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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 12/23/2010 10:25 AM (GMT -6) |   | | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/23/2010 1:50 PM (GMT -6) | | |
The following embodies what the Incarnation means to me...
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A Common Faith
By fatherstephen
---------------------------- There are doubtless many differences to be found between groups of Christians – though there is probably more that all Christians share than not. Orthodox Christianity generally holds to those doctrines that were at one time universal and continues to be a watershed of classical Christian faith. It is interesting that some things that many think of as distinctives of Orthodox Christianity have a wider attestation than most people know. These common essentials are often blurred by an emphasis on distinctives or the fact that certain things which have remained central within Orthodoxy have become marginalized in other places.
Perhaps no single doctrine is more classically expressive of the Orthodox faith than the doctrine of the Divine exchange (divinization or theosis). First offered in its most classical form by St. Irenaeus in the 2nd century (though there is ample Scriptural support for the doctrine), it is generally stated: God became man so that man could become god. This same statement of faith, in varying forms can be found in fathers, both East and West.
Daniel Keating has produced a small book on the topic: Deification and Grace. He says:
Following Irenaeus – and probably dependent upon him – we find wide attestation to this formula throughout the patristic period. It is noteworthy that some form of this expression can be found in writers from Alexandria, Constantinople, Antioch, Syria, North Africa, and Rome….
St. Clement of Alexandria:
the Word of God became man, that you may learn from man how man may become God. St. Athanasius of Alexandria:
For he was made man that we might be made God…and…he himself has made us sons of the Father, and deified men by becoming himself man. St. Gregory the Theologian:
Let us become as Christ is, since Christ became as we are; let us become gods for his sake, since he became man for our sake. St. Gregory of Nyssa:
...the Word became incarnate so that by becoming as we are, he might make us as he is. St. John Chrysostom:
...he became Son of man, who was God’s own Son, in order that he might make the sons of men to be children of God. St. Ephrem the Syrian:
He gave us divinity, we gave him humanity. St. Hilary of Poitiers (in the West):
For when God was born to be man the purpose was not that the Godhead should be lost, but that, the Godhead remaining, man should be born to be god. St. Ambrose of Milan:
For [the Son] took on him that which he was not that he might hide that which he was; he hid that which he was that he might be tempted in it, and that which he was not might be redeemed, in order that he might call us by means of that which he was not to that which he was. St. Augustine of Hippo: God wanted to be the Son of Man and he wanted men to be the Sons of God. Pope St. Leo the Great (5th century):
[The Savior] was made the son of man, so that we could be the sons of God…and…He united humanity to himself in such a way that he remained God, unchangeable. He imparted divinity to human beings in such a way that he did not destroy, but enriched them, by glorification. Even in Protestant writers… Martin Luther in a Christmas sermon: For the Word becomes flesh precisely so that the flesh may become word. In other words: God becomes man so that man may become God. John Calvin, rather eloquently: This is the wonderful exchange which, out of his measureless benevolence, he has made with us; that, by his descent to earth, he has prepared an ascent to heaven for us; that, by taking on our mortality, he has conferred his immortality upon us; that, accepting our weakness, he has strengthened us by his power; that, receiving our poverty unto himself, he has transferred his wealth to us; that, taking the weight of our iniquity upon himself (which oppressed us), he has clothed us with his righteousness. This is a wonderful testimony, of almost universal appeal, to one of the central tenets of the Christian faith. Often obscured by other doctrinal formula, it remains central in the Christian East, where the principle of exchange – that God took upon Himself our human condition that we might share in His divinity – runs throughout the whole of doctrine.
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Full, authentic humanity (rather than mere, inauthentic humanity) is theandric and theocentric...all made possible by the Incarnation.
At least that's what I believe to be true. 
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/23/2010 1:05:23 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/23/2010 2:18 PM (GMT -6) | | Repost...
God presides in the great assembly;
he gives judgment among the "gods":
"How long will you defend the unjust
and show partiality to the wicked?
Defend the weak and the fatherless;
uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
"The 'gods' know nothing, they understand nothing.
They walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
"I said, 'You are "gods";
you are all sons of the Most High.'
But you will die like mere mortals;
you will fall like every other ruler."
Rise up, O God, judge the earth,
for all the nations are your inheritance.
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Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, "I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?"
"We are not stoning you for any good work," they replied, "but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God."
Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are "gods" ' ? If he (God) called them 'gods,' to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, 'I am God's Son'? Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father." Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.
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So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
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There seems to be a link between true humanity living up to it's theandric dignity and responsibility (God's calling for us to be who we truly are)...and being "lead" by the Spirit of Adoption, the Holy Spirit (God empowering us to be who we truly are)...as we live in faith through Grace (us opening up to God's Empowering Presence).
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/23/2010 1:21:19 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/23/2010 2:28 PM (GMT -6) | | How is the biblical usage of "gods" talking about humans ...really differ at all from what Greg talks about when he calls humans "viceroys"
It's pretty much the SAME THING!!!!
A Viceroy is a royal official who runs a country, colony, or province (or state) in the name of and as representative of the Monarch. The term derives from the Latin prefix vice-, meaning "in the place of" and the French word roi, meaning king. His province or larger territory is called a Viceroyalty.
Jesus is the King of all kings, the Lord of all lords...and the God of all "gods".
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/23/2010 1:32:00 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/23/2010 2:55 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
"I am what the Word says I am.
I have what the Word says I have.
I own what the Word says I own."
1) The Word says I'm a "son of God".
2) The Word says I'm an "heir of God" and a "co-heir with Christ."
3) The Word says I'm a member of God's "royal priesthood", with the calling, responsibility, and authority inherent in that reality.
4) The Word says I'm a "partaker of the divine nature" as God has "granted...all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence..."
5) The Word says that God has specifically referred to God's "sons" whom God commissioned and authorized for reigning on Gods behalf...as "gods." Should I accept the first 4 ideas and not the 5th one? If so, why? "Let us become as Christ is, since Christ became as we are; let us become gods for his sake, since he became man for our sake."
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/23/2010 2:08:09 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/24/2010 10:15 AM (GMT -6) | | The Path to Becoming a "god" (theosis style):
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant,(OL's Note: Kenosis, Self-Emptying) being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him (OL's Note: God exalts those who humble themselves.) and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.(OL's Note: conscious participation with God Himself working in, with, and through the self)
Kenosis <=> Plerosis.
So, as we, humans come to completely humble and empty themselves before the world out of love for God (through constant repentance and practice of Jesus' commandments of Love), then God will fill us with Godself via the infilling of the Holy Spirit--through whom the Trinity "takes up residency" in us--to empower us to keep living out those commandments. God, through his Spirit, empowers us to have "hearts of flesh" and "follow his decrees", more consistently displaying the "fruit of the Spirit" and mediating Christ's presence in the world. Our presences are indwelled by and transparent to Divine Presence in Creation...and we live a transformed/transfigured existence in that.
So, this...I think...is the path to "becoming god", from a theosis perspective.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/24/2010 9:50:27 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/24/2010 10:38 AM (GMT -6) | | And you can see something pretty consistent here. Human beings grasping for "godhood" (either trying to be God or be like God) and losing their full, true humanity. I'm talking from Adam and Eve on down. Self-concerned grasping for god-like significance and power...leads to a self-preoccupation and self-separation from others fall of epic proportions in the soul.
"I will be like the Most High..."
The only way to be a human "god" is the humble, meek, and loving way of Jesus.
How ironic is that? NOT a Caesar's way. NOT a Pharoah's way. (Both of whom were thought to be divine or at least have divine sanction)
It's the way of the Cross.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/24/2010 9:46:58 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/24/2010 10:58 AM (GMT -6) | | Reposting...From Evdokimov. Chapter 1
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Every human being possesses a rudimentary person, a psychological center of integration which makes the whole gravitate around the metaphysical Self, and constitutes self-awareness; this is the prosopon, a natural element of the human substance. By contrast, on a deeper level, while all are invited, few of the chosen succeed in becoming a hypostasis. The hypostasis is this advanced stage of the imago Dei (image of God), the organ and place of communion with God which confirms our theandric structure in the image of Christ. In the age to come, "we shall be like him," as St. John says (1 Jn 3:2)
This theandrism is already contained potentially in the imago Dei. The degree to which the image is actualized determines the germination and maturing of the prosopon into hypostasis --the transition from "natural being" into "Christ-being"--by following the great sacramental initiation in which the human structure is recarved entirely, like a statue, according to the model of Christ, our Archetype. In Christ, it is God who united Himself with the human; this communion is the highest and most unique because the place of communion is the Word; and it is the divine Hypostasis that enhypostasizes the particular human nature. In every human being formed "in the image of Christ," the place of communion is the human person which receives its theandric structure in Christ (en Christo), and becomes a hypostasis. In the human being, it is within the self-awareness that the divine awareness occurs, and theandrism is achieved: "We will come to him and make our home with him" (Jn 14:23). "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20). St. Paul's pastoral task aspires to this, that "Christ be formed in you!" (Gal 4:19).
"Man," St. Basil said, "is a creature who has received the command to become god," to become a deified hypostasis. This concept is clarified with great precision in St. Maximus the Confessor. In order to become a hypostasis, the person (prosopon) is called upon "to unify, though love, created nature with uncreated nature (...) by the acquisition of grace (kata ten exin tes charitos)." As we can see, the human being, by grace, unites in his created hypostasis the divine and the human in the image of Christ, and thus becomes a created god, God according to grace. The hypostasis is precisely specified; it is the person of the deified human being. In Christ, deified human nature is enhypostasized in a divine Person. In the deified human being, the created person sees how, in this divinization, his nature is united with the divine deifying energy. Thus, the hypostasis is the personal, unique, incomparable mode of the theandric existence of every Christian. Here is where the radical, mystical, and trans-essential demarcation between the old man and the new creation is to be made. But at this point, any phenomenological analysis changes into trans-phenomenology to reach a state which transcends the primary human state: holiness. The "individual" is a sociological and biological category (OL's Note: Zizy's "biological hypostasis" ) that belongs entirely to nature. The individual is part of the natural whole, and is separate from it either by a contrast, by a demarcation, or through isolation. In the natural state, the prosopon merges with the individual; it is but a "potentiality" of the person. But once actualized, it demands maturing into a hypostasis, which is a spiritual category. It is not a part, but contains the whole, which explains its ability to be enhypostasized.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/24/2010 10:01:59 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/24/2010 11:09 AM (GMT -6) | | | Frankly, I'd say that it's QUITE CLOSE to what Nestorius described as "synapheia". What he describes seems to me to be the Kierkegaardian "positive third" or the "new being in Christ."
Synapheia can't apply to Christ, but it CAN applied to a "deified hypostasis" of a theandric human in Christ.
Saw these quotes in some book...
"[In synapheia] Jesus Christ was a conjunction of divine nature-person and human nature-person: eternal divine Logos and human person Jesus in intimate union. According to Nestorius, such a conjunction can be so intimate and strong that it forms a new kind of entity like a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. "
...
"Nestorious apparently argued that just as two independent persons come together to form a union transcending their differences in marriage, so in the incarnation of the Son of God and the Son of David formed a union (initiated by the Son of God) that transcended their different natures. That union is a bond of fellowship and cooperation of wills that is stronger than any human friendship or marriage. Those can only provide a dim analogy for it."
Hmmm...take this out of the context of the Incarnation...and place it in the context of the believer's relationship with the Spiritual Presence of Christ...and wow, it seems to fit pretty good. The new being in Christ is formed by the bi-polar assymetrical relational union (Loder) of the Spiritual Presence of Christ and the Christian "heart". Truly a NEW CREATION where the OLD has passed away.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/24/2010 10:36:13 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 12/24/2010 4:49 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/24/2010 7:08 PM (GMT -6) | | | Take your time and catch up, then. I'd really like your thoughts. I'm convicted that this view of "becoming god" is essential to Christianity's purpose for humanity.
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Important terms:
theosis (Union with Christ, Christification, Image and Likeness, etc)
hesychasm (Jesus Prayer)
epiklesis (Eucharist)
synapheia (between Christ and human believing "heart")
mimicry (identification and free expressionn of acquired personal values, concepts and behaviors from interpersonal relationship)
re-presentation (multiple contextualized expressions of singular content)
epektasis (eternal growth in God)
And the stance:
Through practicing the "Sacrament of the Present Moment" in "orans"-like humble, active reception of the Holy Spirit, focusing on Divine Presence (Jesus Prayer, etc) and experiencing inner "stillness" and "apatheia" in God in one's "heart" (hesychasm), the core of us beyond all sensory or intellectual deliberation, one can experience one's own "logoi", thereby experiencing the Holy Spirit of Christ-the-Logos, the Divine Center of All Things, in the deepest center of our most unique and particular "selves." The meeting place of the created "I am" and the Uncreated "I AM...Immanuel" that Satan has NO ACCESS to. In that holy sanctuary of the Self, we offer ourselves as "living sacrifices" to God in faith, we experience God "willing" and "doing" in us, as Christ-the-Logos lives "in, as, and through" us...and we actively participate in God's energies, in God's very life. We are truly "one with the Lord in Spirit."
We become most ourselves when we have a transparent relationship to our Divine Center...when the deepest core of ourselves is sealed into a love covenant with God...when we become irreducibly unique, creative living pray-ers to God.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/24/2010 6:13:16 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/25/2010 11:29 AM (GMT -6) | | Just well stated...
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The "whole man is deified by the grace of the God-made-man". In this phrase, St. Maximos brings us to the very door to the heart of the invocatory path of Hesychasm. It is through God, as incarnate Person, that deification--the actual participation in the Divine nature--is made possible for humanity. And it is through the remembrance of God that the "process" of deification begins, although the experience of God--crossing of the boundary between created and Uncreated--cannot be adequately described as a process but as an epiphany or irruption of grace. God unites Himself to those made worthy by Grace to become gods through this "process" of reciprocal ecstasy, in which the "whole man", body and soul, remains entirely man in soul and body according to his created nature, yet--and here one is struck by the boldness and certainty fo the saint's language, holding nothing in reserve--becoming entirely God in soul and body by reason of the Grace and the Divine illumination through uncreated energies, which unite with him totally and "become" what he is. In this state, suffering becomes first dispassion then joy, becomes "active" while still remainnig "passive", in a state otherwise called by St. Maximos the "ever-moving rest" of those living in, participating in, the heaven "around" God.
Vincent Rossi
"Presence, Participation, Performance: The Rememberance of God in the Early Hesychast Fathers"
from Cutsinger's Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East
Page 100
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/25/2010 10:32:17 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/27/2010 5:17 PM (GMT -6) | | The Incarnation in a nutshell, at least as I understand it:
The entirety of subjective and intersubjective activity of the human being Jesus of Nazareth is directly attributable to the Uncreated Eternal Word/Logos/Son of God the Father. This means that the Eternal Son is one and only personal subject who experiences all of the creaturely subjective experience of Jesus of Nazereth. Corresponsively, all of human experiences of Jesus are personally and uniquely experienced by the Eternally Begotten Son of God. Neither God the Father nor God the Spirit personally experience the human experience of Jesus of Nazereth.
This is how we can say that the God actually experienced death in Jesus' crucifixion: God (the Person of the Word/Logos/Son) died...and was resurrected. It was possible for the Son to suffer death...but impossible for death to hold him, right? Why? Two things, I think. 1) In his very person was Life and the Spirit of Life as God the Father's Only Begotten Son. 2) in his very person, he was loving, faithful "obedient" unto his God (the Father) unto human experience of death.
So, as I see it, orthodox Christianity has to confess that the SAME PERSON who is constantly grounded the continous sustanance of all Creation at all times is the SAME PERSON who, over two thousand years ago, was killed by crucifixion and buried (and later, resurrected.)
Any Christology that cannot say that above (including that "God died" or that "God was born in Mary") is deficient to articulate the Incarnation's true power. Or to explain how, through the Incarnation...and ONLY through the Incarnation...tranformation and transfiguration of human experience into it's fuller theandric manifestation (in theosis) is made available to non-incarnate human beings.
Digression:
I guess that's why I'm hung up on Neo (from the Matrix trilogy) being a great analogy for the Incarnation. Particularly Neo's dual experience as totally "one" with the Source via being "the One"...and as being totally "one" with the human experience within the Matrix. In this respect, Neo was the only human being who could have defeated Mr. Smith the way he did. Only he, as human being, could experience assimilation at Smith's hands...and only he, as naturally related to the Source, could act as mediator for the Source to act against Smith in and through his human experience. In like manner, only Jesus as Only Begotten Son of God could personally suffer death as human being, and yet "invade" death with eternal life through his personal connection with uncreated, eternal Life.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/27/2010 5:03:05 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/27/2010 6:00 PM (GMT -6) | | Thought about something. I said...
1) In his very person, the Son is Life and the Spirit of Life as God the Father's Only Begotten Son.
2) In his very person, the Son was loving, faithful "obedient" unto his God (the Father) unto human experience of death via self-sacrificial love.
Through the Son's Incarnation into human experience...
1) In our very (human) persons, we are adopted as "children" in the Son's indwelling Presence and the Uncreated Spirit of Life in us, empowering and enlivening us.
2) In our very persons, we experience the indwelling Trinity working in, with, as , and through us as we choose for loving, faithful "obedience" unto the One Triune God unto human experience of death via self-sacrificial love.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/27/2010 5:21:12 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/27/2010 6:09 PM (GMT -6) | | Given the above...reposting...remixed...
Alexei Nesteruk
Light from the East: Theology, Science, and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition
Page 232
"The human nature in Christ was operating within the reality of empirical space and historical time, whereas Christ's divine nature was always beyond the empirical and intelligible aeons, in the uncreated realm of the kingdom of God, which can be expressed symbolically in terms of the boundaries of the created if these boundaries are seen from the vertical (divine) dimension. It is from this "outside" that Christ the Logos of God coordinated the empirical space where he indwelled in the body with the rest of the created universe. This helps us to understand the space-time of the physical universe as the manifestation of the hypostatic mode of the relationship between God and the world."
All this would seem to fit with the "two minds" view...where the Incarnate Word has the Uncreated Divine Mind and a created human mind (nous). In my own mind, the analogy is the wake-induced lucid dreamer who obviously relates with two distinct levels of consciousness in his lucid dream as singular personal experience. With this, the entirety of subjective and intersubjective activity of the individualized "residual digital self" within the lucid dream is directly attributable to the human mind of the dream experiencer creating it. This means that the dreaming person is one and only personal subject who experiences all of the RDS' experiences "from the inside" dream...and who also simultaneously experiences creating the dream "from the outside." Like so...
Level 1: the level of consciousness creating the whole dream world from "without"
Level 2: the level of consciousness experiencing the dream as an individualized form from "within" the dream world.
From the framework of the Incarnation, the link of analogy would be as follows...
The Eternal Son's divine nature operation from "without" <=> Level 1 lucid dreamer perspective.
The Eternal Son's human nature operating within "empirical space and historical time <=> Level 2 lucid dreamer perspective.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/27/2010 5:18:45 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/28/2010 1:18 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
I'd like to see a rationale for the incarnation's necessary role in deifying us apart from all consideration of sin and redemption. In other words, take "having to save us from sin" out of the equation (because that tends to be the SOLE explanation for the incarnation) and tell me why the incarnation is necessary to our fulfillment. What is it about created human being per se (not sinful/fallen human being) that REQUIRES the incarnation?
Here we go: Humanity is designed with the Incarnation "at heart". Humanity is intended to be a theandric reality, rather than merely a species of animal life. In other words, humanity is designed to have the fullness of Divine Presence indwell (via the Holy Spirit) in its particuarity, effectively empowering full expression of human freedom, creativity, and beauty. Christ demonstrates this as the totality of the universal Logos of God indwells the particular human being, Jesus of Nazereth. One person directly operating with two realities (uncreated and created) within himself. As divine Person, the Eternal Son has the Holy Spirit of God "resting" in himself. In taking on human particularity, the Son filled the requirements (as it were) of human experience being grounded and centered in the Spirit of God. We can say that the Son's incarnation fulfilled the broken image of God in humanity...by bringing the power of the Spirit directly into humanity not as some outside force or presence, but as immanent ground and constant sustanance of human existence and experience in the midst of human nothingness (the Void). The Incarnation demonstrated and fulfilled the imago dei in humanity; the Incarnate actualized the "archetype" that was specifically found in God's original intention to incarnate into humanity, before anything was created. Basically, the Incarnation makes way for "new beings in Christ".
God become human (the universal became particular) so that humanity could become god (the particular embodies the universal)
The Kingdom of God is in you.
Make sense?
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/28/2010 3:57:16 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/28/2010 1:37 PM (GMT -6) | | | Loder talks about this too, following Kierkegaard. Only faith in the Incarnation gives a person "reason" to believe that the Uncreated, Infinite, and Eternal (Divine Presence) can COINCIDE with the Created, Finite, and Non-Eternal (a human being) without the former obliterating the latter in some way. Only the Incarnation gives historical evidence that such a thing is possible. Otherwise, there will just be despairing leaps of assumption in the mind that try to 1) make the Created, Finite, and Non-Eternal INHERENTLY Divine...like some forms of idealism...or 2) make the Divine irrelevant to human existence...like some atheistic forms of existentialism. The "Knight of Faith" or the new being in Christ experiences complementarity between the Uncreated and Created within themselves such that one is constantly "opening oneself to eternity so that it might permeate the blood and bones of our daily activities and regulate one's life..."( Loder, Knight's Move, 91). They are what Marcus Borg would call a "thin place" where the Uncreated and Created coincide in one place withouth confusion, fusion, or obiteration to either reality.
"It is impossible to enter even partially into the wholeness of Christ's nature--fully Divine and fully human--without finding that same assymetrical polarity of the Incarnation* grasping the polarities of one's own being and calling for the wholeness for which human nature was created to be released as re-creation. This is the call to spiritual maturity."
James Loder
Knight's Move
"Human Existence and Divine Presence"
Page 283
*OL's Note: The "assymetrical polarity" that Loder is talking about is the bi-polar assymetrical relational unity between Holy Spirit and human spirit in particular, individual human being, where the "higher level" influence is the Holy Spirit and the human spirit is continuously sensitive and responsive to the Holy Spirit's working.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/28/2010 7:06:41 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/28/2010 1:45 PM (GMT -6) | | Alexei Nesteruk note, Light from the East, page 266, note 33.
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 [Spirit's note: the "eye of the soul", St. John of Damascus], 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. V. 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."
Jesus, in the Incarnation, "completed" and "freed" human existence from "the conditions of the created nature."
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