As I was reading Volf’s review of Zizioulas, it became increasingly clear to me that Zizy (and with him the whole EO tradition) doesn’t capture my concerns regarding personal identity, freedom, love, and interpersonal divine-human relationality. But I did run across a couple of interesting quotes while reading Zizy myself. As much as he claims to differentiate between divine and human being, he fails to makes clear any real personal differentiation between God and human beings. In other words, the differentiation between God and human beings is located anywhere BUT in the personal identities. But there were these two very interesting quotes of his (the latter of which is not a criticism of the freedom to create, but an affirmation of it):

“Sin is the tragic prerogative of the person alone.”

“Just as God created the world as free grace, so the [human] person wants to create its own ‘other’.”

Follow that thought and don’t give up.

Tom

Towards the end of the above article by Fr. Stephen:

Everything we do in Church and as Christians is properly done when it is an act of self-emptying, an act of communion. There can be no communion of any sort without kenosis (emptying).

It is popular now days to take the kenosis passage in Phillipians 2 and make it a sor ot laying down of divinity, rather than a voluntary sharing in our suffering. The popular verson is dramatic to the max, and pleases contemporary tastes.

Perhaps those not finding vibrant displays of muscular humanity (in Zizioulas) do so because they are used to such extremes. Perhaps a Christ that is suffering is not the dramatic victom they expect to see. And perhaps the humanity that also self-empties then just appears to their eyes to have vanished -- instead of vuluntarily--with the cooperation of the Spirit emptied itself.

Tom: Zizioulas fails to make clear any real personal differentiation between God and human beings.

B: What if that is just too obvious to dedicate much space to?

Tom: B, you couldn’t ask this if you understood my fundamental concern these past few months. D understands the disagreement. He knows there’s no room (that we’ve noticed so far) in the EO for what I’m saying. 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.

B: Perhaps those not finding vibrant displays of muscular humanity (in Zizioulas) do so because they are used to such extremes. Perhaps a Christ that is suffering is not the dramatic victom they expect to see. And perhaps the humanity that also self-empties then just appears to their eyes to have vanished -- instead of vuluntarily--with the cooperation of the Spirit emptied itself.

Tom: What’s a “vibrant display of muscular humanity”? I confess I haven’t the slightest idea. But my hunch is that you mean this "muscular display of humanity" is the clarity of personal distinction between God and us which I’m expressing. Is that it?

So what do you think of the two quotes of Z 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? Would you agree that we forever continue to reflect God is such ways?

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

Now, D’s gonna research this like the soaring eagle he is and find a way to show that what I’m seeing in these quotes ISN’T  Z’s point, that this ISN’T what Z means. That’s cool. I’ve already conceded (for the time being) that there is ZERO room for me in the EO tradition on this issue. But I would like to hear Z construe this quote so as to distance himself from what it seems to me to imply. Volf appeared to sense the same tendency in Z that I feel in Z: his wanting to affirm the personal distinction, the differentiating of identities (and so not have the particular drop dissolve into sea) but not knowing how. 

T

Post Edited (HumanHypostasis) : 2/1/2008 6:41:47 AM (GMT-6)

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

Tom cont.: 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..

.

B: Perhaps those not finding vibrant displays of muscular humanity (in Zizioulas) do so because they are used to such extremes. Perhaps a Christ that is suffering is not the dramatic victom they expect to see. And perhaps the humanity that also self-empties then just appears to their eyes to have vanished -- instead of vuluntarily--with the cooperation of the Spirit emptied itself.

Tom: What’s a “vibrant display of muscular humanity”? I confess I haven’t the slightest. But my hunch is that you mean to suggest that the clarity of personal distinction between God and us

What's really interesting?  Wifey's an INTP...so we have some SIMILAR interactions that you and I do, Tom.

She's a turtle, too!   

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 2/1/2008 8:19:44 AM (GMT-6)

 

Kallistos Ware - page 233   -TYPING-

 

The crypto-tritheist perils of the 'mutual love' paradigm may be spelt out more fully in two ways:

(1) In likening the Trinity to a human community of three persons, are we perhaps reading into the Patristic terms *hypostasis and prosopon our modern notion of personhood--a notion which the Greek fathers did not share. . . . . .among contemporary...no agreed definition of what constitues a 'person.' it can be argued in general terms that, when we to day speak about the 'person,' we have in mind primaryily our awareness of being each a distinct center of self-consciousness, of feeling and of willing. In the modern usage of the term, the emphasis is upon inner subjectivity. But in Patreistic words *prosopon* (literally 'face' and hypostasis (literally 'substratum,' and hence that which exists firmly, which has stability and durability) do not convey, in such a clear and direct way, the notion of innner subjectivity. The emphasis is objective rather than subjective, indicating the way in which a person appears to an outside ovserver. This the Greek fathers, in speaking of God as three proopa or three phypostaseis did not necessarily mean that there are in God three distinct cnters of self-consciousness. Perhaps their meaning was that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are each a distinct and enduring 'mode of eistence' (tropos hyparxeous)

(2) In likening the Trinity to a human community of three persons, have we sufficently allowed for the fact that the union of Gagher, Son and Spirit is incomparably closer and stronger than any human association cn  ever be? .....
...And when the Fourth Gospel interprets the relationship between Father and Son in terms of mutual love, let us keep in view the truth that only persons are capable of such love; 'movements' or 'ways of being' do nt and cannot love one another.

. . .

(2) In likening the divine *koinonia* to a community of three human persons, the Cappadocian Fathers--always faithful to an apophatic understanding of God--were in fact careful to insist that there is a vital distinctionof levels. God is not a perons, or rather threr persons, in the same sense that we are persons. This does not mean, however, that god is less personal than we are, but on the contrary that he is unimaginabely more personal. Yet at the same time we dertainly should not--in a crude and unqualified way--project upon uncreated Godhead our created sense of being personal. An analogy odes not signify identity.

The Cappadocians had in fact a number of ways whereby they safeguarded the unique character of the divine unity: in particular, through their understanding of the Father as the sole source and fountainhead of the hypostatid subsistence ithin the Trinity )the 'nomarchy' of the Father); through their empasis upon the *perihcoresis* of the three persons, upon their coinherence and mutual indwelling; and aboe all through their insistence that the threemembers of the trinity share a single energy and a single will, which is certainly not the case with three huan persons.

Yeah...

"I’m with Grosheid on the elements. I don’t see the elements substantially transformed into Christ in any manner of speaking. Sorry. They’re just a reenactment, a memorializing of history, a point of contact wherein my faith and perception connect to the historical act of Christ on my behalf. There’s nothing magical about the elements. I think to make the elements anything more than this is superstitious magic."