⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Trinitarians Argument Analysis

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Zizioulas and Social Trinity

Inflation is caused by more demand than there is supply and this stunt affects neither demand nor supply. Ah, but it would affect supply. It would affect the supply of the dollar. Inflation is not rising prices. Inflation is the expansion of the currency supply. Rising prices are merely a symptom of inflation. When a loaf of bread at the supermarket is twenty cents more expensive than it was a week ago, it's not because bread has become more desirable or more scarce, it's because there are now more dollars in the world chasing the same amount of bread.

Of course the coin would not go into circulation, so it wouldn't have the same effect as running the printing presses. But it would undermine people's faith in U. They may begin to realize that it's just an imaginary construct and start trading it for harder assets. The careful reader may note that I haven't used the word "money" at all in this letter, but that is for another discussion. This coin has such a colorful history, and I am proud to have played a small, if tangential, role in that history. Back in the s, a Double Eagle surfaced in the hands of a British coin dealer, one Stephen Fenton. At the time, it was believed that only two Double Eagles had ever existed, and that one of the two had been melted down.

The U. Treasury Department contended that the surviving Double Eagle had been stolen from the Philadelphia Mint and—on the theory that one can never acquire good title from a thief—Treasury took the view that Fenton could not be considered a lawful owner of the coin. The Secret Service seized the coin from Fenton in a sting operation. Fenton argued that he was indeed the lawful owner of the coin through a chain of possession that stretched back to King Farouk, the last king of Egypt. The dispute landed up in Federal court in New York.

Although the circumstances surrounding King Farouk's acquisition of the coin are a bit murky, and it was never clear exactly how the coin made its way from King Farouk's hands and into Fenton's hands, it was known that King Farouk exported the coin from the United States in We know this because the King applied for—and was granted—an export license to remove the coin from the United States. The parties disputed whether the U. Government acquiesced to the King's ownership of the coin when it granted the export license, or whether the license was granted in error. But because the coin spent time in Egypt before it resurfaced in Fenton's hands the s, the legal team reached out asking me to research Egyptian law to see if that could provide any help.

Working closely with a former colleague, who is a lawyer in Cairo, I helped develop an argument that—whatever the status of the coin under U. Fenton could have had good title to the coin. We came up with three grounds for this position. The first two are based on "ordinary" principles of Egyptian property law; it was the third—based on a specific event in Egyptian history—that I found most fascinating. First, under longstanding principles of Egyptian law which derive from the Napoleonic Code , the rights of the original owner in stolen or lost property are extinguished after three years.

So even if the coin was originally stolen from the Mint as the Treasury Department contended, King Farouk would have acquired good title by sometime in the late s so long as, when he bought it, he didn't know the coin was stolen property. Second, even if King Farouk wasn't a good-faith purchaser—in other words, if he knew when he bought the coin that it had been stolen from the Mint—the King or his successors could still have acquired lawful title to the coin under the doctrine of "acquisitive prescription" analogous to what we U.

Third, and perhaps most interesting, was the argument based on Egyptian Law No. Law was issued by the Revolutionary Command Council that governed Egypt during the interregnum between the overthrow of King Farouk in and the inauguration of Gamal Abdel Nasser as President of Egypt in That law seized and impounded all assets belonging to or in possession of the Royal Family, declared those assets to be the property of the Egyptian state, and set a deadline for any third parties who claimed an ownership interest in the seized assets to lodge their claims. So, we said, by operation of Law the Government of Egypt became the lawful owners of the coin regardless of the circumstances under which King Farouk acquired it.

Within a few days after we finished our report, the Treasury Department decided to settle the case. I was never privy to confidential details, but the media reported that Treasury reached an agreement with Fenton whereby the coin would be sold at auction and the proceeds would be split between the two parties. I always like to tell myself that Treasury decided to settle because it found our research on Egyptian law compelling, but of course there are probably counter-arguments that Treasury could have made in rebuttal. Since the case never went to trial and the legal team never told me what went on in the settlement discussions, who knows?

As another interesting note: When the coin was seized, the Treasury Department stored it in a vault under the World Trade Center. The Double Eagle has such a colorful history. It's always fun for me to remember my small role in it. On the other hand, the Virginia class nuclear submarines will be built in Australia with local labor, expanding the number of nuclear submarine shipyards from the U.

If France had wanted to keep the contract, maybe it shouldn't have been glacial in fulfilling it. So the French were trying to fob off their obsolete diesel subs on Australia. Why weren't they offering Australia the technology from France's nuclear subs? In a shooting war, those diesel subs would have lasted not quite as long as did the Maginot Line. Who could possibly have foreseen that the Germans would go around the wall and through Belgium? It's not like they ever invaded France through Belgium before, right? Let me help out B. Ever since the U. If that means a bit of self-flagellation in the form of food shortages, gas shortages, or labor shortages, that is a price well worth paying, in their view.

The bottom line with the Tories is the bottom line. Once they see they are getting hit in the pockets they will be in favor of rejoining the E. It might not be called E. I can't help but wonder, though, if the impact is more merely? For example, in The Sydney Morning Herald and other Australian news outlets, many serious questions are being raised about whether Australia can actually join such a "big boys club" like the Quad. Consequently, Australia's military capabilities are quite limited, with only 16 combat-level warships and no aircraft carrier. So, I'm just confused: What is this going to actually achieve? Don't get me wrong: The thought of China's military expansion is scary to a lot of people, not least Australians, whose military often have nightmares about defending a 16, mile long coastline with the aforementioned navy yep, that's 1, miles of coastline per combat vessel, and in terms of area, well But really, are the Chinese going to be deterred from military adventurism by the Quad?

Maybe at some level, but in my view, not because of Australia's participation. Meanwhile, the deal has managed to piss off both China and a strong ally, France. This prompts the question: Where was President Biden's diplomatic experience in the way this was handled? I would say, though, this is consistent with Australian prime minister Scott Morrison's arrogance. But after observing the five-week-long Canadian federal election campaign, I must conclude that our neighbors to the north are witless.

But they did not include personal attacks on each other. Don't these people realize that a politician's job is to "define" the opponents? This starts with giving them cutesy nicknames. And if you wish to make Canada great again, you start with border security. Yet nobody has proposed building a beautiful wall along the Ottawa River, to keep hordes of Quebecois from pouring unchecked into Ontario. Many of them don't even speak English! When it came to voting, they marked paper ballots, which election officials counted by hand. Since no voting machines were used, nobody demanded an investigation of Venezuelan algorithms shifting votes from one candidate to another.

Quel dommage! They could do this because each voter voted on one office—a member of Parliament. You can't call yourself a democracy if the voters don't select provincial governors, attorney generals, partisan election officers, members of the Board of Equalization or water district etc. Plus California voters get to decide on a dozen or more densely worded propositions. It's good that American voters have a far greater attention span than Canadians, and don't allow themselves to be distracted by silly stuff. This is the second straight federal election in which the Conservative candidates got more votes nationwide than the Liberals, but the Liberals won more seats.

Where were the protests on gerrymandering? Why didn't anyone call the election rigged? And who would stop the steal? Finally, it appears that Canada has no counterpart to our beloved electoral traditions. Where is their electoral college, filibuster, budget reconciliation, unanimous consent, or Supreme Court that decides which laws can be enforced? I ascribe this abject failure to procrastination. After all, it took four score and eleven years after our Declaration of Independence for them to sort of separate from Britain. And an equally long time thereafter to replace the Queen's portrait with a loon on their paper money.

Perhaps in another 91 years they will adopt some of our great traditions. Someone who gets it! Though we should warn you that a person could read your message as sarcastic, and not actually critical of the 'Nades. We know better, though. It was worth it considering the alternative was watching the Lions and Packers. What I saw was amazing! Results were coming in pretty quickly and updated constantly. But the best thing was there were no complaints from former mayors, fringe lawyers, or pillow makers abou voter fraud, rigged machines, or corrupt officials. No calls to provinces or territories to "find" votes. Every party leader gave speeches. Trudeau was gracious in victory while the opposition didn't blame the media or the voters. Instead, they self-reflected on what happened with their campaigns and promised to honor the will of the people.

It's safe to say there won't be a storming of Parliament in Ottawa by fellows wearing Viking hats, who carry offensive flags while beating up police officers. Canada, you've exported to us hockey, maple syrup, and the likes of William Shatner, Michael J. Fox, and the late, great Alex Trebek. Do you mind if you can also export your election system, but leave out that parliamentary part? We've got enough of our share of Joe Manchins, eh. Well, a New Yorker who doesn't live in Buffalo, at least.

This is unfair. Yes, the U. However, the Marxist governments the United States opposed would invariably have been authoritarian as well and would invariably have pursued poverty-creating economic policies, since every Marxist government in history has, over time, become authoritarian and poverty-creating. Look at Venezuela. A Marxist won office, the US did not intervene, and the Marxist government ruled for 20 years.

The wealth redistribution from the Marxist policies did temporarily help the poor, since you can actually get a nice meal out of killing the golden goose. I took the position that the long-term outlook of Venezuela was bad, but I was dismissed. To them, Chavez's Venezuela was proof that socialism was the right choice, and that anyone who said otherwise was simply the victim of the greedy capitalists' propaganda.

The Marxists never learn. Was the U. I don't know. Self-determination and all that. Did the U. Certainly not. This woman is an absolute riot and she has my sense of humor. Can you imagine an American senator talking like this on TV? Instead of having Donald Trump boasting about kissing and groping women because he's famous, they have a senator who boasts that she doesn't have time for hanky panky. Masks were required to enter any public buildings. Also, proof of vaccination was required for major museums, castles, and many restaurants. We were even refused entry once because our proof-of-vaccination cards were the wrong type. Traveling in France, Germany and Czechia required three different kinds of masks.

A nightmare of the absurd and unnecessary is distorted in some deranged fun house mirrors. I used to work with a young woman who is bright, vivacious and the epitome of a go-getter. We'll call her Jerri, although that's not her name. While I don't know the exact circumstances of her family, I will go out on a limb and suggest her background is not wealthy or affluent and probably struggling lower-middle-class. When Jerri worked with me, she was holding down two jobs while putting herself through school.

She was studying to be a nurse and after graduating she landed a job working with young children in a local hospital. This was her dream job and she fought so hard to get it. She came into the store about two weeks ago and, as always, I was glad to see her. I asked her about her job and Jerri informed me that she had been let go. I was shocked. While Jerri was always opinionated and tenacious, she was also smart enough to know where the line was, or so I thought. She went on to explain that the hospital had required her to take the COVID vaccine and that she had refused. Something about mumble mumble Freedom mumble mumble spy on us mumble mumble. The hospital then proceeded to terminate her employment.

My mouth dropped open in disbelief; she had always seemed so intelligent and driven. As Jerri continued to speak, her voice was filled with righteous indignation. She added that she was going to get a lawyer who would get her reinstated because what the hospital did was against the law. I shook my head and said, "No, Jerri, the hospital is completely within the law to make a vaccine as a condition for employment. I once worked for a company that required all their employees to have the Hepatitis vaccine and they were firmly within their right to do so. Soldiers, teachers and other professionals are all required to be fully vaccinated for a variety of diseases.

No lawyer worth their degree is ever going to take your case. This week, Jerri came back in to the store. She had evidently been to some attorneys who had advised her of the hopelessness of her case. The righteousness was no longer in her voice. Instead there was a tremor of someone grasping for justification. She said that she had never been without a job since she was 14, and she didn't know what to do with herself. She explained that every job she applied to had promptly turned her down on finding out why she had been forced to leave her last job. She added more for herself that she guessed she would just have to wait it out. I didn't say anything, but I wanted to say there's no waiting this out. Time will only prove that the vaccine was right and the antivaxxers were on the wrong side of history.

I felt such deep sadness that this young woman who was so bright and so focused had just thrown her career away and for what? There was another part that was angry and wanted to tell at her, "You work with sick young children, what did you expect? That the medical field would indulge your deluded fact-free fantasy just because someone told you it is impinging on your freedoms? You should know better! Their hands are clean and they're sleeping soundly tonight. Jerri is paying the price for their lies. She has lost her dream job and more than likely will never be hirable in that profession again. If her family was lower-middle-class as I suspect, she will likely not rise any higher. For her the American Dream is dead, and by a self-inflicted wound.

What a waste. I've watched the American Dream die for me in that I used to be comfortable middle-class but now struggle to live a poverty-level existence. That is personally depressing, but to see it die for one so young and so full of promise It didn't have to be this way. Decisions were made for all the wrong reasons. I completely agree with T. His response was "Absolutely! He did. In that I am pro-birth and also pro-choice , and had a number of students who felt the same, I did some research on this last year, and I thought this might assist your readers who were given pause at what they read, if they feel the same way as I do:. As someone who believes abortion is wrong but is still pro-choice , I would not have felt comfortable if it was actual fetal tissue being used.

However, while recognizing most of the readers here do not feel as I do, I think there is a difference between direct use of something I object to and indirect, and good things can come out of bad. With this information, I had no moral qualms, and was excited to fly out to Washington for a day to get my first dose of Pfizer, and then therefore able to get my second dose three weeks later here in the Philippines. As you might expect, MAGA world is giving this a bit of a different spin. In fact, the report shows tens of thousands of votes whose addresses can't be verified, or who appear to have voted in multiple counties, or exhibit various other possible bookkeeping errors which are taken as suggestive of fraud.

Enough to swing the state for Trump. They also claim to have video showing people deleting votes from the voting machines, and proving that the machines were connected to the Internet, contrary to the claims of the mainstream election staff. And state Sen. Wendy Rogers R has called for a vote to decertify the election in Arizona, and released a letter signed by dozens of state legislators from across the country calling for forensic audits followed by decertification in all 50 states.

Funny how the two sides saw completely different things come out of this audit. I guess it's not over yet. So now they appear "legitimate. It was never about the results. It was always about gaining access to election processes, equipment, data, and people in order to commit actual fraud in They are targeting big, democratic cities, like Phoenix, Dallas, and Atlanta. All part of the same playbook. Don is raking in money hand over fist while election audits are ongoing. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Therefore, officials in Texas probably see his exhortations as less of a demand and more of a spectacular idea to get in on the grift. You don't think Texas politicians won't start raising huge sums to "Stop the Texas Steal"? They are probably kicking themselves for not having thought of it previously. Look for every state Republican Party in every state to start doing this. Since the depth of the gullibility is unlimited, the amount of cash to be raised is also probably unlimited. This is too spectacular an opportunity to be passed up! The depth of gullibility on both sides is identical. What is different is that journalists do not believe that Democratic politicians are swindling them and therefore don't write stories about it.

Hopefully every reader of E-V. However, we decided that would be an unacceptable breach of your authorial intent. Things do not always work out for the best and it seems that there are events that the world would have been better without. A hallmark of process theism is to draw attention to the value inherent in the twin probabilities of genuine good and evil. Process thought raises the question—and answers it in the affirmative—whether a world with a probability, not merely a possibility, of genuine good and evil is preferable to a world without it.

In the closing pages of Pragmatism , James raises this question by means of a thought experiment. If God asked you before the creation of the universe if you would agree to be part of a world that was not certain to be saved—where there was real adventure and real risk—what would you say? Hartshorne says that a universe with multiple freedom or creativity is a universe where the non-identical twins of opportunity and risk are inevitable.

As already noted, process theists do not believe in a God that plays with loaded dice. We have already seen that process theism affirms tragedy in God. The silver linings on this cloud are: 1 God preserves the universe in the divine memory which means that the creatures contribute something to God; 2 God, considered as superject, has an inexhaustible capacity to bring order from chaos and make fresh beginnings, providing a sense of hope amidst the ruin of our lives.

The problem of evil is often presented primarily as an ethical concern, but there is an aesthetic dimension to the problem that is emphasized by process theism cf. Whitney If a perfectly good deity would have the motive to overcome discord and wickedness, it would also have a motive to avoid triviality and boredom. This is especially the case in the universe as conceived by process theism where feeling prehension is a metaphysical category. Moreover, the experiencing subject, in most cases, is not human.

This fact is evident not only by looking at the contemporary world with its countless varieties of species, but also when one considers the nearly unfathomable stretches of time on this planet when humans did not exist. Process theism takes the non-anthropocentric, and non-relativist, stance that the experiences of non-human creatures are valuable whether or not humans value them. This is not to say that all experience is equally valuable—the experience of a cockroach can have value without being fully comparable to human experience.

Process metaphysics provides for an aesthetic theory that recognizes objective criteria of value such as unity amid contrast and intensity amid complexity see Dombrowksi The long process of evolution can be charted on a curve of ever increasing varieties and complexities of organisms with augmented capacity for valuable types of experience. The Preacher in Ecclesiastes gives eloquent expression to world-weariness by saying that there is nothing new under the sun. Nevertheless, process thought reminds us that there was once a time when the sun itself was new. We noted earlier that in process metaphysics, time is the process of creation. The universe is not a totality, fixed once and for all, but a dynamic vector growing from a determinate past into an open partly indeterminate future.

We have also seen that process theism conceives God as being really related to the world through prehensions or feelings. If divine knowing is considered perfect, then it follows from these premises that God knows the past as fully determinate as created , the present as the process of determination as being created , and the future as partly indeterminate as yet to be created. Some have criticized process theism for advocating a limited God who is ignorant of the future.

Process theists reply that this is incorrect and represents a subtle begging of the question. The question is not whether God knows a fully determinate future but whether there is a fully determinate future to know. It is the nature of time, not the nature of divine knowing, that is at issue. If the future exists as partially indeterminate, unsettled, or uncreated, then a perfect knower must know it as such. This is not to say that God does not have this information, but it is well to keep in mind that omniscience, for process theism, is more akin to what Bertrand Russell calls knowledge by acquaintance than it is to knowledge by description Hartshorne , This issue highlights a tension between Whitehead and Hartshorne.

Process theism provides an account of the mechanics of omniscience—that is, an account of how God knows the world—that fits well with analogies drawn from experience. Apart from complications introduced by quantum physics, events do not occur because we know about them; we know about them, in part, because they occur. Process theism applies the same logic to God. This account differs from traditional views in two important ways. First, many theists follow Aquinas in reversing the cognitive relation in God. This allows Aquinas to affirm omniscience while denying real relations in God; however, it also makes an unambiguous affirmation of the contingency of creaturely decisions difficult if not impossible, as we have already seen in our discussion of God and creativity.

Second, the process view contradicts the Boethian concept of eternity as a non-temporal viewpoint on temporal events. For Boethius and for Aquinas events in time are related to God as the points on the circumference of a circle are related to its center Consolation of Philosophy , bk 5, prose 6; Summa Contra Gentiles I, ch. For process thought, time is more like a line being added to from moment to moment, but never complete, so there is no vantage from which it can be taken in all at once Hartshorne , There are peculiarities in traditional metaphors for omniscience that process thought rejects. It is noteworthy, however, that process theism retains one element of the traditional view.

We have seen that Hartshorne attributes the laws of nature to an act of God. For this reason, God knows the extent to which the future is open—what the laws allow and what they do not allow. The process God must also be aware of the conditions that creaturely decisions set upon future actualization, opening up some possibilities and closing others.

Process theists were not the first to notice the problems that the Thomistic account poses for human freedom. William of Ockham, for example, despaired of explaining how God could come to know the future free decisions of the creatures Shields , Molina claims that there are true statements about what any possible creature would freely do in any situation in which that creature existed. Using free knowledge, in conjunction with middle knowledge conditionals, God can deduce what any actual creature will freely do. Thus, it poses as much of a challenge to process theism as does Thomism which claims for itself the same advantages. One objection is that Molinism endows God with an innate knowledge of an elaborate set of contingent truths which have no explanation.

Yet, contingent truths are precisely the sorts of truths for which we legitimately seek explanations—indeed, this is one of the marks of contingency Hartshorne , A related problem is that the distinction between the possible and the actual is finessed. To refer to what a possible individual would do is entirely different. Possible individuals are either fictional like Sherlock Holmes or they are tied to the creative powers of the actual world like a child yet to be conceived.

Arguably, persons yet to be conceived can only be said to have the properties that link them to the reproductive potentialities of actual persons. Thus, most babies have the capacity to grow up to become parents themselves. What may the first child call it Chris of a particular newborn call it Kim be like? Molina verbally accepts the idea that one is significantly free only if one could have done otherwise in the same circumstances in the literature this is called incompatibilist freedom. The events, however, that can become actual, that are actually possible, are events in universes created by God. The argument is apparently straightforward.

If the disjunction itself is not true then some tautologies are false. Any theory that commits one to the falsity of some tautologies flaunts the fundamental principles of logic and thereby faces a steep burden of proof. This idea seems logically counter-intuitive. For a brief period, Hartshorne defended the Aritotelian idea Hartshorne , but he discovered a more parsimonious solution Hartshorne c, Instead of locating the indeterminacy of the future in truth values, he focused on predicates that reflect the extent to which the future is open for any given event. Either all causal conditions are such that the sea battle will occur, or no causal conditions are such that it will occur, or it is permitted by some but not all causal conditions cf.

Hartshorne , Whether or not Whitehead and Hartshorne are considered great philosophers, they seem to have occasioned a seismic shift in contemporary discussions of the philosophy of religion in which philosophers take the doctrine of real relations in God more seriously. For example, some Neo-Thomists have taken the criticisms of process theism to heart and admitted real relations in God, contrary to the teaching of the angelic doctor Whitney , 75— The Jesuit philosopher W. The extent to which theists outside the process camp accept the elements of the doctrine of dual transcendence varies greatly.

Neo-Thomists like Clarke and some other theists, like William Alston, accept real relations in God but retain the timelessness, immutability, and non-corporeality of God. Clarke and Alston also affirm creation ex nihilo. In both replies he emphasizes, among other things, what he takes to be arbitrary divisions among contingency, potentiality, and change in their theories. To admit real relations in God is to admit contingency in God. To admit this, but to retain the concept of the non-temporality of deity, requires belief in contingencies eternally fixed in the being of God. Hartshorne also maintains that there are forms of value—specifically, aesthetic values—that do not admit of a maximum.

It may be no more meaningful to speak of greatest possible aesthetic value than it is to speak of a greatest positive integer Hartshorne , 38 and ; cf. Whitehead , If this is the case, and if the creatures contribute to the aesthetic value of the world, then there must be respects in which, as the aesthetic value of the world increases, God increases with it. Openness or free will theists are closer to process theism than the Neo-Thomists or than Alston. They also accept the process view of the nature of time; thus, for God to be influenced by the creatures means that in some respects the future is yet to be determined and God knows it as such. This provides for a straightforward concept of God responding to the creatures and for an interpretive scheme for the dominant Scriptural motif that God is in dynamic interaction with people in answering prayer, for example.

On the other hand, it is this aspect of process theism which seems most disturbing to more traditionally minded Evangelicals, for the lack of knowledge of a detailed future compromises or at least complicates the doctrine of divine providence. How, they ask, can history be the working out of a divine plan if the future is uncertain for God cf. Hall and Sanders, Open theists believe that they can mitigate this criticism by not following process theism in the denial of creation ex nihilo. In any event, these controversies began too late for Hartshorne to respond to them. Because of the dominance historically of classical theism, Hartshorne viewed free will theists more as allies than foes, although he was fully aware of his differences from them and was not without arguments against those aspects of their views with which he disagreed Viney , — A vigorous dialogue between process theists and free will theists is on-going Cobb and Pinnock ; Ramal , part II.

The most contentious issue is creation ex nihilo. Whitehead and Hartshorne share a commitment to the idea that God is the supreme creative power among many lesser creators. Hartshorne is adamant that nothing is gained by endowing God with the ability to create non-creative actualities or to refrain from creating altogether. Nevertheless, process theists are criticized for failing to consider the alternative that God, the sole origin of creative power, graciously shares that power with others. Pike avers that over-power is precisely what most classical theists ascribe to deity. Process theists generally disagree cf. Griffin , 67— For example, Aquinas views God as having the ability to determine the free decisions of others, but this ability is not entailed by over-power, although Pike sometimes defines over-power in these terms Pike , The latter claim is much stronger, and it is the one that process theists attribute to most classical theists.

The process God has what might be called a second cousin to over-power. As we have seen, in process theism, God is responsible for the laws of nature and these laws determine the limits of non-divine creativity. Whitehead and Hartshorne deny, however, that God could create actual entities devoid of creative activity. Moreover, developmental and evolutionary categories are central to their thinking. It is contrary to process philosophy to imagine God with the ability to create a fully grown man or woman who did not grow to adulthood from having been a child. These qualifications notwithstanding, one philosopher working within the process tradition advocates revisions in process theism that would move it in the direction that the critics suggest.

Rem Edwards speaks of divine self-limitation in creating the creatures. For Edwards, God could create a universe of uncreative beings but chooses not to. The claim that deity sharing its creative power is an instance of self-limitation can perhaps be clarified and placed more in the spirit of process theism by referring to it as divine self-augmentation. A self-imposed handicap is one that prevents one from achieving a goal or performing a task that one could accomplish without the limitation. For example, a governor on a truck can be designed to inhibit the velocity it could attain without the governor.

In creating other creators, however, the deity imposes no limits on what it could achieve without them. To be sure, God could have unerring knowledge of a determinate future if the creatures had no freedom, but this would not be knowledge of a future with free creatures in it. To imagine a limitation in this case would require that God could know the future decisions of free creatures, but chooses instead to put on a blindfold, so to speak.

On the other hand, the existence of non-divine creators opens opportunities for cooperative effort and conflict that would be impossible without them. One cannot use persuasion on completely unfree beings. Thus, in creating other creators, other beings with some degree of freedom, God would be perfecting the divine power and the uses to which it can be put. Edwards also affirms a version of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo and believes that this is compatible with process theism.

Inspired by developments in speculative cosmology among astrophysicists—which he insists is really metaphysics—Edwards asks whether our universe may not be one of many actual universes existing within an infinite Superspacetime. Edwards maintains that these ideas allow for a concept of creation ex nihilo. Within the divine Superspacetime, God can create universes from no pre-existing material. Thus, it is not necessary to conceive our own universe as created from the dying embers of a previous cosmic epoch. The initial singularity of our universe could represent an absolute beginning. This does not mean that one must jettison the claims of process theism that God is necessarily social, embodied, and creative.

Edwards notes that his suggestions are not as far removed from the metaphysics of Whitehead and Hartshorne as one might suppose. Whitehead speaks of cosmic epochs and Hartshorne argues that this involves a time beyond what is available to physics that connects various cosmic epochs Hartshorne , 53— Superspacetime differs from the Boethian idea of eternity in at least this much: it is complex whereas eternity has no parts. Edwards also wishes to avoid the deterministic connotations of the traditional idea of creation. Finally, Edwards imports more into the idea of creation ex nihilo than was traditionally in the doctrine.

As we noted in the opening section, the idea that the universe had a first temporal moment is not to be identified with creation ex nihilo since, according to traditional theism, God could have created a temporally infinite universe ex nihilo. Lewis Ford revises process theism in a very different direction, mostly in response to difficulties within process metaphysics that he finds insurmountable.

This ability to prehend is precisely its portion of creativity. In process metaphysics, the future is infinite, indeterminate, and its possibilities for actualization are inexhaustible. Ford identifies God with the future so conceived, but with one important departure from standard accounts in process thought. According to Ford, God is the activity of the future. This is contrary to the views of Whitehead and Hartshorne for whom the future is the arena of possibility awaiting decision. Creative activity is confined to the present actual entity called its concrescence and to its effects on subsequent actual entities called transitional creativity Whitehead , The present is not made by the past but by the divine activity of the future.

This is dangerously close to saying that God cannot be known, except that Ford understands God to fill a definite role in his metaphysics, to wit, the infusion of creativity into the present, providing for an immediacy of the divine presence in all actualities. The physical prehensions of actual occasions are not only the means whereby the present takes account of the past, but they are also the means whereby the past persists into the present. In order to avoid the idea that God is ignorant of the past, Ford posits a kind of knowledge of the past that abstracts from efficient causation. Ford recognizes that his revisions of process theism will strike some thinkers as contrary to the metaphysics that first inspired it.

It is indeed unique; it bears a resemblance to the Thomistic doctrine of participated being, albeit tailored to the categories of process philosophy, as modified in various ways by Ford. In Thomism, the creatures can exist only by participating in and channeling the infinite creativity of God. Our task has been to explain the concept of process theism, not to argue that the God of process theism exists. Nevertheless, a few words are in order about the approaches that process theists take to justifying belief in the existence of God.

We noted in opening that process theism does not privilege claims to special insight or revealed truth cf. Keller , chapter 6. This is not to say that some theologians have not found process thought congenial to their interests e. Whitehead and Hartshorne did not view themselves as apologists for a particular faith, but neither did they simply dismiss religious experiences as uninformative. Whitehead warns against narrowness in the selection of evidence. They add, however, that the claims that religious people make, individually as in the case of mystics or collectively as in the case of religious organizations , are subject to human fallibility. There may be a God who is infallible but human beings are not, and every putative revelation is sifted through an imperfect human filter Hartshorne a, As far as justifying religious belief is concerned, Whitehead and Hartshorne try to navigate between appeals to blind faith and knock-down proof.

As far as Whitehead and Hartshorne are concerned, the working assumptions of the sciences are no more or less open to question and clarification than the working assumptions of religion. Process thought teaches a modest skepticism about the competencies of science that is arguably in the spirit of science itself. Metaphysics, so defined, is an audacious enterprise, for experience is open-ended and every claim to knowledge is perspectival and conditioned. If metaphysicians strive for a comprehensive vision of things, they must continually remind themselves that there is no standpoint within the world from which to speak confidently for eternity.

Whitehead and Hartshorne reject the idea that metaphysics proceeds best by deducing theorems from self-evident axioms. The court in which metaphysical proposals are judged is the community of philosophers, stretching through history and into the future. Whitehead and Hartshorne, heavily influenced by Plato, practice philosophy as a dialogue with great minds, past and present.

Ford suggests that Whitehead was surprised to find that they do, for he began his reflections on the philosophy of nature as an agnostic Ford , Whitehead asks both questions. Moreover, during the period when he was introducing the concept of God into his metaphysics, beginning in , the very concept of God was in flux. Given the World, God must exist. Given God, the World must exist. More traditional forms of reasoning can also be found in Whitehead.

There cannot, to be sure, be a cosmological argument in the classical sense for Whitehead rejects the traditional idea of divine creativity, but he does see a need to explain the initial phase of each actual entity. The graded relevance of these potentialities answers to our sense that there are objectively better and worse options. A related problem is how the activities of the many actualities that make up the cosmos happen to obey a common set of natural laws. Order implies an ordering power; however, all localized order presupposes cosmic order; thus, order on a cosmic scale requires a cosmic ordering power. The best candidate for the cosmic ordering power is God, according to Whitehead Whitehead , —this is a type of design argument.

The primordial nature of God serves this function Whitehead , Finally, the consequent nature of God is the explanation of the fixity of accomplished fact and achieved value. Bowman L. Clarke, however, produced a formal theistic argument along Whiteheadian lines using the linguistic framework developed by Nelson Goodman Clarke , — In a different vein, Franklin Gamwell argues that the moral law must be grounded in the divine good, where the divine good is most parsimoniously conceived in neoclassical terms Gamwell His view of God is less a completed philosophical theism than a work in progress that was left to others to try to complete, and many have tried.

It is worthy of note, however, that an influential group of scholars maintain that Whitehead was not true to his finer insights when he included God in his metaphysical system. One of the most careful and persistent critics of process theism is Robert Neville Neville Hartshorne was more in the mainstream of philosophical discussions about God than was Whitehead. Contingent beings require a divine necessary being cosmological ; cosmic order implies a divine cosmic ordering power design ; reality should be construed as the actual content of divine knowledge epistemic ; the supreme aim in life is to contribute to the divine life moral ; and there is a beauty of the world as a whole that only God can enjoy aesthetic.

Hartshorne presents each of the sub-arguments within his cumulative case as a list of options from an exhaustive set, with his neoclassical theistic option rounding out the set. For example, the options in the design argument are printed as follows Hartshorne , :. The reason for listing the arguments in this way is to avoid the pretense of settling important questions by logic alone. The conclusion of any valid deductive argument can be rejected provided one is willing to reject one or more of the premises.

In this sense, a valid argument provides one with options for belief rather than a proof of its conclusion. Hartshorne denies that one can coerce belief in God with arguments such as this. Moreover, he acknowledges that his own choice for neoclassical theism is not without its difficulties. Hartshorne presents his theistic arguments as a priori , not in the sense that they are conclusive demonstrations, but in the sense that they aim at a conclusion about what is true in all possible states of affairs.

He insists that none of the conclusions of his arguments are empirical. Thus, if God exists, then no conceivable experience could falsify the statement that God exists. Hartshorne also points out that none of his arguments tell us anything concrete about God. True to his distinction between existence and actuality, Hartshorne maintains that the arguments concern that which is most abstract about deity, its existence and character. He notes that from a purely formal point of view, any pair of metaphysical contraries may apply to God or to the world. For example, either God is in different respects necessary and contingent NC , wholly necessary N , wholly contingent C , or neither necessary nor contingent O.

The same is true of the world: necessary and contingent nc , wholly necessary n , wholly contingent c , or neither necessary nor contingent o. This yields sixteen formal options which Hartshorne arranges in a four by four matrix. Historically significant forms of theism can be found on the matrix—classical theism, for example, is N. Only one of the sixteen options can be true, so Hartshorne develops criteria for judging the various possibilities. For example, if the contrast itself should be preserved, then options like N. Hartshorne maintains that one reason classical theism remained unchallenged for so long was because philosophers had not considered all of the options Hartshorne , ch.

If any two matrices are combined, the number of formal options jumps to If we generalize for any number of pairs n , then the number of concepts of God and the world is 16 n. We have already mentioned others within the process tradition who have made the case for process theism: Clarke, Gamwell, and Malone-France. Schubert Ogden and David Ray Griffin a and should be added to the list. Griffin explicitly employs a cumulative case involving eight strands; his argument is indebted to both Whitehead and Hartshorne but includes his own distinctive contributions. Also of note is that Griffin is one of the few process philosophers to have addressed the arguments in the literature of the new atheism although, see Viney and Shields forthcoming, chapter 7. With Hartshorne, as with Whitehead, what is at stake in theistic arguments is less a matter of the soundness of a particular piece of reasoning than the assessment of an entire metaphysical system.

Thus, the sketch given here does not begin to do justice to their arguments. Nevertheless, the development and defense of a concept of God that is fully engaged in temporal processes is perhaps the central pillar and the lasting achievement of their reasoning. After all, one of the selling points of process theism over its rivals has been not only its theoretical superiority in dealing with theological puzzles but its adequacy to everyday religious sensibilities.

Process theists argue that the deity of traditional theism is at once too active and too static. It is too active in the sense that its control of the universe is absolute, leaving nothing for the creatures to do except to unwittingly speak the lines and play the parts decided for them in eternity. It is too static in the sense that it lacks potentiality to change, to participate in the evolving universe it created, and to be affected by the triumphs and tragedies of its creatures.

In short, it is a God who acts but is never acted upon and can therefore never interact. This is summed up in the non-biblical Aristotelian formula of God as the unmoved mover. Hartshorne, Charles panentheism pantheism process philosophy Whitehead, Alfred North. Historical Notes on Process Theism 2. The religion also shares many of the same commonalities of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The religion emphasizes monotheism and believes in one eternal transcendent God, the station of the founders of the major religions as Manifestations of God come with revelation as a series of interventions by God in human history that has been progressive, and each preparing the way for the next.

It is an extremely small religion, with no more than a few thousand adherents according to current estimates, most of which are concentrated in Iran. Samaritanism is based on some of the same books used as the basis of Judaism but differs from the latter. Samaritan religious works include the Samaritan version of the Torah, the Memar Markah, the Samaritan liturgy, and Samaritan law codes and biblical commentaries. Many claim the Samaritans appear to have a text of the Torah as old as the Masoretic Text; scholars have various theories concerning the actual relationships between these three texts.

Mehrdad Izady defines the Yazdanism as an ancient Hurrian religion and states that Mitannis could have introduced some of the Vedic tradition that appears to be manifest in Yazdanism. Shabakism is the name given to the beliefs and practices of the Shabak people of Kurdistan region and around Mosul in Iraq. A majority of Shabaks regard themselves as Shia, and a minority identify as Sunnis. Despite this, their actual faith and rituals differ from Islam, and have characteristics that make them distinct from neighboring Muslim populations. These include features from Christianity including confession, and the consumption of alcohol, and the fact that Shabaks often go on pilgrimage to Yazidi shrines.

Nevertheless, the Shabak people also go on pilgrimages to Shia holy cities such as Najaf and Karbala, and follow many Shiite teachings. The structure of these mediatory relationships closely resembles that of the Yarsan. Abraham, however, is considered a false prophet in Mandeanism. The Epistles of Wisdom is the foundational text of the Druze faith. The Druze follow theophany, and believe in reincarnation or the transmigration of the soul. At the end of the cycle of rebirth, which is achieved through successive reincarnations, the soul is united with the Cosmic Mind Al Aaqal Al Kulli. Rastafari , sometimes termed Rastafarianism, is an Abrahamic religion. Classified as both a new religious movement and social movement, it developed in Jamaica during the s.

It lacks any centralised authority and there is much heterogeneity among practitioners, who are known as Rastafari, Rastafarians, or Rastas. Central is a monotheistic belief in a single God—referred to as Jah—who partially resides within each individual. The former emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, is given central importance. Others regard him as a human prophet who fully recognised the inner divinity within every individual. Other interpretations shift focus on to the adoption of an Afrocentric attitude while living outside of Africa. Rastafari originated among impoverished and socially disenfranchised Afro-Jamaican communities. It was influenced by both Ethiopianism and the Back-to-Africa movement promoted by black nationalist figures like Marcus Garvey.

The movement developed after several Christian clergymen, most notably Leonard Howell, proclaimed that the crowning of Haile Selassie as Emperor of Ethiopia in fulfilled a Biblical prophecy. In the s and s it gained increased respectability within Jamaica and greater visibility abroad through the popularity of Rasta-inspired reggae musicians like Bob Marley. Enthusiasm for Rastafari declined in the s, following the deaths of Haile Selassie and Marley. The Rasta movement is organised on a largely cellular basis. The civilizations that developed in Mesopotamia influenced some religious texts, particularly the Hebrew Bible and the Book of Genesis in particular; Abraham is said to have originated in Mesopotamia.

Judaism regards itself as the religion of the descendants of Jacob, a grandson of Abraham. It has a strictly unitary view of God, and the central holy book for almost all branches is the Masoretic Text as elucidated in the Oral Torah. In the 19th century and 20th centuries Judaism developed a small number of branches, of which the most significant are Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform.

Christianity began as a sect of Judaism in the Mediterranean Basin of the first century CE and evolved into a separate religion—Christianity—with distinctive beliefs and practices. Jesus is the central figure of Christianity, considered by almost all denominations to be God the Son, one person of the Trinity. See God in Christianity. The Christian biblical canons are usually held to be the ultimate authority, alongside sacred tradition in some denominations such as the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Over many centuries, Christianity divided into three main branches Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant , dozens of significant denominations, and hundreds of smaller ones.

Muslims hold the Quran to be the ultimate authority, as revealed and elucidated through the teachings and practices of a central, but not divine, prophet, Muhammad. The Islamic faith considers all prophets and messengers from Adam through the final messenger Muhammad to carry the same Islamic monotheistic principles. Soon after its founding, Islam split into two main branches Sunni and Shia Islam , each of which now has a number of denominations. A vast majority of adherents are unified under a single denomination. The unifying characteristic of Abrahamic religions is that all accept the tradition that God revealed himself to the patriarch Abraham.

All are monotheistic, and conceive God to be a transcendent creator and the source of moral law. Their religious texts feature many of the same figures, histories, and places, although they often present them with different roles, perspectives, and meanings. Believers who agree on these similarities and the common Abrahamic origin tend to also be more positive towards other Abrahamic groups. In these three Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity, Islam , the individual, God, and the universe are highly separate from each other.

The Abrahamic religions believe in a judging, paternal, fully external god to which the individual and nature are subordinate. Main article: Monotheism. All Abrahamic religions claim to be monotheistic, worshiping an exclusive God, although one known by different names. Each of these religions preaches that God creates, is one, rules, reveals, loves, judges, punishes, and forgives.

Since the conception of a divine Trinity is not amenable to tawhid , the Islamic doctrine of monotheism, Islam regards Christianity as variously polytheistic. See also: Messianism. All the Abrahamic religions affirm one eternal God who created the universe, who rules history, who sends prophetic and angelic messengers and who reveals the divine will through inspired revelation. They also affirm that obedience to this creator deity is to be lived out historically and that one day God will unilaterally intervene in human history at the Last Judgment. All Abrahamic religions believe that God guides humanity through revelation to prophets, and each religion recognizes that God revealed teachings up to and including those in their own scripture.

An ethical orientation: all these religions speak of a choice between good and evil, which is associated with obedience or disobedience to a single God and to Divine Law. Ethical monotheism is a form of exclusive monotheism in which God is the source for one standard of morality, who guides humanity through ethical principles. An eschatological world view of history and destiny, beginning with the creation of the world and the concept that God works through history, and ending with a resurrection of the dead and final judgment and world to come.

It has been majority Jewish since about and continues through today. Jerusalem was an early center of Christianity. There has been a continuous Christian presence there since. William R. Kenan, Jr. According to the New Testament, Jerusalem was the city Jesus was brought to as a child to be presented at the temple [Luke ] and for the feast of the Passover. His crucifixion at Golgotha, his burial nearby traditionally the Church of the Holy Sepulchre , and his resurrection and ascension and prophecy to return all are said to have occurred or will occur there. Jerusalem became holy to Muslims, third after Mecca and Medina. Muslim tradition as recorded in the ahadith identifies al-Aqsa with a mosque in Jerusalem. The first Muslims did not pray toward Kaaba, but toward Jerusalem this was the qibla for 13 years : the qibla was switched to Kaaba later on to fulfill the order of Allah of praying in the direction of Kaaba Quran, Al-Baqarah — Even though members of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam do not all claim Abraham as an ancestor, some members of these religions have tried to claim him as exclusively theirs.

For Jews, Abraham is the founding patriarch of the children of Israel. Similarly, converts, who join the covenant, are all identified as sons and daughters of Abraham. According to Jewish tradition, Abraham was the first post-Flood prophet to reject idolatry through rational analysis, although Shem and Eber carried on the tradition from Noah. Christians view Abraham as an important exemplar of faith, and a spiritual, as well as physical, ancestor of Jesus. In Christian belief, Abraham is a role model of faith, [Heb. Ibrahim Abraham is the first in a genealogy for Muhammad. Also, the same as Judaism, Islam believes that Abraham rejected idolatry through logical reasoning.

Abraham is also recalled in certain details of the annual Hajj pilgrimage. The Abrahamic God is conceived of as eternal, omnipotent, omniscient and as the creator of the universe. God is further held to have the properties of holiness, justice, omnibenevolence and omnipresence. Proponents of Abrahamic faiths believe that God is also transcendent, but at the same time personal and involved, listening to prayer and reacting to the actions of his creatures. In Jewish theology , God is strictly monotheistic. God is an absolute one, indivisible and incomparable being who is the ultimate cause of all existence.

The Christian cross or crux is the best-known religious symbol of Christianity; this version is known as a Latin Cross.

Trinitarians Argument Analysis these Trinitarians Argument Analysis and variegated proofs are preparatory. Thus, most babies have the capacity to Trinitarians Argument Analysis Informative Essay On High School Shootings to Trinitarians Argument Analysis parents Trinitarians Argument Analysis. One Trinitarians Argument Analysis of these debates concerns the self-consistency of trinitarian theology. Geach, P.