Post Edited (Son) : 6/11/2008 2:09:19 AM (GMT-5)

Random movement.

Thnking about marriage theology.

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God's Bride is Christ's Bride/Body.

And from what I understand, in marriage, the each spouse's body NO LONGER just belongs to "them".

Nope.

Even in human marriage, each spouse "died" to themselves...and gave in covenant in God...such that their body was the interest of the other spouse and God. (1 Cor 7:3-5) An expression of mutual submission in and through God's Spirit.

So, if we are betrothed/married to Christ in baptism and eucharistic,epicletic living ("walking Eucharists" )...

Then we, by no means, belong solely to ourselves.  We supposedly gave all that away at baptism...when we declared ourselves dead with Christ to be risen to new life in Christ via the Spirit.  We renounced the three enemies all at once: the world, the FLESH (self-willed, egoic disposition, in my opinion), and the Devil.

After Baptism, the sacramental graces (including "Communion" ) make us into the spotless Bride with whom God (Christ the Bridegroom) wants to be completely one...His Beloved, yet Wayward Bride.

"The bride belongs to the bridegroom."
--John the Baptist (John 3)

Bottom line:
BODILY, Christians are never their own.  They have given themselves over to Christ (the Bridegroom) and His Spirit.  They have given themselves over to the "neighbor" as the self, loving the NEIGHBOR like we know that Christ loved us.  In the life of "mundane ecstasy"/"sacrament of the present moment"/etc , the Bride has the unsurpassable experiences of LOVE, JOY, and PEACE of oneness with her Bridegroom's Loving Presence...EVEN...IN...THE...FLESH.

Make sense?

Post Edited (Son) : 6/11/2008 9:36:42 AM (GMT-5)

I just want to be clear before you go making conclusions about our relationship with Christ based on the conjoining of twins. With the twins, the physical attachments are limited and non-exhaustive and the emergence of an embodied personal identity is centered in those regions of the body not shared (brain) and the free determination of the body by each person. Maintain THAT much and I pretty much don’t care what you say about the relationship between Christ’s incarnate ‘body’ and our own physical bodies.

I don’t have a problem thinking of Christ as intimately present with/to/in me. I’ve already said God’s creative energies are the medium in which we live our embodied lives, so I think I see myself and Christ quite intimately related materially-speaking, more than even these conjoined twins in fact. But that doesn’t mean my embodied experience collapses into Christ’s incarnate embodied experience, so that we can’t differentiate between the two.

We recognize that human ‘personal’ identity is inextricably linked to a particular ‘embodied context’ over which the person exercises ownership and control. In the case of these twins, the personal identity of each does not quantify over, say, the head and brain (embodied mental activities) of the other. And that autonomous center manages ‘personal’ expression through the rest of the body when and inasmuch as it gets to ‘determine’ that body’s movements. This freedom is at the heart of my concerns. I’ve got God present and permeating the very fabric of the created order. There’ s not a nook or cranny left that I haven’t stuffed God into, OK? So the only thing left for me is ‘Who determines the movement’? You’re hung up on being ‘physically one’ with Christ. Frankly, that's already a given for me since God is the very medium in which we live. I’m as physically ‘one’ with God as my being a contingent creation sustained by the energetic presence of God will permit. The question isn’t “Is my body as one with God as it can be?” The question is “Who determines the movements my body is to make?” The created order is already saturated, permeated, marinated with God’s personal presence, but the exercise of that order’s material capacities definitive of PERSONAL expression so far as the small slice that order I call my ‘body’ is concerned, is determined by ONE person—me. I'm not grabbing at that, trying to wrest from God an indepdence of my own. I'm being graced with the invitation to become an embodied person. God wants it this way.

Yes, I submit my body to Christ and seek his will. And yes, God’s free to specify what I’m to do with my body. But we’re not robots, so the specification of my embodied expression cannot be exhaustively determined by God. It just can’t be. What's more important and characteristic of the embodied aspect of our lives is that God offers us a KIND of existence, one in which human beings creatively determine the form/shape of their embodied loving expression. This is entailed in the divine “letting go” which characterizes us as ‘persons’ and implicates our bodies. It’s that ‘determination’ of movement by the ‘person’ that means—for me—not everything can be attributed to God as ultimate subject. Interpersonal means intersubjective. God perceives us as a created ‘others’ with our unique subjective perspectives which cannot be experienced by God in the first-person. That’s just what’s entailed in God’s decision to create. To create persons other than himself is to create perspectives other than his own.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 6/11/2008 8:42:28 AM (GMT-5)

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I assert that there is a possible state of affairs where the answer to the "Who determines the movements my body is to make right now" question at every moment is this:

"I do. Well, not I, but Christ-the-Logos in me. After all, I no longer live. It's Christ who lives in me."


Make sense, buddy?

Post Edited (Son) : 6/11/2008 10:28:49 AM (GMT-5)

The Emptiness of Christ

St. Paul speaks of Christ “emptying” Himself in His voluntary sacrifice for us all (Philippians 2:5-11). It is the only place in the New Testament that speaks of this particular action of Christ - at least as an “emptying” (kenosis) but the concept has always played a large role in the Church’s understanding of Christ’s death on the Cross.

It is interesting to me that Father Sophrony, in his writings, takes this idea of kenosis and applies it as well to the “not-I-but-the-Father” sayings: “I live by the Father” (Jn. 6:57; cf 5:30, 7:18, 15:15).

Fr. Nicholas Sakharov says of Father Sophrony’s point:

Christ, though the incarnate God, avoids any “divine action” of his own, so much so that the Father’s hypostasis [Person] is manifest absolutely through the absolutely “transparent screen” of Christ’s self-emptied hypostasis. Through this kenosis it becomes the “express image of the Father” (Heb. 1:3).

This, it seems to me, says much to us about what it means to become “like Christ.” The moralist approach (which I was taught as a child) is fraught with constant attention to “what would Jesus do?” in a moral calculation that can never end in anything but failure or delusion.

When St. Paul speaks of conformity to the image of Christ it is always clear that this is not something we accomplish, but something that is accomplished within us by God. In particular he says:

I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me (Gal. 2:20).

Here is our own kenosis or emptying. “Not-I-but-Christ.” And thus we become transparent and finally transparent such that we are His image. This is not an effort of moralism, but a self-offering to God. And so St. Paul writes:

I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:1-2).

Post Edited (Son) : 6/11/2008 3:59:21 PM (GMT-5)

http://www.opentheismboard.org/default.aspx?f=10&m=99524

 

Interesting...

The Orthodox distinction between “essence” and “energies” articulates a necessary distinction “which honors God’s genuine transcendence while celebrating God’s intimate immanence” (79). God’s essence is beyond knowing, completely transcendent. God’s energies are not God’s influence on the world, but God actually at work in and through the world. This allows for no dualism between nature and grace – categories that continue to hinder theological progress in the Western Church. For the Eastern Church, there is no realm in which God is not at work. “According to Orthodoxy, there is no such supratemporal, immaterial realm of grace. God himself, in his energies, is ever immanent in his creation. Thus, nature is the abode of grace, and grace suffuses nature” (97). Thus, grace is not a substance or influence, but the active presence of God at work! Payton does a fine job in demonstrating how the Western Church rarely, if ever, stops to consider what grace actually is, that is, the active presence of God at work in transforming human lives.

Tom: The question isn’t “Is my body as one with God as it can be?” The question is “Who determines the movements my body is to make?”

D: Ok. Let's say that you can ask this question at EVERY PRESENT MOMENT. What if the following is your HONEST thought process? Reposting...

Holy Spirit of Christ's (divine) activity - "What the Christ-the-Logos (the Divine Center) would want/choose to believe/think/say/do in this moment with this particular, unique hypostatic unity."

Human Spirit's (non-divine) activity - "What I (the created "I" ) want/choose to believe/think/say/do in this moment with this particular, unique hypostatic unity."

Tom: What if the answer is, “There are a million equally loving things I (Jesus) might do in your situation. You’re free to creatively determine how your love gets expressed, so you choose.”

To suppose that we must ask your question, D, presupposes that (a) there’s only ONE right choice to make at every present moment, and that (b) we’re not self-determiners of our unique creative expressive form. But if in the eschaton (and sometimes here) neither of these presuppositions is true, what then? If it’s true that we freely and creatively determine the shape of our expressed love, then there’s no asking ‘What would Jesus do if he were me?’. To ask that is to ask how I might NOT do what God’s created me TO do, viz., be a self-determining creative lover. If every moment I ask Christ to specify for me what my next step is to be, I’m anything but a creative lover.

I can, however, always know at every present moment that who I am and the freedom in which I live is a grace gift of God, my creator and sustainer. I can always know what I freely determine in love perfectly reflects God to God and others since God is the ultimate free loving creator. In doing what God does—determine myself in love—I look like God. But for you the best way to look like God and reflect God is to have God determine one’s self and its movements. This is exactly what your ever-present question means. It means we receive from God the specific form of expression our love it to take. It means we are not creators in any meaningful sense. God determines the expressed form and so most perfectly sees himself reflected in us. For you, D, God sees himself in creation by determining it. Even though you have creatures choosing to be so determined, that doesn’t change the implications—creaturely personal identity is gone. That’s essentially the rock-bottom of your view. It’s determinism all over again. For me God sees himself in creation by NOT determining it, but by—having perfected its nature in love—“letting it go.” For me, God’s answer to the question you propose we ask is, “Are you perfected in love or not? I created you to be a free and creative lover. Stop asking me to tell you what to do all the time and go love somebody.”

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 6/12/2008 9:57:44 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Sahid) : 6/12/2008 11:28:40 AM (GMT-5)

Z: What does "holding in existence" have to do with location?

T: You and I each exist ‘at a location’. God’s holds us in existence ‘at our locations’. God holds ‘located realities’ in their existence. Thus, God’s sustaining activity is located.

Again, what I mean by omnipresence: “All that God is actually and potentially is part of the definition of every other actuality and possibility (whether spiritual or physical). In other words, God is present to all things in the sense that God holds them in existence, sustaining their being and apprehending their becoming—at their locations.” But God’s sustaining activity is unmediated. There’s no non-God reality empowered by God to sustain the universe on God’s behalf. So God does it. Created material realities are spatially located, thus, God’s sustaining energies are spatially located.

POW: Tom says of God, "Stop asking me to tell you what to do all the time and go love somebody." Tom does not literally think we should not ask God for wisdom.

T: In heaven, when we are perfected and glorified, we will not need to ask God for wisdom. That’s a ‘this-worldly’ necessity.

POW:  But what Tom seems to miss is that we NEED God's grace to empower me, and to help me do it.

T: In this world AND the next we will need God’s grace and empowering presence. We’ll never grow out of needing that.

POW: Maybe Tom loves a notion of what he wants to be possible (that is unbiblical) and won't let go of it?

T: What unbiblical notion is that?

POW: Tom, what should I notice about this notion that you are defending, iow, why is it vitally important in your view?

T: What notion are you talking about?

T

I can, however, always know at every present moment that who I am and the freedom in which I live is a grace gift of God, my creator and sustainer. I can always know what I freely determine in love perfectly reflects God to God and others since God is the ultimate free loving creator. In doing what God does—determine myself in love—I look like God. But for you the best way to look like God and reflect God is to have God determine one’s self and its movements. This is exactly what your ever-present question means. It means we receive from God the specific form of expression our love it to take. It means we are not creators in any meaningful sense. God determines the expressed form and so most perfectly sees himself reflected in us. For you, D, God sees himself in creation by determining it. Even though you have creatures choosing to be so determined, that doesn’t change the implications—creaturely personal identity is gone. That’s essentially the rock-bottom of your view. It’s determinism all over again. For me God sees himself in creation by NOT determining it, but by—having perfected its nature in love—“letting it go.” For me, God’s answer to the question you propose we ask is, “Are you perfected in love or not? I created you to be a free and creative lover. Stop asking me to tell you what to do all the time and go love somebody.”

 

Zack, the part you quoted and the many scenes you listed are very different, and I would not compare them. While they seem to present a problem for you (I hope I can solve that.) they don't for me. So I think you have created your own problem.

Let me explain the first part. "Nature is the abode of grace" is a statement about what grace "is." While we can say "grace is God's undeserved favor, that is NOT a definition of what grace IS, it is a statement that surrounds the setting of our relationship with God. What grace IS is God's personal and direct involvement with us for our good. Just as God created through his energies (rather than through an intermediary, or a secretion) and sustains also, so God does not merely influence us from a distance but acts personally for our good. So, nature -- whether the clouds or us -- "is the abode of" grace in that God is everywhere present by his Spirit, filling all things; his energies ARE God. And God's activity IS God's energy outside of the Trinity, and "suffuses" nature -- I have to look that up!

*  literally, to pour beneath, to spread over or through in the manner of fluid or light : flush, fill the northern horizon was suffused with a deep red glow

Literally, God's grace suffuses over nature. God's Light enlightens us, his creatures. Take the VERB literally.

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Then onto the next part. You take grace as being a character trait. No. Grace IS the Holy Spirit. And, so, the verb "suffuses" provides us with a verb we can be comfortable with. (I agree that "resides in" seems ambiguous.) We need a way to say that the creature remains itself but is also "graced" by the Word's Spirit.

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Now, the wind, quake, fire DO have God as much in them as anything else... BUT we can also say that the message, our hearing, the lesson "is not in" them. That IS figurative language. Or said another way, "for us the message/significance is not in them."

Post Edited (Sahid) : 6/13/2008 4:58:31 AM (GMT-5)

Psalm 139

O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
You understand my thought from afar.
3 You scrutinize my path and my lying down,
And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before there is a word on my tongue,
Behold, O LORD, You know it all.
5 You have enclosed me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is too high, I cannot attain to it.
7 Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
10 Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,
And the light around me will be night,”
12 Even the darkness is not dark to You,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to You.
13 For You formed my inward parts;
You wove me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
16 Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book were all written
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them.
17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.
When I awake, I am still with You.
19 O that You would slay the wicked, O God;
Depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed.
20 For they speak against You wickedly,
And Your enemies take Your name in vain.
21 Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against You?
22 I hate them with the utmost hatred;
They have become my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
24 And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
And lead me in the everlasting way.