Tom, here is an unanswered question...

Tom,  I'd like you to provide a historical record of three (#3). going back as far as you can. It strikes me as being relatively "new" and "trendy" -- maybe nineteenth century, and less than three hundred years old...unless it has a foothold in the Renaissance that I don't know about. So, I want to know where and of course who!

Can you do that for me, Tom?

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 2/12/2008 8:08:37 AM (GMT-6)

This is what I've BEEN saying.  FREE "SLAVERY" TO CHRIST.

Slaves to Righteousness

    ¹⁵ What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! ¹⁶ Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? ¹⁷ But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. ¹⁸ You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

    ¹⁹ I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. ²⁰ When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. ²¹ What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! ²² But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. ²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in ^[b] Christ Jesus our Lord.

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 2/12/2008 7:48:12 AM (GMT-6)

POW: Tom, I'd like you to provide a historical record of three (#3). going back as far as you can. It strikes me as being relatively "new" and "trendy" -- maybe nineteenth century, and less than three hundred years old...

Tom: Where would you like me to start? How about with Paul in 1Cor 13 where Paul distinguishes between divine ‘prosopon’ and human ‘prosopon’ IN THE ESCHATON, fully inter-related and engaged in divine-human knowing and being known?

What do you and D (or the entire EO tradition; I’ve just finished another book reviewing the biblical texts upon which, historically, a doctrine of theosis has been built) have biblically speaking that, in D’s language, “wraps” things up? After all is said and done, do you have any idea how flimsy the biblical case is for what you’re arguing?

I mean, take D’s use of Paul’s “slaves of righteousness” in Romans. It simply does NOT say what he’d like it to say. It doesn’t explicate ANY particular theology of personal identity visa-a-vise God. D hears “slavery” and then runs into applications not justified by the text.

The text says nothing about OUR issue here.

A proponent of the now infamous #3 Option has zero problems affirming the sort of slavery to righteousness that Paul describes in Romans. Nothing Paul says there precludes the sort of freedom I’ve been arguing for.

If a daughter who is entirely captivated by love of her father, wanting to do nothing but please him and do his will, so transformed by love that she can’t even contemplate the possibility of displeasing him, is not OTHER or LESS than a slave of love or goodness for freely drawing him a picture of her own choosing—especially if her Dad said, “Hey love, paint me a picture, will ya? I’d like that.” The questions are, What CAN God ask us to do? And then, What is a God of perfect, unsurpassable love and satisfaction who doesn’t NEED to create at all but who CAN create the sort of interpersonal context I’ve described likely to do—create non-persons whose every thought and movement he utterly determines so that all he sees is himself (a vision he has eternally anyway), or create beings who can become persons who love like he loves?

I got a picture of a beautiful ceramics project Jessica made me with the note, “I wanted to share with you one of my ‘creations’.” Shall someone reprimand her for claiming to have ‘created’ anything at all? Shall someone implore her to repent of her selfish presumption and teach her to joyfully expect the day when she’ll be healed of such behavior?

It’s a wrap, D? Sure Bro, whatever. ;o)

Tom

I feel like you spent 90% of the space talking to Dwayne, when it was me who asked the question. All you did by way of answer was cite 1Cor 13. I won't presume that it has "nothing about OUR issue here" but I will aks for help from you to point out what you are seeing in it. Otherwise my question remains unanswered, and I got used as floorboards for your rant at D. Not fun.

12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

From that you say: ...divine ‘prosopon’ and human ‘prosopon’ IN THE ESCHATON, fully inter-related and engaged in divine-human knowing and being known?

OK, just what do you want to make out of that? Knowing God = check. Absence of bariers in knowing=check. What else specifically?

I'll have to go get your #3 and post it here so that I can look at it. (back soon)

HERE's what you said:

#3

What I mean by synergy, POW, is the consummate relational beauty of love, freely and even wildly expressing itself in creative ways within a divine-human interpersonal relationship, so that the end result—the relation itself—is forever a joint-project in which God addresses us and we (WE) respond, and ALSO in which WE address and God responds.

I find much or in some ways all of what you have there to be just find.

BUT, what causes me to put up red flags are the phrases "wildly" and "end result." "End result" is probably just loose speaking to you, but to me as reader it has to be taken literally as something in the end coming into being that was not there before. To my ears it places man as the maker, rather than as the participant in what God is doing.

If you find that distinction of "ear" too fine and picky, then I will GLADLY accept #2 and #3, and leave it up to you to claim why they have to be murually exclusive.

I'LL GO BACK AND MAKE BOLD THE PRINCIPLE I'M USING.

Thanks for being persistent, Tom.

.

P.S., "Deification" is a pastoral matter -- becoming filled wih the Spirit -- and not a political one of who can use which verses which way in the 21st century.

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 2/12/2008 12:58:52 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (HumanHypostasis) : 2/12/2008 2:33:32 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (HumanHypostasis) : 2/12/2008 3:08:20 PM (GMT-6)

Tom, I don't doubt your creative, querky ability, or your stuborn determination to write #3 and #2 to be mutually exclusive. But I read them the say I hope they should be written, and don't succume to your goal of keeping them divided.

I agree with what I want to, and shall continue guilt-free.

And I've put a lot of time and effort in doing so.

'Guess you and D. will have to carry on the light-sword panamime...

(Ever praying for you, bro. And your cohort.)