Perspective
What Is
Earlier today, I did a bit of shopping at a supermarket. Initially, I had an idea of the action in an instant form as ‘that to do’, which occurred to me spontaneously in the nature of a reminder, suggesting the influence of a spirit acting in the zone of now realisation. Various items of need coming to mind, I experienced the rightness so to act in the identified circumstances; and commenced to act, the circumstances accommodating. When the act was completed, from putting on my coat, going downstairs to my parked car, starting and driving it to the supermarket, doing the shopping, and returning, it was in the nature of fulfilling my original intention in an instant form of ‘that to do’. Not merely fulfilment of personal intention, but in the action a fulfilment of contextual circumstances.
In a given set of circumstances, it is observed that everything is in the nature of a fulfilling act, rightness (identity) in those circumstances identified in each object and action by virtue of its occurrence. Even if apparently wrong, the action is fulfilling of circumstances that define it as right in them, its identity a rightness realisation in the contextual circumstances that defines it, or it could not occur. Thus every event is defined by virtue of its identity as a contextual rightness realisation. The difficulty in the case of a criminal act of discerning the context in which it is defined as a rightness realisation does not remove the fact.
My actions are all identified or rightness realised in contextual circumstances which they fulfil: not merely actions of my choice, but all involuntary actions, including those affected by spirit influence. For example, I may be walking along the pavement (voluntary) and trip (involuntary). It is a fulfilment of contextual rightness realisation as ‘what is’ that this happens, including the loose paving stone that caused me to trip; and the evil influence that prevailed a good influence of avoidance, in my taking the step that tripped me. The immediate circumstances blend into and are part of greater circumstances, where indeed rightness realisation is manifested in every object and action in the occasion of its contextual identity. Rightness as a principle determines all contextual act and is controlling even of the actions of spirits affectively driven in manifestation of this principle. Evil is a perversion of rightness, yet manifesting contextual rightness of identity
In the totality of what exists there is nothing but contextual rightness realisation which is identity in every object and action as it occurs, both good and evil. Therefore, the whole act of existence is a contextual manifestation of rightness realisation by virtue of identity in every object and action, good or evil. This proves that nothing, object or action, can be other than what it is at any given moment in time because the identity of each is a contextual rightness realisation in the divine creative affection for manifestation of the Divine Rightness, the Divine Identity, which principle explains the creation as a creative process to that end. It implies that just as we are powerless to choose to be born, but as individuals emerge into the context of our lives - or not - all things are so contextually affectively manifested as rightness realisation. It implies that our speculation as to the possibilities of what might have been or what might be cannot affect ‘what is’ that could not have been or be otherwise.
I realise in the above there are things taken for granted that beg explanation, such as the provenance of spirits, both good and evil, and their affective commitment to action in the world of identified matter as a ‘rightness’ or 'anti-rightness' influence; thus for or against life identified with rightness. It then begs how evil should have come about in the first place, given the infinite goodness of God the creator; and the paradox of evil as in fact a contextual rightness realisation.
The infinite Divine Existence by definition precludes any evil within it. The presence of evil in creation proves not the absence of God, but the distinction between God and existence in the creation, where in the created existence, which is biblically initially termed good, evil is yet a manifestation of rightness by virtue of the imperfection inherent in limitation even of the created good: limitation that, in evil spirits, seeks to exceed itself by comparing itself to the divine. As the work of God, by the power of God, creation’s existence from the nothingness distinct from God derives its form from God as Context, Form and Spirit; existence is its own proof of God. Creation by God ex nihilo is distinct from God as the Divine Existence, but is providentially a process to the manifestation of God as the Divine Righteousness; one brought about by the fall of man.
From the bible narrative of the creation, it is of things directly created by God whose identity implies an absolute form. Also, in the biblical creation myth, there is no hint of a process in which things affect each other, once created, in a Divine contextual affection to an end of Divine manifestation. It speaks only of God’s creation, its identified forms an end in themselves; only subsequently, after the fall of Adam, when evil comes into the good creation, is it revealed as an affective process to an end: the redemption of a fallen humanity in Adam; but through a historical process, culminating in the death and resurrection of Christ; the process not ending in that event, two thousand years have passed, but working out the implications of salvation in Christ to this day in the lives of many generations of people, refined to a love of the truth identified with life.
Nothing comes into existence but that it is a manifestation in affection of contextual rightness of form as identifiably ‘what is’. So saying, this precludes any bias or tendency of identity in creation to be classically ‘pre-destined’. Pre-destination in what is the Divine affection for manifestation of Righteousness, as the end of the creative process since the fall of man, is a human construction. It is rather a case of ‘let that which is manifest itself as what is', the contextual identity its own evidence of rightness. We get that impression from the way things happen.
The spontaneity of process that precludes the presence of God as an influence in the workings of matter is remarked on by deistic science that maintains God created once and for all and stood aside to let events resolve themselves. However, nothing comes into existence as ‘what is’ except it be a contextual rightness realisation. It shows the nature of creation in all its phases as a manifestation simply of ‘what is’ or rightness proving a realising affection for 'what is'.
The notion of God ‘doing as He likes’, bestowing His favour on whom ‘He pleases’, is clearly a human construction, and has its consequences in the attitude by those who worship such a God towards their fellow man; for just as it would imply distinction between those chosen by God and those not, so a man can determine he is chosen as opposed to another who is not. This might appear contrary to the notion in the bible of a chosen people of God, but that the manifestation of rightness, of ‘what is’, is its root, that in effect interprets God’s choice as a rightness realisation in the context of the creation as the manifestation of ‘what is’ or rightness; in the case of a chosen people a manifestation of righteousness in a moral context, occasioned by the fall of man, that becomes the reason of being of the creation process.
A people chosen by God is the instrument of manifestation of 'what is’ or righteousness in a moral context, and their own value is judged by the accord to this end, failing to live up to, being deficient in their service of God, their chosen status cannot avail their downfall, where the idea of choice is distilled to a notion of being able to act in moral rightness, of which man, even in the chosen people, proves to be incapable. Only one is capable of living according to ‘what is’ in moral rightness, one who identifies as the Rightness or Righteousness of God, who comes from God, and is incarnate in Jesus. The manifestation of the Divine Righteousness in Jesus implies detachment in God’s ‘motives’, manifesting ‘what is’ or Righteousness as the nature of ‘He Who Is’.
It would exonerate science’s objective perception of nature, everything as manifesting ‘what is’ in contextually realised form, always determined by circumstances as to what emerges, but that science ignores the fact that an existence form is of an identity, or rightness realisation, contextually affectively realised, in which it affects other existence forms in the contextual affection for 'what is'. In the contextual affection for rightness realisation since the fall of man, the manifestation of the Divine Righteousness is its end, though this would entail an entering into the creative process of the Divine Manifestation which the mystery of the Incarnation resolves.
The Incarnation, particularly in the circumstances of birth from a human mother, is the source of the many attempts at reconciliation of the Divine and the human that has been the preoccupation of Christianity for centuries. It has led to denial of the humanity of Christ or the split in his existence as part divine and part man, or that he was only a man, or that he was only a spirit, his humanity an illusion. If it is understood that Christ is fully God (the Son or the form of the Divine Righteousness in the Trinity) and fully man (so that he lived and died as a human being) the creative act of God is somehow essential to the Divine Existence, and so it is in the manifestation of rightness in the creative process that derives from the manifestation of the Divine Rightness or Righteousness.
The incarnation shows that the Divine Righteousness is the source of the rightness that is manifested in creation and to which it is providentially destined, the fall of man being the turning point, as manifesting the Divine Righteousness, a manifestation of 'what is' or rightness of contextual form to its apotheosis in 'He Who Is' as the Divine Righteousness in a moral context.
17-Jun-2013
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R. D. Ashby
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