Dr. Charlton has written a clarifying post about the need for Jesus Christ and Second Creation. In that post, Bruce describes how the Creation we inhabit now "depends on compulsion and unconsciousness":
God began with a universe of Beings, living without mutual awareness, without cohesion. Creation proceeded by God endowing these Beings with the beginnings of conscious awareness and by coordinating them with His own divine love - binding them together and providing a direction, and principles of interaction.
In this, it resembles a Man's young childhood with loving parents.
I must confess that I have often struggled with the "compulsion and unconsciousness" aspect of Primary Creation for the simple reason that forcing Beings into Creation is mutually incompatible with the primacy and "sacredness" of freedom and agency. However, Bruce's analogy of childhood and loving parents helped to clear up some of my reservations concerning the apparent contradiction behind forcing free Beings into Primary Creation.
I offered my thoughts on this in a comment on Bruce's blog, a comment I will also share below. For full context, I encourage everyone to read Bruce's as well.
I've struggled with the notion of pre-Creation compulsion and unawareness because the idea that God forced Beings into Creation is antithetical to freedom.
However, the more I have thought about it, the more I have come to realize that the freedom Beings possessed before Creation must have been "absolute" sort of freedom in the negative sense, sort of like unconsiousness or a low-level of semi-consciousness adrift in an open ocean, theoretically able to "do" or "think" anything, but lacking any reference points or others through which to discover the "self," ultimately unable to do or think much at all.
Seen in this way, the compulsion part does seem inevitable. How could Beings who were free but unconscious of that freedom freely consent to entering Creation? I suspect they could not even begin to envision or comprehend what was being offered.
It seems Beings only become aware of the freedom they possess after they become a part of Creation. As you note, this awareness also leads to the awareness of the original "compulsion," which may lead some to harbor certain levels of indignity or resentment (the "I didn't ask to be here" mentality), making the opt out possibility viable.
Unlike Primary Creation, Jesus' Second Creation is strictly opt-in, which gels perfectly with the honing of freedom and agency in order to align with divine purposes in resurrected life.
There is no compulsion at all in Jesus' offer. Nothing is forced or dictated. "I didn't ask to be here" does not and cannot exist in Heaven.
God began with a universe of Beings, living without mutual awareness, without cohesion. Creation proceeded by God endowing these Beings with the beginnings of conscious awareness and by coordinating them with His own divine love - binding them together and providing a direction, and principles of interaction.
In this, it resembles a Man's young childhood with loving parents.
I must confess that I have often struggled with the "compulsion and unconsciousness" aspect of Primary Creation for the simple reason that forcing Beings into Creation is mutually incompatible with the primacy and "sacredness" of freedom and agency. However, Bruce's analogy of childhood and loving parents helped to clear up some of my reservations concerning the apparent contradiction behind forcing free Beings into Primary Creation.
I offered my thoughts on this in a comment on Bruce's blog, a comment I will also share below. For full context, I encourage everyone to read Bruce's as well.
I've struggled with the notion of pre-Creation compulsion and unawareness because the idea that God forced Beings into Creation is antithetical to freedom.
However, the more I have thought about it, the more I have come to realize that the freedom Beings possessed before Creation must have been "absolute" sort of freedom in the negative sense, sort of like unconsiousness or a low-level of semi-consciousness adrift in an open ocean, theoretically able to "do" or "think" anything, but lacking any reference points or others through which to discover the "self," ultimately unable to do or think much at all.
Seen in this way, the compulsion part does seem inevitable. How could Beings who were free but unconscious of that freedom freely consent to entering Creation? I suspect they could not even begin to envision or comprehend what was being offered.
It seems Beings only become aware of the freedom they possess after they become a part of Creation. As you note, this awareness also leads to the awareness of the original "compulsion," which may lead some to harbor certain levels of indignity or resentment (the "I didn't ask to be here" mentality), making the opt out possibility viable.
Unlike Primary Creation, Jesus' Second Creation is strictly opt-in, which gels perfectly with the honing of freedom and agency in order to align with divine purposes in resurrected life.
There is no compulsion at all in Jesus' offer. Nothing is forced or dictated. "I didn't ask to be here" does not and cannot exist in Heaven.
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