Comment

Comment by knightoffaith

Right - but "God creates all possible Creations" is true for Spinoza but only in the sense that for Spinoza there is only one possible creation, the one that we are living in now, so God creates the only possible creation. As in, there are no possible potential realities for Spinoza---the only possible world is the one that we're living in. And so for Spinoza, God's omnipotence is expressed through his actualization of creation---that is, roughly speaking, it's not just that God could do anything that is possible, it's that God is willing everything that is possible right now, because the only possible way for things to be is the way things are (this is what wokeupabug means when he talks about Spinoza's conflation of God's power and will). This is, to be sure, something that classical theists would quarrel with.

---------

For your edit:

I don't know about "God & Creation = empty set", it depends on what exactly you mean by that. Classical theists say that all things don't exist independently, but exist in/through/from God (the prepositions vary). What exactly does that mean? Well, a lot of ink has been spilled fleshing out what the relationship between God and creation is, and people have had various ideas on what it is. It seems to me to be an oversimplification to categorize things neatly into theism/pantheism/panentheism without further clarification; these things are complicated. It's been said of Aquinas (certainly a little-o orthodox theologian), apparently, that he's the closest you can be to being a pantheist without being a pantheist.

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton