Heavenly Mother - Why and Not

'God' is a dyad of Heavenly Mother and Father, they are co-creators and parents of all. The metaphysical reality is that all persons are male or female and there is no-one who is neither or both.

The whole person is therefore neither man nor woman - each being incomplete - but a dyad of the two complementary persons man and woman; sealed in an eternal loving relationship.

Traditional Christianity - for good reasons - has focused on God the Father, but the time has come for change. While we might continue to refer to 'God' as tacitly implying the two personages, this is coming to seem evasive, and even dishonest.

Of course the potential for being misunderstood, and deliberately misrepresented, is vast - it is a hazardous, dangerous doctrine; but that applies to Christianity in general - and so, where there is need, hazard does not deter.

The key fact is the grounding in the dyadic and complementary metaphysics; this is the basic assumption, which is attested by direct intuitive knowing and coherence, not by empirical 'evidence'. It is thus metaphysical assumption rooted in faith and personal knowledge which clarifies and protects the concept of Heavenly Mother.

What she is, is a matter that need attention, now.

*

What she is not?... She is not the same as the Father, not another name for the Father, certainly not an equal to the Father. Complementarity means dissimilarity: two complementary things are not the same, are not equal - their quality is that both in combination are needed to make the whole, the unit.

Heavenly Mother is a part of the dyad of God - not a Goddess; she is not any kind of revival - because she has never been acknowledged nor known up to now. She is of the future, not the past.

She is nothing to do with feminism, and is indeed ultimately the opposite of feminism. She is not in any way 'for women' rather than or in preference to being for men (any more that the legitimate Queen of a nation is for the women of that nation more than the men! Or that mothers are for their daughters more than their sons. Nonsense!).

She is not a 'balance' yet not a take-over either... Heavenly Mother is a fact and a necessity.

*

Heavenly Mother is a mystery - because divine; but she is a person we already know, from our long pre-mortal lives as her sons and daughters; we have known her for as long as we consciously knew anything.

If, for good reasons, we have been focused on Heavenly Father (and the reality of our Mother awaited the Mormon revelations of the middle 1800s) - then why do we need her now?

We need her now because the unilateral focus on the Father is preventing our divinely-destined spiritual progression. Where we are now (culturally, individually) is nihilism, despair and death; but we cannot (and should not) go back (which is why all attempts have failed); yet going forward is blocked by a partial and distorted understanding which cuts to the root; progression entails acknowledging the fullness of fundamental understanding, and building-upon that.

At some deep and intuitive level we know this, or we can know it - each for himself or herself - for the asking (serious asking). And we can find out more, and as much as we need, by addressing questions in prayer and meditation and listening for the responses - observing the responses.

(This is not really a matter of 'worship' because the incremental collapse of that concept is representative of the reasons why our Heavenly Mother's time has come. It is instead a matter of acknowledged reality, followed by love; and of conversation, communion, communication.)

*

This is not a matter of capturing Heavenly Mother in definitions, any more than this is helpful for our Father; because persons are known, not defined.

There is no need and little value from dividing-up the powers and responsibilities of our Heavenly parents any more than our real parents - yes they are different, and rightly; but no, the difference is not a consequence of, nor captured by, legal categories.

Persons are primary; loving relations are the cohesion and source of organisation.

*

How important is this - is it necessary? Since the idea of Heavenly Mother is unsafe, will be deliberately and carelessly misunderstood and misrepresented, will be a reason for hatred and loathing... is she not better set-aside, down-played, kept-quiet about?

That is a decision you need to make for yourself. You need to feel that Heavenly Mother is something we need to know - now: urgently; and which honesty requires that we know - openly, explicitly; knowledge the lack of which is poisoning us in many ways.

The impulse is there, the impulse is in our hearts and unfolding in Western culture. If the impulse is refused and kept  unconscious; it will nonetheless emerge in distorted and inverted forms (like feminism, like misogyny, like resentment and competitive exploitation between men and women).

But if Heavenly Mother is acknowledged and takes her place explicitly and joyously as a completion of our knowledge of God and the basis of our mortal lives; then the destined new era of consciousness may commence.

Heavenly Parents and the dyadic/ one-creator God - an update

As I have often written, but not recently, I believe that God is dyadic - consisting of a Heavenly Father and Mother, a man and woman who are (in some sense) incarnate and not spirits. 

This is the Mormon understanding, and reading about Mormon theology was where I first came across it. 

I am not trying to persuade other people that I am right; but I shall here consider why I personally believe this, and what it is that I believe. 

In the first place it is due to what might be termed intuition; in the sense that when I first encountered this idea, my heart seemed to jump and warm; as if I was discovering something true, good and with great possibilities of more-good. 

There was an immediate and positive sense... not so much that this was true, but that I wanted this to be true - this came before my conviction that it was true.  

Following this I read more about Mormon theology, and realized that the dyadic, man-woman nature of our Heavenly parents was just part of an entire metaphysical understanding of creation (including procreation - the creation of beings including people) as something dynamic, interactive, developing, evolutionary, open-ended, and expanding. 

In other words, that creation itself was creative (and therefore creation was not, as I had previously assumed, a done-thing, a closed accomplishment, a finished totality - once-and-for-always.) 

I then began to explore the implications of these ideas for myself; using concepts I got from William Arkle (and his reflections on God's motivations for creation); and Owen Barfield, including Barfield's accounts of the 'polar' philosophy of ST Coleridge. 

I was also building on a longer-term fascination with 'animism' - with the (apparently innate and spontaneous) tendency to regard the world (the universe) as consisting primarily of beings - all of whom were alive, purposive, conscious - albeit in different ways, at different scales and timescales etc.

The motivation for creation, and why God should have created this kind of creation, was something I had found difficult to grasp (none of the usual explanations made much sense to me). But when I conceptualized God as the loving dyad of a man and woman, then it seemed obvious why such a combination would have wanted to create - including others who might eventually become like themselves.   

Furthermore, it did not seem possible that creation had arisen from any state of oneness of self-sufficiency, since this would make creation arbitrary; nor could creation arise from a tendency towards differentiation, because that would lead to meaningless-purposeless chaos. 

There must (I felt) have been some kind of original 'polarity' - in abstract and physics-like terminology, there would need to be at-least two different kinds of 'force', the interaction of which would be creation. Coleridge (also Barfield and Arkle) saw this in terms of a 'masculine'-tendency for expansion and differentiation; and a 'feminine'-tendency for one-ness and integration.  

But in terms of my (non-abstract) preferred metaphysics of beings and animistic assumptions; 'masculine' and 'feminine' simplifies to just a primordial man and a primordial woman; this would mean two complementary, unlike-but-of-the-same-kind, beings; the love of whom would lead to a desire for creation.  

(In the same kind of way that - in this mortal life - love of man and woman usually leads to a desire for procreation.)

At some point I validated this understanding by means of meditative prayer; by refining and asking a simple question, feeling that this question had 'got-through', and receiving a clear inner response.  

In summary; the above account is something-like the sequence by which I desired, concluded, became-convinced-by, the metaphysical assumption of God as Heavenly parents; by some such mixture of feelings, reasoning, and 'feedback'. 

All this happened a good while ago (about a decade); since when I have been interpreting things on the basis of this framework, and it seems to 'work', so far.

What the real-life, this world, implications are; include a reinforcement of the idea that the family is (and ought to be) the primary social structure; on earth as it is in Heaven; and a clarification of the nature of creation - starting with the primary creation by Heavenly parents and also including the secondary creation of beings (such as men and women) within primary creation. 

This metaphysics has further helped me understand both why and how love is the primary value of Christianity; i.e. because love made possible creation in the first place, and is the proper basis of 'coordinating' the subcreative activities of all the beings of creation.  

And it helped me understand how creation can be open-ended and expansile, without degenerating into chaos; because it is love that makes the difference.

Also, it helped me to understand the nature of evil; and how evil is related either to the incapacity for love or its rejection. Without love, the innate creativity of individual beings is going to be selfish and hostile to that of other beings: non-loving attitudes, thinking, and actions by beings, will tend to destroy the harmony of creation.  

I don't talk much about this understanding, and I often use the generic term 'God'; because it is difficult to explain briefly and clearly that the dyadic God of our Heavenly parents serves as a single and 'coherently unified' source of creation

But God is two, not one, because only a dyad can create, and creation must-be dyadic. 

And the dyadic just-is the one-ness of God the primal creator.  

Note added: It may be said, correctly, that the above does not depend on the Bible; but then neither does the metaphysics of orthodox-classical theology depend on scripture. We can find resonances and consistencies within the Bible - but assumptions such as: strict monotheism - creation ex nihilo (from nothing) by a God outside of creation and Time, the Athanasian Creed descriptions of the Trinity, God's omnipotence and omniscience, original sin... These are ideas that would not be derived-from a reading of scripture - the most that can be said is that someone who already ideas can find Biblical references that can be interpreted as consistent-with these assumptions. They are (apparently) products of philosophically sophisticated theologians who brought these ideas to Christianity from earlier and mostly pagan (Greek and Roman) sources. Also, these kinds of metaphysical assumption are theistic - to do with a personal god - but not specifically Christian. The salvific work of Jesus Christ (principally: making possible resurrected life everlasting in Heaven) was done within already-existing creation, and Christianity is not therefore an explanation of creation-as-such.   

Mother-Father-Parents - developmental-evolution of the concept of God

(It seems that) In the developmental history of Men, there were three broad phases of how the ultimate deity was regarded: Orinially God as Mother; then - for most of recorded history - as Father; and - now and in the in future - Parents.

Hunter Gatherers seem to regard 'God' as (or, since it is not fully conscious or articulated, as if) a nurturing Mother; who provides all that is needed; and gives birth to all Beings. This goes with a passive and responsive attitude to the world - God as everywhere and Men as children.

Agricultural societies (and traditional sedentary societies - from at least Ancient Egypt until the Industrial Revolution in the West) generally have a masculine concept of God, or the supreme god; and this especially applies to monotheisms. This was the case for the early centuries of Christianity, and until the past several generations.This goes with a Kingly image of God, with religion as rituals and laws; and Men as subjects.

From the period of modernity (and especially since about 1800) I believe that the understanding of God is destined (supposed) to be as Heavenly Parents - Mother and Father in a celestial marriage, as a distinct but inseparable dyad - a polarity. This is - I think - the proper future and correct understanding of God: as Heavenly Parents.


This is explicit and officially sanctioned in the Restored Gospel of Mormonism, although in practice - so far - Mormonism has been as much (or more) Patriarchal as mainstream Christianity; and there is very little reference to Heavenly Mother or to the dyadic nature of God.

However, my interpretation of this, is that it is a temporary and merely-expedient distortion caused by the rise to dominance of materialist-leftist and socio-political feminism; which (as a strategy) tries to subvert the assumed male nature of real-God and replace it with an insincere female image of not-really-God (i.e. 'liberal Christianity' in its various forms).

Another distortion is the (only semi-serious, not truly lived-by) idea of restoring tribal ideas of God as Earth Mother - a pantheistic idea of non-purposive Goddess divinity; which owes much to an eclectic partial-assimilation of Hinduism and Buddhism. As well as being undesirable (an attempt to become spiritually children again); this is impossible due to the large changes in human and societal evolution: it just will not happen.  


Another distortion is the abstraction of God. Instead of regarding God as an incarnate person (of whom the resurrected Jesus was the filial image); the process began soon after the ascension of regarding the sex and personhood of God as childish anthropomorphism.

So we get the idea that God is not really either male or female, but both-or-neither. This leads to a sexless abstraction of God's person. And leads to the idea that the sex of mortal Men is just a temporary aspect of mortal life (just as mainstream Christians usually regard marriage as merely an expedient of mortal life, dissolved at death and without any equivalent in Heaven) - and that after death we will move-on to becoming de facto sexless.

(I regard this tendency to abstraction, sexlessness and not-incarnation of God, as the deep reason why mainstream Christians have found themselves unable coherently to defend real marriage against the mind-warping yet officially-mandatory literal-insanity that is SSM and the trans-agenda - and whatever is planned to come next...)


Anyway, to pull the argument together; my contention is that the truth and future of Christianity is to regard God as a dyad of Heavenly Parents - and to regard the sexes - man and woman - as ultimate, metaphysical realities, which underpin all of creation from eternity.

What is God like? What does God want from creation?

I have had the privilege of reading in manuscript a collection from letters from William Arkle to a young friend and spiritual-disciple/ -colleague; spanning from the middle 1980s to near the end of Arkle's life (in 2000).  

These have provoked all kinds of thoughts on that vital matter which Arkle 'made his own': questions on the nature of God, and God's hopes and aims in creation. 

 

For all Christians; God is (or should be) a person, not an abstraction. 

We are God's children (that is related-to, descended-from God); and God loves us. 

Beyond this, there are differences of understanding; and there is indeed a difference in my understanding and that of Arkle. More precisely, in his early work, Arkle described what I believe is true: God is a dyad, Father and Mother in Heaven: God is our Heavenly Parents. 

This is also the understanding of Mormon thelogy; and it natually goes-with an understanding of each Human Being as - in his or her eternal primordial essence, and eternally in future - either a man, or a woman (never neither, nor both). 

This metaphysical reality does not necessarily map-onto what may happen to an individual man or woman in terms of biological sex and/or sexuality during this mortal, earthly incarnation - which has the nature of a temporary experience for us to learn-from. My understanding is that - whatever happens 'superficially' in mortal life - each of us eternally has been, and eternally will be, essentially (by the nature of our true and divine self) a man or a woman eternally. 

 

But by the 1980s, Arkle had apparently moved to a view of God as primarily both man and woman simultaneously (a He/ She); and this goes-with an idea of sex as relatively superficial to the essence of Human Being - and with reincarnation as potentially alternating (as 'required') between the sexes; neither being the essence of a Human Being. Or with sex (and marriage, and procreation) being 'discarded' when a Human Being has reached Heaven

(Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield also share this understanding of sex. And it also goes-with an understanding of spirit-form as both the past and future of Man: Man was a spirit, will become a spirit; and physical incarnation is an intermediate stage, for experience and learning only.)

Whereas by contrast; my view (and the Mormon view) is that physical incarnation is higher than spirit life: bodies are better. Including that God is embodied - i.e. God is physically-bounded and in the same as human form (or rather, causally vice versa); God is not an omnipresent spirit. 

So, for me, God is embodied, and indeed two bodies: God is a dyad: Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother.

This matter of "what God is like", whether God is One or Two, is a vital to our metaphysics; because it decides our understanding of why God embarked on creation. Our inferred motivation of a unitary, solo God is very different from that of two Heavenly Parents, distinct but united by their mutual love. 

 

(Traditional Christian theology has it that God was utterly self-sufficient, and without needs (or desires). Trinitarian theology makes the love of this unitary God also be (somehow) sub-divided into the mutual love of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. But either way, the creation of Men and everything-else by God is an ultimately gratuitous act - and Not a matter of God seeking greater satisfaction, Not a matter of God needing, wanting, desiring or yearning. I personally reject this line of reasoning on the basis that God is a person, like our-selves in an ultimate sense; and that God does have passions, wishes. In particular I regard Love as the primary passion of God, and I regard Love as having in its nature many aspects such as needing, wanting, desiring and yearning.) 

Arkle's inference, based on his understanding of God as unity and a real person - is that God before creation must have been lonely and bored. God's greatest need was for things to do, and people to do-things-with. 

From this, Arkle derives an understanding that creation is essentially a matter of overcoming loneliness and boredom; of creating Beings who can develop to become like himself, and of creating many other things 'for fun'. 

Arkle encapsulates this in the ideas that in making Men who can evolve towards full-deity God is literally Making Friends; creating Beings who - it is hoped - will become 'friends' at the same divine level as God. And secondly that all the other Beings of Creation are made as a kind of ultimate 'play'. So that for Arkle life is - at its highest, most divine - created life is about play with and among friends.  

It should be noted - and this comes through repeatedly in these late Arkle letters, that loneliness and boredom are negative motivations - therefore creation is a kind of cosmic therapy for the unitary God.  

My own view, based on God as the loving-dyad of celestial husband and wife, of Heavenly Parents; is that creation is a natural consequence of the existential nature of Love. Creation is the positively-motivated overflow and expansion of spousal love. 

This is nothing esoteric, but a motivation that has been experienced (albeit perhaps partially and temporarily, as is the nature of mortal life) by countless husbands and wives through Man's history. Parental love seeks its own increase through children; and through a creative attitude to life and living.

In different words, the spontaneous expression (consequence) of parental love; is to co-create (in harmony with God's already in-progress creating) an open-ended, expanding-and-harmonious world; in which the family lives creatively. 

In a nutshell, God is like the perfection of married love, and what God wants from creation is analogous to what a loving husband and wife want, given a husband and wife who are themselves members of loving families. 

Thus (in an eternal persepctive) God wants children, and loving-developing family relations; wants new family and friends (i.e. permanent friends, maintained in harmony by analogously-familial love); wants a whole created-world of other (increasingly creative) Beings of many kinds, natures, motivations - but (ideally, and in actuality in Heaven) all maintained in Harmony by their mutual love. 

 

Why categorize evil? Why categorize Good?

 A couple of profoundly-clarifying posts by WmJas Tychonievich have led to the following thoughts. 

Good and evil are not symmetrical - not mirror images - because Good is positive divine creation; while evil is 'various ways' of being opposed to divine creation. Thus Good is primary, and evil cannot exist without Good. 

(This is why I habitually capitalize Good, and make evil lower case - subliminally to emphasize their qualitative difference in kind.)

The reason that I have suggested considering evil as Luciferic, Ahrimanic and Sorathic is a matter of expediency - it need not reflect and actual categories or distinction in the real world. It is a (more, or less) useful way of understanding evil. 

The reason for doing it was becuase Ahrimanic evil was not being recognised consciously as evil. I think most people spontaneously feel that Ahrimanic evil is indeed evil - i.e. the modern workplace and mass media makes people feel bad (e.g. afraid, resentful, despairing). 

But they do not consciously recognize it as necessarily evil by nature and motivation because they do not understand that Good is rooted in God and divine creation; and even if Christians have become transfixed by ancient lists and exemplars of Luciferic sins (murder, torture, rape, arson, theft etc) which are not what it at issue in a totalitarian Matrix of omni-surveillance and micro-control. 

OK so much for evil; but why divide and differentiate Good? I think that a categorization of Good ought to reflect actual, natural reality - rather than being merely expedient. 

And this seems especially important in this Ahrimanic age, when we so often categorize to kill: categorize in order to destroy that which is alive, organic, conscious, purposive...

Lists of virtues, laws of behaviour... these Now (however it was in the past) function to short-circuit thinking from our real and divine self - and to make us bureaucratic functionaries, being instructed by checklists and flow-charts. 

All language, and all concepts, are merely 'models' of real-reality; but we should only be categorizing Good in so far as this is really based-on the categories of real-reality. 

Good is rooted in divine creation, which is rooted in love - so Good is ultimately a unity of motivation. For a Christian Love is Good and it is the single Good.  

Indeed, the purpose of Jesus making possible our resurrection to eternal life is that we may each become able to contribute, each in our unique way - from our unite nature, to the single harmony of many unique goods - to help-make a creation that is always (but always differently and changing) Good. 

But WmJas reminds me that (as we both know, from our acceptance of Joseph Smith's Mormon revelations) behind the integrated harmony of divine loving creation are Two divine beings: our Heavenly Father and Mother. 

God is a dyad, and the single harmony of creating comes from the love of our Heavenly Parents; who are therefore, two qualitatively-different kinds of being that is Good. 

In a sense Heavenly Father and Mother can each be understood (i.e. can be abstractly modelled in language) as what Wm terms Ahuric /Seeking-Good  and Devic Avoiding-evil; or active versus passive* Good - or (as I now think of them) man-good and woman-good.  

Mormon theology has it that sexual difference (male and female) is an essential characteristic of individual pre-mortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose. God the Father is not a self-sufficient 'monad' of Goodness. Instead - God is two kinds of Goodness. 

Instead "God" is a dyad of Heavenly parents, a man and a woman. It is their love (and love is always between Beings) that is the cause of creation: thus all creation is loving-creation. 

(I will now modify, summarize and expand on some comments from Wm Jas.) 

This implies that there are two complementary types of good. No being, no person (not even Jesus) can fully embody both. And, as Wm says, Jesus was indeed an exemplar of positive, active Good - but not so for the negative, passive* kinds of Good (which are instead represented in Catholic Christianity by the figure of Mary his mother). 

Since sexual difference is an essential pre-mortal characteristic. This difference comes before observable chromosomes, hormones, genitalia, motivations, abilities and behaviours. Sexual difference therefore reflects a fundamental division of primordial Human Beings - into promordial men, who are (insofar as they individually are Good) are orientated towards positive Good; and women who are orientated towards the avoidance of evil.

And that causal primary division of ultimate nature is usually reflected, or approximated, in the 'sexual dimorphism' of anatomy, physiology and behaviour of mortal incarnate humans. 

(...Remembering that this mortal life is individually tailored for our unique personal learning requirements - so no specific generalizations apply universally.) 

In sum: it is legitimate to state that really there are two qualitatively different kinds of Good - and that these are the two characteristic Goods of our Heavenly Parents. These are reflected in their Heavenly Children as we observe them - mortal men and women; and will be reflected in Heaven. 

That is the reality - and we can then summarize, model, and in general try to capture these reality-differences in language - but these linguistic descriptions will never be more that partial and distorted representations. 

The reality is in the distinction between the two persons of our Heavenly Father and Mother.

*Passive and negative are wrong terms - for reasons described in the comments. In truth, I think the distinctive complementary qualities of good in a man compared with a woman are irreducible; because this sexual difference of human Beings is primary (hence irreducible). 

The impulse and motive for divine creation

Kristor at the Orthosphere has written a post in response to mine of yesterday and others by Francis Berger - that asks several questions. These seem to require and deserve a more extensive elucidation than can be done in comments, including an expansion of underlying metaphysical assumptions; so here it is. 

This procedure distorts my metaphysical views, because they are being expressed in response to Kristor's framework of ultimate assumptions - so that, even when I try to elucidate - means that my account is fragmentary and seen from an alien angle. But maybe this is the best that can be managed in the circumstances. 

(Obviously, I usually and by preference express my metaphysical ideas in their own terms, trying to make a model or paint a picture of how reality is structured and proceeds.)

 

From Kristor is in italics - edited by me; my responses follow BC: 

The situation prior to creation that Bruce describes is already a world: a disharmonious congeries of eternal conscious selves, purposive beings who suffer affects, who feel, want, act, and so on, 

BC: That is a correct description of my views

who relate to and influence each other (so that they can love, or not), all more or less ordered to a good, which apparently they can all more or less recognize, and to which they are more or less attracted. 

BC: No. Before creation there is no such interaction or harmonization. 

They are from eternity past together in a temporal – and so, presumably also spatial – milieu, in which they have and prosecute lives, but only messily. 

BC: Sort of... but before creation there is no comparison by which their autonomous lives can be called messy. 

Thus they can apprehend each other, and God, and his creative plan; they can find it attractive, can want to participate in it, and can then actually do so. 

BC: No. I regard the above description as happening after creation has been initiated. 

The question then arises, what is the reason of this world that was running along from eternity past, all on its own, before one of its constituents got started on his creative project – or after, for that matter? If we answer that there is no prior reason it is what it is, that its eternal existence is a brute fact, we have admitted that it is fundamentally unintelligible; for, what has no sufficient reason to be what it is cannot be reasonable, either in whole or in part: for, brute facts are utterly inscrutable, in principle, thus even to themselves. 

BC: Correct. Before creation there can be no reasons, except internally - "privately", within beings. Things Just Are.  

What is not reasonable cannot be a world, or for that matter any such thing as the items we find all around us, and in us. It can be rather only just stuff happening for no reason: the chaos of Democritean atomism, but with the atoms all sentient, solipsistically. 

BC: Yes, pretty much a correct summary- except that having sentient beings/ "atoms" makes all the difference. Divine creation is (pretty much) the transformation from solipsistic to ongoing-creation - insofar as creation has happened (which changes through time, because creation is linear and sequential).  

If we say that this world prior to creation has no cause because it is necessarily what it is, then every detail of it must be necessary; in which case there is in it no freedom, for it is a spatiotemporally extended block, in which nothing really moves or acts, or therefore is. 

BC: No, this is wrong. "Necessity" does not come into it when things Just Are. Things really "move" but only within beings, not between beings. 

What we end up with then is either the pure chaos of brute unintelligible fact, and no world, or else the wholly determined motionlessness of universal necessity. 

BC: No, neither of these alternatives; because they are regarding the primordial beings as if unalive. Starting with beings rather than "things" makes all the difference. 

There is of course a third option: the classical metaphysics of Nicene Christianity, in which God as uniquely eternal and necessary is the sufficient reason for all being, including his own: not a brute fact, but on the contrary the perfectly intelligent and thus intelligible fact, in whose light all other things are intelligible, at least in principle, so that knowledge is possible; and in which creatures are not eternal, but rather contingent upon God, so that as contingent they can change, act, suffer, move, love, learn, grow, understand and be understood, and so forth. 

BC from now onwards: 

This leads on to consider God's motivation for creation.

If God is a unity, there can be no motive for anything. Such a God Just Is. 

But my understanding is that God is a dyad of Heavenly Parents - Heavenly Father and Mother. My understanding is that it is the love between our Heavenly Parents that is the motivation for creation - in a way closely analogous to the spiritually-understood way that love between two (ideal) loving human beings may lead to the choice of initiating pro-creation - that is having children who are loved; and beginning what may be an extended family.

(Of course, mortal human parents are born as already part of an extended and (ideally) loving family. But I am here talking about how this all began.) 

Creation is therefore a concept that arises from love, and includes procreation as well as all the other many ways in which loving relationships between beings of all kinds may become.  

To put matters very simply: there is a Timeline for creation. The primordial situation of autonomous and not-relating beings becomes creation as a consequence of our Heavenly Parents meeting, becoming mutually aware, and committing themselves to eternal love. 

Our Heavenly Parents thus became God, and creation began by God's "interventions" on primordial reality; and to the extent that primordial beings opt-in to live by love. 

This was not the original situation of reality, there was a time when it happened, and it might not have happened. 

Furthermore, beings are usually only partly capable of love; and presumably some beings are incapable of love (and therefore do not participate in creation). 

Thus God's primary creation is a mixed state of love, and not-love. 

And it is this deficit in primary creation that led to the need for Jesus Christ and the Second Creation, "needed" because Jesus completes the work of creation by enabling Heaven which is the eternal situation of beings living by love; leaving-behind other and evil motivations at resurrection.

**

By Contrast: Orthodox-traditional "Nicene" Christianity perhaps needs to posit a motive for creation - a motive for God creating rather than not; and therefore (sometimes) posits an analogous impetus for creation in the love of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost - each for the other. 

It is the differences-between the Trinity that enable the love that leads to creation...

However this explanation is made confusing/ incoherent by also insisting that the Trinity are not only different from each other, but also simultaneously the same as each other (because there is only one God). 

(This is required by the insistence on a monotheistic Omni-God creating ex nihilo - such a God cannot be internally subdivided.) 

And furthermore; ortho-trad theology has it that that the "process" of creation (and of love among the Trinity) happens outside of time - so creation always-was-and-is; so there is no "Timeline" of creation. All that is now, ever was and shall be. 

And this is the point at which orthodox Christianity reaches its particular It Just Is assumption - explanations stop at this point.

All metaphysics must reach this point, sooner or later - the point at which we must make assumptions regarding the ultimate nature of reality. 

The goal (as I see it) is to become aware of where this point is reached, to acknowledge this; and to know that here we are indeed making assumptions... 

Which activity is (I suggest) properly called "metaphysics" 

Ultimate metaphysics and Mother in Heaven

In understanding metaphysics using the deepest and most spontaneous kind of explanation; I need to dispense with mathematics, physics and 'science' in general.

My aim is something much more like those Ancient Egyptian myths of primal beings - gods and titans emerging from chaos; or the folk stories about 'totem animals'... Instead of particles and forces we have beings with motivations.

As I have previously posted I have a personal intuition/ revelation that confirms the Mormon teaching (independently endorsed by William Arkle) that God is both Father and Mother (a 'dyad' - complementary - the whole God consisting of an eternal union of man and woman).

The implications are tremendous, and only incrementally becoming clear to me.

One is that this is the truth behind the principle of 'polarity' as articulated by Coleridge and clarified by Barfield. 'Polarity' is a concept derived from the physical sciences - hence is only a model: the reality is our Heavenly Parents.

Thus, the two interdependent forces - centrifugal and centripetal - about which Coleridge talks; and from the interaction of which, all may be derived in a dynamic and self-renewing way; are actually the primal man and woman.

If we ask what is the difference between the Father and Mother, we have actually taken a step away-from the primary reality, because our answer can only be in terms of abstract qualities - whereas our  divine parents are the irreducible units from-which all else (including all abstractions) are derived.

Our Heavenly parents are what they are. While we can know and understand them empathically, by direct intuition - because we are their children and of the same kind - we must (in the attempt to communicate) resist the false temptation to describe them in terms of lesser qualities, or to analyse them as quantities - and then to regard these partial, distorted, abstracted descriptions as the reality.

Heavenly Father and Mother differ; qualitatively and complementarily (to make a living unity in-time); but this difference can't be captured by a static, structural 'personality description'. 

Creation is the consequence of their love; and that is why love is (as the Fourth Gospel tells us) the prime relationship in the universe of creation. Nothing is more important than love; because love (between our Heavenly parents) is the causal basis and reason for all of creation (including, of course, the creation of ourselves, as children of God).

Having reached this point; it seems very important to pay more attention to both Father and Mother in the nature of God; this duality is neglected yet must be of prime importance. If this was physics, we would not neglect one of a polarity - how much more important when it comes to God.

Indeed, this seems a matter of urgent importance.

Children do not feel a need to propitiate their loving parents - real Christians ought Not to regard God as needing propitiation

I have often written of the un-Christian, indeed anti-Christian, idea that God want, needs and demands propitiation. 

I have also often written about my conviction that the spontaneous and natural "spiritual knowledge" of young children was built-into us by God, for our guidance, and as the basis of that adult knowledge we develop from properly-interpreted experiences and (usually) increasing capacity. 

I was considering my own childhood compulsion to pray (I was aged about 5-6 years), and how such prayers were almost entirely propitiatory in nature: I would beg my god (who was, I think, conceptualized as Thor) for the safety and survival of those I loved; and these prayers "needed" to be specific for each person, were desperate, and were repeated over and over again to the limit of my endurance.

These prayers were a ritual (before sleep) needed to avoid the punishment of harm being visited on those I loved. 

And, although the ritual was done to avert harm, I was very unsure of its effectiveness. Partly this was because of a sense that if I said or did anything wrong, then this would at least negate the prayer; and it might even evoke a punishment for my mistake - such that just what I prayed against, would be inflicted as the punishment.

(This seems to have been a common view of religious ritual through much of history, e.g. in the European Middle Ages - i.e. that it must be done exactly correctly or else it would do more harm than good.)

My first thought was to wonder whether this childhood experience of spontaneous propitiatory prayer was a guide to the real nature of God. I wondered if the fact I prayed in this style and spirit without being told, might be evidence that this was the real nature of God and his relationship with us. 

But then it suddenly struck me that I never felt the same way about my own mother or father. 

I never felt that my parents wanted, needed or demanded "propitiation". Indeed, the idea never even crossed my mind. 

The reason was obvious: I knew that my parents loved me. 

And I knew this - it was my solid faith. 

Therefore, because my parents really loved me and I knew it; propitiation was utterly alien and inappropriate - and indeed would be hurtful to loving parents. 

The God of whom Jesus speaks is spoken of as his Father and our Father, as the ideal and perfect loving Father.

Of Course a loving Father does not want propitiation - certainly He does not demand propitiation, nor does God our loving Father punish his children for failing to perform sufficient or correct propitiations...  

Jesus is saying pretty plainly that the real God, the Creator, is our loving Father*; and asking us to have the same "faith" in God's love that a child may have in the love of good parents - as I had in the love of my parents. 

By talking of and to his loving Father; Jesus is saying that a God who is regarded as wanting, needing, demanding propitiation is a false God; because the real God (the "Christian" God, the true creator) is of an absolutely different kind - God is Jesus's actual loving-Father, and our actual loving-Father; and we should have absolute confidence that He loves us as the ideal and perfect Father. 

Many, most - perhaps all? - other religions conceptualize their God or gods in ways that make propitiation of such God/s natural and needful...

And there are plenty of Beings - including human-beings, as well as various spirit-beings, including demonic - that do demand propitiation...

But these are not who Jesus meant by God.

(It very often seems to me that many self-identified Christians {and especially those who profess ultra-orthodox or traditionalist convictions} are actually - albeit implicitly - worshipping the God of Judaism, and/ or of Islam, rather than the Father of Jesus Christ.)  

What this means is that self-identified Christians who believe that their God requires propitiation are making a very serious error. 

(There are many, many, such Christians - often among the most "devout" - and always have been.) 

And if they persist in this error of worshipping a propitiation-demanding God; and if they (for instance) build their core theology, their articles of faith, around the necessity for propitiation; then the God that such people are advocating is Not the same God whom Jesus was addressing. 

In a nutshell: The Christian God is a loving Father, and Jesus asks us to have the same kind of faith in God's love that a good child has in the love of his parents. 

Genuine parental love - by Man of Men, or God of His children - has nothing to do with propitiation. 

   

*Note: I should clarify that ultimately I personally regard God as a dyad of Heavenly Father and Mother for metaphysical (and intuitive) reasons explained elsewhere; but my argument applies the same both to God understood as Father only, and to God as Heavenly Parents. So, I have presented the above argument in traditional language.   

The metaphysical role of men and women in this world, and the next

Most versions of Christianity - and indeed of world religions - do not have any metaphysical role - that is any ultimate, fundamental, essential, necessary role - relating to the role of sex differences (i.e. the division of Man into men and women) that are concerned with the ultimate metaphysical nature and destiny of God's creation. 

This is evident in ideas that sex is often seen as merely a temporary and expedient factor of this ephemeral earthly mortal life; and the belief that sexuality and sex differences will be dissolved away in the life to come. The idea is that we will all be a single kind of being; perhaps differing in appearance and individual character - but most Christians (other than Mormons) do Not see men and women as having a different 'role' in Heavenly life.  

In this earthly world, there are all kinds of - apparently opposed - ideas of sexuality, which are nonetheless all rooted no deeper then observations regarding human psychology. Human psychology is affected by 'nature and nurture' and also by many other things such as illnesses, toxins, genetic problems (including, I believe, cumulative and cross-generational mutation accumulation), drugs and others. 

From a psychological perspective, therefore, many different conclusions can be reached; according to selection of the evidence and prior ideology. 

These range from sexuality being a matter of individual choice, and 'therefore' a matter of indifference to the bureaucratic state - to its being a relatively-sharp binary divide, with one sex as superior, and the other sex inferior; when judged by various criteria. For instance women are (on average and when interfering factors are controlled) healthier, live longer, and are more conscientious; while men are stronger, more intelligent and more creative.    

But here we come up against the fact that in this mortal life - in this material and entropic world - we are always dealing with change, with 'imperfection' and corruption (leading towards death and material destruction in general). So that we almost never get any clear, coherent and stable answers from analyzing the material appearances of things. 

Different attitudes are aware of different sets of data, and the same set of data lead to different conclusions - yet the prior metaphysical assumptions that structure this ephemeral world into data, concepts, and persons are themselves seldom acknowledged or brought to awareness. 

This is a particular problem when we are trying to understand ultimate and spiritual matters. Far too often these get mixed up with worldly factors, and worldly expediency, as well as with short term social and personal agendas. 

Metaphysics then gets reduced to psychology and social policy. 

When this happens, observations are being put before the assumptions that make them possible - which is incoherent, and an error. People then try to generate expedient (and changeable) metaphysical assumptions that seem to sustain whatever it is they want to do, how they want to live, what makes them feel better. 

The result is a mess! 

At the back of everything, the question towards which other questions lead - is the nature of God the creator, God's relationship with Men, and God's purposes in creation.

If, at the end of the line, God is one; then this implies that unity - i.e. one sex (i.e. no sex) - will be the ideal of theosis. 

However things may be in his earthly mortal life; the ideal of Heavenly life will be tending towards the God-like state of no sex differentiation. 

And if God is one and a man in His nature, then it follows that men will be ideal, and woman secondary. Our ideals will tend towards the masculine; and the feminine will be judged by masculine criteria. 

But if, as I believe, God is ultimately two, a dyad; and if that dyad is a man and a woman - then sex difference and sexuality is irreducible, and ideal. 

When one understands that the two-fold division into man and woman goes all the way down, then in an ultimate and eternal sense (not expedient, not temporary, not due to limitations of knowledge nor accidents of entropy) - both man and woman are ideal types, and (again ultimately) the role and behaviour of men and women ought to be regarded in itself, by its own role and criteria. 

(It is the primordial love between our Heavenly Parents that began creation. That is, indeed, creation itself.)

If God is a dyad, and if we are children of God; then man and woman are both finally irreducible; and each is incomplete in some ultimate sense.   

If God is a dyad; then the closer than men and women come to being like God the creator, then the more important will sexual difference become; until, at some point in divinization, men and women will need to become a dyad - if theosis is to continue towards God-like-ness.

Such matters of ultimate metaphysics do not have any direct 'applications' to mortal life. In other words; we cannot read-off social policy from metaphysics. 

On the other hand, some polices are ruled-out by metaphysics - such as the mainstream sexual revolution agenda, and the current gender agenda. 

And the metaphysical understanding does dictate that we do not unthinkingly, and in all situations, judge men and women by the same criteria. Men and women are both human, but neither is the totality of human; so there will surely be situations in which we need to regard men and women as different in kind. 

And when there is a difference in kind, it is wrong to assume that there is no difference, nor should we assume that both men and women can be evaluated and regulated using the same concepts or mechanisms. 

On the contrary, we need to be mindful that men and women are like two separate but intertwined 'species' inhabiting the same niche. While we need to do separate things much of the time and especially at the lower levels of expedient functionality; the more spiritually advanced and ultimate are our considerations - the more aware we need to be that men and women are necessary parts of that harmonious loving creativity of interpersonal interaction which characterizes God's creation as it will be manifested in Heaven.  

However we may be forced to manage affairs with expediency  in this temporary and corrupt mortal life; we ought, therefore, to strive for an ultimate understanding of the human condition which does not give primacy to either the man's or the woman's perspective; but should recognize that at the highest level there is a genuine and necessary complementarity of the two sexes.

In what way does God value Love? What kind of Love does he want from us? From William Arkle

It is essential to stop teaching morality in terms which can be mistaken for the philosophy of external and obvious valuation; of valuation which concedes that behaviour must be good if it is not ‘found-out’ to be bad. Rather must it be said that unless the inner aspect of one's attitude is healthy, the result of any behaviour will be psychological unrest and discontent.

One may succeed in the world and gain the adoration of many people, but if this is to fail to remain true to innermost nature it will mean failure in our own judgement of ourself and in the relating of our many parts to our whole nature. Since this is the root cause of unhappiness it is also where real success and failure lies and where one reaps and enjoys the real treasures of existence.

The essence of real religious and moral aspiration is not between ourselves and God but between ourselves and our Self. At the same time the monitoring activity of God and his many divine assistants is necessary, but not as a substitute for Self-confrontation, but rather to ensure that this condition comes about.

Aspirations towards God are therefore of the utmost value, not as a means of becoming a slave or servant of God, but in order that they can be directed towards the true goal which is the valuation of our True Self.

As we direct the love our children have for us in such a way that it enlarges their own nature and not in order to make them more devoted and servile, so our divine parents divert our love in such a way that it reflects back into our own essential nature again.

Love is therefore valued by God, not as something he wishes to possess, but as a positive expression of our highest attitude which he can receive in the spirit in which it is offered and then use for his creative work. This is the bringing of our individual nature to a condition of divine Self-consciousness.
Extracted from the close of the Chapter 'Education' in William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness (1974)

**

This is a passage which is easy to misunderstand but which I have found to be important. Arkle is clarifying the kind of God wants for us by examining the kind of love we want (or ought to want) from our growing-up children.

In other words, God wants us to give our love from our deep and true self, by an act of agency - and not from the kind of servile devotion that is implicitly based more upon terror than adoration. Arkle is saying that we ought not to fear God (any more than an adult Man ought to fear his father) - but to trust in God's love. 

Of course, a lot of our lives are spent growing-up - but it is important to know what is being aimed-at in full adulthood - not least so that we don't get into bad habits or have false structuring beliefs and expectations. 

Arkle here, as elsewhere, is suspicious of the traditional Christian emphasis on 'worship' as the defining quality of Man's relationship to God. While it is right and proper for a young boy to worship his father - this is not a suitable basis for a grown-up child's relationship with his father.

Arkle is suggesting that the same applies to religion - and he bases this on his intuitive understanding of the fundamental reason why God (who is in fact a dyad of Heavenly Parents) created Men (their sons and daughters) and everything else.

Arkle believes that the rationale for creation was ultimately in order that some (as many as possible) Men might 'evolve' and grow from our current partial and embryonic divinity to a full divinity on the same level as our Heavenly Parents. Therefore, our mother and father in heaven do not want us to get stuck in a stance that regards them as infinitely remote - but rather as finitely (albeit vastly) remote, and incrementally approachable over time. 

We probably tend to feel a superstitious anxiety about thinking or doing this; as if God was some kind of hyper-irritable and easily-offended tyrant; but Arkle is trying to reassure us that friendly affection and trusting confidence is exactly the attitude that God most wants us to have; as illustrated here:

http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-final-words-of-geography-of.html.   

See also a fuller excerpt of the above at:
http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-deep-nature-of-morality.html
        

The Dyadic Holy Ghost

Since I regard God the Creator as dyadic, our Heavenly Parents, Father and Mother (actual, and presumably eternally incarnate, persons)...

And since I regard Jesus Christ's marriage to Mary of Bethany (Mary Magdalene) as a vital and transformative aspect of His work of the Second Creation...

Then it seems to follow - and has a intuitive rightness - that the Holy Ghost is also dyadic, and a consequence of the eternal commitment of Jesus and Mary in love (their "celestial marriage"). 

I think this is necessary because ultimate creativity comes from the eternal dyadic love of our Heavenly Parents (that is, the concept of creation includes (and/or arises from) love, as it includes freedom and agency - as distinguishable but inseparable aspects).  

Thus the Holy Ghost is both guide and teacher, and comforter; and it may be that these aspects reflect Jesus Christ the man and Mary Magdalene the woman; after their death, resurrection and ascension. 

In other words (bearing in mind these are emphases, not separate domains), the main theme of Jesus Christ in the Holy Ghost is to contribute discernment and purpose in a long-term, strategic way; while Mary contributes immediate help, here and now, in a tactical way. 

Jesus shows us the path, Mary keeps us upon it. 

Of course this cannot (even in principle!) be proved from the Gospels; yet the account of Mary in the Fourth Gospel strikes me as compatible by what I have just said - and from other traditions in Christianity. 

By my understanding, Mary Magdalene makes five appearances in the The Fourth Gospel: 1, implicitly in Jesus's Marriage at Cana (a passage that seems clearly tampered-with, including by deletions), in the resurrection of Lazarus (Mary's brother), the episode of the ointment on Jesus's feet in Bethany, at the foot of the cross and after Jesus's resurrection. 

Mary's concerns in the latter four episodes are very immediate, supportive, "caring" - and indeed it seems possible that Mary had a role in the resurrection of Jesus in a way analogous to John the Baptist's role in the divine but mortal transformation of the pre-baptism Jesus into Jesus Christ*. 

I get this from the hints contained in the reported conversation between the resurrected Jesus, and Mary, when she was the first to meet Jesus after his death, thus.

John 20: 14... she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. [15] Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. [16] Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master. [17] Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.  

It strikes me that Jesus may here be talking of their future eternal union - to include the spiritual emanation of the Holy Ghost, available to all who follow Jesus - to happen (only) after Mary's death and resurrection. 

In very general terms - to include Mary Magdalene/ of Bethany in the Holy Ghost is a further development and explication of the deadly rejection of the feminine that afflicted Christianity from early-on (and which I blame of the monotheist philosophers who captures and continue to torment Christin theology!)

The progressively increasing emphasis on Mary the mother of Jesus in Catholic practice, I take to be a theologically-distorted - but nonetheless spiritually very valuable - manifestation of the reality of Heavenly Mother, and the wife of Jesus Christ. 

The fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary is mainly called-upon for aid and comfort in the difficulties of everyday living, fits with my understanding of the role of the divine feminine in general, and Mary Magdalene in her marriage-into the Holy Ghost specifically.   

Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, rediscovered the Christian feminine in God; but the CJCLDS have since neglected and suppressed this aspect of Joseph's revelation - and have chosen not to develop it, while never denying it. 

I am strongly of the view that an explicit inclusion of Heavenly Mother in the fundamental concept of God; and probably too a personal womanly aspect of the Holy Ghost; has (belatedly) become an all-but essential quest or project - for us, here and now. 

This is not something Christians can get off-the-peg or from any external source; but something each needs to work-through for himself - by the usual external and internal means of spiritual guidance. 

*Note added: This is easily (negatively or positively) misinterpreted in terms of divided stereotypical sex roles. I mean much more and almost the opposite; which is that the dyad of a man and woman eternally co-committed in love, can do something that neither can do alone - or, at least, one person can do less, and less well. That is something like a harmony of strategic purposive wisdom with immediate help. By analogy (very approximate) it is a bit like the benefit of being loved and looked-after by two people, a man and a woman, each with distinctive perspectives and capacities, eternally combined in love; who completely share divine purposes and method. This would be better than any conceivable single person, with only a single perspective and vision. That this is two persons creates and sustains a dynamic and growing aspect to the situation - whereas a single person would tend towards inertia and stasis. That this is two persons, rather than more than two, should be seen as an extra gift and potentiality added to the situation of single person - rather than a limitation.   

Is God's motivation for creation 'play' or 'love'?

If the primal reality of God is imagined before the beginning of creation, and if God is single and personal; then creation can be understood as God's 'play'.

This is made simple and explicit in God, the Player Friend; a rare 42 page booklet self-published by William Arkle in 1993, which I only discovered-about a couple of weeks ago, and which I am currently reading.


Typically (and valuably) Arkle boils it down to God alone becoming bored with a world in which everything was caused by himself; and from this dissatisfaction manifesting creation so that divine 'Friends' - that is, fully-developed men and women - could gradually evolve, and become genuinely independent sources of surprise and innovation.

As so often, much hinges upon the primary assumptions; and here Arkle makes the primary assumption that the beginning of everything - God - is a unity. When this is the assumption, then I think it is 'inevitable' that there is an 'arbitrary' quality of 'play' about everything in creation.

Reality is because creation is more 'fun' than no reality; as Arkle sometimes put it.


When creation is driven by something negative like boredom, and negativity is cured by the independent play of other agents or actors; then we get this kind of double-negative theology which I always regard as secondary.

Yet, if creation is dynamic, expansile (as I believe) then it must indeed be motivated by some kind of (negatively) discontent, or (positively) yearning.


My own understanding is different from Arkles, and is pretty-much the Mormon Christian theology; which is that 'in the beginning' God was two, a dyad, man and woman, Heavenly Father and Mother.

By this understanding there never was 'unity' - unless the unity is regarded as being divided in twain. The 'unity' comes from Love: love between our Heavenly Parents, which eternally 'binds' them (in a 'celestial marriage'). That is my primal reality.

The primal reality is therefore one that is dynamic, as love is dynamic; and it is one of yearning, as love contains yearning. By my understanding, then, creation is the result of an overflow of this yearning love; so that there be more autonomous, agent, independently-creative persons to love.

This is a familiar motivation arising between a loving husband and wife: the positive desire for children to expand the scope and possibility of love. The married couple's aspiration for pro-creation (and also to create a home, a family, ideally one that is ever-growing and inter-linking - with all that entails in terms of the context for such growth) is thus seen of a microcosm of the divine impulse to creation. 


The classical 'Trinitarian' formulation of Christian theology 'has it both ways' in asserting that God is both undivided-unity (with no sex) and hence of its nature static and self-sufficient; and also a triad of Father, Son and Holy Ghost (with no sex) - who are different enough to be bound together by love, hence dynamic and motivated to grow.

By this classical account; sexuality is secondary, temporary, inessential; whereas for Mormon theology sexuality is primary and causal; deriving from the nature of God - our Heavenly Parents. 

I can make no rational sense of classical Trinitarianism; but as a form of words, it covers all the bases!

However, for me, God must be either one or more-than-one; and my understanding is that God is (or rather was, primally) two. And these two were a man and a woman. And their love was the fount of creation.

Why is there something rather than nothing; or, what is creation For?

The above are examples of metaphysical questions concerning the fundamental nature of reality. 

And you can see that the question asked already presupposes something - there is no single ultimate first question. 

One who asks why there is something rather than nothing has already made an assumption that nothing was the original condition, and that therefore there needs to be a reason for something. This invites a response along the lines of explaining why a deity - that existed before creation - made the stuff of reality. 

I, by contrast, assume that there always has been something. Therefore, for me, a fundamental question is about the purpose of creation. What is creation for?

I am already assuming that something always has-been, and that we live in 'a creation' with purpose - and that therefore there is a personal God. 

I am asking, therefore, what God aimed at with creation: what did God want?

How did I come to ask this question, to regard it as fundamental;  - since I certainly did not do so form most of my life?

With such fundamental questions it is often difficult to recognize what you personally regard as most fundamental. 

Much of philosophy through the ages consists of "other people's problems", but not mine; it consists of trying to persuade other people (i.e. me) that there is a problem; and that such-and-such is the most important question. 

This is why so much of philosophy is irrelevant, and leaves most people stone-cold and indifferent - you must have experienced this? 

I remember first reading standard philosophy texts, and being repelled by the assumptions of what was fundamental - when my own concerns were very different. 

Philosophy came to life only when it addressed what I personally regarded as important questions. 

Thus Robert M Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was the first to excite me; because it addressed what my seventeen-year-old self regarded as most urgently important - and was seeking what I would regard as the kind of answer I needed.  

The value of philosophy comes from the excitement of reading a problem stated and recognizing a shared concern - a shared sense of what is important. 

"Here is a fellow spirit!" is the feeling - here is someone who who sees life in the same kind of way that I do, who experiences the same kind of problems.  

When I read the opening passage of William Arkle's Letter from a Father, I had just this kind of feeling:

My Dear Child, 

In the beginning before time was, your mother and I had a longing in our heart to share our values and the substance of our being with others who could rejoice and be glad about them as we are glad about them. So we considered how we could do this. 

We realised that to make living beings directly and ready formed was one way, and to make the seeds of this, and plant them in a situation which would cause them to grow in their own way, as a gradual process, was another. 

There were two things we had to bear in mind. We had to decide how important to us it was that these children were real and not remotely controlled puppets. And we had to decide how we could guide and teach them what we knew they would have to learn without them losing the position of judgement for themselves over the values which we already knew to be good. 

We had to think of a system in which we could sow these potentialities of our own being as individual units so that they would grow and realise their potentialities as actual abilities. In the process we would have to be careful not to dominate them too much or we would destroy their individual differences and the integrity of their reality. 

But we also understood that they would have to grow into a certain type of person if they were going to be able to understand what we had to show them and give to them. 

And of course we realised that they would begin their growth as our children, but that what we really longed for was not that they should be our children, but that they should slowly mature and become our companions and friends. For our longing was to share this undemanding gladness in other centres of being who were in harmony with us but who were truly independent individuals to us. 

We understood this relationship to be the most delightful, and one which was open to endless variations, and these variations seemed to us of the greatest value since they had an absolute creative context between them. 

I mean that when we had companions who had matured to this position, and had decided to accept your mother and myself as their friends, and one another as friends, then there would be an endless variety of possibilities for future projects of creation in which we could all share and which would give us tremendous enjoyment in the doing of them together. 

For we are not limited in any way that matters and there is nothing that we could not try out as an experiment so long as it seemed to us to have in it that integrity and affection which is the very basis of our nature.

*

I found the language strange - making, sowing and planting 'seeds', 'potentialities of being', 'centres of being' etc. - but these usages seemed to be eccentric and naïve yet sincere (rather than pretentious, designed to impress - as philosophy so often tends to be). 

The phrase For we are not limited in any way that matters was very striking and memorable to me - it's hard to explain why. 

But mostly, I was captivated by the idea of God - as a 'dyad' of Heavenly Parents - brooding on what was wanted from creation. 

Arkle's was offering a God-centred understanding of creation - which I found at first astonishing, then clarifying; finally absolutely necessary and obvious!

This is what metaphysical-level philosophy can do when it chimes with inner motivations and needs. It can lead the way to un-asking a fundamental question that is experienced as irrelevant; and pointing to another and much more fruitful foundational question. 

Instead of a picture of God creating everything from nothing; I now have a picture of Heavenly parents brooding on what should be the purpose of creation. 

And for me that was A Key.

 

What do I personally mean by 'God'

My personal definition of 'God' is The Creator. This entails that we inhabit a created reality - a created universe; and that this was created by a 'person'.

That definition is my understanding of what A God is.

While not universal, this basic definition is pretty widespread.


Then comes the nature of this personal God; which is perhaps unique to myself and has developed from a personal, intutive-revealed process. So I do not try to persuade others of the truth of it; it is up to each individual to discover such matters for himself. But for those who are interested...

My understanding is that God is not one individual but a dyad - specifically the eternal and loving creative relationship of Heavenly Father and Mother; our divine (actual, spiritual) parents.

This understanding also informs me of the motivation and method of God; in that the love of our Heavenly parents is what led to the purpose of creation being the procreation of spiritual children of God, and their developmental growth (via mortal life) into divine Sons and Daughters of God (as described in the Fourth Gospel). That is the motive.

The method is love: love is what makes creation possible, because it is love that transforms the primordial chaos into creation.

The marvellous originality and profundity of the Mormon theology of eternal marriage

I have given-up on trying to persuade others of the wonders of Mormon theology! Instead, I will here merely vent some of my enthusiasm. 

Even Mormons regard their theology as very-much subordinate to specifics of this world practice in the CJCLDS. 

And hardly anybody else outside the CJCLDS (although, a few!) is sufficiently interested even to engage with the subject - often because of ineradicable ignorant hostile prejudice. 

But for me, I don't know that I have come across any richer source of metaphysical originality and genius across the span of Christendom, as in Mormon theology*. 

One of the greatest insights of Mormon theology was that God (The Creator) is the eternal and loving marriage of Father in Heaven and Mother in Heaven; in other words God is a dyad, not one. 

Properly understood and explored; this can be an astonishingly rich insight into the fundamental nature of reality - transcending centuries, indeed millennia, of false antitheses between monotheism and polytheism. 

The Mormon concept of God can be the basis of a positive metaphysical concept in its own right (not some combination or compromise of pre-existing concepts); as such, it needs to be understood in its own right. 

The Mormon church (the CJCLDS) has confused and distorted matters - in this as in several other ways - by claiming that such eternal "sealed" marriage is possible among mortal men and women, here on earth; and restricted to the administration and approval of the CJCLDS. 

This is understandable, perhaps it is and was inevitable - yet we must distinguish the reality and truth of things, as separable from the compromises and practicalities of organizing and maintaining A Church, in this world. 

But this is not merely something that demonstrably fails in practice (since many sealed marriages have ended in divorce); but is clearly impossible in theory, due to the basic nature of human beings and our life in this entropic and evil world. 

The basic nature of this mortal life cannot be transcended by mortal Men - and the fact of Men organizing into churches. 

Making claims of the church's transcendent power, or that church rules for living are mapped onto post-mortal and heavenly realities, are simply false - because they contradict the nature of this-world; and contradict too the whole rationale of Christianity as entailing death and resurrection. 

We cannot make Heaven on earth - else there would be no need for Heaven.

(And Jesus Christ insisted that there was need for Heaven, and by his work showed why and how.) 

We cannot replicate the eternal realities of Heaven with our mortal minds and bodies - and claiming that we can, acts against the core realities of what Jesus did and why. 

Churches - and their rules and rituals - do not control our access to Heaven; and indeed, the behaviours of church members (since 2020, especially) demonstrates that nobody really believes that they do. 

(They are merely too concerned at the implications of acknowledging they don't believe - which double-negative is not the same as - and much weaker than - positive belief. )

So, to understand the profound truth of the Mormon theology of God, requires that Mormons (as well as other Christians) set-aside the confusions related to how such spiritual realities are crystallized into material and mortal terms here in our lives on earth. 

Yet, our aspirations can and should be heavenly and spiritual - even as we acknowledge that their practice is mortal and corruptible (not just corruptible, but actually inevitably corrupt-ed - to some degree, sooner or later - by entropy and death - even when not by evil). 

(Thus the desire and aspiration towards eternal marriage in the Mormon sense is a new (as of 1830) beautiful and life-enhancing one - and a vital corrective to the destructive (indeed nihilistic) "mainstream" Christian doctrine that marriage is necessarily a temporary expedient that is dissolved by death, combined with the assertion that "there is no marrying in Heaven".) 

This aspiration is true and good; although eternal marriage cannot be actually attained until after we are resurrected and have become wholly and eternally committed to live by love. 

It requires resurrection to be able to make eternal commitments; for the reason that resurrection is itself the foundational eternal commitment - i.e. to live wholly by live (and leave-behind sin). 

Earthly marriage, and the innate desires and motivations we have in relation to it - even when we may be unable to find it during this mortal existence, provide the basis for understanding the reality of Heavenly marriage; and of the original, originative, creative nature of God (originating, that is, in love - with creation, including but not restricted to procreation, understood as a manifestation of love.)

When Joseph Smith had his vision of the dyadic nature of God, he was both a prophet and a philosopher of genius; but when he tried to make this vision a concrete reality among the members of the new Mormon church, he was merely a gifted and able leader, a kind of "king and judge" perhaps. 

Furthermore, the nature of God as from a Heavenly marriage need not be, and I think is not, a template for every man and woman - past, present and future. 

Christianity is for individual persons, and entails that each individual person affiliates to divine creation; I don't see that this entails that everybody ultimately wants the same thing - indeed that would seem vanishingly unlikely. Since each is unique - surely there will "always" be genuine exceptions? 

(As well as those making excuses to justify special treatment!) 

And what we be the point of a creation consisting of everybody doing the same thing! Multiplicity would then have no function or reason!

Another of Joseph Smith's great prophetic insights was that Heaven was A Family, in a literal as well as metaphorical sense. And a loving family - even here on earth - can and often does incorporate many kinds of life-motivations and self-chosen roles, among its loving members. 

Resurrected and eternal individual men and women will develop what is distinctive in their original and innate nature - and this may or may not lead them into eternal marriage of a kind analogous to that of God, our Heavenly Parents and the Primary Creators, and thence to procreating spiritual children - in the way that Joseph Smith seemed to regard as the proper goal of all people. 

I include this, not because I am necessarily correct in contradicting this particular aspect of Joseph Smith's revelations - but as example fo how we ought to engage with them, as realities.

Realities we may know-about now, and experience temporarily and partially in mortal life; but realities that are only do-able in resurrected post-mortal life    

 

*For all its essential insights (at least, they have been essential for me) there are significant deficiencies in Mormon theology. Two of the most important are an incoherent and double-negative understanding of Jesus's real vital importance and the true nature of his work, which error was (apparently) inherited from mainstream Protestant theology. Another mistake - I believe - is also inherited; which is to regard the Holy Ghost as a separate personage from Jesus Christ - which (as with mainstream Christianity) makes the HG into a nebulous abstract entity with no clear provenance or role.