Relatively Absolute: We have alluded more than once to the seemingly contradictory, but metaphysically useful and even indispensable, idea of the “RELATIVELY absolute,” which is absolute in relation to what it rules, while pertaining to relativity in relation to the “Pure Absolute.” (GTUFS: FaceA, Islam and Consciousness of the Absolute)
There could never be any symmetry between the relative and the Absolute; as a result, if there is clearly no such thing as the absolutely relative, there is nonetheless a “RELATIVELY absolute”, and this is Being as creator, revealer, and savior, who is absolute for the world, but not for the Essence: “Beyond-Being” or “Non-Being”. If God were the Absolute in every respect and without any hypostatic restriction, there could be no contact between Him and the world, and the world would not even exist; for in order to be able to create, speak, and act, it is necessary that God Himself make Himself “world” in some fashion, and He does so through the ontological self-limitation that gives rise to the “personal God”, the world itself being the most extreme and hence the most relative of self-limitations. (GTUFS: FormSR, The Two Paradises)
. . . in the sense – paradoxical but real – of the ‘RELATIVELY absolute’; hypostases are relative in respect of the Essence, but they are principial – hence in practice absolute – in respect of cosmic Manifestation. (GTUFS: DivineHuman, Transcendence Is Not Contrary to Sense)
The Vedanta distinguishes between the ‘non-supreme’ Principle (Apara-Brahma) and the ‘supreme’ Principle (Para-Brahma); the first is not, as is the second, the Absolute in itself, but it is ‘practically’ the Absolute in relation to the world; it is thus ‘RELATIVELY absolute’. The personal God is ‘absolute’ without being intrinsically ‘the Absolute’. (GTUFS: SurveyME, The Mystery of the Hypostatic Face)