By Schubert Ogden
1.
God is the all-worshipful, hence the unsurpassable, hence the one universal, transcendental, and necessarily existent individual.
2.
But, then, God must indeed be alpha and omega, the first and the last, the primal source and the final end, the Creator and the Consummator.
3.
God must be the Creator because God's creative activity is unsurpassable, doing all that could conceivably be done by any individual to create both itselfand itself and all others. God must be the Consummator because God's consummative activity likewise is unsurpassable, doing all that could conceivably be done by any individual to allow both itself and all others to contribute to its own self-creation.
4.
But, then, God is not the Creator because God alone creates the future, but rather because God alone creates the future unsurpassably, all other forms of creating being in principle surpassable. In the same way, God is not the Consummator because God alone consummates the past, but rather because God alone consummates the past unsurpassably, all other forms of consummating it being in principle surpassable.
15 February 2001