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One Love
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| Posted 4/16/2008 6:58 AM (GMT -6) |   | | Similtude's response on another thread inspired this.
I'm thinking that I'm having a struggle because I don't believe that a human "ego" is the same things as a "true self" or "person"
I'd like some people to show me how THEY distinguish the PERSON of a human being from their EGO constructs.
Whoever knows and recognizes how near God’s Kingdom is to him may say with Jacob, “God is in this place, and I knew it not.”
Meister Eckhart, "The Nearness of the Kingdom"
Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the Kingdom of God is within you.
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One Love
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| Posted 4/16/2008 7:27 AM (GMT -6) | | Corey,
Have you read either of Loder's books I suggested? (Transforming Moment and Knight's Move)
The reason I suggested those is because Loder was NOT ONLY professor of the Philosophy of Christian Education in Princeton...but he was also a MINISTER and CLINICALLY TRAINED in psychotheraphy. His work is wonderfully interdisciplinary...and he knows what he's talking about. LODER does very, very good work using DOCUMENTED INFORMATION and SOLID RESEARCHED WORK on ego formation and what we've learned about the human mind/brain interaction...and brings it into conversation with the Christian transformative process.
LODER (and SHULTS) talk substantially about EGO FORMATION and what that means to SELF-HOOD.
This is why I've been quoting Loder for SO LONG and SO many times!
So, the things I'm talking about are not just random stuff irrelevant to theology of human personhood. Not at all.
Whoever knows and recognizes how near God’s Kingdom is to him may say with Jacob, “God is in this place, and I knew it not.”
Meister Eckhart, "The Nearness of the Kingdom"
Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the Kingdom of God is within you.
Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 4/16/2008 7:29:48 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 4/16/2008 9:05 AM (GMT -6) | | Here here here here here...
Truth is, on a Christian account of things, to secure belief states that enable and enrich our living for God in communion with God and others. If two people who disagree on the theory and metaphysics behind it all nevertheless live Christ-centered lives of love, joy, and peace and help empower others to do the same, that is, if neither of the views constitutes an obvious material injury to living for God in communion with God and others, then we should just conclude that as far the demands of faith and life demonstrate, their disagreements are immaterial.
So…love God, do all for his glory with a thankful heart, know that you’re loved unconditionally, love others as you’ve been loved, and enjoy the friggin ride.
T
Post Edited (Tom) : 4/16/2008 9:07:38 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 4/16/2008 10:30 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
Truth is, on a Christian account of things, to secure belief states that enable and enrich our living for God in communion with God and others. If two people who disagree on the theory and metaphysics behind it all nevertheless live Christ-centered lives of love, joy, and peace and help empower others to do the same, that is, if neither of the views constitutes an obvious material injury to living for God in communion with God and others, then we should just conclude that as far the demands of faith and life demonstrate, their disagreements are immaterial.
So…love God, do all for his glory with a thankful heart, know that you’re loved unconditionally, love others as you’ve been loved, and enjoy the friggin ride.
Finally, something we can agree on.
Whoever knows and recognizes how near God’s Kingdom is to him may say with Jacob, “God is in this place, and I knew it not.”
Meister Eckhart, "The Nearness of the Kingdom"
Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the Kingdom of God is within you.
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Tom
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| Posted 4/16/2008 10:51 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 4/16/2008 11:28 AM (GMT -6) | | X.
Tom:
D, once you come back and place an X in the space over your name, we can have Corey lock all the relevant threads for at least 120 days and require us to discuss family, politics, violence in the OT, underwater basketweaving, or anything else unrelated to personhood, theosis, or the hypostatic union.
Don't lock anything, seriously. Not until I've saved all of the relevant threads (which will be later today). After this, I'm taking an extended break from posting on the board. I'll probably lurk for a while. There's more exploring this Scissortail is going to do. Soooo....
See you later, y'all!
Love,
I-am-in-I-am
Whoever knows and recognizes how near God’s Kingdom is to him may say with Jacob, “God is in this place, and I knew it not.”
Meister Eckhart, "The Nearness of the Kingdom"
Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the Kingdom of God is within you.
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 4/16/2008 4:52 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 4/16/2008 5:25 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 4/16/2008 6:04 PM (GMT -6) | | | One more time, please.
(from the other thread)
Thanks, Tom.
I don't want to convince you of anything.
The main thing I'd like noticed is something that didn't carry from my post to your copy of it. Instead of your "The elements are "transformed into the body and blood of Christ" via Christ's real presence in them..." what I noticed possible to say was (beginning with mentioning Christ, rather than starting with the groceries) that "The personal presence of Christ makes eating and drinking to be the partaking of his body and blood."
That may be a step beyond Calvin's understanding that our own hearts are lifted up to heaven where Christ is present bodily. What I see it allowing for me is that it begins with what I do not consider controversial, that by the Spirit Christ is with me and with my brothers and sisters. I'm sure of that. Then I move for the only other step I want to make, and that that is that while Christ is present and we're blessing the bread--thanking God for it while actually remembering Christ sacrifice, and his victory (!), that we are made to be communicants of Christ's Body and Blood. (Persons in communion.)
Like I say, I'm not trying to convince you.
But tell me if this was marginally more clear.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity!
Bruce
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 4/19/2008 3:19 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 11/3/2008 2:06 AM (GMT -6) | | I think I have the answer to this question now...
Chapter 1 of this book. The chapter is called "The Composition of the Human Being." If you wish to cut down the reading, you can just read Section 3 of Chapter 1: "The Human Person", pages 44-48. It talks about Chalcedon and the importance of the distinction between "prosopon" and "hypostasis"...and how development of personhood moves FROM "prosopon" TO "hypostasis", with God's Grace.
(Tom: you gotta read it, man!)
I knew I saw it before...but it's clearer now.
As I see it...
Evdokimov's "prosopon" (which in the natural state, merges with the "individual" ) is functionally equivalent to Zizy's "biological hypostasis" or Loder's "ego periphery" (which in its natural state, stays locked in self-oriented existence) or Kierkegaard's "despairing self". Evdokimov's says that the "prosopon" is the POTENTIALITY of being a true person.
Evdokimov's "hypostasis" (which deals with self-transcendence and openness to God) is functionally equivalent to Zizy's "ecclesial hypostasis" or Loder's "bi-polar assymetrical relational unity" (between the Divine Center [Spirit of Christ-the-Logos] and the human ego periphery) or Kierkegaard's "self-as-spirit." Evdokimovs says that the "hypostasis" what makes us truly human in a healthy relationship with the Divine.
One thing that's interesting. The "prosopon" seems to be OF NATURE...NOT PERSON...which is the difference between MERE human existence and TRUE human existence.
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Extended quote...
Every human being possesses a rudimentary person, a psychological center of integration (OL's Note: Loder's ego periphery!) which makes the whole gravitate around the metaphysical Self, and constitutes self-awareness; this is the prosopon, a natural element of the human substance. By contrast, on a deeper level, while all are invited, few of the chosen succeed in becoming a hypostasis. The hypostasis is this advanced stage of the imago Dei (image of God), the organ and place of communion with God which confirms our theandric structure in the image of Christ. In the age to come, "we shall be like him," as St. John says (1 Jn 3:2)
This theandrism is already contained potentially in the imago Dei. The degree to which the image is actualized determines the germination and maturing of the prosopon into hypostasis--the transition from "natural being" into "Christ-being"--by following the great sacramental initiation in which the human structure is recarved entirely, like a statue, according to the model of Christ, our Archetype. In Christ, it is God who united Himself with the human; this communion is the highest and most unique because the place of communion is the Word; and it is the divine Hypostasis that enhypostasizes the particular human nature. In every human being formed "in the image of Christ," the place of communion is the human person which receives its theandric structure in Christ (en Christo), and becomes a hypostasis. In the human being, it is within the self-awareness that the divine awareness occurs, and theandrism is achieved: "We will come to him and make our home with him" (Jn 14:23). "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20). St. Paul's pastoral task aspires to this, that "Christ be formed in you!" (Gal 4:19).
"Man," St. Basil said, "is a creature who has received the command to become god," to become a deified hypostasis. This concept is clarified with great precision in St. Maximus the Confessor. In order to become a hypostasis, the person (prosopon) is called upon "to unify, though love, created nature with uncreated nature (...) by the acquisition of grace (kata ten exin tes charitos)." As we can see, the human being, by grace, unites in his created hypostasis the divine and the human in the image of Christ, and thust becomes a created god, God according to grace. The hypostasis is precisely specified; it is the person of the deified human being. In Christ, deified human nature is enhypostasized in a divine Person. In the deified human being, the created person sees how, in this divinization, his nature is united with the divine deifying energy. Thus, the hypostasis is the personal, unique, incomparable mode of the theandric existence of every Christian. Here is where the radical, mystical, and trans-essential demarcation between the old man and the new creation is to be made. But at this point, any phenomenological analysis changes into trans-phenomenology to reach a state which transcends the primary human state: holiness. The "individual" is a sociological and biological category (OL's Note: Zizy's "biological hypostasis" ! ) that belongs entirely to nature. The individual is part of the natural whole, and is separate from it either by a contrast, by a demarcation, or through isolation. In the natural state, the prosopon merges with the individual; it is but a "potentiality" of the person. But once actualized, it demands maturing into a hypostasis, which is a spiritual category. It is not a part, but contains the whole, which explains its ability to be enhypostasized.
The individual to whom one ascribes "a strong personality" merely presents a particular mixture of natural elements, with certain prominent traits. Despite these salient traits, such a person ultimately creates only the impression of deja vu. A saint is striking because of a countenance unique in the world, because of a light that is always ultimately person. He or she has never seen before.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am." Post Edited (One Love) : 11/3/2008 1:47:20 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 11/3/2008 2:17 AM (GMT -6) | | | And this is what Fr. Stephen was talking about...
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I have written recently that the true central question of our relationship with God goes to the very fact of our existence, that “in Him we live and move and have our being.” I have also written some short comments on statements of the Elder Sophrony reminding us that all we do, we do in the presence of God. Both of these bring us to the question of true or authentic existence. I do not wish to look at something around me (or someone) and say “that does not exist.” Such a statement would be both untrue and silly.
But I do want to be able to look at myself (you’re invited into this as well) and distinguish between mere existence and authentic existence. The purpose for which we were and are created is NOT mere existence. I can think of many days in my life of mere existence and not one of them has had much to recommend it (though I’m grateful to begin even there). But to exist authentically, is to exist not just before and in the presence of God, but consciously present to Him as the very center of my being - as the very center of all that is.
I have become increasingly aware of this during Church services lately. I suppose I could have become aware of it anywhere, and I’m sure that I should be aware of it everywhere. But lately, it has been in the services of the Church that this awareness has opened to me (or me to it). The awareness is simply that at the heart of every word, every action, every sound and movement, God is there. And more than that - but that God is in us, in me, in the midst of all that us. It in no way distracts from words or actions but gives them their proper meaning.
It has brought to my mind the understanding that regardless of what we do at any time, within our heart our attention should be toward God. My directions to those who come to the Church inquiring about the Orthodox faith is not to be distracted by anything, but in all things to seek God. The Orthodox Church exists for no other reason than to unite man to God in Christ. Indeed, the Church is nothing other than the union of God and man in Christ.
This is authentic and true existence - that for which we were and are created: Christ.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
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One Love
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| Posted 11/3/2008 2:30 AM (GMT -6) | | Let me break this all the way down...
"Dwayne Polk" as a self-reflected image of memory and self-perception from inter- and intra-personal activity of my mind/brain unity (the "individual" ) exists ENTIRELY IN NATURE. It's a personality amalgam of thoughts, emotions, and experiences centered around my human intelligible/sensible unity as human being...which forms a core of self-experience and self-willing. It's basically the EGO in development. But this is NOT strictly "person" in the true sense. It is, as Evdokimov says..."a particular mixture of natural elements, with certain prominent traits." The ENFJ-ness. My "African-American" experience. My being from "Texas". All that. My ego periphery pulls all this together and says "I am this." But this is NOT FREE from nature. It's straight up biological hypostasis...and left to itself, "Dwayne Polk" will only live out socially constructed realities that made "him" up. Without relating rightly to the Divine Ground, "Dwayne Polk's" ego can only end in disintergration and death...and will be terribly dependent on false ideas of universality, society, etc in order to keep itself going.
The true "I am" in Dwayne Polk is FAAAAAAAR deeper than that. It is centered on the spiritual reality of bi-polar assymetrically relationality with the Holy Spirit of Christ-the-Logos. THAT is when the "I am" that my ego believes it possesses is SHOWN to be given to "me" ONLY BY GRACE. This FREES the ego from being trapped in nature...and releases it into true being.
Does this make sense, "Tom"?
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In Greek Patristic literature, it was a prevailing view that the state of human being as it exists in the natural environment includes the body, soul (including the dianoia as an analytical part of the soul), and spirit, which had never been dissociated from the Holy Spirit. Human spirit stands here for the nous (spiritual intellect, the organ of faith), linking the human person to its dynamic relationship to God and to the world. It is natural congeniality with God, which is articulated by the presence of the Holy Spirit in human being. But the Holy Spirit is the creator of both body and soul, whose unity forms a particular human person. The presence of the Holy Spirit in human constitution thus makes the human person open upward through it's calling to the Divine as its destiny. Without the Spirit, the Greek Fathers assert, the human being is incomplete and imprisoned through the conditions of the created nature. Vladimir Lossky reaffirms this point by saying that "the distinction between person and nature reproduces in humanity the order of divine life, expressed by the dogma of the Trinity."
Alexei Nesteruk, Light from the East, page 266, note 33.
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"This model further suggests that human development, currently being studied almost exclusively at the level of ego function and formation, is to be reinterpreted as centering not on the ego but on intensification as a bipolarity that extends between the ego and the Absolute Unity of Being (The One Holy Spirit of Christ-the-Logos). This bipolarity may be seen as the spiritual axis for human development, which intersects the arc of ego-development as one of it's polarities, and Absolute Unity at the center, as the other. Ego development (Erikson, Piaget, Kohlberg, etc) may be seen as circumnambulation around the center, the Absolute Unity of Being, but left to itself ego development is inextricably rooted in negation and eventual death. Spiritual development consists in increased access between the ego and the Divine center, not in ego development per se. Thus, the immature ego of the child may have greater access to the Center and be more spiritually mature than an adult ego with less access. However, the adult ego may be more articulate with less access than the child and so effectively confuse the issue, making it appear incorrectly that ego development is definitive of spiritual development.
Although it cannot be fully spelled out here, this model suggests that the classic fourfold pattern of spiritual development is parallel to the phases of intensification. This pattern moves from awakening to purgation to illumination to unification, and at each stage access to the Divine center (The Holy Spirit of Christ-the-Logos) is enhanced as ego anxiety and strategies of defense subside. Thus, if the Christological nature of the model pertains as described above, then spiritual development may be conceived as a way of life in which one increasingly appropriates the bipolar coherence of Christ into one's own nature. It should be evident that this in no way represents ego inflation or egoistic striving: it is precisely the opposite; but the "I" who says "I, not I, but Christ" is not lost, only recentered from the ego to the One (Christ-the-Logos) who holds in his nature the full and complete account of the mutual indwelling of the Divine and the human."
James Loder. Knight's Move. "The Spiritual Recentering of Human Development. 284.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am." Post Edited (One Love) : 11/3/2008 1:41:11 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 11/3/2008 3:00 AM (GMT -6) | | Evdokimov. The End of Chapter 2: "The Image and Likeness of God"
In the writings of all of the Fathers, we find a noticeable difference which St. John of Damascus describes: "'After His likeness' means likeness in virtue." The tradition is very explicit and ever strong: after the Fall, "the image" remained unchanged, but was reduced to ontological silence, ineffective because all capability of "likeness" to God had been destroyed, so "likeness" because radically inaccessible to man's natural powers. St. Gregory Palamas states this precisely: "In our being 'in the image' (of God) man is superior to the angels; but it is 'after the likeness' that he is inferior, because he is unstable." "After the Fall, we rejected the likeness, but we did not cease being, 'in the image.' " Christ restores power to human acts, re-establishes the likeness, which, in turn, liberates the image; and its radiance can be perceived in saints and children. St. Gregory of Nyssa gives us his anthropological kerygma (proclamation): a being is a human being only when moved by the Holy Spirit, then such a being is a "resembling image." The image is constituent and normative; it can never be lost or destroyed. In is function of conforming ot the divine, it makes these words come true: "You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:48). When "God will be all in all" (1 Cor 15:28), His human temples will be like the presence that fills and animates them. The scriptural notion of "sonship" excludes any concept of legal adoption; Christology shows that in Christ, the sons and daughters are really similar to the Father. While God is beyond compare, the human heart, which only God can sound, contains--as St. Gregory of Nyssa states so well--something unique which can be compared: "something that makes on similar to God, for in order to share in God it is vital to possess in one's being something that corresponds to what is shared." To the statement "God is love" (1 Jn 4:16) corresponds the human being's Amo, ergo sum ("I love, therefore I am" ).
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
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Tom
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| Posted 11/3/2008 4:46 AM (GMT -6) | | D: Evdokimov's "prosopon" (which in the natural state, merges with the "individual" ) is functionally equivalent to Zizy's "biological hypostasis" or Loder's "ego periphery" (which in its natural state, stays locked in self-oriented existence) or Kierkegaard's "despairing self". Evdokimov's says that the "prosopon" is the POTENTIALITY of being a true person.
Evdokimov's "hypostasis" (which deals with self-transcendence and openness to God) is functionally equivalent to Zizy's "ecclesial hypostasis" or Loder's "bi-polar assymetrical relational unity" (between the Divine Center [Spirit of Christ-the-Logos] and the human ego periphery) or Kierkegaard's "self-as-spirit." Evdokimovs says that the "hypostasis" what makes us truly human in a healthy relationship with the Divine.
One thing that's interesting. The "prosopon" seems to be OF NATURE...NOT PERSON...which is the difference between MERE human existence and TRUE human existence.
Tom: Dudn't matter what labels we use as long as we're clear about what we mean. BUT, just for the record, for Zizzy "prosopon" is not equivalent to "biological hypostasis." Maybe ENdokimov's understanding of "prosopon" is equivalent to Zizzy's "biological hypostasis." But for Zizzy, "prosopon" and "hypostasis" are equivalent.
I'm cool with the content though. I mean, I'm fine with saying human beings naturally are the potential for becoming true persons. What parts of the process you choose to call by which labels doesn't matter.
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One Love
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| Posted 11/3/2008 5:46 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
BUT, just for the record, for Zizzy "prosopon" is not equivalent to "biological hypostasis." Maybe ENdokimov's understanding of "prosopon" is equivalent to Zizzy's "biological hypostasis." But for Zizzy, "prosopon" and "hypostasis" are equivalent.
The bolded part is what I'm getting. And it's not like they aren't part of the same reality. They are. It seems that Zizzy just says it in a different way. He has two different types of "hypostasis" for describing the same stuff.
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Tom:
I mean, I'm fine with saying human beings naturally are the potential for becoming true persons. What parts of the process you choose to call by which labels doesn't matter.
The corrolary to this idea, IMO, is that being "merely human" is NOT the same as being a truly existent person who is "fully human" like Jesus was. One is not instantly an actual "person" or "hypostasis" just because one is a human being living, breathing, and walking around. It doesn't work that way. There is the work of faith. Without the Spirit, we are pretty much higher functioning animals (humans ARE a part of the animal kingdom!) that have capacity for rationality, emotionality, will, and "individual" self-reflection...possessing the capacity to be truly human, but never exerting that capacity. We could just as easily talk about the difference between spiritually dead humans who live in "beasthood"...and spiritually regenerated humans who are on the way to becoming "created gods" through Grace. We never lose the image living as humans who self-reflect and self-relate...but we are NOT truly personal until we are lifted into hypostasis (ecclesial hypostasis, if you wish) by our indwelling of the Holy One.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am." Post Edited (One Love) : 11/3/2008 4:59:29 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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