Great comment (at least as I read it) of Hart’s in The Beauty of the Infinite:

“As Gregory [of Nyssa]’s is an ontology of not of emanation but of creation, his understanding of the image as such is properly one of expression rather than of mere dissemination: the image in its condition as image expresses how God is God. Not by dissolution into a higher essence, but by an analogical correspondence of its created structure of difference and mediation to the God whose inner life is one of differentiation and mediation, the image expresses the truth of distance….”

I’m almost finished with DH’s book and will need to read it at least ten more times before I have a decent grasp of it, but I’ll say two things for now:

(1) He hasn’t said anything close to the sort of monopersonal view of divine-human relationality that D and B have been arguing for; and…

(2) Some of his statements, like this one, tend definitely toward an interpersonal view.

I know how I interpret statements like this one. The image “in its condition as image” expresses “how God is God.” THAT exactly captures the sense of my own understanding. It is in our ‘otherness’ that we are ‘images’. But surely out ‘imaging’ God obtains in the ‘personal’ nature of our existence and relatedness to God. Thus, a parallel between ‘image’ and ‘personal identity’ and the transfer of the ‘otherness’ that Hart rightly attributes to the former (‘image’) to the latter (‘person’). But this is not possible on D’s view because for D the identity of the Logos IS our identity and there’s no perceived difference in identities, which exposes D’s “we’re ‘images’ of the ‘Image’” as vacuous. Created ‘otherness’ for Hart isn’t the ‘otherness’ of how one and the same ‘image’ or ‘identity’ gets expressed; it’s ‘other images’. For D our identity (our ‘imaging’ God) is the one point at which we are NOT ‘other’ than God. That’s problematic. D will say we’re “images of the Image,” and so ‘other’ than God in the sense that makes a capital ‘I’ and small ‘i’. But inasmuch as ‘image’ resides in ‘personal identity’ in relation, and inasmuch as D posits one ‘person’ as constituting the ‘identity’ of every human being in Christ, there is left to D no way to posit the necessary ‘otherness’ of ‘created image’ or an ‘otherness which is image’ (of which Hart speaks).

On D’s view, our ultimate ‘image’ or ‘identity’ is the one thing that ISN’T ‘other’ than God. In my view (and as I’m reading Hart), it’s the one thing that’s GOT to be different. I wouldn’t object to our being made ‘gods’ (in a qualified sense) in any respect save this one. Hence, it is in our ‘otherness FROM God’ in ‘relationship TO God’ that our being ‘images OF God’ resides. As E. L. Mascall said, even if there is a guarded sense in which God is ‘what’ we become, it is never the case that God is ‘who’ we become.

Tom

D: Help me see from your perspective, Tom.

Tom: After 150 pages?

D: There have to be some pretty bad consequences for my view for you to be this opposed to things. Please...PLEASE...lay out for me what you are trying to avoid.

Tom: Creaturely otherness as image obtains IN the personal identity of the creature in relationship with God. That distinction and relationship is important to me, it expresses the context in which God’s purposes for us are lived out by us. So undermining that vision and relationality is what I’ve tried to be about here. I don't want a loss of relationship. So naturally I want to avoid collapsing creaturely personal identity into the divine identity, and as a result secure a greater diversity within created reality and in turn a more beautifully relational context.

I suppose you'd describe my concerns as a silly sort of Romanticism. I don't know.

D: There is SOMETHING that you don't want to lose.

Tom: God’s intentions for creaturely existence.

D: There MUST be something...cause you are just too "stubborn" against this. 

Tom: Well, I just try to keep up with YOU! And that ain’t easy.  

D: 2) This is serious as a heart attack. What has God been telling you IN PRAYER about all this? What is God saying to you personally about this whole thing?

Tom: God “speaking to me personally” makes sense given MY view (hehe) by what could YOU mean by God “speaking to you personally”? Does that mean God speaks to you, a creature, "as a person"? Who's the person?

Anyhow, yeah, I do think about this a lot, prayerfully, and I do talk to God about these issues. If my research keeps me in it for a few years to come, I don’t want to spin my wheels aimlessly. I hope something of what I end up saying is on the mark and blesses people. The more I contemplate and listen to Scripture, the more convinced I am. If I thought God was telling me you were right, I’d say so and change my view accordingly. But that hasn’t happened.

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

POW: [Tom: …the sort of monopersonal view of divine-human relationality that D and B have been arguing for] Tom, I'll not line through your text if you don't ascribe things to me that I did not say, nor believe.  Seriously!

Tom: Sorry about that. I guess I just don't get it then. You said you cast your vote on Option 2 with D. But Option 2 doesn’t even pretend to describe an interpersonal divine-human relationship. So I understood your vote for Op 2 to be an endorsement of Op 2’s view on divine-human relationship, viz., a monopersonal view; that is, it’s one person, one hypostasis, the Logos, who is the ‘Who’ in each human being relating to the Father and the Spirit. Did you think Op 2 offered something else? It doesn't.

Lets' see...I went with #3. You and D went with #2. You said my #3 was a 'Romanticism' that didn't have more than 300 years behind it. I came back and DESCRIBED Jessica's art, and the relational beauty that exists in her creating those ceramics and giving it to me. I asked you if you thought we'd be creating and expressing ourselves this way in heaven. You were all over that, saying you certainly hoped we wouldn't surrender such exercise of creative capacities. THEN I said, "Well, B, the DESCRIPTION of Jessica that you've just approved is the heart and soul of Option 3 which you thought was a new, tendy Romanticism." I think you came back and said you weren't going to agree with me that Op 2 and 3 were even mutually exclusive. With that I gave up. But I thought you were in Camp #2. And now here we are in a discussion over the meaning of discussions over the meaning of discussions over... 

...forget it.  

The stars just didn't line up on this one for us. Sorry. Like I said, I’ll not comment on your contributions. Not upset or anything like that. It’s just that I ‘feel’ that whenever I try to nail your shingle into the roof in ‘one’ place so that I know where to find it when I come back with the next shingle, you’ve moved the first shingle on me. I can’t converse under such conditions.

A Round of Hugs and Kisses on me!

Tom

Post Edited (HumanHypostasis) : 2/13/2008 12:23:50 PM (GMT-6)

D: How "other" is the Body from the Head? Seriously!

Tom: “Body” is just ONE metaphor, and no metaphor is meant to be drafted into the service of demonstrating high-end metaphysics like we’re trying to do. Sure, it says SOMETHING about Christ and the Church. But it doesn’t say EVERYTHING about the Church. There are OTHER metaphors too which on the surface of it might appear contradictory but are resolved when the metaphor is not universalized and used to try to say something metaphysically ultimate and all-encompassing. Sure, we’re the “body” of Christ. And as we know, “bodies” are just vehicles through which persons (here, the one person of Christ) live and move. But I don't know that you can just move seamlessly from "we are the body of Christ" to "body parts is all any of us ever is" to "body parts aren't persons" to "none of us is a 'person' in relationship to Christ." For starters you've got Paul, in the same letter, a chapter latter, describing the divine-human relationship in prosopon/personal terms of mutual 'knowing' and 'being known'. Body parts like fingers and toes don't 'know' or stand in 'face to face' relations. So I think, D, that you may be trying to get TOO MUCH out of TOO LITTLE.

Take the metaphor of our being ‘sons’ of God and ‘friends’ of Christ (I call you my friends), or in Hebrews as 'brothers' of Christ. Why don’t we universalize THESE metaphors (which are MORE than JUST body parts) so I can call it a wrap? It’s a mixed bag, D. No ONE metaphor can alone prove an entire metaphysics.

That’s my view at least.

Tom

Post Edited (HumanHypostasis) : 2/13/2008 12:28:56 PM (GMT-6)

Thanks, Tom.

- Bruce

    :)

Post Edited (Lurking Luke) : 2/14/2008 6:25:34 AM (GMT-6)

Sorry for breaking the silence. I gotta pots this though. Famous last words, right?

There are two sets of ‘Three Options’ running around here. One set is my summary of the different levels/types of ‘union with God’ that we’re debating. They are:

1) D’s “synergy unto monergism” where we’re free to exercise our will in ways NOT determined by God right up and including the consummate choice to divest ourselves of this very capacity, at which time our every thought, choice, and movement are determined by the divine will ‘alone’ (D’s monergism; and that’s just what moergism is).

2) I also do NOT mean something close to this, namely, the idea that we don’t really give up the capacity to determine ourselves but rather forever freely choose, consistently, moment by moment, to perpetuate a state of affairs in which we are effectively determined by God’s will just as if (1) above WERE the case.

3) What I mean by synergy 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 respond, and ALSO in which WE address and God responds.

D and B went with #2. I of course expressed #3.

Apart from these three are three other levels of union with God which Ware describes in my post of his comments some time ago. And it’s to that quote I want to return. D reposted part of this quote and then turned out some smooth finesse work (love ya!) to argue that given Ware’s beliefs about other things (like epiklesis), Ware couldn’t believe anything like MY #3 above but was surely in #2 with D and B.

Let’s see. Here’s Ware’s quote again (between the dotted lines):

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

“…we need to think always in terms of a threefold differentiation. As Palamas himself puts it [here’s Palamas, now]:

“Three realities pertain to God: essence, energy, and the triad of divine hypostases. As we have seen, those privileged to be united to God so as to become one spirit with him – as St. Paul has said, ‘He who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit with him’ (1Cor 6.17) – are [1] not united to God with respect to his essence, since all the theologians testify that with respect to his essence God undergoes no participation. Moreever, [2] the hypostatic union is fulfilled only in the case of the Logos, the God-man. Thus those privileged to attain union with God are [3] united to him with respect to his energy. [Come ON now D! That’s exactly what I’ve been saying.]

[back to Ware now] “...Palamas [and Ware and Tom, but not D!] envisages, then, three levels of union. First, there is union ‘according to essence,’ such as exists between the three persons of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But the mystical union between God and human beings cannot be on this level. On Palamas’s presuppositions, if we were to participate in God’s essence, then we should become God in a literal sense, in the same way the three divine persons are God. But theosis (deification) is not to be understood in such a crude and unqualified way: for, although united to God, the saints do not become additional members of the Trinity.

“Second, there is union ‘according to hypostasis,’ such as occurred at the Incarnation, when Godhead and manhood were united in the single person of Jesus Christ the Theanthropos. Once more, the mystical union cannot be of this kind, since the hypostatic union brought about at the incarnation is altogether unique. [I don’t know what else to say. How plain can he make his point?] It is indeed our vocation to become ‘sons in the Son’, to use a phrase of Eckhart. But this does not mean that we and God [the Logos] constitute a single person, as in Christ’s hypostatic union [D?]: for in the mystical vision, face-to-face, the saints preserve each their own individual identity.

“There remains, then, the third possibility: the mystical union is a union ‘according to energy’. The human person in such a union is made one with God, yet is not absorbed or annihilated. Each of the saints, although ‘deified’ or ‘divinized’ – filled, that is to say, with the life, glory, and power of God – nonetheless continues to be a distinct personal subject [hello?]. God is ‘all in all’, yet, in the words of the Macarian homilies (fourth century), ‘Peter is Peter, Paul is Paul, Philip is Philip. Each one retains his own nature and personal identity, [EACH one has his own WHAT? What did Ware just say?] but they are all filled with the Holy Spirit.’ In the ‘I and Thou’ relationship between God and the saints, the ‘I’ still remains an ‘I’ and the ‘Thou’ still remains a ‘Thou’, however close the two approach in mutual love. The distinction-in-unity between God’s essence and his uncreated energies thus enables Palamas to avoid monistic pantheism, and yet to affirm the possibility of an unmediated union in love between creature and Creator.”

(All my emphases)

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

Tom: D did a lot of work to distance Ware from my view. But there’s just no getting around Ware’s clear statements. I didn’t see anything is all the subsequent quotes of Ware’s that D posted that encourages me to reinterpret Ware’s summary of Palamas. Ware’s (and Palamas’s) belief regarding our union with God is expressed by the third level of union, not the first or the second. That much is indisputable. No sophistry is gonna finagle its way outta that. And we can argue about just WHAT union with God on this level looks like, but one thing is for sure (in Ware and Palamas’s opinion)—it’s NOT our being assimilated into the subjectivity of the Logos via the hypostatic union. Ware/Palamas contradict D’s claim that the union of Godhead and human-nature in Christ, that is, the hypostatic union, is THE model of the union of the saints with God. Both Palamas and Ware deny this one-to-one correspondence, arguing instead that our union with God is neither ‘essential’ (none of us is claiming this) nor ‘hypostatic’ (as is the union of divine and human being in Christ), but “according to energy.” That much is clear.

The ‘personal distinction’ between God and human being fulfilled in Christ that I’ve been arguing for is expressed by Ware just fine—‘individual identity’ standing in ‘face-to-face’ (looky there!) relations with God. An “I” that’s a human I (NOT the incarnate Christ’s “I” in me via the hypostatic union—both Ware and Palamas argue that’s NOT possible); that is, an “I” that is a non-divine “I” standing in face-to-face relations TO THE DIVINE “Thou.” Exactly my point.

Now, where Ware and I might differ is in the sort of freedom that God grants human beings and in which he is best reflected. But that’s a second level disagreement. I’d definitely argue that God is reflected in our being, in our own small ways, ‘creators’ and ‘shapers’ of beauty. Maybe Ware’s opinion on this matter is buried in his writings. Fine. It doesn’t matter. Ware and Palamas agree that whatever our union with God means, it can’t mean the assimilation of our personal identities into the personal identity of the Logos so that there’s one ‘who’ (the Logos) who is the ‘subject’ of our experience and choice. Ware and Palamas both go for my third option so far as ‘personal (hypostatic) distinction’ is concerned. Both agree that our union with God does not reproduce, in the manner D argues, the hypostatic union of Christ.

But if Ware can’t mean anything like what I’m suggesting by his (and Palamas’s) third level of union with God, you can’t make him mean what he denies in levels one and two (your two, where the hypostatic union in Christ IS the model for all our union with God—we all relate to the Father in precisely the same incarnational model as the Logos relates to the Father because we ARE the Logos incarnated here, there, in you, in me, etc., no ‘personal’ difference, no additional ‘Who’.

Now, later D came back and summarized before asking me to clarify:

D: Basically what I hear all of these people saying is the following:

1) For every individual human being, there will be an creaturely ‘I’ sense there. A sense of creaturely (limited perspective, surpassable in beauty) self-differentiation and self-consciousness that is the source of human meaning-making and choice.
2) This creaturely ‘I’ sense can see itself as personally distinct from the ground of it's being, God.
3) This creaturely ‘I’ sense can have an ego identity associated with it (Paul, Peter, Tom, Dwayne, Hillary, Rush, etc) that will be part of their individual becoming as a ‘thou’.
4) Neither the creaturely ‘I’ sense itself nor the capacity for ego identification are obliterated by mystical union between God and the human soul. The creaturely ‘I’ doesn't see itself as UNlimited and UNcreated subjectivity...so we never see ourselves as God sees Godself. ‘I’ participate in the DIVINE ENERGIES of the Father via the Father's Spirit and Father's Word...but never in the self-experience of God's utter transcendence.

I think this is what was being said pretty much, right, Tom?

Tom: That’s good enough. I would simplify it and just say that God is a personal other to whom we relate and leave it at that.

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

D: If what you are looking for is “creaturely otherness as image IN the personal identity of the creature in relationship with God,” then I already got that. The self-understanding of the Bride of Christ “member”!

Tom: In my estimation you don’t have it. I don’t doubt that together we all constitute the Bride of Christ (which of course is a good metaphor supporting a personal distinction between Christ and us, unless Christ is marrying himself!) I think we can only ‘together’ constitute a ‘person’ (like a collective ‘Bride’) if we are each individually persons contributing personally to the community (and being contributed to by others). In other words, collective whole get their characteristics from their members. The whole is personal because the members are. So the differentiation into personal otherness extends to each individual. It doesn’t STOP with the collective whole as if the “Body of Christ” collectively is a ‘person’ (the Bride) and leaves the individuals who constitute that collective whole as non-persons. In my view the differentiation moves all the way down and embraces the individual. You can’t claim the individual is a ‘non-person’ but that when we have a lot of these non-persons together they THEN constitute a collective-person. The human being must be individually such that collectively we constitute such a collective-person. At least that’s how I see it.

And let’s remember, in the end “Bride of Christ” is a metaphor. It won’t bear the weight of all the things we can say about our relationship to God. It can say SOME things, and it’s probably aiming at an aesthetic (a love for the ‘family’ of God, for preferring and caring for others so that together we become the community the Father gives to Christ). “Bride” is meant to paint a picture that makes us FEEL something, something that touches us EMOTIONALLY, not a picture that we extrapolate into a metaphysic.

And POW said, “Amen!”…?

Tom

Post Edited (HumanHypostasis) : 2/16/2008 1:05:17 PM (GMT-6)

I had a careful, wonderful read of this part:

YEP:

Tom: D did a lot of work to distance Ware from my view. But there’s just no getting around Ware’s clear statements. I didn’t see anything is all the subsequent quotes of Ware’s that D posted that encourages me to reinterpret Ware’s summary of Palamas. Ware’s (and Palamas’s) belief regarding our union with God is expressed by the third level of union, not the first or the second. That much is indisputable. No sophistry is gonna finagle its way outta that. And we can argue about just WHAT union with God on this level looks like, but one thing is for sure (in Ware and Palamas’s opinion)—it’s NOT our being assimilated into the subjectivity of the Logos via the hypostatic union. Ware/Palamas contradict D’s claim that the union of Godhead and human-nature in Christ, that is, the hypostatic union, is THE model of the union of the saints with God. Both Palamas and Ware deny this one-to-one correspondence, arguing instead that our union with God is neither ‘essential’ (none of us is claiming this) nor ‘hypostatic’ (as is the union of divine and human being in Christ), but "according to energy." That much is clear.

The ‘personal distinction’ between God and human being fulfilled in Christ that I’ve been arguing for is expressed by Ware just fine—‘individual identity’ standing in ‘face-to-face’ (looky there!) relations with God. An "I" that’s a human I (NOT the incarnate Christ’s "I" in me via the hypostatic union—both Ware and Palamas argue that’s NOT possible); that is, an "I" that is a non-divine "I" standing in face-to-face relations TO THE DIVINE "Thou." Exactly my point.

Now, where Ware and I might differ is in the sort of freedom that God grants human beings and in which he is best reflected. But that’s a second level disagreement. I’d definitely argue that God is reflected in our being, in our own small ways, ‘creators’ and ‘shapers’ of beauty. Maybe Ware’s opinion on this matter is buried in his writings. Fine. It doesn’t matter. Ware and Palamas agree that whatever our union with God means, it can’t mean the assimilation of our personal identities into the personal identity of the Logos so that there’s one ‘who’ (the Logos) who is the ‘subject’ of our experience and choice. Ware and Palamas both go for my third option so far as ‘personal (hypostatic) distinction’ is concerned. Both agree that our union with God does not reproduce, in the manner D argues, the hypostatic union of Christ.

But if Ware can’t mean anything like what I’m suggesting by his (and Palamas’s) third level of union with God, you can’t make him mean what he denies in levels one and two (your two, where the hypostatic union in Christ IS the model for all our union with God—we all relate to the Father in precisely the same incarnational model as the Logos relates to the Father because we ARE the Logos incarnated here, there, in you, in me, etc., no ‘personal’ difference, no additional ‘Who’.

. . . .

And POW said, "Amen!"…?

Yep!

I mean, "Amen."

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 2/16/2008 3:34:27 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 2/16/2008 3:31:15 PM (GMT-6)

My only question was how many separate posts D would have responded with before I got back on line to check. I was off by one!

And I’m too happy about POW’s unqualified ‘Amen’ to wanna debate anybody. I wrested POW single-handedly from the clutches of D’s neo-Orthodoxy! Yay! (Just kiddin!)

D: Did Mary give birth to God the Logos?

Tom: How can you ask me that? I’m deciding whether or not to be offended…wait a sec…OK, naw, I won’t be offended. But if you don’t know whether or not I believe God the Son was born of Mary, then…Wow.

D: If so, explain. If not, explain.

Tom: Explain what?

D: se any and all qualifications your want...just show me how IN YOUR MIND Mary is "God's Mother" and how THAT deals with any human spirit/heart/nous within baby Jesus.

Tom: Ooohh, you want to explain the i-n-c-a-r-n-a-t-i-o-n of God. Hmmm. Let’s see…

…eh, I haven’t the slightest. You want me to put Christ up on an operating table and dissect him for you?

I don’t have the tools. Haven’t been to Med School.

I don’t know HOW God did it, D. I just don’t know. Neither do you, neither did the Cappadoccians. Neither did St. Paul. Great is the mystery of godliness…God became a man. I can see Paul scratching his head in amazement while he wrote the words. Did Paul ever explain it? No. Do I think he really understood HOW God incarnated? No. Did he venerate Mary? I’m sure he honored her. I’m sure he honored all human beings. But he never mentions her OR the virgin birth, so I’m not really sure. I’ve already shared why I’m hesitant to call Mary the “Mother of God.” Doesn’t feel right, even AFTER you explain it. Did she “give birth” to Jesus? Of course. Is Jesus God incarnate? Yes. Does that make Mary “God’s Mother”? Hmmm…don’t like the feel of it. Sorry. Theotokos, the God-bearer? If by that you just mean the woman who gave birth to the infant God-incarnate, sure. No protestant who believes in the virgin birth doubts Mary did that. I’m sorry I don’t have more of an explanation for HOW God did that. Do I think Mary reached theosis as a prerequisite for giving birth to Christ? I don’t think so, no.

T