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There's nothing new going on here, so I don't feel good about jumping in again, though I am!
D: Synergy IS monergy.
Tom: This is always how I’ve read you, and why I object. Synergy is not monergy.
D: You (Tom) say that it IS possible for two homoousias persons to have an identical will.
Tom: We're talking about F, S, and SP, right? So yeah, it’s not just ‘possible’ for two/three homousiatic (is that a word?) persons to have one and the same will, it’s part of the definition of what it means to be homousios with another--of one and the same nature (numerically that is). That's why there's only ONE mind, and ONE will, between F, S, and SP right? Unless we want to say there are three minds, wills, etc. This is why Morris' distinction between kind-essences and individual-essences is helpful, for it's obvious that though you and I do NOT share one and the same mind and will we nevertheless say you and I are, in a sense, homousios; we both share human nature, though not one and the same instantiation of that nature, which is why we have different minds and wills.
D: In other words, a person A determining another person B necessarily diminishes the authentic personhood of person B ONLY if the controlling person A was not homoousias with the controlled person B.
Tom: Do you think the Father ‘determines’ the Son? You should read more Zizioulas. He’s so radical about ‘personhood’ and ‘freedom’ he refuses to attribute any necessity to F, S, and SP. Each ‘freely choose’ to love the other. I couldn’t believe it. I can’t even go that far!
But yes, it seems to me that F and S’s being homousios (of one essence/nature and so having only one will) and our NOT being of one essence/nature with God (and so having wills not identical to God’s) ought to say SOMETHING about how ‘one’ with God we can be.
D: Because God the Father is homoousias with God the Logos, his personhood utterly determining that of God the Logos is not a problem. Christ the Logos is truly homoousias with the Father.
Tom: I’d never say the Father ‘determines’ the Son or the exercise of the Son’s will. That wouldn’t make sense. They share one and the same will. Talk of F “determining” S is out of place. I hope I get an ‘Amen’ from POW on that.
You’re mixing two uses of ‘determine’, D. There’s “logically determine” which we might say is how the Father ‘delimits’ or ‘determines’ the Son and Spirit. That’s fine. But then there’s a determining of an ‘essentially other’ sort, like me determining you in some respect, a kind of determination that involves a ‘causal chain’. I don’t think that applies to F, S, and SP.
Our being “not-of-one-essence/nature” (and thus not of one will) with God (where F and S ARE essentially related in this way) has to mean something for this whole discussion.
D: Christ the Logos is also homoousias with humanity, through becoming human "flesh", including the human spirit/heart/nous like that of his Mother, the Theotokos. I'm homoousias with humanity...
Tom: Do you and I share one and the same ‘mind’ and ‘will’ naturally? Are you and I homousios? On the kind-essential level, yes. Not on the individual-essential level.
Just a thought, D (on the limitation of language). You posit ONE divine ousia, right? Of course you do. One divine essence/nature. OK. You and the EO say the divine essence or ‘ousia’ is absolutely off-limits to penetration by creation. We can’t touch it, observe it, know it, or participate in it, right? F, S, and SP are homousios—they share one and the same divine ‘ousia’. So whatever the Logos’s being homousios with humanity means, it cannot by some algebraic leap make US homousios with the divine essence. Remember the hypostatic/ousia distinction. The Logos (a hypostasis) is homousios with the divine essence AND the human essence, yes, but this doesn’t mean the two natures are, so to speak, co-essential or ‘mixed’. Christ’s sharing human kind-essential nature/essence doesn’t mean we come to possess the nature/essence of God (not even 2Pet, read rightly, means that) which the Logos also shares.
D: If, through epicletic faith and poverty-of-spirit, I FREELY CHOOSE to allow "Christ-in-me" (who is ONE PERSON who IS homoousias with me in his humanity! ) to determine all my human activity, such that 1) "Dwayne's" will was COMPLETELY IDENTIFIED with "Christ-in-me" 's will and 2) all aspects of "Dwayne's" powers of personality and human becoming were at the complete determination of "Christ-in-me"...would any of this nullify Christ's love for "Dwayne" as a person? Nope.
Tom: I’d say ‘yep’, because in such an arrangement there is no non-divine person to speak of. What other ‘person’ is the person of Christ loving in loving you? You only love another 'person'. So who's the person being loved by Christ in the act of Christ's loving you? Who's the 'you'? Love by definition defines personal relations, the exchange of life between persons. If you’re going to say God “loves” you (in the personal sense), you have to posit the personal distinction constitutive of such a relation. Take away the 'other' as person and you have nothing there to love.
This brings up the thorniest of issues. The key theological question (and we’re ALL struggling with this) is exactly how we are to employ Trinitarianism in defining the human experience of relationality, love and freedom. That is, we want to start with the Trinity and let that tell us what love, personhood, and freedom are. And I’m cool with that. BUT at the same time we (a) have no way of understanding the Trinity other than through analogies taken from our own interpersonal relations (but I think this is not a HUGE problem), and we (b) have to respect the ontological divide and differences between divine and human being. Surely these differences will influence how we are to employ Trinitarianism to our understanding of love, personhood, and freedom. So to “apply Trinitarianism” to ourselves means accounting for and applying similarities AND differences, not just similarities. So we can’t simplistically conclude that since ‘this’ or ‘that’ is how God relates to Godself that it all transfers over to how God relates to non-God selves. We’re caught in this tension.
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Tom: 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: Is Jesus a hypostatic human being who loves God, worships God, chooses to do God's will, relate personally to God and is responsible for the choices of his HUMAN "heart"? Yes.
Tom: Jesus IS God the Son. Hypostatcially, Jesus is one and the same hypostasis as the Logos. The Logos assuming human nature. What you do NOT have in Jesus is a human hypostasis worshipping a divine hypostasis. The relationship between the divine and the human in Christ is not inter-hypostatic, inter-personal. Of course, you want THIS to become THE paradigm for all divine-human relationality. I understand the claim. I just disagree with it.
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D: Is Jesus' human becoming determined by Father's Spirit in "every respect without remainder"? Yes.
Tom: Sure, there’s no ‘human other’ named Jesus that is loved by the Son. The determination of the human by the Son in Christ is not the determination of ‘a human being’ (I want to say ‘person’ but you’ll object) by God, not the determination of one person by another person.
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D: Is Jesus the ARCHETYPE for the hypostatic nature of humanity's created nature? Yes.
Tom: If ‘yes’ means no other understanding of the sense in which Christ’s humanity is paradigmatic for us is allowed, then I guess we’re done. I happen to have a different opinion.
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Dang, I’ll go ahead a post some of Greg’s email to me. I’ll have to buy him extra cigars to get back in with him. There’s absolute nothing here Greg hasn’t said before and/or published elsewhere, otherwise I wouldn’t post it:
“I am of course in full agreement with your view, and your arguments supporting your view, for we are twins and must agree [inside joke, sorry]. Some of the arguments you use are used by Hartshorne, and I review them in Trinity and Process, e.g., if X determines Y without remainder, Y is simply X. There is no distinct identity without some element of self-determination. That's why I say God gives our dispositional essence, and this is a disposition to be self-disposed. Here is where I break from Edwards. And, as I argued in an earlier email, I agree with you that we aren't destined to participate in the divine nature the exact same way that Jesus, the Son, participates in the divine nature. We dance IN the Trinity, but we are NOT the Trinity. And that's a GOOD thing because if we WERE the Trinity there'd be no additional otherness and therefore [no additional] relatedness expressing love that was already eternally there.”
Tom: Now, sure, Greg might agree (as you say he has) that God’s determining us without remainder is a logical state of affairs; but not without consequences:
“I grant that God could create a world that wasn't populated with agents with morally responsible free will, and I grant that God could create a world that APPEARED distinct that was nevertheless the terminus of God's will, but I deny that God could create a world that was the terminus of his will (without remainder) and [also] (a) have this world populated with agents who have morally responsible free will, or (b) enter into genuine relationships with other agents, or (c) have this world be ontologically distinct from himself.”
Tom: I asked him about Neville:
“Neville is a pantheist, pure and simple.”
Exactly. And that’s why your view (and all the EO if your view is theirs) is pantheistic. Now, I agree that in the case of Christ we have an instance of “hypostatic pantheism” (Panhypostaticism maybe?) so to speak, where the “pan” quantifies hypostatically over the Christ-event. All (that is, 'pan') hypostatic activity constitutive of the divine-human event of Christ is attributable to a single undivided person—the Logos, yes. But to extend this without qualification to all human beings is to quantify pantheistically over all divine-human relationality per se and thus leads to a universal pantheism.
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D: Are YOU, the human person named ‘Tom’, homoousias with the Risen and Ever-Present Christ the Logos right now?
Tom: Which ‘ousia’? The divine or the human? We know Christ has TWO ‘natures’ or ‘ousias’.
D: If you say "yes", then it would seem to me that you'd have to concede that for "Christ-in-Tom" to determine "Tom" without remainder would NOT be a violation of love...because "Tom" and "Christ-in-Tom" are two PERSONS who are homoousias. We're just following your logic all the way out. Do you see this as consistent with Tom's logic, Sahid? Corey? Jeff?
If you say "no"...well...now we'll REALLY see if you're Apollinarian or not... HA!
Tom: I can’t answer you ‘yes’ or ‘no’ unless you (a) tell me which of Christ’s natures (the divine or the human) you’re asking about, and if you mean the ‘human’, then (b) tell me whether you mean the kind-essential properties of human nature or the individual-essential properties of a human hypostasis. If the former, then yes, I share that with Christ, we’re homousios; we share a kind-nature. If the latter, then no. I am not numerically identical to, or one and the same with, the Logos’ hypostacization of human nature.
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D: 2) As far as Tom's own logic ["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."] and how it works out...doesn't this mean that, because Christ the Logos (person B) is homoousias with Tom (person A), Christ the Logos determining Tom's becoming without remainder is NEITHER incompatible with Christ's loving Tom...NOR with Tom retaining authentic personhood?
Tom: I don’t argue that Christ and I are homousios in the same sense that Son and Father are homousios. Obviously homousios cannot mean the same thing in both cases. F and S possess one and the same ‘will’. How many ‘wills’ between them? One. How many between Christ and me? Two. Are you and I homousios D? Well, yes. No more or less than Christ and I are homousios. We share the same kind-essential properties of human nature. Now, if you were to determine me in every respect without remainder, I think we’d have a problem that isn’t solved by appealing to the mere fact that we both share human nature. The logic (if X determines Y without remainder, then Y is just X) kicks in and love evaporates, as far as I can tell. You’re not loving me as a person if you insist on your own way (1Cor 13) with me, if you treat others as mere extensions of your own will without setting them free to be themselves in relation to you.
Tom
Post Edited (HumanHypostasis) : 2/10/2008 2:19:45 AM (GMT-6) |