God did not create this life and then abandon us (the clockmaker).

God did not create this life and continues to determine every action (the puppetmaster).

Panentheism says that all is in God, somewhat as if God were the ocean and we were fish. If one considers what is in God's body to be part of God, then we can say that God is all there is and then some. The universe is God's body, but God's awareness or personality is much greater than the sum of all the parts of the universe. All the parts have some degree of freedom in co-creating with God. At the start of its momentary career as a subject, an experience is God--as the divine initial aim. As the experience carries on its choosing process, it is a freely aiming reality that is not strictly God, since it departs from God's purpose to some degree. Yet everything is within God.

Nice James - to add  Whitehead showed that causality, natural law, and temporality are given, or derivative from what is given, in our subjective experience. So are novelty and freedom, and also the sense of better and worse. He shows that we have nonsensory perception that is more basic than that which is mediated by sense organs. It is in the analysis of this subjective world, excluded by science, that God plays an important role.

Process thinkers believe that what happens subjectively affects what happens objectively and that excluding the subject from the study of living things leads science to incomplete explanations. This is especially true where human beings are involved, but it is true also of other animals. When animals learn new ways of procuring food or enter into symbiotic relations, this affects the selection of mutated genes. Evolutionists rarely deny this, but they do not include it in standard accounts of evolution.

Unless and until the extensive role of animal subjectivity in evolution is acknowledged and included in the account of evolution, evolutionary theory will be thoroughly atheistic and also morally nihilistic. Giving the subjective lives of animals their due place will not automatically lead to theism. But the fullest and deepest account of what transpires in subjectivity, moment by moment, involves the creaturely relationship to God. This relationship grounds both order and novelty, both law and freedom. Through it God influences, but does not determine, what happens in the world.

I will put matters in philosophical terms. There are philosophies that imply that facts can be deduced from first principles. These are deterministic systems in which metaphysics plays the controlling role. Whitehead rejects that type of philosophy drastically. A central role for philosophy is to develop a metaphysics that makes clear the radical contingency of the world of facts.
The world of facts is also the world of values. Human attention should focus primarily on the world of facts and values. These can be studied empirically and historically. From empirical and historical study theories can be developed, which guide further study. They can be tested in wider realms.

The God question continues to be a regular topic, so here is how Process answers it.

Notice the term God is basic to the tradition.  What I am going to say can be supported by a biblical understanding but for the sake of economy I will only glance in that direction.
 
What is know as classic theism is in tension with the biblical view and modern consciousness.  Language like immutable and omnipotence are problems.  Immutable  means what happens in the world has no real impact on God.  Omnipotence means only God has real power and has all the power and that is a problem in the face of tragedy - god sends floods and shootings and we know that such a god is immoral.

So Process offers a way to understand prayer.  Perfection means that God loves perfectly.  This means a radical openness to human experience.  God takes them into God’s reality. Thus perfection means perfect vulnerability... God is changed by experience and is consistent in God’s intentions - offers the divine lure of eros and beauty to every situation in a form that is appropriate to each entity.  Then the entity takes that lure and makes it concrete and offers it to others and God, for the next moment of becoming.

So God like all other entities interacts with others.  “The difference is that God interacts perfectly with all creatures.  The creatures interact very imperfectly with only a few.”

We use the word panentheism. Note it is not pantheism.  Panentheism means that everything is in God.  Yet God is distinct from the world - there is an otherness or transcendent experience of God. What happens to the world happens in God and God transforms what has happened in light of God’s aim and offers it to the world in the form of beauty , compassion, and justice.  These are emerging qualities and grow in strength and meaning.  All things ‘prehend through internal relationships.’  This later concept is a basic metaphysical given about all reality - God and all sentient reality share this.  This is a form of deep empiricism suggested by William James... and such a view aids scientific exploration - offers a better theory than reductionistic- mechanistic - materialism.

As well as the world being in God - and having its own district reality - God is in the world. “There is nothing in which  in which God is not present. “   This is the idea that the Holy Spirit works in us.  It is not identical with us but it means that find God when we look within.  The religious disciplines help value up this experience because this is the nature of their function.

God knows only what has happened and is now happening.  In that knowing God knows what is possible and what is not possible.  However, God does not know exactly what will happen in the future.  Humans make real decisions which  God has to consider.  We have real consequences on what while become.  Thus real inderminism about the future.

This allows us to escape the issue of Nietzsche - if humans  are to experience freedom God must be denied.  This view is based on the mistaken idea that God is in complete control - has all the power.  God does not self-limit Godself - there is real power to influence held by all sentient reality.  God’s power is one of persuasion.  God is the influence to more value and God is the influence that opens up the future for us.  “God is the source of alternative real possibilities among which we decide, moment by moment.”  We are lured by God, and the action in response is ours.  God is the source of strength for the  good.  God is the source of love that is for the other- that is in the best interests of the ‘other.’

Such a view is, I think biblical.  For in the myth of Genesis one, God is becoming and works with ‘stuff’ to create - it is not out of nothing.  And one of the many names for God is “I will be what  I will be” or the great I am is a becoming process.

I leave other questions of everlasting life in God for now. But it can be held in two senses: objectively in God and a subject experience in God.  If all things affect what is becoming and if God is eternal all that has made a positive difference remains in the memory of God. And it is logical to suggest that we may have a subjective experience in the memory of God.  Resurrection is creative transformation where reality has been changed for ever, and it is embodied, that is material in the sense of all things that are are actual... there is difference from the old form, but transformation has changed material reality.

Hi crazyheart,

No.  A Creator, creates.

Now, what if there is more to the Creator than creating?  What if that same Creator is also say, a Redeemer and a Sustainer?  Would some control come into play then?  What if the Creator is in a relationship with something other?  Does the Creator exercise any control in that relationship or because they are Creator are they at the mercy of the other?

So yes, a Creator who does more than simply create but relates would exercise some control in some fashion.  The question would be how?

Grace and peace to you.

John

The power of God is love, it is not the power of coercive violence. The power of love is a relational power, exercised with others, which is how we are the co-creators with God of the future.

A creator sets the initial conditions of a system. The more competent the creator, the greater the appearance of control; a good creation will act (or react) just as the creator intended without the need for intervention.

Qualitatively, control at time t=0 is indistinguishible from control at time t=1,2,3,...,n when both creations do the same things.

Hi crazyheart:

I didn't take the time to read this entire thread, and I'm sure somebody wrote this before:

A creator does not control. A creator (any creator) creates.

If we were indeed created in the image of our ultimate creator, then we, too, should create rather than control.

If I shape soft clay into the form of a pot and bake it, thus creating a hardened pot, I am limiting the function of that clay. To limit something is to control something. It may not be under my control, but it is of my control.

Of course, while you create a work of art, you control it. But once it is created, it is out of your hands, and assumes a "life" of its own.

I regard the cosmos as self-creative or self-generative. In my cosmos there is no external creator.

As you said Ergo - you have to work with the clay or the wood -  it limits what can be done - in analogy the creator working with humans ( and all sentient beings) has to deal with what they bring to the table - as James points out the power relationship of the creator is peruasion - not force - and likewise with clay one cannot force to create

Thanks guys.  Much appreciated.

Shalom

Mate