Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 2/1/2008 8:37:51 AM (GMT-6)

1. The Lord's Supper is the other sacrament (besides baptism) accepted by the Christian Reformed Church, because it, too, was commanded and thus instituted by Christ himself, as Paul reports in 1 Corinthians 11:23-25 (see also Matt. 26:26-29 and parallel Gospel texts). In setting forth the meaning of this sacrament, the Reformed confessions, the writings of Reformed theologians, and recent ecumenical documents emphasize the following themes:
     a. The Lord's Supper is a thanksgiving to God (eucharist).
     b. The Lord's Supper is a memorial of Christ (anamnesis).
     c. The Lord's Supper is a participation in the body and the blood of Christ.
     d. The Lord's Supper signifies the work of the Spirit (epiclesis).
     e. The Lord's Supper symbolizes the unity of the church in all times and places.
     f. The Lord's Supper seals the present and coming kingdom of God.

http://www.crcna.org/pages/1994_supper.cfm

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 2/1/2008 8:45:37 AM (GMT-6)

Tom: I hope so. I wonder.  

POW: …understand D., and see you both as extremes.

Tom: Extremes?  

POW: The problem is, that Z. was written in one period of time--then, and is then read as if it conversed in another--now.

Tom: Z isn’t a fourth century Church Father.   He’s still alive. He’s knowledgeable of modern-day issues and takes ‘em into account. In just the amount of space Volf gave to reviewing Z, it was obvious that Z understood the issues D and I have been debating. He’s not in some other time warp.

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Tom: D understands the disagreement. He knows there’s no room (that we’ve noticed so far) in the EO for what I’m saying.

POW: You sometimes speak from the exreme model, and sometimes recongnize gradations.

Tom:  

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Tom: It’s not a different shade of the same color, not a slightly different perspective on the same vision. It’s a real, substantial disagreement..

PoW now: Obviously a substantial disagreement. But sometimes poor communication too.

Tom: But after three months and 100 pages of text, we worked through the communication issues. Now D and I understand that we really do disagree.

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POW: Clarity of such distinction is there.

Tom: Really?  Is the distinction a ‘personal’ one? If so, show me. I don’t see it in D or Z?

POW: But if one demands that it has to look one way to exist, then we get the T vs. D. impasse.

Tom: Hmmmm.  It’s not so much demanding that it look a certain way. It’s asking for a meaningful sense of the terms employed. And we ONLY have our experience as the canvass against which to describe, analogously, what it is we’re attributing to God (and to our relationship with God). 

Now, if somebody wants to tell me that…

(a) we’re ‘persons’ in interpersonal relationship with God, and that,

(b) we determine nothing of the shape our loving expression takes, that there are no created capacities in human beings for free and creative expression not determined in their exercise by the divine will, that everything about human behavior once perfected is the effect of a causal chain that starts with God’s will and ends with ours…

…I’m going to reply, “I have no concept of ‘personal loving relationality’ that makes sense of personal loving relationships in such deterministic terms.”

D understands this, which is why he knows he can’t concede a free exercise of creative expression determined by human beings who are one with God. He’ll concede it’s possible (a possibility I think I can easily show he CAN’T really concede, given his belief that God’s purposes for creation are an expression of God’s necessary nature and character—same goes for me) but that God didn't go that way. As it stands D’s understanding is that God’s purpose for creation are incompatible with the sort of loving creaturely freedom of expression that I value (and which I see as at the heart of God’s purpose for creating).

We’re beyond communication snags and extreme views. We just disagree.   

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POW: I'm not sure what you're saying in the last part. But what I was NOTICING was a congruence in (1) how a matcho-kenesis is a fairly recent innovation, and pleases certain contemporary expectation (sells books and pleases from the stage), and (2) it seems that you would be most pleased if "clarity of personal distinction between God and us" would be evidenced in one way more than another.

Tom: Trust me B, I’d be happy with ANY meaningful evidence of the personal distinction between God and us.   

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POW: I propose that a less smokey view of the distinction between God and us might be found away from the now very popularized "Person" genre, and be explored instead in the patristic contours and textures addressing "Deification."

Tom: I’m not sure there’s anything really that smoky any more about either D’s or my view. We’re each clear about what God’s intentions for us include and disallow.

POW: I recommend this Greek contemporay author as being one who is patristic-revival and not crowd pleasing to the eccumenical crowd. (The Deification of Man : St. Gregory Palamas and the Orthodox Tradition).

Tom: Again, do you really think there is in the EO tradition room for what I’VE BEEN DESCRIBING? If you saw yes, D will tell you that you don’t understand my core convictions. Because he knows there’s NOBODY in the EO saying what I’M saying.

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Tom: So what do you think of the two quotes of Z that I posted? What do you think about his point there in the second quote, that ‘just as’ God creates, ‘so also’ the human person creates? Do you grant such free creativity in human beings?

POW: Yes. And that seems to be good evidence of it.

Tom: Wow. Oh my. Well, OK then. Hmmm. B, I’m glad to hear you answer yes but less sure you appreciate what ‘yes’ means. I’m sure D will want to tell you want it entails and how you CAN'T really say yes to me and be Orthodox.

Tom: Would you agree that we forever continue to reflect God is such ways?

POW: Yes.

Tom:  D?  Don't spank Bruce too hard!

B, I’m surprise at your “yes.” I’m surprised because reflecting God in such ways is THE WHOLE OF MY VIEW. That’s it. But above you were sure D and I both represented “extremes.” I can’t be extreme there but have you agreeing with me here!

Tom: Would you grant that for Z’s point to stand we’re required to deny that all human beings are once glorified are termini of the divine will?

POW: To deny the above would require undertansing what "termini of the divine will" means.

Tom: It means that in heaven, all our choices, movements, expressions and relations are determined and “controlled” (D’s word) by the divine will. God chooses…and we’re the “end point,” the ‘terminus’, the ‘effect’ of God’s choice. God decides everything about what we do. Whatever we do that’s creative, that differentiates creaturely being and expression, is GOD determining how we are to differ (in our choices and movements). What saves this from the standard criticisms against determinism, D believes, is that fact that we freely choose such an arrangement.

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Tom cont.: . . . I’ve already conceded (for the time being) that there is ZERO room for me in the EO tradition on this issue.

POW: Accept no extremes, and come at the issue from another angle. This angle is getting so full of ruts (and books, etc.).

Tom: Get used to it! I’ll be in THIS issue for the next four to five years!  

I’m pleased to know that you have such hope that I may at last have a place within Orthodoxy. I think D knows that ain’t happening!

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Tom: But I would like to hear Z construe this quote so as to distance himself from what it seems to me to imply.

POW: I'm not sure how to read this. I can only make sense of it if it is a kind of dare: "Boy, I'd just like to see Z try to do x, y, and z.”

Tom: Naw, not a dare; just the expression of a ‘wish’. I’d like, would appreciate, would love, to see Z explain those quotes. Volf couldn’t resolve such ‘personal distinction’ with other of Z’s views that seemed clearly to collapse the distinction.

Tom

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 (Christ) 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

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So the Jesus prayer begins as an oral prayer like any other. But the rhythmic repetition of the same short phrase enables the hesychast, by the very simplicity of the words which he uses, to advance beyond all language and images into the mystery of God. In this way, the Jesus Prayer develops, with God's help, into what Western writers call "prayer of loving attention" or "prayer of simple gaze", where the sould rests in God without a constantly varying succession of images, ideas, and feelings. Beyond this there is a further stage, when the hesychast's prayer ceases to be the result of his own efforts, and becomes--at any rate from time to time--what Orthodox writers call "self-acting" and Western writers call "infused". It ceases, in other words, to be "my" prayer and becomes to a greater or lesser extent the prayer of Christ in me.

Yet it is not to be imagined that this transition from oral prayer to prayer of silence, or from "active" to "self-acting" prayer, is rapidly and easily made. The anonymous author of "The Way of the Pilgrim" was granted continual "self-acting" prayer only after a few weeks of practicing the Invocation of the Name of Jesus, but his case is altogether most exceptional and should on no account be regarded as the norm. More commonly, those who recite the Jesus Prayer are granted from time to time moments of "rapture", coming unexpectedly as a free gift, when the word of prayer recede into the background or disappear altogether, and are replaced by an immediate sense of God's presence and love. But for the great majority this experience is only a brief glimpse, not a continuous state. It would in any case be most unwise to attempt to induce by artificial means what can only come about as the fruit of God's direct action. The best course, when invoking the Holy Name, is to consecrate our full efforts upon the recitation of the words; otherwise, in our premature attempts to attain wordless prayer of the heart, we may find that we end up not really praying at all, but merely sitting half asleep.

Ware. Orthodox Way. 123-124.

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 2/1/2008 9:08:48 AM (GMT-6)

Has some Zizioulas (but is Volf's book)

http://books.google.com/books?id=J-s7xzugXqkC&pg=PA87&lpg=PA87&dq=zizioulas+person&source=web&ots=6ezRYTKSog&sig=DCWXpr0IrItO7fsFlIZCH9NGbdo#PPA208,M1

After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity 

By Miroslav Volf

Published 1998 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Christian communities

326 pages

ISBN 0802844405

 

Wow! What happened? We were on page 1 when I went to compose my last note and then KABOOM! The Eucharist? I thought we were talking about Z?

D’s right. I think I incorrectly expressed my memoralist view with the word “re-enactment.” That’s inaccurate. Christ is not crucified again.

D: Tom believes that the EO belief that the bread and wine actually are spiritually TRANSFORMED into the REAL "flesh" of Christ by the Holy Spirit...is "superstitious magic."  And it is on THAT POINT that I say that Tom may need to "change his thinking."

Tom: Ooooh. OK. Alright, I won’t call Catholics and Orthodox cannibals. Superstitious magic might be a little strong, but only a little! I don’t think there’s a shred of evidence for such a wholly unnecessary view. And whatever doctrine or dogma that logically requires such a view of the elements should fall with it.

I’m in a kick-a** mood ya’ll!

Tom

I didn’t feel heckled. Did somebody heckle me? Didn’t notice!

D: ONLY CHRIST really lives in them, through their continual self-emptying. It is ONLY CHRIST is who loves, forgives, and serves in them. The subjectivity of the human “I” is now IMPLICIT...as the person only understands their actions, thoughts, and decisions to be “Christ-in-me.”

Tom: See Bruce? I told you.

Now, B, this day have I set before you life and…eh…some other kinda life. Choose you this day whom you will believe!

You can’t agree with D here, B, and also answer ‘yes’ to my questions above about free creativity being exercise BY us (not just IN us BY God—see the difference?).

In my view D’s ‘implicit I’ is no different from the sense in which a ‘drop’ is implicit in the sea. And that is NOT ENOUGH.

T