Post Edited (Tom) : 5/2/2009 1:41:40 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Tom) : 5/2/2009 1:51:51 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/2/2009 7:50:21 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/2/2009 7:28:40 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/2/2009 9:08:10 AM (GMT-5)

I love you, Jesus.

Ay, ay, ay,

Y'all rock wit' me...Y'all rock wit' me...

Y'all rock wit' me...Y'all rock wit' me...

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The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of human beings who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

    For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal human beings and birds and animals and reptiles.

    Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/2/2009 8:51:16 AM (GMT-5)

I might be missing the whole point here but…

Tom: I think D's point (I'm guessing) is that, like he said, "for the Christian" the GIVEN is that God is good, so anything (i.e. any theodicy) that contradicts that has to be the lie.

D: See, to truly know God intimately is to love God unconditionally, regardless of how the world may "feel" to us. If anyone can stop loving God because of some interpretation they have of some experience in their lives, they are deceiving themselves to think that they love God with all the heart, soul, mind, and strength. The Christian who "sees" God KNOWS that the continuously creating God is Good, despite all human interpretations of events to the contrary.

Tom: I agree of course, BUT...there’s a kind of circularity to this argument that bothers me. To “see God” and thus “know” that God is good IS to interpret/perceive the events of one’s life in a certain way. In other words, you only GET to the “seeing” of God as unfailingly good through interpreting the world this way as opposed to that. There’s no “seeing” of “God as good” IN this world which is previous to all perception and interpretation OF this world. In other words, the claim "God is good" is itself an interpretation OF the world. Are you trying to posit a seeing of God as God which is not a "human interpretation of events"?

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D: Is it more important to spend mental energy squaring God's immutable goodness with the evil we see in the world...OR...to spend mental energy focusing on "seeing" Christ's Presence in and through all created things, including oneself and other human persons…

Tom: Why the either/or? To me these are one and the same thing. To say God is immutably good regardless of what the world makes us feel is to make the distinction in the world between what is God at work and what’s not God at work, otherwise “evil” has no meaning and we’re not distinguishing between anything when we distinguish between God and evil when we call God “good.” So for me, D, to see/perceive Christ in and through all things IS (among other things) to square God’s goodness with the evil we see in the world, unless you want to say you don’t see evil in the world and don’t distinguish it from God.

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D: It would seem to me that God's "creatio continua" of all things would settle the issue about God unconditional love towards us.

Jeff: I must confess I don't see how God's benevolence is entailed in or implied by any theistic "creation continua" of things.

Tom: Gotta agree with Jeff here, D. Omnibenevolence doesn’t follow logically from the mere fact of creatio continua. And your reply to this: “For the believer to personally ‘know’ the Omniscient God as the ‘Ever-Present Help’ renders…” assumes in it our very objection. What is this “knowing God as the ever-present help” if not something MORE than just mere belief in creatio continua? It’s not a “sheer creative force” itself that entails God’s being an “ever-present help.” Rather, it’s the belief that this creative force is—in addition to being ever present—is an ever present SOMETHING, i.e., goodness and love. But you conclude that he’s good from the WAY that he’s present in the world, not JUST from the fact that he creates.

So though I agree that “for the Christian” the GIVEN is that God is good and that anything (i.e. any theodicy) that contradicts that has to be the lie, I wouldn’t pretend that people don’t have to have REASONS for believing this GIVEN claim about God. And those reasons have to be embraced in a world whose evil challenges its truth. People don’t exercise faith in a vacuum and THEN face an evil world. They find REASONS for believing God is good in spite of evil.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 5/2/2009 11:40:16 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/2/2009 11:53:02 AM (GMT-5)

"The highest goal of the Hesychast is the experiential knowledge of God."

...The Hesychast is to bring his mind (Gr. nous) into his heart so as to practise both the Jesus Prayer and sobriety with his mind in his heart. The descent of the mind into the heart is taken quite literally by the practitioners of Hesychasm and is not at all considered to be a metaphorical expression. Some of the psychophysical techniques described in the texts are to assist the descent of the mind into the heart at those times that only with difficulty it descends on its own.

The goal at this stage is a practice of the Jesus Prayer with the mind in the heart, which practice is free of images (see Pros Theodoulon). What this means is that by the exercise of sobriety (the mental ascesis against tempting thoughts), the Hesychast arrives at a continual practice of the Jesus Prayer with his mind in his heart and where his consciousness is no longer encumbered by the spontaneous inception of images: his mind has a certain stillness and emptiness that is punctuated only by the eternal repetition of the Jesus Prayer.

...

The guard of the mind is the practical goal of the Hesychast. It is the condition in which he remains as a matter of course throughout his day, every day until he dies. It is from the guard of the mind that he is raised to contemplation by the Grace of God.

The Hesychast usually experiences the contemplation of God as light, the Uncreated Light of the theology of St Gregory Palamas. The Hesychast, when he has by the mercy of God been granted such an experience, does not remain in that experience for a very long time (there are exceptions—see for example the Life of St Savas the Fool for Christ (14th Century), written by St Philotheos Kokkinos (14th Century)), but he returns 'to earth' and continues to practise the guard of the mind.

The Uncreated Light that the Hesychast experiences is identified with the Holy Spirit. Experiences of the Uncreated Light are allied to the 'acquisition of the Holy Spirit'. Notable accounts of encounters with the Holy Spirit in this fashion are found in St Symeon the New Theologian's account of the illumination of 'George' (considered a pseudonym of St Symeon himself); in the 'conversation with Motovilov' in the Life of St Seraphim of Sarov (1759 – 1833); and, more recently, in the reminiscences of Elder Porphyrios (Wounded by Love pp. 27 – 31). 

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/2/2009 12:43:49 PM (GMT-5)

Tom: Are you trying to posit a seeing of God as God which is not a "human interpretation of events"?

D: Beatific Vision   Theoria  Humans that "see" by the Spirit of God in direct, unmediated love relationship with God.

Tom: It’s not prior to all perception and contemplation of the world and discursive reasoning within our created contexts. It may take one beyond that. But there’s no GETTING there as a creature without BEING a creature, and that means being a creature in a CREATURE’S WORLD. And when one does encounter God in this wonderful way, then that experience becomes a further REASON for believing that God is good and that this goodness is compatible with the world’s being as evil as it is. That’s my point. You seem to be offering that particular experience as a reason for why people ought to stop THINKING. I’m saying you have no need to direct people to this course of action. Let thinking/contemplation/searching lead them, as it did you, to a place where the direct experience of God becomes one’s undeniable and sure grounds for God’s goodness.

I’m not arguing that we don’t experience God directly or that there can and will never come a day when we’ll have no need of theodicy (or discursive reasoning about God for that matter). I’m saying that a) people don’t GET to an experience of God in this world apart from being in the world nor apart from SOME contemplation upon beliefs about God’s goodness in the particular world they’re in, and ours is an evil one.

I’m still not sure what your point in this thread even is, D. Is it just to say that one can experience the goodness of God directly and hence come to a place where she no longer needs to chase theodicies? I agree with that. But it sounds like you’re saying one can GET to this experience without ANY reasons whatsoever. I wouldn’t agree with that.

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D: Creatio continua is not merely some "fact". It is the very self-communication of God to us.

Tom: But we don’t KNOW that automatically. And we only COME to perceive it by considering reasons for its being true.

D: It's ALL Grace (which is God Himself at work.) It's our apperception through our self-referential operations that doesn't allow us to see this more easily in the universe.

Tom: Right. So how do we solve the problem of this apperception? It sounds like you’re saying it’s solved by refusing to think about it (about how God can be called ‘good’ in spite of all the evil in the world) and just accepting the GIVENNESS of God’s goodness. I’m saying God’s goodness is a metaphysical given, yes. But it’s perception you’ve agreed is NOT a given. One has to come to perceive it, and in a world of great evil and pain, reasoning creatures are going to need reasons for thinking God is good. There's nothing wrong or weak or unnecessary about this. God understands it, and offers us the reasons we require: "Come, let us reason together, though you sins...."

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D: Creatio continua is not merely some "fact". It is the very self-communication of God to us.

Jeff: If you're saying that creatio continua can be known non-discursively if we only thought aright, then I guess I need to know what is this mode of thinking aright. Such that if I did it I would see that God is creating continuously and that that entails the fact that God is benevolent.

Tom: Exactly. Without faith it’s impossible to please God. And faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, etc. There’s CONTENT to faith. Now, it may be that there’s a non-discursive dimension of experiencing God directly. I don’t doubt this, or doubt that perhaps that this is the CORE of how we shall come to know God. What I’m saying is that one doesn’t GET finite, fallen, human beings TO that stage by telling them to STOP thinking, to give up find any reasons for believing God is good and for believing that God can be trusted and experienced.

Jeff:  All I hear you saying so far is that some of us don't see because we apperceive though our self-referential operations. That's not helping me know what that even means. It just sounds like a judgment with no explanation of how to fix my sad state of affairs. Any claim that people don't think right since they don't believe what would be clear IF they had thought right doesn't really get us anywhere.

Tom: Exactly.

Tom

Tom:

I’m still not sure what your point in this thread even is, D. Is it just to say that one can experience the goodness of God directly and hence come to a place where she no longer needs to chase theodicies? I agree with that. But it sounds like you’re saying one can GET to this experience without ANY reasons whatsoever. I wouldn’t agree with that.

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/2/2009 2:07:56 PM (GMT-5)