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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 3/28/2007 2:28 PM (GMT -6) |   | |
OR, boil it down to just this:
"Where one spoke of the persons (or person) one spoke
at the same time of the nature, and vice versa. The nature
is inconceivable apart from the persons or as anterior to the
three persons, even in the logical order. If the balance of this
antinomy between nature and persons, absolutely different
and absolutely identical at the same time, is upset, there
will be in the one case a tendency towards a Sabellian
unitarianism (the God-essence of the philosophers), or else
towards tritheism."
(o)Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 3/28/2007 3:36:51 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 3/28/2007 5:45 PM (GMT -6) | |
Exousia said...
Stark:
Since Necessary Being is relationship and consciousness, it is unalterably PERSONAL...as everything we know as "person" is only an expression of relationship in the context of consciousness.
I think, Exousia, this is what I was getting at in my first post; the proof of something essential is in the relationship, proven in the act of expressing who we are (language). What you have done, in your brilliance, as usual, is ground it in the One who is in perfect relationship with both Himself and everything else. Love, of course, being the driving force.
So, we will struggle in our philosophies to find the essential of anything if we cannot first find it in the God who is all and creates all.
Starkman
My teacher used to say that whenever he read Scripture, he would always ask the question, "What does this have to say about the character of God?" Working off his thinking, as I read Scripture, I have come to ask, "What does this have to say about the heart and passion of God's desire for relationship with us? | | Back to Top | | |
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Alan Rhoda
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Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 3/28/2007 6:40 PM (GMT -6) | | Greetings, all.
Tom emailed me and requested that I look at this discussion of essentialism. So here goes.
An essentialist is someone who thinks that things have essential (intrinsic) properties. A property F is essential to X iff X cannot exist without being F. Some such properties seem to be characteristic of anything and everything (e.g., the property of being self-identical). Others pertain to some things and not others and thereby give rise to different kinds of things. For example, all electrons qua electrons have the essential property of having negative charge. If you change the charge, you no longer have an electron but, rather, a positron, or perhaps a neutrino.
That at least some things have essential properties is very hard to deny, especially for a theist. Does anyone here really want to deny that God is essentially loving, or personal?
The main reason why essentialism is often spoken of as though it were controversial has to do with disputes over whether things falling under a certain description (e.g., "living organisms" have any nontrivial essential properties and, if so, what those properties are. For example, someone committed to Darwinian gradualism will probably want to resist the suggestion that living organisms fall into natural kinds. Creationists, on the other hand, normally accept that there are natural kinds defined by different essential properties. The typical Darwinist, mind you, is not going to say that there are no natural kinds anywhere - indeed, almost everyone accepts that fundamental physical particles and such do fall into natural kinds, and thus have essential properties.
In summary, as general thesis essentialism isn't particularly controversial. Nearly everyone accepts the existence of at least some natural kinds. Where things do get controversial is when it comes to trying to figure just what sorts of natural kinds there are and what their essential properties are. | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 3/28/2007 7:38 PM (GMT -6) | | |
Thanks everybody! Thanks especially to you Alan. I know you're busy right now.
Here’s what got me wondering what the controversy over essentialism is. Over on David Congdon’s blog (which I visit from time to time), David posted the following (between the lines):
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I recently received my ‘hot-off-the-press’ copy of Oliver Crisp’s new book, Divinity and Humanity…. I bought it with the intention of exploring Crisp’s rejection of the notion that Christ assumed a fallen human nature in the incarnation. This view was first articulated by Crisp in his 2004 article, “Did Christ have a Fallen Human Nature?” (IJST 6.3, 170-88). This essay has essentially become the fourth of his six chapters, in the course of which he addresses perichoresis as a christological category, the anhypostasia-enhypostasia distinction, and kenosis, among other topics.
At some point in the near future, I hope to write an essay which will explore why Crisp misunderstands Barth and Torrance (among others) in their affirmation of the fallen human nature of Christ. The conflict rests, I believe, in radically different ontologies, such that Barth has an actualized-historicized account of what “nature” means, while Crisp works with a traditional, essentialist account. While this by no means exhausts the issues at stake, I believe this is where one must begin in order to unpack the christological ramifications…
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A couple of posters then questioned David about essentialism. David responded that “For Crisp, the problem is that he reads Barth from an essentialist perspective without even attempting to understand the ontology that Barth actually has, which is non-essentialist. If Crisp wishes to debate Barth's christology, he has to deal with his ontology.”
Their discussion goes on. Essentialism is mistaken and the ontology they prefer is Barth’s “actualized-historicized” account of human “nature.” In trying to follow along (I’m not familiar with Barth), I thought I’d first get a handle on what essentialism is. I was thinking pretty much what Alan said. But that doesn’t seem controversial at all. So what’s Barth’s “actualized-historicized” account of human nature? Sounds like Barth is speaking Kierkegaardian (a language I can't yet speak!). I can imagine that SK would have problems with essentialism when it comes to personhood. There’s nothing there of a "self" until we actualized it in history through choice, right? We “become” selves (ala SK), right Exousia? But even so, SK would have to admit a minimal essentialism.
I'm just wondering how an "essentialist" Christology is going to differ from whatever Barth's "actualized-historicized" Christology.
Greg (he wouldn’t mind my repeating him here) mentioned to me that he’s an essentialist but not a substantialist, nor an idealist, nor an individualist, for he holds that the ESSENCE of each distinct "thing" is a disposition which is defined by that thing’s way of INTER-RELATING to other things; so the QUIDDITY is both "thing" and an "event" and a nexus of relations. Would you get with this Alan?
Somebody pour me a drink!
Tom
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BBBCanada
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 2763
| Posted 3/28/2007 7:44 PM (GMT -6) | | Alan said: In summary, as general thesis essentialism isn't particularly controversial. Nearly everyone accepts the existence of at least some natural kinds. Where things do get controversial is when it comes to trying to figure just what sorts of natural kinds there are and what their essential properties are.
What D said: It's a "strange loop" (thanks, Tom, for the James Loder book!) where Eternal Consciousness has the inseparate power within itself to act reflexively...and then project itself from that reflexive action. Since Necessary Being is relationship and consciousness, it is unalterably PERSONAL...as everything we know as "person" is only an expression of relationship in the context of consciousness.
I interpret that reflexive act as dynamic.
Brandon
It is the purpose that makes strong the vow, but vows to every purpose must not hold.--A friend.
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Tom
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| Posted 3/28/2007 7:52 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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BBBCanada
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 2763
| Posted 3/28/2007 8:02 PM (GMT -6) | | | Tom said: Greg (he wouldn’t mind my repeating him here) mentioned to me that he’s an essentialist but not a substantialist, nor an idealist, nor an individualist, for he holds that the ESSENCE of each distinct "thing" is a disposition which is defined by that thing’s way of INTER-RELATING to other things; so the QUIDDITY is both "thing" and an "event" and a nexus of relations. Would you get with this Alan?
I believe that there is a substance, but it is substance in relation. Greg, as you say here, would seem to do away with the substantial pole and emphasize "event" or the relational pole. There, it seems that something has to have being before it becomes. Somebody pour Tom a drink. 
Brandon
It is the purpose that makes strong the vow, but vows to every purpose must not hold.--A friend.
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 3/28/2007 8:57 PM (GMT -6) | | | Tom, is Crisp saying the same as this?:
Thus Mary was born with the same fallen, mortal nature that we all share and it was precisely this fallen humanity that she gave to God the Son! If this were not so He could not have healed our fallen condition. As the Holy Fathers repeatedly stated, "That which God the Son did not assume in His Incarnation is not healed." By assuming our fallen nature and uniting it to His divine nature God has healed our fallen condition and set us free from sin and death!
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 3/28/2007 9:02 PM (GMT -6) | | Following up -- where's Tom or Selah? -- on what I want to be literate on here...
QUOTE: 7. The anhypostasia, impersonality, or, to speak more accurately, the enhypostasia, of the human nature of Christ; for anhypostasia is a purely negative term, and presupposes a fictitious abstraction, since the human nature of Christ did not exist at all before the act of the incarnation, and could therefore be neither personal nor impersonal. The meaning of this doctrine is that Christ's human nature had no independent personality of its own, besides the divine, and that the divine nature is the root and basis of his personality.
http://www.temeculaopc.org/beliefs/chalcedon.htm
How were an-h and en-h handled. T? S?
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PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 3/28/2007 10:31 PM (GMT -6) | | | Another example that comes to mind, regarding essence and person, is found in Lossky's "Mystical Theology," page 48 -- got that book, D?
It points out the difference between the procession of the Son and Spirit which are according to nature, and the creation of the cosmos which is according to will.
Notice that "will" is not, there, assigned to nature.
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Starkman
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Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 3/29/2007 9:29 AM (GMT -6) | |
TGB said...I still need that drink! Tom
Beat you to it; flat, plain wasted, I am!
Starkman
My teacher used to say that whenever he read Scripture, he would always ask the question, "What does this have to say about the character of God?" Working off his thinking, as I read Scripture, I have come to ask, "What does this have to say about the heart and passion of God's desire for relationship with us? | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 3/31/2007 6:56 PM (GMT -6) | | | I had a response written and somehow lost it by some sequence of key strokes. I hate when that happens. Anyway, without giving away the movie, it does seem to give support to the idea that identity could be illusory, right? One's memories could actually be false memories, giving one the illusion that experiences had happened which, in fact, had not. This, of course, can happen. But what we tend to doubt is that great quantities of memories are illusory such that much of our "remembered" life never happened.
Have you read the book, Tom? My sister-in-law is going to. I'm curious to see what the book is like from her.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 3/31/2007 7:10:47 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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