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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/8/2010 7:42 AM (GMT -6) |   | Tom:
We have to specify what we mean when we say "fully human." Do we JUST mean "a full human nature" (a full slate of human natural capacities)? Or do we mean a fully personalized human nature.
We mean the latter.
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Tom:
If the former, then we and Jesus are the same. If the latter, then we're a bit different, because where Jesus' human nature is personalized (made fully personal) by being taking up into the divine person of the Son and made THAT person's nature...our human natures are not personalized in exactly the same manner. And we've talked about how and where the difference is...how human natural capacities are "let go" so as to permit the emergence of personal identity IN US in a way NOT permitted in Jesus' case. That how Jesus is the one divine person of the Son and we are persons in the Person, having our identities as the surface of created being by relating interpersonally to the source of that being.
I'm with all this, yeah. I think what I'm saying is that neither Incarnation nor Theosis would be possible without the Uncreated Holy Spirit being somehow "natural" to "fully personalized human nature." Sure, human beings fall into an UNnatural state where perception of God is negated by "greiving the Spirit"...but that just shows the point. Repentence brings the human heart to HEALTH, in the natural state of living in God's Creation.
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Tom: I'm going to argue that the logoi are God's (divine acts of God) gift of being and otherness, and that this is the best place to seek an answer for what it means to be 'fully human'. It's going to mean the logoi are (and are becoming) all they are intended to be. That means that as 'fully human' we are God's act fully 'acted' (or fully 'acting'), i.e., being and doing the will of God in its fullness--no disparity between what God wills and the way the world is. Complete conformity. This is when we are (as Hart likes to describe us) "the surface of being" upon which God is reflected back to himself. We're FULLY HUMAN when God sees himself reflected in us.I agree completely. Really. My question is this: Is the Holy Spirit of Jesus a sine qua non of the actualization of this human possibility...and if so, in what way(s)? Asked a slightly different way, concerning what you're already doing, how are the logoi of God (and their perception by human beings) grounded in the Holy Spirit of Jesus? I think the two questions are two facets of the same reality. I'm thinking that it's impossible for human beings to fully actualize total conformity to God's will WITHOUT God's Spirit. Just thinking biblically. The prophecies. (Listed below) God talking about renewing hearts and giving His people His Spirit to empower and enable them to do his commands. Jesus' giving of the Spirit at Pentecost and what that entailed. It seems that accurate perception of God's possibilities for one's own particular human existence is impossible without the Holy Spirit who IS Divine Presence...which makes sense. It is only by the Holy Spirit that the thoughts of God are known, right?  So, if human beings were originally designed to have a "know and be known" relationship with God, fully personalized humanity would have to have an integral relationship with the Holy Spirit, the only means by which God and Creation can be truly "known."
And this may be presumptuous...but maybe that's why the Incarnation was necessary. The Divine Person of God the Son is inseparable from the Holy Spirit, both being Divine Persons of the One Triune God. When "the Word became Flesh", the Holy Spirit was part and parcel of that, fully indwelling particularized human nature, making it image and likeness...as it was truly meant to be. The Incarnate Word took on human nature, already possessing the Holy Spirit, which is the very thing that COMPLETES human nature, making it "fully alive."
Bam. Jesus, the perfect ikon of God.
So, the Father sends us Jesus' Holy Spirit...and we take on "the mind of Christ" by His Spirit...as Christ's Body and Bride.
Yeah...
Post Edited (One Love) : 3/8/2010 7:38:39 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/8/2010 8:13 AM (GMT -6) | | "The time is coming," declares the LORD,
"when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them, "
declares the LORD.
"This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time," declares the LORD.
"I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,'
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,"
declares the LORD.
"For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more."
This is what the LORD says,
he who appoints the sun
to shine by day,
who decrees the moon and stars
to shine by night,
who stirs up the sea
so that its waves roar—
the LORD Almighty is his name:
"Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,"
declares the LORD,
"will the descendants of Israel ever cease
to be a nation before me."
This is what the LORD says:
"Only if the heavens above can be measured
and the foundations of the earth below be searched out
will I reject all the descendants of Israel
because of all they have done,"
declares the LORD.
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"Therefore say to the house of Israel, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Sovereign LORD, when I show myself holy through you before their eyes.
" 'For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. You will live in the land I gave your forefathers; you will be my people, and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness. I will call for the grain and make it plentiful and will not bring famine upon you. I will increase the fruit of the trees and the crops of the field, so that you will no longer suffer disgrace among the nations because of famine. Then you will remember your evil ways and wicked deeds, and you will loathe yourselves for your sins and detestable practices."
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"And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days.
I will show wonders in the heavens
and on the earth,
blood and fire and billows of smoke.
The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.
And everyone who calls
on the name of the LORD will be saved;
for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
there will be deliverance,
as the LORD has said,
among the survivors
whom the LORD calls.
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Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him."
In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."
"How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!"
Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."
"How can this be?" Nicodemus asked.
"You are Israel's teacher," said Jesus, "and do you not understand these things?
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Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Post Edited (One Love) : 3/8/2010 7:25:49 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/8/2010 9:03 AM (GMT -6) | | Thought I'd find this...
"In Greek Patristic literature, it was a prevailing view that the state of human being as it exists in the natural environment includes the body, soul (including the dianoia as an analytical part of the soul), and spirit, which had never been dissociated from the Holy Spirit. Human spirit stands here for the nous (spiritual intellect, the organ of faith), linking the human person to its dynamic relationship to God and to the world. It is natural congeniality with God, which is articulated by the presence of the Holy Spirit in human being. But the Holy Spirit is the creator of both body and soul, whose unity forms a particular human person. The presence of the Holy Spirit in human constitution thus makes the human person open upward through it's calling to the Divine as its destiny. Without the Spirit, the Greek Fathers assert, the human being is incomplete and imprisoned through the conditions of the created nature. [Vladimir] Lossky reaffirms this point by saying that "the distinction between person and nature reproduces in humanity the order of divine life, expressed by the dogma of the Trinity."
Alexei Nesteruk
Light from the East
page 266, note 33.
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/8/2010 9:20 AM (GMT -6) | | In the writings of all of the Fathers, we find a noticeable difference which St. John of Damascus describes: "'After His likeness' means likeness in virtue." The tradition is very explicit and ever strong: after the Fall, "the image" remained unchanged, but was reduced to ontological silence, ineffective because all capability of "likeness" to God had been destroyed, so "likeness" because radically inaccessible to man's natural powers. St. Gregory Palamas states this precisely: "In our being 'in the image' (of God) man is superior to the angels; but it is 'after the likeness' that he is inferior, because he is unstable." "After the Fall, we rejected the likeness, but we did not cease being, 'in the image.' " Christ restores power to human acts, re-establishes the likeness, which, in turn, liberates the image; and its radiance can be perceived in saints and children. St. Gregory of Nyssa gives us his anthropological kerygma (proclamation): a being is a human being only when moved by the Holy Spirit, then such a being is a "resembling image." The image is constituent and normative; it can never be lost or destroyed. In is function of conforming ot the divine, it makes these words come true: "You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:48). When "God will be all in all" (1 Cor 15:28), His human temples will be like the presence that fills and animates them. The scriptural notion of "sonship" excludes any concept of legal adoption; Christology shows that in Christ, the sons and daughters are really similar to the Father. While God is beyond compare, the human heart, which only God can sound, contains--as St. Gregory of Nyssa states so well--something unique which can be compared: "something that makes on similar to God, for in order to share in God it is vital to possess in one's being something that corresponds to what is shared." To the statement "God is love" (1 Jn 4:16) corresponds the human being's Amo, ergo sum ("I love, therefore I am" ).
--Evdokimov
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/8/2010 9:39 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/8/2010 9:49 AM (GMT -6) | | The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men 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 men 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 man 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 of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
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This, I would say, is evidential of what happens when human beings "greive the Holy Spirit" through idolatry of Creation (including self-idolatry) , and therefore fail to "retain the knowledge of God." Something every human being is, in some way, guilty of...well, save Jesus.
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 3/8/2010 9:56 AM (GMT -6) | | D: My question is this: Is the Holy Spirit of Jesus a sine qua non of the actualization of this human possibility...
T: By “Holy Spirit of Jesus” you mean THE Holy Spirit?
D: …and if so, in what way(s)?
T: Not sure. But whatever those ways are in Jesus’ case, there’re not in every aspect identical to how they function in our case, for the difference in how divine and human relate in Jesus (on the one hand) and us (on the other) is what accounts for the suppression (maybe not a good word) of the emergence of a ‘personal’ other in his case and yet its emergence in each of ours.
So my question is, given this ‘personal otherness’ that obtains between us and God but not between Christ and God is rooted/maintained in how the Spirit is at work ‘this way’ in us and ‘that way’ in Jesus, what calculus is guiding us in drawing out and identifying the similarities and differences? In other words, what conclusions do we hope to gain and apply to us from studying Jesus IF we admit at the outset that only ‘some’ of what fulfills Christ’s human nature will transfer to us?
D: Asked a slightly different way, concerning what you're already doing, how are the logoi of God (and their perception by human beings) grounded in the Holy Spirit of Jesus? I think the two questions are two facets of the same reality.
T: Ah, OK. I see. What’s the Holy Spirit’s role in God’s standing in the event that is ME and call me (my logos) continuously into being as a person? And how’s this similar to and different from God’s standing in the event that is the hypostatic union? In other words, what’s similar and different about the Spirit’s role in personalizing Jesus’ human nature (on the one hand) and personalizing our human natures (on the other)? There HAVE to be similarities (or else Jesus’ is a human being LIKE us), but there also HAVE to be differences (or else each of us is, like Jesus, ‘the’ Son of God incarnate, the hypostatic union repeated over and over in each of us).
My hunch would be to say that the explanation is located in the fact that where each of us has ‘a’ logos grounded in ‘the’ Logos that expresses the fulfillment of his/her being, Jesus has no such logos in the Logos-incarnate (Toronen and Tollefson, remember?). There can be no logos that can prescribe for the Logos what the fulfillment of its human nature should look like. This is why and how you have a hypostatic union in Christ that you don’t have in our case, and how human nature in Christ is personalized in a way different than in us—yet with similarities. There’s no logos that subsumes the Logos in this instance (as there is in ours). Christ is God standing in human nature articulating his own personal “I am,” while in us God invites us to stand within our logos (within this space God creates for us to emerge) and articulate our own “I am” in-relation-to God.
D: I'm thinking that it's impossible for human beings to fully actualize total conformity to God's will WITHOUT God's Spirit.
Tom: Totally agree.
D: Maybe that's why the Incarnation was necessary. The Divine Person of God the Son is inseparable from the Holy Spirit, both being Divine Persons of the One Triune God. When "the Word became Flesh", the Holy Spirit was part and parcel of that, fully indwelling particularized human nature, making it image and likeness...as it was truly meant to be. The Incarnate Word took on human nature, already possessing the Holy Spirit, which is the very thing that COMPLETES human nature, making it "fully alive."
T: Yeah, this is a question I really struggle with. How is the incarnation necessary to our being fully personalized? That’s the question. Forget sin and healing its effects. We want to say that God’s incarnation was always a necessary step in our becoming all we were intended to be. HOW does that work? What is it about human and divine being that makes human being’s perfection impossible apart from God’s taking human being into his own personal identity (via the Son’s incarnation). My problem with grasping this necessity is based on the fact that we already posit God intimately present in/with the world, and perceivable by us as image-bearers. What more is needed than for me to dispose myself toward this? Why MUST God be incarnate (sin aside)?
Tom
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One Love
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| Posted 3/8/2010 10:04 AM (GMT -6) | | D: Asked a slightly different way, concerning what you're already doing, how are the logoi of God (and their perception by human beings) grounded in the Holy Spirit of Jesus? I think the two questions are two facets of the same reality.
Tom: My hunch would be to say that the explanation is located in the fact that where each of us has ‘a’ logos grounded in ‘the’ Logos that expresses the fulfillment of his/her being, Jesus has no such logos in the Logos-incarnate (Toronen and Tollefson, remember?). There can be no logos that can prescribe for the Logos what the fulfillment of its human nature should look like. This is why and how you have a hypostatic union in Christ that you don’t have in our case, and how human nature in Christ is personalized in a way different than in us—yet with similarities. There’s no logos that subsumes the Logos in this instance (as there is in ours). Christ is God standing in human nature articulating his own personal “I am,” while in us God invites us to stand within our logos (within this space God creates for us to emerge) and articulate our own “I am” in-relation-to God.
Ok. I'm with this. Just being sure though. Possessing a human spirit does NOT require having a human "logos", right? This gets to the heart of the Apollinarius/Nestorius mess. In other words, it is not the case that:
one human "heart <=> one human "logos"
...but rather the human "heart" is a natural function of human particularized existence that God the Son took upon himself in taking on human flesh. For every human being, you will have a human "heart." Jesus is the one human heart not grounded in a human "logos"
Right?
Post Edited (One Love) : 3/8/2010 9:08:20 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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