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One Love
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| Posted 11/6/2011 11:02 AM (GMT -6) |   | Now, let's say you WERE to change your mind. Let's say you WERE to believe that this Scripture implies creatio continua by the Son while incarnate.
Looking from THAT lens...what would you see with these...
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."
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"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together."
Just put the view ON for a sec, Jeff. See if it works, man.
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One Love
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| Posted 11/6/2011 11:05 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 11/6/2011 12:03 PM (GMT -6) | | D: But the only way that I can see you do this is by specifically saying that Christ's "carrying/upholding/bearing" was INCOMPLETE/PARTIAL until the post-Resurrection exaltation of Christ. What in the text itself indicates this position? What theological claims made in the NT indicate this position?
J: That particular participle seems equivocal. I think it can mean either. But the rest of the NT is filled with language that explicitly or implicitly claims the second person ACQUIRED such things as "all authority in heavens and the earth," "the holy spirit," the ability to act as "a quickening spirit," "the fulness of the godhead, bodily," "a name above all names," etc. This is Christus Victor language. It implies change of accidental attributes for the second person of the godhead. I'm simply saying it seems to me that the Hebrews passage can be read THAT way--i.e., that Christ no longer NEEDS to bear what he once had to bear since he is now seated. When to be seated is spoken of as a goal, it has the idea of "to rest from ..."
Indeed, by your view, I don't see how much of that language even has meaning. Because by your view, the second person seemingly already had all that the NT seems to say he ACQUIRED. Rather, he only chose to limit the exercising or exhibition of those attributes to a human body. But much of the language reads as if attributes were truly ACQUIRED, not just localized more specifically. We can't treat the first person mental content of Jesus of Nazareth as something other than the first person mental content of the eternal logos, by your view. Only ONE person "received all authority in the heavens and the earth." So to interpret "given" (in "authority has been given me") as "was localized" is not necessarily the only way to read the text, much less the most obvious.
Hence the idea of Christus Victor. I.e., the second person of the godhead actually succeeded, by his suffering/dying/ressurecting, in assuring one or more ends of creation are NOW secured. You are claiming as much by hanging theosis on that activity. But theosis is not said to be due to that activity apart from the redemptive nature OF it. No redemption, no theosis. So whereas I posit that the incarnation would have occurred independently of redemption for intimacy alone, I think scripture is telling us that incarnation had to take on a second purpose (hence two comings) of redemption.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 11/6/2011 11:23:26 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 11/6/2011 12:29 PM (GMT -6) | | D: But the only way that I can see you do this is by specifically saying that Christ's "carrying/upholding/bearing" was INCOMPLETE/PARTIAL until the post-Resurrection exaltation of Christ. What in the text itself indicates this position? What theological claims made in the NT indicate this position?
J: That particular participle seems equivocal. I think it can mean either.
Jeff said...
"...prior to his BECOMING Christus Victor and sitting down at the right hand of God, that "bearing" might have had a literal uncompleted sense the writer was getting at. And that is the sense the writer may have been communicating. And that is totally consistent with the rest of the book--not to mention the rest of the NT."
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Jeff:
This is Christus Victor language. It implies change of accidental attributes for the second person of the godhead. I'm simply saying it seems to me that the Hebrews passage can be read THAT way--i.e., that Christ no longer NEEDS to bear what he once had to bear since he is now seated. When to be seated is spoken of as a goal, it has the idea of "to rest from ..."
Exegetically speaking, whatever you apply to the "bearing", you HAVE to apply to the "being", bro. That's what I'm simply saying. So, then you are implying that Christ no longer NEEDS to "BE" the "brightness" and "express image" he once was since he is now seated.
Does that make any sense, dude? If it doesn't, then...
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 11/6/2011 11:40:19 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 11/6/2011 12:34 PM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
But the rest of the NT is filled with language that explicitly or implicitly claims the second person ACQUIRED such things as "all authority in heavens and the earth," "the holy spirit," the ability to act as "a quickening spirit," "the fulness of the godhead, bodily," "a name above all names," etc. This is Christus Victor language. It implies change of accidental attributes for the second person of the godhead.
and...
Indeed, by your view, I don't see how much of that language even has meaning. Because by your view, the second person seemingly already had all that the NT seems to say he ACQUIRED. Rather, he only chose to limit the exercising or exhibition of those attributes to a human body. But much of the language reads as if attributes were truly ACQUIRED, not just localized more specifically. We can't treat the first person mental content of Jesus of Nazareth as something other than the first person mental content of the eternal logos, by your view. Only ONE person "received all authority in the heavens and the earth." So to interpret "given" (in "authority has been given me" ) as "was localized" is not necessarily the only way to read the text, much less the most obvious.
All it is saying is that IN HIS ACQUIRED HUMAN NATURE, the ONE UNCREATED PERSON, the Co-Eternal "John 1:1" Word of God the Father experienced the very human experiences of filling with the Holy Spirit and exaltation (ie "all authority has been given to me" ) by God following humbling oneself in obedience to God. It was through this human nature (which is ONTOLOGICALLY DISTINCT from uncreated nature!!) that the "John 1:1" Word of God the Father became Christus VICTOR.
The "name above all names" is "Jesus", right? (At Now, did Jesus (as NAME/HUMAN LANGUAGE or as HUMAN ENTITY) exist before Creation?
No.
But the divine person, the Co-Eternal Word of God the Father, DID exist before Creation. The "name above all names" (and all the other things you mention) only exists AS SUCH because of the Word taking on human existence, which is infinitely distinct from uncreated existence.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 11/6/2011 11:46:21 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 11/6/2011 12:46 PM (GMT -6) | | D: All it is saying is that IN HIS ACQUIRED HUMAN NATURE, the ONE UNCREATED PERSON, the Co-Eternal "John 1:1" Word of God the Father experienced the very human experiences of filling with the Holy Spirit and exaltation (ie "all authority has been given to me" )...
J: But isn't "me" in "all authority has been given to me" a person? It's ONE person. Authority was "given" at a point of time to one "person." At least that's a very plausible way to read those passages.
As for the image, certainly Christ still has that image. But it still had relevance to the atonement, and therefore BECOMING Christus Victor, in two senses. First, he had to have that image to be an effectual propitiation. Second, and entailed in that, is an irony: that the most perfect person could propitiate for US. Thus, to use that fact in a context of bearing unto an "it is finished" type "seating" can have a more specifically temporal contextual sense to it.
I'm not trying to say someone is right and someone is wrong. I'm just saying we can live and let live a bit on this stuff. The plurality of the godhead is what gives us room for tolerance. Because it does render things more equivocal than a non-plurality. Because that allows for more logical possibilities, which allows for more ways to try to synthesize our exegesis.
What is undeniable is that the fullness of the godhead NOW dwells in him bodily. If that's due to Christus Victor and will be relinquished when the Son gives the kingdom to the Father that the Father may be all in all, that's OK. The second person holds a divine and authoritative relationship to creation either way.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 11/6/2011 11:49:25 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 11/6/2011 1:13 PM (GMT -6) | | | D: The ME is Jesus...
J: ... whose 1st person mental content just IS the 1st person mental content of the second person of the godhead.
D: So you're just arguing for space to exist as a Christian in good standing outside of Chaledonian belief in a live and let live fashion? Hmm.
J: No. I'm not arguing for space for ME. Burn me at the stake if you want. I'm asserting dogmatically that God gives space for views outside of the Chalcedonian belief whether you realize it or not. Because God has confirmed this view of tolerance with signs and wonders (Rom. 14, etc). But a hand full of men who reach a consensus without confirming signs and wonders does NOT, per se, generate obligatory belief.
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One Love
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| Posted 11/6/2011 4:04 PM (GMT -6) | | D: The ME is Jesus...
J: ... whose 1st person mental content just IS the 1st person mental content of the second person of the godhead.
Try this. If the pre-Creation, the immaterial, boundless, uncreated God the Word/Son/Logos were to have a wake-induced lucid dream wherein he creates a "universe"...where "in the fullness of time" he took on dream experience as an individualized participant as a person within a society within world within that "universe" within the w.i.l.d...
...what would that look like?
Could it look like what we experience as Creation?
And what would the "1st person mental content of the Second Person of the Godhead" consist of, particularly following this "condescension"...especially if He remains being the UNCREATED PERSON who is having the wake-induced lucid dream?
Just ponder that.
Repost renixed...
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"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."
Alexei Nesteruk
Light from the East: Theology, Science, and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition
Page 232
All this would seem to fit with the "two minds/two spheres of consciousness" view...where the Incarnate Word has the Uncreated Divine Mind and a created human mind (nous). In MY OWN MIND, the analogy is the single lucid dreamer who obviously relates with two distinct levels of consciousness in his lucid dream.
Level 1: the level of consciousness creating the whole dream world from "without"
Level 2: the level of consciousness experiencing the dream as a dream individual from "within" the dream world.
In this framework, the lucid dreamer experiences herself both as creator (level 1) and creation (level 2) in one unique, personal experience. I can see the Christ-the-Logos' experience as Uncreated Creator and Incarnation as being something LIKE this.
If I may...
Level 1 lucid dreamer perspective <=> God the Son/Word's divine/uncreated nature operation from "without"
Level 2 lucid dreamer perspective <=> God the Son/Word's human/created nature operating within "empirical space and historical time"
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Doesn't this seem much more plausible than what Evangelical Kenotic position/interpretation ends up saying?
“Omniscience gives up all knowledge but that of the child, the infant, the embryo, the infinitesimal germ of humanity. Omnipotence gives up all power but that of the impregnated ovum in the womb of the Virgin. The Godhead narrows itself down to a point that is next to absolute extinction.”
-Augustus Strong
**************************** Jeff: D: So you're just arguing for space to exist as a Christian in good standing outside of Chaledonian belief in a live and let live fashion? Hmm.
J: No. I'm not arguing for space for ME. Burn me at the stake if you want. I'm asserting dogmatically that God gives space for views outside of the Chalcedonian belief whether you realize it or not. Because God has confirmed this view of tolerance with signs and wonders (Rom. 14, etc). But a hand full of men who reach a consensus without confirming signs and wonders does NOT, per se, generate obligatory belief.Oh, now, Jeff. It goes without saying that 1) I don't want to burn anyone at the stake and 2) God gives space for faith-having anti-Chalcedonian heretics. We've all been anti-Chalcedonian heretics in some form or another at some time or another just being EVANGELICALS...and God's been gracious. I remember when I used to feel the way that you do about the Councils. And that was without me reading them or really even caring about 'em. Yeah. And as far as "tolerance"...it should be the Great Commandments of God that stop people from burning heretics...literally or figuratively. 
Anyways, I thought that it was about seeing which interpretation of Hebrews 1:3-4 is more plausible, all things considered: yours or Tom's.
I'm really trying to see WHY you believe the way you believe about this passage. And looking at it, exegetically and historically, it simply seems problematic. Much less problematic that what Tom's been saying.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 11/6/2011 3:35:37 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 11/6/2011 5:09 PM (GMT -6) | | D: A fundamental disruption of the intimate, perichoretic, interpersonal nature of the Uncreated Trinity.
It's too unworkable, man...as I see it.
J: I agree. I just don't assume that the interpersonal relating can't be postponed or diminished for teleological reasons.
D: And what would the "1st person mental content of the Second Person of the Godhead" consist of, particularly following this "condescension"...especially if He remains being the UNCREATED PERSON who is having the wake-induced lucid dream?
J: A dream is an illusory state to the extent that the dreamer believes the dream "world" is real. But you're saying the dream state IS real. So it's not actually like what we call a dream. A dream and an imagined SOFA are two distinct kinds of mental content. An imagined SOFA is known to the imaginer to be UNreal.
D: Doesn't this seem much more plausible than what Evangelical Kenotic position/interpretation ends up saying?
“Omniscience gives up all knowledge but that of the child, the infant, the embryo, the infinitesimal germ of humanity. Omnipotence gives up all power but that of the impregnated ovum in the womb of the Virgin. The Godhead narrows itself down to a point that is next to absolute extinction.”
-Augustus Strong
J: I don't know what could ground plausibility BUT scriptural statements since the Father's attributes plus the existence of one "other" person of the godhead to create "for" is all that is needed to account for creation without a necessary god-world relationship. And I'm not seeing any scriptures that even say the 2nd person of the godhead ever was or ever will be omniscient, omnipotent, etc, in the way the Father is. So I'm not seeing the need to explain the kenosis of THOSE attributes. What the 2nd person emptied himself of, IMO, is the sufferingless state of social harmony with the Father. When he incarnated, he gave up the continuousness of that relationship temporarily and suffered as humans do.
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One Love
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| Posted 11/6/2011 10:01 PM (GMT -6) | | Ok. Common ground time.
I think, Jeff, that what we CAN agree on is the following: the evangelical kenotic christological position, taking consistently is NOT COMPATIBLE with Chalcedonian Christianity (two minds, God the Son upholding Creation while in the manager, etc.).
In other words, if you saw an evangelical kenotic person who tried to tell you that their view was totally compatible with Chalcedonian Christianity, you would disagree like I would disagree.
Right? 
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One Love
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| Posted 11/6/2011 11:41 PM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
What is undeniable is that the fullness of the godhead NOW dwells in him bodily.
I can agree with you here. We have consensus on this point. Hooray! 
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Jeff:
The second person holds a divine and authoritative relationship to creation either way.
I can agree to this. At the same time, your view has no real way of articulating any hope for the deification of human flesh...and the revelation of humanity's full theandric capabilities and it's relationship to the Incarnation itself. It completely eviscerates it, as I see it.
But then again...
Another proposed agreement:
The Crucified and Resurrected Incarnate Word of God the Father (Christ Jesus) consistently dwells in our human particularity by the Power of the Holy Spirit, meaning that the One Triune God perichoretically indwells our hearts---our total selves--as we continually remain aware of His Presence and are continually "filled with the Spirit" by Grace through faith. Basically, we both believe John 17:20-26!
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you (God the Father) have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
You'd completely agree with that, right?  And if you can get with that...then we basically agree on what I would consider to be a meeting point for agreement on the general movement of Christification/deification. I love you, bro!
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 11/6/2011 11:07:28 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 11/7/2011 10:14 AM (GMT -6) | | |
Jeff: I just don’t assume that the interpersonal relating can’t be postponed or diminished for teleological reasons.
Tom: Then we may have identified where our views first begin to diverge and why they end up so differently. I can’t imagine any telos that would require a postponement or diminishment of interpersonal relating. In my understanding, every telos is by definition an achievement of interpersonal relating. To suggest that interpersonal relating must diminish itself essentially to achieve the purposes for which it exists is to say it is essentially self-contradictory. Even the greatest act of self-giving—giving one’s life for another—is in Christian thought never a postponement or diminishment of the personal existence of the one giving his life.
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Tom [previously]: There is no something more fundamental than conscious persons-in-relation which might maintain the personal identity of any divine person while he takes a nap.
Jeff: I don’t even know what that means unless I’m not a person when I sleep. Is that what ya’ll are saying? To my mind, I’m a person when I sleep. I’ll be a person if I die. I was a person when I was drugged for medical reasons. Maybe I define “person” different.
Tom: The sleep analogy cannot apply to God whose personal existence is not essentially a composite reality as ours is. You and I can sleep and wake up to continue our personal existence because the conscious existence we enjoy is embodied existence. There’s something (i.e., a brain) that serves as the ‘stuff’ in which our consciousness is grounded and in which it may rest (but only on some levels, provided the brain structure is sufficient to store all this). But none of this is true of the embryonic Jesus, so it fails at that level to begin with. But more fundamentally, it cannot be true of God essentially, for God is not essentially/necessarily embodied, though he IS essentially/necessarily interpersonally related. The divine consciousness cannot sleep because there is no stuff more fundamental to it which can do for it what our brain does for us.
Conscious existence is the mode of immaterial being. We have no material analogy (like ‘sleeping’) by which to make the denial of this meaningful, and positing its truth is required to explain the contingency of the material order and the freedom by which God creates at all, as well as the necessity of God’s own triune inter-personal being.
Jeff: I see exactly what you [D] mean. A person, to be recognizably a person, has to exhibit conscious activity. That exhibition would be actions that we recognize ANALOGICALLY as consciously performed actions. But what I wouldn't say is that I ceased to BE a person when I was put under for an intrusive medical exam. To say that I'm a person only when I'm conscious seems to be a rather non-conventional use of the term. I've never known anyone that uses the term that way such that human beings cease and begin to be persons over and over.
Tom: D isn’t arguing that we’re not persons when WE sleep. He’s arguing that the natural conditions (embodied existence with sufficient brain wave specificity, etc.) which make it possible for US to maintain OUR personal identities when we wake after having slept cannot apply to a disembodied/immaterial spiritual being whose consciousness is the only sphere we have in which to posit any of this being’s necessary attributes and relations and therefore cannot explain the continuity between pre-Incarnate and post-Incarnate states of one and the same divine Logos.
We should think of divine personal being as coterminous with divine conscious existence, because there is nothing more metaphysically fundamental to the divine consciousness in which the divine persons may be said to subsist. The triune God doesn’t have a physical brain, so we cannot appeal to the endurance of human personal idenity by means of embodied sleep and brain waves as an analogy to make meaningful the claim that the eternal Logos stepped out of conscious relatedness to the Father without ceasing to be the divine person he essentially is.
Tom
"The aesthetic value the world has for God is in expressing, not constituting, the aesthetic value God eternally finds within Godself." Greg BoydPost Edited (Tom) : 11/7/2011 3:27:36 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 11/7/2011 1:52 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 11/7/2011 8:21 PM (GMT -6) | | Snowed under, but I'll be back.
And yeah, it's all love! I was just defending the notion of dogmatism. 
I'm good with it. We have to be.
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One Love
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| Posted 11/18/2011 8:32 AM (GMT -6) | | Corey:
Could it be that Jesus continued to relate intimately, personally, interactively with the Father in the spiritual realm and yet also progressively to whatever degree his human cognitive faculties would allow? So, is it not possible that although Jesus' body was presently a zygote, nonetheless his mind -- which is eternally begotten of the Father as the ground of its being -- could simultaneously be fully consciously related to the Father?
Since Jesus' personhood isn't an emergent property of human brain activity, why be so bothered by the zygote state of affairs? I don't think he became more of a person over time as he matured. But, I do accept that he became more of a human and all that entails. The incarnation was a real.
If you don't exhaustively localize the Son's personal presence to the created realm post-Immaculate Conception--making the Son coextensive only with his human nature---there is no issue. The divine mind of the Son continues perichoretically relating to the Father after taking on human nature.
If the "spiritual realm" you are talking about is only the CREATED realm post-Immaculate Conception--meaning the human incorporeal aspect of the blastocystic Jesus--then you are effectively has the divine mind of God the Son/Logos just taking the place of the human "soul", making it a fully hypostatic reality in and of itself. This is heresy.
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