Programs:

Essence and Energy, Synergy Part 6

Sunday, March 23, 2008

In the sixth and final program on the series on "Relics", Steve and Bill discuss issues that face the Western theological concepts of nature, person, will and their relationships to one another before and after the fall. How one views the nature of God and the human being determines one's view of the meaning of salvation and the impact of "salvation" on the human being in this life. Relics are the evidence of the progressive nature of the human participation in the divine energies of God and a foretaste of the life to come in eternity. In the second half of the program Steve and Bill examine the New Testament and many passages that point us to the concept of "synergy", the working of the human person with God toward the goal of union with God.

Essence and Energy, Relics Part 5

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

We continue the discussion of essence and energy and give a very broad overview of the influence of the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle on Augustine and Aquinas and how philosophy has influenced the views of God in the West. . We also discuss how the East and West's views of God manifest themselves in how we view creation and the human being's relationship to God.

Relics Part 4: Persons, Essence and Energies

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

In part four of our discussion of relics, we tackle the nature of God and the nature of the human being and how we can "know" a person. What is the relationship of "nature" to a "person"? What is an "energy"? How is a nature's energies expressed? The proper definition of nature, energy and personhood form the cornerstone for a proper definition of salvation and the goal of our existence in God.

 

http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/ourlife

Post Edited (praying4tom) : 3/29/2008 9:11:18 AM (GMT-5)

You know what I'm talkin' bout, B...

Jesus has human "nous" and "dianoia".

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/29/2008 10:35:24 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/29/2008 10:34:29 AM (GMT-5)

D: For example, (using what Steve said about Bill) they would say 'Bill' is "a person who expresses human nature. He is an individual who expresses human nature uniquely through the 'person' who is Bill. Their terms.

So WHO is the "person" that is "Bill"?

Tom: Well, he’s not God, because Bill and Steve make it clear at the end of Part 4 that human persons are “in personal relationships TO” God. That looks like person-to-person divine-human relations to me. But in the other episodes they might backtrack and say what you would say, “Our ‘person’ just IS God manifested in our human natures.” The problem is that they make it clear that there is no instantiation of human nature apart from some person.

I’ll see what the other episodes say.

D: Is this the creaturely "I" that is always differentiated from the Divine Presence?

Tom: I think that’s what Bill is saying, yeah.

D: The way they talk about "person"...it is DISTINCT from thoughts or emotions or any combination of the two, but EXPRESSES through thoughts, emotion, and combinations of the two as "personal energies" in unique human individuals.

Tom: But I didn’t hear them go on to make YOUR claim, namely, that the person that gets expressed through each of our natures is the Logos and not some non-divine, created person-in-relation-to the Logos. Sounded more like they were saying the latter.

Don’t worry though. I’m prepared to be disappointed. My hopes aren’t up yet. But other things they said in Part 4 clearly lead one to believe they think we are non-divine, created persons (“only persons can sin,” we can “as persons” influence God to change his mind, we have a “personal relationship to/with” God, etc.). If in the end they’re going to say (as I do) that the human center of experience exercises its will in freely creative ways, it’s over for me dude. I can’t NOT call THAT a non-divine person.

It boils down to this—all the fancy philosophical argumentation aside!—I love God, and in loving God, there’s a creature loving God, not God loving Godself through utilitarian use of my human natural capacities. I worship God, and in worshipping him, the CREATURE worships God; not God worshipping himself in me. And only persons love.

And B, I understand the difficult in nailing down WHO we are, as you say. We perceive and experience our unique and unrepeatable personal selves (in-relation-to God) but there's no exhausting the content of that experience in abstract terms.

The see one of the hosts is into pogonotrophy (just picked up that word from David Hart!).

Tom

Tom:   But I expect to be told by D that I'm misunderstading them.

D: 

P4T:  Let's keep with the podcast until its over. Let's let Bill and Steve put all their cards on the table BEFORE any of your theories or terms begin to muddle the clarity and memory of these three programs.

Thanks.

POGONOTROPHY

<!--STORY STARTS-->

Cultivation of a beard; beard-growing.

Do not — as a British journalist did some years ago — confuse this useful word with pogonotomy. Both originate in the Greek word pogon, a beard, but the latter ends in –tomia, cutting, and so is the word for trimming one’s beard, or shaving, the exact opposite of the writer’s intention. Pogonotrophy, on the other hand, ends with Greek trophe, nourishment, so its literal sense is “beard feeding”. Neither word is what you might call common; they usually appear only when somebody is writing in a mock-pompous, tongue-in-cheek way. Other words in pogon include pogonic, pertaining to a beard, and Pogonophora, the systematic name for a group of deep-sea worms; their name actually means “beard bearer”, which is odd, since they don’t have mouths to cultivate them around.

Essence and Energies Part 5 was good. I thought they misunderstood Yancey’s referring to Paul’s language of the Church as the “body of Christ” as metaphor. They said, “No, the Church isn’t a metaphor.” Well, of course the ‘Church’ itself isn’t a metaphor, but Yancey didn’t say that. It’s just the language “body of Christ” which is a metaphorical way of describing the Church.

No biggie.

I think they drove a bit of an illegitimate wedge between ‘being in Christ’ (and the experience of all that means in community as the Church) and what it seems they think is a mistaken emphasis by Evangelicals upon the importance of believing truth and perceiving ourselves (and how God sees us, etc.). They set up a false either/or between the two I think.

Again, no biggie. Probably could sort that stuff out by just getting clear on emphases, etc.

The whammy came at the very end when one of the hosts said:

“God has created us as persons, and we have a mutual relationship in which, like in all relationships, the will of one person can be changed by the will or actions of another person. This is the dynamics of the relationships between persons….’Natures’ don’t do anything, people do….We can have full union with God and never lose our personhood.” And ‘personhood’ here at the end only makes sense IF it’s created personhood which is never lost.

I got one more episode to go. They might turn all this into what I’ve been hearing D saying, or they might make me a happy camper! We’ll see.

Tom

Synergy, Part 6. In discussing synergy, Bill begins by saying “God is a person, or rather persons, interacting with persons [us].”

They hammer deterministic understandings of the God-world relationship.

Also, “any resistance or rebellion, or sin, or enmity that we have with God is [on] a personal level, not a nature level.” His point is that the fallen condition we find ourselves in is only possible if human beings are hypostatic beings. They speak repeatedly of “the human person” in relationship to God, how it is that God can work in us and we also can work “and not be violated in terms of our will, in terms of our nature, or in terms of our person.”

They’re good on 2Pet 1.4. Just going on what they actually say, I don’t have any objections. They still tend to drive a wedge between ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’ (between rational apprehension and practicing the virtues), but that’s nothing we couldn’t agree on if we had time to iron out the wrinkles. There are several good statements in their discussion of 2Pet about the interpersonal nature of our relationship to and participation in God’s life.

I’m done. Good stuff.

Tom