God's Perfection and Mankind's
Original Sin of Being Less Than Perfect
The
neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus developed the concept of the One
(God) as the original perfect spiritual singularity in his collection
of 54 tractates named the
Enneads.
Being absolutely perfect spirit with omniscience, omnipotence and
omnipresence the One had no need for anything else to be. Christians
believe God is One yet with three persons-for-others.
Plotinus wondered why the
absolutely perfect One would create anything else. Why would a
perfect Spirit create anything less than Himself, less than One
existing apart from the all-in-One monistic fact.
Plato
and his realm of forms was the source of inspiration for Plotinus'
ideas. Plotinus never really answered his own question about why the
One would create anything. Plotinus described a logical paradigm
wherein the One emanates ideas that become actual apart from the One
(God). The realm of ideas emanated is known as the realm of forms
that Plato described in The
Republic,
and the
Intelligence
directs the realm of forms. The
Intelligence is
comparable to the word or Logos whom is Jesus Christ and of whom the
Disciple John wrote of in opening his gospel.
The realm of forms is a
foundational realm of every possible configuration of being and of
things that exist or will exist apart from the One. It might be
comparable to an abstract mathematical field wherein every possible
particle configuration that could occur in the Higgs field or
elsewhere exists timelessly in thought stasis.
The
world of actual forms is incomplete and partial; none that arise in
material being have actual perfection; all are temporal and haven't
omniscience, omnipotence or omnipresence. Mankind are actualized
forms themselves. Maybe the Schrödinger wave-function collapsing
super-positioned quantum state is a way to think about broken forms
arising from the realm of forms. Symmetry breaking happens in the
initial waveform collapse from possible perfect balance of quantum
superposition. Subsequently a steady state realm of broken forms
evolves through thermodynamic changes as God has destined.
In
the Garden of Eden mankind was in a near perfect relation to the One
within their innocence. It seems as if the Garden of Eden was
non-temporal and likely spiritually founded. It is possible that Adam
though made from dust was yet in a closer relation to pure spirit.
The fall took Adam and Eve farther away from spiritual perfection and
down into a purely material realm of broken forms that is the cosmos
and Earth.
That
brings me to the topic of salvation and mankind's need for relief
from original sin. Mankind placed into the temporal material realm of
broken forms has no way out; there isn't a way to directly return to
the One. Jesus Christ; perfectly God and perfectly man, is the sole
way for mankind unto the One.
God sees Jesus whom is perfection
within the One and is of the One when he regards the saved whom have
accepted the Lord as their personal savior. The elect saved through
the grace of God through the Lord Jesus Christ receive eternal life
that is the state of the One.
It
is impossible for broken forms that are human beings, and for
artificial intelligence, animals or stones to bring themselves unto
the One. The abundant providence of the Lord and the grace of
election makes that unnecessary. Imperfection as human beings is
transformed through the perfect atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus
and thence may the saved return closer unto the One.
That brings me to the topic of
works versus grace. Works in-the-world could never result in
perfection or perfect obedience to the will of God. The sole way to
fully obey the will of God is to have faith in the Lord Jesus as
one's savior.
There
is one final point to raise in this essay; how could God create
anything imperfect if he is perfection in-himself? The question seems
comparable to a paradigm of how could the One whom is pure monism
though being three persons create a plural realm of forms and broken
forms?
Maybe
the answer is that a multi-verse in an infinite number of forms is
logically a manifestation of the omnipotence, omniscience and
omnipresence of God. Creating every possible good thing is a logical
activity of omnipotence. The infinite creative power of infinite
plural things in every possible state of being is a power of God.
Like a fog that covers some regions of land and water and may
increase or decrease the realm visible to others, the will,
providence and grace of God makes some things known and knowable and
others not so within realms for sentient beings in order to be
consistent with his creative parameters. The temporal ekstasis of
past, present and future is an example.
For
God eternity is complete rather than incomplete as it appears to
imperfect, incomplete beings existing in regions of his will for
things actualized to be and become. Physicists too have speculated
that matter already exists in past, present and future and it is
human conscious movement along a ladder or route of time, space, mass
and energy that is a spiritual journey appearing subjectively as
outward or empirical change. It is a strange Universe in which
humanity exists. God is good.
