I have often written about the twin ultimate-problems (ineradicable insufficiencies) of this, our mortal life; under the headings of Entropy and Evil.
My understanding of reality is that its fundamental divisions or units are eternal Beings, i.e living-Beings; such that (to modify the title of William James's book) this is an Pluralistic Animistic universe; i.e. there are many fundamental entities (not one); and these fundamental entities are alive, purposive, with agency and other attributes of Beings.
Because things began with many Beings; God's divine creation (that we inhabit) is the primary source of cohesion: in a crude sense, by creation God imposed harmony on pre-existing and originally autonomous Beings.
For creation to be sustained (insofar as it is sustained) there must me harmony/ cooperation/ cohesion etc between the Purposes and motives of the many Beings which constitute creation.
Otherwise, divine creation will tend to fall apart - with different Beings pursuing different goals, or living by different values.
It is this tendency for divine creation to fall-apart into a chaos of competing directions and behaviours that is the essential cause of the tendency named Entropy: i.e. the tendency of all life, order, organization, forms, functionality etc to decline towards chaos, with time.
The primary source of Entropy is therefore the disharmony of Beings.
Therefore we need to stop thinking of Entropy abstractly, as if it was a branch of physics, as if it was some kind of force (or anti-force) that broke-up stuff...
Instead, we should think of entropy as a consequence of the fact that the Beings of divine creation are imperfectly aligned in their nature and purposes.
Our situation is that we may find ourselves loving God and experiencing profound desiring to live in harmony with divine creation; but we simply cannot do this in reality as we experience it, in this mortal life - because of our innate nature, because of the way we are (and have been) eternally.
We may want to live in harmony with divine creation, but we cannot.
But not all Beings want to live in harmony with divine creation, and some Beings hate God; and these are Beings that have chosen (or, at least, are currently choosing) Evil.
So, Evil can be defined as a kind of chosen Entropy; when the inevitable disharmony between our-selves and divine creation is made into the positive choice our-selves to oppose divine creation.
From this perspective we can see that Evil is a type of Entropy - in a sense a worse type of Entropy: a positive decision to pursue negative outcomes. And worse than non-evil-Entropy; because Entropy is universal and unavoidable, whereas Evil makes the personal choice to oppose divine harmony....
Motives for Evil are various, but perhaps some kind of resentment or grudge against God and the imposed aspect of divine creation, might be the most basic motivation.
Aims of Evil, too, are various.
Perhaps the aim is to exploit divine harmony in pursuit of personal gratification or other selfish benefit; perhaps (more extremely) to oppose divine harmony simply from a desire to see it destroyed, taking spiteful pleasure in the destruction.
This was the unavoidable human condition, blighted by ineradicable Entropy, and worsened by chosen Evil; and the situation for all Beings, until the advent of Jesus Christ.
Jesus was a mortal Being, incarnated into this world of imperfect harmony between Beings - but Jesus himself loved God wholly; and was himself (at least, at the time of his ministry, after his Baptism by John) wholly-aligned with divine creation.
Jesus was himself mortal: which is to say he was subject to Entropy. And Jesus was subject also to Evil. However; because Jesus was perfectly aligned with God and creation he knew that after death he could (and would) be remade as himself but "perfectly" - in other words, resurrected into eternal life, freed from Entropy.
Resurrection takes our aspiration to live wholly in harmony with divine creation, and rebuilds us from that basis.
Furthermore, Jesus knew that if or when others had followed him into this eternal (because wholly-aligned, Entropy-purged) state of resurrection - which remaking process would be guided by Jesus himself - then a world of such persons would be a world without Evil.
In eliminating Entropy, resurrection also eliminates Evil, as a subsidiary effect.
And this wholly-harmonious and wholly-God-aligned post-mortal world would be Heaven: in which the deepest and ineradicable problems of this mortal life are eliminated; and free and creative Beings live spontaneously in harmony (loving God and each-other), and from common aims and motives.
What I appreciate most about the pluralistic-animistic "framework" of divine creation is that it underscores the vital role of freedom/agency within creation while at the same time providing a satisfying and coherent explanation about what freedom is and where it originates.
ReplyDeleteAligning freedom/agency with God's creative purposes puts the emphasis on love, which is a far more Christian vision than mere obedient submission to the overwhelming and ungraspable power of God.
Jesus's life and work also make more sense within this "framework", a your post helps explain. Starting with a mortal man who aligned his freedom perfectly with God and then used this alignment to add something wonderful and meaningful to creation, something God could not have done on his own, makes more sense to me then conventional explanations of who Jesus was and what he did.
@Frank. Indeed.
ReplyDeleteI recognize that the pluralistic-animistic metaphysics has the problem of all metaphysics, - that it is a simplified and symbolic model of reality, and therefore ultimately cannot be True. But it does seem to explain the things that Most need explaining here and now.
The classical theology explains things that don't need explaining, or are generally incomprehensible (as are the explanations). Also classical theology is permeated by value assumptions that are abhorrent.
(Such as the "justice" of vicarious atonement. The idea of God demanding that Jesus must be tortured to death to pay for the "original" sins of mankind. We are supposed to recognize that this is an appropriate, OK, indeed wonderful, thing for God to do! Compelling modern Christians to accept this is either futile (mere words) - or else very bad for them!).
Modern Trads do their best to deny the moral problems with the old explanations and requirements - but there is a strong element of cherry-picking and play-acting.
Or (worse) the exercise in reconstructed traditionalism sometimes looks very much like an attempted justification for a psychopathic power grab - revealing the aspiration to become a tyrannical cult-leader (even if merely domestic, household in scale).
The question of freedom is much too important to be disposed of by lazy hand waving! As if freedom could be equated with randomness, or non-compulsion.
I tried to deal with this matter more specifically in today's post.
Beautiful entry, Bruce. Though these bigger themes are probably difficult to put into words you have a real gift for doing just that.
ReplyDeleteDidn't realize i was signed in anonymously. That last comment was from me. No worries either way on posting it or not, it was more of a thank you for you than adding anything to the conversation.
ReplyDelete@Rich W - Thanks for identifying yourself!
ReplyDeleteIt's encouraging to know that these difficult posts, and therefore of limited appeal, are actually getting through to somebody.
One motive behind the above post is to emphasize something that I think Christians are prone to forget in our usual focus on morality; which is that even if we lived in a world without evil (a world entirely of wholly good persons, and wholly good ourselves) - this would still not be enough to deal with the fundamental problems of life.
ReplyDeleteThis is (I think) why there is so much emphasis on Jesus's offer of eternal life/ life everlasting in the IV Gospel - and why the concept of "sin" is almost (not quite) wholly absorbed into death, mortal death. It is an implicit recognition that "entropy" is the fundamental problem, the ultimate because unavoidable "evil" of this-life; rather than "moral evil".
They are my favorite bits of your writing!
ReplyDeleteYes, there is a cartoonish morality at play in Christian circles which looks a lot like the status (virtue) signaling the left does. As you say, the problem of morality really doesn't hold a candle to the problem of entropy which was never addressed in all my years growing up in the Catholic Church.
Becoming a family and a parent really crystalizes this point. The idea of your wife and children being turned into oblivion and just ending is the worst thing that could ever be. That we will be together again in full harmony of everlasting love is the most wonderful news there ever was.
@Rich W.
ReplyDeleteThat's how I see it now, although I had to discard a lot of my earlier ideas to reach this situation.
Theoretically and in several important ways, Mormonism (especially Joseph Smith) did a good job of focusing on the *expectation* of post-mortal resurrection and reuniting (for those who want it). This remains its greatest appeal.
But unfortunately IMO this is often spoiled in practice by a vast and elaborate, church-controlled, obstacle-course of system requirements related to specific forms of morality (while ignoring most others), requirements for church service and participation, multiple doctrines, and gateway-rituals; that has been superimposed-on and interwoven-with this.