First, Exousia, I need to know if we're on the same page about feelings being conditioned by some intellectual state of apprehension/contemplation. This is important in ruling out any extraneous relevance of the quality of negative feelings. I really like the analogy about fear. I totally agree with it.

Exousia: Again, Jeff. We don't need anger to talk about God's longsuffering.

Jeff: I totally agree. I think empathy alone is sufficient. But that's not the point, to my mind. It seems over parsimonious to me to reduce God's feelings to two merely aesthetic ones--one pleasurable and one displeasurable. I don't even know how to conceive of the Father-Son relationship in those terms alone.

To me, personal sensibilities are distinguishable from aesthetic ones. Other philosophers have said the same. So I don't think it's a simple task to pull off the kind of reduction you're arguing for. I see the incarnational Son and the Father-Son relationship as entailing sensibilities that are definitely personal and social, as opposed to merely aesthetic.

Exousia: The specific feeling of anger is problematic because anger inherently deals with the internalized feeling of "BEING WRONGED AGAINST".

Jeff: Are you saying that there is a separate "feeling of 'BEING WRONGED AGAINST'" that necessarily co-exists with anger? I don't understand this. To me, anger is the feeling, whereas a state of misrelating (the "wrong") is the intellectually apprehended state that conditions the feeling.

Exousia: For a person to believe that a "wrong" or an "offense" was done against them, they would have to hold a previous belief that something COULD "wrong" or "offend" them. The "wrong" or "offense" is seen as either implicit or explicit DEVALUING of the offended by the offender.

Jeff: I would word the last statement differently. I would word it thus:

The "wrong" or "offense" is seen as either implicit or explicit MISEVALUATION of the offended by the offender.

No one can actually be devalued by another, and God knows this. But persons can misevaluate the true role/value/contribution/etc of another to their own sentient satisfaction. Remember, I believe that the moral order requires, as one of it's conditions, that the highest good of all other sentient beings is consistent with and conducive to my own highest good. SO, if a person sins knowingly, he/she has misevaluated God. This is a fact, but I know of no "feeling of devaluation" that necessarily attends wrath/anger.

Exousia: The alternative is to say that when God has anger at transgression, God feels IN NO WAY "devalued" or "slighted" by the trangressing action.

Jeff: I agree. What it sounds like you're interpreting me as saying is that God needs recognition from creatures. He certainly doesn't. Indeed, that has been why I have argued that God's longsuffering is for Christ and not His own glory from creatures. God needs nothing from creation. Neither does Christ. But God wants to give glory to the Son (because it is sentiently satisfying to him), and the Son wants to give glory to the Father. It has nothing to do with need. Hence, God can not feel deprived of what He has no need of. If this is all you're saying, I'm with you.

Exousia: But to say this is to REMOVE any meaningful idea of God being OFFENDED by transgression.

Jeff: I agree if all you're saying is that God has no need of recognition from creatures. But I don't see why anger has anything to do with this.

Exousia: Christ, the New Adam, set the transcendental whole of humanity into right-relatedness with God, dispositionally speaking. The propitiation was in the fact of God (in Jesus) doing what we couldn't do for ourselves, and in doing so, taking upon the proper consequences of fallen humanity upon Godself.  We had that whole other thread about this.

Jeff: Right, but even you, if I'm understanding you, don't say that the propitiation alone is sufficient to bring humanity into right-relatedness. You claim that either repentance/belief/rehabilitation is also necessary. When we say that perfect love has no need of forgiveness/remission, we are denying the need of the atonement as one piece of the restoration to wholeness. So maybe the atonement wasn't volitional, but it was conditional.

Are you saying that it was conditional (and contingent in that sense), but not volitional? I can understand that. We need only posit that Christ's obedience was compatibilistic to get there. This is Doc's view, is it not?

Exousia: I'd rather use aesthetic pleasure and aesthetic displeasure. (I do in my own head.) To me, "sad", "hurt", and "disgust" are emotional states on the continuum of aesthetic displeasure that is commensurate with perfect love.

Jeff: So in your usage, "sad," "hurt," and "disgust" are only differences of intensity in the same feeling? For me, sadness is different in quality (not merely intensity) from disgust. Moreover, I can feel great differences of intensity in sadness, disgust, beauty, and anger. I don't experience them separately as particular ranges of degree of intensity with the same quality of feeling.


Exousia: Jeff, you have explained the CIRCUMSTANCES in which you think divine anger arises, but I don't think that you have described what Tom is asking for. What IS anger, in your mind? Please describe the emotional content as you understand it. We know that you feel that the UNIQUENESS of the feeling is included in the UNIQUENESS of the situation (transgression). What I don't yet see is what this means? Please paint for me how YOU see God emotionally operating in anger. Give me something to show WHAT an angry person says in their head! This would help immensely.

Jeff: My epistemology works different. From my corporate training, I have been taught and believe that different types of personalities value different kinds of pleasure as most satisfying. E.g., do a search on the internet for social styles. Per that classification scheme, people tend to be either analytical, driver, amiable, or expressive. These correspond rather well to the Meyers-Briggs classification. The DISC classification is very similar, too. The different social styles have as their greatest measure of personal value, the following:

1) Analyticals - Respect

2) Drivers - Control

3) Amiables - Acceptance

4) Expressives - Recognition

Post Edited (Corey) : 1/6/2007 12:06:07 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Exousia) : 1/6/2007 12:09:39 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Corey) : 1/6/2007 12:27:32 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Corey) : 1/6/2007 2:31:06 PM (GMT-6)