Francis Berger

The Vision of St. Hubert

6/14/2026

I like the stag-antler-crucifix symbolism because it includes the notion of actively pursuing something/following something to where you need to go, coupled with the reality that, ultimately, Christ is the "where" that you "need to go."

The above is an old comment I left on a From the Narrow Desert post in which William explored stag-crucifix symbolism. I include it here because it connects well to Franz von Stuck -- a minor nineteenth-century German painter I've been studying -- and his take on the vision of St. Hubert.

The Vision of St. Hubert - 1890

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That'll Turn You to Stone, For Sure

6/12/2026

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I imagine most people are familiar with Caravaggio's Head of Medusa (1597), which I was fortunate enough to view in person on a recent trip to Florence.

Serving as the grisly emblem of a ceremonial shield, Caravaggio depicts Medusa's severed head in the way most people might imagine it -- the wide-open eyes and mouth frozen in shock, the blood dripping from the neck, the serpents still writhing on the otherwise dispatched head.

Horrified facial expression and snake-hair aside, the face of Caravaggio's Medusa is about as "pretty" as one could expect a Gorgon face to be. Not all that attractive, but not terrifyingly repulsive either.

Moreover, there is nothing in the eyes to indicate that you will turn to stone upon looking into them.

Franz von Stuck employs a more ethereal approach in his take on mythological monster.

His Head of Medusa (1892) depicts the Gorgon as an ideal, almost otherworldly beauty with a smooth, unblemished alabaster face.

The snakes are still there but not readily detectable (it almost looks like Medusa is simply wearing a hood).

All the same, you can detect the danger and evil.

And those eyes! The penetrating intensity of those almost translucent green-yellow irises with their pinprick pupils focused directly on you and only you.

Eyes you can't avoid looking into, no matter how hard you try, no matter what the consequences.

You can almost feel yourself turning into stone as you look into them.

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Uncreated Means Not Divinely Created and Not Divine in Origin

6/10/2026

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I posit that freedom must be uncreated to be authentic.

Uncreated signifies not divine in origin, meaning it does not emanate from God. Since God is not the source of freedom, he cannot create freedom “into” us or any other Being in Creation.

Declaring freedom to be a timeless and uncreated form, which is an eternal idea in the mind of God, and then stating that our participation in this uncreated form qualifies as uncreated seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

The distinction here is clear. God creates creatures, but their properties—all of their properties—are uncreated because all properties, including physical features like noses, are eternal forms in the mind of God.

The concept is known as divine exemplarism, which focuses on the metaphysics of universals. It asserts that everything in Creation originates from divine, eternal forms in God's mind. Thus, our freedom is based on an uncreated blueprint called “freedom” that God holds as an eternal idea.

First point, this does not make freedom uncreated in the way I understand it.

Freedom as an eternal form in God’s mind still makes God the source of freedom.

It matters little that this form in God’s mind is uncreated in the same way God is uncreated. He remains the origin of freedom by creating our capacity to be free agents.

Hence, freedom as an eternal form may be uncreated in the sense that God didn’t create it, but the idea is still God’s, meaning he is ultimately the source of that uncreated idea.

Second point, a blueprint is only good if it leads to creation. An eternal property or form or universal or whatever in God’s mind may be eternal and uncreated, but what he constructs from these divine blueprints is definitely created; otherwise, there would be nothing we could call Creation.

There may be an uncreated blueprint in the mind of God for a nose, but my actual nose, the tip of which I see every day when I stare out upon the world, is created. It may be based on an uncreated eternal idea or blueprint, but it is not uncreated and eternal.

The same applies to freedom. The freedom I experience may be based on an eternal, uncreated idea in the mind of God, but once God creates my freedom, that freedom becomes created, even if it is based on something uncreated.

If freedom is an eternal idea in God’s mind, then God is the source of freedom.

An eternal idea or form may be uncreated, but once God creates from it, the thing he creates is a created thing. The properties may not be created, but the thing the properties comprise is certainly created.

Freedom as an eternal, universal form may be uncreated, but the specific, individual capacity for freedom or to participate in freedom that God creates into a creature cannot be anything but created.

In classical/orthodox metaphysics, only God—including his essence, ideas, etc.—is uncreated. Everything else is contingent and created, including the freedom creatures experience.

In classical/orthodox metaphysics, the existence of freedom—and everything else for that matter—depends entirely on God.

Without God, I would have no freedom of my own of which to speak. The only freedom I can enjoy is the freedom God grants me, allows me to participate in, or creates "into" me.

None of that has anything to do with uncreated freedom, at least not as I regard it.

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Problems Defining and Describing Time or Timelessness

6/9/2026

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Eternal is a difficult, ambiguous word.

In the past, I used it to describe Beings, which I assume have no beginning and no end.

Unfortunately, this led some to believe that such Beings must also exist entirely outside time. Or that they never change.

However, I regard time as a necessary aspect of Beings and cannot imagine any Being existing outside time.

Which means I assume all Beings change.

Yeah, but how can Beings that have no beginning and no end be “in” time? Where does that time start? What kind of time is it?

More on that in another post, perhaps.

Back to eternal. I do my best to work around it to avoid confusion about timelessness.

But what else is there?

Unfortunately, other words are rarely helpful.

Everlasting? Misunderstandable.

Neverending? Also implies a beginning.

Forever? Okay, but from when?

Perpetual?

Primordial?

Of course, my problem is not novel. It has affected and continues to affect others.

For example, for some thinkers, eternal means both timeless and temporal, as in the assumption that God is timeless without Creation and temporal after He created time.

Others describe God as everlasting but temporal, and use it to mean that God never began to exist and will never go out of existence, but experiences temporal succession.

That kind of lines up with what I assume, but whenever I use the word everlasting, it is misinterpreted as having a beginning but no end.

Eternal is not a straightforward word.

Unfortunately, most of the other words aren’t much better.

We need to coin some new words, tout de suite.

Note: Toute de suite is French for “immediately” (just in case Dr. Charlton reads this).

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Ungrund or Primordial Chaos?

6/9/2026

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Although I do not agree with everything Berdyaev assumes, I admire him for understanding that freedom could only be truly free if it were placed outside of God, which he accomplished by arguing for the existence of the Ungrund, a reworking of Böhme’s primordial abyss that Berdyaev defines as pure meonic freedom, a formless chaos of potential that existed before God and from which God emerges through a self-caused act of will and becomes being.

Unlike traditional Christians, Berdyaev claims that God then created from the Ungrund rather than ex nihilo. Thus, all beings in Creation share the same uncreated freedom that God possesses. That uncreated, meonic freedom inherent in all created beings contains the capacity for both good and evil. Although God was able to master this freedom for good only, the beings he creates fall short. Hence, the existence of free choice for evil in Creation.

Although I respect Berdyaev for recognizing that freedom must be outside of God for it to be authentic, I am inclined to think his insistence on placing the reality of freedom before being posits an unlikely state. Can freedom or the potential for freedom even exist outside of being? If it can, then it is pure potential, which is exactly what Berdyaev argues. But what is potential if it does not exist within something to potentiate?

For me, it seems simpler and more comprehensible to envision freedom existing within Beings; more precisely, within Beings that have no beginning and no end. With this in mind, I see Berdyaev’s Ungrund more as a primordial, pre-Creation chaos containing eternal (not timeless but having no beginning and no end) spiritual beings who innately possess freedom.

Instead of emerging from an Ungrund of meonic freedom, God emerges from a primordial chaos of eternal beings through a self-caused act of freedom and creativity. God then shapes and forms the eternal Beings of the primordial chaos into Creation.

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It is Through Freedom that We Discern the Nature of God

6/9/2026

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The matter of freedom is important to me because it is through freedom that we discern the nature of God.

It is through freedom that we apprehend God either as a loving father or as an absolute, autocratic ruler or a completed, static entity.

What we assume about freedom determines what we assume about God.

Traditional Christianity posits that nothing can be prior to or outside of God.

If nothing can be prior to or outside of God, then, as stated in Acts 17:28, in God, we live and move and have our being.

The same applies to everything in existence, and it only follows that it should apply to freedom.

The problem is that it can’t, at least not if God is perfect, eternal, ultimate, timeless, and omni-everything, all of which traditional Christianity insists upon.

Thus, freedom is defined as an innate attribute of actual creatures, as an extension of God’s freedom in which all actual creatures participate, albeit minutely, or as an uncreated eternal idea in the mind of God, imbued in all creatures that can then utilize the eternal idea to align themselves with God’s law via free will choices.

Whatever the explanation, the ultimate source of freedom is God, which contradicts what freedom is.

Traditional Christianity has not regarded this as a problem because it emphasizes the omni-attributes, divine sovereignty, and Ultimacy of God above considerations of freedom, relegating them to afterthought.

If all freedom is contingent upon God— and traditional Christianity insists that it must be because God is ultimately the source of everything—then it is not free in any authentic sense, conceptually, existentially, or otherwise.

Factoring in God’s omni attributes like omnipotence and omniscience only deepens the contradictions implicit in traditional/classical theological explanations and qualifications.

Arguing that God creates actual beings and that these beings are free solves nothing when one considers the sort of freedom that is implied within such a framework.

Because God created everything, he also creates the conditions for our free acts. The freedom that free actual creatures partake in is then reduced to choosing from the options within the conditions God created and organized.

Many Christians argue that although God creates the conditions for our choices, he cannot and does not force our choices. Moreover, despite his omniscience, he does not and cannot know what we choose. Hence, we are free.

If we are good, God-aligned Christians, we will be able to discern the right option or options within those conditions God has predetermined for us. If we cannot discern the right choice or, worse, purposely make the wrong choice, we are the hook for sin and, potentially, damnation.

What is outlined above is known as the free will doctrine, and for most Christians, it sets the tone and boundaries of what freedom is and what it involves.

This capability to choose between good and evil within a set of conditions God has organized is often presented as one of the great gifts God has bestowed upon humanity because it grants people the freedom to accept or reject God, Creation, and the Good in favor of embracing Satan, captivity, and evil.

Defenders of the free will doctrine point to humanity’s unconstrained and voluntary ability to choose between good and evil as proof of God’s infinite love via his refusal to coerce or force.

The problem with the doctrine of free will is simple – it is not about freedom at all.

To begin with, if God grants man free will, then whatever freedom resides within it emanates from God, not man. It makes no difference at all if the source of that freedom comes from some eternal form in God’s mind; the source is still God (after all, it's his idea).

The freedom is created freedom, which is not really freedom.

Secondly, God determines the scope and range of choice to which free will may be applied. On the one side is the good choice to abide by God’s law and commands; on the other side is rejecting this law and embracing evil. Thus, the free will choice essentially boils down to obeying God’s law and commands... or else.

The free will doctrine makes man accountable for his choices between good and evil within the context of God’s laws and commands. It places the onus of such choices on man while simultaneously exempting God from all accountability.

The doctrine of free will provides man the “freedom” to be the offender while simultaneously relieving God of all responsibility for evil choices. Man’s free will choice to be a transgressor of divine law also justifies God’s role as a punisher of divine law transgressions.

In simplest terms, the free will doctrine is God adopting a “my way or the highway” framework of freedom. Use the free will I provided to do what I command, and all will be well. Use the free will I provided to reject My commands, and all will be lost.

Seen this way, the free will choice to obey God’s law and command becomes a matter of necessity. Man needs to choose the good option God has provided or else face the consequences. But what if no good option is available? More on that later.

The need to choose the Good, this necessity inherent within the free will choice, does not emanate from within man but is externally imposed by God.

As such, it does little more than ask a man to adhere to or fulfill a given law or command, leaving no space for creativity or a creative act.

The free will doctrine reduces man to a mere instrument in the fulfillment of God’s law. It lacks all spiritual dynamism and ultimately relegates freedom to the level of submission.

Then there is also the matter of the available options in the conditions God organizes to engender our free choices.

Where exactly do the bad options come from?

If God creates the conditions for our free will choices, then he must also, in some way, be responsible for creating conditions that allow for evil choices or, at the very least, conditions in which no good choice seems possible.

The Trolley Problem is a good example of conditions in which no apparent good option exists. Pull the switch, and a person tied to one set of tracks dies. Push the switch, and three people tied to another set of tracks die. What is the good option?

Although the Trolley Problem is a hypothetical thought experiment, it sheds light on something everyone has experienced at some point in their lives—conditions in which God’s law and the possibility of a good choice are absent.

Yes, there are a thousand arguments and doctrines about how there is good in that somewhere, or we are too blind or fallen to see the right choice, or the bad choice is non-being/not really of God, or God cannot create conditions for bad choices because "a bachelor cannot be married"; however, if God does create the conditions for our free choices, and most Christians insist that he does create those conditions and that we simply complete the equation through our choices, then it seems that at least some of those conditions are set up in such a way as to make choices for evil virtually unavoidable.

Again, what we assume about freedom determines what we assume about God.

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Uncreated Freedom is Not an Uncreated Form We Share with God

6/8/2026

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A while back, Kristor of the Orthosphere wrote a post in which he surprisingly toyed with and then acknowledged the reality of uncreated freedom.

The acknowledgement made quite an impression on me at the time, but I resisted responding to the post for the simple reason that my interactions with Kristor or his ideas have rarely been constructive or, for my part, pleasant.

Anyway, I forgot about the post after that, but it recently came back to me, and I have decided to respond to it, not with the intention of sparking another fruitless debate or debunking Kristor’s assumptions. Instead, I see this more as a sharing of my assumptions on what I believe uncreated freedom to be and how and why these differ from Kristor’s assumptions.

That’s it. Make of it what you will. (Kristor's post in italics.)

Francis asserted that our creaturely freedom is uncreate, that we too must therefore be uncreate, and that if we or our freedom are created, then our freedom is inauthentic, or unreal: not true freedom.

I am unsure what “creaturely freedom” refers to; however, I do assume that freedom is uncreated. I base this belief on the assumption that Beings are fundamental.

Beings not only comprise Creation — they are Creation. Beings are eternal-everlasting in the sense that they exist and have always existed in time.

God, who is a Being among Beings, formed these Beings into Creation. Freedom is an inherent part of all Beings. Thus, God molded or formed Beings into Creation, but did not and could not mold or form the freedom inherent in all Beings.

I disagreed, pointing out difficulties and absurdities that arise from the notion that there are many uncreate beings, or that we are such beings, and arguing that, despite our creation, in which we had no part, creatures are real through and through – including our freedom.

The difficulties and absurdities alluded to only arise when the assumptions posited are approached through the lens of another set of assumptions that asserts things like creatio ex nihilo.

Beings are fundamentally uncreated, yet in Creation they could be classified as uncreated-created Beings. Put another way, pre-existing Beings provided with other properties, but their inherent and innate freedom remained largely intact.

I continue to think I am right about all that, but – while I am in no doubt that we are not eternal, for I apprehend that I am changing this very minute – I still found myself ruminating over the last few weeks about whether our freedom is indeed uncreate.

Once again, for me, eternal means everlasting, not unchanging.

I think it is, even though we are not; and that despite that we are temporal, contingent creatures, and despite the fact that we are thoroughly caused (so that there is sufficient reason that we are as we find that we are), our freedom is nevertheless radical and authentic: that we are, really and truly, free. How? That is the matter of this post.

I find the admission that freedom is uncreated rather interesting here. It signifies a recognition that if freedom is entirely God-created, then freedom is not really free. I reject the assumption that we are thoroughly caused. The existence of everlasting Beings is a what Kristor would refer to as a brute fact. In other words, there is no underlying explanation past theat level. Some might argue that God is also a brute fact in this sense, but most Christians address this by claiming that God is a necessary being that can be explained. In any case, the Principle of Sufficient Reason does not really apply to what I assume. Our freedom is radical and authentic because it is an innate aspect of our everlasting “Beingness.”

The basic problem is how to square our freedom with the fact that we must be exhaustively caused in order to be just what we are in and in virtue of any of our acts, and so as to be each an instance of order, reason, intelligibility, and cosmic coordination – rather than chaos, madness, unbeing.

To me, this amounts to trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

If our acts are exhaustively caused by their priors, then may they be exhaustively reasonable. But also in that case are they by their priors exhaustively determined, so that they follow inexorably and immutably from those priors. In that case they are not really free; and so, are not acts in the first place. Which, if true, would mean that we are not ourselves actual, but rather are mere mechanical sequelae of prior equally mechanical events.

An expansion of the square peg-round hole dilemma.

If on the other hand, our acts are not exhaustively caused by our priors, then to the extent they are not, they are free; but are they not in that case, and to the extent that they are undetermined by their priors, simply random? Are they not then each at least in part a violation of the PSR? And would not that insufficiency of their reasonableness introduce a bit of chaos to every act by every agent of the world, thereby rendering the world itself chaotic, radically disordered?

Yes.

Again, the PSR does not really apply in the assumptions that I propose. However, the PSR is vital if one assumes classical theism to be true. Concerning the matter of agents introducing a bit of chaos to every act by every agent in the world, I would say there is truth in this, though I would not say every act by every agent. Some acts introduce order. Some acts introduce love, some creativity, and so forth. Such positive acts—acts aligned with Creation through love—and the acts of God, who also works in Creation, keep Creation from spinning into a radically disordered chaos. However, there is no guarantee that Creation cannot spin into a radically disordered chaos at some point in the future.

I see Creation as the dynamic interaction between order/disorder, love/the rejection of love, loving Creation/hating Creation, life/death. Since each Being in Creation works from its own innate freedom, it has the power to introduce all sorts of things into Creation. Since God has limited control over this freedom, whatever the uncreated freedom of Beings introduces into Creation profoundly affects the overarching movement and flux of Creation.

Our acts are indeed underspecified by their causal priors. On Gödelian Incompleteness, this must logically be so: on Gödel, the specification string of each of our acts is infinite, whereas the set of its causal factors – all antecedent acts of creatures, and the act of God – is finite. The proscenium and forecondition of each creaturely act consists of the entire set of beings to it extant as facts; of such sets, God is the only member of all of them. But each such set is finite (even though it contains an infinite member – God). The finite set of causal factors of each of our acts is not sufficient to specify the infinite formal specification of exactly what its character shall be.

This is where we begin to veer into concepts like infinity, which classical theists use to separate God from Creation in categorical terms. Classical theists also use infinity to confuse and derail. Are we talking about potential infinities or actual infinities? Countable or uncountable? Anyone in the mood for a Zeno’s paradox? How about traversing the infinite? I don't much care for that sort of thing. I think one's metaphysical assumptions can be stated in simpler, more readily comprehensible terms.

Anyway, in reference to Gödellian Incompleteness, I assume that the idea referred to has something to do with no single formal system being able to capture all mathematical truths. The reference appears to be setting up some sort of argument in which God, as a formal system, cannot capture all of Creation’s truths, or, put more clearly, that some acts slip outside the boundaries of the formal system that is God. Hence, he cannot determine those acts.

So, some portion of the formal specification of each creaturely act is at its inception not yet specified. This is a way of saying that at the inception of each of our acts, we have options among which we must choose.

This is why actual beings must be free.

Ah, there it is. God is a formal system, but even He cannot consistently and completely axiomatize Creation because if he did, we would not really be free. Sure, but doesn’t this fly in the face of God’s omni-powers? Doesn’t that little bit of space open up enough room for the chaotic disorder that freedom threatens to introduce into the cosmos, thereby upsetting the order and reason?

The underspecification of our acts ex ante means that actual beings must be to some extent causa sui. The completion of our specification cannot be determined by God. It must be determined by us on the fly, in the midst of each new occasion of life.

"Causa sui" means self-caused. "Ex ante" means based on forecasts rather than results. I assume actual beings here refers to the Aristotelian distinction between potentiality and actuality, implying that beings referred to represent a complete, primary state of being. In my own case, I assume all Beings are originally causa sui in a sense that they have always existed in some way or other. The forms Beings assume in Creation are not primary states of Being, but other states of being.

This description of our ontic predicament has in its favor the fact that it pretty much nails what it is like to be us from one moment to the next. We make it up as we go, doing our best, given what we know and understand, and always at least a little unsure of whether we are doing quite the right thing withal – indeed, often fairly sure we are erring quite badly.

I pretty much agree with the description of how some Beings deal with their freedom in Creation, but I don't accept the ontic predicament that is outlined.

Because our completion of each act cannot be determined by God, he cannot be properly said to create it. Rather, he creates the conditions for its coming to be; he creates the conditions for free acts. Our being is one of those conditions.

Our being is our being, not God’s being. God does not create conditions for anything coming to be in the original sense. Within Creation, he creates conditions for free acts and other things, sure, but the free acts do not depend on those conditions alone. If they did, they would be reduced to necessity. The conditions referred to are also created by the other agents in Creation, all exercising their inherent freedom. The emphasis on acts alone also simplifies what I believe the essence of freedom to be. Freedom is far more than just acting upon or reacting to conditions. Freedom also co-creates conditions.

God creates us, but he does not create our acts. It is in this sense then, that our freedom is uncreated. That God and all our other antecedents do not altogether determine our acts is to say that they are really free.

God created our current forms in Creation, but he did not create us as Beings. Nor did he create the freedom that is innate within us as Beings. It is in that sense that freedom is uncreated.

There is more.

The forms of the options opened to us by the underspecification of our acts by their causal factors are present to us as implicit in those factors. Such options are logically implicit in their array.

To say that the forms of our options are logically implicit in the array of the causal factors of our acts is just to say that they are present and accessible to us in the Lógos. They are implicit in the creaturely causal factors of our acts only in virtue of their a priori and eternal implication in the Lógos.

Then the possibilities that we might do this or that, given our antecedents – our options at each new moment of action – are eternal.

The square peg reappears.

Thus, while the ultimate source of all the resources of our free acts – including the affective characters of all the underdetermined options open to us – is God, nevertheless, we ourselves are the sources of the final bits of our own specifications that are not given in and by our causal factors. Of those final bits of ourselves that are not specified by our causal factors, we are the originators. We are to that extent causa sui; we are to that extent uncreated; we are to that extent free; and so our freedom, our capacity to cause ourselves, is uncreated. It is an essential aspect of our actuality.

This seems to be saying that God is the source and cause of everything, but we are somehow originators in a tiny little way because we get to choose among the various causes God makes available to us or imposes upon us.

I get a vision of a lab rat in an ever-shifting maze. He doesn’t have any input on how or why the walls of the maze shift; his only input is choosing from the openings made available to him. In this sense, the scientist managing the maze has no real control over which route the rat will take. Thus, the rat is free.

I guess my approach is more existentialist at heart. I don’t think true or complete actuality or reality resides in the measurable, external, physical world. True actuality also involves spiritual, subjective experience, grounded in uncreated freedom that transcends choice and options amidst shifting maze walls. Uncreated freedom signifies a state of potential, a state of creative becoming spiritually, which I regard as far more actual than conventional definitions of actuality.

It should however be noted also that in the final analysis, all the properties of a given creature are in themselves, like freedom, uncreate; for, they are forms, which are all eternal; which are ideas in the mind of God. Creatures are created, but their properties are not. My bipedality, e.g., is not novel with me. Rather, bipedality is eternal, and so is uncreate; and as one of its concrete instantiations, I partake it. So likewise with freedom.

Beings as concrete actualizations of forms, God’s eternal, unchanging ideas is another spin on uncreated-creations. Unlike my assumption, which posits that existing beings were created into other forms, Kristor assumes we are creatures who are made up of uncreated properties, all of which are eternal and belong to God. Our actuality implies that we are concrete instantiations of uncreated properties in the form of forms, hence, uncreated creations. At least, that’s what seems to be implied.

That strikes me as quite interesting. Both of us appear to acknowledge the need for uncreated-creations for freedom to be free. My uncreated part comprises pre-existing beings, while Kristor assumes these uncreated parts must emanate from God.

I don’t know how freedom can be equated with other properties like having two feet, but I think it draws attention to how radically different my assumptions of freedom are from what is posited above. Properties like bipedality do not strike me as eternal, unchanging forms. In fact, the whole notion of unchanging, eternal forms strikes me as anathema.

I assume Beings are uncreated outwith Creation and created within Creation, albeit while retaining some uncreated attributes like freedom. Things like bipedality belong in the created category, as far as I’m concerned. Freedom does not. I don’t regard freedom as some eternal idea of God’s that we participate in. It is a fundamental reality like our being. Uncreated being and freedom together are fundamental. We bring both into Creation with us without the help of God.

To the extent that we are uncreated, we are images of God (there are other ways we are his images; e.g., the specification string of each finite occasion is infinite). Our uncreated bits are participations in his own free act. However, we differ from God in that, unlike him, we cannot be ourselves alone, or even in combination with any number of other creatures, the sufficient forecondition of any other being. Like God, we influence other beings by the characters of our own acts. We do this by simply being who we are, and what we are.

I have a different assumption of what we are. Anyway, Kristor states that it is only through forms that we are images of God, at least that is what seems to be implied, and it is through these uncreated bits that we are participants in his own free act.

If I’m interpreting that correctly, that seems to suggest that participation in freedom is anchored in forms, in God’s eternal idea of freedom. That seems like a gross abstraction to me, one that keeps freedom firmly within God’s control, except for some minute part in which we get to choose from prearranged and likely predetermined options.

We are being. Even without God, we are being. God did not provide us with being.

God does that too. But, unlike us, he is alone sufficient as the ontological forecondition of other beings. He is, after all, the way that beings can influence each other. He is the way that beings get their original and basic being. As the logic of being as such, he is the way that being is. So, it is proper to say of him, but not of us, that he brings other beings into being. We influence their characters; he enables that influence by creating us, and them. Thus, while our acts are, like his, truly creative, the difference is that our acts create only ourselves, whereas his act creates all things.

I assume that the original and basic beingness of Beings existed without God. In this sense, we don’t get our original and basic being from God. I don’t assume God brings other beings into being. I assume God brings Beings into Creation. God certainly creates, but he does not create all things in the sense of creating them from himself or from nothing. He certainly did not create freedom or agency.

The causal priors of an occasion suffice as reasons for its inception, but not for its final character. The inception of an occasion begins a process of aesthetic selection, the criteria thereof being given in the nature of its initiation; but the specification string of that nature is not a complete and exhaustive specification of its final character. Rather, the initial aim specifies the goodness, beauty, complexity, and so forth, which each novel creaturely occasion must take as guides in its search for a proper solution of its ontic predicament. That search, the specification of satisfactory solutions, and the data – together, the dimensions of the solution space – are given with the initial aim; but the search itself is stochastic, and thus its conclusion cannot be specified beforehand.

This seems like hedging omniscience and the whole causal chain to allow for some semblance of freedom. In my mind, the strict and unforgiving chain of cause and effect acts as an alienating force on freedom and true spirituality. I assume that true spiritual freedom transcends causality.

The freedom Kristor posits is of the free will variety -- the kind God grants to "force" (yes, force) humans into choosing between following God's law or sinning. For me, free will represents a very limited conception of freedom. Berdyaev went as far as to declare it a "fatal" form of freedom. He even went as far as to say that he regarded the free will doctrine to be an enslaving force. I can't say I disagree with that.

Thanks to the constraints of the solution space given in its initial aim to each novel occasion, its stochastic search for a solution is not disordered or without sufficient reason.

This is so even of searches that end in errant solutions; that miss the mark; that are sinful. Sinful options are among those open to us at every turn. If we knew perfectly, we would know perfectly how each action possible to us at each moment would turn out, and how it would feel to suffer it. But we are partiscient and finite, and can’t know anything perfectly (this too is a corollary of Gödelian Incompleteness). So we can err about the best thing to do right now, and choose a lesser good over a greater.

This raises the whole question of why an omni-God who creates all the conditions for us to exercise our uncreated-based-on-an-eternal-form freedom would allow sinful options or choices that missed the mark in the first place. Why couldn't he create us to be free of having to make such choices? Free from evil altogether? I won’t go into that now, other than to say that it is not God alone who creates the conditions for us to exercise our freedom.

I think that does it. We are underdetermined by our causal priors, and therefore a bit free, a bit causa sui. Our freedom as such, like our other properties – including the property of being – is eternal, and so our freedom is not created; rather, in our freedom we partake the freedom of God. But that we are underdetermined does not mean that our freedom is chaotic. It is throughly ordered by the aesthetic preference given to us at the inception of each moment of our stochastic process of becoming, as the essential character and valence of its yearning and striving.

So, in a nutshell, what seems to be proposed is that freedom is uncreated because it is an eternal form in the mind of God. We partake in that freedom of God, and it is through this partaking of an eternal (unchanging) form that our freedom is uncreated even though we are thoroughly created, right down to our original being, and why we are a bit causa sui and a bit free even though we are otherwise thoroughly caused and unfree.

I suppose that’s the best that can be done with uncreated freedom when one holds the core metaphysical tenets of classical theism to be true.

However, "a bit free" and "a bit causa sui" free will based on the uncreated ideas of God is not the kind of uncreated freedom I assume.

A bit causa sui and a bit free seems to me like a hedge.

It's a definition of “kind of but not really free” freedom that subtly attempts to acknowledge the fundamental need for uncreated freedom but cannot let go of God as Absolute—which, for me, is the very thing that makes uncreated freedom impossible and a contradiction in terms.

Note added: Though I don't agree with Kristor's assessment of how and why freedom is uncreated, I do applaud him for recognizing that the essence of freedom must be uncreated to be authentically free.

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Let's Use the AI Ring to Save and Fortify Christianity!

6/7/2026

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Many Christians cannot seem to wrap their heads around the harmful and destructive – to say nothing of utterly useless – Boromir Strategy, as outlined by Dr. Charlton via Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

The following is but an example of this tired old snare in which Christians continue to get entangled, despite everything. Here AI serves as a substitute for the Ring (bold added):

Artificial intelligence has unsettled the Christian imagination, and for good reason. It speaks, imitates, flatters, instructs, and enters the vulnerable places where attention, desire, memory, and loneliness are formed.

Retreat may look like wisdom, but absence also teaches. In this episode, we examine why Christians cannot answer the age of AI with fear, nostalgia, or holy incompetence. Technology must be placed beneath Christ, governed by discipline, and ordered toward mission.

Drawing from Genesis, the Great Commission, the theology of sub-creation, and the ancient disciplines of Askesis and Nepsis, this episode argues for a sober Christian competence in the digital city.

The machine cannot love God, absolve sins, or shepherd souls. Yet when ruled by prayer, beauty, and human judgment, it can become a servant of truth, mercy, teaching, and wonder. The throne belongs to Christ. The tool belongs beneath the throne.

Yes. Let’s harness and use an inherently evil technology – evil in its motivation, design, purposes, and objectives – as a servant of truth, mercy, teaching, and wonder. You know, the same way Boromir wanted to use the Ring to save Gondor. Once Christians have mastered the AI ring, they can use it to build an ark and guilds and communities and churches.

I mean, it's not like we can really avoid it or anything, so we may as well use it for good. Besides, AI is not really inherently evil, right?

The AI revolution is the modern flood.

That does not mean AI is evil in itself. Rain is not evil. Water gives life, cleanses the ground, fills the river, and feeds the field. Then it rises too high, and the same water that nourished the garden carries away the house.

And . . .

AI will reward people who know what they are for. It will punish those who wait to be assigned a purpose. That is why Christian order matters. The person formed by worship, family, work, craft, and duty can use new tools without becoming their servant. The person formed by appetite will be led by the nose through a palace of mirrors.

And . . .

Christians must stop treating AI as a debate topic and start treating it as weather. Learn the tools. Teach the children. Strengthen the household. Rebuild the parish. Form guilds. Protect real art. Restore feast days. Practice hospitality. Train attention. Study Scripture. Recover craft. Build local bonds strong enough to hold when the national mood begins chewing furniture again.

And . . .

Christians should stop treating AI as a debate topic and begin treating it as rain. The task is not panic, purity theater, or retreat into technological nostalgia. Noah did not reject the flood. He built the ark. In the same way, Christians must build durable forms of life capable of carrying human dignity through upheaval: ordered households, embodied parishes, skilled guilds, sacred time, real craft, and disciplined attention.

Sure, we could do all that, I suppose, but do you really think any of it will work? Be honest now. Not just about the chances of such an ark staying afloat but your own motivations for wanting one built.

Or, we could begin to see this whole AI thing and using evil to do good thing from another angle . . .

Now, many Christians have assimilated and committed to the idea that Christianity is essentially a group, communal activity; that must be pursued via an intermediary and material, this-worldly social system (i.e. their favoured church or denomination) - so they are self-painted into an ever-shrinking corner from which they can only imagine (or will only entertain the possibility) of the same-old form of Boromir Strategic escape: no matter how often this has failed, no matter how counter-productive is the attempt in practice.

. . . Life is trying to teach us that retaking culture, taking-over The System, or any version of the Boromir Strategy... is not what we should be attempting; because we are spiritual Beings with a direct-line to God and direct guidance from the Holy Ghost.

And this decision has been made easy for us, by the repeatedly proved fact that church-centred, institution-centred, collective strategies will not work, anyway - so it ought to be facile for us to abandon them.

Of course; if one is indeed painted-into a this-worldly corner, then this sounds like a counsel of despair!

But if we are instead prepared to learn from the divine teachings of this-world; we can be completely hope-full that pursuing the strategy which God has laid-out for us, will be far more successful (when success is defined correctly - i.e. spiritually) than the same old useless delusions.

Indeed, we can be utterly confident that - in the long-term and where-it-matters - we certainly will be successful; so, we ought to feel joy, not despair.

In other words, the reaction of despair is a product of self-blinding and a delusion; but joy is a consequence of that hope which derives from faith in God the creator, our Heavenly Father+, and we His children.

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Von Stuck’s Lucifer is Rodin’s Dante from the Gates of Hell

6/6/2026

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I recently featured an unconventional pieta by Franz von Stuck and drew parallels between its depiction of Christ in the tomb and Hans Holbein's rendition of the lifeless Jesus.

Today, I focused a little on another von Stuck painting, Lucifer, a simple work depicting a man-demon with glowing eyes sitting pensively with his chin resting in his hand in what appears to be a cave or part of hell.

The similarities between von Stuck’s rendition of Lucifer and Auguste Rodin’s sculpture, The Thinker, struck me immediately – the seated position, the chin resting on the hand, the pensive look.

As I searched for The Thinker online, I was instantly reminded that Rodin had originally called the sculpture The Poet and that it was meant to be Dante, which in turn reminded me that the sculpture Rodin had originally envisioned as The Poet was part of a larger work titled The Gates of Hell.

Placed at the top as a crowning element, the original “Thinker” was meant to be Dante leaning forward and peering down into the circles of hell.

The Poet, originally about 70 cm in size, was occasionally exhibited separately. It became so popular that Rodin enlarged the sculpture in 1904.

Rodin’s Poet/Thinker appeared in 1880, a decade before von Stuck’s Lucifer. The influence of the one upon the other, both stylistically and thematically, is undeniable.

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When Arguments Conspire to Deny Individual Lived Experience

6/5/2026

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Imagine someone who, as a child, suffered under an abusive, alcoholic father.

Telling that person that he cannot apply his individual experience to all fathers or fatherhood in general may be logically coherent, but it essentially sidesteps the individual's terrible childhood growing up under a bad father.

One bad father does not mean all fathers are bad. Nor does it mean that fatherhood itself is bad.

True.

All the same, none of that really acknowledges the badness of that one, specific father under whom the individual in question suffered (to say nothing of that individual's experience).

The same goes for the "not as bad as" spiel. Saying things like the church closures of 2020-21 were not as bad as the Black Death does not really address the church closures that occurred earlier in this decade.

For one, it's a false comparison – i.e., the Black Death was not a top-down System-fomented and enforced "health crisis" to which the Church readily and willingly adhered.

Aside from that, it once again sidesteps the matter of lived experience.

Most Christians alive today experienced the church closures of 2020-21, while the Black Death is entirely a matter of history, i.e., piecing together what the case may have been back during that time by locating and gathering sources to determine what happened, which, once again, is not lived experience.

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