CADRE Comments

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 51, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 52.] It is the beginning of a history--not of all humanity’s history, not of Nature, but of a particular story enacted by God, with us and for us, within the Nature we inhabit. God is beginning His greatest adventure: giving us hope in this life. For we --live-- in this life!--and God is committed to this Nature and to us, the synthetic persons He has molded, shaped, grown, begotten, within the womb of our mother. But quickly or slowly or some combination thereof, God will do it in His own time; for His purpose is not to provide some technical 'method of salvation'. Salvation from sin is a personal act, an act of God to co-operate with us as persons, and act of ours in response to the graces of God the Merciful and the Compassionate. But He wants people in this history, sooner or later, to know more about Him and what His love t...

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 50, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 51.] If God is going to maintain all the various balances in His creation, while still working to His utmost to help effect our salvation from our own sins and the sins of our predecessors, then He will have to go about it within our history--not merely within the stories we tell ourselves (although He will do some work along those lines, too), but within the real natural reality we inhabit as synthetic creatures. This means He will act within a historical context, and it will be a context of His choosing: designed and guided, even 'tweaked' by Him to fit His plans; but also incorporating the choices of the people, the families, the nations, who will be a part of this particular story of history. But those people will not be sock-puppets. They will be real people; they will be fallible, even though God works with them to the best of ...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, continuing chapter 29, can be found here. ] [This entry concludes chapter 29, "Resolving The Grand Paradox".] You may have noticed I have often insisted throughout my book that opponents are not entirely wrong, but rather they're not entirely right; that they do have some good points, but they're taking them a bit too far or not taking them far enough or putting them together the wrong way. I have recently granted this in the case of pantheists and vitalists, for instance. In the case of atheistic naturalists, I think they are actually on the right trail when they discuss aggregations of natural events as the source of our rationality. Their pivotal error, as I have deduced, is that they put these observations and conclusions into service of a nonsensical proposition: that non-initiation produces initiation ability, that reactions produce actions, that the non-rational can be rational. Th...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, starting chapter 29, can be found here. ] [This entry continues chapter 29, "Resolving The Grand Paradox".] God, if He creates, must first create Nature. Let us say Nature is now up-and-running. It does not have to be exactly our Nature; it could for instance be a Nature inhabited by angels or elves or whatever--but, since I am searching for an explanation that deals with you and me and our behavior and qualities, let me stick with what I know best: this Nature, the one you and I obviously inhabit in some fashion. The first not-God thing God creates (per se) must be reactive, as distinct from His active character, so that He has created and not begotten (nor generated a Person of God Who has nothing to do with God’s own self-generation--but that’s a topic for later). If God wishes to introduce further effects into this system, above and beyond the effects that this system of itself produces (alon...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, concluding chapter 27, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes chapter 28, "Principles of a Commonly Shared Nature".] In the most recent few chapters, I have deduced that I must exist within a reactive system which is itself a declension from (not equivalent to) God. I think this type--and source--of Nature accounts for many interesting features, not only of Christian doctrine (I'll get back to that later), but of science. Consider how Nature seems to be at once infinite and yet finite; no boundaries to a three-dimensional space are conceivable, yet we can measure the 'size' of the universe and wonder into what it is 'expanding'. When we try to figure out the 'age' of the universe, we are left with a series of paradoxes, which seem to indicate the universe had a beginning, and yet also that physical time cannot be calculated in such a manner at that point of space...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, starting chapter 27, can be found here. ] [This entry concludes chapter 27, "My Relationship To Creation And To God".] Here you and I are, reasoning together. The fact that we two derivative entities are doing this, leads me to conclude that one way or another this must reflect some (probably very many) true intentions of God when He created. Specifically: what would God have to do, in order to get us into this position? The answers will tell us useful truths about the reality that overarches and encompasses you and I. (Notice, by the way, that I am once more applying the Golden Presumption, looking to deduct propositions which conflict with it.) Whatever it means for me (and for you) to be an act-er, and yet be apparently derivative, and however God managed to accomplish this (which I am setting aside again just a little while longer), I am here. Thus God intended (at least generally speaking) ...