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| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > General Chat > Woah, check this out! Greg in 1985! | Forum Quick Jump
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 1/25/2011 10:47 PM (GMT -6) |   | | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 1/26/2011 9:57 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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BBBCanada
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 2763
| Posted 1/27/2011 2:29 AM (GMT -6) | | Read the first page so far. Like what I've read so far.
Brandon
It is the purpose that makes strong the vow, but vows to every purpose must not hold.--A friend.
To love without love is slavery--Mother Teresa
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 1/27/2011 2:46 PM (GMT -6) | | This is some of what I'm getting from it.
Greg-- following Pascal--seems to say that divine revelation and it's balance of disclosure and hiddeness renders it impossible for human relationship with God to be an outworking solely of the "dianoia", that is, the rational, discursive aspect of the intelligible/sensible relational unity of the human being. It requires the intuitive immediacy of the "nous" in contact with God. This means that one cannot devolve the human relationship to God into mere logical affirmation of and assent to God's reality. The divinely-prescribed epistemic distance within divine revelation 1) forces the issues of personal immediacy, risk, and trust into one's decisions of whether and how to relate to God and 2) demonstrates that the "dianoia" is necessary, but not sufficient, in having a fully realized relationship with God. In other words, God's self-revelation to Creation is ambiguous enough such that entering a loving covenant with God is not some inexorable logical deduction for all rational creatures, but a existentially meaningful act of intention and decision possible for those who are open to it, via God's wooing. This is how presenting the "moment of salvation" to a person can either draw them closer or push them further away, depending on their heart's current reception or opposition to God's wooing.
It's obvious that during this 1985, Greg was pretty much a Calvinist. He talks about the "elect" and "reprobate" in terms that are in line with irresistable grace from TULIP. But I don't think the overall idea is incompatible with open theism at all. Open theists can say that God reveals and hides Godself in such a way that freedom for choosing for or against God obtains for authentic responsibility, humility, and gratitude before God.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 1/27/2011 1:52:01 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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BBBCanada
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 2763
| Posted 1/27/2011 10:00 PM (GMT -6) | | IOW, TRUST, right? Smith talks about this in, "Whose Afraid of Postmodernism?" That seems hardly coincidental for a relational being. That God would make his Word ambiguous like that.
Let me ask you this. As I told you this past week D, my kid's grandfather passed away. He had Alzheimer's. During the funeral they said a number of times that he was "reunited with his memories." Now, think about this. Here's a guy who basically "checked out" before he died. So what did God do? Hold his memories in some sort of spiritual compartment so that when he gets a new body God can program those memories back in? It's hard for me to imagine that somehow God can restore a decomposing brain in which we will remember our loved ones and our past. I knew of a guy who fell into a woodchipper and was shredded into a million different pieces. How does God restore that and the mind that was once there? A rational response cannot be given. It's a mystery of how dead decomposed brain tissues can ever have life breathed back into them. And that's the sort of rationalism I can do without. Unless of course you want to say that somehow because of God's energies this is not unfathomable or that the memories reside not in the matter of the brain with all of it's electrical firings and chemical reactions but are located in the spirit and soul of the person. However, you would have to explain why, say, something like a bullet to the brain can cause memory loss. IOW, it seems some forms of rationalism do us no favors because they would take away from the mystery of where say the supernatural and the natural intersect. Does that make any sense D or Tommy?
Second, and more on topic here, I still find it amazing that the God of the universe is reliant upon a book to bring men and women unto him. I've heard it said especially among some evangelicals who worry about certain modes of contemporary worship (which use state of the art technologies with visual aids and all) that words were more appropriate to God's self-revelation as opposed to images which is one reason God commanded us not to attempt to enshrine God in graven images they can't reveal God's image. Either way, it just seems for God to want us to have a relationship with himself, why a book of all things that will be subject to human capacity (the ability to not screw up the msg through translation upon translation for example) that not everyone will even know about much less read?
Brandon
It is the purpose that makes strong the vow, but vows to every purpose must not hold.--A friend.
To love without love is slavery--Mother Teresa
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