a being, or part of a being. (These beings are (by choice) either on the side of God, or against God.) 

3. The so-called dead are actually alive, in some way and in some place; and those of 'the dead' in Heaven remain active in this mortal life: we may help them, and they may help us. This is important work for us. 

4. Sleep is a vital part of our mortal lives. Sleep is an experience from which it is intended we shall learn. It requires our attention. 

5. We need to become consciously aware of much that is currently unconscious - indeed this is a major task of these times. A false non-reality is being imposed on us when we are passive, unconscious and refuse the responsibility of choosing; therefore, we need to be conscious of reality (of truth) and actively-choosing the 'real reality'.  

6. God is the eternal (loving and creating) dyad of heavenly Father and Mother - yet I tend to neglect my Heavenly Mother. She surely deserves my attention, and I would surely be the better for giving it. 

7. There is no fixed limit to my knowledge except my capacity of knowing - and that may be developed by spiritual experience and learning; by right alignment and right choices. Anything I need to know - for salvation or theosis - I can know. If I don't yet know it, then I have not yet asked properly. 

8. My current spiritual task is related to my current situation - including bad things about Now; because my current situation is continually-being fitted to my spiritual needs by God. 

9. Whatever is my current motivation or obsession has some meaning, some lesson to impart (maybe positive, maybe negative) - so is worth attending to. 

10. Think about Heaven and the everlasting resurrected life to come for all those who choose to follow Jesus Christ. This choice is free and cannot be compelled - or excluded. Heaven is awaiting after the end of mortal life - if we want it, if we are prepared to acknowledge our sins and allow ourselves to be cleansed of all that contradicts eternal love. So - assuming we intend to accept the gift of it: think about Heaven.