Gender Theology

[polytropos]

Do the individuals participating in the drama of the dream have their own personal consciousness and free will? Answer: Good question. It definitely appears that they do, at least from the perspective of the dreamer. But appearances can be deceiving.

Here is an additional point where the analogy breaks down. To the dreamer, those in the dream may just appear conscious and free.

But in the real world, it is to those in the world that they appear conscious and free, ie. I appear conscious and free to myself, even though I am supposed to be analogous to a purely intentional entity in the dreamer’s dream. And then God actually transcends the created universe and qua ultimate cause knows infallibly the nature of my consciousness and freedom, appearances notwithstanding.

 

[Counterpoint]

It’s all well and good to repeat the clause “in him we live, and move, and have our being” and attach the term “immanence” to it, but that ignores that the clause is part of a larger sentence and point that Paul is making. Again: “27 And he did this so that they might seek the deity and, by feeling their way towards him, succeed in finding him; and indeed he is not far from any of us, 28 since it is in him that we live, and move, and exist, as indeed some of your own writers have said: We are all his children.”

Just because Paul goes on to argue that we are all God’s children does not negate the fact that he also argued previously that in God “we live, and move, and have our being.” Also, Catholicism holds that God is immanent as well as transcendent. So, you have no argument here.

If you are to draw any conclusions from the dream analogy, you would have to show that it is appropriate and that it does not limp (as all analogies do) when you need it to hold. But here you seem to run into trouble. Paul is using the “in” idiom to illustrate God’s creative proximity. His analogies is not that we should be construed idealistically as “thoughts” (or “dreams”) of God, but that we should be construed analogously to children of God. And while children are in close creative proximity to their father, they are not “idealistically in” their father in the sense that your dream analogy would require…

All finite beings are created in the image of God (regardless of how limited that image might be). This is technically known as the “imitability” of the divine essence. IOW, the creatures are a plurality of images or “ideas” of the divine essence.

“If we consider the essence alone…there is but one idea for all things; but if we consider the different proportions of creatures to the divine essence, then there can be said to be a plurality of ideas.” - St. Thomas Aquinas, "Summa Theologiae,“De veritate,” 3.2

 

[Counterpoint]

Here is an additional point where the analogy breaks down. To the dreamer, those in the dream may just appear conscious and free.

It’s an analogy! An analogy is only analogous in certain respects, not all respects. If it were analogous in all respects, then it would something more than an analogy.

The point of the analogy was to demonstrate how God’s mind could be both transcendent and immanent relative to the world. And in that regard, I believe my analogy was more than adequate. In fact, I could argue that it was verging on something more than an analogy, because the world can be viewed literally as the work of a creative imagination. That’s what you’re failing to understand. A dream in not something that only happens during sleep. It can also be an idea or vision created by the imagination.

 

[polytropos]

Just because Paul goes on to argue that we are all God’s children does not negate the fact that he also argued previously that in God “we live, and move, and have our being.”

Right you are. But it is not just that Paul says one thing and then, in a separate point, says another thing. He says that we are all God’s children as a way of articulating and spelling out the “in” idiom. Once again:

27 And he did this so that they might seek the deity and, by feeling their way towards him, succeed in finding him; and indeed he is not far from any of us,

28 since it is in him that we live, and move, and exist, as indeed some of your own writers have said: We are all his children.

The sense of “in” is not detachable from the claim that “We are all his children.”

On the other hand, there is no space in the passage for any sort of “dream” parallel. Paul has directly given us a way to understand the “in” idiom; we are to understand it in terms of God’s proximity to creation (which is like a father’s proximity to his children).

Also, Catholicism holds that God is immanent as well as transcendent.

I have not denied that Catholicism holds that God is immanent. I’ve argued that one has to clarify what it means for God to be “immanent” or for creation to be “in” God. (For those idioms have been used in diverse and incompatible theologies such as that of Paul and that of Spinoza.) I have argued that the meaning of those terms in Catholic theology relates them to God’s creative, sustaining relation with the world, which does not suffice for a strong doctrine of panentheism.

All finite beings are created in the image of God (regardless of how limited that image might be). This is technically known as the “imitability” of the divine essence. IOW, the creatures are a plurality of images or “ideas” of the divine essence.

“If we consider the essence alone…there is but one idea for all things; but if we consider the different proportions of creatures to the divine essence, then there can be said to be a plurality of ideas.” - St. Thomas Aquinas, "Summa Theologiae,“De veritate,” 3.2

Hm? Aquinas is there addressing the question of whether there are many ideas in God, and the relation of that consequence to divine simplicity, with which it prima facie appears to be in tension. He is not identifying creatures with the ideas that are in God; to identify the forms intellected with the actual things known would be to do violence to Aquinas’s philosophy of mind.

 

[Counterpoint]

Hm? Aquinas is there addressing the question of whether there are many ideas in God, and the relation of that consequence to divine simplicity, with which it prima facie appears to be in tension. He is not identifying creatures with the ideas that are in God; to identify the forms intellected with the actual things known would be to do violence to Aquinas’s philosophy of mind.

All real beings are (imperfect) images of God.

The whole universe of real beings [is] a single great community of existents, with a deep “kinship” of similarity running through them all, which turns out when fully analyzed to imply that ALL are in some way the IMAGES of God, their Source, each in its own unique but limited (imperfect) way. (source: pp. 87-88, "“The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics” by W. Norris Clarke, S.J.)

 

[polytropos]

All real beings are (imperfect) images of God.

Right. Clarke says: “ALL are in some way the IMAGES of God.” As his qualification “in some way” screams out to us, though, there is only a sense in which all things are images of God. The question is: in what sense?

If I had to hazard a guess (and you haven’t given me a lot of context), Clarke is referring to the analogy of being; the universe of beings, because being is analogous, is “a single great community of existents.” The sense of “images” then would have to do with the likeness implied by analogous predications of being.

But that wouldn’t have anything to do with the stronger claim made in #42 that things that exist are therefore “ideas” themselves. That would seem to equivocate on “images,” taking it to mean something like an empiricist’s sensory “impressions” rather than characterizing likeness of analogous beings.

 

[Sochi]

But that wouldn’t have anything to do with the stronger claim made in #42 that things that exist are therefore “ideas” themselves. That would seem to equivocate on “images,” taking it to mean something like an empiricist’s sensory “impressions” rather than characterizing likeness of analogous beings.

I’ve understood that kind of idea to mean that Consciousness is the light to the awareness of ideas and thoughts. In other words, it is an hierarchy of dependency of appearance in what is essentially a Unity. As “humans” we experience awareness as having primacy. That awareness depends on the principle of Consciousness, as such. And of course we find that nothing happens that doesn’t happen in mind first.

 

[polytropos]

I’ve understood that kind of idea to mean that Consciousness is the light to the awareness of ideas and thoughts. In other words, it is an hierarchy of dependency of appearance in what is essentially a Unity. As “humans” we experience awareness as having primacy. That awareness depends on the principle of Consciousness, as such. And of course we find that nothing happens that doesn’t happen in mind first.

Can you clarify?

When you say “that kind of idea,” do you mean the idea “that things that exist are…ideas themselves”?

Otherwise, consciousness of whom/what? You say that consciousness is “the light to the awareness of ideas and thoughts” and that “appearance” and “awareness” depend on. But I’m still not sure what consciousness is referring to. The consciousness of God? (I would hesitate to predicate consciousness of God, lest it mislead us to think of God as having something like a stream of consciousness.) Or is this supposed to be panpsychistic?

 

[Counterpoint]

Right. Clarke says: “ALL are in some way the IMAGES of God.” As his qualification “in some way” screams out to us, though, there is only a sense in which all things are images of God. The question is: in what sense?

If I had to hazard a guess (and you haven’t given me a lot of context), Clarke is referring to the analogy of being; the universe of beings, because being is analogous, is “a single great community of existents.” The sense of “images” then would have to do with the likeness implied by analogous predications of being.

But that wouldn’t have anything to do with the stronger claim made in #42 that things that exist are therefore “ideas” themselves. That would seem to equivocate on “images,” taking it to mean something like an empiricist’s sensory “impressions” rather than characterizing likeness of analogous beings.

I never argued that the “image of God” was a sensory impression. Obviously, God is not corporeal. So, he does not have any sensory impressions. The image of God is the “mirror image of God’s essential nature.” (source: Wikipedia: Image of God)

By the way, we are digressing here. The subject matter of this thread is gender, not panentheism. Panentheism is a topic for another thread.