By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
The basic idea to be worked out is:
that any even inadequate distinction between God's creative and God's emancipative (providential) activity, on the one hand, and between God's consummative and God's redemptive activity, on the other, depends on the distinction that is possible with respect to any "society," individual or aggregate, in Whitehead's technical use of the term -- viz., the distinction between its existence as such in some state or other and its existence in just this, that, or the other particular state. God's creative and consummative activity can be distinguished insofar as both have to do with existence as such in some state or other relative to its beginning and its end respectively, whereas God's emancipative (providential) and redemptive activity can be distinguished insofar as both have to do with existence in just this, that, or the other particular state relative to its beginning and its end respectively.
Perhaps the best approach would be:
first, to distinguish between God's creative activity, on the one hand, and God's consummative activity, on the other;
second, to allow that, just as there cannot be an adequate distinction between God's creative activity and God's emancipative (providential) activity, so there cannot be an adequate distinction between God's consummative activity and God's redemptive activity -- There cannot be an adequate distinction in either case for the same reason: neither creation nor consummation is a single unique event on a time line, running from the first at the beginning of the line to the second at its end. Although everything other than God has its primal source and final end in God, that there is something other than God has neither beginning nor end. "Evermore from his store, new-born worlds rise and adore!"; and
third, to maintain, nevertheless, that one can and should distinguish, even if only inadequately, both between God's creative activity and God's emancipative (providential) activity and between God's consummative activity and God's redemptive activity -- These distinctions can be made inadequately insofar as everything other than God exists, if it exists at all, contingently, not necessarily. Considered, then, with respect to anything's existence as such in some state or other, one can speak of God's creative activity as the sole primal source of its existence, while speaking of God's emancipative [providential] activity as the sole primal source of its existing in just this, that, or the other particular state. Mutatis mutandis, one can speak of God's consummative activity as the sole final end of anything considered with respect to its existence as such in some state or other, while speaking of God's redemptive activity as the sole final end of its existing in just this, that, or the other particular state.
October 1989; rev. 9 September 2003
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