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One Love
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| Posted 12/30/2009 9:16 PM (GMT -6) |   | Tom, I was thinking about something. So, I'm getting convicted about something, right? Lovely scathing truth. 
But at the same time, I found what I personally believe to be incontrovertible biblical evidence that God Himself can (and does) suffer at the hands of Creation. A passage...
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
I was thinking about it. The Holy Spirit is the self-relational Power of God Himself, the Spirit is HOW God knows Himself as Trinity...
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except that person's own spirit within? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
If the Holy Spirit can be made to be distressed or sorrowful (good translations of "lupeite") by created beings, then the Uncreated God IS TRULY feeling sorrow. Period. Something God never experienced before Creation. God "suffers" in his deepest Uncreated Heart...every time we live outside of compassion and inside of malice.
I can't see any person taking the Bible seriously (regardless of denominational affiliation) that would debate that this is the clear meaning of the text. Seriously. Especially since it matches up with Isaiah 63:7-10...
I will tell of the kindnesses of the LORD,
the deeds for which he is to be praised,
according to all the LORD has done for us—
yes, the many good things he has done
for the house of Israel,
according to his compassion and many kindnesses.
He said, "Surely they are my people,
sons who will not be false to me";
and so he became their Savior.
In all their distress he too was distressed,
and the angel of his presence saved them.
In his love and mercy he redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them
all the days of old.
Yet they rebelled
and grieved his Holy Spirit.
So he turned and became their enemy
and he himself fought against them.
Hebrew: atsab ...to distress, make sorry...yep...
Whatcha think?
Actually, can you ask David Bentley Hart (and other like him) this question:
If God doesn't "experience emotion", meaning God is actually immune to all feeling, could you please explain what Paul was trying to say in Ephesians 4:29-32?
You can ask about Isaiah 63 if you want to, but I'd really like to know the Ephesians one. 
As I see it, for God to be completely incapable of emotion would mean that "grieving" God in any meaningful sense of the term is impossible. This would render Paul's plea with the Ephesians to effectively "not hurt the Spirit's feelings" completely ineffectual, if you think about it. If I know God cannot be "distress" or "sorrowful" for anything I do, then Paul's exhortation means nothing to me.
Right?
Post Edited (One Love) : 12/30/2009 8:47:23 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/30/2009 9:39 PM (GMT -6) | | And how long has the Holy Spirit been "grieving" with his people? Let's look...
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Then the high priest asked Stephen, "Are these charges true?"
To this he replied: "Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Harran. 'Leave your country and your people,' God said, 'and go to the land I will show you.'
"So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Harran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. He gave him no inheritance here, not even enough ground to set his foot on. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child. God spoke to him in this way: 'For four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,' God said, 'and afterward they will come out of that country and worship me in this place.' Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth. Later Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.
"Because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him and rescued him from all his troubles. He gave Joseph wisdom and enabled him to gain the goodwill of Pharaoh king of Egypt. So Pharaoh made him ruler over Egypt and all his palace.
"Then a famine struck all Egypt and Canaan, bringing great suffering, and our people could not find food. When Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our ancestors on their first visit. On their second visit, Joseph told his brothers who he was, and Pharaoh learned about Joseph's family. After this, Joseph sent for his father Jacob and his whole family, seventy-five in all. Then Jacob went down to Egypt, where he and our ancestors died. Their bodies were brought back to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought from the sons of Hamor at Shechem for a certain sum of money.
"As the time drew near for God to fulfill his promise to Abraham, the number of our people in Egypt had greatly increased. Then 'a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.' He dealt treacherously with our people and oppressed our ancestors by forcing them to throw out their newborn babies so that they would die.
"At that time Moses was born, and he was no ordinary child. For three months he was cared for in his parents' home. When he was placed outside, Pharaoh's daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action.
"When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, 'Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?'
"But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, 'Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?' When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons.
"After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to get a closer look, he heard the Lord say: 'I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.' Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look.
"Then the Lord said to him, 'Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt.'
"This is the same Moses they had rejected with the words, 'Who made you ruler and judge?' He was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself, through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. He led them out of Egypt and performed wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea and for forty years in the wilderness.
"This is the Moses who told the Israelites, 'God will send you a prophet like me from your own people.' He was in the assembly in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors; and he received living words to pass on to us.
"But our ancestors refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. They told Aaron, 'Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt—we don't know what has happened to him!' That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf. They brought sacrifices to it and reveled in what their own hands had made. But God turned away from them and gave them over to the worship of the sun, moon and stars. This agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets:
" 'Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings
forty years in the wilderness, house of Israel?
You have taken up the tabernacle of Molek
and the star of your god Rephan,
the idols you made to worship.
Therefore I will send you into exile' beyond Babylon.
"Our ancestors had the tabernacle of the covenant law with them in the wilderness. It had been made as God directed Moses, according to the pattern he had seen. Having received the tabernacle, our ancestors under Joshua brought it with them when they took the land from the nations God drove out before them. It remained in the land until the time of David, who enjoyed God's favor and asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. But it was Solomon who built a house for him.
"However, the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says:
" 'Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house will you build for me?
says the Lord.
Or where will my resting place be?
Has not my hand made all these things?'
"You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him— you who have received the law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it."
When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. "Look," he said, "I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God."
At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.
While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Then he fell on his knees and cried out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." When he had said this, he fell asleep.
------------------------------------------------
I'm thinking that all the time that the people "resisted" the Holy Spirit, they were "grieving" Him in the same action.
What do you think? 
Post Edited (One Love) : 12/30/2009 8:43:27 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/30/2009 10:03 PM (GMT -6) | | Hart on Divine Apatheia
Page 167.
...here I can at least offer a definition of divine apatheia as trinitarian love: God's impassibility is the utter fullness of an infinite dynamism, the absolutely complete and replet generation of the Son and procession of the Spirikt from the Father, the infinite "drama" of God's joyous act of self-outpouring--which is his being as God. Within the plenitude of this motion, no contrary motion can fabricate an interval of negation, because it is the infinite possibility of every creaturely motion or act; no pathos is possible for God because a pathos is, by definition, a finite instance of change visited upon a passive subject, actualizing some potential, whereas God's love is pure positivity and pure activity.
Question:
So whenever a Holy Spirit sealed person lives and speaks in malice, there is no real "finite instance of change" visited upon the Holy Spirit, as far as "greiving" the Spirit? Temporary greiving the Spirit never ACTUALLY occurs?
I'm trying to think of a context where genuine emotional distress over the actions of another person has absolutely NO pathos associated with it. Can't think of any...
Post Edited (One Love) : 12/30/2009 9:08:14 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/30/2009 10:38 PM (GMT -6) | | Wow. Talk about TIMING...that's the Spirit...
--------------------------------
Human Impassibility
The impassible suffered, the church fathers said. Why? To make passible humanity impassible. As usual (”God became man, to make man God”), a neat chiasm.
But what can human impassibility mean? Can it mean that we no longer feel? That’s what it sounds like, but that’s hardly possible. The church fathers were aware human beings have bodies, and, if not aware of the nervous system, knew that we sense pain and pleasure. Does it mean that we escape passivity, that we, like God, are incapable of being acted upon? That can’t work either. To be created is to be passive in relation to the active God. Whatever it means for humans, impassibility is a gift, and thus received.
For humans, impassibility must mean that we are no longer subjected to or dominated by what we suffer. Martyrs are impassible; they suffer, and might even suffer the passion of fear, but that does not make them shrink back. In Christ, they have become impassible. In fact, one might draw an even closer analogy between divine and human impassibility: God’s impassibility is not mainly concerned with God’s feelings; He is compassionate and jealous and grieves and pities. Impassibility has to do with whether He will fall under the control of such feelings, whether He will deviate from His purpose because He is angry or grieving. And the answer is No: God cannot be derailed from His purpose. So too human impassibility: Not that we lack feeling, but that, whatever we feel, we are not derailed from the works that the Lord has prepared for us to walk in.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, December 29, 2009 at 10:22 am
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One Love
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| Posted 12/30/2009 10:46 PM (GMT -6) | | Leithart:
In fact, one might draw an even closer analogy between divine and human impassibility: God’s impassibility is not mainly concerned with God’s feelings; He is compassionate and jealous and grieves and pities. Impassibility has to do with whether He will fall under the control of such feelings, whether He will deviate from His purpose because He is angry or grieving. And the answer is No: God cannot be derailed from His purpose.
Well, "self-control" IS an aspect of the Spirit's fruit. (Galatians 5:22-23) It would make sense that God was the epitome of self-control within his own "superpassibility". Basically, God is never overwhelmed or render "out-of-control" by his own experience, ad intra OR ad extra.
God can't very well GIVE us the spiritual fruit of "self-control"...if HE doesn't have it to give...right?
Post Edited (One Love) : 12/30/2009 9:51:23 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/30/2009 10:48 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/30/2009 11:10 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/30/2009 11:34 PM (GMT -6) | | | American Buddhist monk Bhikkhu Bodhi wrote:
“The real meaning of upekkha is equanimity, not indifference in the sense of unconcern for others. As a spiritual virtue, upekkha means equanimity in the face of the fluctuations of worldly fortune. It is evenness of mind, unshakeable freedom of mind, a state of inner equipoise that cannot be upset by gain and loss, honor and dishonor, praise and blame, pleasure and pain. Upekkha is freedom from all points of self-reference ; it is indifference only to the demands of the ego-self with its craving for pleasure and position, not to the well-being of one's fellow human beings. True equanimity is the pinnacle of the four social attitudes that the Buddhist texts call the 'divine abodes': boundless loving-kindness, compassion, altruistic joy, and equanimity. The last does not override and negate the preceding three, but perfects and consummates them.”
God is Love...perfectly ecstatic. Completely "for the other". Through Grace, we can be completely "for the other" like God is.
Make sense?
Post Edited (One Love) : 12/30/2009 10:37:54 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/31/2009 1:07 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
I mean, there are analogies that make it possible to conceive of God being both necessarily fulfilled and yet experience joy and sorrow relative to the world.
Yep. As I think about it, the infinity of God (which Hart seems to love) is a good reason to think that God could experience joy and sorrow relative to the world without any concern or fear of being overwhelmed by it. God's infinite experience of self (Love) grounds God's perfect equanimity/non-attachment in his ecstatic, compassionate relationship with Creation.
Post Edited (One Love) : 12/31/2009 12:21:23 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 12/31/2009 1:40 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/31/2009 6:18 AM (GMT -6) | | | Ok....THIS was a little funny...
God bless us all.
PS: Tom. I like this description of equanimity from this website. Even uses the kaleidoscope idea.
Equanimity. Once we open to the riches of the heart and to the inexhaustible wonder of living in truth, we are filled from moment to moment with a kaleidoscope of powerful impressions, sensations, and feelings. Equanimity gives us the capacity to contain all of these ever-changing qualities without being swept into emotional reactions about them. Because the nature of spirit is ever changing, our experience of ourselves and of life is also constantly changing. Equanimity allows the identity of the Essential self to participate in the cornucopia of experiences and inner qualities without clinging to or fearing any of them, and without regretting their passing. In this way, the sense of oneself continually deepens so that powerful experiences are fully felt but do not overwhelm the Essential identity. We are able to feel both the heights of ecstasy and the full intensity of suffering without becoming lost in either.
Exactamundo.
Post Edited (One Love) : 12/31/2009 9:42:58 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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