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But we do not have completedness in creation before the final Judgment, which is where the perfection of God's creation is achieved -- not before. God created a "good," not a "perfect" creation, as He Himself says.... "Goodness" accords with His purpose; "perfection" would leave no room for development toward God's end or goal in creating. There would also be no role for man, for human free will in a "perfect" universe.

Excellent, dearest sister in Christ! Just excellent!

It occurs to me that this is right up marron's alley, so I'm giving him a ping, too.

But we do not have completedness in creation before the final Judgment, which is where the perfection of God's creation is achieved -- not before. God created a "good," not a "perfect" creation, as He Himself says.... "Goodness" accords with His purpose; "perfection" would leave no room for development toward God's end or goal in creating. There would also be no role for man, for human free will in a "perfect" universe.

That is my sense of it, at least. "Perfect" is a mental construct. It does not exist in reality. We use it in reference to God, but it doesn't really tell us anything about him, because he defines it, rather than the other way around.

"Perfect" with reference to anything else, can not exist, because any state of "perfect" you could imagine only sets the stage for the next stage of "perfect". If you could map "perfect", it would trace a corkscrew path moving away at light speed in any of a thousand directions.

"Perfection", however, does exist, and it is the fundamental essence of creation both as an act and as a description of what occurs in natural history and human history as well, despite all the detours and crashes along the way. I'm convinced that detours and crashes (and missing links and biological dead ends) are an inevitable part of the process.

"Perfection", in fact, turns "perfect" on its head. We might imagine that for any question there is one right answer, but life shows us a million right answers, and more on the way. There isn't one tree, there are myriad species and among all the individual trees not one is like any other, not even another of the same species, and not one of them stops changing right up until the moment of death.

But we do not have completedness in creation before the final Judgment, which is where the perfection of God's creation is achieved -- not before.

I can't think of a single Scripture which would 100% fool proof indicate anything of the kind. I actually can't think of a single Scriptural phrase which would infallibly 100% reliably prove, indicate that CREATION will ever be "completed" in our notions of the construct.

I can think of quite a few from which we could infer, assume, extrapolate that God WILL BE FOREVER CRFEATING, EXAPANDING, EMBELLISHING, UNFOLDING, FLOWERING, BREATHING INTO CREATION "ALL" HIS LIMITLESS EXAPANSIVENESS . . .

There is also that interesting Scripture at the Tower of Babel . . . about how unless they confuse the languages, man would discover the secret of life itself. DNA?

I personally can't imagine a COMPLETED CREATION with God Almighty that I know--after the "Final Judgment" or any other "time" in history future.