Hi Jason, thanks for replying
I didn’t mean to imply that you thought God’s divinity was reduced by creating non-God entities, but merely ‘changed’ somehow to be no longer the ‘perfect pure self-generation’ of God.
Essentially I don’t think this is the case. I DON’T think the EM analogy breaks down, because I DO think that E (A personal, soulish God) and M (the expression of that personal soulish God) DO necessarily co-exist.
In order for God to actively exist, He must not only self-generate, but He must be true to His own characteristics within that self-generation. For a more basic God, I agree, this is a fairly mute point. But for the God I see in Scripture (and the nature of reality), in order to be true to His characteristics I believe He MUST be expressing Himself through creating non-God entities.
In other words, I DO think that the creation of non-God entities is an ontologically necessary characteristic of a personal soulish God like the one described in Scripture, if He were to actively self-exist.
I don’t think this damages the rest of your argument in any way. Like the EM analogy, it is useful (and real, in some sense) to distinguish between E and M, but it is shallow to not recognize a fundamental and ontologically necessary unification. I think the rest of your discussion (utilizing the ‘God’ vs ‘Non-God’ distinction) still works well.
Regarding Free Agency, my experience has been that most people are unwilling to let go of some semblance of ‘randomness’ to our decisions, or the (limited) ability to choose in a way that violates all the things our decisions are based upon. Free Agency denies this, so this is why I think Free Agency denies free will as most people understand it.
Also (although I personally agree that justice incorporates many factors more important than our natural macro/micro environment) most people DO consider justice primarily from this perspective, and hence free will (I think) is logically inconsistent for them. Especially since many use this perception of justice as the reason for rejecting determinism.
I think you misunderstand what I mean by ‘the single best perceived option’. If you choose to act otherwise in your workout, for better or for worse, this is because you have perceived it to BE THE BEST option for you (however you define it in your current context and state of ‘soulishness’). I realize that my terms are not crisply defined here, but it doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that Free Agency maintains that, however difficult it is to predict or define, our decisions are entirely based upon elements of our soul and perception and context, which are all under God’s deterministic control or intimate foreknowledge, making our choices entirely malleable in a deterministic way.
This does not mean that God has not limited his determinism in any way out of respect for something in our soul - he has chosen to work with our soul’s unique characteristics and how it will respond and mould to various contexts and inputs and events, etc. But Free Will per-se is not the element that He has chosen to protect.