The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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1. Hartshorne says of Radhakrishnan's concept of the "pre-cosmic nature of God" that it "should mean, not God before the creaturely process, but God in abstraction from every particular form or world-constellation which this process has actually taken. For, as all such forms are contingent, we are at liberty to conceive alternatives for every one of them, and the pre-cosmic nature is merely what all such possible forms have in common. Not before but all times, actual or possible, is the meaning" ("Radkahrishan on Mind, Matter, and God": 321).

2. But, mutatis mutandis, one could also conceive a "post-cosmic nature of God," which would be God as necessarily including every particular form or world-constellation which the creaturely process has actually taken and as destined to include every potential such form or world-constellation. Thus not after all times, actual or possible, but all times, actual or possible in God is the meaning.

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