19.1 Subparts as enneads

From general immanence, it follows that God is immanent in every part of creation and in every part of each part. God must be present in every realm that influences each part and each sub-part. God must be imaged in each thing of love, and in each thing of thought, and in each physical thing, as well as in the interior realms of all of these. God’s pattern is of love-wisdom-power, which we now abbreviate as L/W/P. This pattern must be within every part, which implies that we have 3 sub-parts each of love, of thought, and of effect. This is nine altogether. We talk of enneads, from the Greek for nine. The function of each of the original three spiritual, mental and physical degrees is itself further distributed over the nine sub-degrees that must be present, three in each. Each element of the resulting ennead has its own substance, its own quality, its own space, and its own actions, according to the way each is an image of the divine.

There is no reason to stop there. The L/W/P pattern should be recursively applied in all creation at all levels, giving rise to discrete degrees, sub-degrees, sub-sub-degrees, and so on. All these discrete (sub-)degrees will have generative and selection relations linking distinct levels. They will all be within their own spaces, in various shapes, and they will all act by contacts within the same space or level.

This scheme of nested images of God comes about because God is the same everywhere, at all scales in space and at all degrees and stages of generation. God is the same, but all these things are different, so the reception varies This scheme, moreover, is not a mechanical fragmentation of created reality. Rather, it is a source of ideas at each level which are all qualitatively as well as quantitatively completely distinct. The qualitative novelty that results is almost overwhelming. It is certainly the result of the overflowing love of God. Each step of the ladder is a new world with new dynamics. Soon we get to the end of what can be predicted a priori in any scientific theism. In Part IV, we will use empirical observations with a theistic science to identify some of those qualitative worlds.