D: I thought this is what you wanted to be the case.

Tom: Talking about this is like a drug for me. I love it. But I have to confess that it’s also tiring when there’s no real progress on the issues. And I don’t feel like we’ve really come that far since last September. In fact, I bet we could take all the posts on this issue from then to now, shuffle them like a deck of cards to get them all out of order, and then read through them without compromising the progress of the debate. I mean, we each just keep saying the same thing to each other over and over. You have your mantra (“oneness”) and I have mine (“interpersonal relationality”). You’re sure there’s nothing about your view of ‘unity’ that undermines personal integrity, and I dispute that. On the other hand I’m confident that my understanding of interpersonal relations is a sufficient context for the unity God intends with/for us, and you dispute that. But we are each satisfied with our positions because we have different commitments to what it is we think God created for in the first place.

I argue for a form of glorified existence characterized by a plurality of equally loving options the actualizing of which God desires should be our own free contribution to the synergistic composition of our lives. You prefer to assume that there’s pretty much one most loving possible option for every occasion. This assumption is present EVEN when you consider the possibility of a plurality of equally loving options. On this assumption, a deterministic understanding of theosis follows rather simply for you. If one assumes only one most loving option for each next step, and  possible worlds are grounded in God and offered as subjective aims to us, and if loving God means surrendering one’s will to God to do his bidding, then OF COURSE the sort of freedom I imagine is a fantasy and God determines everything about us. But that’s what a perfected heart, so the argument goes, would want anyways. Therein lay our satisfaction and fulfillment.

But I categorically reject limiting possible worlds in a perfected context to one most loving option. What I cannot seem to get from you is a REASON for WHY you assume such limited options to begin with. It boggles my mind. Your offer of angels in heaven as an argument for thinking that our present wartime manner of God-human relations isn’t really a ‘wartime’ deal at all is, well, just amazing. I can’t at all get inside your reasoning here. The appeal to angels seems like a desperate reach to me. Sorry. You’re asking me to believe that in a fallen and conflicted context in which the number of loving options narrows, even to ONE such option most of the time (how could we know?), the fact that our response to God amounts to obedience to a single divine directive has NOTHING to do with the fallen and conflicted nature of the context itself. You in fact deny that the options are narrowed in such circumstances. To me this borders on the ridiculous.

I ask, “But IF (an “if” in my question which your answer ignored) the number of possible courses of action are all equally loving (here’s my question again)—Why would a perfectly secure and loving God NOT WANT perfected loving creatures to determine for themselves which of those possibilities gets realized?” and cannot seem to get a straight answer. Your answer left me completely unsatisfied. I’m sorry.

You grant that: “There are cases where multiple courses of action are equally loving” but then follow with “when those situations occur, the Holy Spirit continues to, by grace, empower OUR human personal/gnomic agencies to make the most loving, beauty-creating decisions possible that WE can for God's World in the moment.” But D, if there are really cases when there are multiple courses of equally loving action open to US, then there IS NO ONE most loving, beauty-creating decision that WE can make for God. There are MANY such decisions WE can make for God. The question then becomes, “Who determines which of the several possible worlds gets actualized?” You say, “God.” I say, “God wants us to make that determination.” The manner in which you imagine us empowered by the Spirit to make “THE most loving decision that WE can make” when we face “multiple options” is itself a denial of what we’re supposing, namely, that there are multiple equally loving decisions that WE can make. That’s the whole point.

B:  Tom's are in small text, and mine in larger text. 

 

Tom: Carefully. I’m gonna walk through it step by step because I really want an answer from you:

 

(1) I said that once perfected, our having self-determining freedom over how we express our love will include our bodies.  [b: glorified bodies, whatever that might mean]   Fulfilled human existence is embodied existence.  [b: Yes. ]   And I believe we determine HOW our love for God and others gets expressed through our bodies.   [b: Yes. ]    God does NOT decide everything about this.   [b: Yes. God already decided the logos of our being, and also the skopos of our communion with God-- (which includes our relationships with God and with creation) -- Payton, page 96... in his chapter "The Creator and the Creation" within the section called The Dynamism of Creation"]    God doesn't want to decide everything about this.   [b: Yes. For our logoi and our skopoi God provides possibilities and potentialities for us to be our logoi and explore our skopooi in fellowship with God and to the praise of his Glory! ]    God wants US to determine how we express our love.   [b: Mostly yes, with the addition that it is tough for us to "determine" anything. Right? We "work out" how we express our love and share in other people's love. ]   Not God deciding it through us.   [b: God already decided a lot, in the creation of our logos, and with it the setting of our skopos. The rest is DYNAMIC -- Get Payton's book!!!]    Not God deciding it by imprinting it on our subconscious.   [b: Slowly forming us, with our cooperation. Payton explores the differences in understanding of sin in E & W, where the environment and our habits play more of a roll in E. ]   But God letting us go, leaving us to determine ourselves in this way.  [b: To me, that is overstating the matter. I'd say "...God working with us. ]    God wants this. God loves ths. This is part of what God created.   [b: Yes. ]  

 

That says a lot about human freedom and creativity.

Post Edited (Shekinah) : 6/24/2008 4:33:55 PM (GMT-5)

----------------------------

Look here, man. Let's just say this. Let's just say that...

1) there are cases where multiple courses of action are "equally loving" (meaning that there is no meaningful difference in the quality or quanity of love being expressed in the given thoughts, feelings, and actions of each "course of action"...distinction without real difference, in a way)

and...

2) when those situations occur, the Holy Spirit continues to, by grace, empower US and OUR human personal/gnomic agencies so that WE can make the most loving, beauty-creating decisions possible for OURSELVES in God's World in the moment...and humbly trust God for the rest.  (In my mind, this would functionally be the SAME as epicletically living out this idea: "What would the Presence of Jesus do RIGHT NOW if he were me (my entire human particularity) RIGHT NOW and empowered by the Holy Spirit in everything he did?" But anyways...)

-------------------------------------

From what I'm reading here...I say that "US" (which respresents human persons) are able to make the "most loving, beauty-creating decisions possible." 

I'm trying to see how this gets read as my SPECIFICALLY saying that there is only ONE most loving, beauty-creating things in EVERY situation.  I'm trying to see where that's been said.  As I'm reading this, nothing I've written above necessitates or maintains that there is ONLY one "most loving" thing to do at one time.

Post Edited (Shekinah) : 6/25/2008 8:00:45 AM (GMT-5)

D, it seemed to me that you were assuming "one most loving option" view when you suggested that in every situation we ask ourselves, “What would the Presence of Jesus do RIGHT NOW if he were me (my entire human particularity) RIGHT NOW and empowered by the Holy Spirit in everything he did?”

Do you see how this tends toward (if not entails) the conclusion that there is one most loving option in each circumstance? Your question assumes “an” answer, “some one thing” that Jesus “would do” in this particular situation. There’s the “one option” approach. But if there really are multiple options, then there is no answer to our asking ourselves what Jesus would do in our situation (apart from a range of equally loving alternatives). The answer to the question produces no one right answer, no particular "thing" Jesus would do to which we then respond by doing it. So the more important question becomes, Who determines/decides which from among these options gets actualized? I say we do. And I say that our exercising this kind of freedom remains the fulfillment of God’s will because God wills us to exercise such creative freedom.

Another example you gave that suggested to me that you’re perhaps assuming a “one option” scenario is the married couple analogy where I ask my wife, “Where would you like to eat?” and she answers with, “Let’s get some stuff from Whole Foods and cook it at home,” to which I reply, “I was just thinking the same thing.” Do you see the “one option” assumption here? I see it clearly.

You can’t seem to get away from wanting our choices to be somehow antecedently decided upon by God, so that everything we do is essentially the effect of God’s willing. For you this is part of what it means for us to be “one” with God. But this is what I’m challenging. It can’t be the case that we face multiple options and are free to determine which gets actualized if after we choose God can say "I was just thinking the same thing for you.” How could God have been thinking the same thing? Is he just a lucky guesser? Or are you positing some other sort of causal link that’s hidden in the works? How will it always turn out to be the case for every free determination we make God will be able to say, “Oh yeah, I was just thinking of your choosing that same thing!”? How is this NOT essentially the “one-option” approach? If God knew we’d make that choice and was actually willing that we make it freely, then there weren’t any real options to begin with. We've been over all that sort of argument. What I imagine God saying forever in heaven after we've acted in love is, “Beautiful! I love the way you did that!”

Yet another example of why I think you’re assuming a one-option approach is that when I elaborate on this creative plurality of options and our choosing which gets actualized, you object. Like when I said:

“My guess is that [Hart?] views our true ‘self’, our ‘logos’, as the gift of creative capacities to interpret the divine themes of love, not specific determinations minutely prescribed. The divine themes are GIVEN as gift by God and then received back from us as gratitude precisely IN THE DIFFERENCE which our freely determined elaborations and renditions upon those themes constitute. Thus it is in the difference which we determine that we are in fact different from God in the only really important sense at all, personally distinct from God. So our gifts to God throughout eternity are not the blank slate of our volition void of self-expression and offered to God as the mere instrumentation for divine will (the sort Hart criticizes). Our gift to God is our renditions of the gift of his themes. That’s the music he wants to hear.”

You objected by referring to the hypostatic union, etc. etc. See? So I’m wondering why, if you’re agreeing that we exercise this sort of freedom facing a plurality of equally loving options, you seem to be so uncomfortable with the red-lettered portion in the previous paragraph. That just IS the multiple options alternative. Without the red-letter portion above, the multiple options approach and our being free to determine which gets actualized are meaningless.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 6/25/2008 11:00:59 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Tom) : 6/25/2008 12:16:38 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Tom) : 6/25/2008 6:24:39 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Shekinah) : 6/25/2008 6:29:58 PM (GMT-5)

The unitive life is the last stage of mystical ascent.  The mystic becomes as closely united to God through God’s love as God is unified to his own being by nature.  Mystically married to God, the mystic becomes “God by participation.”  Nonetheless, this union remains differentiated, that is, God and the mystic become one while remaining distinctly two.  The mystic’s person does not dissolve into God.  In fact, the more deeply united to God the mystic becomes, the more the mystic’s individuality is confirmed and enhanced.

Mystical marriage bestows the conscious sharing in God’s own life and power and almost complete self-forgetfulness.  The mystic now seeks only God’s will and honor and desires to serve God totally.  Although external trials may continue, absolutely nothing can touch the peace and freedom at the deepest core of the mystic’s being.  The transformed mystic desires greatly to suffer, but in no way does this suffering disturb the peace that flows from the ever present, explicit awareness of living God’s very own life.  In fact, the only thing separating the mystic from the beatific vision is this life itself.

The mystic is experientially united to a love that communicates itself to all persons and to all things.  Therefore, the more deeply the mystic experiences union with God, the more deeply union with God’s creation is experienced.  Transformed by and into Love itself, the mystic becomes creative, totally self-giving, radically concerned about others—in short, spiritually fecund.

Harvey Egan, S.J.
An Anthology of Christian Mysticism

Compatible...right? 

The mystic’s person does not dissolve into God.

D: I agree with what you are saying.

Tom: Let me see.

D: Seriously. I see it.

Tom: I don’t know how you couldn’t see it. You actually DO live and experience what I’m saying a lot of the time. I believe that.

D: I don't think our ideas are mutually exclusive.

Tom: I think I follow your first part there about not being absorbed and the human will being free. That sounds OK. But I’m not sure I even understand the larger paragraph. Too many turns. But it’s 2:30 AM here and that might explain it. I’ll give it shot after I’ve had some rack. If you could simplify it that might help.

Peace,

Tom