Minithought: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even life itself—such a person cannot be my disciple."

The core of my personhood would still be "I, not I, but the Father" as "Father's Child"

Do you see this?  Do you see the POWER and FREEDOM in that kind of existence?

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/21/2008 11:11:24 AM (GMT-6)

We are not of this world.  We come in peace.

Outkast
ATLiens
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ygqj3RbHFU&feature=related

Programs:

What Faith Shall I Defend?

Posted Friday, January 18, 2008

Fr. Stephen makes a distinction between the truth of the Christian faith and the many distortions and misperceptions of the Christian faith that surround us. He makes the case that we need only defend the search for the true and living God.

http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/freeman/

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/21/2008 12:59:41 PM (GMT-6)

Loder: 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, 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: 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, an inveterably "open system" [Imagos' Note:The practice of HESYCHASM! ], ) appears to be reversible in the spontaneous creation of a new order of determinants. 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.

Tom: I didn’t understand a single word Loder said. Not a single word. POW, did you?

Look ya’ll, just leave me behind, OK? Go onward and upward into whatever mystical unity thang ya got going. If you’re right, I’ll get it all when I catch up to you in heaven without all the debating. If you’re wrong, you won’t care by then either. I do love God. I don’t seek to get my meaning and value and identity from myself or others even though it follows from you view that I must be doing so. I really do attempt to live out of the life-giving connection I have to God, in Christ, through the Spirit as adopted and loved. And I do all this, perceiving it in interpersonal, face to face terms. That really shouldn’t be possible on your view. But hopefully it’s enough to get me into port on the other side of the Jordan! Whatever happens then is fine with me.

-----------------------------

D, what you expressed about having previously gotten your personal identity from being a black man, etc., is beautiful. It’s totally explainable on my view too, so I don’t see what it offers uniquely in defense of your view. I don’t suggest that our identities are “rooted” (as you objected in response to me earlier) in any of our relationships save the relationship to/with God. All we differ on is the nature of THAT relationship. I see it as interpersonal, a “face to face” encounter. You see it as God encountering Godself in us, the divine Person staring at the divine Person.

By the way, I wrote David Bentley Hart a week or so ago asking him about this. He just wrote back. What’d he say? He said he apologized but there was no way he could engage me at all. Just too busy. Said he gets 100 emails a day from people who (like me) write wanting to chat about this or that. Said he couldn’t even make it to the end of my email!

T

To the extent that we enter into the mystery of Christ, who died for us when we were all sinners and under the wrath of God, our hearts in our deepest being is transformed. The heart, once inhabited by the forces of darkness and hatred, becomes the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. It is no longer I who live--this destestible I--but Christ who lives in me (Gal 2:20). He is the one who lives, who loves, who forgives. He is the one who prays and intercedes. Jesus on the cross makes heavenly intercession, as the one whom the Epistle of the Hebrews and the entire Christian tradition calls "the high priest." Essentially the risen Christ prays that we might enter into His prayer and forgive. In the breath of the Spirit who sighs in us, "Abba, Father," He is the one who is poured out in our hearts. This is the gift of Pentecost, the gift of tongues, the anti-Babel.
--Protopresbyter Boris Bobrinskoy, Dean of Saint Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute, Paris

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/23/2008 6:12:47 AM (GMT-6)

Don't know if I follow Loder 100%... But here's something I've liked for years:

taken from some paragraphs from Georgios I. Mantzaridis' book "Man and Time". (I experimented by pulling put just a few paragraphs from each of the three logical "sections" and arranging a summary.)

Section ONE:

* "The kingdom of God is not simply awaited as something that is to come; it is also perceptible as something now present. The resurrection and regeneration in Christ as well are not only awaited in the future, but are also already offered in the present... The period of the presence of Christ and his Church is the period of the 'last days.' It is the period during which God and his kingdom are made manifest in history. It is the beginning of eternal life, which cannot be interrupted by death. ..... Thus, the eschata are at once present yet awaited, experienced yet expected." (p. 51-52)

* "Participation in the kingdom of God brings about an eclipse of time, just as the presence too of the kingdom of God, turns all understanding of logical sequence of time on its head." (p. 54)

* "The Church still stands as a sign of eternity in the world and guides the world towards eternity. The institutions of the Church...transport the mind of man 'from things present to the things to come.'" (pp. 54-55)

* "The Church is not subordinate to time, but leads from time into eternity." (p. 55)

* "For those who become "sons of light," and "sons of day," and behave as sons of light and day in their lives, the "day of the Lord" is already come. These people are already living the "day of the Lord" and contemplating his glory. These things, of course, do not come about simply as a result of a formal receiving of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, but rather through real communion and union with Christ. And just as Christ is not limited by time and space, so the experience too of his presence, or the experience of his "day," is not confined to the 'eschata,' the last times, but is offered here and now. The eschata will not present entirely new things, but will manifest in their full and perfect form those things which exist and are offered already as a sort of betrothal in the Church." (p. 50)


Section TWO:

* The Church cannot preserve her identity in history without developing organically in time and space. And the Church's preaching cannot be offered unaltered to the world without adapting in an appropriate way to her respective environment. (p. 64, 66)

* The question of the correct consideration of tradition is, in the final analysis, a question of the correct consideration of time and space. .......The question of consideration of space and time is a question of whether, and to what extent, man refers the question to a transcendent reality. Without this reference, any understanding of space and time is fragmentary and limited. ....... The only real possibility of reference to a transcendent reality is offered in Christ. It is in the person of Christ that the temporal is united with the eternal, the finite with the transcendental. Union with Christ within space and time. It is a union which brings about the relation to a transcendent reality and true communion. ....... The union with Christ comes about in the Church by the grace of the Holy Spirit. ....... Christ, who recapitulates the past, the present and the future, keeps perpetual and indissoluble communion with all the members of his Body, the Church. The tradition of the Apostles, the Fathers and the saints of the Church ministers to this communion between God and man, and finds in it its summary and final expression.

* "Tradition without a direct or indirect link with Christ has no meaning in the Church, and the importance of the various traditions is in direct proportion to the extent of their relationship to Christ." (p. 63)

* "All the traditions that are associated with Christ have a eucharistic or worshipful character. This is why they are offered 'in a mystery" (p. 63)


Section THREE:

* "St. Nicholas Cabasilis points out that for the saints, the future is already present in is life, but its presence is not full and complete, as it will be in the life to come." (p. 84)

* "The Church with her feasts and services actuates the work of divine economy within time, thereby sanctifying the transforming of time of everyday life...she integrates it with, and directs it towards, its eschatological fulfillment--the kingdom of God.

The Church¹s feasts, preeminent among which are the feasts of the Lord, are not mere commemorations. They are opportunities...for communion with Christ and the Church. ....... In following the...cycles of feasts...and the daily cycle of day and night offices, the faithful worshipper lives the whole work of divine economy and comes to share in the life of the kingdom of God even in this present life.

Distinction is made between the movable feasts and fixed feasts of the Church.

The Immovable Feasts are tied to a fixed date in the Church¹s year which begins the first day of September. They present us with specific redemptive interventions of God in the history of man, or with historical persons and events in the life of the church: the Annunciation, the Nativity of Christ, Theophany, the Transfiguration, feasts of the Theotokos, and the feasts of the angels and saints. These feasts serve to sanctify time and transform it in the light of the kingdom of God. (p. 87)

* "The Moveable Feasts constitute a special sequence which stands apart from historical time and guides man above and beyond it. Fashioning a new dimension of time as though suspended above that temporality to which history is subjected, it thus offers limitless vistas to the man who is shackled by time.

* "Apart from the movable feasts, which highlight, above all the eschatological character of the Church and her passage from time to eternity, there are also, as we have seen, the immovable feasts, which stress the sanctification of time and the presence of the eternal within it. The Annunciation, the Nativity of Christ, Theophany, the feasts of the Theotokos and the feasts of the angels and the saints stress above all the presence of eternity within time itself.


IN SUMMARY:

* "Liturgical time transfigures physical time and transports us from symbol to truth, from the transient to the eternal, from creation to the Lord of creation. ... Behind the symbolism is the one symbolized. ..... Thus the function of time is to refer creation to the uncreated Creator." (p. 105 )

* "...the mystery (sacrament)...preserves...the memory of all the events in the divine economy, and of the events in the history of mankind in their eschatological perspective." (p. 102)

* "In this way, all time becomes sacred time. Every day and every moment is sanctified because it becomes a bearer of eternity. In the same way, all space becomes sacred because it is sanctified by spiritual worship." (p. 104 )

* Eternal life is not abstract or imaginary. It is God himself, who became man and manifested himself to the world in Christ....for a Christian, the memory of God is made concrete in the memory of Christ and his regenerative work in the world. So the content of the memory of Christ is the Church herself as the Body of Christ, the enter and essence of which is the mystery of the Holy Eucharist." (p. 103)

* "By taking part in the Divine Liturgy and approaching for Holy Communion, the believer experiences the unique and eternal event of his regeneration in Christ. Without ceasing to be in time, he nevertheless shares in eternity. Even one participation in holy Communion would be sufficient for his regeneration. ... Each one of these approaches is the one unrepeatable approach to the mystery of his union with Christ. It represents his approach to, and his progress within, the ties indestructible and constantly renewed communion which deifies the Church. Furthermore, whatever happens in time and is of truth, no longer belongs to time, but to eternity. And what ever is repeated in time and is of truth, is not confined to time but extends into eternity. Thus every Holy Eucharist is a repetition of the unique and unrepeatable Eucharist of the Last Supper." (p. 102)

Christ himself was treated as “the New Man” and the last Adam. The divine plan of salvation was consummated, the kingdom of God inaugurated through Christ, but the ultimate things were yet to come in fullness and glory. The king had come, but the kingdom was still to come. The promise of the kingdom was granted to the church by the Holy Spirit. The church has lived since then in two dimensions: in sight of ongoing secular history and world events in the time of decay and oblivion, but also in the time of the heavenly kingdom inaugurated by the risen savior (in which the church has lived epicletically in the expectation of the kingdom.)

The coming of Christ and the resurrection changed completely the human situation, for in fallen existence, the time form of the world is characterized by law (nomos); this implies that humans were involved in an irreversible chain of decay and corruption, which led them to mortality with no hope of undoing the things they had done. Everything that had been done became ontologically necessary, so that there was no way to overcome this necessity, which is indicated by the word “law”. The coming of Christ and the resurrection relieved us from this law; we are still living in the world or “fallen” temporal order, but we are relieved from the necessity of the law; that is, we have a chance of renewal and of entering the kingdom [of God], cleansing ourselves through constant participation in the resurrection of the Lord.

Alexei V. Nesteruk, Light from the East: Theology, Science, and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition, p.246

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Reposting...

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 enstasy 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)

My personally held conception of continuous "complete awareness of God" falls along these lines.

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/23/2008 7:06:31 AM (GMT-6)

D: 2) If a human being sees themselves as "I, not I, but the Father", this IS interpersonal "face-to-face" terms.

Tom: Name the ‘persons’ involved.

D: Through the Holy Spirit in epiclesis, Christ lives in and through my human hypostasis, integrates my human personhood, and relates INTERPERSONALLY to the Father. Face to face. How is it that I cannot have "interpersonal" relationship with God?

Tom: D, there is no non-divine, human ‘person’ in your view. The persons involved in your interpersonal account are the F, S, and SP. That’s it. Those are the only ‘persons’ for you. So sure, of course you agree that Son and Father relate interpersonally. You just upload human nature into Christ’s hypostasis and THAT’S how you have humans participating in interpersonal relations with God. What you don’t have are human hypostases, human persons, non-divine hypostases relating interpersonally, as the non-divine persons THEY are, to God.

D: My very personhood is "caught up" with the eternal face-to-face encounter of Father-Father's Spirit-Father's Child relationship.

Tom: Right. That's you view. But it's not what I’m talking about.

T

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/23/2008 8:33:03 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (HumanHypostasis) : 1/23/2008 9:29:34 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/23/2008 10:05:09 AM (GMT-6)