Sentences with phrase «divine persuasion»

In that moment there is no longer any divine persuasion remaining, nor logically any creaturely freedom.

I have said that the only really strong thing is love; and I now add that the divine persuasion, working tenderly yet indefatigably, may very well be able, in the long run, to win free consent.

As we shall see, this understanding of God as future, or more precisely, as the power of the future effective in the present, permits a renewed appropriation of divine persuasion and human freedom.7

There is no divine persuasion here.

At this juncture, however, just when it appears that there is no room at all for any affirmation of divine persuasion, Jesus» proclamation of the kingdom of God introduces a radically new way of experiencing God's sovereignty as the power of the future.

An alternative, now emerging in theism, is the model of divine persuasion.

Believers often feel strengthened by God in responding to the divine persuasion.

This would certainly be consistent with the divine persuasion of Whitehead's metaphysics.

We have seen that God works by divine persuasion by providing those lures toward which we can aspire.

Hence Whitehead thinks in terms of divine persuasion.

At the ontological level, the level of efficient causality, divine persuasion is not operative; «forbearance would mean non-existence...» But once humanity is created and God resolves to relate himself to humankind in terms of persuasion and not coercion, God «would have to be uncertain about a number of details of the future... and in some respects unable to accomplish his will at all.»

God's directive provides an initial aim for this process of integration, but unlike the efficient causal influences, that aim can be so drastically modified that its original purpose could be completely excluded from physical realization in the final outcome.4 Insofar as the occasion actualizes its initial aim, the divine persuasion has been effective.

Without the alternative of divine persuasion, we confront two unwelcome extremes: divine determinism or pure chance.

Cobb recognizes that his account goes «a little beyond the confines of description of Whitehead's account in Process and Reality in the direction of systematization, «10 but he is prepared to defend his interpretation in detail.11 What is important for our purposes is the fact that the involvement of God's consequent nature in divine persuasion renders that activity intensely personal.

Not only we ourselves, but the entire created order, whether consciously or unconsciously, is open to this divine persuasion, each in its own way.

On this level it becomes possible for the increasing complexity of order to be directed toward the achievement of civilization, and for the means of divine persuasion to become ethical aspiration (see EM 119).

The notion of divine persuasion entails a twofold expansion of our traditional understanding of freedom.

In the remainder of this chapter we shall isolate features that illustrate divine persuasion drawn from the areas of creation, providence, and biblical authority, reserving for the next chapter the difficult theme of the interaction of persuasive and coercive elements within the biblical image of God as king.

For process theism, this evaluation ultimately stems from God and constitutes the way he acts in the world by divine persuasion.

Yet, in doing so, the presupposition underlying divine persuasion is destroyed.

This identification is not possible in process theism, which sees self - decision and divine persuasion, along with the multiplicity of past causal conditions, as distinct but indispensable and complementary aspects of every act of freedom.

The logic of divine persuasion, moreover, requires us to recognize the limitation of the philosophical approach to God, not within its proper domain, to be sure, but with respect to the totality of divine activity.

From the standpoint of divine persuasion, providence is simply another way of looking at God's guidance of the historical process already manifest in creation.

Yet there are a good many biblical themes that the concept of divine persuasion can appropriate and illuminate, particularly themes which are a source of embarrassment to exponents of classical omnipotence.

Thus, for the universe at large, divine persuasion seeks to evoke life wherever possible, in the form appropriate to particular local conditions.

Creation in the sense of the emergence of levels of intensification in concert with divine persuasion is universal, and the salvation of each (intelligent) level depends upon its participation in the creation of the next higher level.

Since human coercion has absolutely no intrinsic value within a process system (in fact, is an intrinsic evil), it would appear that if divine persuasion is maximally effective alone, process theists should be pacifists.

If God would use coercive power if it were available, then there are, in principle, times when divine persuasion plus divine coercion would bring about more worthwhile results.

On the other hand, if the answer is yes — that is, if divine persuasion alone does not maximize human freedom to the extent that such persuasion and divinely approved human coercion does — then it is difficult to see why the process God would not use coercive power if this were an option.

If we assume, as we presently do, that the primary goal of both God and concerned humans is to maximize freedom (creativity) for the greatest number, it is the following query with which we must be concerned: Do continuous divine persuasion and occasional human coercion, in conjunction, better maximize freedom than would continuous divine persuasion alone?

But the process theist would insist that God must always work with an already existing creaturely order and that changes in this order can therefore come about only gradually through the agency of divine persuasion.

If, with Hartshorne, we pare away at this excess by limiting ourselves to that which must be exemplified at all times, the abstract nature of God, we rob ourselves of the means of achieving divine persuasion by the provision of initial aims.

Not exact matches

Like effective and respectful therapy, persuasion brings about new wants and aims, but it does so, not by coercion or by frustrating desires, but by opening new possibilities, which is the result of divine «creativity.»

Another example was alluded to before: the fact that our world seems to have taken shape over a period of many billions of years, rather than having been created in essentially its present form a few thousand years ago, provides evidence against the view that the creation of our world required omnipotent coercive power; this fact is much more consistent with the view that the divine creative power is solely the power of persuasion, the kind of power we can experience working in our own lives.

God does not work by persuasion alone only because of a divine decision to do so, as in a voluntary self - limitation, which could in principle be revoked from time to time.

It appears that there is general though only implicit recognition of the fact that a call to the ministry includes at least these four elements (1) the call to be a Christian, which is variously described as the call to discipleship of Jesus Christ, to hearing and doing of the Word of God, to repentance and faith, et cetera; (2) the secret call, namely, that inner persuasion or experience whereby a person feels himself directly summoned or invited by God to take up the work of the ministry; (3) the providential call, which is that invitation and command to assume the work of the ministry which comes through the equipment of a person with the talents necessary for the exercise of the office and through the divine guidance of his life by all its circumstances; (4) the ecclesiastical call, that is, the summons and invitation extended to a man by some community or institution of the Church to engage in the work of the ministry.

Along with the insights of Charles Hartshorne, Whitehead's concept of persuasion (in contrast to coercion) has formed the basis for development of both divine and social images of power.

But they must then give up the claim that coercion is morally «incompatible with divine perfection» and the claim that persuasion is always the «greatest of all powers and «the only power capable of worthwhile results.»

In a discussion of power and obedience in the primeval history, George W. Coats has recently outlined the logic of this position.1 He emphasizes the element of persuasion involved in the divine commands given to the man and the woman in the garden.

In the mode of being felt the divine presence in the universe is a lure or power of persuasion continually offering new possibilities of intensity and harmony to patterns of events in cosmic becoming.16 «God» is a word we may use to refer to the radical source of novelty and order in the emergent universe.17 Without such a source of novelty and order we may well ask whether there would be any emergence at all.