The Limits of Created Freedom

9/24/2024

If one follows the tenets of classical theism to their logical conclusions, it quickly becomes evident that God is the only authentically free being in the cosmos. On top of that, he will forever remain the only authentically free being in the cosmos.

Immutable, impassible, and entirely self-sufficient, God does not need anything or any other being. Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent, God is also not constrained or limited by anything or any other being.

God is so free that his essence and existence are indistinguishable, making him utterly distinct from all other beings, all of which he created from nothing, none of which he needs.

Put another way, God is perfectly free to be God, and there is nothing in the cosmos that does or can interfere with or influence his godly freedom, not even his Creation, which he transcends.

The only limits or constraints God experiences are the ones he sets for himself. More specifically, those that do not contradict his nature—his perfect wisdom and character.

One notable limit God sets himself is the inability to create another god.

Omnigod is also a mono-god. He does not want or need other gods. And even if he did, he couldn’t create any.

As free as God is, he is not free to create other gods.

Try as he might, God could never raise any of his creatures to his level because it is logically impossible for him to do so.

Moreover, God’s “free” actual creatures could never utilize their freedom to become god-like or attain godhood.

Thus, the freedom inherent in God’s created “actual” beings cannot and never will contain any seed of godhood.

Any created freedom that contained even a hint of godhood would not only contradict but also serve as a direct assault against God’s freedom, which is the only uncreated freedom in existence.

Of course, classical theism incorporates all of the above into its assumptions concerning God’s overarching divine purposes for Creation.

I don't know about you, but those assumptions come off as awfully limiting, for both God and man.

All I can say is this -- God's overarching divine purposes become much “freer” and perhaps even more logical when one entertains the simple assumption that all freedom --not just God's--is uncreated.

Note added: I used impassable when I mean impassible. H/T to Bruce Charlton for catching that and bringing it to my attention.

19 Comments

Kristor link

9/26/2024 06:25:02

It isn't true that Nicene Christianity denies the possibility that humans might become godlike. Indeed, it insists that we are all made in the image and likeness of God ab initio and right now, even if we be yet sinners. And becoming divine - theosis, or sanctification - sums the whole Christian spiritual project. To become perfectly holy, a saint, is to put on the mind of Christ, to participate his godhood, and so is to become a godling.

And that is to become perfectly free. Perfect freedom consists, not in total absence of constraint upon our acts, but in total absence of influence upon us of options to do anything other than what is best for us and the whole system of things, withal; which is to be in perfect agreement with the Will of God. His service is perfect freedom, and everlasting ecstatic bliss. Such is godhood.

All your other characterizations of Nicene Christianity are pretty accurate. But the limits you deplore look to me not like constraints upon freedom, but rather its forecondition. The limits you cite - that God can't create other Gods, and that creatures can't become Gods - are sorts of the basic limit that logical contradictions cannot be implemented really, by any sort of being. The Law of Noncontradiction entails that it is not possible to do x that is not x. Thus, it is not possible for God to create a being that, like him, is not created. Nor likewise is it possible for any created being to become uncreated, as God is.

Likewise, it is not possible for any being to draw a 4 sided triangle, or square 2 and get 5.

The only sorts of acts that any being is free to enact are those that are not logically contradictory. The many constraints on our freedom that arise from the factors of our past are of this sort, too. I can't make it so that I didn't go to the store yesterday if I did indeed go to the store yesterday. The most I can do is dissemble or hallucinate or forget about having gone to the store yesterday.

We can't enact contradictions. We treat those who think such a thing is possible as insane; not as free, but as imprisoned, and harmed, diminished, by illusions.

Francis Berger

9/26/2024 21:20:03

@ Kristor - Please understand these posts are not out to skewer Nicene Christianity for fun and laughs. I respect Nicene Christianity, but I do not believe it is the do-all-and-end-all of Christianity -- that is, Christianity is not an open and shut case in which everything that needed to be revealed has been revealed. Christianity is still unfolding, and going beyond some of the tenets of Nicene Christianity is a part of that unfolding. Thus, I will forgo the usual arguments against Omnigod -- the same kind that clogs a million comment sections and Reddit pages. You know all those arguments already.

Yes, Nicene Christianity does confirm the possibility of theosis, but it is very much a backburner issue when it should be front and center. Also, the meaning of what becoming divine means encounters serious headwinds when you factor in the law of non-contradiction.
God allows for and desires god-likeness and divinity in other beings, yet cannot logically create or even logically desire other gods, and so forth.

In connection with that, the law of non-contradiction only holds within the framework of how classical theism/Nicene Christianity defines God and freedom. Step away from that framework, and the law of non-contradiction is less of a logical stumbling block.

I will confirm that Nicene Christianity/classical theism has it partly right -- God cannot create gods, at least not alone; he can only help. Creating divinity is a co-creative project requiring God and another being who has aligned with God's creative purposes.

What you say about freedom and being perfectly free rings true, but it can only "truly" ring true if freedom -- both God's and man's -- is uncreated. Otherwise, it remains God playing a game with himself, particularly if you factor in the idea that we were nothing before he created us, and it is only in him that we live, move, and have our being.

I don't think we are merely made in God's image but contain a seed of divinity within us. We are God's children. Nurturing that seed of divinity is a matter of mastering our freedom, similar to how you describe it. And since this freedom is not of God, its mastery depends entirely on us. Beings can bring creativity and newness into creation via this freedom, thereby adding to creation in a way God could not have done alone. And no, I'm not referring to things like procreation or subcreation but actual divine creativity.

I assume the overarching purpose of creation is for God to raise beings to his level to expand and deepen creation in a way he could not have done alone, which is a very different understanding of God than the immutable, impassible, completely self-satisfied, totally self-sufficient God of philosophy and logic (who is not nearly as coherent as Nicene Christian assumptions posit).

9/26/2024 06:38:50

PS: Also, it isn't accurate to say that Nicene Christianity asserts that God is the only authentically free being in the cosmos. In the first place, Nicene Xianity does not think God is a being in the cosmos. It goes rather the other way: in him we live, move, and have our being.

In the second place, Nicene Xianity says that we are indeed authentically free; not, i.e., entirely determined by our antecedent factors, including God.

9/27/2024 07:27:45

@ Kristor - OK, then I suppose it's more accurate to say that Nicene Christianity implicitly asserts that God is the only authentic freedom, period; so authentic is that freedom that it cannot be limited to the cosmos and transcends it entirely, implying that the created freedom within the cosmos is of a more inauthentic sort, i.e., impossible without Him, depends entirely on him. If that's the case, then how can our "authentic" freedom not be entirely determined by antecedent factors, including God?

10/2/2024 04:07:22

Not that God has the only authentic freedom, but that his is the only absolutely unconditioned freedom. Other beings are conditioned in part, at least by God, and almost always by other beings too. That they are conditioned does not entail either that they are entirely conditioned, or (therefore) that their freedom is not real.

Likewise, from the fact that other beings are contingent upon God for their very existence, and thus for their freedom, it does not follow either that they are not really free, or that they do not really exist.

“Christianity is still unfolding, and going beyond some of the tenets of Nicene Christianity is a part of that unfolding.”

While development of doctrine is possible, an outright rejection of the key principles of Nicene Christianity (such as those of the Nicene Creed), cannot but fall into heresy, apostasy, or schism: into a different religion altogether – as Arianism (the Son is a creature) and Gnosticism (YHWH is evil) are different religions than Christianity, even though they might like Islam revere Jesus.

“… the meaning of what becoming divine means encounters serious headwinds when you factor in the law of non-contradiction.”

Yes, but only if we suppose that God’s eternal sort of being is the only sort that is divine. It is possible to become more and more like God – more and more godlike – without ever becoming *exactly* like him. It is not possible for a temporal being to be eternal; it is not possible for a thing that changes to be changeless. It is however possible for an eternal being to be temporal as well; while Romeo can’t become Shakespeare, Shakespeare can write himself into his play as a character thereof.

“Creating divinity is a co-creative project requiring God and another being who has aligned with God's creative purposes.”

Yes. Or of leaving off disagreement with those purposes, in the case of Fallen creatures.

“What you say about freedom and being perfectly free rings true, but it can only "truly" ring true if freedom – both God's and man's – is uncreated.”

Why? You’ve said this a lot, but I don’t recall any argument supporting it. *Why* is only uncreate freedom real? *Why* can’t creatures be free?

“I don't think we are merely made in God's image but contain a seed of divinity within us.”

Justin Martyr called that seed the lógos spermatikos, that God infuses in each creaturely occasion as its proper form, its true and original nature, its portion of the Lógos, and – because the entire Lógos is logically implicit in any bit thereof (such is God’s ubiquity) – its hologram of the Lógos. It doesn’t render the creature capable of transformation into the Lógos. Rather, it makes the creature capable of becoming itself, a being distinct from God: like him, and different.

10/2/2024 07:30:17

@ Kristor - The Nicene Creed, establishment of doctrine via committee, took form 325 years after the birth of Christ and contains many, what I would term, corrections to Jesus' work. You can refer to challenges to those corrections as Gnosticism or whatever you will, but the fact remains -- the Nicene Creed itself contains many incoherences and dictums that have little or nothing to do with the work of Jesus.

10/3/2024 04:19:51

The output of committees is all we have to go on in respect to the work of Jesus. The committees began with 11, which soon grew to 13, and then in just a few years many more, eventually thousands.

What clauses of the Nicene Creed are unsupported by the NT? I.e., that canon of inspired texts that was specified by (and in some cases, it would seem, written, compiled, recorded by) … committees?

The ecumenical councils were not just making stuff up. They were clarifying doctrines that had long been in current, and that are found in the ante-Nicene Fathers, all the way back to Irenaeus. And they were in a much better position than anyone for the last 1700 years to know a lot about what Jesus and his students taught. The papyrus libraries of the Levant had not yet then been destroyed.

Church *just is* committees. It’s right there in the Greek: ekklesia, assembly. It would be more accurate to call them communions. And Church *is* the work of Jesus: Matthew 28:19-20. He didn’t write down his teachings; he taught them to the Apostles, and commanded the Apostles – a committee – to teach them.

What do you have of the work of Jesus that has not been handed down to you by committees? How do you know what Jesus taught, apart from what we have inherited from the Tradition maintained by committees?

10/2/2024 07:57:12

@ Kristor - "Not that God has the only authentic freedom, but that his is the only absolutely unconditioned freedom."
God has mastered his uncreated freedom, implying that God once had to face conditions and perhaps still does. Any mention of absolute this or that is pure abstraction.

"Likewise, from the fact that other beings are contingent upon God for their very existence, and thus for their freedom, it does not follow either that they are not really free, or that they do not really exist."
Beings are contingent upon for their existence in Creation and they must apply their freedom within the possibilities and limits of mortal life in Creation, but since beings pre-existed before entering Creation, they are not contingent upon God for their existence nor their freedom.

"Yes, but only if we suppose that God’s eternal sort of being is the only sort that is divine. (And the rest.)

What are you suggesting? Divinity light? Theosis, the margarine of divinity? The problem here is, you place God in an entirely different category of being, while I have stated that we all have the seeds of divinity within us. Seeds can grow into mature plants. Those plants are not exactly like their parent plants, but they are essentially the same. You once stated that God's relationship with me is like my relationship with my cat because different category of being. Sorry, not quite.

“What you say about freedom and being perfectly free rings true, but it can only "truly" ring true if freedom – both God's and man's – is uncreated.”

Because it is only through uncreated freedom that a. God is divine. b. We can become divine. If we are merely his creatures with created freedom, the product of him and nothing, we cannot possess the sort of freedom he does, which means we are essentially nothing more than God's little playthings.

"It doesn’t render the creature capable of transformation into the Lógos. Rather, it makes the creature capable of becoming itself, a being distinct from God: like him, and different."

Classical theism always exalts God at the expense of man and then wonders why atheists and materialists have so successfully and ruthlessly exalted man at the expense of God. God always has to be different, distinct, not contingent upon anything, out there in the ether, beyond time -- an entirely different category of being, not a schmuck like us, etc. I believe God can make man greater and that, yes, man can make God greater.

God and man together are greater than God alone. Classical theism rejects this outright because God does not need man to be greater. In fact, God cannot be any greater in any way, shape, or form because he is already absolute and needs absolutely nothing.

Well, modern consciousness has -- somewhat understandably -- rejected this and has errantly decided that if God does not need man to be greater then man certainly does not need God to be greater.

Our current state of affairs has diminished both God and man (even though you would argue that it is logically impossible to diminish God in any way, shape, or form because different category of being, absolute this and that, non-contigency, etc.)

10/3/2024 08:04:13

“God has mastered his uncreated freedom, implying that God once had to face conditions and perhaps still does.”

That implication might hold *if* we presuppose that God masters himself, develops, learns, changes, and so forth – that, i.e., he is not eternal (for, what is eternal is what it is in every state of affairs, and so does not change from one state of affairs to another). Thus the argument that God changes in response to exogenous conditions presupposes that God changes in response to such conditions. It is a circular argument.

“Any mention of absolute this or that is pure abstraction.”

So what? “2 + 2 = 4” is an abstraction. “Any mention of absolute this or that is pure abstraction” is an abstraction. So what? *All* propositions are abstractions. That fact is neither here nor there. What matters is whether propositions are *true.*

Likewise, from the fact that other beings are contingent upon God for their very existence, and thus for their freedom, it does not follow either that they are not really free, or that they do not really exist.

“Beings are contingent upon for their existence in Creation and they must apply their freedom within the possibilities and limits of mortal life in Creation, but since beings pre-existed before entering Creation, they are not contingent upon God for their existence nor their freedom.”

So God is not our creator. Where did we come from? We can’t be eternal, for we change, and are in part contingent – upon God for our existence *in this cosmos* – and so are by others (God and other beings) conditioned. So, we had to have a beginning, prior to our changing into participants of this cosmos. What caused our beginning?

NB: it won’t work to propose that our lives that consist of finite moments each different from every other stretch back infinitely far into a past, on account of the paradoxes of actual infinites composed of finites, by the Kalam Cosmological Argument, and by Zeno’s paradoxes of motion.

*Why* did we choose to participate this cosmos? What attracted us to the idea? I mean, it’s a vale of tears. Why get involved? To serve a higher purpose? What makes God’s purpose higher, or better, than those of any other being (e.g., Lucifer or Sorath)? Higher or better according to what standard? Whence that standard, that sways billions of solipsist beings to participate and then cooperate in composing this cosmos?

10/3/2024 08:05:22

“What are you suggesting? Divinity light? Theosis, the margarine of divinity?”

Well, either we suppose that we are less divine than God, or we suppose that we are not; that, i.e., God is no better by nature than we are. On the former option, we raise God up; on the latter option, we cut him down to our size. On the latter option, there is no reason for other equally divine beings such as we to pay the slightest attention to God’s designs; for, he is nowise inherently better or nobler than we, by nature (just as no amoeba is nobler or better by nature than any other). His designs then likewise are no nobler or better than ours. So, the latter option doesn’t work. I’ll take the former option.

There is another pretty big problem with the notion that God is the same sort of being as we: the Bible. It is chock full of statements that God is unique, and eternal, the Most High God, and that there are no others like him. Ehyeh asher ehyeh, I AM that I AM (Exodus 3:14); and, before Abraham was, I AM (John 8:58: the testimony that got Jesus killed).

“Because it is only through uncreated freedom that a. God is divine. b. We can become divine.”

Why? What are the arguments for these assertions?

If uncreate freedom is all it takes to be just as divine as God, and if ex hypothesi Sorath and Lucifer and I all have uncreate freedom, so that we are all divine by nature in exactly the way that God is divine by nature, then we are ontologically equal with God. It follows that we three, and our designs, should be with him equally honored, or for that matter dishonored. I mean, what makes God such a smarty pants? Why should we not each go our own way? Non serviam, that’s for me! The dwarves are for the dwarves! Who cares about God and his silly rules? He’s not the boss of us! We are just as great as he! And because we are uncreate, he can’t even kill us, and we can’t die!

NB: such is the counsel of *Lucifer;* of *our Enemy.*

“If we are merely his creatures with created freedom, the product of him and nothing, we cannot possess the sort of freedom he does …”

Yes. Conditioned, contingent beings cannot – logically cannot, by definition cannot – be as free as unconditioned, necessary beings.

“… which means we are essentially nothing more than God's little playthings.”

No. That does not follow. From the fact that we are conditioned and contingent, it simply does not follow that we are not free.

“Classical theism always exalts God at the expense of man …”

Well, again, it’s that or reduce God to the lowly ontological condition of man. I.e., it’s that or atheism.

“God and man together are greater than God alone.”

Yes. That’s why he created us.

“Classical theism rejects this outright …”

No, classical theism does not reject this outright. The creation adds nothing to God, inasmuch as, being omniscient, he enjoys it eternally; but it certainly does add to the total of actual goodness. More actual goodness is achieved by the system of God and his creation than by God alone.

“God cannot be any greater … because he is already absolute and needs absolutely nothing.”

Yeah, it’s amazingly great. God doesn’t need to create other beings, but his goodness, power and love overflow into creation, which is top to bottom an utterly gratuitous gift. What is more, he partakes his creation, and suffers to redeem and repair it. It’s immensely wonderful.

“Well, modern consciousness has … errantly decided that if God does not need man to be greater, then man certainly does not need God to be greater.”

Had you not noticed that modern consciousness – which rejects classical theism in favor of Satan and his alluring suggestion that there is no absolute God, that therefore we are all equally gods, so that all judgements are subjective and relative and there are no absolute truths, no objective reality – has generated total and radical moral, aesthetic, social, cultural, sexual, psychological and demographic dyscatastrophe, that threatens not just the West, but civilization, indeed even man?

That’s a rhetorical question. I know that you have noticed this. You’ve been reading Bruce Charlton, for heaven’s sake; you must have noticed what he’s been rightly saying about all this, for years.

To Hell with modern consciousness and all its vain pomps. We should run from it as fast as we can.

10/2/2024 04:08:16

“And since this freedom is not of God, its mastery depends entirely on us.”

So God is nowise needed for us to become gods? God can’t help us with his grace? What then have we to do with God? Why bother then with religion?

“Beings can bring creativity and newness into creation via this freedom, thereby adding to creation in a way God could not have done alone.”

Sure, but this is so also of the acts of creatures. God can’t have gone to the beach with my dog today as I did.

“… the overarching purpose of creation is for God to raise beings to his level to expand and deepen creation in a way he could not have done alone, which is a very different understanding of God than the immutable, impassible, completely self-satisfied, totally self-sufficient God of philosophy and logic …”

On orthodox Christianity, the point of creation is to realize the infinite good of creatures who are not God, but which are each of them good in its own peculiar way. God is completely sufficient to his own perfect joy, yes: *as the God who creates, and so knows his creatures; who knows, and so creates, his creatures.*

If we are uncreate, God cannot be our Creator. Nor then can he be our Savior or Redeemer; for, what is uncreate has no possible want of salvation or redemption. It is what it is, cannot be other than it is, and that’s all there is to say about it.

10/2/2024 06:16:21

@ Kristor - "So God is nowise needed for us to become gods? God can’t help us with his grace? What then have we to do with God? Why bother then with religion?"

Not what I said or implied. Divinity is a co-creative project. God's participation is required, but he has little or no control over the freedom of other beings bring to the table.

"Sure, but this is so also of the acts of creatures. God can’t have gone to the beach with my dog today as I did."

Not even in the same ballpark of the sort of creativity and "additions" I mean.

" *as the God who creates, and so knows his creatures; who knows, and so creates, his creatures.*"

His creatures possess an uncreated element of the same sort God enjoys. Thus, he cannot completely "know" his creatures.

"If we are uncreate, God cannot be our Creator. Nor then can he be our Savior or Redeemer; for, what is uncreate has no possible want of salvation or redemption. It is what it is, cannot be other than it is, and that’s all there is to say about it."

A part of us is uncreated, Kristor, not all of us. God created us, or more correctly, formed us, but there is a part of us he did not create. That part is freedom.

Creation is an exercise/learning experience in freedom. We were free in pre-mortal life, but this freedom was essentially chaotic and purposeless. Mortal life in Creation allows us to hone this freedom via relationships with God and other Beings. I don't see how this leads you to the conclusion that this makes salvation or redemption undesirable.

10/3/2024 06:48:01

@ Kristor - "They were clarifying doctrines that had long been in current, and that are found in the ante-Nicene Fathers . . ."

Clarifying is a good way of putting it, though I prefer "correcting." How many ante-Nicene doctrines that aligned with Jesus work were cast aside or "clarified" or simply declared heretical? Some early church fathers, such as Justin Martyr, whom you cite, believed in creatio ex materia. But those assumptions were voted down by committee. On what grounds?

Motivation is key, particularly when considering the work of committees, and I would say that the motivations, though perhaps well-intentioned, did not always adhere with essence of Christ's teaching. For example, the father did not create Heaven, Jesus did. Of course, the same creed claims that the father and Jesus are basically one and the same, and so forth.

10/3/2024 09:00:48

Well, the Arians certainly *thought* that their doctrine that the Second Person of the Trinity was a creature aligned with the teachings of Jesus. But most of the other bishops at Nicea disagreed with them. The Creed that issued from their council was both a clarification of the true doctrine and a correction of the false.

The grounds for the propositions that Jesus is the Word of God, and that the Word and his Father and the Holy Ghost are all God, and that the Word, his Father and the Holy Ghost created all things other than God, including the heavens and all their starry hosts, are Romans 11:36, Romans 4:17, Hebrews 11:3, Revelation 4:11, I Corinthians 8:6, John 1:1-3, Colossians 1:16-17, and Hebrews 1:2-3.

10/3/2024 09:07:42

PS: The Fathers did not of course all agree on every point. E.g., especially, Origen and Tertullian. The teaching of Jesus was after all a radical revolution in human thought, difficult for people of the early Church to understand. But they and their students converged on what over the course of the early councils most of them agreed was the true teaching of Jesus, and the way to think about it that would avoid falling into conflict or contradiction with it.

10/3/2024 17:02:10

@ Kristor - "The teaching of Jesus was after all a radical revolution in human thought, difficult for people of the early Church to understand."

I agree. Moreover, I think it might qualify as the understatement of the century. I'll take it a step further -- the teaching of Jesus was such a radical revolution in human thought that the people of the early Church couldn't understand the bulk of it. More precisely, could not bring themselves to understand the bulk of it. Berdyaev noted that Jesus' teaching was so revolutionary it would cause the collapse of nations and civilizations as we know them. Hence, that teaching has been adapted to man's everyday life. The work of Christ was corrected. I don't subscribe to much of Berdyaev's metaphysics, but I think put his finger on something significant there.

10/3/2024 07:34:08

@ Kristor - Concerning Nicene Christianity, let me just reiterate, I do respect it and acknowledge its immense contribution to keeping Christianity in the world, for lack of a better way of putting it. I was baptized Roman Catholic and raised in that tradition, albeit in a purely cultural, passive sense, but I maintain that Christianity is in a process of unfolding--that further revelations are forthcoming. Moreover, these revelations will not come from up-high, but from man.

The bulk of Nicene Christianity emanates from an earlier form of human consciousness. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but we should acknowledge that the way in which the early church fathers discerned reality is very different from the way we disern reality. Though their teachings and writings may provide help, they cannot and should not be entirely relied upon as utterly authoritative in every way, shape, and form.

As for how we would know with Tradition, well, I think we have reached the point where we have no choice but to know without Tradition. That doesn't mean we must discard all Tradition, only that we cannot rely on it passively to provide all the answers. To claim that Jesus is only accessible through the external symbols handed down over the centuries undermines the very meaning of what it means to follow Christ. Surely communion with the Holy Ghost does not rely solely on things like churches or doctrines.

10/3/2024 10:21:05

@ Kristor - "“Because it is only through uncreated freedom that a. God is divine. b. We can become divine.”

Why? What are the arguments for these assertions?

If uncreate freedom is all it takes to be just as divine as God, and if ex hypothesi Sorath and Lucifer and I all have uncreate freedom, so that we are all divine by nature in exactly the way that God is divine by nature, then we are ontologically equal with God."

What arguments do you need? If uncreated freedom is a major aspect of God's divinity, then the only way other beings can become divine is if they possess the same uncreated freedom. 2+2= 4, even though I dislike putting into those terms.

No, we are not divine like God. We can become divine. Again, can become. Put another way, we have the potential to be divine. Satan, Lucifer, and the vast majority of beings in Creation either reject that potential or actively work against it.

So, your line of reasoning does not follow at all as far as that is concerned.

10/3/2024 18:38:07

@ Kristor - I am attempting to explain my metaphysical assumptions concerning uncreated freedom, but we're veering into ontology and epistemology. You're also playing tautology games in some of your responses and then refering to those as proof or evidence of, well, I don't exactly know what. I appreciate the Bible verses, but you are using these without acknowledging how your assumptions bias your interpretations.

I am attempting to talk about uncreated freedom. Your assumptions exclude the existence of such a thing. How are we to proceed? I say freedom and you cite going to the beach with your dog as an example of that. You claim ex nihilo just is Jesus' teaching, but that's simply not true. The ex nihilo mindset only began to settle into Christianity in the second century, and it took a good longer for it to become official doctrine. We're talking at cross purposes.

As I stated earlier, I am doing my best to avoid the long, drawn-out conventional debates that litter comment sections and Reddit pages.

I believe God takes pre-existing imperfection and does his best to help move it toward perfection. He didn't create the pre-existing imperfection, but he forms it in the hopes that such "creation" may help move the imperfection toward perfection. Put another way, I believe God takes pre-existing chaos and works to form it and order it. On top of that, God hopes to raise some of that imperfection up to his level. However, freedom that God did not create is innate within that pre-existing imperfection and chaos. God does his best to appeal to it and inspire it, but he has little or no real control over it.

I find this far more appealing and "logical" than orthodox assumptions.

Moreover, I find it epitomizes God's love.

I could now go on about the incoherence of a perfect, self-sufficient, immutable, absolute, eternal, impassable, trio of beings who is actually one being deciding to create imperfect creatures out of nothing even though such creatures are totally unnecessary and could never really add anything to God's glory but were created anyway because love yada, yada, yada, but it's been done to death.

If you are content with those assumptions, then peace be with you.

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