I've made that mistake in the past, i.e. thought that the highest reality was above time, and it's true that that condition must be a more fundamental state of being just as uncreated reality comes before creation in the universal scheme of things. But it's equally true that spirit and matter (otherwise put, eternity and time) together are more than spirit alone. Creation adds something to being, and what it adds is goodness, beauty and love. The religions and philosophies that downgrade creation (you know who you are!) are actually ignoring the whole raison d'être of the universe and of human beings.
Whitehead and Harthorne are the pivotal players in this area. Harthorne couldn't reconcile a Perfect Absolute God and an Immanent Creative God, so he came up with a model of God's Dual Transcendence.
@ted - Yes, but they are abstract and use physics metaphors. I'm trying to get away from that.
28 May 2019 at 15:19
What Owen Barfield (drawing on Steiner) terms 'polarity' - I have reformulated as Beings in Relationship.
In other words, polarity is described abstractly in terms of a self-generating distinction, a dynamic process - but ultimately I understand this is terms of the Beings that constitute reality having Relationships.
When it comes to Creation - the relevant Relationship is Love.
To put it differently - When Love between Beings acts over Time, there is Creation.
This applies to God - it is God's Love acting through Time, that is Creation. (In other words, the process of love between beings in intrinsically creative.)
However, when Time (process, change) is Not mediated by Love; then we have evil - because any relationship other-than Love is anti-Creation.
So the Good/ Positive situation is of Creation (made by Love through Time).
Not-Love (anything other-than Love) is a negative situation - and is destructive of Creation.
(This is evil and the situation is hell. Absence of Love is hell.)
Not-Time is No-Creation; it would be Stasis; it would be neither Good nor evil; neither Heaven nor Hell - but Just-Be.
(Not Be-ing - just Be, just mere Existence.)
This situation is the Nirvana asserted by 'Eastern Religion'.
Note: This clarifies why Christians should acknowledge the reality and necessity of Time - and should set-aside pre-Christian hangovers and metaphysical errors (common to almost all mainstream, classical Christian theology) about God being outside-of-Time, or a state of Timelessness being the highest state. One would have thought (hoped) that the incarnation of Christ in history would have made this clear - but apparently not. Unless there is Time, there would be no Good, no direction, no Freedom - and no Love. Thus Time is necessary for Christianity; without Time, Christianity is refuted. It is a superiority of Romantic Christianity that it regards Time as necessary and intrinsic.
"Love and Time = Creation"
3 Comments -
I've made that mistake in the past, i.e. thought that the highest reality was above time, and it's true that that condition must be a more fundamental state of being just as uncreated reality comes before creation in the universal scheme of things. But it's equally true that spirit and matter (otherwise put, eternity and time) together are more than spirit alone. Creation adds something to being, and what it adds is goodness, beauty and love. The religions and philosophies that downgrade creation (you know who you are!) are actually ignoring the whole raison d'être of the universe and of human beings.
28 May 2019 at 12:09
Whitehead and Harthorne are the pivotal players in this area. Harthorne couldn't reconcile a Perfect Absolute God and an Immanent Creative God, so he came up with a model of God's Dual Transcendence.
28 May 2019 at 15:17
@ted - Yes, but they are abstract and use physics metaphors. I'm trying to get away from that.
28 May 2019 at 15:19