(July 20, 2019 at 3:50 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: I would argue that those are not good analogies. Your face, a mirror, the flowers, the air in the hallway, and the sun are all things that exist in space and time. God does not. Time and physical change are required for a flower to smell like like a flower, or for the sun to emit light. OTOH, god is (allegedly) unchanging, immaterial, and “outside” space-time. These characteristics are antithetic to the characteristics of the objects in your analogies.
Yeah, like all analogies, these are limited. They are meant to illustrate only one point: that we can talk about creation in two ways.
First kind of creation: that involving activity and effort on the part of the creator, which leads to an object with independent existence.
Second kind: that involving no effort by the creator, which leads to a condition that continues to be dependent on the creator.
Beyond that, you're certainly right -- the analogies tell us nothing about eternity or divine situations.
