B:   LET ME FIRST APPOLOGIZE FOR ANY DIFFICULTIES IN T'S AND D'S CONVERSATION!

Personally, trying to use "determination" in a "good" way is like trying to make a beautiful portrait on black velvet. Argh!!!

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(o)

Don: I think that the end will be like the beginning... God stopping by in the cool of the evening and asking me how my day was today. He will always be "surprised" and delighted to hear about how I was able to reflect His glory today. The dance will continue, two pairs of footprints in the sand.

Tom: I could kiss you right now, Don. Frickin AY! YES!

TWO PAIRS OF FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND.

Tom

D: [Synchronized swimming...] where God is living His life through them as vessels. I've always thought this was beautiful.

Tom: Hope it's OK to respond to part of a private note. It has to do with the convo.

Synchronized swimming isn’t an ugly thing. Of course it’s beautiful. There’s beauty because it's a cooperation of wills, yes.

Difference contexts awaken different feelings in me. I’m not gonna say synchronized swimming isn’t beautiful. Everybody’s making the exact same movement. Translate that into music and it’s not really pleasing. A symphony where everybody ALWAYS strikes the same note (it occasionally may happen, sure) isn’t a beautiful symphony.

My understanding of divine-human relationality, D, is that it’s a relational symphony. Now, you’ve used this analogy too. ONE ‘will’, Mozart’s, composes the music and scores each person’s individual contribution, every note they play, how long the hold the note, how they crescendo, everything, so that though everybody is striking a different note, it’s still all composed and scored by Mozart. I think this is precisely how you imagine our destiny. God creates so that our actions express him, his composition and score (but we willingly making those movements because WE decided to become a member in the symphony)

So let me take the symphony analogy and put it in a context that expresses a how I imagine things to be—Jazz music. Take any great jazz composer, say, Scott Joplin. He composes a melody and determines roughly the feel and direction he wants it to take. And he does so unilaterally. Fine. But it’s the unilaterally determined intension of the jazz composer to create room for improvisation on the part of each individual player. It can’t ALL be improvisation. There has to be deference to some overarching, prescribed but general rhythm and melody. THAT’S determined by one will, Joplin’s. But within the general scope of a unilaterally prescribed rhythm and melody embraced willingly by the band members who want to play JOPLIN’S music, it remains the case that each individual member has room to improvise and in so doing put something of herself into the song. It’s JOPLIN’S music they’re playing, and though they’re following the general rhythm and melody determined for them by Joplin, they’re also doing something else Joplin WANTED THEM TO DO, and that’s freely improvise in ways not prescribed by him. Joplin intends this, leaves room for it in his composition, and loves it.

Along comes a trumpet player who looks at Joplin’s score and says, “Eh, it says here that on these measures I’m to ‘improvise’. Eh. I don’t wanna improvise.” Joplin says, “I’m a jazz composer dude. That’s what you signed up for.” The trumpet player says, “Look, why don’t you score this out for me and tell me exactly what notes to play, how long to hold them, and how loud to play each note.” Joplin cocks his head, “Why do you want that?”

I’m asking you D, why do you want what you want? Why do you WANT to freely dispose out of all relational improvisation? The only reason I can think you’d want this is because you think GOD wants it (because I know you want to want what God wants). So let me then ask—Why do you think God wants this?

I believe creation is analogous to the composition of jazz music, a relational improvisation of God's design and composition. Since I think THIS is what it's all about, anything LESS than this is not a maximally beautiful (should of added maximally to that earlier statement of mine) FINAL STATE. It's not entirely ungly; it's not hell. But in comparison to the beauty of relationally improvised choice and loving expression, it pales.

God plays jazz--the beauty of relational improvisation.

Tom

Post Edited (MANY) : 6/26/2007 11:24:12 PM (GMT-5)

B: I "read" you, Tom. God created man with free will, and with the office of enjoying, tilling and tending, and giving thanks (in a free way) for the Creation. That is not only not deterministic, it is also not monotonous, as Creation--and one presumes new-creation too--are not borring. (Inifnity is found within creation: expanding.)

Tom: So why does D think you agree with him?

D: So...as I'm hearing you, it's not at all "relationally beautiful" for God to unilaterally determine the "thoughts, intentions, choices, actions, etc." of a being, even if this determination is the outcome of continual self-disposition by a freely choosing human.

Tom: I think what I said was I “don’t at all” expect or hope for a relationship with God and others in which everything about these relationships is determined by God. That’s not relationally beautiful to me.

What’s relational about it, D? I mean, what’s relational about the ONGOING determinations of the relationship? Nothing. The only thing that possibly makes it relational on your account is the fact that the person freely chooses to be so determined by God. That somehow continues to qualify the ongoing relationship as mutually personal. I’m not sure it does. I earlier said that I don’t know how to disprove the possibility of our freely disposing out of being freely disposing beings. But I’m very suspicious of it. I’m even more interested in WHY a person would want this. I’m extremely interested in why a person would think GOD would want this.

Hope that clarifies.

Tom

Post Edited (MANY) : 6/26/2007 11:27:12 PM (GMT-5)

B: But, what did Motzart have in mind? What can be said of Joplin can also be said of Motzart. (My nephew got all "1-s" in Musickschule in Vienna, Ostreich this year! Motzart's home town.) I still think you are steriotyping D., T.

Tom: I just wanted to focus on free ‘improvisation’. There is some freedom of interpretation and expression in Mozart’s music, yes. I don’t deny that. But it’s nothing like Jazz music. They are different genres. Trust me, D will not concede the sort of improvisation I’m describing.

Tom

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

Chapter 25. Concerning what is in our own power, that is, concerning Free-will.

Chapter 26. Concerning Events.

Chapter 27. Concerning the reason of our endowment with Free-will.

Chapter 28. Concerning what is not in our hands.

Chapter 29. Concerning Providence.

Chapter 30. Concerning Prescience and Predestination.

* Lest anyone object to the word 'infinity' let me point out that there are an infinite number of line segments on a segment one inch long--size doesn't matter.

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 6/26/2007 5:48:05 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (MANY) : 6/26/2007 11:30:41 PM (GMT-5)