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One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 1/15/2007 5:17 AM (GMT -6)

I'm just thinking...

The reason why it's so hard for us to understand perfect love is because we don't have the proper context in mind.

Perfect love originates in a context of COMPLETE SELF-SUFFICIENCY.

Perfect love exists in a relational place where there is completely aesthetic satisfaction. A state where ALL desires are fulfilled! Where there is NO FURTHER increasing of one's experience of truth, beauty, and right-relatedness.

Unlike this, we FROM THE WOMB know nothing BUT dependence! We know EXACTLY what it means to feel UNsatisfied (ie be hungry as a baby) and work to get that satisfaction (ie cry and move to get food).

We interpret love from a fundamentally RECEPTIVE role!

And we bring these assumptions into all our thoughts about love and God.

So, there is a FUNDAMENTAL DISJUNCT in the way that we will perceive love.

God knows what it feels like to have ABSOLUTELY EVERY DESIRE IN HIS HEART FULFILLED.

This is part and parcel of ASEITY.

So, it doesn't make any sense to say that God created Creation because he wanted something for HIMSELF.

It makes NO SENSE whatsoever.

Creation was a "MORE THAN NECESSARY" act!

To say that God would create Creation PRIMARILY BECAUSE God wanted to enhance God in someway would effectively deny that God was COMPLETELY satisfied within Godself before Creation.

No.

It makes so much more sense to say that God, being the TOTALLY FULFILLED Being that God is...decided to "make it rain!" on other beings!

Meaning live GENEROUSLY.

Meaning giving without THOUGHT of receiving back.

Meaning live a life going BEYOND just Godself.

Just because there was a POSSIBILITY of doing so.

AS A FREELY CHOSEN ACT OF GRACE!

God truly DID create Creation FOR US, not for HIMSELF.

It's just a matter of course that WHATEVER is a contingent expression of God will indeed glorify God in some way. That's the "reflective" nature of contingent expression!

So that means God KNEW that whatever he created would give him SOME level of glory, just by BEING what it was! Like Tom was saying.

But HIS glorification wasn't the main point.

There is no WAY that Creation's glorification of God can TOUCH the glorification that God receives from Godself! (Again, this is part and parcel of aseity!)

The main point was God creating a free Creation and LIFING IT UNTO GODSELF THROUGH LOVE so as to BLESS that free Creation with the most loving thing imaginable: God's Reality (truth, beauty, right-relatedness)

The Son of God, the Messiah, Jesus, is the CONSEQUENT HYPOSTASIS OF GOD, through whom all things were made. It was the Son that made genuine interaction with non-God reality possible.

God FOR NO OTHER REASON THAN LOVE placed Godself in a position to actually experience what was IMPOSSIBLE for the Necessarily Existent Perfectly-relational, Triune God:

"My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me???"

And he did it all...for us.

God has been Immanuel since Creation.

Jesus was just an INCARNATION of the truth of the matter!

God is a GIVER.

God is a FREE giver.

God is a CHEERFUL giver.

God is an UNCONDITIONAL giver of GOOD GIFTS.

This is what Perfect Love DOES.

What say you, brothers and sisters?

I bet it made sense to Ghandi...and Mother Teresa...and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Happy B-day, man. I can't WAIT to meet you.

)

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.

Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)

And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."

Similitude
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968

Posted 1/15/2007 7:12 AM (GMT -6)

I total follow your thinking, here. But I've never agreed with your view of aseity. While you think that Christ was a contingent expression on earth while something called the LOGOS simultaneously existed in intra-bliss, I don't. As I understand the plurality of the godhead, Christ on earth was the Second member of the Trinity in totality. There was no other "version" of him living in blissful aseity (to me, this would have to be a fourth person). Hence, Christ DID suffer SIGNIFICANTLY because of our sin. And as an open theist, I don't believe that suffering was inevitable. Hence, my idea that God's suffering is WORTH it to Him makes sense to me. And it makes sense to me that Christ endured the shame for the joy set before him--not JUST for our joy. God is omnicompetent. He will always profit from His own actions--even when they result in His temporary suffering.

So God's love is just like ours. It cost Him something. Just not so much that He loses in an absolute sense.

Post Edited (jefscott) : 1/15/2007 6:33:53 AM (GMT-6)

Similitude
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968

Posted 1/15/2007 7:13 AM (GMT -6)

Heading out for the week. Look forward to this discussion, though, cause it's at the heart of the matter, I think!!

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