The nature of Primal Chaos: God or Chaos versus God or Nothing (continuing a dialogue with Francis Berger)

The background goes back some way, but could be regarded as a post by Francis Berger discussing the nature of freedom, and comments from Kristor Lawson of the Orthosphere. The theme then became the nature of God, as God ought to be understood by Christians - in particular whether, on the one hand, God created absolutely everything from absolutely nothing ("ex nihilo"). Or on the other hand; whether  God created from something pre-existent - in particular "beings" (living, purposive, conscious to some degree, self-sustaining etc) that had always existed, coeternally with God. 

Bruce Charlton comment (edited by me): 

Kristor comments: "Because he is subultimate, the Mormon God is unnecessary, contingent, and dependent (like Zeus or Thor)". 

This is interestingly wrong, in part; because it reveals several of the assumptions into which philosophy came to embed mainstream Christian theology. Perhaps the key term is contingent - in that the desire of classical theology is to describe a state of affairs that could not be otherwise than it is. 

If that was true then (by my understanding) there can be no real freedom. Freedom has been excluded by assumption. 

"Unnecessary" is related to the desire to escape all contingency: to insist that things cannot be other than what they are, however this also also entails that nothing can really change. 

But when there is life/ consciousness/ being - there is change, and change is directional and sequential - and this is something that everybody is born already knowing. 

The Mormon concept of God (and IMO the real God!) is indeed "necessary" in the sense that God is the creator, and without God there would be no creation. So it is a case of God or Chaos. 

But the philosophy (expressed by Kristor) that (IMO) captured Christian theology, wants it to be that there must be God, now and always, and nothing would be without God. 

This is a case of God or Nothing. 

Well, that idea of necessity is a very particular view of God. Most gods/Gods throughout history and the world (including some descriptions of the God of the Old Testament, it seems clear enough) do not conform to this idea of necessity. 

Indeed extremely few people - now or ever - could even conceive of a God in that sense, and could not express it if they did. They would not want or see reason to posit such an entity. 

What is strange to me is that so many Christian theologians (from very early in the Christian church) seem to have decided to make the assumption that only such an abstract entity is a "real" God, or deserves to be considered a God.

It is strange because of Jesus Christ. If Christianity had been a pure monotheism, this dogmatic assumption would be comprehensible; but given the incarnate nature of Jesus the Man, Son of God, who was born, grew, lived "in time", who died etc etc... 

Well, it is just plain strange for Christians to make an insoluble problem from Jesus - just because of their pre-existing philosophical convictions. And having made the nature of Jesus such a Big Problem, but not so strange to pretend that all questions have been answered but at a level of abstraction so remote that all contradictions dissolve into each other! 

**

Francis Berger then wrote a post amplifying on some of the above concepts (edited): 

In his comment, Dr. Charlton refers to two disparate cases concerning the nature of God and Creation—the first being the conventional conceptualization of God or nothing and the unconventional view of God or chaos.

The first case posits God as the ultimate creator of everything and argues that there would be nothing without God. The second case envisions God as a primary creator who shaped and formed Creation from pre-existing “material” (for lack of a better way of putting it) that was chaotic and purposeless. God or nothing and God or chaos is another angle from which one can view the old creatio ex nihilo versus creatio ex materia debate.

The God or nothing approach insists upon the absolute necessity of God for the simple reason that without him, nothing could exist or be. God not only is—he absolutely must be, for without Him, there would be nothing but a void of nothingness.

In other words, I am must be because there is literally nothing on the other side of that thunderous I am. Every being needs God, but God needs no other beings. No being is utterly necessary but God.

This absolute necessity of God relegates everything in existence or being to the state of contingency. Every being in existence is utterly dependent on God in every way imaginable, even when they exercise their God-given freedom to reject God altogether.

However, the God-given free rejection of the Divine Creator does not negate God’s thunderous I am declaration. The creatures he created from nothing can never return to the nothing from whence they came. They either come to know and worship him or suffer the consequences of their free rejection, the capacity for which God created from nothing.

The God or chaos case envisages God as the primary creator. Without God, there is no Creation, only chaos. God can still say I am, but his necessity takes on an entirely different hue.

The creatures he shaped existed in some form before entering Creation, so he is not necessary for their core pre-existence as beings but crucial to their existence in Creation. They come to know him and attempt to understand why they are Creation, or they may reject him and, perhaps, choose to return to the chaos from which they emerged. ​ Since God did not create the freedom driving such a choice, it remains authentically free. 

**

Me, now: 

Deriving the nature of God from a "God or Chaos" distinction, seems to be a useful shorthand of the the paired alternatives that arise from the metaphysical assumptions that I share with Francis Berger. 

His comment stimulated a few further clarifications. God or Chaos could be re-framed as Love or Chaos - since creation derives from Love. 

Furthermore, it is vitally important that God creates from "beings" and not from "materia" - by my understanding, God did not start with inert, unalive, "stuff" but already alive and conscious, purposive beings. That pre-creation reality was of beings is essential to the reality and nature of freedom. 

If pre-creation reality was not already-alive and already-conscious - by their nature and from-eternity, then the problem of "where freedom comes from" remains unanswered. Because, ultimately, freedom just isn't something that can be made or gifted.

(And the same applies to life, or consciousness, or purpose - these are attributes of beings, and cannot be bestowed upon no-beings, "things" or "material".)  

Therefore, Chaos should not be pictured scientistically as some kind of Brownian motion of dead-molecules. Instead, Chaos should be understood as a situation in which beings are self-centred in their purposes and methods, autonomous in their world view... 

So, this debate is not a re-run of creatio ex nihilo versus creatio ex materia - because the starting point is an already-alive ("animated") universe, but one in which living beings are "uncoordinated" - each pulling in a different direction, all with with different motivations. 

Creation is therefore understood as the incremental and progressive harmonization and direction of a multitude of already-existing living beings by Love: that is, by Love of God (which provides ultimate coherence), and of each-other (without which creation would break-down). 

In other words; the "Two Great Commandments": first to love God, then to love our "neighbour", fellow Men (and by extension all other beings).  

Chaos is a collection of unharmoniuous beings, each "doing his own thing", wholly self-motivated, un-loving and indifferent to other beings (and perhaps unaware of them). It is this kind of situation, upon-which God initiates the process of creation.

But, this was only the beginning of creation - because it led to a mixed world of continuing chaos and ("within" this) an expanding divine creation. Creation exists insofar as love motivates; but love is (at best) incomplete in any being. 

So far this is monotheism, not Christianity. The completion and "perfection" of creation, into a wholly good world - i.e. Heaven - required the later intervention of Jesus Christ. This is therefore The Second Creation.