POW: Yet you ussually, eventually slip into hyperbolae, or put forward the most extreme example.

Tom: OH MY GOSH!

I put forward EXTREME examples?

Cotton picking #*&@ rackin frackin )($&#*

POW...buddy, pal, friend, brother B...

Give me ONE, just ONE, of any of the analogies I've EVER employed on this issue that's an EXTREME example.

Please.

Stop everything! Nobody post ANYTHING until I get one of my extreme examples. You're talking MR TURTLE here. D knows. Right D? I don't do EXTREME analogies or examples.

T

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!

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 2/1/2008 9:59:34 AM (GMT-6)

Based on the below I'll now HECKLE Tom as being a *monenergistic* thinker.

The Eastern Orthodox understanding of Synergy handles it all quite well, imho.

What do YOU think, D?

http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2007/10/13/writing-plans-zizioulas-made-plain/   http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/zizioulas-and-the-church-that-is-communion/

Here's...

Zizioulas on Zizioulas

BEING AS COMMUNION

Personhood and Being

pages 46-47

It thus becomes evident that the only exercise of freedom in an ontological manner is love. The expression "God is love" (I John 4:16) signifies that God "subsists" as Trinity, that is, as person and not as substance. Love is not an emana­tion or "property" of the substance of God—this detail is significant in the light of what I have said so far—but is constitutive of His substance, i.e. it is that which makes God what He is, the one God. Thus love ceases to be a qualifying —i.e. secondary—property of being and becomes the supreme ontological predicate. Love as God's mode of existence "hypostasizes" God, constitutes His being. Therefore, as a result of love, the ontology of God is not subject to the necessity of the substance. Love is identified with ontological freedom.⁴¹

All this means that personhood creates for human existence the following dilemma: either freedom as love, or freedom as negation. The choice of the latter certainly constitutes an expression of personhood—only the person can seek negative freedom—but it is a negation nevertheless of its ontological content. For nothingness has no ontological content when the person is seen in the light of trinitarian theology.

(c) The person does not simply want to be, to exist "eternally," that is, to possess an ontologicai content. It wants something more: to exist as a concrete, unique and unrepeat­able entity. The person cannot be understood simply as the "ecstasy" of the substance; it must necessarily be regarded also as a hypostasis of the substance, as a concrete and unique identity.

Uniqueness is something absolute for the person. The per­son is so absolute in its uniqueness that it does not permit itself to be regarded as an arithmetical concept, to be set alongside other beings, to be combined with other objects, or to be used as a means, even for the most sacred goal. The goal is the person itself; personhood is the total fulfilment of being, the catholic expression of its nature. This tendency of the person, like freedom, is the "two-edged sword" of existence. For applied to man it leads to the denial of others, to egocentrism, to the total destruction of social life. As in the case of freedom, so with the unique and hypostatic nature of the person, a relativisation appears to be indispensible if chaos is to be avoided. Thus uniqueness is relativised in social life, and man becomes—in a greater or lesser degree but never­theless assuredly so—a useful "object," a "combination," a persona. But it is precisely this which constitutes the tragic aspect of the person. Diffused today throughout all forms of social life is the intense search for personal identity. The person is not relativized without provoking a reaction.

Man's inability to ensure his absolute identity in the world culminates in death. Death becomes tragic and unacceptable only when man is regarded as person, and above all as hypos-tasis and unique identity. As a biological event death is some­thing natural and welcome, because only in this way is life perpetuated. In the natural world "personal" identity is en­sured by childbearing, by the "survival" of the parents in the faces of their children. But this is not a survival of persons; it is a survival of the species, which may be observed equally in the whole animal kingdom and is directed by the harsh laws of natural selection. The survival of the person as a unique identity is not ensured by marriage and childbearing, which in the last analysis are shown only to supply matter for death. For if through all this being survives finally as the "substance" or as the 'species" of a man, what does not survive is the concrete and unique identity, the person.

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 2/1/2008 11:37:21 AM (GMT-6)

B: A kenosis of human individuality is not deterministic, AND YET it is not what YOU are talking about.

Tom: Dude, I myself pointed out the difference between the present day (Calvinistic) determinISM we debate about and the determinisTIC character of D’s view. I explained it step by step and described what I meant. Don’t take ‘deterministic’ when I use it to describe D’s view and object on the grounds that D’s view isn’t what standard, theological determinISM is. I know it isn’t what standard determinISM is. But D’s view (and yours if you agree, and the EO’s if they agree, and Greg Boyd’s if he agrees) is determinisTIC because the determination of human behavior (we’re talking about glorified existence, OK?) begins and ends in the divine will. Think ‘words’ and their meaning, B, without all the emotional baggage that’s normally attached to the word ‘determine’. Suggesting that the human agent ‘chooses’ this arrangement doesn’t make it other than determinisTIC (viz, characterized by a unilateral determination of all things by God). If you don’t like the word ‘deterministic’, change the view. But as far as it stands, it accurately describes things.

B, now I have to ask you something AGAIN. You seem here to be contrasting “a kenosis of human individuality” with “what I’m talking about.” Well, I carefully asked you what I’m talking about when I posed the questions:

Tom: …‘just as’ God creates, ‘so also’ the human person creates? Do you grant such free creativity in human beings?

POW: Yes.

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

POW: Yes.

Tom: The problem is that you can’t differentiate between a kenosis of human individuality on the one hand and a freely determined expression of creative capacities in us (which I asked you about) on the other, and then say you agree with me on the latter and also agree with the former while at the same time agreeing the former “is not what I’m saying” by the latter.

So which is it?

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

I still don’t see the ‘extreme examples’ you mentioned. I jokingly told D not to “spank” you too hard. That’s not an example of anything. It’s a joke. You said “examples.” But never mind, Bro. We’ll never get out of this conversation if we challenge every single word.

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

Thanks for the Zizy post too. Good stuff.

“Uniqueness is something absolute for the person. The per­son is so absolute in its uniqueness that it does not permit itself to be regarded as an arithmetical concept, to be set alongside other beings, to be combined with other objects, or to be used as a means, even for the most sacred goal.”

Now THAT looks like what I’m talking about. And this:

“The Person is otherness in communion and communion in otherness. The Person is an identity that emerges through relationship; it is an ‘I’ that can exist only as long as it relates to a ‘Thou’ which affirms its existence and its otherness. If we isolate the ‘I’ from the ‘Thou’, we lose not only its otherness but also its very being; it simply cannot be without the other. This is what distinguishes the person from the individual.”

Again, I read this and see all that I’ve been arguing FOR. Or this:

“Personhood is inconceivable without freedom; it is the freedom of being other.”

Or this, which I posted earlier:

“Just as God created the world as free grace, so the person wants to create its own ‘other’. This is what happens with art: the artist creating a totally other identity as an act of freedom and communion.”

Here’s the question B, it’s easy. Will human beings exercise THIS kind of freedom, freedom to ‘be other’ IN THEIR PERSONHOOD, freedom to determine the shape of their loving expression, that which makes the, as Z says, absolutely unique, and is it REALLY the case that this SELF-DETERMINED UNIQUENESS is “not to be used as a means, even for the most sacred goal” (Z’s comment). Would that include God? Is Z saying that God’s purposes are fulfilled in the creating of ‘other persons’ who reflect God in doing what God does, viz., freely determining themselves in loving expression for the other? If so, then there may be room in the EO for me, IF Z is essentially saying what I’m saying.

But this leaves me baffled as to why you suspect Z would find “some of my notions too individualistic.” I’ve been clear. YOU TELL ME which ‘notions’ you think are ‘too individualistic’ POW. Don’t leave me hanging. These quotes by Z express the VERY SAME NOTIONS I’ve been trying to champion—personally other, freedom, uniqueness, etc.—and in the very same TERMS. So tell me which of these notions is “too individualistic” when I express them which aren’t too individualistic when Z expresses them.

D will now come and clear this up for us and show us that Z, as a good Orthodox father, cannot mean what these quotes seem to me to mean, because it’s a fact that there is no room in the EO for human beings being ‘personally other’ than the persons of the F, S, and SP…or for human beings to exercise a free and creative determination of SOMETHING of the shape which their unique expression takes. These are Z’s terms too, B, OK? No ‘individualistic notions’. I’m using HIS notions.

While you’re at it B. I’d like to ask you—

If we shall be free in this sense, free to determine the unique shape which our loving expression takes, in relationship to God as a ‘personal other’ (all of this from Z’s quotes here—unless he means something OTHER by the words, in which case my fears are confirmed), what, pray tell, do YOU mean by “a kenosis of human individuality.” You mention this kenosis (which you approve of) and then CONTRAST it with what I’m arguing for (which is just reflected in Z’s quotes here) which you also approve of. So where ARE YOU?

Take it away D!

Tom

Post Edited (HumanHypostasis) : 2/1/2008 3:11:53 PM (GMT-6)

In this way the discussion of the being of God leads patris­tic thought to the following theses, which are fundamentally bound up with ecclesiology as well as ontology:

 

(a) There is no true being without communion. Nothing exists as an "individual," conceivable in itself. Communion is an ontological category.

 

(b) Communion which does not come from a "hypostasis," that is, a concrete and free person, and which does not lead to "hypostases," that is concrete and free persons, is not an "image" of the being of God. The person cannot exist without communion; but every form of communion which denies or suppresses the person, is inadmissible.

 

This theology of the person, which appeared for the first time in history through the patristic vision of the being of God, could never have become a live experience for man without the mystery of the Church. Humanism or sociology could struggle as much as they wished to affirm the importance of man. The existentialist philosophers, however, have shown in our day—with an intellectual honesty that makes them worthy of the name of philosopher—that, humanly speaking, the person as an absolute ontological freedom remains a quest without fulfilment. Between the being of God and that of man remains the gulf of creaturehood, and creaturehood means precisely this: the being of each human person is given to him; consequently, the human person is not able to free himself absolutely from his "nature" or from his "substance," from what biological laws dictate to him, without bringing about his annihilation. And even when he lives the event of com­munion either in the form of love or of social and political life, he is obliged in the last analysis, if he wants to survive, to relativize his freedom, to submit to certain natural and social "givens." The demand of the person for absolute freedom involves a "new birth," a birth "from on high," a baptism. And it is precisely the ecclesial being which "hypostasizes" the person according to God's way of being. That is what makes the Church the image of the Triune God.

 

But patristic theology insisted from its origins on something very significant: man can approach God only through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. Ecclesiology which uses the notion of  the "image of God" cannot be founded simply on triadology. The fact that man in the Church is the "image of God" is due to the economy of the Holy Trinity, that is, the work of Christ and the Spirit in history. This economy is the basis of ecclesi­ology, without being the goal of it. The Church is built by the historical work of the divine economy but leads finally to the vision of God "as He is," to the vision of the Triune God in his eternal existence.

 

This meta-historical, eschatological and iconological dimen­sion of the Church is characteristic of the Eastern tradition, which lives and teaches its theology liturgically; it contem­plates the being of God and the being of the Church with the eyes of worship, principally of eucharistic worship, image of the "eschata" par excellence. It is for that reason that Ortho- ) doxy is often thought of, or presented by its spokesmen, as a sort of Christian Platonism, as a vision of future or heavenly things without an interest in history and its problems. By contrast, Western theology tends to limit ecclesiology (and actually even the whole of theology) to the historical content of the faith—to the economy—and to project realities belonging to history and time into the eternal existence of God. In this way the dialectic of God and the world, the uncreated and the created, history and the eschata is lost. The Church ends by being completely "historicized"; it ceases to be the mani­festation of the eschata and becomes the image of this world and of historical realities. Ecclesial being and the being of God are no longer organically bound; ecclesiology no longer has need of "theo-logy" to function. Orthodox theology runs the danger of historically disincarnating the Church; by con­trast, the West risks tying it primarily to history, either in the form of an extreme Christocentrism—an imitatio Christi—lack­ing the essential influence of pneumatology or in the form of a social activism or moralism which tries to play in the Church the role of the image of God. Consequently, the two theolo­gies, Eastern and Western, need to meet in depth, to recover the authentic patristic synthesis which will protect them from the above dangers. Ecclesial being must never separate itself from the absolute demands of the being of God—that is, its eschatological nature—nor from history. The institutional di­mension of the Church must always incarnate its eschatolog­ical nature without annulling the dialectic of this age and the age to come, the uncreated and the created, the being of God and that of man and the world.

 

 

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 2/1/2008 3:17:58 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (HumanHypostasis) : 2/1/2008 3:10:29 PM (GMT-6)

The Orthodox Church has perhaps the weakest ecclesiology of all, because it depends, moment by moment, on the love and forgiveness of each by all and of all by each. Either the Bishops of the Church love and forgive each other or the whole thing falls apart. “Brethren, let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” These are the words that introduce the Creed each Sunday, and they are the words that are the bedrock of our ecclesiology

http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/the-ecclesiology-of-the-cross/

 

I like this guy's blog:

The Ecclesiology of the Cross     http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/the-ecclesiology-of-the-cross/

I would like to suggest several points for reflection on the Cross and the Church:

1. The self-emptying of God on the Cross, including his descent into Hades, is not accidental but utterly integral to understanding the saving work of Christ.

2. Any imitation of God, any conformity of our life to His, will involve this same self-emptying.

3. All discussion of the Church and its life, must include this self-emptying, not only of God, but of each of the members of the Church.

4. Every description of the various aspects of the Church would do well to include the self-emptying of God and the self-emptying of Christians in imitation of the God Who Saves.

Today, the first point:

1. When St. Paul writes of Christ’s “emptying” Himself (Phil 2:5-11), he is not describing something that is somehow alien to God, regardless of its profound irony. In Rev. 13:8 Christ is described as the “lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Thus we cannot look at the Cross as an event that is somehow alien to God. Rather, it is a revelation of Who God Is, perhaps the fullest revelation that we receive.

Christ speaks of his crucifixion, saying, “for this cause came I unto this hour”  (John 12:27).   Other aspects of Christ’s ministry, even His revelation of the Father to the world, should not be separated from the event of the Cross. In His self-emptying, Christ reveals the true character God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Writing about this self-emptying (kenosis), Fr. Nicholas Sakharov describes its place in the teachings of the Elder Sophrony:

The eternal aspect of Christ’s kenosis is perceived in the framework of the kenotic intratrinitarian love. Fr. Sophrony remarks that before Christ accomplished his earthly kenosis, “it had already been accomplished in heaven according to his divinity in relation to the Father.” The earthly kenosis is thus a manifestation of the heavenly: “Through him [Christ] we are given revelation about the nature of God-Love. The perfection consists in that this love humbly, without reservations, gives itself over. The Father in the generation of the Son pours himself out entirely. But the Son returns all things to the Father” (I Love Therefore I Am, 95).

Indeed, in this understanding we would say that this self-emptying is not only integral to Christ’s saving work, but to the revelation of the Triune God. Thus when we say, “God is love,” we understand that God pours Himself out: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is into this life of self-emptying that we are grafted in our salvation. We lose our life in order to save it. This is no reference to a single act, but to the character of the whole of our life as it is found in Christ. “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live” (Galatians 2:20).

CONTINUED... Check it out!