POW: I wrote: "A kenosis of human individuality is not deterministic" and not "kenosis of personal identity" (to my relief since the later would be far more complicated -- and I'll join you in wondering what that would mean!)

Tom: If you don’t know what it means, what are you asserting in differentiating between kenosis of ‘individuality’ but not of ‘personal identity’. As for me, I don’t wonder. I have an opinion on the matter.

POW: Simply, for an individual who individually (not with others; not that it matters) to kenosis-es (empty) is a free action and is not determined. That's what it means.

Tom: What does this “kenosis” mean for the ongoing exercise of my will, of my capacities for creative expression?

POW: But I'm not familiar with "freely creative creaturely determination of loving expression" and don't know what that means.

Tom: What? You don’t know what that means? What were you saying “yes” to when I asked you about the exercise of creative capacities for loving expression a few posts ago?

Here it is:

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.

You say “yes” to “free creativity in human beings,” to their “reflecting God in that they, like God, ‘create’,” but then tell me you don’t have any idea what “freely creative creaturely determination of loving expression” even means?

I asked some important question of you B regarding this. If you’re not going to answer, then we’ve got nothing further to discuss.

I'm gettin' the run-around here I think. This conversation is taking a lot of time and effort and yielding very little clarity and progress.

T

Is all this right, Tom?

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 2/2/2008 8:03:43 AM (GMT-6)

Make sense, B?

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 2/2/2008 8:34:37 AM (GMT-6)

D: This is what I think Tom is saying...

Tom: POW, listen to what D says here OK?

D: Tom wants a glorified human to be able to have this self-understanding eternally...

“I am a created non-divine person who freely creates and determines something of how I express my love to God. God does not determine everything that I do, say, and think. I have the ability to freely choose to determine HOW I give God some type of gift and WHAT I give.”

Tom: So far so good.

D: “There are at least some life choices that “I” and ONLY “I” (not God) make concerning about my own existence. This means that “I” can give my Heavenly Daddy a gift that's conceptualized and achieved ONLY from “ME” and not ultimately from Him.”

Tom: I’d only add (for clarity’s sake) THREE things (two now and a third in toward the end): (1) I’m uncomfortable with “only I” because I insist, as well any, that “I am BECAUSE we are,” that without a “you” there is no “I.” And I don’t want your “only” there to be understood as a version of “individualism.” It’s never the case—ever—that there’s a meaningful sense of a personal action that is defined in exclusively “only” terms. But if all you mean is to say that there is a transitioning of possibility to actuality for which the final arbiter (to bring back some old lingo) is the human agent, then yes. That’s my view. (2) Secondly, I’d never deny that ultimately our choices are from God, in the sense that God grounds their possibilities, defines their meaningfulness, and empowers us in their execution. All of that is from God. In God we live and move and have our being. We create, yes. But only in the sense of picking out which flower, from a bouquet of possibilities that grow from the garden of God’s own creative self in which our souls run free in Christ, we shall embrace, make our own, and give back to God.

D: “I am not the "terminus" of God's choices at all times.”

Tom: Right. That would destroy any sense of ‘personal [created] otherness’ we possess.

D: Bottom line: Tom doesn't want us to be able to self-dispose our way out of having the freedom to be PERSONALLY DISTINCT in all ways from God…

Tom: My ‘wanting’ has nothing to do with it. It’s like saying “Tom doesn’t want us to be able to make 2 + 2 = 7.” The issue of what I want is out of place when discussing such things. I don’t want or not want us to be able to freely self-dispose out of being a freely self-disposing being. I just view the possibility extremely skeptically. I can’t seem to perceive it meaningfully.

D: To Tom, if ALL of the loving decisions and movements come from the "Christ-in-us", then they are not coming from a created person at all really. To Tom, that would turn the "God-Person" to "human person" relationship into a "God-Person" to "God-Person-in-God-Mirror" self-relationship...and that's "not enough" for Tom.

Tom: Essentially, yes. BUT (3) a third point just to clarify. I would never exclude “Christ-in-me” (its reality, its meaning, its influence, its beauty, its purpose, etc.) from the “I” who freely chooses. Again, “I am because we are.” This is another of the difficulties we have understanding each other. For you Dwayne, “Christ in me” simply means “Christ is determining/controlling everything about me.” So when I disagree about the nature of this ‘control’, you want to disallow (as you do here) my use of “Christ in me” to express MY view. But that begs the question. I don’t at all see myself as giving Christ less than 100% of myself, as less than totally surrendered. I don’t think a person who makes the choice to surrender to God in the sense you argue is by definition more surrendered to God or a truer reflection of “Christ in me.” I don’t think of my ‘creating’ (in the way you’ve perfectly described it—thank you) as stepping outside of “Christ in me” into “Only me in me.” If a father wants his daughter to draw him a picture, her drawing him picture (not determined by him) absolutely cannot be construed as stepping outside of the most intimate of connections between father and daughter. On the contrary, I argue that if the father is always determining everything about the child’s art, we universally intuit here a lack of relationality, the presence of something not quite right. Some may no longer intuit this, but my guess is that’s because they’ve been motivated (by whatever means) to talk themselves out of a perfectly God-given compass-setting.

So, my third point is to insist that “Christ in me” is perfectly at home in my vision of divine-human relationality.

Back to POW. POW, I hope now you better understand me. Do you still want to leave your “yes” in answer to my questions about the freely determined expression of creaturely love in heaven?

Tom

I asked some important question of you B regarding this. If you’re not going to answer, then we’ve got nothing further to discuss.

 

I'm gettin' the run-around here I think. This conversation is taking a lot of time and effort and yielding very little clarity and progress.

 

PoW: Tom, please don't rant with me. I gave honest answers, and I put effort into covering the question...up to my ability.

But I'm not a professional at this, and have other obligations.

PLEASE CONSIDER THIS: I DO HONEST READING OF WHAT YOU AND D. POST. IT TAKES A LOT TO JUST KEEP UP. SO PLEASE DON'T RAG ON ME IF I'M SLOW IN MY ANWERS. I NEED YOU TO UNDERSTAND THAT.

(I'm feel'n due for another 'vacation.')

Post Edited (HumanHypostasis) : 2/2/2008 9:29:31 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 2/2/2008 9:44:16 AM (GMT-6)

Having lived in BOTH the NeoKyperian Reformed camp, and sending my kids to a Presb. school, AND having exposure to Orthodoxy....

I find myself straddling these two. One moment and another.

Thanks for the clarifying question, D.

B.

ONLY having skimmed the book, my guess is that the inight of placing the person within the church is gread.

I just wonder, though, whether some of V's hesitations with Z aren't really resolved if he'd just follow that same thesis further.

My guess.

Imago Dei said...
Tom.

Read the Zizoulas chapters of this book.

Dang!

Ecclesial Personhood, page 83-84

The concrete locus of deindividualization and personalization is the church. The church can be so, however, only because it is the pneumatologically constituted (Imago's Note: EPICLETIC) body of Christ. For this reason, it is in the church that human beings can become persons through baptism and can live as persons through the Eucharist.

There's more, dude. Read it!

Gotta put this.  I KNOW Dallas Willard's got my back on the IMPLICIT "I"...check it again...

Dallas Willard. Renovation of the Heart. From Abandonment to Contentment and Participation.
Pp. 151-152

Beyond contentment lies intelligent, energetic participation in accomplishing God's will in our world. We are no longer spectators, but are caught up in a vivid and eternal drama in which we play an essential part. We embrace our imposed circumstances, no matter how tragic they seem, and act for the good in a power beyond ourselves. "We are reigning---exercising dominion--in life by One, Christ Jesus" (Romans 5:17), looking toward an eternity of reigning with God through ages of ages (Revelation 22:5). We take action to accomplish the will of God in his power. Our tiny "willpower" is not the source of our strength. We hardly notice any exercise of it, though it is fully dedicated to carrying out God's purposes in every respect. But we are carried along by the power of the divine drama within which we live actively engaged. So far from struggling to resist sin, we are devoted to realization of righteousness all around us. This is the real meaning of "Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." The strongest human will is always the one that is surrendered to God's will and acts with it.

This progression towards full identification of our will with God's will is one that, perhaps for most people, may not be fully realized in this life. But that does not really matter. It is a progression that it there for us to enter into now, thought the power at work within us as disciples of Jesus Christ. It may be that at present we cannot even imagine what it would be like for us to have a will significantly identified with God's will as just described. But we must never forget that he "is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, in terms of the power that it working in us" (Ephesians 3:20, compare Isaiah 64:4). Our part is to begin as best we can.

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

What do you think, Tom?  Where's the evidence going?