Abysses and Ground? No. Freedom is Being and Being is Freedom
I admire Böhme, Schelling, and Berdyaev because they understood the inherent contradictions in traditional Christian theology concerning freedom and evil. If nothing can be prior to our 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 and evil.
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, or 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. 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.
And what about evil? If nothing can be prior to or outside of God, then it only follows that evil is also a part of God. Privatio boni/absence of good delineations that declare everything in Creation to be good and write off evil as nothing, non-being, or non-existence do nothing to address the very real presence of evil in Creation, to say nothing of the many contradictions such elucidations reveal when juxtaposed against God’s ultimacy and omni attributes.
Böhme, Schelling, and Berdyaev recognized traditional/classical theological explications on freedom and evil as contradictory and incoherent, regardless of how such explications were qualified or asserted.
Böhme, Schelling, and Berdyaev had the honesty and discernment needed to recognize that if nothing can be prior to or outside of God, then freedom and evil must also be from God. Full stop. There was no way around it. Understanding the gravity of the problem, Böhme, Schelling, and Berdyaev all offered coherent explanations of how freedom can still be authentic and how God cannot be responsible for evil even though nothing can be prior to or outside God.
Böhme placed the potential for evil with God in the form of the Ungrund—the groundless ground, neither good nor evil--within and from which God the Father creates. The Son purifies the potential within the Ungrund into pure act, thus elevating the Trinity above all potential for evil. The same applied to the rest of Creation until the Fall, after which the Light of the Son retracted from Creation, and the potential for evil seeped through. Consequently, it is only through the Son that this potential for evil can be negated.
Influenced by Böhme, Schelling reconceptualized the Ungrund as the Ground. Like Böhme’s Ungrund, Schelling’s Ground is also within God, but, paradoxically, contains a part that is His living essence and a part that is not God. Schelling describes God and His Ground as co-eternal.
“God has in himself an inner ground of his that in this respect precedes him in existence, but, precisely, in this way, God is again the Prius [what is before] of the ground and in so far as the ground, even as such, could not exist if God did not exist actually.”
God’s Ground is an essential concept in Schelling’s Freedom Essay as it pertains to the biblical Fall. Creatures are separated from God and exist in the mere Ground as independent beings. This independence is crucial for Schelling who posited that creatures do not dwell in God’s immanence, the perfection of pure, unblemished divinity. Instead, creatures are engaged in the process of becoming in the mere Ground of God.
Like Böhme’s Ungrund, Schelling’s Ground in God contains the potential for darkness because in some sense it is both connected and separated from God. The dark ground yearns for revelation and anticipates the moment of being reunited with the eternal father. This separation from God is vital to upholding the necessity behind all beings/creatures’ freedom and individuality.
Schelling argued that the only real way for freedom to emerge in the cosmos is through the primordial decision each creature makes—the choice for good or for evil—made possible via the Ground in which every creature exists. According to Schelling, this independence and power within the Ground allows creatures to form their own ontological centers. As is the case with Böhme, the end goal of all creatures is realignment with God; hence, the necessity of the light, that is Christ, in overcoming the darkness of selfishness and alienation.
Berdyaev took Böhme’s Ungrund a step further in the name of freedom and absolving God of evil by placing it entirely outside God. The Ungrund—the abyss of pure freedom—precedes being, even God, but it is not prior to God as time does not exist until God emerges from the Ungrund and begins creating. Since God creates from the Ungrund, a part of that pure freedom is inherent within all creatures, and over this freedom, God has little or no control; hence, the presence of evil in the cosmos.
As I reflect upon these explanations for freedom, I can’t help but think that a simpler and more coherent possibility exists. Böhme, Schelling, and Berdyaev all began from the assumption that nothing can be prior to or outside of God and then developed imaginative and coherent explanations of how and why freedom can be authentic within such an assumption. These explanations then branch into more convincing elucidations on how God is not responsible for the presence of evil in the cosmos. However, for me, these explanations are still far too abstract and fall short.
The crux of the problem, for me, at least, is the assumption that nothing is prior to God. Nothing is prior does not negate the possibility that beings co-exist with God eternally. Neither before nor after—but at the same time, stretching back into eternity. If we allow for such a possibility, we can then define freedom as something implicit, fundamental, and essential to beings.
Thus, freedom is in being, and being is freedom. Neither can be separated from the other. They did not begin, nor will they end. At most, they change depending on their mode of being.
In this sense, I do not think the beings in Creation are prior to God, but I certainly think that they were outside of God and that even now, within Creation, a mode of being, a part of them remains outside of God.
Berdyaev’s dictum that God has control over all being but not freedom is, at best, a partial truth. It is probably closer to the truth to say that God has control over beings in Creation—the mode into which he forms beings—but not their 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, or 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. 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.
And what about evil? If nothing can be prior to or outside of God, then it only follows that evil is also a part of God. Privatio boni/absence of good delineations that declare everything in Creation to be good and write off evil as nothing, non-being, or non-existence do nothing to address the very real presence of evil in Creation, to say nothing of the many contradictions such elucidations reveal when juxtaposed against God’s ultimacy and omni attributes.
Böhme, Schelling, and Berdyaev recognized traditional/classical theological explications on freedom and evil as contradictory and incoherent, regardless of how such explications were qualified or asserted.
Böhme, Schelling, and Berdyaev had the honesty and discernment needed to recognize that if nothing can be prior to or outside of God, then freedom and evil must also be from God. Full stop. There was no way around it. Understanding the gravity of the problem, Böhme, Schelling, and Berdyaev all offered coherent explanations of how freedom can still be authentic and how God cannot be responsible for evil even though nothing can be prior to or outside God.
Böhme placed the potential for evil with God in the form of the Ungrund—the groundless ground, neither good nor evil--within and from which God the Father creates. The Son purifies the potential within the Ungrund into pure act, thus elevating the Trinity above all potential for evil. The same applied to the rest of Creation until the Fall, after which the Light of the Son retracted from Creation, and the potential for evil seeped through. Consequently, it is only through the Son that this potential for evil can be negated.
Influenced by Böhme, Schelling reconceptualized the Ungrund as the Ground. Like Böhme’s Ungrund, Schelling’s Ground is also within God, but, paradoxically, contains a part that is His living essence and a part that is not God. Schelling describes God and His Ground as co-eternal.
“God has in himself an inner ground of his that in this respect precedes him in existence, but, precisely, in this way, God is again the Prius [what is before] of the ground and in so far as the ground, even as such, could not exist if God did not exist actually.”
God’s Ground is an essential concept in Schelling’s Freedom Essay as it pertains to the biblical Fall. Creatures are separated from God and exist in the mere Ground as independent beings. This independence is crucial for Schelling who posited that creatures do not dwell in God’s immanence, the perfection of pure, unblemished divinity. Instead, creatures are engaged in the process of becoming in the mere Ground of God.
Like Böhme’s Ungrund, Schelling’s Ground in God contains the potential for darkness because in some sense it is both connected and separated from God. The dark ground yearns for revelation and anticipates the moment of being reunited with the eternal father. This separation from God is vital to upholding the necessity behind all beings/creatures’ freedom and individuality.
Schelling argued that the only real way for freedom to emerge in the cosmos is through the primordial decision each creature makes—the choice for good or for evil—made possible via the Ground in which every creature exists. According to Schelling, this independence and power within the Ground allows creatures to form their own ontological centers. As is the case with Böhme, the end goal of all creatures is realignment with God; hence, the necessity of the light, that is Christ, in overcoming the darkness of selfishness and alienation.
Berdyaev took Böhme’s Ungrund a step further in the name of freedom and absolving God of evil by placing it entirely outside God. The Ungrund—the abyss of pure freedom—precedes being, even God, but it is not prior to God as time does not exist until God emerges from the Ungrund and begins creating. Since God creates from the Ungrund, a part of that pure freedom is inherent within all creatures, and over this freedom, God has little or no control; hence, the presence of evil in the cosmos.
As I reflect upon these explanations for freedom, I can’t help but think that a simpler and more coherent possibility exists. Böhme, Schelling, and Berdyaev all began from the assumption that nothing can be prior to or outside of God and then developed imaginative and coherent explanations of how and why freedom can be authentic within such an assumption. These explanations then branch into more convincing elucidations on how God is not responsible for the presence of evil in the cosmos. However, for me, these explanations are still far too abstract and fall short.
The crux of the problem, for me, at least, is the assumption that nothing is prior to God. Nothing is prior does not negate the possibility that beings co-exist with God eternally. Neither before nor after—but at the same time, stretching back into eternity. If we allow for such a possibility, we can then define freedom as something implicit, fundamental, and essential to beings.
Thus, freedom is in being, and being is freedom. Neither can be separated from the other. They did not begin, nor will they end. At most, they change depending on their mode of being.
In this sense, I do not think the beings in Creation are prior to God, but I certainly think that they were outside of God and that even now, within Creation, a mode of being, a part of them remains outside of God.
Berdyaev’s dictum that God has control over all being but not freedom is, at best, a partial truth. It is probably closer to the truth to say that God has control over beings in Creation—the mode into which he forms beings—but not their freedom.
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