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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 1/13/2008 2:14 PM (GMT -6) |   | "If truth is stranger than fiction, as we sometimes say, it may be that we live in a state of estrangement from the truth. Suppose it were all turned around and the fictions by which we lice were suddenly and starkly thrust, as on the Damascus road, into the light of a Truth so splendid we would cringe and hide our wounded eyes from it. Suppose we can only bear one glimpse of the Truth at a time. Then the Truth would be wonderful and terrible, and we would cherish our moments before it and long for more—yet we would be afraid lest we get too much all at once.
But suppose further that the Truth took on the nature of our fictions making—incredible!—our fictions bearers of the Truth. Who could conceive such a thing, even in retrospect? Perhaps only those who have once been partially blinded by the Truth—whether suddenly or gradually—come to the breath-taking realization that the One who sits at table and breaks bread and drinks wine with us is the One through whom and for whom all ten billion light years of creation, including our own come-lately, here and now existence, have their being. To sit at table with Him is more wonderful and terrible than a blinding light since it allows us no fictional existence in which to shroud ourselves, no place to hide from the relentlessly gracious claim that our very existence, fractured and fictionalized as it is, is of infinite worth, potentially a bearer of the very Truth which we fear could so easily crush us under the weight of it’s glory.
But suppose, finally, that this awesome condition in which we may find ourselves has in it a kind of comprehensive intelligibility we had not dared to consider before, a reason about reason, a supra rationem, that is so inclusive of us and the universe that we couldn’t see it unless it were shown to us in a gigantic mirror. If even cosmic chaos has in its hidden order, as we are surprisingly coming to understand, how much more astonishing and compelling is that greater intelligibility which unites all creation—even the turbulence and unpredictable upheavals of natural and human existence—to its creator. Such a union would have to be full God and fully human. Yet this remains ancient text and obscure doctrine until, in that breathless moment, we see ourselves, the full dimensions of our existence, reflected in the Holy One at the table with us. In the broken bread and wine, He becomes a mirror in whom we see simultaneously the embodied chaos of human existence in a vast and meaningless universe, and the hidden order and sacred destiny which He by His Presence—and not separable from that Presence—in a moment of epiclesis would beget in us. Then—though we could never say how—we see that the fragment could contain the whole, we are captivated by the intelligibility of His nature which we long to embrace, and it draws us to the edge of the abyss of uncreated light, the inner life of God.
But alas—to lay hold on that remarkable intelligibility by which one’s fragmentary existence becomes the bearer of the whole, that intelligibility through which all things have been made---to lay hold on that by faith is to touch the ark of the covenant, it is to hear “the sound of a mighty wind,” as “the roar of the New Jerusalem”,” and it is to die. Who wants to die so that the uncreated light and life of God may indwell human flesh and turn everything we do into the work of God’s Spirit?
Holy in its nature, the life of the Spirit is stunning in its impact; the depths of its mysterious centered silence remains unmoved, intensely personal, even in its rush through the walls of the upper room, its pause to console, its power to disclose and to heal, and its provocation to joy and exuberant praise. This is marvelous and dangerous; ordinary human flesh should not have to consider such alternatives.
If we do die, then all that we saw in Him and in ourselves because of Him as He sat at table with us, now becomes in our death the transformation of ordinary existence. We become in our individual and common life the outer expression of His invisible nature, including the darkness of dereliction as well as the light or the transfiguration—that by which condemnation is condemned, false light is itself falsified, and daily life is a continuing intra-mundane ecstasy. Who will die to bear witness to the inner life of God, to become an expression of this higher order? Not many—or perhaps, in another way, somewhere inside, all of us know we are supposed to die. In moments of deeply centered reflection we know the death instinct is not biological but teleological—we have been given life so as to die for what is so much more important than our own lives. If we just knew a bit more—if we could just put our hand and touch it, to be sure we are not being deceived…”
James E. Loder, The Transforming Moment, pp. 211-213
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Past post by me...
James Loder has a concept he calls " mundane ecstasy." (It's actually similar to the idea of sahaja and jivanmukta. ) He gives a good simple description about mundane ecstasy in "The Transforming Moment" page 223 (Parentheses and emphases mine) Ecstasy: In general usage, a transcendent, "standing-outside-of" the ordinary limits of reality under the impetus of a benevolent spiritual presence. This usage is intended here, except where the term is combined with "mundane." Then it denotes a "standing-outside-of" simultaneous with a "standing-more-deeply-within" the everyday, or the two-dimensional reality. (ie Self and the Lived World) In mundane ecstasy, therefore, ordinary existence can be perceived four-dimensionally (ie Self, Lived World, Void, and the Holy)In my mind, it's a reality of e nstasy and ecstasy at the same time where one REALLY participates in God's World at all times. As one lives epicletically in the "Present Moment", she allows the Eternal/Being into the Temporal/Becoming of life. (One-Story Universe...right, Bruce?  ) My personally held conception of continuous "complete awareness of God" falls along these lines.
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More Loder. In his book (with W. Jim Neidhardt), The Knight's Move: The Relational Logic of the Spirit in Theology and Science, there is a section called "The Spiritual Recentering of Human Development." Here, he discusses his model of spirtual growth. All parentheses and emphases are mine.
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This model further suggests that human development, currently being studied almost exclusively at the level of ego function and formation, is to be reinterpreted as centering not on the ego (Note: The self-understandings of "Tom", "Dwayne", "Brandon" are EGO-FORMATIONS...mental constructs that our brains have garnered because of our EMBODIED experiences between the "Self" and "Lived World"! This is extremely important to understand!) but on intensification as a bipolarity that extends between the ego and the Absolute Unity of Being. This bipolarity may be seen as the spiritual axis for human development, which intersects the arc of ego-development as one of it's polarities, and Absolute Unity at the center, as the other. Ego development (Erikson, Piaget, Kohlberg, etc) may be seen as circumnambulation around the center, the Absolute Unity of Being, but left to itself ego development is inextricably rooted in negation and eventual death. (Note: The mental formation of the ego CANNOT maintain it's self-relational integrity by itself. It needs a transcendent ground to do that. SK was RIGHT!) Spiritual development consists in increased access between the ego and the Divine center, not in ego development per se. Thus, the immature ego of the child may have greater access to the Center and be more spiritually mature than an adult ego with less access. (Note: Remember AKIANE, the artist child of God?) However, the adult ego may be more articulate with less access than the child and so effectively confuse the issue, making it appear incorrectly that ego development is definitive of spiritual development.
Although it cannot be fully spelled out here, this model suggests that the classic fourfold pattern of spiritual development is parallel to the phases of intensification. This pattern moves from awakening to purgation to illumination to unification, and at each stage access to the Divine center is enhanced as ego anxiety and strategies of defense subside. Thus, if the Christological nature of the model pertains as described above, then spiritual development may be conceived as a way of life in which one increasingly appropriates the bipolar coherence of Christ into one's own nature. It should be evident that this in no way represents ego inflation or egoistic striving: it is precisely the opposite; but the "I" who says "I, not I, but Christ" is not lost, only recentered from the ego ("Tom", "Dwayne", Brandon", etc) to the One who holds in his nature the full and complete account of the mutual indwelling of the Divine and the human. (Note: Christ becomes the true "subject" of all one's experience!!)
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In the same book, from the section is "The Self's Experiential Appropriation of Trinitarian Life", pp.299-300 (All parentheses Loder's)
Let us now summarize the experiential appropriation of trinitarian life by way of the same three levels Torrance used to describe the emergence fo the doctrine of the Trinity. First, the spontaneous creative work of consciousness which is both autobiographical (involving the "I" ) and symbolically constructed (not merely awareness as shared with lower animals) is, as we have suggested, implicitly but not sufficiently perichoretic. It is already the bearer of despair. Second, intentional efforts to created a new frame of knowledge vis-a-vis any given situation or problem, as in Einstein's productive thought, approaches ever more profoundly, but still insufficiently, the perichoretic potential in the mind and self of the knower. Even great creative efforts do not elude despair. Third, for Kierkegaard, is the decisive level in which the Divine Presence is able, in turn, to indwell the self via the Holy Spirit. That is, the Holy Spirit generates an open-ended reality that replicates in human nature the Divine nature of the Trinity. Here the image indwells its Original and, at the same time, and because of that indwelling, becomes a reflection of it. The transparently grounded self is thus sustained as such by the Divine nature and at the same time is transcended by it as Original transcends image.
Note that the Perichoretic reality that demonstrates itself in the Epicletic "leap" of faith!
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Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart
Chapter 8: Transforming the Will (Heart or Spirit) and Character, p. 143-144
Now we ask, What does a will or heart look like that has been transformed into Christlikeness? How is it to be characterized?
Jesus said of himself—and of course he is always the pattern—“He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him” (John 8:29).
And Paul had this to say: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.” (Galatians 2:20).
We also recall John Calvin’s words: “The only haven of safety is to have no other will, no other wisdom, than to follow the Lord wherever he leads. Let this, then, be the first step, to abandon ourselves, and devote the whole energy of our minds to the service of God.”
So we have the answer to our question: Single-minded and joyous devotion to God [Imago's Note: God the Father] and his will, to what God wants for us—and to service to him and to others because of him—is what the will transformed into Christlikeness looks like. That is the outcome of Christian spiritual formation with reference to the will, heart, or spirit. And this outcome becomes our character when it has become the governing response of every dimension of our being. Then we can truly be said to have “put on Christ.”
But how far this is from the usual human will and character we hardly need say! Instead of being simple and transparent through a constant and coherent devotion to God, the usual human will is a place of chaotic duplicity and confusion if not darkness, because it is the playing field of pride and fear and lack of confidence in God, shrouded in layer upon layer of destructive habits.
So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them... Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/13/2008 1:23:44 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 1/13/2008 9:49 PM (GMT -6) | | Ha ha ha. Comment, buddy. 
Basically, is this making any sense to you?
So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them... Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/13/2008 8:52:41 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 1/13/2008 9:55 PM (GMT -6) | | | I'm with Tom: I think if you sprung all this on Paul when he wrote the words he'd be like, "Huh? What?" I think he just meant to say that he had given up attempting to live his own independent life his own independent way in favor of following Christ and obeying him. I don't know if there's enough here to extrapolate ANY deeply metaphysical conclusions about ultimate reality per se, D. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 1/13/2008 9:57 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 1/13/2008 10:06 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom/Corey:
I think if you sprung all this on Paul when he wrote the words he'd be like, "Huh? What?" I think he just meant to say that he had given up attempting to live his own independent life his own independent way in favor of following Christ and obeying him. I don't know if there's enough here to extrapolate ANY deeply metaphysical conclusions about ultimate reality per se, D.
Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.
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But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.
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I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!"
So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them... Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/13/2008 9:19:39 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 1/13/2008 11:49 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom: For me, the 'logos' determines a measure of freedom. It just IS a spark of creative and free love. When we become into THAT, we are creative centers centered in God.
and...
We need an indeterminist model of theosis which views ‘logoi’ as “creative packages” that human beings unpack in ways NOT [exhaustively] determined by the divine will (thought he divine will determines the possibilities).
D: Let it be said and noted that I AGREE with these ideas!
Tom: How can you? I just don’t see anything in your comments that indicates you think fully realized human beings are creative centers who shall always determine something of the shape of their loving expression in ways NOT determined by the divine will and that this creative determining center is PART of the ‘person’, the ‘identity’, we bring to an interpersonal relationship with God.
D: For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.
Tom: To me it just looks like D is saying that his accomplishments as an apostle are not his own independent accomplishments achieved through his own independent effort, but they are the result of a synergy between him and the person of Christ, through the presence of ‘grace’.
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Think through the analogies I gave of a policeman or an ambassador. I think there might be something there that’ll bring us closer together.
A policeman says, “Open up in the name of the Law.”
An ambassador speaks and acts on behalf of his government, essentially BEING that government by virtue of his ‘relationship’ to the President of the United States.
Each of these is an ‘identity’ that the individual embraces in exercising certain dispositional capacities (signing treaties, searches and seizures, arrests, etc.). Those dispositional capacities are only available to individuals who stand in appropriate relationship (with the President or the city or whatever). It’s an “identity [ambassador or policeman] shaped through relationship.”
An ambassador, in a sense IS the government he has a relationship with and he gets his ‘identity’ as an ambassador by virtue of this relationship. The ‘other’ in his relationship (the President) penetrates his identity and self-perception. I can imagine an ambassador never stepping outside this relationship, this identity (to the detriment of his other identities—so to speak—as a father and husband, for example). He might ‘always bring his work home with him’ and speak to his wife and kids as if he were still representing the US government.
I can get with this. It’s just an analogy, and if you think it brings us closer, fine. I’ll bring MORE interrelationality to it than you will. I won’t draw the lines as asymmetrically as you will. And like I said about the ‘logoi’ being apprehended indeterministically by God, I’ll have creatures who are non-divine persons who choose to perceive themselves in terms of their relationship to God and then to “bring their work home with them” everywhere they go. But where living out of one identity is harmful to all other relationships when that one identity is not the God-individual relationship (identity), all other relationships improve and function properly when that one identity IS the God-individual relationship.
I don’t have a problem with this. But I still see this identity as INTER-PERSONAL. You don’t. You reduce finite subjects to being predicates of the all-inclusive agency of God. I don’t. That can’t be the case if non-divine, finite subjects are determining which of several God-ordained options is actualized (an indeterminist model of theosis). So the ambassador perceives himself as an “expression of the United States” in a foreign land, but he also sees himself as freely self-determining person. Part of his identity is that irreducibly free and creative center that behaves within a scope of choices compatible with his being an ambassador. That which determines which of a number of possible choices isn’t the US government, and it can’t be “nature” per se. It has to be a ‘personal’ entity.
T
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One Love
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| Posted 1/13/2008 11:56 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
I don’t have a problem with this. But I still see this identity as INTER-PERSONAL. You don’t. You reduce finite subjects to being predicates of the all-inclusive agency of God. I don’t. That can’t be the case if non-divine, finite subjects are determining which of several God-ordained options is actualized (an indeterminist model of theosis). So the ambassador perceives himself as an “expression of the United States” in a foreign land, but he also sees himself as freely self-determining person. Part of his identity is that irreducibly free and creative center that behaves within a scope of choices compatible with his being an ambassador. That which determines which of a number of possible choices isn’t the US government, and it can’t be “nature” per se. It has to be a ‘personal’ entity.
Let's try something. Spirit help us.
"Father's Child relationship" <=> "Expression of United States" self-understanding taken on by relatively autonomous American citizen
Human brain/mind <=> Relatively autonomous American citizen
If my essential personhood is "I, not I, but the Father", how is this NOT interpersonal on the DEEPEST level?
How is my identity NOT interpersonal, again?
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Tom:
I can imagine an ambassador never stepping outside this relationship, this identity (to the detriment of his other identities—so to speak—as a father and husband, for example). He might ‘always bring his work home with him’ and speak to his wife and kids as if he were still representing the US government.
American Dad. (Click here first!!)
So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them... Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/14/2008 12:06:42 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 1/14/2008 8:30 AM (GMT -6) | | Let us sing to the Father...
Everything to Me
Fred Hammondwww.youtube.com/watch?v=6tKA_sztiDEMy start, my now, my close, my end.
The lover of my soul, my friend
Oh, Lord...you are my everything
My Father God, My Lord and KIng...--Fred Hammond Our Father.
You are so very wonderously worthy, beautiful and holy!
Let your Kingdom Come...
And your Will be done...
On earth in our very beings...
as it is in the heavenlies.
Provide us with what we will need today
And give us grace...as we are gracious to others.
Lead us away from anything that would take our minds away from you...
and deliver us from all evil, personal and otherwise.
For Yours will always and ever be the Power, Majesty, Honor, and Glory.
Forever and ever, unto the everlasting ages.
Amen.
So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them... | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 1/14/2008 8:41 AM (GMT -6) | | | "I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."
The Jews who heard these words were again divided. Many of them said, "He is demon-possessed and raving mad. Why listen to him?"
But others said, "These are not the sayings of someone possessed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?"
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When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"
They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."
Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of death will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/14/2008 7:46:59 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 1/14/2008 9:34 AM (GMT -6) | | |
D: But what if we have two TOTALLY SEPARATE AND DISTINCT brains had only ONE CONCEPT as their personal existence "I, not I, but the Father."...and both brains related to God ONLY from that perspective?
Wouldn't you have a weird situation where two "singularities" of human hypostatic existence would be participating in the same SINGLE eternal hypostatic reality?
Tell me you see this...please...
Tom: I see your meaning. I don't think it captures an ‘indeterminist model of theosis’ (as I mean it at least). To me you reduce finite subjects (human persons) to being predicates of the divine person. That’s the fundamental difference between us. That’s why I posted those comments by Malone-France on Whitehead. If there’s an irreducible freedom that defines the human subject, so that the subject determines itself in transitioning possibility to actuality, I don’t see how this exercise of freedom does not share in defining the identity of the subject as a person. Persons are discrete subjects whose meaning (identity) is mutually defined through relations with other persons. From my point of view you have the lines of influence that determine identity all originating in God and running asymmetrically TO the human subject. It’s all one-way traffic on your view, not inter-personal traffic (an exchange of thoughts, feelings, and desires between two persons whose identities and meanings are determined THROUGH the exchange itself). And that’s the problem. In my view, the non-divine subject has to contribute something ‘as a subject’ to the relationship if the relationship is to be inter-personal, and that means nothing if it doesn’t mean that the non-divine subject shares in determining its meaning/identity within the relationship. Again, mutually determined identity.
So when I talk of an indeterminist model of theosis, I mean fully-realized divine-human interpersonal relationality wherein there is a mutual exchange of thoughts, feelings, and desires and wherein the exchange is determined by both subjects-in-relation (and not exhaustively by God).
And may consider taking a further step in understanding the mutually defining nature of the relationship, such that human contributions to God’s ongoing life-experience participate in shaping God’s own identity as well. They can’t participate in defining God essentially, but they take up room—so to speak—in God’s apprehension (and appreciation) of his own life and identity. THAT is kenotic creationism. In other words, now that God has created, when he perceives himself—shall I say it?—We are there. And if we’re there, that can only mean we contribute to the definition, the identity, the MEANING of what God perceives.
Tom
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Sahid
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Total Posts : 2013
| Posted 1/14/2008 7:11 PM (GMT -6) | | I'm all for grand, overarching frameworks that elegantly bring together otherwise disjointed reality. But I've got to see some practical payoff to be interested. Now I hear you that it affects your worship, and that is not to be taken lightly. But as far as that goes, how am I to judge between experiences of worship?
Correct me if I'm wrong (I probably am), but Tom is advocating a real, permanent multiplicity of persons without denying a real and permanent unity (but not of persons), on the other hand Dwayne is advocating the opposite: a real unity of person without denying a real (non-personal) multiplicity. I am wary of categories such as "person." I first need to be convinced that this personal/non-personal distinction is one I should care about. So far I don't.
If you tell me a being has two brains and one "person" or "ONE CONCEPT as their personal existence," I just say, "Huh?" One concept? If it's a matter of self-concept, then I don't see why you two can't agree that we can both conceive of ourselves as followers of Christ and also members of Christ. At this point we are not discussing metaphysics but semantics and metaphor.
If, on the other hand, I've misinterpreted the two-brains thing and you mean to say that I will at some point cease to have a mind and thoughts distinct from God (who is looking less and less like a Trinity), then I think you've gone too far and substituted the social, communal, outwardly-loving God for something more monolithic than I am comfortable associating with Jesus and our story of faith.
Either way, we are either individual willing persons or we've somewhat successfully convinced ourselves that we are, so what's it all matter? Bring it back around to ethics and I'll be interested.
Watch me fly. Freedom like wings and I will use them. Freedom like wings and I will spread them wide. - Stavesacre | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 1/14/2008 7:19 PM (GMT -6) | | You see my meaning? Ok, then.
So let's say that you have two people ACTUALLY doing this. Two people who strive only define themselves as God's Child (Father's Child born from and borne by Father's Spirit)...and they relate to the created order from that perspective. Moreover, they REALLY BELIEVE that, as they see themselves this way and, by divine grace, strive to live in continual "poverty of spirit"...the Father's Spirit never ceases to 1) use them providentially for God's divine purposes such that effectively God is TRULY the subject of their actions and 2) they find a fullness of love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, etc through their relationship with Father and Father's Spirit through inhering in the personhood of Father's Child. Following this scripture...
For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.
...we freely choose to be "led" by the Spirit of God in absolutely ALL AREAS of their human existence, not leaving ANYTHING out. They believe that, through epicletic faith (faith leading to mystical "revealing" of the Real Presence of Christ in the "ordinary", they can be a "continuation of Christ's Incarnation". In relating to Father (and his Spirit), they FREELY CHOOSE the stance "Not my will, but Your will be done" for absolutely everything they think, feel, and desire. They only think about God and they ONLY desire the accomplishment of God's will in them at all times.
How would you straighten out their self-concepts so that they would align with your view?
Seriously. Show me step by step how these people are inaccurate in their interpersonal relationship with the Father.
So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them... | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/14/2008 7:36 PM (GMT -6) | | Sahid:
I'm all for grand, overarching frameworks that elegantly bring together otherwise disjointed reality. But I've got to see some practical payoff to be interested. Now I hear you that it affects your worship, and that is not to be taken lightly. But as far as that goes, how am I to judge between experiences of worship?
I was really, really hoping that...at least for the people who knew "Mephi" from since the old days...the radical change in my disposition would be allowed as evidence of what I'm experiencing being true. (Forget all the other stuff...Jesus prayer...Christ in me...etc.) I especially thought this for the old heads that remembered me back with the Carlie days...angry, brazen, suicidal...and THEN the times when I barely believed in Jesus, the Bible, the Church or even Satan. I thought that the "fruit" of what's the Spirit's been doing with me and my family/friends/etc (I've been chronicling my transformation on this board pretty much) would be evidence of God's working in this...and inherently demonstrate the awesome practicality. I would have definitely thought this with Tom. Oh well...
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Sahid:
Correct me if I'm wrong (I probably am), but Tom is advocating a real, permanent multiplicity of persons without denying a real and permanent unity (but not of persons), on the other hand Dwayne is advocating the opposite: a real unity of person without denying a real (non-personal) multiplicity.
Tom's unity is the purification of creaturely subjectivity into God-likeness virtue. Both God the Son and human hypostases have God-virtue.
My unity is the personal (hypostatic), subjectively appropriated self-understanding of God the Son: "I, not I, but the Father." Both God the Son and human hypostases define the core of their personhood solely from their PERSONAL relationship with the Father and Father's Spirit...as Father's Child.
I believe that BOTH OCCUR...but I believe that the unity in the Logos' hypostasis is primary.
So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them... Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/14/2008 8:27:19 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/14/2008 8:04 PM (GMT -6) | | Sahid:
Sorry, if I offended.
Dude, there's absolutely no offense taken. That wasn't my point. My point was that I believed that lived personal transformation into Christlikeness, Christianly speaking, was evidential of a human being living in Truth (Truth as Person of Christ). By God's grace, I've done an entire 180 in my entire existence in all of my relationships through this development. And my theological ideas (growing as they are) are not separate from that process in which I thoroughly believe Christ's Spirit is involved. In other words, I was hoping this:
As weird as this stuff starts to sound, I hope that the way that my mind has been transformed by Christ's Spirit, and my previous transparency about everything else on this board (including my anger with and nigh disbelief in God) will give some indication about how REAL this is.
If ANYONE disbelieved in the usefulness and practicality of the Jesus Prayer, hesychasm, Church Tradition, and all that, it was me. I thought it impractical...just like I thought Jesus' "Take no thought for you life" think impractical. So...in my mind, for all THAT to change, God's got to be up to something, right?
So, again, NO OFFENSE taken at all.
So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them... Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/14/2008 7:17:12 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/14/2008 11:58 PM (GMT -6) | | "Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring - when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children - black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics - will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
--Martin Luther King, Jr
So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them... Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/14/2008 11:03:33 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/15/2008 12:20 AM (GMT -6) | | | In the ongoing interplay between the human spirit and the Holy Spirit, there is is a vital exchange--continuously alive, bringing forth fundamentally new orders of being and understanding. Yet the new orders do not violate or contravene the paradoxical unity of the two spirits. The kinetic moments of convergence presupposed by the model are a kind of epiclesis--the moment in the celebration of the Eucharist when by an act of the Holy Spirit the elements become the body and blood of Christ. Repeatedly enacted (Imago's Note: Continually living in POVERTY OF SPIRIT with Father's Spirit), the moment is a "leap" between the human and the Divine, the Divine and the human, which in all situations brings forth transformation--if not a transubstantiation--of the fallen orders of mind, life, and creation.
The final point to be stressed here is the twist [Imago's note: of Da Loop Da Loop, Tom ] As a physical model of the decisive kinetic moment, the twist depicts a temporal event via spatial terms but without spatializing it. Thus, the twist in the model bears a fundamental truth about the relationsh between the two spirits [Imago's Note: Holy Spirit and human spirit] : in this interplay time eludes space and all its presumed determinants, and via transformation a new order of fundamental determinants emerges. In the context of irreversible thermodynamics it is not time per se that is irreversible, but time's determinants. The fallen and shattered teacup can't reassemble itself on the table; the filmstrip of events does not run backward. However, time stripped of its determinants (as can only happen in reflective human consciousness [Imagos' Note: HESYCHASM!!!! ], an inveterably "open system" ) appears to be reversible in the spontaneous creation of a new order of determinants. [Imago's Note: "ONE STORY" Living that occurs in KAIROS...otherwise known as...)
Theologically, the experience of that "reversibility" in faith is a new being in Christ. However, as we will see, this notion involves "God's time." In this context, what appears to be reversibility may instead be highly accelerated motion toward the eschatological future in Christ--a wrinkle in time and foretaste of the redemption of all things.
James Loder, Knignt's Move. 121-122.
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The man knew God and was a genius. I don't know how better to say it than this.
This is the experience.
So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them... Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/14/2008 11:27:39 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/15/2008 12:38 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
In the end (just on the theory side of the explanation), I don't see your view as INTERpersonal. Define the non-God person for me? If persons are discrete identities, where's the non-divine person on your view? It has to be a self-perceiving entity, or else what happens to its identity? That's why FREEDOM is so cricial. If there's no freedom to determine self in creative ways, there's no ground for an 'identity' other than the one determining identity--God's. But if there is such freedom, there HAS to be identity.
"Non-God person-ness" (that's the best I can do right now... ) is a self-relational perspective that can be subjectively appropriated by a human "center of willing"...which leads to the possible experience of DESPAIR.
Jesus showed us that.
"My God, My God! Why have YOU forsaken ME?"
Ok. Jesus is SEPARATING HIMSELF from God in this situation such that "ME" (Jesus) feels abandoned by "YOU" (God).
But this is the ONE PERSON of the God the Logos talking, given Chalcedon? How can this be?
Well, Jesus WAS separated from God (Himself)...in his flesh.
Jesus WILLINGLY took our faulty perspective (Jesus "became sin" )...and gave us the chance to take his RIGHTLY RELATED perspective (We "become righteous" in Him). Jesus showed us how our TROPOS were really supposed to work when he kept living in the "Abba, Father" reality!
But just like God the Son had the ability to experience self-separation in Jesus' human perspective of self-relationship...ALL HUMAN BEINGS have the ability to experience the perfect self-relatedness of the Father/Father's Spirit/Father's Image(Child) relationship through their human perspective of self-relationship (I, not I, but the Father)
We all (Jesus and the rest of humanity) SHARE the same human nature after all.
So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them... Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/14/2008 11:44:24 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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