Doxa

Lets share our views on who and what God is, and his relationship to his creation.

I personallyu see God like a Novelist, who creates a world in his head. The world and Charecters aren't the author, but are neverthless derived form the author and are part f him.

He contorles the wolrd, but oftne let shis CHarecters do as they like, and they become indpendant of the authors own personality and sometimes even his desires.

Thats the metaphore I use to descirbe God.

ZAROVE wrote:Lets share our views on who and what God is, and his relationship to his creation.

I personallyu see God like a Novelist, who creates a world in his head. The world and Charecters aren't the author, but are neverthless derived form the author and are part f him.

He contorles the wolrd, but oftne let shis CHarecters do as they like, and they become indpendant of the authors own personality and sometimes even his desires.

Thats the metaphore I use to descirbe God.

Yea I an dig that. I've argued that the universe is a thought in the mind of God for some time. The problem with that is it makes one think of a man. God is a big novelist in the sky. I see God in complex terms, as more like the dialetic than like a big man. so I am still searching for a better metaphor.

ALL metaphjores are flawed, but this one does work if you udnerstand its meanign well.

The novelist metaphor is a good one in several ways--I've used it myself numerous times (it helps to actually be a novelist, too. {g}) One of the more useful ways, as illustrated by Lewis in an appendix to Miracles: A Preliminary Study, is to help get across the notion that God operates at right angles to history (so to speak). I can hop around to different places in my novel doing work there and attending to its "history" at "any time" I want, although one distinction here is that I have to "hop around" in my attention and action from point to point. God can (and does) attend to all points of the story simultaneously. Also, my novel exists more-or-less independently of myself (though still dependently on whatever I'm dependent on), but God's creation, though not-God, does not in any fashion exist independently of Himself. On the contrary His action constantly keeps creation in existence.

None of this, of course, is intended to explain why I believe these claims to be true (including the qualifications and distinctions). That would take several hundred pages.

JasonPratt wrote:The novelist metaphor is a good one in several ways--I've used it myself numerous times (it helps to actually be a novelist, too. {g}) One of the more useful ways, as illustrated by Lewis in an appendix to Miracles: A Preliminary Study, is to help get across the notion that God operates at right angles to history (so to speak). I can hop around to different places in my novel doing work there and attending to its "history" at "any time" I want, although one distinction here is that I have to "hop around" in my attention and action from point to point. God can (and does) attend to all points of the story simultaneously. Also, my novel exists more-or-less independently of myself (though still dependently on whatever I'm dependent on), but God's creation, though not-God, does not in any fashion exist independently of Himself. On the contrary His action constantly keeps creation in existence.

None of this, of course, is intended to explain why I believe these claims to be true (including the qualifications and distinctions). That would take several hundred pages.

but I want a metaphor that emphasizes God's wholly otherness. He can't be a big novelist in the sky.

The ide aisn't that God is a Big Novelist int he sky, but that he is a novelist so we an't relaly see him in the sky. Just liek Charecters in a book don't see the author as a big guy in the sky.

That said, other metaphores cna be adipted to descibe other attributes of God, and work in unison with htis one.

Metacrock wrote:but I want a metaphor that emphasizes God's wholly otherness. He can't be a big novelist in the sky.

Depends on what you mean by "wholly" other. If you mean an ontological distinction between God and not-God, the novelist metaphor can accommodate that. (My novel isn't me or vice versa.) Though the ontological distinction is even sharper for God and creation of course, and unlike me and my novel God and creation don't exist dependently on something else. (see below)

If you mean something more than ontological God/not-God distinction, now you're cruising into cosmological dualism territory (at the very least). A novelist metaphor would not accommodate that; although it could accommodate a Mormonistic ontology where God and his creation, notice the decap on the pronoun , both exist within an overarching system, with both dependent ultimately on that system, even though the creation is produced by this deity.

Ultimately, though, analogies are going to break down. God's existence and relationship to our natural system are sui generis.

JasonPratt wrote:

Metacrock wrote:but I want a metaphor that emphasizes God's wholly otherness. He can't be a big novelist in the sky.

Depends on what you mean by "wholly" other. If you mean an ontological distinction between God and not-God, the novelist metaphor can accommodate that. (My novel isn't me or vice versa.) Though the ontological distinction is even sharper for God and creation of course, and unlike me and my novel God and creation don't exist dependently on something else. (see below)

If you mean something more than ontological God/not-God distinction, now you're cruising into cosmological dualism territory (at the very least). A novelist metaphor would not accommodate that; although it could accommodate a Mormonistic ontology where God and his creation, notice the decap on the pronoun , both exist within an overarching system, with both dependent ultimately on that system, even though the creation is produced by this deity.

Ultimately, though, analogies are going to break down. God's existence and relationship to our natural system are sui generis.

I want to image God as an impersonal force. Not because I think God is impersonal but because I want to get across the idea that even though God is the basis of consciousness, as I believe, we can't understand God's consciousness. God is so far above us we should try to think of God as the dialectic or something.

the bible images God in many ways, male and female, and some imperonal like a whirl wind, burning bush, fire, darkness, light.

Metacrock wrote:God is so far above us we should try to think of God as the dialectic or something.

Even the other images you borrowed from the Bible are not abstractions like "dialectic", though.

Besides, isn't dialectic a description of interpersonal relationship? {s!}

Are you ready for the po white, trailer trash, TV dinner version? Probably not… and it’s past my bed time… lucky you...