The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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I find it interesting that there is at least one place where Hartshorne defends the idea of God's creating us "out of nothing." This he does on the ground that, since "the other-than-ourselves-now which creates us, as of now, is God and in addition to God, nothing," God, in truth, creates us out of nothing other than Godself -- literally a Deo, "Deo" meaning "God as having actually created and now possessing all previous worlds" (LP: 273 f.).

So far as I can see, this is entirely compatible with my defense of the idea on the ground that, prior to each creature's being created, it was "nothing," and it is out of this nothing that it is created -- again, precisely, a Deo.

Likewise relevant is Hartshorne's teaching elsewhere that "[o]bjective nothing can only be pure possibility [or the realm of primordial possibilities]" ("The Divine Relativity and Absoluteness: A Reply": 44). Since any world is a world whose real or immediate possibility God creates and, as such, is a determination of the wholly indeterminate, i.e., "pure possibility," God creates that and any other possible world literally "out of nothing."

31 May 2005

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