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One Love
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| Posted 4/30/2010 2:36 PM (GMT -6) |   | | 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
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I (OL) believe that 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." )
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 4/30/2010 3:19 PM (GMT -6) | | |
Daniel: Do we have the capacity to reject God irrevocably through multiple determinations? Do we eventually become that which we have chosen?
Tom: Yes, I think we do become what we choose. But God remains an irreducible part of whatever we become. So sets the limits to what we can FINALLY become. This is so because as ‘created’ we cannot choose our way out of the conditions of our createdness, and (what we’re saying is that) part of the conditions of created being is having unfailing love as the ground of your existence. That places an already irrevocable love (God) as the necessary condition of our existence and our choices. Whatever we choose, then, has to be possible, and whatever is possible is grounded in God; so (I think) whatever is possible is made so by infinite love. That is, infinite divine love determines what’s possible, even the possibilities (and possible duration) of rejecting God. The question then is: Is it coherent to say that infinite, unfailing love can be the very ground and source of being its own irrevocable denial (however the irrevocability be accomplished)? That is, can an irrevocable love sustain in being an irrevocable hopelessness? I don't think so. As I’m seeing it, whatever we ‘become’, however solidified against God we become, we remain creatures sustained by God and thus subject to the conditions and limits of created being per se (more on what this entails below).
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Daniel: Sure. God risked creation being infested with evil for a time. But, I think at best UR can claim something along the lines of "God risked a delay in his ultimate goal of a restored creation". The risk was never the loss of creation as a totality.
Tom: Right. This isn’t risked because God, being who and what God is, literally can’t be the ground of his own irrevocable rejection, since AS LOVE, God just is a constant and irrevocable invitation to being. To exist, to be—as created—is to be invited. And to be invited is to face the possibility of attending the party. Thus, there can never be an utterly or absolutely hopeless state of being. Metaphysically speaking, such hopelessness is an impossibility, a self-contradiction—God inviting to Godself what is irredeemably hopeless. That's a possible as it is meaningful. I think the most that can be risked is the temporary loss of beauty, the temporary loss of relationship. I think the difference between us is how we understand God's being as love and how this love, freely offered in the act of creation, constitutes the existence and created persons and determines the limitations and freedoms of their natures.
I’m still open to the possibility that some notion of permanent loss is conceivable. One sense this is possible is to say that every instance of a temporary loss of beauty endures forever. The particular beauty that was achievable at THIS time through THIS act of obedience, if lost, can never be recaptured. That PARTICULAR opportunity, the particular ROUTE, is gone. The question is, does all this (even for the wicked redeemed from hell) result in a permanent loss? In heaven, will we all (to greater and lesser degrees because of the differing magnitude of all our failures) fail to maximize are God-given capacities? I have a hard time arguing for the idea that since all created persons are sinful (i.e., have forfeited some opportunity to maximize their created potential) that no creature at all shall maximize his/her potential; that no logos will be fully actualized. But this is a separate issue.
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Daniel: But UR seems to be suggesting that the Eschaton is NOT the culmination of creaturely choice. If the opportunity to repent resides in the Eschaton, then I don't see how it is a culmination of anything.
Tom: Maybe hell isn’t the final word, the final ‘culmination’ of creaturely choice. It’s final in the sense that it’s a definitively different context, one quite different than this present world, in which some new rules apply, and maybe that is what constitutes the inescapable suffering and pain of hell. But it does seem to miss the sense in which God is ultimately ‘finally’ victorious over evil if we say the culmination of God’s redemptive activity, the culmination of creation itself, ends with the vast majority (and who doubts that those finally in hell will constitute the majority of humanity) of human beings in an irrevocable state of rebellion. I mean really, wouldn’t we say Satan’s the winner (even if he can’t really enjoy his winnings) and God’s the loser?
Daniel: Also, I don't see how the choice can exist to repent without the choice to rebel.
Tom: I agree. Like I said, at any given point in time at which the unglorified are free to choose for God, they're free to choose against God.
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Daniel: Unless there is a metaphysical difference between human souls in the Eschaton, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible for one of the redeemed to rebel. Given an infinite amount of time, it's %99.99 percent likely that one (or all) will rebel. It cuts both ways.
Tom: This was Origen’s problem. He insisted upon creaturely freedom so passionately he didn’t know how to avoid concluding that we’ll be forever free to fall. I think this happens if we emphasize freedom per se without understanding it in the context of the conditionedness (Is that a word?) of creaturely being as sustained by and grounded in God. There's an asymmetricality to uncreated vs created being (God grounds us, we don't ground God; God determines the limitations of our natures, we don't determine the limitations of his divine nature; God is everything he is apart from us, we are nothing apart from him). Given the asymmetricality of divine vs created being, there's an equally asymmetrical shape to freedom. We can irrevocably solidify toward God, but we can’t irrevocably solidify against God, and this is so simply because there is a God of love who is the ground of all being and possibility; but there is no contrary God who is the ground of all hopeless non-being. No metaphysical dualism.
Love this site!
Tom
KIXYTΘEMTAPost Edited (Tom) : 4/30/2010 3:38:15 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/30/2010 3:37 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
The question then is: Is it coherent to say that infinite, unfailing love can be the very ground and source of being its own irrevocable denial (however the irrevocability be accomplished)? That is, can an irrevocable love sustain in being an irrevocable hopelessness? I don't think so. As I’m seeing it, whatever we ‘become’, however solidified against God we become, we remain creatures sustained by God and thus subject to the conditions and limits of created being per se
Bro, I don't think that the idea of "infinite, unfailing love" being the "ground and source of being" makes any difference as far as language goes, UNTIL someone understands the big difference between the Western and Eastern concepts of Grace. For example, Greg would say that God's love is the ground and source of Creation's existence...but he would NOT be meaning what you and I mean by that.
See what I'm saying?
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One Love
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| Posted 4/30/2010 3:48 PM (GMT -6) | | |
Tom:So 'grace' isn't GOD himself, in the love that God is, offering the God that he is to what he sustains?
THAT'S what I've been trying to say. In SATPOE, Greg had God using his POWER to keep the hell-bound people in existence, but NOT his Presence. Greg STRAIGHT UP SAYS IN THE BOOK that God removes His Spirit from the hell-bound people. But that's not POSSIBLE in the Eastern view of grace!!!!!!!!!!
Remember. Greg REALLY BELIEVED that, after hell, there was NO SHARED CONTEXT between the unsaved and God. No Holy Spirit in the unsaved to BE that context.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/30/2010 3:51:45 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/30/2010 3:59 PM (GMT -6) | | | Read it for yourself. Let me get this...
Satan and the Problem of Evil, pages 354-355. "Letting Rebels Have Their Way"
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One Love
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| Posted 4/30/2010 4:04 PM (GMT -6) | | "Thus, God had no choice but to give up on them. For Paul, this divine abandonment is the execution of God's wrath. He lets rebel people have their way. ... God withdrew his Spirit, just as he had done in the days prior to the Flood. (Gen 6:3)
...
"Indeed, in my view, all they [hellbound folks] have is their want. Their self-inclosed will is the sum of their reality, for outside this rebel willing, their "reality" does not exist."
Does any of that sound like Greg understands the Eastern view of Grace???
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/30/2010 4:08:22 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/30/2010 4:13 PM (GMT -6) | | "Secondly, it follows from this that Christ as Creator-Logos is to be envisaged, not as on the outside, but as on the inside of everything. It is a frequent fault of religious writers that they speak of the created universe as if it were an artifact of a Maker Who has, so to speak, produced it from without. God the Creator becomes the celestial Clock-maker Who sets the cosmic process in motion, winding up the clock, but then leaving it to continue ticking on its own. This will not do. It is important to avoid such images as the divine architect, builder or engineer, and to speak rather in terms of indwelling (without thereby excluding the dimension of divine transcendence). Creation is not something upon which God acts from the outside, but something through which he expresses Himself from within. Transcendent, He is also immanent; above and beyond creation, He is also its true inwardness, its 'within.' "
Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia
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One Love
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| Posted 4/30/2010 4:16 PM (GMT -6) | | James R. Payton, Jr
Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition
Chapter 9: What is Grace?
Section 1: Western Christianity on Grace
Pp 155-160
Summary statement by Payton...on page164.
"Thus, grace is not an "influence" or an "effect" which God works within us; grace is God Himself, working within us."
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/30/2010 4:22:16 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/30/2010 4:29 PM (GMT -6) | | Part of the "Scandalous Love" series is gonna be called "Burning Love". I'm betting it's gonna be talking about judgment and hell. In talking to Greg, I'm also betting that this is what we will hear, pretty much:
In the Eschaton, God's Presence will "burn up" and "consume" anything in any creature that is dissonant with the Kingdom of God. He will most likely LEAVE IT OPEN whether or not there will be anything left of the person after this happens. It's kind of a mix between annihiliationism and universalism.
I'd bet a steak dinner that this will be it.
BUT...that's the problem. Greg is STILL going by the Western view...where he believes that a creature CAN be annihilated BECAUSE he doesn't believe that God's Personal Redemptive Presence grounds all beings.
Once Greg comes around to Maximus the Confessor and the Eastern view of Grace...it's wrapped up like a burrito! 
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Tom
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| Posted 4/30/2010 4:34 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/30/2010 9:58 PM (GMT -6) | | | Ok. For real. Is there any last arguments AGAINST Eventual Universal Reconciliation, given everything we've talked about here?
Between the aionions arguments, the reconilication-of-all-things arguments, the Revelation 21/Isaiah 60 argument, and everything here...what other problems are there?
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/30/2010 10:01:29 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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