BB, my Dear Sister in Christ, I fear I must side with MHGinTN on this one.
God is not only omniscient and omnipotent, but omnipresent at all loci in His creation.
Per our discussion of the "Universal NOW", I believe that He can not only "see" the spin status of every subatomic particle in His creation at any instant, if required for the accomplishment of His Will, His omnipotence enables Him to modify that state to effect His desired conclusion.
Humans call such changes "evolution" or "development" or "progress" -- or, if the result appears to contravene one of His "laws", (E=MC², R=ρL/A, PV=nrT, etc....) we call it "miraculous". '-)
He is, indeed, "here". I am ever-conscious of His presence...
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After all, His Name is, "I AM"...
Praise God!!!
And you, dear brother in Christ, wrote: "BB, my Dear Sister in Christ, I fear I must side with MHGinTN on this one. "
My dear brother in Christ, you acknowledge agreement with what MHGinTN wrote:
God is in Christ, reconciling we flawed beings to Himself, thus He is intimately in contact with spacetime in the person of Jesus Christ. That is how He can reconcile us to Himself, through The Christ, The Son of the Everliving God.TX, you provided the following amplification of MHGinTN's remarks:
God diminishes none of His transcendence by functioning as The Holy Spirit holding the unbelievably delicate balance of the Universe together, and in being the earnest of our inheritance present in our human spirit through Christ's work. And God compromises none of His transcendence by indwelling Jesus through Jesus's human spirit made Divine forever more. As Creator, perhaps God is 'outside' the Creation, but as The Holy Spirit and as Christ, He is with us, as the name Emmanuel was given to mean.
God is not only omniscient and omnipotent, but omnipresent at all loci in His creation.But it seems to me the two of you aren't exactly talking about the same thing in the same way. MHGinTN's argument seems to go mainly to theology; yours, to a more "scientific" understanding.
Per our discussion of the "Universal NOW", I believe that He can not only "see" the spin status of every subatomic particle in His creation at any instant, if required for the accomplishment of His Will, His omnipotence enables Him to modify that state to effect His desired conclusion.
Humans call such changes "evolution" or "development" or "progress" — or, if the result appears to contravene one of His "laws", (E=MC2, R=ρL/A, PV=nrT, etc....) we call it "miraculous".
I'm with both of you "in spirit"; but have some thoughts and questions on points.
For one thing, I really do stick with my observation that God is entirely beyond spacetime. The Eternal Now is not in the same temporal order that human beings experience as Time (spacetime). I think there is a correspondence between the Eternal Now and its relation to Time that is directly analogous to the Ayn Sof — God is "No-THING" (that is, uncreated) in relation to "THINGS" — i.e., phenomena of the created world: The Eternal Now is (categorically) "No-TIME."
So for openers, it seems to me if we try to model the Universe in such as way as to include the Eternal Now as a temporal dimension, we speak nonsense.
There has been in all of human history one exception to this "rule": The 32 years during which the Son of God was incarnate as Jesus Christ, Son of Man, around 2,100 years ago [according to our spacetime coordinates :^)]. I suspect that was the only "time" when the Eternal Now and our ordinary sense of Time ever "blended." Then Christ resurrected, back to His Father in Heaven. He has not been "in" the world of creation ever since. He sent the Holy Spirit to be with us after His departure from this world. But it seems to me that the Holy Spirit is not "in" the world either, only in those human souls who respond to His divine call.
I believe that when Christ came, He came not only to redeem us from the sin of Adam, thus to restore the possibility of being reunited with our Father in Heaven; He came also to show us what we humans are, as God-created imago Dei.
To me, the imago Dei is the soul, which incarnates in the human body. The soul is not subject to causes that arise in space and time. Only the physical body is so subject. So we might say the soul already ever lives in the Eternal Now; only the body is subject to Time. To me, this irreducible dualism is the ultimate human condition.
I haven't got the slightest doubt that God — being Omniscient — always and already knows the spin status of every subatomic particle in His Creation, just as He can number the hairs on our heads, or have knowledge of any and every sparrow that ever falls here on Earth....
But to me, this does not suggest that God need be the "micromanager" of everything that happens on Earth. To create man in His image — as possessing reason and free will — and to give him dominion over all the orders of Creation as His steward, charged with making the Creation "fruitful," to me suggests that God created an "under-determined" world. That is, He has left a role for man in the unfolding of His Creation, starting with the privilege He accorded Adam, directing him to NAME all the creatures of the Earth He had made. To me this suggests that God desires divine–human cooperation WRT the unfoldment ("evolution") of His Creation — which from the human side could only proceed as an act of (timeless) soul, not of (in-time) body.
Isaac Newton's concept of sensorium Dei seems like an attempt to relate God to His creation in scientific terms, similarly as you seem to do here, dear TX. Instantly, Leibniz had a field-day with this notion, accusing Newton of engaging in "pantheism." It seemed to Leibniz that Newton was trying to make God somehow coterminous with the world. But I think this may have been a misunderstanding of what Newton was aiming at. His sensorium Dei looks a whole lot like a "field" to me, and thus a created entity in spacetime. The point is this field (although universal) and God are NOT one and the same. One might say this field is an effect of the Presence of God, but is definitely not God Himself.
Heaven stands in relation to the Creation as the human soul stands in relation to the physical body: They are two entirely different categorical orders that affect each other, both of which are necessary to grasp the "all that there is." [In this sense, they are like "complementarities," seemingly mutually-exclusive entities, both of which turn out to be necessary to the complete description of the "all that there is."]
Thus two time orders impinge on man — he lives at the intersection of Time and Timelessness, or the Eternal Now, because he is a creature constituted of soul and body.
Anyhoot, to wrap up, If Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit have effects in this world of Creation, it is because of the openness of human souls to receive them. Nothing in science can tell you anything at all about such matters; for science deals only with the physical aspects of creation, the "time-bound" parts of it. Neither can science tell you a single thing about the human soul.
But ultimately, the Creation swims in Timelessness, in the Eternal Now — of God's Being, Word, Truth, and Will.
I have no idea whether anything I've written here makes sense to you. I'm not here to "correct" you, nor even to "persuade" you to my point of view. I'm just saying (FWIW): This is my point of view from where I sit right now, as best as I can put it into words....
Thank you so very much, dear brothers in Christ, for exploring these matters with me, and for sharing your wonderfully thought-provoking insights!
God's Name is I AM: Our very physical existence depends on His Being. He is Perfect undivided Substance, the "No-THING" Who created space and time as the manifold to receive His Creation, Who articulates as three Persons (depending on context). Our physical bodies are deaf to such notions. But our souls know — or can know — that God IS Emmanuel, Present, with us who seek Him. (If we seek Him, He will find us....)
And may He ever bless you both, my very dear brothers in Christ!
Thank you!