Post Edited (MANY) : 6/15/2007 9:20:24 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (jefscott) : 6/15/2007 10:10:15 AM (GMT-5)

While this is not exactly on-target for this thread, it is related (in echoing what the essence/engeries distinction preserves, without being exactly about that --- see what you think, I didn't even read it carefully. Ooops.).

Thursday, June 14, 2007

What They're Saying

God’s spiritual discipline

“The connection between apatheia and self-giving love (agapé) is crucial. In teaching apatheia as a spiritual discipline, the constant emphasis of the patristic theologians is on growing to be free of irrational feelings and fantasies that stem from self-love, from vanity and wounded pride. That is, apatheia, as either an attribute of God or a Christian virtue in this world and ‘beatitude’ for the world to come, is the opposite of what we normally call an emotional reaction. It is, rather, an aspect of the ‘eternal changelessness’ of divine love, ‘God’s everlasting outpouring,’ flowing in and (sic) from the Godhead and at work also in the human creature.

“Viewed in relation to divine love, it seems clear that the doctrine of apatheia functions to make two crucial assertions about God’s involvement with the world. Negatively, it refutes the possibility that the God known to Israel can ever become estranged from humanity or any part of it–unlike the highly emotional and therefore fickle gods worshiped by the Mesopotamians, the Greeks, or the Romans. Positively, the doctrine of apatheia affirms that God can be genuinely involved in events that happen in time, in human events, without either being formed or diminished by them.

“It is especially apt to consider the patristic teaching of apatheia . . . because I believe that the biblical concept of covenant is a way of making, through the medium of narrative, these same crucial assertions. Covenant is the stabilizing mechanism that allows God to remain profoundly involved in the contingent events of history, responding in various ways to the often distressingly unstable human situations and heart, yet without essential change in either the divine being or the divine disposition toward those whom God has made. The first indication of this function of covenant occurs within the early chapters of Genesis, when the original covenant is established, through Noah, with ‘all flesh’ (Gen 9:17). It is telling that the recognition that hurts God to the heart and leaders to the flood–namely, that ‘every inclination of the thought of [the human] heart is purely evil all the time’ (Gen 6:5)–is the very recognition that, immediately after the flood, moves God to forswear further destruction and enter into covenant with this creature whose heart inclines to evil ‘from his youth’ (8:21). And from this recognition the whole of biblical history unfolds. Now, it is foreseeable that there will be other occasions for God to be ‘hurt to the heart,’ yet covenant represents God’s own renunciation of an emotional reaction. It is God’s choice, one might say, of the spiritual discipline of apatheia.”

Ellen F. Davis, “Vulnerability, the Condition of the Covenant,” in The Art of Reading Scripture (Eerdmans, 2003), 292-293.

Posted by crconnect at 12:35 PM 0 comments  

crconnect.blogspot.com

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 6/15/2007 7:09:37 PM (GMT-5)

All I can say is to repeat stuff I’ve tried to express before…

A) I don’t think we draw metaphysical conclusions about ‘all’ human beings from God’s calling ‘some’ ancient Israelis (Israel’s ‘judges’) “elohim” or “gods.” It doesn’t seem plausible to me that Jesus answers his critics in Jn 10 with “Hey, if the Old Testament says we all the energies of God and monism is true, then surely that includes ME as well!” That is, if Jesus’ being God-incarnate is a unique thing, ontologically speaking, then it simply doesn’t prove anything about this to appeal to what we all are. This ends up destroying, not supporting, any unique sense of Jesus’ being God’s Son. I’m not sure just what the best take on Ps 82/Jn 10 is, but it doesn’t seem to me to be obvious that Jesus substantiates his status as God-incarnate by appealing to what all human beings are. Ps. 82 doesn’t say ‘all human beings’ are anything.

B) I envision an end state for human beings that precludes the divine will being the only will determining what occurs. That does not seem to me to be a end that is most glorifying or pleasing to God. Once you get human character sufficiently loving, why in the world would God want to program or otherwise determine its every move? What need would there be for such a hands-on approach? The whole assumption that this is what God wants or that it’s a desirable end state seems wrong to me given everything else we argue about personal relationality as open theists. So theosis, if it describes becoming a holy robot (wait a sec, a “divine holy robot”), is not something I aspire to. I do aspire to becoming one with God, to loving God with my whole heart, to doing everything I do to reflect him, and even to partaking of the divine nature (as Peter says, though I don’t think any of us knows exactly what that means or what metaphysical conclusions should be drawn from it), but I aspire to do this all as a subjective self, a person, not reducible to God’s self. Why do I want that? To be independent of God (as Unison continuously asks me)? To be separated from God? No no. I want this because I honestly believe it’s what God desires and is the end for which he created me. We’ve been over all this before.

C) Instead of describing all this in philosophical lingo, just describe human existence in the eternal state. Tell me what the daily in’s and out’s of human decision making and relating will look like in heaven. If we’re worshipping and loving God with our whole heart and being, if we’re doing all we do as an expression of love and joy, if we understand that we’re created and consummated reflections of his beauty, if we’re relating to other human persons as persons, making choices about how to celebrate and love God, them, and the environment, carrying on in human society, then I say “Yes!” I don’t want something other than this. This is what I want. This is all I want. But I don’t envision it in metaphysical terms D describes. In fact, some of his metaphysical breakdown of this end state seems to jeopardize what I’ve just described.

D) This isn’t something we’ve talked about before, but I did just get Gannon Murphy’s Consumming Glory: A Classical Defense of Divine-Human Relationality Against Open Theism. Wanna start into it this weekend. But I did notice that one his main points (or maybe his main thesis) has to do with theosis. It looks like he’s going to argue that since theosis is where we’re headed, and since theosis describes a state wherein everything about us is determined by God, what’s the problem with everything being determined by God now?

Gotta run!

Tom

Post Edited (MANY) : 6/16/2007 9:53:07 AM (GMT-5)

T.     ".. So theosis, if it describes becoming a holy robot (wait a sec, a “divine holy robot”), is not something I aspire to..."

B.     Nor I.

But, the goarch.org article above says this:

THE HOLY SPIRIT
The ever-deepening union of each Christian with God is not a magical or automatic process. While Christ has destroyed the powers of sin, death, and evil once and for all, this victory must be appropriated by each person in cooperation with the Holy Spirit. Each person is called to join with the lifegiving and liberating Spirit" in realizing the fulness of human life in communion with the Father. The Holy Spirit is the agent of deification whose task it is to incorporate us into the life of the Holy Trinity. However, the Spirit always recognizes our human freedom and invites our active cooperation in perfecting the "image and likeness of God" with which each of us is created.

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 6/16/2007 9:09:53 AM (GMT-5)

Tom: ".. So theosis, if it describes becoming a holy robot (wait a sec, a “divine holy robot”), is not something I aspire to..."

POW: Nor I … but …

Tom: One may not describe it in terms of being a holy robot (though D hasn’t objected to describing it as such), but if the end result = everything about the person is determined by the divine will (EVEN IF THE PERSON IS FREELY ASPIRING TO THIS), then I object. What I object to is the view/understanding of God that thinks God would desire such a thing.

I've tried to make this clear before. What I envision as the end state of human being is our having become such that God can have his character reflected in beings HE DOESN'T HAVE TO MICROMANAGE BY PROSCRIBING EVERY NEXT STEP. That God would desire this (that is, making every determination and actualizing his unilaterally determined will THROUGH us) and create for this is an unargued assumption that entails a particular sort of oneness with God. If it's not assumed or not true, then "oneness" with God may be envisioned in different terms, terms that allow us to say we're perfectly reflecting God's loving character but also reflecting the FREEDOM that God is. Reflecting that freedom in compatibilistically loving ways means oneness with God includes God's foreeeeeever letting go on certain levels, and THEREIN lies the beauty and diversity. D wants the diversity to reside in the DIVINE WILL determining our wills (viz., God alones decides to do 'this' in you and 'that' through me). I want to posit the diversity in the DETERMINATION of human volition sufficiently glorified in love so that the future continues to be open, though open within a scope of possibilities that are all loving and Godlike. So God doesn't always know what he gets from and through us, though he can know it will perfectly reflect his loving character. But what D has been describing precludes the sort of diversity and beauty I envision.

I don't know how else to describe it.

POW (article): Each person is called to join with the lifegiving and liberating Spirit" in realizing the fulness of human life in communion with the Father.

Tom: Sounds fine to me but leaves unanswered the question of WHAT a human being actually is in such communion.

POW (article): The Holy Spirit is the agent of deification whose task it is to incorporate us into the life of the Holy Trinity.

Tom: Sounds good to me but again it leaves unanswered the question of WHAT a human being actually is when fully incorporated.

POW (article): However, the Spirit always recognizes our human freedom and invites our active cooperation in perfecting the "image and likeness of God" with which each of us is created.

Tom: And when the process is perfected, what is an individual human being after that point?

Tom

Post Edited (MANY) : 6/16/2007 9:51:53 AM (GMT-5)

http://www.amazon.com/Man-Cosmos-Vision-Maximus-Confessor/dp/0881410195

 

Tom: Tell me what the daily in’s and out’s of human decision making and relating will look like in heaven.

Jeff: I totally agree with you that we will not be robots when we partake of the divine nature. I think all that means is that we will no longer desire that which is or constitutes wrongly-relating.  But we will still be free to positively-affect the sentient satisfaction of our fellow sentient beings in a host of diverse, creative ways.

I would distinguish between, say, covetous desires and desiring food while fasting. Eating is not wrongly-relating, per the actual order of things. Thus, desiring to eat is not wrongly-relating. Fasting, then, is not good because it is the elimination of hunger (the desire for food), but because it is the intentional refusal to succomb to the desire of food to attain to another kind of good.

So Jesus hungering while fasting would not be an example of desiring that which is wrongly-relating. But coveting is. Because coveting is desiring that which is contrary to the very "order" of things. Coveting is, essentially, a disordering act, because it diminishes that sentient satisfaction that right-relating (according to the order of things) maintains and/or augments.

The reason why I make that distinction is to allow for the idea of Christ having the divine nature (i.e., incapacity to desire wrong-relating) even during the incarnation. Not all desires contrary to an intended goal constitute wrong-relating. As another example, the mere desire to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge (because of the properties of the fruit) was not wrongly-relating. Indeed, it was that desire (impelling unto the eating of it) that we are to see as the occasion for the act of volition.

But one day, there will be no suffering at all. Only the desire to creatively (i.e., volitionally) positively-affect the sentient satisfaction of all.