Evil is a subtype of Entropy, in this Pluralistic-Animistic divine creation

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. 

 

Harmony with divine purposes

From the Classical-Medieval era of human consciousness, we have inherited an habitual way of planning life according to a blueprint. We make a picture of how ideally we want things to be; and - obediently to the blueprint - work-towards making it, realizing it; often by making rules and following stepwise plans. 

This has been common in traditional religions. There was a more-or-less explicit model for how Men ought to be, for the trajectory of their lives, for the kind of society and how it should function. This mode of living was inherited and adapted by the early secular ideologists such as communists, nationalists, fascists - they worked towards some ideal blueprint by means of encouraging obedience to stepwise plans. 

It is still the usual way of proceeding for the rulers of this-world; and indeed over the past few decades it has been extended down to even medium sized human institutions, via mandatory (law- and regulation-driven) bureaucratic requirements for 'transparent' auditable structures - from 'mission statements' at the top; all the way down to micro-monitored, micro-managed functionality of all personnel.

But Man's consciousness has developed such that this way of proceeding has become first ineffective, then actively destructive. This applies to the ideals and procedures of traditionalist churches, as well as to corporations and government - these do not work as they used to work, nor as intended.

The means defeat the ends. 

The ultimate reason for this failure is that in the 'Medieval' consciousness era, Men did not (and could not) distinguish between spirit and matter. Material manipulations were therefore effective at shaping (including improving) Men's spirituality toward ideal blueprints exactly because the material manipulations arose-from Men's spirituality. 

For instance; until recent centuries Men did not (could not) distinguish between the consecrated host and the body of Christ; only around the reformation did Men begin to separate the spiritual and material aspects of the host, and ask what was the relationship, and 'how it worked' when the host was consecrated. 

Modern Man is much further down that path, and does not spontaneously experience that the material is a 'subset' of the spiritual; and so the link between what we Do and our Spirit, has become 'problematic'. The answer decided is not the point; but instead the fact that there is experienced a question to be answered. 

Now we can-not (because we do not) take-for-granted what used to be known unconsciously and spontaneously.

Yet, for most serious Christians, there seems to be no alternative to the traditional ways of creating a blueprint and striving to realize it. It seems to be the choice between that - or else a surrender to the evils of mainstream-materialist-atheism. 

This is experienced as the contrast between order and chaos - God's order versus the devil's chaos. 

Such a framework envisages human life as a static conformity to order - our proper life is allocated to each, and Goodness is to obey that allocation, and to behave as set-out by the ideal situation; and how to get there is a function of laws and practices - which it is each Man's job to follow. 

For traditional religion; the aim is the blueprint: each Man's job is to conform to that blueprint*.

It may be helpful instead to consider the ideal of living in Harmony with Divine Purposes. 

This sees the opposite of demonic chaos as being creation, rather than order. 

The principle of life is creation - not order; in other words we are intended to join-with and add-to God's ongoing work of creation - which is a matter of continually-repeatedly bringing our own selves and resources into harmony with God's purposes (instead of fulfilling a pre-decided role). 

In principle (as an aim) all of life can be conduced on that basis. Whenever we need to decide; we might do so on the basis of how our choices fit with our knowledge of divine purposes - and aiming to remain always in harmony with God's existing creation. 

('In harmony', that is, with creation - not with 'this world' - because 'this world' includes much evil intent, corruption and chaos - as well as creation.)

 

Such a life-ideal depends on each Man being able and willing to discern divine purposes, and the presence or absence of harmony between our choices and ongoing-creation. We each need to be able to know (or to learn) the relationship between our choices - and that harmony-purpose.

This is possible because we are each and all Children of God: that is, we have divinity in us, and therefore innerly partake of God's purposes; also because outer guidance from the Holy Ghost is available to all who wish to follow Christ to resurrected eternal life.

Yet it is also essential to be aware that this ideal of living in harmony with divine purposes is a guiding ideal - and not actually attainable; because this mortal life is ultimately for learning, not to be perfect. 

In mortal life on this earth we are learning for Heaven. 

Thus, we Modern Men are intended to learn from our failures (and successes) in living in creative harmony with God's purposes. This is in contrast to the traditional framework, where we were intended to learn from our failures (and successes) in conforming to an ideal blueprint of life. 

Now we are meant individually to be creative in our stance; whereas in the past we were (to some partial but significant extent) operating from the situation of being immersed-in God's creativity: the challenge was to conform to it. 

We can only add to God's creativity (as we are called to do) when we are no longer immersed in it. And creating in-harmony only becomes a problem (only something to strive-for) when we are Not already and spontaneously a part of God's creativity.   

Living in harmony with divine purposes requires faith; because the inner and outer guidance concerning what is divine purpose and harmony, is a direct experience relevant to exactly that specific situation in which we currently find ourselves. 

...And not, therefore, a consequence of either external instruction from some blueprint, nor a consequence of reason working upon evidence.  

This means that we may need to conduct our lives, make our decisions, in ways that violate both the blueprint and the dictates of reason-applied-to-evidence. 

Hence the need for faith.

*NOTE added: 

Traditional Heaven could be characterized as having No purpose, but only harmony. 

In other words (and deriving, probably, from Plato's conception of the realm of ideas) Heaven is not going-anywhere. 

Traditional Heaven Just Is. Because Heaven is perfection, there is nowhere for it to go. 

This contrasts with the idea of Heaven proposed here; which is that Heaven is the situation in which Men have become fully-divine and therefore fully in harmony with God's creative purposes; and thus Men participate (each to to the limit of his or her capacity) to the unending work of creation.

Is it Irrational to reject God?

There is a common line of argument in Christian theology - which is rooted in the 'omni' conceptualization of God as creating everything from nothing (ex nihilo) - which concludes that evil is necessarily irrational, i.e. evil makes no sense even from its own perspective. 

(This is sometimes extended into asserting that - therefore, sooner or later - all Men will 'come to their senses' and choose salvation; even those who initially choose hell or are sent to hell.)  

But I regard this as mistaken: partly because its premises (omni-God and creation ex nihilo) are wrong; partly because it fails to acknowledge a core aspect of Christianity - specifically, which is that it is an 'opt-in' and chosen religion; and partly because it fails to grasp the potential rational appeal of evil. 

To be Good is to affiliate oneself with God's will and creation; evil is to oppose this. 

To be Good is to desire to live in harmony with God and God's wishes and with other Beings who have made the same choice; to be evil is to set oneself against creation (and, usually, of other Beings). 

But why oppose creation? There might be several reasons that are rational - one is to resent the fact that God created thus, and not otherwise - and with these aims and not others.

Such resentment comes from our-selves as free agents, as (eternal) Beings who have our own wills and creative potential. Evil may therefore be rooted in a conviction that 'I' personally disagree with God, 'I' dislike Gods plans and methods; and 'I' therefore refuse to affiliate-myself with God's work. 

Such resentment amounts to a preference for 'myself' over God (despite that this is God's created reality - indeed perhaps exactly because 'I' am compelled to dwell in God's created reality). 

Consider: whatever the nature of my disagreement may be, the disagree-er nonetheless finds-himself already-within God's creation. 

Evil amounts to a preference of myself (and my desires and motivations) above God and this world he made, including the changes God made to me - without asking for my agreement!

Thus evil is correctly described as a form of pride - of regarding oneself as The Being who ought-to-be God. 

So far this might be a purely private 'preference', as leading merely to opting-out of God's creation. In theory a Man might disagree with God's reality, and simply desire not to be a part of it...

But in practice, much evil is also fuelled by resentment against God. 

Because he cannot do what God has done; because he cannot' replace God - the evil Man (or other Being) develops an active dislike of God and divine creation... 

Because he knows that he cannot replace God, he reacts by the desire to destroy creation: the desire to destroy all that God has done and is doing; simply because it is not what he personally would have chosen to do. 

To be Good is to desire to live in harmony with God's creation and the other Beings who themselves have chosen to live in harmony with God's creation. 

To be evil is rooted in disagreement with this ideal of harmony; and to take up an attitude of opposition to God and creation - mostly including an attitude to other Beings that regards them as instruments of this opposition (because there is no reason to desire harmony with them), and the desire that other beings with will enlisted to one's own assertion as the legitimate creator. 

(Hence the manipulative and exploitative - 'means to the end of destruction' - attitude to other Beings that is characteristic of evil - albeit perhaps not universal... I could imagine an evil that was group-based, rooted in an arbitrary preference for a particular group of Beings - who then manipulate and exploit the other Beings) 

I infer from this way of understanding; that evil is, at root, a personal response to the facts of God and creation; and that evil therefore need not be irrational, nor need it be self-correcting.  

I assume that some Beings (i.e. Men, Angels/ Demons, and indeed any other of the many Beings of which reality is constituted) may choose to adopt evil as their basic stance concerning God and divine creation.

This ultimate choice to oppose God may be based on a genuine understanding of reality; and evil may therefore be an irreducible preference and choice of perspective - which means that such evil is both rational, and also potentially eternal. 

The progression of Luciferic, Ahrimanic and Sorathic evil; related to our loving-creator-personal-God, and to Jesus Christ

Christianity is not just about Jesus Christ; it is built upon several other realities:

1. We inhabit a creation - the world is created.

2. The creator is a God, i.e. a personal God (not an abstraction)

3. The creator God is loving towards all the Beings of creation (God might be otherwise, but is not)

In sum: Jesus operates in the context of reality being the creation of a loving (hence necessarily personal) God. 

Jesus is necessary because of the nature of creation: Creation takes place in the midst of primordial chaos. 

Primordial chaos is primal Beings existing without love - without coordination, without harmony; each Being a world unto Himself. 

This is why our mortal reality (termed Primary Creation) is subject to Entropy. Entropy is the spontaneous tendency of creation to revert to primordial chaos. (We experience Entropy in terms of disease, degenerative change, and the inevitability of death for all Beings)

Jesus offers the possibility of permanent and complete escape from entropy and the threat of chaos. 

Evil is the rejection of creation. 

Evil therefore came after creation. 

Evil entails the rejection of love, since love between Beings is what makes creation - creation is the harmony of Beings. 

The first evil is called Luciferic.

Luciferic evil is the assertion of a Being's selfishness ("my" self is all that matters) and the rejection of Love between oneself and other Beings. 

Luciferic evil therefore aspires to use (therefore not destroy) creation; to use creation in order to serve its own selfish will and personal gratification. 

Luciferic evil does not aspire to the damnation of other Beings (i.e. to make them reject resurrection into Heaven); it tends to be indifferent to the spiritual fate of other Beings. 

A Luciferically-evil Being, exploits ruthlessly and without love: desires that any and all other Beings will serve his personal satisfaction. 

In a sense; a Luciferic Being desires that creation will serve his will. This is why he is not against-creation as such. 

It could be said that Luciferic evil hates God (is anti-God; because God is loving), and is indifferent to Jesus.  

The second evil is Ahrimanic. 

Luciferic evil tends to develop into Ahrimanic evil; because Luciferically evil Beings band-together in mutually beneficial alliances, in order more effectively to exploit other-Beings. 

Ahrimanic evil is an alliance of the selfish. 

Ahrimanic evil is anti-God, which it inherits from Luciferic evil; and Ahrimanic evil is in addition anti-Jesus. 

Thus Luciferic = anti-God; whereas Ahrimanic = anti-God plus anti-Jesus. 

Therefore the alliance of the selfish will organize, manipulate and coerce other Beings, aiming that these other Beings will reject salvation: will reject the offer of resurrection to eternal life in Heaven.

In sum; while Luciferic evil desires the exploitation of Beings; Ahrimanic evil desires the damnation of Beings. 

Ahrimanic evil desires damnation because it is more spitefully evil than Luciferic evil. It's desires are not just for selfish gratification; but also for the immiseration of others. 

It could reasonably be said, therefore, that Ahrimanic evil is a greater evil that Luciferic; wanting not just its own satisfaction, but the stripping of satisfaction from others. 

This is why Ahrimanic evil has tended towards depersonalization via bureaucracy. 

The Ahrimanic aim of omni-surveillance and micro-control is not just a positive aspiration for domination; it is also actively directed-against the freedom and agency of other Beings. 

Yet Ahrimanic evil of-itself does not aim at the destruction of other Beings: it aims at domination, not destruction. 

It wants a universe of miserable slaves.

(Indeed; including the "enslavement" of animals, plants, earth and heavenly bodies, and indeed the "mineral" world; permanent utter domination of every-thing, rather than to kill every-thing.) 

And the Ahrimanic desire for damnation of other-Beings is a consequence of being against Freedom and Agency. Salvation is, after all, an eternal choice for resurrected Men to participate in divine creation; which absolutely entails their agency and freedom.   

The third evil is Sorathic. 

Sorathic evil is anti-creation; it aspires ultimately to reduce creation to chaos.

Sorathic evil is directed against all kinds of creation; it is against not only positive Good, but also against Luciferic and Ahrimanic evils - insofar as these seek to exploit or enslave creation. 

Sorathic evil can be considered a completion of the motivational shift from Luciferic to Ahrimanic evil, which is a shift from seeking personal gratification by using other Beings, to a type of personal gratification that enjoys the utter domination of other Beings. 

A qualitative shift from hedonism, to spitefulness. 

Sorathic evil moves on from the desire to dominate the whole of creation, to the desire to destroy all of creation - including oneself, insofar as we all are products of divine creation. 

The Sorathic can be seen as a purely negative form of evil, found in Beings that have lost all capacity for positive personal satisfaction, and can only enjoy destruction.

To summarize: Luciferic evil is pro-creation and anti-God because anti-Love. 

Ahrimanic evil is pro-creation and anti God (anti-Love) and also Jesus (anti-salvation). 

While Sorathic evil is "anti-" all manifestations of creation - including anti- all Beings (including anti-God and anti-Jesus Christ); also anti-Love, and anti-salvation. 

Sorathic evil tends to chaos; but it is not pro-chaos. 

Ultimately, Sorathic chaos is the negation of creation; the end-result of being anti-every-thing...

***

Note on Sin = Entropy and Evil; Salvation being from both Entropy and Evil 

Entropy (termed "Death") and Evil are, together, what is called Sin in the Fourth Gospel. 

Jesus came to save us from Sin - that is, to offer us the chance to reject Sin eternally; live without-sin eternally. 

Thus resurrection into eternal Heavenly Life saves us both from entropy including death (as well as disease and degenerative change); and simultaneously saves us from evil of all kinds. 

Resurrected Eternal Life in Heaven in therefore the Second Creation; which is derived from Primary Creation but operating entirely and eternally on the basis of Love, and without entropy or evil - because Sin is left-behind at resurrection. 

Owen Barfield's concept of participation provides the basis of what is needed for Christians, as of 2025

Owen Barfield's concept of participation provides the basis of what is needed for Christians, as of 2025 and going forward. 

Barfield assumes that participation in Divine Creation is both our nature as created beings; and also the proper aim of created beings. 

Creation is in the direction of developing participation in the direction of freely creating in greater consciousness. 

More exactly, that this is our proper aim as Christian beings who have chosen to live by love and therefore in harmony with God's creative will. 

The reason why participation is so centrally and vitally important to Christians, is that it is by participation that there is creation in the first place. 

Creation is itself (if properly understood) a matter of participation; because creation is (as all Christians acknowledge) primarily a matter of love. 

For there to be love in this "relational" and personal Christian sense; there must be distinct beings each with the capacity for loving - and then love needs to be mutually chosen.

The cohesion of divine creation should therefore be understood as an ongoing process of harmonizing the motivations of beings; harmonization through the love between beings. 

In different words; divine creation is (partly) a matter of once indifferent beings, coming to participate-in the creative direction of God's loving nature; through loving God and loving one-another. 

It is this love between Beings that is the basis of the harmony that is creation.

But divine creation is also living, dynamic, continuing, increasing... And by the Christian understanding it is God's intention that Men become fully (and divine) Sons of God; share in the work of creation, and who each contribute something unique (because from themselves), new, and additional-to creation. 

Therefore, the direction of creation is towards greater consciousness and choice among beings - towards an increasingly-active participation - which change must be freely-chosen by each being. 

That is to say; there is a change through time from a mostly passive, mostly unconscious, harmony of creation in which individuals largely serve the divine will and each does not bring much new and additional to the whole...

And towards what must necessarily be a more collegial participation in the work of creation; by which every single being that chooses to live by love, is consciously enabled to contribute that which is unique in himself and which he learns to the totality of creation.

Explaining the origin of irredeemable, never-incarnated, demonic spirits

Following from yesterday's discussion; I shall put forward here an explanation for those beings who are traditionally regarded as demons in orthodox Christian theology:

The definition of which is that they are spirit-beings, that have never incarnated, and which are eternally committed to evil such that they cannot be redeemed or saved. 

There are several other kinds of being that might be termed "demons"* - and these might include currently-incarnated beings, or beings that have previously been incarnated and died (analogous to evil ghosts)...

But here I am focusing on beings that have always been spirits - and I am trying to understand and explain how any being might be outwith the scope of the salvation of Jesus Christ.   

I will first outline my metaphysical assumptions: those who want to cut straight to the explanation of demons will find this after the break: indicated +++

My metaphysical understanding of reality is that it comprises beings in relationships; and that beings have attributes such that they are alive, conscious (to some degree), purposive, self-sustaining and so forth. 

Beings are eternal, always have existed - including before creation.

All beings are unique: that is important. Some Christians (perhaps influenced by oneness spiritualty) assume that all Men are originally equal, and diverge - and then spiritually develop and converge towards becoming very similar, or even identical. 

But in contrast I assume that all beings began as unique (and un-cooperative) and God's plan of salvation is a matter of progressively achieving harmony. At first a partly-imposed and temporary harmony, but a process that is completed by the Second Creation, of Heaven; where each resurrected being has chosen to be remade such as to live wholly from-love, and harmony between unalike beings is then innate and spontaneous**.

That is: living-beings are the primary unit of reality; and "beings" include humans, animals, plants, as well as what are usually considered to be "mineral" entities and materials. 

Everything primary in reality is thus either itself a being, or part of a being. 

A further assumption is that all beings were originally spirits. 

Only later, and only for some beings, there may be incarnation into some material form. 

Many spirits have never been incarnated.  

Originally (before creation) beings may have been aware of each other, to varying degrees, and with varying attitudes - but each being is assumed to have been autonomous, separate, pursuing its own goals. 

Before creation, reality was a "chaos" of beings. 

Divine creation happened when God's love became the means of "coordinating" or harmonizing these already-existing beings. 

However, to become a part of divine creation, a being must first be capable of love; then secondly a being-capable-of-love must choose to live by, or from, this love.

(Because it is love that harmonizes the disparate beings, and this harmonization is creation.)

Hence the formulation "God is love", and the great commandments to love God and fellow Men - which can be interpreted to make the choice to embrace the loving purpose of God as ideal, and to aspire to live wholly from love of other beings. 

+++

Now I will explain the origin of demons:

All beings are unique. To participate in creation, a being must be capable of love; but not all beings are capable of love. 

A love-incapable being happens to be constituted that way. Such a being will not be part of creation, and cannot ever become a part of creation. 

Demons are here regarded as spirits that are incapable of love. 

For a being to be saved or redeemed includes death and resurrection such as to live entirely from love. 

It follows that any being constitutionally incapable of love, cannot undergo salvation, indeed, such a being cannot even want salvation.

Some love-incapable beings might remain passive, detached from creation. But demons are assumed to be those love-incapable beings who have chosen to oppose creation - for various motives. 

For instance; demons may aim to exploit creation, or may seek to destroy it. They may be motivated by their own pleasure, by negative resentment, or sheer spiteful desire to inflict suffering. Or mixture of motivation; and demonic motivations may change over time. 

But although capable of changing their behaviours; a love-incapable demon can never become part of creation, and can never seek or attain salvation through following Jesus Christ. 

The above scheme may explain the occurrence of those demons - traditionally-defined: demons that are spirits, have never incarnated, and are eternally outwith even the possibility of salvation. 

*(And some of these are capable of choosing salvation.)

**(An analogy is that the first creation is like a State ruled by a loving creator God with a mixture of coercion and consent; while the Second Creation is a perfectly loving family.) 

Man's creative freedom is part-of God's "plan of creation" - not an impediment

If we consider God's Plan of Creation; the usual descriptions are extremely "top-down" - and have the form of a plan of God's, with each Individual Man's proper role being to choose-to-follow that plan.

This kind of description implies a negative view of Man's free agency, or at most an ultra-restricted understanding; because (at root) there is only one predetermined answer to the question of "what should I do?" to fulfill God's hopes; and therefore Man's freedom becomes little more than the ability to choose wrongly! 

Thus if we take a top-down view of God's creation; with Goodness and truth coming from above; Man is assumed to have an essentially negative potential. Men can fail to do what is needed, what they ought to do; but Men cannot succeed creatively. 

(Because God is omnipotent and created everything-from-nothing; Men can add nothing that could could not otherwise be provided by God.) 

Therefore, by traditional Christian theology; Men are not supposed to have the potential to participate positively in creation. 

Furthermore - because of the idea of Original Sin - Men will have at least a very strong tendency to do evil; which understanding points either towards each Man's withdrawal and contemplation; or else points towards an attitude of self-negation and obedience. 

Obedience to... well, whatever is generally supposed to constitute religious authority (e.g. church leadership, scripture, tradition etc). 

If God is regarded as analogous to an absolute monarch, with a complex and detailed "blueprint" for our betterment, we are at-best God's servants - and each Man's job is to choose to obey God's comprehensive instructions, follow the plan in all respects (even though we do not and cannot comprehend it) - and then (so the theory goes) things will work-out in accordance with divine intentions. 

Such views may have been normal in the past, and were very-probably correct for Mankind, as Mankind was constituted in the past - when individuals regarded themselves as only semi-differentiated from their social group: their clan, people, nation etc. 

Yet ultimately, and now that we primarily self-experience as individuals; I would say that this traditional understanding has become a profoundly anti-Christian understanding. 

(That is: What was right and inevitable then, has become wrong and avoidable now.)

Indeed; a religion based-on obedience and the self-image of a servant (in its effect) leaves-out the work of Jesus Christ; consequently it seems much closer to a purely-monotheistic (e.g. Jewish or Islamic) understanding of Man's role and destiny. 

(To me, that is almost-exactly what A Lot of "modern but trad." Christians seem to be yearning for: I mean, their religion is a version of ancient Judaism, or Islam, in deep essentials - with a superficial top-dressing of Christianized language, and a Jesus that does nothing essential.) 

A Christian understanding should instead (surely?) take into account that this is a universe where Jesus is also divine, and Men are each - like Jesus - sons or daughters of God; and therefore one in which Men can follow Jesus to divine status. 

My understanding of God's creation is much more participatory - a "joint-project" of God and Men - and has a necessary and positive creative role for all Men who are capable of conceptualizing it. Here's how I see things: 

Creation relies-upon Man's freedom for its success. Our creative contributions are vital elements to The Plan; although none are indispensable. 

The set-up is such that we are intended to participate and add-to creation; and every-thing we do in that line is a plus. 

(Despite that the plan continues even if we do nothing to help it.) 

This is because the Plan of Creation is not really a "plan" as such, it is not like a blueprint aiming at a fixed and specific outcome; but creation is instead something that God sets-up and sustains; and this creation is inhabited by Beings (such as Men) each with agency. 

Not by accident do Men have agency!

Ongoing creation is continually being re-shaped - taking into account the creative activates of Beings. 

God's creative intentions are quite simple in their general direction: God desires as many as possible Men (an other beings) to choose salvation - that is, to choose resurrection into Heaven after death. That means, ultimately, to choose and commit to live By Love - wholly and eternally.  

And also, as a consequence of this attitude, during this mortal life; God desires that as many Men (and other Beings) as possible, should join-with the work of creation, participate in creation, whenever possible - which is done by thinking and acting from our deepest, real, potentially-eternal "selves" in harmony with divine creation.

If it is to be genuinely creative, then all thinking and acting from our eternal selves will be in harmony with divine creation - if it is not in harmony with God's creation then real-self-thinking is something that is either without effect, happening only "inside" us; or it acts against divine creation - is evil. 

That possibility is, presumably, where the fear of creativity, and the mistaken attempt to avoid it, comes-from. But avoiding creativity is not a "safe option": there are no safe options. 

Here-and-now, with Man as He is; we must be creative and participatory with divine creation, if we are to avoid assimilation to the world-dominating Agenda of Evil.  

In this mortal life; such creative participation is something we can only do relatively-briefly, and in a modest fashion; but it is-happening whenever we are living from our True Selves (not our superficial personalities) in a state of conscious commitment to Love of God and Fellow Men. 

(i.e. The two Great Commandments.) 

Every time this happens, creation is enriched (and permanently); and we also learn from such experiences what it is to live in Heaven - which experience can be a strong (perhaps decisive) encouragement to choose salvation: Because; only to those who follow Jesus Christ to resurrection can such loving, creative participation become full and everlasting. 

Why are the two great commandments *exactly* what we must do to gain eternal life in Heaven?

Luke 10:25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? 26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? 27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. 28 And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.

(See also Matthew 22:35–40; Mark 12:28–34.)

 

I am struck by how exactly the 'two great commandments' - first to love God and then your neighbour - fit with my metaphysical understanding of reality; and how they are said to suffice to enable us to enter Heaven. 

(Because, in the above passage, when Jesus is quoted as saying "This do, and thou shalt live"; the 'live' refers to resurrected eternal life in Heaven.)

My understanding of God's overall intention is that he wishes to enable Men to develop spiritually, to rise-up to become fully Sons and Daughters of God. This means to become fully divine; which means to dwell together in Heaven as a family (or rather many families, interlinked). 

And what do Men do in Heaven forever? My answer is To Create. Specifically we shall be participating in God's divine work of creation - including the pro-creation of new Men to begin the process of development. 

 

(This derives from my understanding that God is essentially 'the creator' - and that to become 'more divine' is to become more fully a participant in the ongoing creative development of God's already-existing divine creation. And my experience and intuition tell me that creation is the only activity which never palls, is always motivating and gratifying. Creation is also open-ended. Anything other than a Heaven of creation would both be dull, and would run-out and cease - on a timescale of eternity.) 

 

And God's purpose is understood in the context of my belief (metaphysical assumption) that Men are and always have been unique and different individuals. 

So, God's purpose entails getting this diversity of Men and enabling a situation in which these many and different Men can work together with the same purpose and harmoniously - forever. 

Because the many and diverse do not spontaneously have the same purpose, nor do they spontaneously get-along. 

The necessary purpose and harmony come from Love - which is why Love is the primary requirement of a Christian (and that those who reject Love, or are genuinely incapable of Love, neither want the life of Heaven - nor would be allowed to enter it.) 

 

The first great commandment - to love God - is about purpose. For Heaven to be possible, its participants all need to share the same purpose, be pointing in the same direction, have the same ultimate goals. 

To 'love' God means to love God's purpose; to accept God's purpose as my purpose. This enables us to have 'faith' in God, to trust him.  

Therefore, the first qualification to enter heaven, and dwell in Heaven for eternity, is that we share God's purpose. That is why is commandment comes first. 

The second great commandment is what enables the inhabitants of Heaven to work together, to create harmoniously - to coordinate a multitude of individual creativity into a great symphony. To do this requires, as well as shared purpose - as well as everybody pointing in the same direction; attention and loving care towards other people engaged in the same work. 

Love of neighbour means that we harmonise our creative endeavour with the others in our Heavenly Family, primarily; and secondarily with all in heaven. I see this harmony as a developmental thing: individuals love the same ultimate purpose, and also a love of neighbour - therefore individuals will create, and monitor the consequences of their creativity, informed and shaped by these two loves. 

In the first place, an individual would not create any-thing he knew to be hostile to purpose, or neighbours. In the second place, when an individual dis, inadvertently, create something that turned-out to be working against purpose, or interfering with the harmony between individual creations, then he would work to compensate for this disharmony, to mend the problem, to restore purpose and loving harmony. 

God's creation is therefore a work-in-progress; and as God recruits more and more resurrected Men to join this work of creation, it is essential that this work-in-progress be maintained. 

 

I see the first commandment as being a vertical arrow, pointing up to all Heavenly residents sustaining a commonly-agreed future, keeping creation moving in the correct direction; and the second commandment as several or many sideways arrows that tend always to maintain harmony in this upward pursuit; by mutual observation and adjustments.  

And this is why someone who is prepared permanently and irreversibly to endorse the two great commandments has everything that is both necessary and sufficient to enter Heaven and receive the gift of eternal life that Jesus brought. 

 

(Note: Jesus's role in this, is that he made it possible. After we die, and if we endorse the two great commandments; then we 'merely' have to follow Jesus to Heaven.)

Salvation and theosis compared - why there is, ultimately, no System

God aims at our salvation and also at our theosis. For God's ultimate goals to be achieved, that is the reason behind Creation, both salvation and theosis need to happen in as many individuals as possible.

(The plan works no matter how few individuals, but each individual who does Not choose salvation and theosis is a loss compared with what might have been possible.)


Salvation is when someone chooses Heaven: that is, chooses to follow Jesus Christ through death to immortal resurrection. 

Theosis is the process of raising the level of consciousness - from the immersive and passive to the free and agent.

There can be salvation without theosis, as when someone chooses Heaven but chooses to remain spiritually 'a child'.

Theosis can occur without salvation, as when a mortal Man rises in freedom and agency, becomes truly creative as an individual, 'grows-up' to some extent; but rejects Heaven.


Theosis is to develop consciousness of a divine nature, towards the goal of reaching a level of participation in the work of divine creation.

But without salvation, the attainable level of theosis cannot be high - because the individual's creation must be harmonious with divine creation in order to be taken-up into it and to exist eternally. Otherwise, individual creativity is a temporary and labile thing of men's minds only.

Harmony-with divine Creation comes from Love of God, Good and God's Creation - which for mortal Men can be simplified to love of, faith in, trust in, the (always potentially present, as the Holy Ghost) person of Jesus Christ.

The fullness of creation from a Man is when creation comes actively, personally, originally, as a product of our divine selves, in harmony with God's creation, that harmony coming-from our love of God and creation.


There is no System, ultimately. And we are coming to realise that.

System and Symbol were important to our ancestors; but for us they are losing their power and generality - a spiritually-effective system nowadays is likely to be personal, idiosyncratic - and that in itself limits the effectiveness of the system.

In practice, now; system increasingly equates with bureaucracy; so that dependence on any system will usually (and eventually certainly will) be captured and turned; bureaucracy will subvert then dictate symbol; insistence on specifci symbolism will lead to monitoring and control systems... And any specific system will converge onto/into 'the single linked bureaucracy' of Global totalitarianism.


So, for us, we must cease to depend on system - on pain of being drawn into the instrument of purposive (demonic) evil...

As bottom line, all system and symbol must be disposable; there should eventually be no system; because there is no system of creation (nor of love).

Individual creativity (like love) is a 'product' of A Being, not a system.

True, everlasting and universal creativity is an overflow of the self, motivated by love; harmoniously enhancing God's original and continuing Creation.

 

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.   

True personal creativity is only possible when originating from the True Self, in alignment with already-existing divine creation

When I think rigorously about what is required for 'true creativity' by a Man, then it seems that a pretty extensive set of pre-requisites must be in place; such that true creativity is only possible to some people, at some times and places in history. 

Human creativity is possible because of divine creativity: we dwell 'in' God's creation; so, for a Man's creativity to be real entails first that it comes from the Man himself - from his unique personal 'self'; and second that it harmonizes with divine creation. 

If creativity does not come from the Man himself, then what we have is just an instance of divine creation. 

Through most of history (in most places) Men did not claim to be creative, because their experience was that creativity came from God (or the gods). This was sometimes called inspiration; reflecting that it was breathed-in from some other source - from the divine, from the muses or whatever. 

So most of creativity in the past was not the product of an individual person - because the individual was merely a conduit for the divine; a tool or instrument of the divine. 

This kind of creativity is therefore real - and it harmonizes with divine creation - but it is not personal, its creative aspect is of-God, not of-Man. 

On the other hand; every-thing (every thought or action) which comes from a person innately, from his Real (hence divine) Self; is not of God, is indeed personal - but it is not creative unless it harmonizes-with and adds-to divine creation. 

Thus, most things we do from our-selves is merely personal, is not from God but instead a product of a Man; and it is Not creative. It is indeed anti-creation. 

In other words; of itself, that which originates from Man will Not, of itself, be creative - because it will be individual and out-of-harmony with divine creation. It will therefore be (to a greater of lesser degree) damaging or subversive to divine creation. 

In order, therefore, for a Man to be genuinely creative; he must be sufficiently an independent agent that he can generate thought/action from-himself (rather than simply being a conduit channeling divine creation); and top be genuinely creative, he must also make the choice to align himself with divine creation by a voluntary act. 

All independent acts of a Man that are aligned with divine creation are therefore instances of true personal creativity - but the magnitude of achievement varies between a world-historical genius; and someone 'minor' or altogether unknown, who has lesser ability and application but who nonetheless does 'make a difference' (and an eternal difference) - but a small difference, yet in a positive direction. 

Thus all acts of true personal creativity add-to divine creation, but the amount by which they add to divine creation varies hugely in accordance with the 'stature' of individuals. 

The business of aligning with divine creation is what happens when a scientist is devoted to 'the Truth' or when an artist is devoted to 'Beauty' - both of these are types of alignment with the Reality of divine creation. 

The long period of attunement, learning, practice and preparation which leads-up to a work of genius is exactly this process of alignment. Once the individual is aligned with divine creation; then his spontaneous creativity will contribute to overall creation. 

This model also explains why recent generations of supposedly creative people have the form of the 'evil genius' - in that these are people of great ability who are Not aligned with the Reality of divine creation; and who therefore inevitable do harm to creation. 

A metaphysics of creation is not a middle way between Christian monism and chaos - it is the only way that makes sense of what most needs to be explained

The history of philosophy from the Ancient Greeks until now has mostly been an oscillation between - or attempt to find a middle-way, a compromise, between - two extremes; which have various labels but any choice of these two extremes always runs into the same problems. 

One is that this is (or was) a single and unified reality (monism); which has either apparently split into a multiplicity - or else people have the illusion that it has split. Unity is ultimate, variety is merely temporary, or an illusion. One God created everything from nothing, The principle of the universe is order - chaos is contained within order, order will prevail. We Men are pieces of God, seeds, droplets from a divine ocean - but everything we are is Of God. Everything In Total is Good - and evil is temporary, a transitory kind of imbalance. God is omniscient and omnipotent. This mortal life is - by comparison with divine unity - utterly insignificant, and cannot affect anything that is eternal. 

The other extreme is that which supposedly derives from Heraclitus: everything flows, everything changes, order and stasis are temporary and illusory; ultimately chaos rules. All 'understanding' is temporary, contingent, or merely delusional. There is no purpose or meaning to reality - it Just Is. There is no God. This apparent mortal life is everything - but it is nothing, really... a succession of subjective impressions merely. The are no real values: no truth, beauty or virtue - neither good nor evil.  

By my understanding, neither of the above traditional extremes offer any meaning or purpose for this mortal life; nor do they provide a solid basis for our individual freedom or creativity, nor for the reality of both good and evil.

I regard Christianity as having become trapped by the metaphysical assumptions of monism, in opposition to the chaos which it regards as the only alternative. As a result, Christianity - as taught and exemplified by Jesus Christ, and described especially in the Fourth Gospel - has been distorted into a pre-existing monist framework which really does not make sense. Although by complexification and mystification - and by the false dichotomy with chaos (regarded as the only alternative) - an illusion of sense can be made and sustained by diktat, threats and authority.  

Yet there is at least one metaphysical alternative to the above two, and that is the metaphysics to which I have adhered for about the last decade. This begins with the existence of beings in the midst of chaos, and has God as the creator, and creation as the making of a world of harmony between beings, aiming at greater freedom, hence greater consciousness; and always increasing creativity.  

This harmony of beings is love - analogous to the love within an ideal family; and it can be understood as shared creative purposes and the mutual accommodation and help which is the consequence of love. 

Therefore is the two classic and traditional views are monism and chaos; then this third view is rooted in creation. We began with chaos as a background, but with innumerable beings already existing. Creation began with God, and it was God who made possible the cooperation (harmony) between beings that began to change the universe. 

Reality is neither and ultimate order, nor is it disorganized randomness; but reality changes, evolves, develops through time - and towards increasing love, harmony, purpose, meaning. This changes happens by the development of beings, under the influence of God. Initially being can passively be raised towards greater consciousness, by adding to their equipment  

The advantages I find, up-front, are that it explains the origins of evil in chaos, the nature of evil in opposition to the Good; the nature of Good in God's creation - and the movement through time from evil towards Good: as God began with a chaotic universe and then made Heaven, and (since the work of Jesus Christ) began to people heaven with those beings who chose to subscribe to the project of Good. Thus it also explains the work of Jesus Christ, and accounts for his essential role in the divine project.

It accounts for the reality of freedom in our independent eternal origin as beings; the spiritual war whereby beings (such as ourselves) choose either the side of God and divine creation; or else to oppose that. It makes sense of the possibility of beings such as ourselves becoming genuine co-creators (ie, bringing something new, additional to God) in the creation that God began. 

It provides a model for the meaning and purpose of this mortal life - its meaning in love which is working with the divine harmony, and acts of co-creation (even in this mortal life, but more so in resurrected eternal life); and as a time for learning and preparation for immortality to come.  

So far, this metaphysics of creation has proved itself absolutely solid in response to the tests and critiques of my interrogations and life-experiences. 

But this third metaphysics seems not to be understood by the adherents of Christian monism, or chaos; and the reasons is that they do not follow the implications of their metaphysics to their conclusions; but instead introduce 'unprincipled exceptions' or 'auxiliary hypotheses' so as to provide a pseudo-rationalization for (in particular) the meaning of mortal life and the reality of freedom. 

These incoherent elements serve to take away the demand for something different; yet they fail to solve the incoherences that have been evidence for thousands of years, and are so obvious to adherents of the opposite views. I mean, the incoherence of traditional Christian metaphysics is obvious to evil-atheist-'materialists', and vice-versa. 

The metaphysics of creation is only seldom held explicitly and consciously; yet I regard it as essentially the simple, instinctive, innate metaphysics of childhood (and, probably, ancestral hunter gatherers) that has been raised to a higher level of conscious awareness.  

It is the metaphysics of the Fourth Gospel ('John') - and implicitly what Jesus lived and taught - and completed by his opening of Heaven to Men. 

Join with demons or become mini-gods? Because we can choose, we must choose

The big, bad fact of these times is that people actually do choose their reality; and they are (en masse) choosing the reality devised by the powers of evil. 

If we consider meaning and purpose in life; then it can be seen that purpose dictates meaning; meaning derives-from purpose. 

Meaning derives from purpose - and purpose is external. 

We necessarily choose our purpose, because our purpose is outside us. Having chosen our purpose, we consciously derive meaning from that purpose.

Thus purpose is chosen. Therefore we actually-do choose the meaning in our lives; or more accurately we already have-chosen the meaning of our lives - but, that meaning can be changed if we change purpose. 

There are only two purposes, into which all others may be classified: with God, or Against. 

This has a precise meaning in that God is the Creator, and we live in divine creation insofar as our life has meaning (since the alternative is un-formed chaos, without knowledge or purpose). 

And God's creation is on-going, moment-by-moment - a living 'process'. (i.e. God is create-ing.) 

The purpose of a Christian is called 'salvation' - which means the choice of resurrected life eternal, in Heaven (with those others who have chosen salvation); to come after the transformation of biological-death. 

This is the choice to become immortal mini-gods (Children of God), whose life is participation in the work of divine creation. 

Therefore, salvation is bound-up-in affiliation to God the Creator - a wish to be part-of and harmonious-with ongoing divine creation. 

What we - each as an individual - decide is whether harmoniously to affiliate-with creation (this is called Love of God); or else try to use creation for our own purposes (this is called pride). 

If we pursue some other purpose than harmony with creation; then we are essentially subordinating divine creation to our-own-purposes. (Or trying-to...)

This is termed 'pride' and all other sins can be reduced to it - hence, for Christians, pride (in this meaning) is the master sin. 

In other words, if we want to live in Heaven, then we will put-first the harmony of God's creation and the people in it - and this virtue is called Love. 

(This is not something theoretical - but what all members of a happy and good family are doing; for so long as that family is happy and good - which, on this world, is always temporary and usually partial.) 

Love is the motivation for those who wish to live in Heaven as it actually is; therefore is is part-of salvation. 

(Someone who cannot love or does not love would not wish to be a part of Heaven; since Heaven 'entails' putting divine creation first.) 

It is the fate of modern Man that the choice to join the side of God and creation is unconscious. A choice that is unconscious, passive, will be a choice to subordinate to the group-mind; and that group-mind is (here-and-now) corrupted to the side against-God.

The group-mind of Man was not always and everywhere corrupted to oppose God and creation - but It Is Now. Therefore, in 2021, the default is anti-creation, prop-evil. In 2021, if we are ruled by that which is spontaneous and appears 'natural' - then we will be opposed to the divine. 

But the seduction to the side of evil is by pride. An implicit 'deal' is offered by evil, which is that: "We will support your personal purposes, If you you join our side." 

Such a person (and this appears to be the majority of people) has come to understand his own life as a matter of manipulating creation to maximize his own personal purposes or gratification.

This 'deal' ("join us and get what you want") is fundamentally dishonest - because 'joining' the side of evil is actually a voluntary submission; after which evil has no reason to honour the deal. 

Nonetheless there are many deal-takers - who are choosing the path to join with the demons*. 

In sum; the most important decision relates to our purpose in life - since this dictates meaning. If there is no conscious choice of purpose - then that purpose will 'naturally be dictated by the group-mind, which is on the side of evil. 

(In a world where God and creation are denied - this is the normal, default choice.) 

Yet we may consciously choose Heavenly Salvation as our personal purpose. This amounts to 'creating our own reality' - which (in a materialist world that denies life beyond biological-death) sounds like mere wishful thinking... 

In truth; it is explicitly taking responsibility for your purpose in living. 

*Few people apparently want Heaven, or do not put it as the priority - or else they do not, in mortal life, understand what is on-offer. But if mere ignorance of Heaven is the problem, we can expect that such people will choose Heaven after this mortal life. On the other hand, if a person is (by that point) too deeply corrupted by evil motivations, too deeply committed to his sins (sin meaning other, personal, priorities) then Heaven will be rejected. The main barrier to salvation is not ignorance but 'having other priorities'.  

The choices of spiritual development made by all Beings

The primary reality is of Beings who, at first, existed as individuals dwelling in chaos; until God's creation arose. 

The first choice was whether to dwell in creation, whether to join-in with the God's 'project' of creation. This incarnated mortal world consists of those who made this choice. 

But some Beings who dwell in creation desire to live in harmony with God's plans, while others live in opposition to them - for example, desiring to exploit their situation at the expense of harmony. So that is the second choice - to live in harmony, or opposition, with divine creation. 

This mortal life is what might be termed 'temporary creation' and is finite; such that every incarnated Being that inhabits it will undergo entropic decline tending towards death - in which the spirit will separate from the material. 

After the point of death, there is a choice of whether to move-on to permanent creation - which is Heaven - or not. To move on to Heaven; entails that each Being makes an eternal commitment to live by Love, and to reject all that is incompatible with love (i.e. sin).  

So that is the next choice - repentance and resurrection to life everlasting (i.e. without 'entropy') in that part of creation called Heaven; or to remain out-with Heaven in some way or another.  

Of those Beings who enter Heaven (by following Jesus Christ, who is the unique guide from discarnate spirit through-to resurrection), there is a further and ongoing choice; which is how far to proceed with consciousness. 

In other words, the choice of "how conscious do I wish to become?"

This choice applies to all Beings; but all Beings are unique individuals - albeit apparently the fall into broad and continuously-varying categories; such as men, animals, plants and minerals. (All of these categories are considered to be living Beings, purposive, conscious - but in different ways and to different degrees.) 

If we focus on Men; there is a choice of how much consciousness we desire to develop the over long term of eternity. The 'top level' of consciousness is to become like God: a full creator, albeit within God's primary creation. 

Lower levels of Man's consciousness can be understood as analogous to the different developmental stages of Men... e.g. baby, young child, pre-adolescent, adult. 

But not a permanent adolescent, that is Not an option in Heaven; because that phase meant to be merely transitional - which is why the powers of purposive evil strive to make Modern man desire to remain a permanent adolescent (i.e. perpetuating this desire can only lead to rejection of the divine).

That, then, is the 'final' choice of spiritual development made by subclasses of beings: choosing to become fully-divine, and a grown-up child of God; or some lower and lesser degree of consciousness...

I say 'lower and lesser'; yet this is the destiny and desire of some Beings; whose nature is such that they do not have a fully-divine-desiring disposition. These 'natural-children' will become Beings that - to some variable extent - will passively (and less-than-fully-consciously) be 'controlled' to attain harmony with the other Beings of Heaven, in a top-down fashion by God, or God's agents. 

Such are the choices. 

Consciousness of the flowing direction of creation

Dualism is essential to human functioning; because even self-described monists are actually dualists, with their duality being reality versus illusion.

However, the monist type of dualism is paralysing, because there is no guide for thinking or acting - any potential thought or action is equally valid (or illusory); all is equally beautiful (or vile), all is equally virtuous (or wicked), all is true (or false).

The tendency is towards inert contemplation and yearning - mortal, incarnated life on earth is seen as intrincially illusory, and therefore ultimately meaningless, purposeless, a waste of time ('time' also being illusory).

So we need to take care in picking our dualism! These fundamental assumptions have implication for the everyday. Indeed, one primary aspect is whether our dualism is a static or dynamic dualism - whether we assume that reality is developing or just-is, whether time is real or just an appearance?


Assuming we have chosen a 'dynamic dualism': What then should I do - here and now?

I need to become aware of the flow of creation - feel its direction and get into harmony with that direction, by aligning my own will with that of The Creator. This may happen only through loving The Creator - it is love that harmonises my wishes with the potential direction of on-going creation.


I need to know (to experience) where creation (that bit of it relevant) has come-from and is going-to. I also need to know my-self and how my thinking, scting, creating can be included in that on-going creating.  So I need both love and intuitive knowing.

Intuition is being-aware-of ongoing creating; and its meaning and implications for me - here, now. 


The key insight is that there is creation, and that creation is not everything; there is also that which is outwith creation - we could call it chaos.

Creation is made-from chaos - through time; in an on-going process. 

The intended direction of creation is towards greater consciousness on the part of beings such as you and me; greater awareness both of creation and of our own place in it: awareness of on-going creating and our own sub-creating within it.


This mortal life is therefore intended for increased consciousness - or else, if unawareness were equally desirable, there would be no need for bodily incarnation (we could instead be spirits); there would be no need for agency (since we could behave automatically, determined as a dependent part of creation); there would be no change/ decay/ disease/ death (because we would just exist in static harmony with creation).

Or, if consciousness did not matter; we need not exist at all; since our existence would then add nothing substantive to creation).

So, with an imperative of greater consciousness; there is always something for each of us to do: At any time or place or situation, we each need to be more aware of on-going creation and our own part in it.

How important is creativity?

Across eternity, ultimately - creativity is the most important thing of all.

This may sound to be rather an elitist and intellectual perspective; but that is the conclusion I draw from my life. First is love; and from love springs creativity. Love is the necessary context of goodness, a good life; creativity is what we 'do with it'.

Of course, it requires a considerable amount of definition and background clarification to explain what I mean...


Heaven is a place of creation, development, eternal growth. My understanding is that Heaven is the way God devised to enable Men to create with God, in the context of, and extending, God's original and continuing creation. Heaven is what enables Men to create with God, and with each other, in harmony and with the same goals.

The implied reference to the first and second commandments (to love God and Neighbour) is deliberate; because I regard creativity as linked to love, in polarity with love: an overflow of Love; just as God's work of creation is the overflow of our Heavenly Parents' love for each other; and the yearning for more people like themselves, more love.

Thus creation is linked with procreation - with the having and raising of children.


So creation is for everybody, one way or another. In this earthly mortal life, the creativity of a genius is most obviously like that of God; because the genius creates somewhat new from-himself. But procreation is also potentially a divine kind of creation - for the same reasons.

What of children, the simple minded, 'uncreative' people? Well, if the genius and the parent are types of active creation; then children and others may participate passively in the work of creation that is 'led' by others. If the genius creates from-himself in freedom, the creative participant chooses or consents to join-with this creation - not to originate, but to assist.


Different people are differently constituted - for some (for me), their nature aims to be a primary creator, as much like a genius as possible - at whatever scale and with whatever scope.

Others prefer to be part of some scheme that originates elsewhere, with someone else - like actors in a drama, or the builders of a great cathedral, or young children in a family.

The link to love is absolute - because primary creativity emerges from love. It is love that is the difference between mere novelty, or destructive innovation that tends to destroy primary creation - and contributes to the permanent and eternally-growing work of God's original creation.


Thus Heaven is entered only by those who love: who love primarily Jesus; and via him the work of God and other Men.

The transformation that is resurrection is enabled by this love (it is this love that makes a person and and commit forever and irreversibly to resurrection and its conditions) ; and resurrection into Heaven is what enables the permanence of love and the harmony of creation.

And - since evil and un-love cannot resurrect, cannot enter Heaven - it is love that ensures the indestructibility of creation. 

Why aren't people naturally and spontaneously wholly-Good?

It seems evident to me that nobody is naturally and spontaneously Good - that is, nobody lives wholly in harmony with God's creation and intentions. Indeed, we don't, any of us, get anywhere near this ideal! (i.e. We are all "sinners", as Jesus said.)

Why should this be? Why is it that - as created Beings dwelling in a wholly-Good-God's creation - we are not wholly-Good? 

My answer is that we ourselves are not wholly created Beings; but are instead eternal Beings who existed from before divine creation; and therefore we are now a mixture of God's creation and our primordial selves. 

Our primordial selves are what make us genuinely free Beings, and also what means that we are not wholly aligned with divine creation.

That we are "mixed" entails that some of what makes us is a "product" of divine creation, and some of what makes us is not.   

Thus we find-ourselves. We know from experience what it is to be in harmony with God's creative will; and we also know otherwise. 

At one level; this finite mortal life is therefore a time of choice; when that which is free in us needs to make a choice whether to affiliate with God's creation... Or not. 

We are what we are; and in terms of God's purpose for our mortal lives, this means that we not meant to be naturally and spontaneously wholly-Good - but to make this choice...

Do we want to commit fully and eternally to live in harmony with God's creation - in which case we choose to follow Jesus Christ to Heaven (that being the method by which such a goal is attained)? 

Or, do we want to disengage from creation; and return to something like the primordial state of isolation, non-communication with other Beings, a state of barely-conscious "beingness"?  

Or, do we choose to oppose God and divine creation... Perhaps because we resent having being co-opted into this scheme in the first place; or because we dislike our presumed role and situation in the scheme of creations, or because the price of choosing Heaven is too great (i.e. we do not want to live forever wholly by love) ... Or for any reason.

That is the choice of this mortal life; and there are no other options. 

Creation, Subcreation and Co-creation

The matter of human creativity - and whether it is 'a good thing' has profound implications for religious thinking, including Christianity.

There is a divide in religious thinking concerning the extent to which Men can or should participate in creation.

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At one - common among major religions - extreme; creation is a 'finished work', and Men cannot make any substantive difference to that fact. Reality is already complete, static, perfect. All creation is/ was a matter of god or the gods.

In such a world, Man's role in life is passive - he should (for example) obey the rules of creation, should worship the creator, should be grateful for having been created etc. But Man as a species, and each Man as an individual, does not have any essential - nor even important - role in creation.

Man may create something to god's glory - but it doesn't really matter either way; because, with respect to creation, Man is utterly dispensable: a mere recipient.

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If a value is accorded to Man's creative work, then matters become much more complex: indeed an utterly different kind of reality (and nature of god) is implied: that is how important the concept of creativity is to religion!

A view assigns to Man a destiny as sub-creator. It is intended/ desired, supposed that Man will be a creator himself (and from-himself - not merely as a conduit for divine action) within the already-existing context of creation. So - there is creation as it exists when the Man begins work, and there is potentially a larger and more complex reality which exists as a consequence of that Man's work - and this later state is conceived to be better than the former. It is each Man's job potentially to contribute to that better future.

By including creation among Man's roles, an element of real Time has been introduced - along with an element of Evolution. Reality is being seen as not a finished static thing, but as a dynamic process, perpetually unfolding as creation proceeds.

This implies that reality is not and never has been perfect - and probably never can be; which idea  strikes at the heart of some conceptualisations of the nature of god (in terms of his completeness, perfections and infinites). Because a god that asks for Man's 'help' in creation is a very different kind of god than one who creates everything in eternal perfection and coherence - and who requires of Man only that he praise the creation and live in harmony with it.

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This may be the root of that clash between the most-creative Men and religion - their deep-seated conviction that Man is not superfluous and that each Man potentially has something of specific and reality-changing value to contribute; the demand that Man has something substantive to do in his life. (In contrast with the perceived inadequacy of an eternity of passive, superfluous worship, obedience and gratitude.)

Naturally, this attitude is regarded as pride-driven by those who deny the need or possibility of subcreation, and may indeed be such - but whether it is necessarily pride-driven, depends on one's concept of creation and the possibility (or not) of genuine subcreation.

A philosophy of life which takes seriously the role of Man as subcreator is one which necessarily  extends to considering man as co-creator - because any real subcreation becomes a part of created reality; so any Man who subcreates makes some contribution to the totality of creation and is therefore co-creator with god (albeit within the context of god's original and primary creation; and himself being created and using created materials).

This affects our understanding of the nature of God; because a god who made us to be subcreators and then co-creators is a god who apparently sees us as potential 'friends' rather than 'subjects' - on-a-level of sorts, a god who seems to want us to have an increasingly-equal relationship with him.

And this is a long way from the utterly remote, all knowing/ all powerful god of some religious conceptions: and the fact that such gods always seem to regard active subcreation by Men as an activity always unnecessary, and usually harmful. 

Contemplation, Enjoyment, and Creation

It has become ever clearer to me that one of the convictions that underlies my metaphysical assumptions is that Man's creative ability is real; yet mainstream, classical, 'traditional' Christian theology has no place for Men to be able genuinely to create: that is, for a Man to be able to to add something new to to God's existing creation. 

This exclusion of the possibility of creation is a consequence of the mainstream Christian's understanding of the nature and attributes of God. 

God is assumed to have created everything from nothing (creation ex nihilo), and to live outside of time (such that God knows everything that including all possible futures), and to be omnipotent and omniscient.

Putting all of these together - for the mainstream-classical theology divine creation has-been done wholly by God, has already-happened; and is complete and unchangeable (since it is beyond time).   

From this perspective; there are two basic ways we can know - which CS Lewis terms contemplation and enjoyment (and which are described and explained in this essay, but without using the contemplation-enjoyment nomenclature - which distinction is explained in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, and elsewhere). 

For a classical, mainstream Christian theologian like Lewis, contemplation and enjoyment are the only possible ways of conscious 'knowing' - with enjoyment a higher form of knowing. 

(There will also be ways of 'unconscious' knowing - in the sense of animals, or plants, that implicitly 'know' many things, because they behave adaptively; but without possessing what most people would recognize as explicit, conscious awareness of their knowing. However, I believe they do, because everything does, possess some consciousness, of some type)

Contemplation is when we retain the stance of a separate observer - it is, in effect, knowing-about something. 

For a Christian, a Man might contemplate God, or the works of God - and this means knowing-about such things; by paying attention, having experiences, studying, learning.

A higher form of knowing God would be enjoyment, or 'communion'. 

This would be when someone (perhaps a Saint, or a resurrected Man in Heaven) inhabited the divine mind, able to perceive and know God by means of a direct connection; becoming joined-with God's creative will - but retaining one's own identity as a distinct creature (created individual). 

Man in full communion with the divine remains conscious of himself; but knows God's work from the inside, and knows his own part in it. 

(It is this retaining of personal identity that differentiates the Christian understanding of divine communion, from the 'Eastern' (Hindu, Buddhist etc.) idea of Nirvana - in which the individual Man loses his distinction, his 'self'; and becomes dissolved-back-into the divine-whole, from which he originated.) 

But communion is not creative; since creation is done. 

What seems like creation to mortal Men is - by this analysis - a result of our limited perspective - and is actually just a selection and arrangement of already-created material. 

For the mainstream-classical Christian, Men cannot truly create, in a primary sense; because Men are creatures/ created-Beings; and only God is capable of true creation. 

But for me, as for CS Lewis's best friend Owen Barfield, there is a higher state than enjoyment - which is creation - or what Barfield terms Final Participation. 

This includes communion, but also involves knowing oneself to be adding-to and enhancing already-existing divine creation: that is, becoming a co-creator of God's creation. 

Therefore, Man can (potentially) become a creator with God, creating in harmony with what already exists. 

It can be seen that for co-creation to be true, several of the classical-mainstream assumptions about God must be discarded. Because it can be added-to; creation is no longer regarded as existing outside time, nor as being complete and finished. 

Man is no longer understood as wholly a 'creature' - but as an 'embryonic god': capable of developing to participate in primary creation of that which is new and unforeseen.

Thus, a recognition of Man as potential creator goes-with a rejection of the assumptions that God is omnipotent and omniscient, that God created everything from nothing, and that creation is complete and beyond time. 

Instead; creation is recognized as ongoing - within time - incomplete and capable of expansion. 

In other words; creation is God's original project; and a project in which Men may develop to participate.

To summarize; if we are to regard Man as capable of real creation; we must reject the classical, mainstream, tradition Christian theology; and adopt different metaphysical assumptions concerning God, creation and time. 

Conversely, if we choose instead to adhere to the classical, mainstream, tradition Christian theology; we must reject the possibility of Man being a true creator; and assume instead that the highest form of being that Man can aspire to is an ultimately passive state of 'enjoyment' in communion with God. 

How to decide between these incompatible metaphysical explanations of Christianity - apart from intuition? 

The Bible as a whole is apparently ambivalent and self-contradicting on this topic; but the Fourth Gospel (of "John" - especially Chapters 13-17 inclusive) strongly suggests that Men (in the new dispensation of Christ) can and should aspire to become co-creators: that is loving 'friends' of Jesus Christ and God, rather than (as in the previous era, before Christ) merely obedient servants of God.   

Beware of developing and following your conscious 'will power', except when you have chosen to align it with divine creation

The development of human consciousness means that strategies that once were (overall) directed towards Good, have now become net-harmful. Will power is one of them. 

This is because (to a nearly complete degree) modern Man's will power is cut-off from the creative purposes of God; and cut-off also from his former immersion in the unconscious mind of other-Men. 

In the past, an individual Man's will arose from a context of other Men and from at least some degree of spontaneous sharing of divine purpose - for example, from some degree of 'automatic' harmony with the natural world. 

But nowadays a Man's free will lacks these former (unconscious, spontaneous, automatic) elements of coherence and direction. 

Therefore any strengthening of will power, of focused concentration upon an inner purpose, will - unless deliberately directed into harmony with divine creation - be directed against God and fellow Men. And nowadays this maldirection does not tend to be corrected 'automatically' by unconscious inner feedback impulses. 

In effect; there is only one Good direction for will to be harmonious with God; and an 'infinite' number of bad/ wrong/ evil directions - in pursuit of which will power is dissonant, disruptive - and ultimately destructive of creative harmony.  

Thus we moderns are more free in our will and thinking than ever before; consequently for us to will in harmony with divine creation is a conscious choice; whereas to will in conformity to divine creation used to be, to some extent - albeit an extent dwindling through recorded history - natural and spontaneous.

Yet nowadays we are confronted with a vast array of options and alternatives among which we must and do choose. 

Given this range of choice; most Men choose to conform by (what they regard as) expediency: i.e. they make their choices for their own best advantage... And, in practice, this usually means they will choose whatever is most powerfully imposed upon them. 

In the modern world; this means that Men typically choose whatever is imposed by saturation (by marination) in the outputs of mass media, state and corporate bureaucracies; and by propaganda from all these plus from (what used to be called) churches, law, science, schools and colleges etc. 

And since 2020; it has been obvious that all these are 'converged' onto a single global program: so (in those matters of core importance to the 'world government', the passive individual experiences a unified external will.

What is the nature and direction of this external pressure that is imposed? It is demonic, purposively-evil; it is a will unified in opposition to God, divine creation and The Good. 

Thus passivity is evil; and the scope of such evil is unbounded - including even nonsensical incoherence and the gross inversion of Good - since modern Man's will power can now 'make' whatever 'reality' it chooses. 

 

But this is not inevitable - it is always a choice. 

In effect, it is often a choice made by the cut-off will power to deny choice. 

It is simply choosing passively to yield to external pressure.  

Yet, all the time, the divine harmony and purpose of God's creation is still there - (as it were); in the background; waiting to be noticed and waiting to be chosen: waiting to have will power directed at it. 

Any Man is free make this choice, but it must be a conscious choice.

 

How can a Man know where this choice lies? 

By the possibility of directly knowing God-within each Man, through directing our attention to our real-divine Self; and by directing our will power to make such choices. 

And from 'externally'; through knowing in our hearts the personal presence of the Holy Ghost; which is the spirit of the ascended Jesus Christ... 

This through love-of, and faith-in, that same Jesus Christ - by making the choice to follow the Good Shepherd to eternal resurrected life.