By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
There are two, and only two, senses in which we can talk about lithe totality of being."
In one sense, lithe totality of being" refers to the completeness of the potential as such, including the necessary as the least common denominator of all potentialities. To this totality, nothing determinate or actual can ever be added, since it must be conceived in entire abstraction from all determination or actualization. In the other sense, "the totality of being" refers to the most inclusive actual whole. To this totality, infinite new determinations can be added forever, although none can ever be outside it.
Rightly conceived, God is the totality of being in both senses of the words.
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"Infinity" is an ambiguous concept and needs explication.
On the one hand, it can refer to the plenum of eternal possibilities, which is in a definite sense absolutely infinite, even if also perforce abstract, lacking in any definite actuality. On the other hand, "infinity" can refer to the beginningless totality of already created actualities, which must be numerically infinite, even though it does not and never can exhaustively actualize the infinity of possibility.
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"God is being in both its opposite aspects: abstract least common denominator, and concrete de facto maximal achieved totality" (The Divine Relativity: 88),
n.d.; rev. 30 July 2002
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