For mainstream Christian theologians, the primary act of creation is making the stuff of everything; for Mormons it is perhaps the shaping of pre-existent stuff- the making of form.

But perhaps God’s primary purpose was neither of these – but to bring the stuff of existence into a relation – each with every other. Because, naturally, there is no coherence – only chaos.

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Even before shaping, first everything needed to be brought into relation. However, relation is something that happens between entities – so the implication is that entities were already present.

Entities were already there – in other words, life is eternal and universal (but very various!). Life is not the problem – the problem is to bring the multiplicity of lives into relation.

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That was done through Love. The reason that Christians say God is Love refers to this primary act: God brought everything into relationship, by Love.

We can think of this primordial Love as a light emanating from God and bathing the universe in luminosity – everything is inside God’s Love; or, Love could be a sea, and everything immersed in this sea.

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So the first phase of creation was to make the universe ‘one’ – not in identity, but one group (or family) as a network of relations: a network of Loving relations.

The later phase was to enable primordial Men to become divine, and share in God’s Love: this is a transition from being spontaneously bathed-in love, to each man becoming a self-conscious entity and then choosing to Love (choosing to participate in God’s network of loving relations).

So, the secondary act of creation is in relation to Man; and the enabling of each man’s self-consciousness: so that we step-back-from the first state of unselfconscious immersion – become aware of ourselves as free agents capable for choice – and then decide whether or not to participate in the network of relations.

[This participation including the matter of making more (self-conscious) Men, who will then be confronted by the same choice.]

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The choice is threefold:

1. To enter into the fullest relationship with God by becoming a fully self-conscious divine person and choosing to love God-as-a-person;

2. To return to primordial and unselfconscious immersion-in love, ceasing to be a person (e.g. the Eastern religious goal of Nirvanah, impersonal non-self);

3. To oppose God’s unification of the universe through love, by explicitly and actively rejecting God – denying the desirability of a network of loving relations as the basis of reality: to assert one’s autonomy from this web of love.

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Note, for simplification, I have left-out explicit reference to the role of Jesus Christ – which relates to the process of achieving self-consciousness – both in Man and in each man. I also left-out consideration of a distinction of God between Heavenly Father and Mother in Heaven.