Why would God create a world he knew he would have to save?

[sinjin smithe]

Why would God create a world that He knew he would have to save? That is my question here, and I think it is an important one to ponder.

[Richard McBride]

"Why would God create a world that He knew he would have to save? That is my question here, and I think it is an important one to ponder. "

I wonder how many millions of times this question has been asked -- due to the very active capacity for intelligence which God Himself gave us? I wonder if the answers may not outnumber the incidence of questions.

And I agree, that it is important to resolve this question in one's own mind, for if it is left to fester it will tend to block further development along the path to the Promise; but it will have to be solved by one's self, to one's own liking.

At this moment, my own thinking suggests that no progress on this issue is likely until one decides that questioning what God may or may not know is a foolish pastime (i.e.: "...a world that He knew he would have to save...").

Once that thorn is set aside *, it seems all other resolutions to the issue will devolve around the free will, freely given, as a basic part of human nature.

One of the free will resolutions which interests me is a particular commentary by Saint Maximos the Confessor. In those passages his purpose is to illustrate the origination of pleasure and its nature as being NOT God-given, but freely chosen; there is in it, however (for the active mind which contemplates such things as, What in the world was God thinking when He created humans?) -- there is in it also one of many approaches to just how humans complicate the course of events (even within God's Plan) -- whether it is "known" or not, the point is that humans do affect history; and for myself, these words of Saint Maximos offer yet another reason why a Holy Aesthetic is difficult to conceive.

Saint Maximos says:
"33. When God the Logos created human nature He did not make the senses susceptible either to pleasure or to pain; instead, He implanted in it a certain noetic capacity through which men could enjoy Him in an inexpressible way. By this capacity I mean the intellect's natural longing for God. But on his creation the first man, through an initial movement towards sensible objects, transferred this longing to his senses, and through them began to experience pleasure in a way which is contrary to nature. Whereupon God in His providential care for our salvation implanted pain in us as a kind of chastising force; and so through pain the law of death was wisely rooted in the body, thus setting limits to the intellect's manic longing, directed, in a manner contrary to nature, towards sensible objects.

34. Pleasure and pain were not created simultaneously with the flesh. On the contrary, it was the fall that led man to conceive and pursue pleasure in a way that corrupted his power of choice, and that also brought upon him, by way of chastisement, the pain that leads to the dissolution of his nature. Thus because of pleasure, sin became the freely chosen death of the soul; and pain, by means of this dissolution, brought about the disintegration of the material form of the flesh. For God has providentially given man pain he has not chosen, together with the death that follows from it, in order to chasten him for the pleasure he has chosen."
Phil; v.II; 243-44;

richard

* If this thorn is NOT set aside, then the demons will have a field day in one's head, kicking one's thinking around like a ripe melon, until it squashes.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Sinjin, Richard and others,

On the topic of 'why God would create a world He knew He would have to save', see the archive of a discussion had in this community in October 2002 (http://www.monachos.net/mb/messages/4225/7074.html). In particular, a few posts are worth noting:
Erich von Abele's post (http://www.monachos.net/cgi-bin/mb/show.cgi?tpc=4225&post=2055#POST2055) originally posing this question, with some provisos. Rebecca's post (http://www.monachos.net/cgi-bin/mb/show.cgi?tpc=4225&post=2057#POST2057) quoting St Maximus on the beauty of the creation of humankind. Owen's post (http://www.monachos.net/cgi-bin/mb/show.cgi?tpc=4225&post=2065#POST2065) on the impossibility of a formulaic answer. My own post (http://www.monachos.net/cgi-bin/mb/show.cgi?tpc=4225&post=2070#POST2070) reshaping the question from the context of humankind's creation as free entity (with a Sunday School response (http://www.monachos.net/cgi-bin/mb/show.cgi?tpc=4225&post=2071#POST2071) quoted by Owen, with expansion).
(All links in this message open in a new window, so as not to lose one's place.)

INXC, Matthew

[sinjin smithe]

Thank you Matthew for the references I will be sure to read them.

[John Curtis Dunn]

Why did the Creator create a Creation he then has to save?

Voegelin posed this only to say this is an unaswerable Question, and that the Question is more important than the thousands of final "answers" to it that come up throughout history.

The problem for me is this:

1) This question is existentially valid
2) Christian doctrine (of whatever stripe) seems essentially intolerant of this question --

leading me to wonder, is there any way to harmonize this Question with the Gospel? Or are they mutually exclusive?

My wonder, and my honest, authentic experience (to the degree I am able to tap into it) tell me that these two must be harmonizable, but only in terms of Paradox.

I apologize for entering into this topic thread so late, but as I have been quite busy for some time, my opportunities to read and post have been time constrained.

I have enjoyed reading the replies to the original posted question by Sinjin Smithe. I propose what I believe is a profoundly simple Orthodox reply; profoundly simple, but not profoundly comprehensible. This latter point being evident within the wording of the original question as phrased: \i["He knew he would have to save?"] The question arises naturally enough out of our own human experience of love. How can I or someone else love him, her or them, of whom the category of 'unlovely or unlovable' appropriately seems to apply?

I would propose the question in its orignal posting has less to do with the essence, energy and nature of God and more to do with our own epistemological awareness of our (whether corporately or individually) \i[beingness] as unworthy of being saved. It often appears to me when philosophy attempts to breach the unknown \i[the essence of God] it more often (if not always) is broaching the existential awareness of man's own existence: "Who am I? Why do I exist? What is my purpose? Is it attainable to me? How will this knowledge help me? Is it true of everyman (or woman) or am I unique and alone within my own existence?" These and many more questions seem to prompt the philosophical soul to reach outwards towards the unknown god of philosophers.

The questions are common enough, even the Prophet David could ponder "What is man that thou art mindful of him? (realizing of course that King David spoke the Kings English quite fluently :>)) Thus, the question phrased as philosophical speculation concerning "What KIND of God would create a world He knew He would have to save?" is simply man's search for the purpose or meaning of his own existence? To this latter question our Orthodox faith has given us an overwhelming consensus of: insight, vision, or revelation which exceeds the boundries of philosophy and is to be comprehended through our worship of the God who is Incarnate for our sake.

Perhaps the reader easily recognizes the point or answer to which I have alluded? In the language of philosophical speculation it might be phrased as: "Man realizes his true existence in the measure to which he is raised upwards towards God \i[and] becomes united with Him." The problem with this answer as philosophical speculation is that the god of Philosophy always remains unknown and thus unknowable. This latter point is not wholly absent from our Orthodox conscience formed through our Orthodox worship (including all Orthodox services and prayers) because we know God is wholly unknowable in His essences except to Himself. However, God in His energies has made Himself wholly knowable to Himself, albeit we approach Him in the manner which He Himself has proscribed: "holiness, faith, obedience, etc..."

The more simple wording of our Orthodox answer (and more profoundly stated) is that "God became man that man might become God." This answer (I propose) is the precise answer to the original questioning and its reconstruction in other postings. The whole of its meaning is further profoundly (but which remains wholly incomprehensible to us when beginning with our own epistomological awarenss) in those words that "God alone loves mankind."

The direction I am pointing has also been expressed within our Orthodox conscience of consensus as "Like is attracted to like." But how is it that God is like us and we are like God? What is there about/or in us that attracts God towards us, that even in our fallen beingness he enters into our human experince by wholly taking into Himself our own nature?

This latter question ocassions that we ask, "Would God have become incarnate if Adam had not disobeyed and thus been cast out of Paradise?"
The answer we give to this latter question would seem to form our conscience to anticipate that its answer also answers "What KIND of God would create...?"

To this latter point we know this much concerning our Lord Jesus Christ: "All things through Him and to Him have been created. And He is before all things, and in Him all things have come into existence. And He is head of the body, the Church. Who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, tha in all things he might come to hold first place. For all the fullness was pleased to dwell in Him; and through Him to reconcile all things to Him, having made peace through the blood of His Cross, through Him, whether the things onthe earth or the things in the heavens."

St. Athanasios in his discourse against the Arians wrote: "If through the Son creation has come to be, and 'in Him all things have come into existence," it must follow tht he who contemplates the creation rightly, is contemplating also the Logos Who framed it, and through Him begins to apprehend the Father." At this point I refer the reader to the entire fourteeth Chapter of John, especially the section concerning the Love of the Father and Son.

Returning to the original question and its reconstruction; we find the answer incomprehensible to philosophy because love is philosophically unknowable, except analogically from outside.

In conclusion, to retain in ones self the answer to the original question (and its related questions) requires that one become "the fool or foolish" and answer simply "God alone loves mankind." The foolishness of this answer to philosophy (especially modern philosophy) is that it addresses God as wholly personal and thus knowable. It is this latter part of our Orthodox Revelation and Faith which troubles the modern mind, for personableness requires direct response such as "eye to eye" or "face to face." That is to say to have God's shine upon us.

Answering thusly, I propose both questions in the original posted question are answered: "Why did God create?" and "Why did God save."

John

[Owen Jones]

Dear John,

Whew! Thanks for pointing out Voegelin's point in asking the question. A lot depends on the tone in which it is expressed? It is a cold, logical question? A lament? An effort to trip Him up?

As you point out, there are many questions that the prophets ask of God, both first and second person, and they never get the answer they want. Christ tended to answer questions with a question.

One point, however. Voegelin would say that there is no such thing as philosophy, only philosophizing. So to juxtapose Christianity with something called philosophy, as hardened positions, he would question that.

I see the question "What kind of God...?" for the therapeutic value. Voegelin was concerned with the pneumopathology characteristic of the "modern age." I think most of the non-scholarly people who read Voegelin do so for the therapeutic value, not in order to acquire some kind of system. Which, of course, was his intent. I once knew a major author and playwrite, Calder Willingham, who was on the verge of suicide, until he read Voegelin. He became Christian, because that was the only way he could concretely express his faith, although the New England congretationalist Church he attended was frustrating. He was going to write a documentary script for me on Voegelin that I was going to produce, but he died of lung cancer in the meantime.

And I think, frankly, it is the therapeutic value of Orthodoxy that should matter the most to us, expressed in the pastoral basis of it. Theology is pastorally driven. We should never forget that. I think this is part of what you are saying. Let's say that the modern term existential is not that far removed from the traditional term pastoral.