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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/6/2006 11:46 AM (GMT -6) |   | Jeff:
Right. But we don't just CHOOSE to believe. There has to be a degree of adaptedness to APPREHEND a truth. This adaptedness is what constitutes the relation of means/end. If our minds are just a product of chance (not design) then metanoia is as morally meaningless as an animal's change of consciousness.
This is why I talk about the creaturely ability to SELF-DISPOSE. This is the crux of CREATURELY FREEDOM.
We have the ability to influence (in a PRIMARY way) our POSTURES towards reality. That's all self-disposition is.
God cannot self-dispose because God IS consummate reality and knows Godself as such.
Our ability to rationally deliberate with respect to self-disposition is BECAUSE we don't have IMMEDIATE KNOWLEDGE of all truth. If we did, there would BE no opportunity for self-disposition, only ACQUIESENCE to what we know is real.
Hence, the need for some EPISTEMIC DISTANCE between creatures and God.
Get it?
"All is full of love." -- Bjork
"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." -- 1 John 4:16b
"God is most glorified in us as we are most satisfied in God's nature." -- the new mantra of the Evangelical Universalist :) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 10/6/2006 11:46 AM (GMT -6) | | Mephi: You have this deep drive to maintain the primacy of volition. Cool.
Tom: It's how we get into states of shalom or dispair. If we're in dispair, volition is how we get out of it.
Mephi: Anyways, sickness and health do NOT leave out the volition aspect depending on how we express ourselves about this topic.
Tom: Well, particular "sicknesses" CAN betoken poor choice (like lung cancer from smoking). But the mere idea of "sickness" doesn't necessarily betoken any particular kind of choice. And we WANT something that betokens CHOICE (I think).
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Tom: I get the feeling that you think the sheer NOTION of "good" and "evil" itself constitute partaking of the tree, whereas I think the meaningfulness of the notions constitute the bare minimum requirement that make choice possible. In other words, I can understand that I have a choice between getting my life and identity from trusting God OR from trying to BE God (and so make my own judgments about what thigns 'issue' in life or death). But that understanding itself isn't dispairing or sinful.
Mephi: No. The bare minimum requirement of rational deliberation is space to choose between what is real and what is NOT real.
Tom: That's what I meant to say. Semantics. Hmmm.
Mephi: Look at your own belief, Tom. about Das Nichtige. How it's just a SHADOWY privation of what REALLY exists.
Tom: Yes, but nobody BELIEVES they're choosing privation or shadow when they choose poorly (sinfully). They believe they're choosing substantially.
I'm cool with all this. I just don't see why you feel we can't explain what we want to explain about sin as choice that lands us in EVIL (privation) with the terms "good" and "evil." The whole discussion is about maps. And when it comes to maps I'm much less invested. If a new map will help somebody make the journey better than an old map, sure. Give 'em a new map. But let's not argue that old maps are no good period and we should dump 'em. I don't get it.
Tom
Post Edited (TGB) : 10/6/2006 3:46:04 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 10/6/2006 11:49 AM (GMT -6) | | |
Jeff: And I'm agreeing with it. I'm just not assuming that people have only negative concepts of the terms "good" and "evil." I think they are just parsimonious ways to say that predominantly good feelings are associated with proper "movement" and that predominantly bad (evil) feelings are associated with improper "movement."
Tom: Exactly.
Why is this a problem for you Mephi? I mean if we dump "good/evil" and substitute "whole/sick" or "peace/dispair" do you really think we make a huge stride in mapping how human being works and how we experience our sinfulness and freedom?
Tom
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/6/2006 11:59 AM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
I think they are just parsimonious ways to say that predominantly good feelings are associated with proper "movement" and that predominantly bad (evil) feelings are associated with improper "movement."
Ok...just go with me here.
How does a doctor (physiological or psychological) diagnose? What kind of questions do they ask?
Do they ask about POSITIVE or NEGATIVE prehensions that you have, with respect to either your physical or emotional state?
Yes.
The MORE POSITIVE prehensions that you articulate (and that the doctor can verify), the MORE WELL you are.
The LESS POSITIVE prehensions that you articulate (and that the doctor can verify), the LESS WELL you are.
Mark 2:13-17
Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.
While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?"
On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
Jesus came for HEALING. This is why the Orthodox Church sees the state of the world as EVIDENCE of a ubiquitous MALADY within humanity. And that the Church is a HOSPITAL
This seems clear as day to me. How can I explain this better?
"All is full of love." -- Bjork
"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." -- 1 John 4:16b
"God is most glorified in us as we are most satisfied in God's nature." -- the new mantra of the Evangelical Universalist :) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/6/2006 12:11 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
From the point of view of the Fall, we are all sick INDEPENDENT of volition. But there are still aspects of our corruption that result from intentional wrongs that we committed with sufficient knowledge to know better. That's the very meaning of Rom. 1.
It's basically like CHOOSING not to take helpful, healing medicine just because you don't happen to LIKE the taste. You stay sick...just because of you OWN choices.
*********************
Tom:
But I think I sense your concern, Meph. Because I, like you, am very sympathetic to how the difficulty of formulating a plausible theodicy plays into people's difficulty with trusting reality to be ultimately benevolent. And without that trust, suffering for righteousness sake can seem like a gamble--and even more so when the person was subjected to significant amounts of seemingly gratuitous suffering in their formative years.
Yes! This is why theodicy is so hard. All of our experience in this fallen world seems to JUSTIFY our distrust of reality! We feel WARRANTED in our disbelief.
God asks us to go BEYOND our socialized, crystallized mistrust, look to Jesus, and see that the pain and suffering that we feel does NOT REALLY WARRANT what people think it does, with respect to mistrusting God.
Not if we REEEEEEEALY look at the work of God in Christ!
"All is full of love." -- Bjork
"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." -- 1 John 4:16b
"God is most glorified in us as we are most satisfied in God's nature." -- the new mantra of the Evangelical Universalist :) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/6/2006 12:32 PM (GMT -6) | | This is why divine wrath is NOT connected to the "rightness" or "wrongness" of our choices. It's connected to God's DISGUST of the sickness-conducive Das Nichtige that we opt into by our messed-up choices.
When I exhibit wrath on my child who's a meth addict by forcibly placing them in rehab...it's NOT that I hate my child...and it's NOT primarily the decision making PROCESS of my child that I hate...
It's that I HATE the insidious LIES about REALITY grounding his despair (perhaps including false beliefs about himself), which LED to faulty choice making...that has expressed itself in my son's meth addiction.
Satan is the "father of LIES"...remember?
I know you see it.
"All is full of love." -- Bjork
"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." -- 1 John 4:16b
"God is most glorified in us as we are most satisfied in God's nature." -- the new mantra of the Evangelical Universalist :) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/6/2006 12:34 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 10/6/2006 12:39 PM (GMT -6) | | | I think Paul's argument is that it is only the voluntary nature of sin that brings wrath. Sin that is not voluntary results in death, but maybe not the same level of accountability as voluntary sin. I don't see this difference in accountability as problematic. But I agree that ultimately it has nothing to do with God's interest in the well-being of the sinner. God prefers our well-being regardless of what we do or don't do--volitional or non-volitional.
Alright, speaking of health, I've GOT to pull myself away long enough to go get some exercise!!
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/6/2006 12:44 PM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
I think Paul's argument is that it is only the voluntary nature of sin that brings wrath. Sin that is not voluntary results in death, but maybe not the same level of accountability as voluntary sin. I don't see this difference in accountability as problematic.
I don't disagree. Paul's argument deals with MORAL RESPONSIBILITY. As we grow older, and frankly, we have more brain development, we have ENOUGH "data" from the world to genuinely believe that reality is ultimately trustworthy. When we CHOOSE to negatively prehend (SUPRESS) that data, THEN God's wrath is on us...big time.
But the issue is not "rightness" or "wrongness" of the choice itself. It's the CHOSEN STANCE of supressing the data that the choice exemplifies. See?
With this, I think we pretty much agree now.
"All is full of love." -- Bjork
"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." -- 1 John 4:16b
"God is most glorified in us as we are most satisfied in God's nature." -- the new mantra of the Evangelical Universalist :) Post Edited (MephEternal) : 10/6/2006 12:47:32 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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