Johnboy on March 11, 2012 at 10:30 am said: Your comment is awaiting moderation. This is exciting! While all metaphors eventually collapse, “field” has been my favorite root metaphor and, perhaps, the most resilient vis a vis panentheism. Because freedom is indispensable to love, the inherently coercive nature of a “force” field presents a paradox though? I would like to share the fruits of my own grappling with this riddle. How might this field interact with reality, optimizing freedom? Among its manifold and multiform attributes, in addition to its essence as love, we might conceive of both the amplitude (how big?) and frequency (how often?) of field interactions and plot those, respectively, on x and y axes. On such a graph, we would observe 4 quadrants: 1) low frequency – low amplitude 2) low frequency – high amplitude 3) high frequency – high amplitude and 4) high frequency – low amplitude. Consider, now, the nature of human interactions. At polar extremes, low frequency – low amplitude interactions reveal an apathetic posture, while high frequency – high amplitude interactions reveal a pathetic over-involvement. We can draw a line on our graph between these poles and call it, then, our Axis of Codependency. Alternatively, high frequency – low amplitude interactions characterize the nature of a healthy day in-day out relationship as filled with many gentle affirmations and small nurturing ministrations with only an occasional low frequency – high amplitude intervention. We can draw a line on our graph between these poles and call it, then, our Axis of Co-creativity. In an emergentist paradigm, consistent with cosmic evolution, we can observe these patterns playing out in nature. Think of the Big Bang and of natural selection. We can also observe these patterns, I believe, in Salvation History. Think of the Incarnation and of the work of the Spirit. We can observe this paradigm in physics where our modal ontology has changed its categories from the possible, actual and necessary (reductionistic determinism of Newton) to the possible, actual and probable (nonreductive physicalism). In a metaphysic where the necessary prescinds to the probable, what emerges is freedom. A theology of nature recognizes the Author of this freedom as the Ens Necessarium, Who shrunk to make room for it all — in the Name of Love. This is my own theology of nature (what I call pan-semioentheism) in a nutshell and I’ll let others poetically tease out its implications rather than belabor it all here. It really makes more sense in my poem: the Spirit woos creation forth makes this way south & that way north invites each blade of grass to green! horizons, boundaries, limits, origins 1
perimeters, parameters, centers, margins we’re given freedom in between! thus truth & beauty & goodness grow thus lizards leap & roosters crow and dawns break with each new day! good news is ours to be believed love freely given if received the Spirit in our heart will stay!
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