Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 2/8/2008 9:23:16 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 2/9/2008 10:11:32 AM (GMT-6)

QUOTE:

. . . I do not wish to look at something around me (or someone) and say “that does not exist.” Such a statement would be both untrue and silly.

But I do want to be able to look at myself (you’re invited into this as well) and distinguish between mere existence and authentic existence. The purpose for which we were and are created is not mere existence. I can think of many days in my life of mere existence and not one of them has had much to recommend it (though I’m grateful to begin even there). But to exist authentically, is to exist not just before and in the presence of God, but consciously present to Him as the very center of my being - as the very center of all that is.

Just finished Norman Russell's The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (2004, based on his '88 Oxford doctoral dissertation). I’ll just say that I'm more encouraged to believe there's room for me at the Orthodox Inn. Not that I need it, but it's nice to know.

A couple of interesting quotes I ran across…

Ferguss Kerr, in Immortal Longings (1997):

“In differentiating creatures from himself, God of course limits them to be only his creatures; but in so doing he gives them precisely their specific genuine reality. In differentiating human beings from other creatures he limits them to be to be only human beings--and thus distinguishes them from all other creatures. In differentiating this human being from all others, God limits him or her, in relation to all others, to be only this particular human being. In so doing, he treats him or her as a soul, as a subject, as this unique and irreplaceable particular individual, as an ‘I’ to be addressed as ‘thou’.”

E. L. Mascall, in his study on deification, The Christian and the Church (1946), says:

“One of the characteristics of our adoptive union with Christ is that our personal identity is preserved. Even if, in a strictly guarded sense, we can say, with some of the mystics that Christ and God are what we become, we can never say that they are who we become.”

Russell, on the Macarian Homilies (which I can’t find online to read—rats!):

“All, however, will still retain their individuality, otherwise ‘there will be no Peter or Paul’ but ‘everything will be God’ (Coll. II, Hom. 15.10). The absorption of the individual into the Godhead, condemned by Timothy of Constantinople as a Messalian propositions...is specifically condemned.”

Interesting that the Macarian Homilies condemn any understanding of ‘individual identity’ in terms that end up with ‘everything being God’. In other words, the creator/creation difference is a difference of personal identity. I may look into the Macarian Homilies some more.

And lastly, a quote of David B. Hart from his The Beauty of the Infinite (2003):

“One cannot…take the route of the transcendental tradition and simply ascribe the unity of experience to the synthesizing activity of the transcendental Ego….”

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D: Why you hatin', man?

Tom: Me hatin’? Hating?

D:  It's a possibility open to us as human beings in Christ to be “controlled” by Christ's Spirit by free obedience unto “free slavery” to God and God's Kingdom. Greg and Paul ended up saying so. So what's YOUR problem?

Tom: No problem. We disagree on WHY God created us and on the nature of the FREEDOM we shall exercise in a glorified state, and on our self-perceived IDENTITY in that state. I don’t think Greg buys the plausitility of your view. I’m not in your conversation with him, so I can't judge. But I know what my conversations with him have been. No biggie.

In the end, if I’m willing to stand outside orthodoxy (if your view really is ‘THE’ orthodox "christian" view and all others are heresy), then I wouldn't have any problem disagreeing with Greg and Paul to boot.

POW: Tom, you entirely destroyed the ample context that is here, above.

Tom: I don’t understand. I disagree with D. That's all. I posted one little yellow figurine. I didn’t destroy anything.

Liquid Love,

Tom

So...the question...

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 2/9/2008 9:33:27 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 2/9/2008 9:51:33 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Sahid) : 2/9/2008 9:57:12 AM (GMT-6)

Whenever you, Zach, did any "works of Love", you would understand them to be GOD'S works of GOD'S love in, through, and by 'Zach'...being incarnated in 'Zach' by the power of God's Spirit.

See the synergy yet?

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 2/9/2008 10:15:26 AM (GMT-6)

PoW:  "Just think of in church. WE cannot make our offering of dimes and nickles acceptable before God, BUT we can pray and ask the ONE person who is Himself worthy to present our gifts for us, on behalf of us, and THEN they become worthy giifts. See?"

Point is that our offering is not a "works righteousness" but neither is it God-only and leaving us out.

http://wesley.nnu.edu/wesleyan_theology/theojrnl/21-25/22-16.htm

"DIALOGUE" WITHIN A TRADITION:
JOHN WESLEY AND GREGORY OF NYSSA DISCUSS CHRISTIAN PERFECTION

 

We may start the unraveling of this fairly complex problem by noting that for Wesley the most adequate ancient model of a dynamic expression of perfection was Clement of Alexandria's "Christian Gnostic." 15 And from Clement we may trace a line of development which forms that tradition in Eastern spirituality with which Wesley "communicated" in the evolving of his doctrine of Christian perfection. Wesley thought that the person through whom he was "interacting" with this tradition was "Macarius the Egyptian," one of the "desert fathers" that the Holy Club studied in its Oxford gatherings. But was it the voice of Macarius that Wesley actually "heard" in his conversations with antiquity? On the basis of discoveries made by Werner Jaeger, the great Harvard hellenist scholar, Dr. Outler does not think so. Outler basically follows Jaeger in proposing that there are positive links between the writings attributed to Macarius and those of Gregory of Nyssa. That linkage, on the basis of Jaeger's historico-literary criticism, is made by attributing the authorship of the Macarian Homilies-extracts of which Wesley included in Volume I of his Christian Library, published in Bristol between 1749 and 1751-not to a "fourth-century Egyptian 'desert father,' but rather (to) a fifth-century Syrian monk, whose concept of Christian spirituality was derived almost exclusively from Gregory" of Nyssa. 16 Therefore, Professor Outler suggests that if Jaeger is correct in discerning this connection between the Macarian Homilies and Gregory of Nyssa, then John Wesley

. . . was actually in touch with Gregory of Nyssa, the greatest of all the Eastern Christian teachers of the quest for perfection. Thus, in his early days, (Wesley) drank deep of this Byzantine tradition of spirituality at its source and assimilated its concept of devotion as the way and perfection as the goal of the Christian life. 17

Thus, says Outler,

Wesley's doctrine of Christian perfection is an amalgam of many sources, but its fountainhead (outside the New Testament, of course) is Gregory of Nyssa. 18

This, then, would explain why Wesley in his affinity for "Macarius" would also be attracted to Clement of Alexandria. For, in a way, Wesley was really in "dialogue" with an Eastern tradition of spirituality that has lines of continuity stretching from Clement of Alexandria and Origen through Basil the Great (the older brother of Gregory) to Gregory of Nyssa. Thus John Wesley was in trans-historical union with the ancient Church at points John Clayton could not have imagined and Wesley did not realize!

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 2/9/2008 1:10:25 PM (GMT-6)

D: In your view of personhood, is it possible for two DISTINCT persons to have an IDENTICAL will and/or power of willing?

Tom: More ‘nouns’. Gosh. OK, I’ll try.

‘Will’ has to do with ‘nature’, while person has to do with ‘hypostasis’. Now, as far as I understand, East and West both agree that Trinitarian faith is: THREE persons (hypostases), ONE nature (ousia). That means three ‘persons’ and one ‘will’. So yes, two (or three) ‘persons’ may together share one and the same faculty of ‘will’, in which case they would be ‘homousios’.

D: In other words, is it possible for one person A to be seen as a truly DISTINCT PERSON from another person B...IF person A only submits to and incarnates person B's perspectives for every decision at all times?

Tom: Do they have the SAME will or not? If so, they share one and the same ‘nature’, in which case they are homousios. Yes, this is possible.

D: I think that you and Greg would say no.

Tom: We can’t say ‘no’ and be Trinitarians in ANYTHING like an orthodox sense.

THREE persons, ONE nature. Does ‘will’ have to do with ‘nature’ or not?

D: Even for person A to FREELY CHOOSE such determinisTIC submission to person B is to, for all intents and purposes, REMOVE her "personal otherness" from person B.

Tom: I thought you said they shared ONE AND THE SAME WILL, one and the same faculty of will, one and the same ‘nature’.

OK, you’re NOT talking about two ‘homousios’ persons. You’re talking about two persons who are NOT homousios, who have two separate wills. If you’re talking about two distinct persons who are NOT homousios, who do NOT share one and the same nature, and so who do NOT share on and the same will, if you want to know if one such person A can submit to the will of person B for every decision at all times…

…yes, I think that’s possible. I think that’s what I’ll be doing forever. When I freely create in ways not immediately determined by God…listen carefully…I will be submitting my will to God’s, I will be doing and being what God wills me to be. God wills the differentiation of creative centers of willing. Such free exercise of creative capacities CANNOT be any LESS a surrender or submission of one’s will to God than is YOUR version of surrender to God. Your assumption that such freely creative capacities in us—not determined by God—represents a less ‘unified’, less ‘reflective of God’ form of relationality is entirely presumptuous.

After over 100 pages you still don’t get my point Bro. My point is that for a person B to wish to determine a person A (with whom B is not homousios) without remainder is to not love A. God is the love that ‘lets us be’. Where you view God as really wanting to determine us without remainder and then add to this our wanting only to please God and do his will, I don’t doubt the latter (that we always desire the will and pleasure of God; that is, I’m not suggesting an arrangement in which human beings have their being is determining themselves in ways that are CONTRARY to the divine will—that would be stupid of me), I reject the former, that God could relate, or wish to relate, to us in such a manner. That is, I reject the notion that God COULD create hypostatic beings (who love, worship him, choose to do his will, relate personally, are responsible for their choices, etc.) while at the same time determining (or WANT to determine) them in every respect without remainder.

D: So...for a human being to surrender all control to God determinisTICally would be for the human being to CEASE being her own created ‘person’ to being God's ‘extension’.

Tom: Now you’re talking about two persons who are NOT homousios. In this case, yes, such determination would render the determined an ‘object’ and not a ‘person’. Hartshorne argued it. Greg reminded me that he argued it as well. Where A determines B without remainder, B is just A. There is no distinct identity without some element of self-determination.

D: The Father and the Son are distinct persons in the Godhead...but there is only ONE WILL.

Tom: Of course, D. They’re homousios. They have one will because they share the same ‘nature’ or ‘ousia’. We aren’t homousios with God and cannot be of one ‘ousia’ with him. You have always failed to APPRECIATE this I think.

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D: You (Tom) believe that God created us because he wanted NON-DIVINE PERSONS with whom he could INTERPERSONALLY relate for eternity. He wanted beings who LIKE HIM can freely give LOVE from a personal place that is NOT REDUCIBLE to any deterministIC operation by any other person, including Godself. This created personal otherness, you contend, cannot obtain if God completely determines the activity of a created agent...even if such deterministIC activity is freely chosen for oneself. In order for God's true telos to be accomplished, our eternal self-understanding and deepest identity must represent this "interpersonal" reality between created personal being and Uncreated Personal Being.

Tom: More summarizing? You should do a PhD dissertation on ME!  

I’d adjust a few things, because I think your distaste for personal differentiation (between divine and non-divine being) comes through a bit. I’d say first of all that positing ‘reasons’ for ‘why’ God created us is OK if we’re looking to understand our purpose and goal. But I don’t want to be seen as having circumscribed God’s intentions entirely. Having said that, I’ll summarize:

God created us for reasons analogous to why parents have children, because God wanted to see beings who are not the same being as he is love like he loves, personally, creatively, and beautifully. God sees Godself in such a creation. That’s the self-reflection God is after.

It goes without saying that the A’s creativity ceases to be A’s if A is determined without remainder by B. If God’s interested in multiplying creative love and relationality (in a manner analogous to why parents have children), then their identities and behavior cannot be reduced to the effects of deterministic causality. “This created personal otherness cannot obtain if God completely determines the activity of a created agent even if such deterministic activity is freely chosen for oneself.” Correct, because no ‘person’ who loves the ‘other’ and wills for that ‘other’ a personal, loving, creative, life would reduce that ‘other’ to a mere ‘object’ by determining it without remainder.

D: In order for God's true telos to be accomplished, our eternal self-understanding and deepest identity must represent this ‘interpersonal’ reality between created personal being and Uncreated Personal Being.

Tom: You add stuff that confuses me, like “deepest identity.” Is that different from “identity”? I don’t know. I will say yes, it is my hope to occasion as much unique and loving beauty and personal pleasure for God as I can. I don’t think the sort of surrender to being an object of causally deterministic machinations (even if divine) you describe fulfills my wildest dreams. If you can offer me a better dream, I’m all ears.

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D: “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” The words of Jesus.

Question: What is this "light"? Could it be that "our light" is like the "light" of the MOON on a full moon's night? A REFLECTION of the Sun's light that has it's "own" lunar luminescense.  A manifestation of Day's Light...at night.

So...our light is INSEPARABLE from Christ.

Tom: I’d suggest that we take ALL metaphors in stride. They point without circumscribing. I don’t think I’m a self-existent being that produces his own identity and manufactures his own light and glory. Come on. But to admit this, D, is not to concede your ‘hypostatic monism’. Not at all.

But there are OTHER metaphors. Like Phil. 2.14 where Paul describes us each as “stars that shine in the universe.” Well, a star DOES generate its own light (as opposed to reflecting light like the moon as in your example. And you had to introduce the ‘moon’ in your analogy; it’s not even mentioned in the passage. So you’re interpreting where technically speaking I am not. So why don’t I offer this metaphor as biblical PROOF of MY view? Maybe I should. Or perhaps 2Cor 5.20, “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors as though God were making his appeal through us.” I find the “as though” quite interesting. It presumes a distinction, a personal distinction in fact. You’d want to say it IS God; you want "God AS us" so that "we just ARE God appealing to others." But that destroys Paul’s language. It's NOT what he SAYS. It is AS THOUGH God were making his appeal through us. But of course God IS making his appeal through us. Which is it? It’s a metaphor; that’s the which which it is! It’s difficult so squeeze ontology out of them, though I don’t suppose we can avoid trying. My point is, if you want to play the metaphor game, there are metaphors that confirm my view too.

Tom

• http://www.seanmultimedia.com/Pie_Macarius_Egyptian_Homilies_1-5.html
• http://www.seanmultimedia.com/Pie_Macarius_Egyptian_Homilies_6-11.html
• http://www.seanmultimedia.com/Pie_Macarius_Egyptian_Homilies_12-22.html

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 2/9/2008 1:22:20 PM (GMT-6)

POW: HumanHypostasis said...I thought the quotes I posted were interesting. Sorry they didn't garner more interest. Yes, POW, I was aware of Wesley's connection to the Macarian Homilies. They inspired some of his hymns. What's the point?

Tom: Really? That's what HumanHypostasis said? Strikes through his words and all?

I'm not mad or anything, B. I'm not ranting, so don't misunderstand me OK? But can you do me a favor and NOT strike through my words, my meaning? I really don't appreicate being reinterpreted and having my words erased. Whatever you might mean by doing so, I own the text Bro. They're MY words. Thanks

So let me say it again: I am sorry my quotes did not garner MORE interest. That's what I said. That's what I still mean.

And how can you strike through a question? A question! I don't get it. I'm looking for the Macarian Homilies online, to read them, THE text--not commentaries on parts--but the text itself, either English or Greek. If you have THAT, then you'll be helping me. But to post something about Wesley and the Homilies? I don't get it. What's the point of THAT, given what I was looking for?

Why is this so hard?

Tom