Post Edited (Sahid) : 3/27/2008 3:48:25 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/27/2008 8:52:55 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Sahid) : 3/27/2008 3:44:34 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Sahid) : 3/27/2008 4:23:30 PM (GMT-5)

D: Second of all, it seems that you don't believe that the ‘human spirit’ question with Jesus is a big deal at all.

Tom: I’d have to have some firm opinion on just what the human spirit is to say that. I’m totally open-minded D.

D: The human spirit/nous/heart, biblically speaking, is the arena of self-consciousness, self-understanding and freedom for human beings.

Tom: Really? Biblically speaking? Where does the Bible define the human ‘spirit’ in such terms? You reading that straight out of some text? Let me understand you rightly. You’re saying that in the NT, ‘pneuma’, ‘nous’ and ‘kardia’ are all equivalent, synonymous terms?

D: You, Tom, seem to link personhood more directly with the exercise of self-determining freedom...which deals implicitly with self-consciousness and self-understanding.

Tom: Here’s what I’d like to try to say. Where there is no self-determining exercise of a person’s will BY that person, there’s no person to speak of. Moreover, where’s there’s a determination of the will of one by another, the one is not a person-in-relation-to the other. Now, I don't know that I want to absolutely "ground" personhood in the exercise of the will, as you say I do. I'm not that smart. I'm just describing what I think has to be present for a 'person' to be present. I don't see how this much can't also apply to the Trinity. No one of the three persons absolutely determines what unique exercises of will define or qualify any other. We might not have to say there are three separate 'faculties' of will or 'centers' of willing (whatever that means). Perhaps we can say that each distinct person exercises one and the same faculty in ways unique to the distinct personal identity of each.

We aim our language at describing the divine reality. I don't know that we ever capture it precisely, without remainder. 

But if this means that I don't line up on the historical Orthodox position regarding the one will of God (at least as I understand it), I guess that'll just have to be. There may be a way to attribute to all three divine persons one and the same ‘faculty of will’ as it were which each person determines/exercises in self-determining ways (agreed upon by the others and allowed and desired by the others, but unique to each). If love doesn’t demand its own way, then perhaps this ought to mean something in terms of the trinity too, as the LOVE that God is. But I don’t see how there’s any room for a trinitarian version of ‘love not demanding its own way’ if there is not some  exercise of the divine will unique to each person, definitive of that person. Otherwise, WHO the Son is has absolutely nothing to do with the exercise of will, and that divorces 'person' from 'nature' too absolutely in my view. So it seems to me best to suppose some deference toward the other with respect to the disposing of the divine will.

I know I know, I'm a heretic. What else is new?

Just interested, D, do you think Father, Son, and Spirit ever ‘agree’ upon anything?

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/28/2008 6:08:51 AM (GMT-5)

D: From your perspective, there can only be ONE locus of self-determining freedom in ONE person.

Tom: That seems so to me, yes. The ‘self’, the true self, is a ‘person’, a subject, an agent. Would you prefer TWO selves/persons/agents/subjects doing the determining in Christ? How many self-determining selves would like to put into one person?

D: And if the human spirit/nous/heart is based upon God granting a human being a human "logos" which "grounds our created capacities for and development toward personhood" ...then you deduced (at that time) that Christ did NOT have a human "logos." You deduced that the Logos HIMSELF assumed the role/place of any human "logos" that would have formed a created locus of Jesus human "unity of consciousness" in any other human case.

Tom: OK, let me try this.

I take the ‘logos’ of created things to be simply God’s ‘speaking’ or ‘offering’ a range of free creativity to created things—“Be this!”—where there’s a measure of asymmetrical determination of the created by God which just is God’s ‘sustaining’ presence in created things. That has to be. Our sheer existence from one moment to the next can’t be the ‘effect’ of anything we do. Existence as such is God’s gift to us. But the shape, the becoming, and the experienced and enjoyed relatedness of personal existence (I’m talking human beings now), is not entirely asymmetrical. We do contribute, freely, creatively, synergistically to the shape of our becoming, our personal existence. So we have two distinct activities of God visa-a-vis creation: God's unilateral/asymmetrical sustaining of the existence of created beings (on the one hand) and God’s offering created entities a measure of self-determining freedom to become (on the other, with human being as the pinnacle of created being). In the former case, divine action is determinative. In the latter, God let’s go. So we have both the asymmetrical defining of our possibilities that are offered to us by God in the form of the gift of our existence per se (on the one hand), and the symmetrical/synergistic determining of the shape of the creative, expressive form which any particular human being takes (on the other). In the case of human beings, God desires a level of relational give-and-take, loving mutuality, personal enjoyment and relational intimacy. We are unique in this respect, like God, possessing the capacity to perceive and enjoy beauty and relational intimacy with personally distinct others.

This means that for ME, D, human personal existence, i.e., human personhood, created personhood, is not to be located under the God-determined asymmetrical column nothing of which can be the 'effect' of anything we do. I locate it in the right hand column under God-creature synergy. God's part is to offer us the only source and ultimate ground for our 'identity' (in Christ, sons of the same Father). Our part is to shape that identity in a unique and unrepeatable personal expression. Back to the music analogy: we freely render the themes of divine love. That's what it means to me to be 'personally' distinct from God--as distinct as Miles Davis is playing a Cole Porter tune. In THAT unique expression, the former expresses his natural capacities through a free interpretation of the latter's music. You see Porter IN Davis. But Porter is not (as you suggest) all we see. That's why in my view you underappreciate or devalue created diversity (in spite of your inisting on the contrary) when you say you look around at people and ALL you see is Christ. It's not all Christ sees when he looks around. It ought not be all we see. It sounds profound to say all you see is Christ perhaps. But it's still an underappreciation of created diversity.

It seems to me that in the case of human beings, the created ‘logos’ itself is the expressed desire of the divine will that a created entity be unique and unrepeatable, synergistically bound to God but personally distinct, for the conscious mind perceives the truth about its being a self-determining, freely creative co-creator. But in my view such behavior is irreducibly ‘personal’; it's part of what defines the unique and unrepeatable character of each human being. I can’t but call such a being a ‘personal’ being, and I have no concept of a higher, more beautiful form of existence which is personal if this is not personal. So I can't call such created beings '(mere) contingent expressions of God' (i.e., not personally distinct from God) because the shape of personal existence in our case is not determined BY God. It's determined by creaturely volition as well. See?

You have to argue that freely self-determining, self-conscious loving centers of experience who express love in creative ways, who perceive beauty and affirm and celebrate it in themselves and others are NOT persons. I think that's rediculous. I asked, "Well, what would you ADD to this to GET TO 'person'?" I got no answer.

I hope you understand me. I don't think God offered to the humanity of Jesus a ‘logos’ in the above sense, that is, I don't see God intending Jesus's humanity to be a freely self-determining co-creator who perceived himself as ‘personally-related-to-God’ in the sense God wishes us to be. There’s no such offer “to become a person-in-relationship-to God” that’s extended to the humanity of Jesus. God simply doesn’t wish THAT in his case. Jesus doesn’t instantiate a ‘logos’ for personal becoming that is “let go” by the Logos (as in our case) and then comes to stand in a personal realtionship to God in Christ. Jesus IS the offerer of ‘logoi,’ he IS the Logos. It doesn't make sense to say the Logos offers a 'logos' for his own personal human becoming in-relation-to the person of the Logos. But in my view, you have BOTH of these in Christ—the Logos AND an offer (a ‘logos’ let go) for personal becoming in-relation-to God to an individual human being. You have the Logos in Christ offering to a human being the same invitation to become a person-in-relation-to God that God offers us. And that’s not my understanding of who God incarnate is. Nor do I see why Jesus is ‘less human’ if no such offer is made for the coming into being of a non-divine personal existent (as IS the case with us). Instead, it makes more sense to say we have in Christ the Logos himself offering not ‘a logos’ of personal becoming to a human individual whom God/Logos wishes to relate to mutually and intimately (as he does with us), but rather offering ‘THE Logos’ in relation to us within human being.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/28/2008 7:20:08 AM (GMT-5)

D: From your perspective, there can only be ONE locus of self-determining freedom in ONE person.

Tom: That seems so to me, yes. The ‘self’, the true self, is a ‘person’, a subject, an agent. Would you prefer TWO selves/persons/agents/subjects doing the determining in Christ? How many self-determining selves would like to put into one person?

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/28/2008 11:57:46 AM (GMT-5)

D: Anyways, I think the ‘my will’ statement of the “Not my will, but Your will be done” refers to the exercise of Christ-the-Logos’ human center of willing that is, as you say, a “freely self-determining, self-conscious loving center of experience who expresses love in creative ways, who perceive beauty and affirm and celebrate it in themselves and others.”

I wanted to know what YOU thought the "my will" referred to?

Tom: I think every exercise of will is either an attempt at or an expression of personhood. If Jesus said “my” will, then that “my” expresses personal ownership, the ‘who’ behind the choice, and there’s only one ‘who’ in Christ, the Son. I think the Son says these things. No one else. In the case of our freely determining creative expression once perfected, our will is exercised independently of the divine will (which in itself is the fulfilling of the divine will). So to me it seems that fulfilled human beings, in freely determining themselves, are expressing non-divine personhood, unlike Jesus.

Hope you have a good day at work. God use you and make you a blessing to others.

Your friendly neighborhood heretic,

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/28/2008 12:09:48 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/28/2008 12:22:03 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/29/2008 11:01:12 AM (GMT-5)

D: “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.” Please help me understand this phrase from the Incarnate Word, Christ-the-Logos. Was Jesus making some veiled statement that he was God in this statement? Or was Jesus declaring his SELF-UNDERSTOOD DIFFERENTIATION from God?

Tom: I’ve always understood this in the first sense, as a claim by Christ to be more than merely human. The guys calls him ‘good’, and Jesus (perhaps seeing through his agenda and wanting to confront him immediately with more ultimate issues and the question of his identity), says, “Oh, really? You call me good? OK, you sure you realize what that means? You know that only God is really ‘good’. Still wanna call me ‘good’?” Jesus is challenging him to think about the implications of what he’s just said and recognize that if only God is good, and Christ is good, then Christ is God. That’s how I’ve read this for as long as I can remember.

Note that Jesus doesn’t reject the attribution. He doesn’t say, “Look, I’m just a human ego periphery talking right now, and I’m not the good one. Only the divine person I’m perichoretically related to is good. Which would you like to talk to?” Is that how you read it?

Jesus’ “self-understood differentiation from God”? What ‘self’? A self is an identity, right? The ‘who’ that somebody believes they are. As such, it’s either an attempt at or an expression of genuine personhood. But there is no  ‘personal differentiation’ between the human and the divine in Christ; hence there is no ‘self-understood differentiation from God’ that obtains in Christ. The human self-understanding of Jesus and the divine self-understanding of the Logos are one and the same self-understanding. ONE person, one self, one agent, one subject.

I know you object to this on the basis of Jesus’ cry in the Garden, “Not my will but yours.” The calculus is, God only has one will. But Jesus’ cry assumes a differentiation of wills (mine and yours). So this cry has to be the human agent/self. It can’t be God the Logos saying to God the Father, “Not my will but yours.” But then you have a human, self-perceiving, self-determining, non-divine center of experience relating itself personally (free and responsible choices are the activity of PERSONAL beings) to God the Logos. That’s not my understanding of the incarnation. I say, if the Logos has assumed a human will, then God [the Logos] no longer has only one will, does he? Hmmm? I guess not. Now God has two wills. Now the self-same God the Logos has to dispose of his identity/person (the divine person) through the exercise of a human will, something he’s never had to do before. Why cannot the Garden cry be this ONE divine person, God the Logos, telling the Father, “Not my [human] will, but your (speaking to the Father) [divine] will”? I’m happy to work on this some more.

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/29/2008 11:43:37 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/29/2008 11:45:13 AM (GMT-5)