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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 8/23/2011 3:34 PM (GMT -6) |   | | Combine...
-EO views of Grace, Essence/Energies, epiklesis, and asceticism
-Greg's trinitarian process metaphysics--including God as Summum Bonum
-John Piper's Christian hedonism
And you get a good ground for an EVANGELICALLY COMPATIBLE view of "apatheia" and "theosis"
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 8/23/2011 3:53:34 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 8/24/2011 11:34 AM (GMT -6) | | Piper was on to something here...
Dissatisfied Contentment
Now let's ask our earlier question in a concrete form: What should motivate a contented, joyful Christian to cross the street and help a man who has been beat up by robbers? The answer, I think, is something like this: When I see an injured man across the street, his hurt is like a magnet to my God-given joy, which has in it the compulsion to expand itself. My joy desires to increase by rejoicing in his restored joy. This prospect of greater joy in his joy is my motive for crossing the street and helping him. I feel drawn to go because when he enters my awareness, his injury and grief are like a low-pressure zone that my high-pressure zone of joy is approaching. There is an immediate draft of air created toward the low-pressure zone as my joy tends to expand to fill it. This draft of joy is called "love." As Paul says in II Corinthians 1:23-24, to love is to find our joy in the purest joy of another.
Does this, then, imply that a Christian will never weep or be grieved? No. When Paul says in Romans 12:15, "Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep," he shows that the contentment of the believer is not a static, Buddha-like serenity unmovable by the hurts of others. When Christian joy perceives grief, it becomes "dissatisfied contentment." It senses a lack and a need – the lack of sharing itself with the grieving, and the need to delight in the other person's happiness, which isn't there. Thus, Christian joy starts to expand in love to fill that lack by bringing about the holy joy of another person. The manifold process by which this is done embraces all forms of Christian ministry. But since there is usually a lapse of time between our perception of our neighbor's grief and our eventual rejoicing in his restored joy, there is a place for weeping in that interval. The weeping of compassion is the weeping of joy impeded in the extension of itself to another.
(Though he grossly misunderstands the Buddhist understanding of equanimity, it's the expansive view of joy that makes sense)
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From Jewish Kabbalah... Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction
"...we find ourselves longing for lasting pleasure and feel that somehow it must exist… but in order to feel that, first we need an unlimited, ever expanding desire that draws a boundless fulfillment. To do this we have to seek pleasure in the fulfillment of others. This desire to bestow is a spiritual desire, and one taste of it is greater than all the egoistic pleasure ever felt by all creatures over all time, because it’s a pleasure not felt in our little subjective needs but in everything. There’s no limit to that desire, and there’s no end to the pleasure derived from that need."When John Piper and Kabbalah agree like that...you gotta KNOW somethin's up. 
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 8/24/2011 11:45:38 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 8/24/2011 12:02 PM (GMT -6) | | | Yeah. Piper didn't know what he was talking about with the Buddhism thing. That got to me.
Easy... The four immeasurables are:
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."
Empathetic Joy (Pāli and Sanskrit: mudita): joy in the accomplishments of a person — oneself or another; sympathetic joy; "the wholesome attitude of rejoicing in the happiness and virtues of all sentient beings."
Equanimity (Pāli: upekkhā, Sanskrit: upekṣā): learning to accept loss and gain, praise and blame, and success and failure, all with detachment, equally, for oneself and for others. Equanimity is "not to distinguish between friend, enemy or stranger, but regard every sentient being as equal. It is a clear-minded tranquil state of mind - not being overpowered by delusions, mental dullness or agitation."
Buddhism calls these immeasurables because the qualities can BOUNDLESSLY cultivated.
These are pretty much the concepts we are saying that God possesses infinitely...that human beings can participate in.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 8/24/2011 12:06:36 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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