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Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
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| Posted 12/4/2008 7:15 AM (GMT -6) |   | | D: First, let's get an example of how there can be uniqueness-in-multiplicity of personal perspective inhering in a singular consciousness. Looking at the Trinity, the SINGLE divine consciousness/subjectivity is shared between the divine persons, even though there is differentiation among those persons. (There is only ONE Spirit of Divine Self-Knowledge in God, after all, not three! ) These differentiations (not separations or divisions) within the Godhead deal with the indivisibility of the mutually understood and confirmed experiences of each divine person in their eternal perichoretic movement.
Jeff: Got a quick second this morning. I think we can explain the same idea by saying that the Father and Son, as separate beings, only have essential attributes which are CAPACITIES. The Spirit is necessary for the actualization of these capacities. Thus, they can be separate beings and still ONLY function as a UNIFIED team, if you will. This way, they need not have ONE shared subjective experience. The Father and Son can both have separate 1st-person experiences while depending on the ONE Spirit for the actualization of those experiences. And even then, those experiences depend on the Spirit diversely for the Father and the Son. The Son can RECEIVE the Spirit and BECOME a quickening Spirit while the Father can not in the same way. In some sense, the Spirit IS the Father's personal spirit in a way that it is not (or was not at one time) the spirit of the Son, though the Son depended on the Spirit for the actualization of his capacities, as did the Father.
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Tom
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| Posted 12/4/2008 8:01 AM (GMT -6) | | Dudn't work for me D, but thanks for trying.
Merry Christmas all!
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One Love
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| Posted 12/4/2008 8:39 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
Dudn't work for me D, but thanks for trying.
Oh, well. It's all good. Merry Christmas. 
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Jeff:
I think we can explain the same idea by saying that the Father and Son, as separate beings, only have essential attributes which are CAPACITIES. The Spirit is necessary for the actualization of these capacities. Thus, they can be separate beings and still ONLY function as a UNIFIED team, if you will. This way, they need not have ONE shared subjective experience. The Father and Son can both have separate 1st-person experiences while depending on the ONE Spirit for the actualization of those experiences. And even then, those experiences depend on the Spirit diversely for the Father and the Son. The Son can RECEIVE the Spirit and BECOME a quickening Spirit while the Father can not in the same way. In some sense, the Spirit IS the Father's personal spirit in a way that it is not (or was not at one time) the spirit of the Son, though the Son depended on the Spirit for the actualization of his capacities, as did the Father.
1) Is there some kind of problem with the divine persons sharing subjective experience, via perichoretic interpenetration? If so, what is it? It seems like there must be some reason why this doesn't take. Does it not make sense or something like that?
2) In your way of thinking, Jeff, how many "wills" are in the Trinity: One, two, or three? If you believe that there are three beings, wouldn't you have to believe that there are actually three wills that are perfectly in concert...rather than one will? Actually, wouldn't you have to believe that it TAKES three wills constantly cooperating for the Trinity to do anything?
3) For the bolded part, I like the underlined part. With that, if the Son is the "exact representation" and "perfect image" of the Father, then he would have to naturally "possess" the Holy Spirit like the Father does. The Father is NOT the Father without His Spirit. It would have to be the same with Christ. That's why Jesus could breathe on us and say "Receive the Holy Spirit." The Spirit was the Incarnate Word's natural possession as the Only Begotten.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
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One Love
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| Posted 12/4/2008 9:00 AM (GMT -6) | | I like this...
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Perichoresis has been used historically to describe God's relationship to the world, as a way of expressing the immanence and transcendence of God. It is true, on the one hand, that God is contained by nothing, and is instead the One in whom we live and move and have our being — i.e., everything is contained by Him. Yet at the same time God is within all things, "omnipresent." As Hilary of Poitiers put it, God is both "without" and "within" all things.
This mutual indwelling and containment is a created extension of the mutual indwelling and containment of the Triune Persons. The Father is in the Son, and in the Son are "precontained" all created things (so Cusa, and many others, including Bavinck); so, the Father is "in" all things. Likewise the Son, as the One in whom are all things, is in the Father, so that all things are in the Father. And all things are within and without the Father and the Son because the Father and Son indwell one another by the Spirit.
This raises the question of whether a unitarian God can be omnipresent, without becoming a pantheistic deity. If there is no uncreated "space" for the unitarian god to indwell, then he begins to indwell, realizes his potential for indwelling, when he makes a world (but can a unitarian god create? I think not, but that'll be a point for another post). Each person of the Triune God, however, has always forever indwelled "alien" "space," the alien space of the other persons. Each person has a home outside Himself, and God as the One God has a home within Himself, and there is nothing essentially new when He begins to indwell a created world.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, September 10, 2003 at 01:27 PM
And of course...there's wiki...
And you KNOW that James Loder had a kick a$$ section on it in "The Knight's Move"! (tip for Jeff!) 
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
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One Love
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| Posted 12/4/2008 9:05 AM (GMT -6) | | How about this?
The perchoretic movement of the Trinity is the only reason that we even have a category for "interiority" and "exteriority." True pantheistic monism cannot foster this, even metaphysically. Just like a monadic god (as opposed to a triune god) would never be able to BE "Love."
Feel me?
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am." Post Edited (One Love) : 12/4/2008 8:09:17 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/4/2008 9:34 AM (GMT -6) | | As a matter of fact...
there would be no ontological grounding for the Great Commandments being the ultimate expression of the eternal reality of personhood. Unless God "Loves God with all the heart, etc...AND loves his neighbor as Himself.", then human beings living the Great Commandments are not really expressions of divine life...because an uncreated, unitarian, monadic God HAS no neighbors...and no potential for neighboorHOOD.
Just think about it real quick...
This is why I know I ain't no true monistic pantheist!
I would qualify as a trinitarian panENtheist, who is holds to "attributive monistic mentalism"...grounded in "spirit" (dispositional mediation between possibility and actuality as enduring reality) in "perspectival relationality" ending up in panexperientialism.
Panexperientialism or panprotopsychism are related concepts. Alfred North Whitehead incorporated a scientific worldview into the development of his philosophical system similar to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. His ideas were a significant development of the idea of panpsychism, also known as panexperientialism, due to Whitehead’s emphasis on experience, though the term itself was first applied to Whitehead's philosophy by David Ray Griffin many years later. Process philosophy suggests that fundamental elements of the universe are occasions of experience, which can be collected into groups creating something as complex as a human being. This experience is not consciousness; there is no mind-body duality under this system as mind is seen as a very developed kind of experience. Whitehead was not a subjective idealist and, while his philosophy resembles the concept of monads first proposed by Leibniz, Whitehead’s occasions of experience are interrelated with every other occasion of experience that has ever occurred. He embraced panentheism with God encompassing all occasions of experience, transcending them. Whitehead believed that the occasions of experience are the smallest element in the universe--even smaller than subatomic particles.
I strongly believe that Greg is a panexperientialist. Probably even more so over the years.
And that's what's cool. I don't think he knows just HOW MUCH his reconstructed trinitarian metaphysic and panexperientialism aligns WELL with EO's panentheism, particularly it's consonance with the Essence/Energies distinction.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am." Post Edited (One Love) : 12/4/2008 10:36:27 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/4/2008 11:15 AM (GMT -6) | | New thoughts.
As I see it, the reality of perichoresis shatters all of the illusions of creaturely self-possession. ( "I own and possess some aspect of myself" ) Ultimate Reality isn't about self-possession, but self-giving and self-emptying. We are given life, not to hoard it...but in order to give it away, and in so doing, experience true life.
The Logos says...
Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.
And when human beings live egocentrically (as opposed to theocentrically, like Jesus) , falling into the despairing illusion of self-possession, they will inevitably seek to PRESERVE their lives and "selves" at all costs...even killing "others" in "self-defense." I think human history bears this out.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am." Post Edited (One Love) : 12/4/2008 10:33:57 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Asher
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| Posted 12/4/2008 8:36 PM (GMT -6) | | Hey Dwayne,
One Love:
"As I see it, the reality of perichoresis shatters all of the illusions of creaturely self-possession. ( "I own and possess some aspect of myself" ) Ultimate Reality isn't about self-possession, but self-giving and self-emptying. We are given life, not to hoard it...but in order to give it away, and in so doing, experience true life."
If I do not own and possess some aspect of myself, what is libertarian freedom?
How can a self give something it does not have? How can a self empty something it does not have?
If my self does not possess self, how can my self ever be self-giving or self-emptying? There is no self there to give or empty.
Two of your sentences seem to be at odds to me
1) the illusion of creaturely self-possession
2) We are given life, not to hoard it...but in order to give it away
The first strongly intimates to me that we are not given life (self-possession), that we think we have it, but it is really an illusion.
The second seems to tell me what is proper to do with the life (self-possession) I have been given; but it certainly seems that I have been given and do now possess that to which the edict applies.
This just occurred to me, don't know if it is the case or not. When you talk about the "I" and when I talk about the "I" is there not something going on similar to the way that a compatibilist and an incompatibilist talk about free-will?
One Love : "The indivisible 'I' which is distinct from the indivisible 'Thou'."
I would strongly agree with this statement of yours, but I don't know if we are even talking about the same thing.
I have mentioned this before in another thread...many times when I hear some Christian rail against individualism, I see them drawing a false dichotomy. First, they critique the many evils of individualism, then they point the way to an alternative, which they do not name explicitly, but we can call collectivism. And I think that they are partly right, but the part they get wrong throws out the baby (the self) with the bathwater. The individual "I" can indeed become filthy and need a bath, and it does stand in need of learning how to maintain itself in cleanness; but because it CAN get dirty does not mean that it CANNOT be clean. From my studies of Buber, Kierkegaard, and Ayn Rand (none of which I totally agree with on everything) I hold to the idea of an "I-Thou individualism". What I see you and others critique is when the I falls into an "I-It individualism", and I certainly agree with the appraisal. But it ignores the clean I-Thou individualism possibility. If it is mere oversight brought on from philosophical exhaustion due to lack of clarity, then let me energize and clarify by putting on the table the idea of man, as an "I", in self-possession...and maintaining and valuing that self-possession...while also maintaining and valuing the self-possession of each "Thou" it encounters.
If I do not own myself, and so can freely give myself to my God, my Lover...but instead am owned by "God", and must live my life, accountable before "God", without having full power of self-possession, and thus no power of self-disposal...then man is the most miserably wretched being and can only have his origination from a devil and not a God...and his having been brought into being is mere slavery and torture.
I am distinct from God and am not a matrix-y or lucid dream-y spin-off self...all of which just seems to me to be theistic mental masturbation. Yet, there is no I without a Thou, so I do not maintain myself as having no connection to God, without Him I would not be, but I am. Thanks to God!
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One Love
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| Posted 12/4/2008 9:26 PM (GMT -6) | | Cool stuff, Asher!
Some questions...
1. Do you possess your own goodness? If so, by what means?
2. Do you possess your own love? If so, by what means?
3. Do you possess your own spirit? If so, by what means?
4. Do you possess your own life? If so, by what means?
5. Isn't it true that the Spirit of Christ-the-Logos the source of all of your goodness, love, spirit, and life by Grace? That without God, you couldn't be genuinely "good" at all?
"Why do you call me good? There is only ONE who is good, and that's God."
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Dictionary.com on "possess"
pos·sess
- To have as property; own.
- To have as a quality, characteristic, or other attribute: possessed great tact.
- To acquire mastery of or have knowledge of: possess valuable data.
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- To gain or exert influence or control over; dominate: Fury possessed me.
- To control or maintain (one's nature) in a particular condition: I possessed my temper despite the insult.
- To cause to own, hold, or master something, such as property or knowledge: She possessed herself of the unclaimed goods.
- To cause to be influenced or controlled, as by an idea or emotion: The thought of getting rich possessed him.
- Obsolete To gain or seize.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am." Post Edited (One Love) : 12/4/2008 8:35:14 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/4/2008 9:45 PM (GMT -6) | | | Steward.
n. One who manages another's property, finances, or other affairs.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
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Asher
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| Posted 12/4/2008 11:06 PM (GMT -6) | | There are two types of stewards:
those who are masters of their own household and also manage someone else's property, finances, or affairs...as an employee, and are thus paid for their service...and
slaves...who manage a slaveowner's property, finances and affairs.
"Isn't it true that the Spirit of Christ-the-Logos the source of all of your goodness, love, spirit, and life by Grace?"
As I have said, there is no I without a Thou. God is the source of all goodness, love, spirit and life...insomuch as He is those things and He created man in His image. And He created a real world, not a matrix. I guess this comes down to what you see as the design specs for man. I believe God's intentions for man is as His Thou. He created man with the capacity to achieve goodness. He starts as my Father and ends as my Lover. I am not His slave. He loves me, and I love Him.
He creates man with a rational consciousness. Thereby man acquires mastery of or gains knowledge of goodness, love. Being made in the image of God man has the capability of these values.
"Why do you call me good? There is only ONE who is good, and that's God."
Let's see...that is a quote from who?...hmmm?...Jesus!
Dwayne? Is Jesus good?
If you say "yes" then answer Jesus' question.
If you say "no" well, that's a whole bunch a 'nother worm of cans.
Matthew: Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?
Mark: Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
Matthew: Why do you ask me about what is good?
Mark: Why do you call me good?
So, are we talking about an ontology of good...or are we talking about the rational faculty of acquiring the idea of what good is and then practicing our knowledge.
Do you Dwayne possess the knowledge that 2+2 is 4? If so, by what means?
At one time, I didn't know 2+2 was 4. Then I learned it.
"Isn't it true that the Spirit of Christ-the-Logos the source of all of your goodness, love, spirit, and life by Grace?"
by Grace...what does that mean in this context?
"Isn't it true..." That God possessed these values before me and created me in His image, with a capacity for these values? Then, yes, by Grace.
"Isn't it true..." That man is an unworthy worm, but God bestows these values on him anyway. Then, no.
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One Love
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| Posted 12/5/2008 12:12 AM (GMT -6) | | Asher:
There are two types of stewards:
those who are masters of their own household and also manage someone else's property, finances, or affairs...as an employee, and are thus paid for their service...and
slaves...who manage a slaveowner's property, finances and affairs.
Well, I could talk about us being "slaves of God" and "slaves of righteousness" (like a Romans 6 "love slave"), but... 
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Asher:
As I have said, there is no I without a Thou. God is the source of all goodness, love, spirit and life...insomuch as He is those things and He created man in His image. And He created a real world, not a matrix. I guess this comes down to what you see as the design specs for man. I believe God's intentions for man is as His Thou. He created man with the capacity to achieve goodness. He starts as my Father and ends as my Lover. I am not His slave. He loves me, and I love Him.
So you believe that the human spirit has the capacity to achieve and possess goodness of it's own...outside of empowerment of the Holy Spirit, then? I suppose, man. It makes more sense to me to say that the human spirit lives in the "energies" of God via the Holy Spirit, thus displaying an "alien righteousness" (Luther)
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Asher:
He creates man with a rational consciousness. Thereby man acquires mastery of or gains knowledge of goodness, love. Being made in the image of God man has the capability of these values.
Saying that humanity has the capability to live in these values...is distinct from saying that the capacity for self-originated, self-sustained, self-possessed goodness, love, etc is INHERENT in human spirit.
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Asher:
"Why do you call me good? There is only ONE who is good, and that's God."
Let's see...that is a quote from who?...hmmm?...Jesus!
Dwayne? Is Jesus good?
If you say "yes" then answer Jesus' question.
If you say "no" well, that's a whole bunch a 'nother worm of cans.
As I see it, Jesus' goodness was NOT his own...and he said so. (I refer back to the Emptiness of Christ) Jesus' goodness was rooted in his Father and the Father's Spirit. Everything he did, he did by total transparency to the Father. Shouldn't his statement be seen in this obvious pattern?
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Asher:
Matthew: Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?
Mark: Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
Matthew: Why do you ask me about what is good?
Mark: Why do you call me good?
So, are we talking about an ontology of good...or are we talking about the rational faculty of acquiring the idea of what good is and then practicing our knowledge.
Don't forget Luke: "Why do you call me good?"
With this, I think that Jesus is drawing the young man's attention to the source of Jesus' attested goodness: God alone. (Mark and Luke). And we know that when Jesus is talking about "God alone", he's specifically talking about the Father, his God. See "Emptiness of Christ" idea again...
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Asher:
"Isn't it true that the Spirit of Christ-the-Logos the source of all of your goodness, love, spirit, and life by Grace?"
by Grace...what does that mean in this context?
"Isn't it true..." That God possessed these values before me and created me in His image, with a capacity for these values? Then, yes, by Grace.
"Isn't it true..." That man is an unworthy worm, but God bestows these values on him anyway. Then, no.
It means this: Without God's Grace (Empowering Presence), human spirits could exhibit no virtue...for the Spirit of Christ-the-Logos is "all virtue."
"There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one."
"Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit."
"The poison of vipers is on their lips."
"Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness."
"Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know."
"There is no fear of God before their eyes."
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am." Post Edited (One Love) : 12/4/2008 11:22:07 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Asher
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Total Posts : 477
| Posted 12/5/2008 2:49 AM (GMT -6) | | "Love your neighbor as yourself." which assumes self-love as a guide...this way, that you regard yourself...this is the way you are to regard others. They are a self and hold themselves in this self same esteem. This is I-Thou.
"We are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman." which in socio-political context means that we have all the rights and privileges of our free parents.
We can't press too far with verses that talk about us as bond slaves to Christ, because we have balancing verses that talk about us as free. What they are pointing to is the overwhelming love, trust, esteem that we have for Christ...because what we know is that God loves us and holds us in such high esteem that we are seen as a bride. So, we know an internal longing after Christ that is so exalted that we have trouble finding words to describe it, but if you have it, you know it, whether you can adequately describe it or not. So, we call ourselves slaves to Christ. Weird experiment...if we knew that God did NOT have our best interests at heart, and instead cared very little for us...perhaps we would actually BE slaves to God, but would we willingly take the slave mantle upon ourselves if we could somehow avoid it?
One Love: "So you believe that the human spirit has the capacity to achieve and possess goodness of it's own...outside of empowerment of the Holy Spirit, then?"
Dwayne, are you in favor of government regulation of personal and business interests at every point, or should a government perhaps set some regulatory guidelines around only specific areas in which people or businesses can exploit others? Apart from these kinds of needful regulations, shouldn't government just get out of the way? Is that not empowering?
Did God make man anemic as pertaining to the good, and he must constantly be getting a transfusion?
How does one go about not being empowered of the Holy Spirit? In that God grounds (underwrites) the whole shebang, the empowerment is in how God created man...in His image. God is good, and that is what man can be. (I understand that God does specially empower people for special feats, I'm not talking about this.) If you know what it means to be good, you can be good (granted, there are any number of obstacles, this is what mastery means, overcoming them...and growing from strength to strength with God as your guide), if you don't know what it means to be good, then why are you calling God good, you don't know if He is or not.
One Love: "...self-originated, self-sustained, self-possessed goodness, love, etc is INHERENT in human spirit."
If there is no self-originated, self-sustained, self-possessed goodness, then there is no human spirit.
self-originated...does not mean that I do not acknowledge God prior to my self-origination of good. He designed man, that is prior...but He designed man with the capacity to be self-originators of good. He is the originator of self-originators.
self-sustained...that just means we keep on doing what we originate
self-possessed..."The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him."
One Love: "As I see it, Jesus' goodness was NOT his own...and he said so. (I refer back to the Emptiness of Christ) Jesus' goodness was rooted in his Father and the Father's Spirit. Everything he did, he did by total transparency to the Father. Shouldn't his statement be seen in this obvious pattern? "
What does it mean "The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him."? What is a good man?
I'm gonna go on record and say...Jesus was good.
One Love: "the source of Jesus' attested goodness: God alone"
attested: To affirm to be correct, true, or genuine
Now watch your words closely here...Jesus' attested goodness
Jesus' goodness is affirmed to be correct, true and genuine. Is that what you meant to say?
Sure, God alone is the source if what we mean is the priorness and creation of a world in which good is possible, and in which man is capable of being good.
There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one."
"Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit."
"The poison of vipers is on their lips."
"Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness."
"Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know."
"There is no fear of God before their eyes.
You're not good with hyperbole, are you?
If no one is righteous, no one understands, no one seeks God, everyone turns away, everyone is worthless, no one does good, everyone's speech is venomous, all their deeds are violent, and no one fears God.
And no one can self-originate any of the opposite good things. And they can only do good when God "empowers" them?
Two questions come to mind:
Why doesn't God "empower" everyone? And if He doesn't choose to empower and things are as you say with regard to man's goodness...why the surprise and hurt manifest in these verses?
And if God can empower man, but some men are not so empowered, why are they not empowered? What is it in them that is keeping God from empowering them? And is that thing self-originated and self-possessed? And is evil a privation of good or does it have ontological existence on it's own? And if man can self-originate evil, how does he do that if there is no good in him?
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Tom
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| Posted 12/5/2008 3:40 AM (GMT -6) | | |
Asher : If I do not own and possess some aspect of myself, what is libertarian freedom?
T: Exactly.
And "self-possession" is just a word. One has to ask what is meant by it. Why suppose it's an "illusion"? I see it as God's benevolent will that I become a unique person in relation to him.
D: 5. Isn't it true that the Spirit of Christ-the-Logos the source of all of your goodness, love, spirit, and life by Grace? That without God, you couldn't be genuinely "good" at all?
T: Who would want to deny this? But this doesn't at all entail a denial of unique, creaturely freedom or the unique subjectivities that define agents. You, D, assimilate all this into God so that all creaturely perspectives and identities are predicates of God. That's what makes you a qualified pantheist in my view.
Paul says we're "slaves of righteousness"? Sure. But Jesus says, "I no longer call you slaves, but friends." Both passages are good reasons to interpret contextually. And careful, contexual interpretation will not (as far as I see) favor D's view. Being a slave of righteousness doesn't mean not being a unique person in relation to God.
D: Ultimate Reality isn't about self-possession, but self-giving and self-emptying.
T: This is most certainly inaccurate. At best it's half of what ultimate reality is about. Ultimate reality is about possessing one's self (identity) in self-giving and self-receiving. It's not JUST about self-emptying...full stop. It's about being-in-relation. I can't be a unique person 'alone'. I have to love and affirm others (ultimately God) in relation to them in order to become someone unique.
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One Love
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| Posted 12/5/2008 8:00 AM (GMT -6) | | D: Ultimate Reality isn't about self-possession, but self-giving and self-emptying.
T: This is most certainly inaccurate. At best it's half of what ultimate reality is about. Ultimate reality is about possessing one's self (identity) in self-giving and self-receiving. It's not JUST about self-emptying...full stop. It's about being-in-relation. I can't be a unique person 'alone'. I have to love and affirm others (ultimately God) in relation to them in order to become someone unique.
If you are saying that a sense of identity ("who I am" ) comes from the perichoretic interaction of self-giving and self-emptying (which allows one to receive the giving of another), I don't disagree. This doesn't eliminate uniqueness...and I didn't say that it did. It seems that you associate identity directly with self-ownership. I don't do that.
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Asher: If I do not own and possess some aspect of myself, what is libertarian freedom?
T: Exactly.
And "self-possession" is just a word. One has to ask what is meant by it. Why suppose it's an "illusion"? I see it as God's benevolent will that I become a unique person in relation to him.
Let me show where I'm coming from...Loder...
By the leap of faith in the God-man, eternity and existence now coinhere such that one's existence in the world is received utterly and exhaustively as a gift. Although the gift is given concretely and as a whole--as when the world seems given back to one who has had a narrow escape from death--it may be seen from each of its coinherent aspects.
In its eternal aspect, the gift is continually given, yet it can never be possessed or unpacked. It is a gift which, by it irreducible giftedness, exposes all previous assumptions about one's existence (e.g. existence as having been earned, able to be possessed, possessing in itself the eternal, or being consumed by the eternal)--all basic ways of evading the mutual exclusion between eternity and existence in Religiousness A--as Error.
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If we combine this positive coinherence with the previous discussion of particularity and universality, then it is clear that this giftedness, in both is concrete richness and its purgatorial effects, is an expression of Divine Love. That is, to be given our particularity in a way that necessarily and resiliently remains free from all possessiveness, yet does this in such a way that we may in our particularity appropriate the universal (the Divine Person) as having made and as continuing to make that particularity possible and actual--this is the work of God's love.
THIS is what I'm referring to.
Like Mary, we see EVERYTHING as faith and Grace.
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D: 5. Isn't it true that the Spirit of Christ-the-Logos the source of all of your goodness, love, spirit, and life by Grace? That without God, you couldn't be genuinely "good" at all?
T: Who would want to deny this?
I'm glad that YOU don't.
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Tom:
But this doesn't at all entail a denial of unique, creaturely freedom or the unique subjectivities that define agents. You, D, assimilate all this into God so that all creaturely perspectives and identities are predicates of God. That's what makes you a qualified pantheist in my view.
I've already explained my perspective clearly. You take things as you want.
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Tom:
Paul says we're "slaves of righteousness"? Sure. But Jesus says, "I no longer call you slaves, but friends." Both passages are good reasons to interpret contextually. And careful, contexual interpretation will not (as far as I see) favor D's view. Being a slave of righteousness doesn't mean not being a unique person in relation to God.
I knew that you and Asher were gonna get on this. Some things:
1) I said "love slave" for a reason. We are talking freely chosen servitude...which there is NOTHING wrong with.
2) I never said that being a slave of righteousness eliminated uniqueness. YOU are saying that.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am." Post Edited (One Love) : 12/5/2008 7:03:55 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/5/2008 11:00 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
I'm trying to get clear on what IS unique about the 'self', the 'I' that you spoke of as unique and irreducible. And for the life of me I just spin in circles looking for this unique, irreducible self that you say each of us is. You don't think the uniqueness resides in a unique subjectivity, a subjective perspectival experience of self and the world, because you say God shares each of our subjective perspectives as constitutive of his own. So every belief I have about myself, even if false, is a belief God has about himself. Besides being extremely objectionable theologically, that still leaves us with no explanation of what IS unique about me. It's not my subjectivity that's unique. It's not my experience. It's not my identity. What is it?
Let's start with this...
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From Greg's Trinity and Process, pages 394-395
God's Relationship to Non-Divine Reality
The disposition of God to create a non-divine reality--which is itself a contingent feature of God's necessary disposition to be God --is thus a disposition to create experiential centers of, and contributors to, non-divine beauty. It is a disposition to create a matrix of relations with ordinal centers, each of which enjoys and/or contributes to an approximation of divine beauty. The divine disposition "diffuses itself" (Edwards) into a multiplicity of dispositions which "aim at" a unique actualization, a unique perspective on reality, which is defined either as an contribution to, and/or an experience of, beauty.
It is at this point of this "diffusion" that the distinction between God and the non-divine world occurs. The multiplicity of dispositions towards non-divine realities are themselves non-divine in their concrescence. The "termini" of God's creative act is not (as with Neville) the creature act itself, but the beginning of the (not wholly determined) disposition of the creature which shall act. The non-divine disposition arises out of God--it is an aspect of God's self-disposition to delight in Godself--and results in what is not God.
As with Edwards, we can in this way assert that God's creativity is, in one sense,"the substance of bodies", the "ens entium" of all things, without thereby endorsing pantheism. But this in our scheme carried through more consistently than was possible in Edwards because we have not held that this creativity toward non-divine realities is in any sense necessary. The relative autonomy of the non-divine dispositions is manifested in their autonomous--viz. not divinely determined--creativity (OL's Note: LFW 2), though their relative dependence is manifested in their tie to the primordial disposition of God as the ground of their creativity. (OL's Note: Divine Presence as "Grace" )
The divine ground defines the parameters within which the preordained role of the entity within the matrix of being can be played, through exactly how this creativity is in particular actualized is their own doing. The divine ground thus defines the essence of the non-divine creature without thereby undermining the autonomous integrity of the creature: indeed, it is the divine ground of the creature's essence which allows the creature space to be autonomous.
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Do you see anything there? What is the ground of the radical uniqueness and particularity that we see in all of Creation?
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am." Post Edited (One Love) : 12/5/2008 10:19:24 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/5/2008 11:14 AM (GMT -6) | | Satan's Lie: Your identity comes from what people say about you.
God's Truth: Your identity comes from what God says about you.
What does God say about you, dear reader...as a human being?
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God presides in the great assembly;
he gives judgment among the "gods":
"How long will you defend the unjust
and show partiality to the wicked?
Defend the weak and the fatherless;
uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
"The 'gods' know nothing, they understand nothing.
They walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
"I said, 'You are "gods";
you are all sons of the Most High.'
But you will die like mere mortals;
you will fall like every other ruler."
Rise up, O God, judge the earth,
for all the nations are your inheritance.
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Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are "gods" ' ? If he (God the Father) called them 'gods,' to whom the word of God came (HUMAN BEINGS)— and Scripture cannot be broken— what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? (ALSO a human being!) Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, 'I am God's Son' (Exactly what the Scriptures said that human beings were, because of God's call to them as such) Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father." Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.
Now really look at this.
Wasn't Jesus just believing God's Word about himself and others?
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am." Post Edited (One Love) : 12/5/2008 10:23:08 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/5/2008 11:27 AM (GMT -6) | | For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.
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Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father."
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See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
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Hmmm...
So, if Scripturally, being "called gods by God" is LINKED with being "sons/children of God"...what does THAT mean?
Hmmm..."Your identity comes from what God says about you."
What do you think about that there? 
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
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One Love
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| Posted 12/5/2008 11:34 AM (GMT -6) | | |
It is very daring for someone to talk about Theosis without first having tasted it. But we have dared what is beyond our power because we have faith in the mercy of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.
This is done so as not to hide from our Christian brothers the highest and ultimate purpose of our life; that for which we were created.
This is done so that it will become clear that the only truly Orthodox form of pastoral guidance is that which is intended to lead to Theosis, and is not, as in Western Christianity, aimed at a moral perfection for man which does not depend on God's Grace.
This is done so that all may desire what is best and struggle for the highest. This is the only thing able to quench the depth of the psyche's thirst for the Absolute, the Triune God.
This is done so that we will overflow with gratitude towards our Maker and Creator for His great gift to us, Theosis by Grace.
This is done so that we realise the irreplaceability of our Holy Church as the only community of Theosis on earth.
This is done so that the magnificence and truth of our Orthodox Faith should be revealed as the only faith that teaches and provides Theosis to its members.
This is done so that our psyches should be consoled, for regardless of the degree to which they have been poisoned and darkened by sin, they yearn for the light of Christ's face.
Merciful Lord, in Your boundless love, be pleased to make us worthy to enter the path of Theosis before we leave the present temporal world.
Merciful Lord, in their quest for Theosis, guide those of our Orthodox brethren who do not rejoice because they are unaware of the magnificence of the fact that they are "called to be gods."
Merciful Lord, also guide the steps of heterodox Christians to become aware of Your Truth, so that they are not left outside Your Bridechamber, deprived of the Grace of Theosis.
Merciful Lord, have mercy on us and on Your world! Amen.
The Abbot of the Holy Monastery of St. Gregorios of the Holy Mountain Athos
Archimandrite George
March 1997
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
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Tom
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| Posted 12/5/2008 11:40 AM (GMT -6) | | I didn't see an answer anywhere in there. Sorry.
I saw Greg mention each of us aiming at "a unique perspective on reality." I like that. That looks like an answer. But if Greg agrees with you that every first-person belief I have about myself is also believed by God to be true about Godself, then I'll say the same thing to him I've said to you, namely, there's nothing unique about first-person perspectives that are shared by more than one. If it's the perspective of more than one, then it's not unique to any one person. So what does Greg think is "unique" about a creature's perspective? What about you D? YOU said the creaturely 'self', the creaturely 'I', was "unique and indivisible"? I'm asking you to tell us what's unique and indivisible about the creaturely 'self'? So far you haven't offered us anything. Everything you say about the human self, identity, the 'I', and whatever, you EQUALLY attribute to God as a predicate of God. None of that is then unique to me. So we still have no answer.
TPost Edited (Tom) : 12/5/2008 10:44:02 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/5/2008 12:02 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
I saw Greg mention each of us aiming at "a unique perspective on reality." I like that. That looks like an answer. But if Greg agrees with you that every first-person belief I have about myself is also believed by God to be true about Godself, then I'll say the same thing to him I've said to you, namely, there's nothing unique about first-person perspectives that are shared by more than one. If it's the perspective of more than one, then it's not unique to any one person. So what does Greg think is "unique" about a creature's perspective? What about you D? YOU said the creaturely 'self', the creaturely 'I', was "unique and indivisible"? I'm asking you to tell us what's unique and indivisible about the creaturely 'self'? So far you haven't offered us anything. Everything you say about the human self, identity, the 'I', and whatever, you EQUALLY attribute to God as a predicate of God. None of that is then unique to me. So we still have no answer.
We are talking uniqueness, indivisibility AND unrepeatability, right?
This is found in the "eschatological essence" (Greg's language) or logoi seen in each "matrix of relations with ordinal centers" that make up the haecceity of a thing. God ACTIVELY CALLING each "something" to be it's own thing with it's own independent movement and perspective, via the logoi...and empowering the response! Each and every unrepeatable moment.
The divine disposition (LOGOS)"diffuses itself" (Edwards) into a multiplicity of dispositions (LOGOI) which "aim at" a unique actualization, a unique perspective on reality, which is defined either as an contribution to, and/or an experience of, beauty.
It is at this point of this "diffusion" that the distinction between God and the non-divine world occurs. The multiplicity of dispositions towards non-divine realities are themselves non-divine in their concrescence.
Come on now... 
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am." Post Edited (One Love) : 12/5/2008 11:06:12 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 12/5/2008 12:15 PM (GMT -6) | | D: We are talking uniqueness, indivisibility AND unrepeatability, right?
T: We're talking about what YOU meant when you said that each of us is a unique and indivisible 'self' or 'I'.
Can you tell me what is unique about that self? Don't quote anybody and paste it. Just type it out in your own words as simply as you can (for my pea-sized brain) on your keyboard.
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