POW: Did you catch that two different things are both called "time" by us, and shouldn't be?

Tom: We shouldn't call either 'time' or we shouldn't call both of them 'time' (while we should call one of them 'time')?

POW: You wrote, "We shouldn't call either 'time' or we shouldn't call both of them 'time'..." I can agree with that.

Tom: I don’t understand. What do you agree with? I asked a question. How does one agree with a question?

I was asking about your question. You asked, “Did you catch that two different things are both called "time" by us, and shouldn't be?” I’m trying to understand your question. Your question can be taken to be assuming one of two things: (1) We shouldn’t be calling either of them “time” or (2) we should only be calling one of them “time.”

Wouldn’t it be easier, POW, to just say what those two things are and then say which of them you think we should be calling “time”?

----------------------

POW: I can agree with that. And then we can both feel better. But in history, and a history that affects you and me, they DID get confused. Mether and Reardon show us how to separate them again. We NEED that!!

Tom: Then I must have completely misunderstood Mether. I didn’t read Reardon. And I have no idea what you’re talking about.

POW…spell it out. I’m a simple person. I like it served straight up. Get to the point for my sake.

What are the two things we’re calling “time” which we shouldn’t be? What is it we should be separating which we aren’t?

------------------------

POW: What's "time" I won't try to define.

Tom: Why not? If you can’t define it, how do you know God is ‘beyond it’ or ‘not beyond it’? If you can’t define it (at least a working definition), how do you know we shouldn’t be calling this or that “time”? How do you know we should be making the distinction Mether argues for?

POW: But I'll try to pull out from Mether's article what needs differentiated (and article written to help parse out Calvinism, not OV btw).

Tom: I’m no longer interested in Mether. I want to know what YOU think.

POW: You wrote, "And does God experience it?" D. wrote on that, and explained it.

Tom: I want to know what YOU think. I want to hear you say what you believe in your words.

POW: (You may not know that, and possibly him either -- I wonder.)

Tom: I don’t know what you’re wondering about. I have no doubts about what my views on time are and what I think God’s relationship to time is. I’m wondering what YOU think on these matters. The more the posts increase, the less I understand your view.

----------------------

POW: ...a form that isn't Biblical.

Tom: And what would be the biblical form/view on God's relationship to time?

POW: We will consult Mether, again. And we will define what is characteristic of EACH thing that the west confused.

Tom: I no longer what to consult Mather nor do I wish to know what the West confused.

I asked a simple question of YOU, POW. What is YOUR view on the biblical form (i.e., the biblical position on God’s relationship to) time?

_____________________

Tom: POW: I'm in a rush, in the midst of a too-busy week...so I'm crossing my fingers so that I can take this back... So, THIS seems crutial: WHICH "time" is he saying "outside" of?

Tom: Mether's meaning is clear--God is outside that same time "through which" he remains faithful.

POW: D. wrote something about that! Granting in the background that everything in the economy -- which includes creation itself (!) -- the Spirit and the Word are involved with the cosmos in a way that the Father is not. God is "outside" creation and its time…

Tom: It doesn’t follow logically that because the Spirit and the Word are involved with the cosmos in a way the Father is not that the Father is therefore outside of time. I disagreed with D on this. I’m not sure it makes any sense to say the Father is timeless but the Son and Spirit are temporal.

You say God is outside creation and ‘its’ time. How do you know time isn’t a necessary consequence of the existence of the triune God? How do you know time is merely ‘creation’s time’? Does the Bible tell you? Philosophy? What?

------------------------

POW: (I'll come back later to think about this. But I think that since there are two 'times' you might have excaped the full import of that. What do you think, Tom?)

Tom: I have no concept of two 'times'. None at all.

POW: You will have to reread Mether too. :-)

Tom: No time. But if you come up with a meaningful distinction between to different “times,” pass it on!

Tom

http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/orth_plato.aspx

. . .

The west was captured by an ousiological metaphysics. This metaphysics held western theology in captivity. It is in its nominalist form coming from William Occam that we find it still in captivity in the Calvinist’s even having the very question of whether God knows future contingents in light of predestination, and time. This was a metaphysics, St. Maximos the Confessor points out, that saw time as an enemy and thus sought that stable enduring thing through change that thereby is the most fundamental kind of being. Thus, that kind of perdurance was dubbed with the past participle he says. In essence, what is called by contemporary philosophers "the metaphysics of presence" according to Maximos is really the metaphysics of the past, as fully complete and determinate, used paradigmatically to colonize all the other temporal modes of present and future. The present is the predestined creature of the past both in Calvin and Newton. The essentialism downgrades accidental being or sumbebekos. Now sumbebekos as accidental being was also not well understood in the west. It is not being that exists in another like a form of being found within one of the predicate categories. It designates the happenstantial, the contingently situational so it is not precisely necessary-essential that my wife has auburn hair; that she has this hair color is accidental in the sense of sumbebekos, it is fortuitous in the sense that her hair could have indifferently been auburn or not auburn but it is necessary that it have some color. This kind of accidental being can be found in every category. Thus, in the pagan Greek view, that a human is this or that individual is accidental but it is necessary that a human be somebody. The distinction then between accidental being in the sense of sumbebekos from an accident-predicate is that the accidental being is the contingent or fortuitious actuality according to every necessary category. So, accidental being in this sense is the contingent affection or actual constellation or situation or event that takes place according to the necessity of different categories. On the Orthodox reading, this sumbebekos is really God’s governance or the concrete realization of God’s purpose in time. To downgrade it is a spiritually sick symptom of the religiosity of sarx that finds time to be a corrosive force that bears no faith or hope. Thus, accidental being just as the unique particularity of persons and the future, is downgraded in pagan metaphysics in favor of fully determinate being-essences (the dead, fully completed and determinate and deterministic past idealized as enduring presence) or ousiological being for the paradigmatic past participle. It was not till Scotus developed his concept of haecceity and the individual’s will did you find the beginning of the overturn of a ousiological metaphysics in western Christian theology. Maximos pointed out the original meaning of sumbebekos was not negative as it as in pagan philosophical theology but was positive. It meant the adventurous and creative way things are "brought together." So, in Orthodox theology coming from Maximos, the pagan agenda to make (persons and) reality in its concreteness, in all its contingency, fortuity, distinctiveness, and unique unrepeatibility unreal in favor of impersonal, universal, and necessary is set on its head. Thus, sumbebekos, as very purposeful counterpoint in Byzantine theology, is the creative way (Logos) that God brings all things together (sumbebekos) in the existential fullness of their realization (uparktikos) of his eikonomia. This lead Maximos to revolutionize Aristotle’s categorical analysis of Being in one of its meanings.

 

 

-------------------------------------

Mether discusses one "time," but Reardon (which was in the back of my mind) compares/contrasts two.

I take note of what each says, and am interested in the convergence of the two contributions.

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 12/5/2006 10:36:22 PM (GMT-6)

Here's TWO notions of time:

That whole Augustinian idea of foreknowledge is fishy to me, in that time is conceived as a "thing" or a dimension, and a simplistically linear one at that. I'm not into "open theism," God forbid. Rather, it seems to my neuronal epiphenomena that an event is "foreknown" by God simply because it is logoi, residing in His energies, in the eternal council of the Trinity (you know, "let Us make Man in Our Image"). That which is logoi will be realized, don't you know.

 

<CLICK THE UNDERLINED LINK>

 

   Strictly speaking, we don't measure kairos. We don't ask someone, for example, "How much Christmas did you have?" We inquire, rather, "what sort of Christmas did you have?" With kairos we employ the category of qualis, not quantum.

   . . .

   Eternity is not a long time. Strictly speaking, there is simply no length to it. Nothing elapses. The infinite is not measurable. Thus, "when we've been there ten thousand years/ bright shining as the sun/ we've no less days to sing God's praise/ than when we've first begun." 

   . . .

   The only time we can ever really seize is the now. Now is the present instant, the marked pulsing of the heart, the moment to lay hold on eternity.

THERE'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO.

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 12/5/2006 11:32:36 PM (GMT-6)

POW-

Thanks for the response. I hate these discussion boards sometimes. It takes several goes to get one’s point across.

It’s interesting that you link Calvinistic determinism with the OV and have them both insisting that God be in time. It’s true of the OV that God is temporal since creation (we disagree on the status of God’s relationship to time sans creation, or before creation). But it’s not at all true that determinism has to have God in time. On the contrary, once you posit determinism, you can be pretty indifferent with respect to time. Paul Helm, as you know, is a determinist who has to have God outside of time. That tends to be the rule among determinists (Acquinas included; when you boil him down, Tom is a determinist).

With respect to chronos and kairos, in my view you can’t have the latter without the former, though I wouldn’t insist that the former be measured. I mean, we obviously measure time. But just saying that posit a distinction between the thing measured and the measurement itself. Our measurements don’t create time. To speaking qualitatively in terms of kairos is to assume ‘events’ of a certain sort and to assume time, I think. I at least cannot now imagine ‘atemporal qualitative experience’. And that’s just what God is (Father included). So I’m inclined to disagree that ‘time’ is just a creational thing. I think God’s experience of Godself, triunely, qualitatively, is definitive of time.

Friend: That whole Augustinian idea of foreknowledge is fishy to me, in that time is conceived as a "thing" or a dimension, and a simplistically linear one at that. I'm not into "open theism," God forbid.

Tom: God forbid!

Friend: Rather, it seems to my neuronal epiphenomena that an event is "foreknown" by God simply because it is logoi, residing in His energies, in the eternal council of the Trinity (you know, "let Us make Man in Our Image"). That which is logoi will be realized, don't you know.

Tom: No, I don’t know. And I don’t see how it can be so. It seems as obvious to me that nothing about eternal logoi per se entails future fulfillment (though it CAN, it doesn’t necessarily entail future fulfillment). This would rule out the very possibility that God ever know possibilities that never get fulfilled, that the eternally creative Word of God eternally ground possibilities that never find fulfillment. If being eternally known as logoi entails future fulfillment, then all the same arguments for incompatability arise and you’re landed in determinism, albeit by a different route. No thank you.

POW: I see "time" being "in" the creation God created...but not God being in time.

Tom: Why? Because the Bible tells you? Because the Fathers tell you? Or because philosophical assumptions tell you? That’s what I’m asking. Yes there's an essence/energies distinction. But why assume only the latter invovles time? How did you conclude that?

POW: Eternity is not a long time. Strictly speaking, there is simply no length to it. Nothing elapses. The infinite is not measurable. Thus, "when we've been there ten thousand years/ bright shining as the sun/ we've no less days to sing God's praise/ than when we've first begun."

Tom: If nothing elapses, then how will be singing? What would that even mean? You mean OUR final state is to be timeless/beyond time/outside of time as well?

I don’t think I’m interested in such existence.

-------------------------------------

I appreciate your time, POW. Really I do. We’ve just got very different intuitions and assumptions firing. I see the attempt at the distinction between ‘times’ (chronos and kairos) that you mention. I’ve been aware of it in fact. Just wasn’t sure what YOU had in mind. To my mind they’re different ways of talking (quantitatively and qualitatively) about one and the same fundamental reality. You don’t have either one without the other. You don’t have quantity (that something which we describe “qualitatively” as either this good or that good, this beautiful or that wonderful) without a corresponding quality, nor do you have quality (a bearer or experiencer of qualitatively beautiful experience or not) without a corresponding quantity (bearer or experiencer, an event-defined center of experience). If God’s eternal and necessary triune experience of Godself is qualitatively satisfying, beautiful, and personal, then I’m inclined to assume the temporal nature of that experience. Remove time and I have no idea of how to conceive of God’s existence or experience of Godself in qualitatively personal, loving, relational terms.

You locate time in the event that is creation. I locate it in ‘event-ness’ per se, and since I see God by definition as unsurpassable qualitatively beautiful event-experience per se, I feel constrained to locate time in God. I'll do that until somebody offers me a meaningful way to conceive of personal, loving, relational experience in non-sequential terms, that is, as an experience of loving relationality that does not "elapse" in any sense whatsoever. I insist on a meaningful faith, and that is not meaningful to me.

Hope that helps.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 12/6/2006 12:56:31 PM (GMT-6)

1. No, you are not "landed in determinism." Not at all.

2. I come back to "That whole Augustinian idea of foreknowledge is fishy to me, in that time is conceived as a "thing" or a dimension," Meaning, its not a thing.

3. Tom: "I see the attempt at the distinction between ‘times’ (chronos and kairos) that you mention. I’ve been aware of it in fact. Just wasn’t sure what YOU had in mind. To my mind they’re different ways of talking (quantitatively and qualitatively) about one and the same fundamental reality. You don’t have either one without the other."

4. Tom: "If God’s eternal and necessary triune experience of Godself is qualitatively satisfying, beautiful, and personal, then I’m inclined to assume the temporal nature of that experience. Remove time and I have no idea of how to conceive of God’s existence or experience of Godself in qualitatively personal, loving, relational terms."

POW: 1. No, you are not "landed in determinism." Not at all.

Tom: We’ll just disagree on this. Cool.

----------------

POW: 2. I come back to "That whole Augustinian idea of foreknowledge is fishy to me, in that time is conceived as a "thing" or a dimension," Meaning, its not a thing.

Tom: I’m not going to quibble over fine print. We do the best we can with our language. “Thing” is alright with me if all one means by it is that time is ‘real’, a ‘reality’ if you prefer.

------------------

POW: 3. PoW: False time is a pagan thing. Determinism embraces it. It ultimately imprisons God. OV shuns it--rightly. True time is what is to be embraced.

Tom: Since you refuse to define true time for me, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Define this “true time” and I’ll think about it. If you mean ‘kairos’ time is true time and ‘chronos’ time is false time, then we’ll just agree to disagree on this too.

------------------

POW: But just because true time is the alternative to false time does not mean that God in essence is still in time.

Tom: I don’t recognize this false/true distinction and would never argue that God is in time because the time God is in is an alternative time to some false notion of time. What kind of argument is that?

But since you mention it; neither is it the case, POW, that the alternatives forbid God’s being in time. That two things are “alternatives” would not in itself prove much about how God would or wouldn’t relate to them.

------------------

POW: There is no reason to think you have to have both, or should.

Tom: I think there are reasons and I offered them.

-------------------

Tom: "If God’s eternal and necessary triune experience of Godself is qualitatively satisfying, beautiful, and personal, then I’m inclined to assume the temporal nature of that experience. Remove time and I have no idea of how to conceive of God’s existence or experience of Godself in qualitatively personal, loving, relational terms."

POW: Our experience shares qualities of "God's experience" (note quotation marks) in the same way that we are "after the image" (but are not the image) of God in naturally having a free will. (Ware's book is good on this.) God is not "in time" even though our reflections of God's "experience" are in time.

Tom: Sorry B. I’m not following this AT ALL. Is there an argument here for God’s not being in time? I don’t see it.

It’s simple (for me). We describe God as necessarily related, personal, and loving (irrespective of creation). What I’m offering is very simple, and I’m having difficulty seeing how anything you’re saying relates to my concerns at all. I’m saying that these concepts, the notions “personal,” “related,” and “loving” taken together (personally and lovingly related) are utterly meaningless to me when I imagine them outside of time.

Now, perhaps you think saying “God is not ‘in time’ even though our reflections of God’s ‘experiences’ are in time” addresses me concerns. It does not.

Of course our reflections are in time. WE’RE in time. Big deal? That we are temporal says nothing “in itself” about God’s being temporal OR timeless. So how do you reason FROM our being in time and reflecting upon God in time TO God’s being outside of time? There’s nothing logical about that.

So I'll keep asking…why? Why do you think God is outside of time? Does the Bible tell you God is outside of time? Where? Is it because the Fathers say so? Is it some philosophical assumption about divine perfection? What is it? You keep saying it--"God is outside of time"--without telling me WHY this must be the case.

I’m going to keep asking ‘Why?’ until I get a clear answer.

Why?

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 12/6/2006 5:34:18 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 12/6/2006 6:49:50 PM (GMT-6)

by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope)

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 12/6/2006 6:15:53 PM (GMT-6)

Every prayer changes the entire universe. Our every prayer, each prayer, actually changes history, the way God created the world, and all else. God is outside time. God is not "waiting up there" for our prayer, and then He acts. All has already occurred in God. We are His co-redeemers.

We don't pray to get "some benefit." We don't pray to reduce our stress, or strengthen our immune system, or lose weight, or add years to our life. On the contrary, we enter prayer to follow Christ, to become open to Him. His way is the Way of the Cross.

Prayer works in the Unseen Warfare as a power/gift from Jesus, given as a function of our ability to receive it. We increase our ability to receive by asking for the increase, and God grants it as He sees fit, in His tender, all sweet and merciful manner.

Difference...

QUOTE.......................................

What is at the root of the separation of the two communities is the Roman departure from earlier Eastern Orthodox Trinitarian dogma. This difference is well attested at the Roman New Advent site. The first paragraph under the heading of "The [Trinitarian] Doctrine as Interpreted in Greek Theology" is a good contrast:

The Greek Fathers approached the problem of Trinitarian doctrine in a way which differs in an important particular from that which, since the days of St. Augustine, has become traditional in Latin theology. In Latin theology thought fixed first on the Nature and only subsequently on the Persons. Personality is viewed as being, so to speak, the final complement of the Nature: the Nature is regarded as logically prior to the Personality. Hence, because God's Nature is one, He is known to us as One God before He can be known as Three Persons. And when theologians speak of God without special mention of a Person, conceive Him under this aspect. This is entirely different from the Greek point of view. Greek thought fixed primarily on the Three distinct Persons: the Father, to Whom, as the source and origin of all, the name of God (Theos) more especially belongs; the Son, proceeding from the Father by an eternal generation, and therefore rightly termed God also; and the Divine Spirit, proceeding from the Father through the Son. The Personality is treated as logically prior to the Nature. Just as human nature is something which the individual men possesses, and which can only be conceived as belonging to and dependent on the individual, so the Divine Nature is something which belongs to the Persons and cannot be conceived independently of Them.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15047a.htm

 

ISN'T TOM BEGINNING WITH NATURE?

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 12/7/2006 6:10:37 AM (GMT-6)

John Meyendorff, in his Byzantine Theology (Fordham, 1974), writes this:

... the Mystagogy [of Photius] makes clear the basic Byzantine objection to the Latin doctrine of the Trinity: that it understands God as a single and philosophically simple essence, in which personal or hypostatic existence is reduced to the concept of mutual relations between the three Persons. If the idea of consubstantiality requires that the Father and the Son together be the one origin of the Spirit, essence in God necessarily precedes His personal existence as three hypostases. For Photius, however, "the Father is the origin [of the Son and of the Holy Spirit] not by nature, but in virtue of His hypostatic character." To confuse the hypostatic characters of the Father and the Son by attributing to them the procession of the Spirit is to fall into Sabellianism, a modalist heresy of the third century, or rather into semi-Sabellianism. For Sabellius had confused the three Persons into one, while the Latins limit themselves to the Father and the Son, but then fall into the danger of excluding the Spirit from the Godhead altogether.

   Thus, Photius clearly demonstrates that behind the dispute on the Filioque lie two concepts of the Trinity: the Greek personalistic concept, which considers the personal revelation of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit as the starting point of Trinitarian theology; and the Latin, Augustinian approach to God as a simple essence, within which a Trinity of persons can be understood only in terms of internal relations. (pp. 60-61)

Photius