The epochal occasions are the primary units of the actual community. These epochal occasions are the creatures. The creativity is not separable from its creatures. Therefore the creatures remain with the creativity. An epochal occasion is a concretion. It is a mode where diverse elements come together into real unity. The various elements, which are therefore brought into unity, are the other creatures and the ideal forms and God. (Pg 78-79)
The inclusion of God in every creature shows itself in the determination whereby a definite result is emergent. God is that nontemporal actuality which has to be taken account fir in every creative phase.
The boundless wealth of possibility in the realm of abstract form would leave each creative phase still indeterminate, unable to synthesize under determinant conditions the creatures from which it springs. Therefore creative indetermination attains its measure of determination. A simpler metaphysic would result if we could stop at this conclusion. A complete determinism would therefore mean the complete self-consistency of the temporal world. The difficulty of this conclusion comes when we confront the theory with the facts of the world. If the theory of complete determinism, of the necessity of conformation with the nature of God, holds true, then the evil in the world is in conformity with the nature of God. (Pg 81-82)
Now evil is exhibited in physical suffering, mental suffering, and loss of the higher experience in favor of the lower experience. The fact of the instability of evil is the moral order in the world. This instability of evil does not necessarily lead to progress. The evil in itself leads to the world losing forms of attainment in which that evil manifests itself. Therefore evil promotes its own elimination by destruction, or degradation, or by elevation. Therefore if God were an actual entity, which enters into every creative phase and yet is above change, he must be exempt from internal inconsistency, which is the note of evil. (Pg 83-84)
The temporal world exhibits two sides of itself. On one side it exhibits an order in matter of fact, and a self-contrast with ideals, which show that its creative passage is subject to the immanence of an unchanging actual entity. On the other side its incompletion, and its evil, show that the temporal world is to be construed in terms of additional formative elements, which are not definable in the terms, which are applicable to God. (Pg 85)
The purpose of God is the attainment of value in the temporal world. Value is inherent in actuality itself. Value is inherent in actuality itself. To be an actual entity is to have self-interest. This self-interest is a feeling of self-evaluation. It is an emotional tone. This self-interest is the interest of what one s existence comes to. It is the ultimate enjoyment of being actual. But the actuality is the enjoyment, and this enjoyment is the experiencing of value. Each actual entity is an arrangement of the whole universe, whereby there is constituted that self-value which is the entity itself. (Pg 87)
Therefore the epochal occasion has two sides. On one side it is a mode of creativity bringing together the universe. This side is the occasion as the cause of itself, its own creative act. On the other side, the occasion is the creature. This creature is that one emergent fact. (Pg 88)
Various occasions are therefore comparable in respect to their relative depths of actuality. Therefore the purpose of God in the attainment of value is in a sense a creative purpose. Apart from God, the remaining formative elements would fail in their functions.
The adjustment is the reason for the world. It is not the case that there is an actual world, which accidentally happens to exhibit an order of nature. There is an actual world because there is an order in nature. If there were no order, there would be no world. All order is therefore aesthetic order, and the moral order is merely certain aspects of aesthetic order. The actual world is the outcome of the aesthetic order, and the aesthetic order is derived from the immanence of God. (Pg 89-91)
The order of the world is no accident. There is nothing actual which could be actual without some measure of order. The religious insight is the grasp of this truth: That the order of the world, the depth of reality of the world, the value of the world in its whole and its parts, the beauty of the world, the zest of life, the peace of life, and the mastery of evil, are all bound together not accidentally, but by reason of this truth: that the universe exhibits a creativity with infinite freedom, and a realm of forms with infinite possibilities; but that creativity and these forms are together impotent to achieve actuality apart from the completed ideal harmony, which is God. (Pg 102-104)
Truth and Criticism
Religion starts from the generalization of final truths first perceived as exemplified in particular instances. These truths are amplified into a coherent system and applied to the interpretation on life. The peculiar character of religious truth is that it explicitly deals with values. It brings into our consciousness that permanent side of the universe, which we can care for. (Pg 110)
A dogma is the precise enunciation of a general truth, divested so far as possible from particular exemplification. Such precise expression is in the long run a condition for vivid realization, for effectiveness, for apprehension of width of scope, and for survival. A dogma can never be final. It can only be adequate in its adjustment of certain abstract concepts. A dogma may be true in the sense that it expresses such interrelations of the subject matter as are expressible within the set of ideas employed. Every true dogma, which formulates with some adequacy the facts of a complex religious experience, is fundamental for the individual in search and he disregards it at his peril. But every individual suffers from invincible ignorance. And a dogma, which fails to evoke any response in immediate apprehension, stifles the religious life. Therefore religion is primarily individual, and the dogmas of religion are clarifying modes of external expression. Expression, and in particular expression by dogma, is the return from solitariness to society. The dogmas are statements of how the complex world is to be expressed in the light of the intuitions fundamental to the religion. They are not necessarily simple in character or limited in number. (Pg 117-119)
The importance of rational religion in the history of modern culture is that it stands or falls with its fundamental position, that we know more than can be formulated in one finite systematized scheme of abstractions. The final principle of religion is that there is wisdom in the nature of things, from which flow our direction of practice, and our possibility of the theoretical analysis of fact. Religion insists that the world is a mutually adjusted disposition of things, issuing in value for its own sake. This is the very point that science is always forgetting. Religions commit suicide when they find their inspirations in their dogmas. The inspiration of religion lies in the history of religion. The sources of religious belief are always growing, though some supreme expressions may lie in the past. But dogmatic expression is necessary. The dogmas, however true, are only bits of the truth, expressed in terms, which in some ways are over-assertive and in other ways lose the essence of truth.
God, who is the ground antecedent to transition, must include all possibilities of physical value conceptually, thereby holding the ideal forms apart in equal, conceptual realization of knowledge. The limitation of God is his goodness. He gains his depth of actuality by his harmony of valuation. The nature of God is the complete conceptual realization of the realm of ideal forms. The kingdom of heaven is God. The depths of his existence lie beyond the vulgarities of praise or of power.
God is the binding element in the world. He is not the world, but the valuation of the world. He confronts what is actual in it with what is possible for it. He solves all indeterminations.
In conclusion, God is the only thing that is everlasting and all else is temporary. Therefore, it only makes sense to find out as much about God as one can. Recognize the temporality of all things and what is causing delusion. Reexamine everything so that you gain a new understanding of everything. After one recognizes the delusions perpetuated around oneself, it follows naturally that one should like to know the truth, which explains the delusion. The truth is the only thing permanent that one knows. Realize what you already have and be thankful to God for it. In ones selfishness, one forgets how lucky one is to be alive and how thankful one should be for all the goodness in ones life.
So many people have wrongly come to the conclusion that they can make pleasure permanent even though they have never been able to do so before. They wrongly think that if they just had more money and power they would be permanently happy. The truth is that no pleasure is permanent. Even if one had more money, they would realize that one couldn t buy love, peace, joy, and contentment that one gets from a relationship with the truth. When one accepts the ideal that God has created, and stops fighting against ones own perfection, one may enter the kingdom of God.