Jeanine Diller Models of God

[@mariashao8820]

Thank you so much for having this conversation and sharing it. Extremely valuable and fascinating.

[@StevenPetermann]

Fascinating conversation. I wasn't aware of Jeanine's ideas but have started reading some of her papers and the introduction to the book she edited. Great stuff. I agree that the idea of evolution is an important one in thinking about God. In my view, the Divine Life is an evolutionary tale that is steeped in meaning and purpose. It is a narrative of what I call God-as-living where God incarnates (takes on finite being) in everything from quantum fields, their excitations into what we call particles, to molecules, inanimate entities, animate creatures, all the way to sentient beings wherever they may be in the cosmos. This all occurs in the Divine Mind so a Divine Idealism. One concept that I think should be abandoned is the idea of salvation. This came out of the phase of religious thought when the major religions emerged roughly during the axial age. It was a phase where world rejection was ubiquitous (see Robert Bellah's the evolution of religion). This was a tragic metaphysical mistake, in my opinion, because it sets up a horrible theology that casts a dark shadow on creation and God's competence as creator. It also instigates a carrot-or-stick mentality that is so destructive.

[@StevenPetermann]

In reading some of Jeanine's work and a lot of prior reading about various ideas about ultimate reality like the book Hartshorne edited on "Philosophers Speak of God" and McEvilley's magnificent tome, "The Shape of Ancient Thought", the huge diversity makes me wonder what personal psychological factors/issues might be in play that influence an individual to favor a specific position. Positions like a personal/impersonal ultimate, what the "en" in panentheism means, God being "perfect", divine action, transcendence/or not, and so on. I've done a search for research on this but can't find anything. Does anyone know of scholars who have tackled this question?

[@TenOnReligion]

I don't know if there is research on some sort of predisposition to particular models of God based on psychological factors or not. It certainly would be an interesting question to pursue.