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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/5/2010 8:08 PM (GMT -6) |   | | Brahmavihara
Two of them:
Loving-kindness (Pāli: metta, Sanskrit: maitri) towards all: the hope that a person will be well; "the wish that all sentient beings, without any exception, be happy."
Compassion (Pāli and Sanskrit: karuṇā): the hope that a person's sufferings will diminish; "the wish for all sentient beings to be free from suffering."
These are pretty good representative definitions. Now, let's just forget this is Buddhist for a moment. I think the terms, just standing as described, would be perfectly appropriate to associate with the Christian view of God. God the Father wishes that all his image-bearers would "be well"...and wishes that their suffering of his would be diminished. Would anyone disagree with that, biblically? I wouldn't think so...
Anyways...let's say you DON'T disagree, such that the descriptions of "Loving-kindness" and "Compassion" above ARE suitable descriptions for God's relationship to human beings.
Here's the questions, all assuming the Trinitarian, Christian (Biblical) God...
1) Is "Compassion" (as defined above) possible without Creation?
2) Is "Loving-kindness" possible without Creation?"
3) How is "Compassion" related to "Loving-kindness"?
4) How was Jesus "perfected" to be our great high-priest for humanity? [Hint: Hebrews 2:5-18; 5:1-10]
Last question...given everything else...
5) Is it possible that "Compassion" (or "Suffering Love" as Kallistos Ware would say) was the novel, contingent expression of God's "Loving-Kindness" that God sought in becoming "Immanuel"? God wanted beings upon whom he could (and would HAVE to, given creaturely freedom, utter dependency on God, etc. ) have "Compassion"...and beings who could freely choose to be "compassionate" to others out of "loving-kindness" to God and created other?
As I see it, there will be a day where "Compassion" will no longer be necessary as a contingent expression of divine love. Creaturely existence will only exist in eternal "Loving-Kindness" (and the related Joy and Peace.) At that time, God will be "all-in-all" and " He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."
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If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
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Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Post Edited (One Love) : 4/5/2010 8:11:41 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 4/6/2010 6:11 AM (GMT -6) | | I don't know of any other way, but...
I just stand silent before Christ's cry of dereliction. I can't figure out what it reflects. Christ KNOWS what's going on (see the Garden of Gath), soooo he knows he's not being forsaken, literally. He's in control all the way through it..."No man takes my life; 'I' lay down, 'I' take it up." And IF he's in a derelict state of mind on the cross, then why wonder whether you've been "forsaken"? To wonder that is to KNOW/believe your innocent and that something's wrong on the Father's end, which isn't what an abandoned, derelict mind would think. It just seems that Christ is too in control and motivated to really make this statement, and then to suppose an absence and dereliction of mind would lead me to believe he's say something ELSE, something wrong, something derelict. But his cry is the cry not of a condemned forsaken man but of a man who KNOWS who and what he is.
I don't get it.
Tom
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/6/2010 8:02 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
I just stand silent before Christ's cry of dereliction. I can't figure out what it reflects. Christ KNOWS what's going on (see the Garden of Gath), soooo he knows he's not being forsaken, literally. He's in control all the way through it..."No man takes my life; 'I' lay down, 'I' take it up." And IF he's in a derelict state of mind on the cross, then why wonder whether you've been "forsaken"? To wonder that is to KNOW/believe your innocent and that something's wrong on the Father's end, which isn't what an abandoned, derelict mind would think. It just seems that Christ is too in control and motivated to really make this statement, and then to suppose an absence and dereliction of mind would lead me to believe he's say something ELSE, something wrong, something derelict. But his cry is the cry not of a condemned forsaken man but of a man who KNOWS who and what he is.
Personally, I think that in Jesus' moment of "becoming sin" (2 Cor. 5:21), there was GENUINE DISRUPTION experienced in the intimate relationship of the God the Father and God the Son (in the Son's "flesh" )...and that, at said point, Jesus' perception of his own situation brought Psalm 22 to his mind. (He did something like this in the Wilderness Temptation...why couldn't he have done that here?) Look at the Psalm. The writer described his HUMAN FEELINGS of abandonment authentically...and weaves it in with hope in God. Some of it...
I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax;
it is melted within my breast;
my strength is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
you lay me in the dust of death.
For dogs encompass me;
a company of evildoers encircles me;
they have pierced my hands and feet—
I can count all my bones—
they stare and gloat over me;
they divide my garments among them,
and for my clothing they cast lots. (OL's Note: John 19:34)
But you, O Lord, do not be far off!
O you my help, come quickly to my aid!
Deliver my soul from the sword,
my precious life from the power of the dog!
Save me from the mouth of the lion!
You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen!
Now...doesn't that sound like this?
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
This doesn't only have to represent what happened at Gethsemane, but also what happened to Jesus on the Cross.
Doesn't it all fit, Tom?
Post Edited (One Love) : 4/6/2010 8:40:32 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/6/2010 8:19 AM (GMT -6) | | | And a thought: Just because Jesus KNEW "what was going on" (Hebrews 12:2) doesn't mean that the every element of the experience would be experienced "disruption-free." If anything, Jesus' knowledge of the end of all this would have help EMPOWER his self-giving dedication to God even THROUGH the existential separation from God he felt.
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A second glimpse is given us at the Crucifixion, when Christ cries out with a loud voice, "My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me??" (Matt. 27:46) Once again, full weight should be given to these words. Here is the extreme point of Christ's desolation, when he feels abandoned not only by men but by God. We cannot begin to explain how it is possible for one who is himself the living God to lose awareness of the divine presence. But this at least is evident. In Christ's Passion there is no play-acting, nothing is done for outward show. Each word from the Cross means what it says. And if the cry "My God, My God..." is to signify anything at all, it must mean that at this moment Jesus is truly experiencing the spiritual death of separation from God. Not only does he shed his blood for us, but for our sakes he accepts even the loss of God."
"He descended into hell" (Apostles' Creed). Does this mean merely that Christ went to preach to the departed spirits during the interval between Great Friday evening and Easter morning (see 1 Pet. 3:19)? Surely is has also a deeper sense. Hell is a point not in space but in the soul. It is the place where God is not. (And yet God is everywhere! ) If Christ truly "descended into hell", that means he descended into the depths of the absence of God. Totally, unreservedly, he identifies himself with all man's anguish and alienation. He assumed it into himself, and by assuming it he healed it. There was no other way he could heal it, except by making it his own.
Kallistos Ware
The Orthodox Way
Page 80
Post Edited (One Love) : 4/6/2010 8:24:41 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/6/2010 8:35 AM (GMT -6) | | Seriously. Would we say that Jesus' struggle was ANY LESS during the Wilderness Temptation because Jesus knew who and what he was? Nope. Would we say that Jesus' quoting of Scripture was merely some "playing out of a part" without genuine human struggle and faith embodied in Jesus' statements? Nope.
So why do that with "My God, My God..." on the Cross?
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And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’” And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written,
“‘You shall worship the Lord your God,
and him only shall you serve.’”
And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written,
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
to guard you,’
and
“‘On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”
And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.
Post Edited (One Love) : 4/6/2010 8:38:51 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/7/2010 7:02 PM (GMT -6) | | Thought:
God the Son (as Incarnate Word) personally experienced the CONDITIONAL "absence of God", with all of the loneliness, pain, and suffering that entails ( "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" )...so that...Creation could experience the UNCONDITIONAL "Presence of God" (as the Holy Spirit's Mediation of the Resurrected Incarnate Word's Presence)...and all of the love, joy, and peace that entails. ( "And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." )
Dang, that's just beautiful. 
Post Edited (One Love) : 4/7/2010 7:07:15 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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