Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/26/2008 8:19:21 AM (GMT-5)

Hey D.,

If you would, tell me what would be some of the Church Fathers (and their works) that you would recommend someone start off with. And what would they continue into with (love those prepositions!)?

Thanks,

Starkman

PS:  Don't forget St. Maximos the Confessor...

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/26/2008 12:41:54 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/26/2008 12:14:20 PM (GMT-5)

I didn’t comment on what you think it means to be a personal human being because I disagree with your view. But you’ve served up this same question before and I’ve answered it many times.

There is no embodied human individual who is not a also a ‘personal’ being. You keep offering Christ as an example. He’s not an example. The human nature of Christ is the nature of a [divine] person. There is no ‘apersonal’ human being as such. No embodied containers of 'human nature' walking around who have absolutely no actualized dimension of personal existence. That’s a figment of your imagination.

I’m not equating human ‘nature’ with ‘personhood’, and I’m not saying every human being is a fully realized person. I’m just saying you don’t get human ‘nature’ instantiated apart from the personal aspect (even in the case of Christ where it’s a divine person who instantiates that nature). In our case the person emerges into existence and becomes a fully realized ‘person’ only in-relation-to God and other persons. But our developed natures are never absolutely apersonal. We’re never zombies. That’s Sci-fi.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/26/2008 3:49:09 PM (GMT-5)

Ahhhh...found it!

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/26/2008 6:16:45 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Sahid) : 3/26/2008 11:16:32 PM (GMT-5)

I knew you’d find and drag up here those comments of mine about the human ‘spirit’. It seems to be the thing to do when all our disagreements come to a head, in spite of the fact that regarding those comments I was just casting an idea out upon the water, just thinking out loud, not committing myself to a particular view, just wondering. I shoulda known it would come back to bite me in the rump!

I’ll be more careful about thinking out loud here. Who knows how my experimenting with the atonement will come back to haunt me?

Tom: I didn’t comment on what you think it means to be a personal human being because I disagree with your view. But you’ve served up this same question before and I’ve answered it many times.

D: Fine. Let's relate this to you, directly.  What is the ground of YOUR human personhood, Tom? Please don't say that it's an emergent property from any interaction of the human spirit/soul, mind, body (the composite human individual). It cannot be that. First of all, person is DISTINCT from nature. Second of all, the Incarnate Word shows us that CREATED HUMAN PERSONHOOD does NOT come directly from any emergent process dealing with a human spirit/soul, mind, and body. And I'm not backing off of that.

Tom: It’s like nothing I’ve said the past four months was even said. Dang!

I don’t think human personhood emerges matter-of-factly from the embodiment of human natural capacities as if it’s just a property of the capacities as such. That would be to DENY a ‘relational’ ontology. Personhood has to emerge from the free and responsible interaction of these capacities with other human beings. It emerges from the free disposing of these capacities, in responsibly free ways, to others; through ‘relating’ these capacities to God and others. My point is that there is no ‘person’ apart from the exercise of ‘natural capacities’, which are just the ‘how’ in which the person relates and abides.

D: In Christ, there is a TOTAL human individual with human spirit/soul, ming, and body...but NO emergent created personhood from the human nature.

Tom: Right, no ‘created’ person who emerges. But there IS ‘a person’ who emerges, the divine Logos.

D: So, your CREATED human personhood, Tom, is NOT based upon...

1) your embodied nature
2) your human mind
3) your human ego development
4) your human spirit/soul

So...what's the ground of YOUR human personhood?

Tom: Created human personhood isn’t equated with these things, but it will always be at least minimally present where these capacities are properly developed and maximally present where they have and are freely disposed in-relation-to God and others. It’s the exercise of natural capacities in-relation-to others out of which emerges human personhood.

So the “ground” of my personhood is God-in-relation to me. No worldly, created relation can tell me who I ultimately am. Only God can tell me that. Hence, my ‘identity’ is ultimately found and grounded in the free disposing of my natural capacities to God as author, source and savior of those capacities.

D: The only thing I can think of you saying...is what I've heard you say before: It's simply divine fiat...and a mysterious one at that.  God just wishes it...and it is. God wishes you to be a created human person, personally distinct from the Triune God...and POOF, you are one.

Tom: You’re scaring me now dude! Come on D. You and I both know that EVERYTHING created is divine fiat. Remember idealism? ALL frickin’ creation is what it is, behaves as it does, and persists as it does from one moment to the next, SIMPLY because God wills it. We’re ALL ‘poof’ Bro. Come on now. How ELSE would you suggest creation abides? Being pure ‘poof’ at our very core doesn’t mean we’re illusory or false. God’s fiats give ACTUALITY to what he wills (unlike our willing). That’s what it means to create ex nihilo. So to be a created actuality is just to BE poof in God’s mind! What happened to your idealism?

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D: Is this what you still believe about WHY Christ didn't have a human "person"? By saying that Christ DIDN'T HAVE something that ALL OTHER HUMANS have: a sustaining human "logos"?

Tom: We don’t “have” persons. We “are” persons. Persons are not what is "possessed by" their natures. Persons are, ultimately, what do the possessing of nature. And 'person' possesses its nature in the "free" exercise of those capacities. And my point has been all along that IF we remain self-determining in the exercise of our will, therein we do a measure of "possessing" (in-relation-to-God of course), and are 'persons' (in-relation-to-God).

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If ‘spirit’ is a kind-essential property of human nature as such, then the Logos came to possess a human spirit. I’ve never said otherwise. I wish you’d see that. I’m not sure what that natural capacity is. So I can concede, if you insist, that "spirit" is a natural capacity of human being as such, but I won't really know what I'm saying. Is that alright? Can I be permitted to not know? To be unsure? To be in process? To be human? Thanks!

But you can rest assured that I will never deny the incarnate Logos any kind-essential property of human nature. But if spirit is a kind-essential property of human nature, then you seem to think the whole debate is over. I don't grant THAT.

It’s not the case, D, that whatever might be ‘common’ to ALL human beings is definitive of human nature, so that all such ‘common’ properties have to be assumed by God. It’s common to all human beings to be, say, born on this planet. But that’s not definitive of human ‘nature’ per se. The day may come when the first human being will be born on a colonized moon. THAT human being will lack a property ‘common’ to all others but not be less than fully ‘human’. So commonality isn’t itself definitive of human ‘nature’.

Gotta go.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/26/2008 11:53:38 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/27/2008 6:38:01 AM (GMT-5)

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Sahid:
I hear Tom saying that we are and will be in the eschaton persons, meaning the individual has and will continue to have a truly free will, not a will determined meticulously by God (or even meticulously co-determined because our will has been subsumed in the meticulous will of God).

I hear Dwayne saying that we are not yet fully persons but will be when our will is meticulously co-determined because our will will have been subsumed in the meticulous will of God.

If we are determining personhood by the criterion of "self-determining freedom", I really think we are going in the wrong direction...for the reasons I gave above.

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/27/2008 6:41:20 AM (GMT-5)

Jesus is the only human who NEVER FAILED to be human.

All other humans have existed in SUBHUMAN or INHUMAN lives, to some degree.

Spiritual ZOMBIES! (Sci-fi indeed...)

Ephesians 2:1-10
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins,  in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.  All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.  But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,  in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.  For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.  For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/27/2008 7:22:49 AM (GMT-5)