Post Edited (Theoria) : 7/21/2007 12:34:18 PM (GMT-5)

 I'm the uneducated one here, but it seems useful to point out that what the True Person gives is not ourselves but rather our person-ness.

Did that help?

Post Edited (Theoria) : 7/22/2007 8:28:54 AM (GMT-5)

(Or here even!)

See anything interesting?

Post Edited (Theoria) : 7/22/2007 10:38:14 AM (GMT-5)

CUT AND PASTE AS YOU WISH!

Verses in the audio on "The Illumined Heart" Podcast;
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"He who IS" ............not just a greek philosophers "being" (neuter) but "being itself." (Personal living masculine)

2 things: God is transcendent (essence, substance, reality); God is totally present within creation (shared energies; not derivative). 2 aspects of Christian understanding of God -- they balance each other to avoid heresy.

Exodus 33. John 17.

Exodus 33. Moses, Mt. Sinai. Pleads with God to let him know/see him. "No one can see my "face" and live. Cleft of Rock. See 'back parts' i.e., energies.
Saw God's divine glory! Not a creature. Truely God. God as can be known and seen.

John 17. That divine glory can not only be seen (Transfiguration), but it is also something that can be shared -- given to disciples. Invites disciples to share in "the glory he shared with the Father from before the beginning of the world. Praying to the Father to let the disciples share in that glory. We can have it within us.

Examples of NT uses for God's energies:

Aristotle coined 'energies' - activity, always unplies actuality. Not potential

Colosians 1:29 - striving according to Christ's working/energy, which is being made effective/energized within me. (two forms of word energy two times in the verse.)

Paul is not made a pupet -- it is still his own life. Christ's energy as present in him is ALSO his own energy. Synergy -- union of energy between God and man.

God working, and we're working through God.

Not the same thing as partners. Our activity is not equal to God. Not two beings who are otherwise equal and separate. Anything that we do is going to be ultimately what we received the power and energy from God to do that.

Philipians 2:12-13 Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God which worketh/energy in you God who is active in you both to will and to do/energy of his good pleasure. (same verb twice)

Not either/or, but both/and. Exhorting Philipians to do this. Synergy. Work out...because it is God who is working in you. God imparts to them the energy to work out their own salvation. But it has to be *appropriated* by them, they have to *respond* freely as free agents, become, like Paul, a *vessel* of grace. They do not lose, in any way, their own reality as creatures.

 

Synergy.

 

It is God who is the ultimate source of this reality, but we are capable of appropriating it and making it ours.  

E/W grace/works.......... Fully understanding the ENERGIA solves those debates.

 

Grace must be there before man is even in a position to cooperate. Always preceeds the so-called works.

 

Western went of track because of notion of merit. M. is not prominent in NT.

 

God actively present in us enabling us to perform works that are pleasing to him. That is natural -- and you don't earn anything additional for doing so.  Not a form of merit, but it is a form of cooperation.

1 Cor 12 - gifts of the spirit. God works/energies - performed by God. Include: faith, or ability to call Jesus Lord. Even those are gifts of the Spirit. From the ground up, from our first response to God,from that first act of faith, it is God reaching out to God. God's presence enabling us and leading us to respond to God.  

 

Synergy.

 

Question: Connection between our acts as Christians in minestry, and God working in the world. Can we say that God is working through us?"

 

We can never say often enough that whatever we good we offer to God itself. comes from God -- including whatever works he enables us to perform.

 

Works of charity are perhaps the best examples. In caring for the poor you are responding to the presence of God that is right in front of you. The other human being. "The least of these" is a kind of second incarnation. Like, God is continually present before us, in man, enabling us to respond to him and thereby become to god by deification. by cooperating with God, by accepting and responding to this gift he offers to us through active works of charity. This is our salvation we are talking about, so it is enormously important.

 

Apply to working out our salvation in fear and trembling.

 

1.  Wrong to think of self as accumulating points.

2.  Wrong to think God leaves us to our own understanding.

 

"Energies" leads us away from both of these errors. Go is present here, now, both within us and around us. Beauty. The poor. God is around us calling us. Summon to respond and to come to him.

 

Another passage, the end of Romans 8, prayer itself as the unutterable groanings of the Spirt within of us, that sort us well up from the heart. Prayer itself is God reaching out to God. Things we do.........we have to think of them as the liturgy of God within us being offered up to God. Continually present.

 

Backing up to transcendence and immenence. . .

 

You don't want to draw charactures. But Augustine's version of divine simplicity -- attributes are equal to the single divine essence. God "wills" is identical with divine essence.

 

West had difficulty with a concept like "God's presence within creation." Impossible for divine essence to be present.

 

Augustine interprets biblical theophanies, as creatures. What East would call 'manifestations of divine glory' Augustine considered creatures--because the only two possibilites were essence or creatures.

 

Latin did not have the vocabulary to make the distinctions. (Greek distinguises active form and passive form of the word 'energy.' Latin 'operatur,' which is a passive form that has an active meaning.) Multiple Greek words all translated into the same Latin word. Also, Latin did not have the philosophical heritage, coming down from Aristotle.

 

Augustine's reading of NT put him not in place to see what Paul was saying. Augustine's ideas became codified in medieval Europe; and by the time Greek NT was recovered it was really too late. The categories by which theology was done were already established -- people really couldn't go back to square-one, and actually recognize what Paul was saying. 

Tom: I make a decision, OK? Let's say I choose X. My question is this. Did God choose X?

Theoria: Let me try this. It really looks like this is what you want to know: If "you" ("Tom" ) make a choice, what the final cause of that particular decision in that particular context? In my mind, the final cause...what provides the sufficiency for being a hypostatic agent...would be your activity of self-disposition. That would need to be there for your hypostatic activity to be fully actualized. (This is still taking into account "dependent origination" and all that.) However, insofar as "you" are 1) a continuing, sustained hypostatic event made of a contingent web of divine energies, hypostatically inherent in the Logos and, as such, 2) a localized expression in Creation of the universal personhood of God (God's Image), then I would say that there is meaning in saying that "you" are a "god" made in God's Image who has the potential to, through hypostatic participation, be unifed with God...such that all of "your" actions would be human and divine movement as God's providence would work through you more and more directly. (Growing into God's Likeness) There is a real, significant distinction between you and God that is found in the in bi-polar relational unity of God's essential existence (God Ad-Intra) and God's contingent expressive activity(God Ad-Extra). You are in the latter and cannot experience the former. God experiences the former and the latter.

Does this help at all?

Tom: I never dreamed something so simple could become so complex. It’s just a simple question. God is an agent who makes choices. And I make choices too, libertarian choices (so we all agree). So I’m an agent. The question is—are my agency and God’s agency co-terminus? Are they otherwise one and the same? If yes, then God ought to share in the responsibility for all my choices. If there are any choices of mine for which God is not responsible, then it seems to me that this is to be accounted for by positing distinct agencies not co-terminus or otherwise the same.

All I want to know is when I make a libertarian choice to do X, is God choosing X? Who’s responsible for X? What ‘agent’ owns X? It seems to me that we ought to ascribe responsibility for X to the owner of X, and X’s owner is the sufficient cause or determiner of X.

Do we ascribe responsibility for X to God? We do NOT. If not, then there is some non-God agency responsible for X.

The analogy of the eddie of a river is, in my view, horribly inadequate to account for moral agency and responsibility, for whatever the eddie does the river does. Whatever movements or effects flow from the eddie flow equally and co-terminously from the river. Whatever the eddie does the river does; not at all how I envision the relationship between God and humanity.

Tom

Post Edited (PLANIS) : 7/22/2007 9:36:34 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (PLANIS) : 7/23/2007 12:21:12 AM (GMT-5)