I agree that the way God causes is unlike how we cause, but I do think that analogy can help! The analogy to authorship is helpful for me. To take an example from recent reading, why does Frodo leave the Shire in Lord of the Rings? One cause is that Gandalf charges him to do so. But another is that JRR Tolkien had a story to tell. These are two different ways of thinking of "causes".
Not only are they different philosophically, but also in terms of personal meaning. If Frodo thinks of his quest as a somewhat accidental link in a chain of Bilbo stumbling across the Ring and then Frodo happening to be his favorite nephew, then it's easy to imagine life being otherwise: "I wish the Ring had never come to me". If there is no why, then the blessings and challenges of my life are just downstream consequences of events, and I'm just existentially coping to the extent I can.
It is Sam who keeps coming back to the idea that they are characters in a Story, and therefore, they are not only especially chosen for their roles, but are being born along on the current of a Will that has a desire to see those roles fulfilled. And _that_ is part of what sustains Sam, and allows him to sustain Frodo, when mere existential coping gives out.
Richard, I very much appreciate your comments on Thomas, which I think are exactly right. Even to use the word "proofs" is a categorical mistake. To even think of proving something related to divine agency is a silly categorical mistake. More than that, it's human hubris. Falling down before the apophatic mystery of God is not a cop out, but a refusal to engage in idolatry, for what else is idolatry but forming a god after our own understanding of whet a god should be like. We can understand very little about creation or providence apart from the conviction that God is love, and that is all we can or need to know about thesd mysteries.
“We are tempted to think of God's ‘causality’ as being similar to creaturely causality. In this imagination, which is hard to escape, God is a cause among or alongside other causes…. Rather, God's ‘causality’ is wholly different from any understanding we might have of causality…. Thomas doesn't just mean ‘temporally prior to.’ He also means ‘ontologically different.’”
This is extremely helpful, particularly when one wrestles with the notion of God’s so-called “intervention in history.”
We struggle with seemingly arbitrary and sometimes cruel paradoxes. Why does God help this person but not that one? Why does God allow horrible disasters, horrible human behaviors? Why does God answer some prayers and not others? And we construct elaborate “reward and punishment” doctrines and “tests” of faith, none of which satisfy either our sense of justice or our desires and fears.
Increasingly in relationships with suffering people, I find myself seeking to lift God out of our temporal notions of causality. We are moral. Things happen; things change. God is present in all of this, not as a cause but as a pastor, a prophet, a healer.
This is happening in the mortal world, the Spirit says in our hearts. Keep your awareness in the still point of the moment. Experience and observe what goes by, allow yourself to feel true grief and true joy. But stay in the present moment, where God is.
I agree that the way God causes is unlike how we cause, but I do think that analogy can help! The analogy to authorship is helpful for me. To take an example from recent reading, why does Frodo leave the Shire in Lord of the Rings? One cause is that Gandalf charges him to do so. But another is that JRR Tolkien had a story to tell. These are two different ways of thinking of "causes".
Not only are they different philosophically, but also in terms of personal meaning. If Frodo thinks of his quest as a somewhat accidental link in a chain of Bilbo stumbling across the Ring and then Frodo happening to be his favorite nephew, then it's easy to imagine life being otherwise: "I wish the Ring had never come to me". If there is no why, then the blessings and challenges of my life are just downstream consequences of events, and I'm just existentially coping to the extent I can.
It is Sam who keeps coming back to the idea that they are characters in a Story, and therefore, they are not only especially chosen for their roles, but are being born along on the current of a Will that has a desire to see those roles fulfilled. And _that_ is part of what sustains Sam, and allows him to sustain Frodo, when mere existential coping gives out.
Richard, I very much appreciate your comments on Thomas, which I think are exactly right. Even to use the word "proofs" is a categorical mistake. To even think of proving something related to divine agency is a silly categorical mistake. More than that, it's human hubris. Falling down before the apophatic mystery of God is not a cop out, but a refusal to engage in idolatry, for what else is idolatry but forming a god after our own understanding of whet a god should be like. We can understand very little about creation or providence apart from the conviction that God is love, and that is all we can or need to know about thesd mysteries.
“We are tempted to think of God's ‘causality’ as being similar to creaturely causality. In this imagination, which is hard to escape, God is a cause among or alongside other causes…. Rather, God's ‘causality’ is wholly different from any understanding we might have of causality…. Thomas doesn't just mean ‘temporally prior to.’ He also means ‘ontologically different.’”
This is extremely helpful, particularly when one wrestles with the notion of God’s so-called “intervention in history.”
We struggle with seemingly arbitrary and sometimes cruel paradoxes. Why does God help this person but not that one? Why does God allow horrible disasters, horrible human behaviors? Why does God answer some prayers and not others? And we construct elaborate “reward and punishment” doctrines and “tests” of faith, none of which satisfy either our sense of justice or our desires and fears.
Increasingly in relationships with suffering people, I find myself seeking to lift God out of our temporal notions of causality. We are moral. Things happen; things change. God is present in all of this, not as a cause but as a pastor, a prophet, a healer.
This is happening in the mortal world, the Spirit says in our hearts. Keep your awareness in the still point of the moment. Experience and observe what goes by, allow yourself to feel true grief and true joy. But stay in the present moment, where God is.