B: NOTICE ABOVE THE WORD 'MOVEMENT. But if the human will is nothing but a movement of nature, is there a place for human freedom?

Tom: In Christ’s case there can be no room for a MERELY human movement of will. The question is what determines that movement. And I’m still waiting for a yes or no from D on my rule: Choice is always an attempt at or expression of personhood. So the movement of Christ’s human will (going with the two will idea) is determined either by the hunger for or satisfaction of some identity or person. It ain’t the former. So it’s the latter. And that person is the Son. The will doesn’t move apart from that, as if it operates separately from self-perception. It doesn’t. The will is a servant and instrument OF the person, or one’s beliefs about who she is. You choose based on who you believe yourself to be, or not be. This is why the whole one will/two will debate is getting more and more uninteresting to me. If two (or a hundred) will in Christ, it matters not—all are determined in their movements by the same person.

B: Therefore, for Maximus, when man follows his natural will, which presupposes life in God, God’s co-operation, and communion, he is truly free. But man also possesses another potential, determined not by his nature, but by each human person, or hypostasis, the freedom of choice, of revolt, of movement against nature, and therefore of self-destruction.

Tom: I’m uncomfortable with the way this is worded and how it relates things, but I might be misunderstanding Maximus. From my view, even when we are our FREEST and most united to God, we still self-determine freely and creatively, and that’s only because we’re persons other than God. Life in God IS true freedom. But it’s not having the movement of our will determined by God (by any divine person), as was the case with Christ. And I’m a bit uncomfortable with the adversative “but” that seems to drive a wedge between the will’s natural movement in God and the will’s capacity for movement away from God. BOTH movements are grounded in the same personal distinction from God.

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Jeff: Tom, what is a demiurge. POW, what, per EO, is a "person" and the "will," if not the "faculty" by which we act as a final cause?

Tom: In ancient Greek philosophy the ‘demiurge’ was an emanation from the immutable One. Basically the Neo-Platonists had the One (the ultimately REAL thing), and then three emanations from the One. The Nous (or mind of God, or the demiurge) was one of them. I think the point was that there had to be a stratification of mediators between the Ultimate, the One, and the world, because the two couldn’t touch or relate directly. So the demiurge is that go between. Some views had further steps in a gradation or hierarchy of reality. But the point was that the demiurge was just a bit lower on the totem pole than the One but still not a created/material entity.

T