I’m listening to Diana Krall’s Live in Paris (jazz) CD, so I’m not how intelligible this will be! I’m swaying to the rhythms while I type.

L: Tom, I was trying to express your position regarding becoming versus loving.

T: I see. For me ‘becoming’ is a given of creaturely existence and ‘love’ is the goal of creaturely becoming.

L: Let me try and simplify. I believe God is loving because He has chosen to love. He is not loving because it’s an essential property of His.

T: I’d love to hear you interact a bit with my question regarding the relationship between...

1) God’s trinitarian interpersonal relations (Is God necessarily or contingently trinitarian and interpersonally related?) as the fullest expression of personal existence imaginable, on the one hand,

and

2) God’s love and benevolence on the other hand.

Is there ANY relationship between the necessity of God's trinitarian relatedness and the love that defines that interpersonal existence? If there's NO relationship between "love" and "the fullest personal existence imaginable," then please distinguisht the two for me because I don't see any difference. But if love and such interpersonal existence are mutually defining, and God's necessarily interpersonally related, do you not agree that God's loving, or being love, is equivalent to his being interpersonally related, indeed, to his being at all?

I think love is a choice too, so I can say God’s loving because (i.e., in as much as) he chooses to be. There’s no love with is not a choice of self-giving toward another and the choice to receive the same in return. The question is the ‘nature’ of the choice. I think that choice is compatibilistic in God’s case with respect to its aim and orientation (viz., it’s always fully informed by a perfect apprehension of the ‘other’ and the value of the ‘other’ and perfectly disposes to affirm and celebrate that value). I don’t think God has to actually contemplate the pro’s and con’s of not loving and continue to redetermine himself with respect to whether or not he’ll apprehend and value and affirm himself and others perfectly. But that sort of pondering and less than determined character defines libertarian choice with respect to evil. It leaves me wondering what James had in mind when he said God can’t be tempted. How’s one libertarianly free with respect to evil if one’s constitution is such that being tempted (which requires the capacity to contemplate evil as an option) is impossible?

L: We say He “unconditionally loves.” “Unconditional” and “conditional” are adverbs that you use with volitional acts, you don't use them to describe non-moral properties. If “God loves” describes one of His essential properties, then “God loves unconditionally” is incoherent as it mixes language. Could you explain to me why you use volitional words with non-moral, essential properties?

T: I’ve never taken “God loves us unconditionally” to mean anything other than that his love of us is not conditioned upon our good behavior or righteous performance.

I posit the libertarian freedom and unnecessary graciousness of God’s love for us entirely in his choice to create. It’s at THAT point, in the choice to bring us into existence or not, where God is free to not love the world, viz., by not bringing us into existence. But ONCE CREATED, once brought into being freely and unnecessarily, it’s a matter of fact grounded in that same character and being of God that he does and will love us. There’s now no question as to whether or not God will love those he’s created.

L: As for character ‘solidification’, I tend to avoid the word and it implies something that no one has explained or proved.

T: You used it to express your belief that “the more one chooses one way, the more one ‘solidifies’ in one direction.” You were ‘free’ to not use it! ;o) Dump the word ‘solidify’ if it’s not the right one. But besides that word, you obviously meant something. You were expressing your own belief. What happened? Do you now not believe that the “more one chooses one way the more one ______” (and fill it is with whatever word you’d like to express the manner in which the will or character are shaped and formed) becoming, as you said, “more predictable”? Or did you see that the idea of solidification isn’t really compatible with the idea that regardless of how long God or we choose rightly, we’ll never be beyond having to libertarianly face evil and contemplate it as a possibility?

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/8/2008 9:00:13 AM (GMT-5)

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." ²⁷ So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Laika,

where does it say in Scripture that we were created in “God’s moral Image”?  If this was true we would not need a Savior, since we would be flawless, perfect and holy.  I believe we were created with a spirit, a moral conscience, a self evident truth, that if we choose, can guide us in God’s moral image.   It is helpful to hold to a trichotomy view in regards to the makeup of man's constitutional nature.  It is within this trichotomy view that we find our contingent choices between good and evil(untruth).  A necessary God is not confined to this same type of choice, he is the Spirit of Truth, truth constitutes his nature as he freely chooses exclusively between good and good.  

Thanks,

Mark

So you say “rocks aren’t moral”, I agree since rocks aren’t even alive.  Get off “rocks”, get on ass. 

Let’s take a live ass placed exactly in the middle between two stacks of hay of equal size and quality set at an equal distance and let the ass choose between them. Would he starve to death?  Will the ass use God’s moral image to choose which pile of hay to eat from?  No.  Man often times makes an ass out of himself when he lets his senses(body) dictate to his mind(soul) his choices instead of his mind being led by his moral conscience(spirit).   Yes, by process of elimination, God breathed his spirit (moral conscience) into us, this is how we are created in God’s image, this is how we know God exists, this is how we can separate ourselves from the choices of an ass.   

We can freely choose to either suppress the Spirit of Truth (conscious torment)  or we can follow our moral conscience and be right with God.  On the contrary, God can’t suppress the truth of himself, he’s always self-conscience, “necessarily” so, it's constituted in his nature.

Post Edited (Truth Aficionado) : 7/8/2008 2:51:08 PM (GMT-5)

Z: But why can't he freely accept moral standards without obligation?

J: Which of the following meaning or meanings of the word "standard" are you using (I realize most certainly don't apply, but all seem to create problems to me)? It seems to me that "standard" has the idea of that which exists independently of yourself, or your desires, that you aspire to. With God, it seems that He just does His will. But ones will is not a standard.

stand·ard   

–noun

1.	something considered by an authority or by general consent as a basis of comparison; an approved model.

2.	an object that is regarded as the usual or most common size or form of its kind: We stock the deluxe models as well as the standards.

3.	a rule or principle that is used as a basis for judgment: They tried to establish standards for a new philosophical approach.

4.	an average or normal requirement, quality, quantity, level, grade, etc.: His work this week hasn't been up to his usual standard.

5.	standards, those morals, ethics, habits, etc., established by authority, custom, or an individual as acceptable: He tried to live up to his father's standards.

6.	a grade of beef immediately below good.

7.	the authorized exemplar of a unit of weight or measure.

8.	a certain commodity in or by which a basic monetary unit is stated. Compare gold standard, silver standard, bimetallism, monometallism.

9.	the legally established content of full-weight coins.

10.	the prescribed degree of fineness for gold or silver.

11.	British. a class or grade in elementary schools.

12.	a musical piece of sufficiently enduring popularity to be made part of a permanent repertoire, esp. a popular song.

13.	a flag indicating the presence of a sovereign or public official.

14.	a flag, emblematic figure, or other object raised on a pole to indicate the rallying point of an army, fleet, etc.

15.	Military. a. any of various military or naval flags. b. the colors of a mounted unit. c. (initial capital letter) a U.S. Navy radar-guided surface-to-air missile with a range of 10–30 miles (16–48 km).

16.	Heraldry. a long, tapering flag or ensign, as of a monarch or a nation.

17.	something that stands or is placed upright.

18.	a long candlestick or candelabrum used in a church.

19.	an upright support or supporting part.

20.	Armor. a standing collar of mail.

21.	Horticulture. a plant trained or grafted to have a single, erect, treelike stem.

22.	Botany. a distinct petal, larger than the rest, of certain flowers; a vexillum.

–adjective

23.	serving as a basis of weight, measure, value, comparison, or judgment.

24.	of recognized excellence or established authority: a standard reference on medieval history.

25.	usual, common, or customary: Chairs are standard furniture in American households.

26.	manual; not electric or automatic: standard transmission.

27.	conforming in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, etc., to the usage of most educated native speakers, esp. those having prestige, and widely considered acceptable or correct: Standard American English; standard pronunciation. Compare nonstandard (def. 2).

28.	authorized or approved: The program was broadcast on the standard broadcast band.

Post Edited (Similtude) : 7/8/2008 8:49:08 PM (GMT-5)

Laika: God had no beginning? not me, I had a beginning. God has to exist? not me, I didn't have to exist. God has to love? not me, I have a choice. Where's the part I'm an image of?

Tom: I take the view that the image of God in us is basically ‘personhood’, just a ‘way of relating’ (perceiving, valuing, and affirming one’s self and others in creative ways). This doesn’t mean there can’t or won’t be differences in how a necessary being (God) possesses personhood and now contingent/created beings (Us) come to be persons. The point is that the same perceiving and affirming of the value of self and others is what defines and expresses one’s personal identity. The same sort of thing is happening in both cases.

Laika: God is essential, I get that. Why is a trinity essential? I don't get that. If you could have a duality that's relational, or a quadality that's relational or a legion that's relational, then obviously, 3 isn't essential.

Tom: For the moment, let’s just say 2 or more will do. Forget why ‘3’ is the simplest and most perfect expression of oneness and diversity. Let’s just go with anything at 2 or above. BUT…you do at least agree that a plurality (a duality or quadality, etc.) of persons is essential to being a person, to being relational. In other words, you agree that God is essentially ‘relational’, you just question how many persons are essential to that relationality. Fine.

So God is essentially interpersonally related (however many persons essentially constitute that inter-relationality). My point doesn’t change:

Isn’t it the case that to be interpersonally related is to be loving? The two are mutually defining, so that the interpersonal sharing of self and identity that constitutes God’s very being is at the same time love's defining act -- and so “God is love.” That means God is as necessarily loving as he is necessarily interpersonally related. So the only question is, Is God necessarily (or essentially) interpersonally related? Or, Is God essentially personal? If yes, then God is equally essentially loving. If not, then God is essentially IMpersonal.

It’s interpersonal relations (forgetting for the moment whether you can get that with 2, 3, 5, or however many persons) which constitute love. So we can't remove ‘love’ from the definition of ‘person’. They’re different ways of saying the same thing.

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/9/2008 12:12:19 AM (GMT-5)

D-

Yeah, I see your point. And as I’m arguing that the full and complete actualization of our ‘persons’ is something we have to ‘become’ over time, something that gets ‘called into being’, I’d say we do, over time, come to express this in truer and more complete ways as opposed to just stepping into it—bam—a finished project. Like the clarity of vision through a camera that becomes more or less focused as you turn the lens, we come to perceive reality and shape our identities gradually. It’s a process of clarity, and thus perception, and thus appreciation, and thus evaluation, and thus choice and concrete personal form.

So I wouldn’t say that ‘personhood’ is an all or nothing sort of thing, that we’re either beasts and not persons or we’ll all the person we can be. That doesn’t seem true to experience and I can’t see theoretically why it should be.

But—more related to your question—I would equate ‘love’ and ‘personhood’ so that the more ‘loving’ I become the more a ‘person’ I am. A completely unloving ‘person’, viz., a ‘person’ who’s utterly void of any true perception of and appreciate for value, etc.? No, I don’t think so. Utter ‘non-love’ is equivalent to the absence of all personal identity. On the other hand, to the extent we’re right on love we’re true persons. God, I think, is fully realized personal being, the truest instantiation of personal being possible, and thus the truest lover possible.

This takes me back to Laika’s question about a scale of ten lesser to greater courses of action, options 1-5 being ‘evil’ while at the same time falling along a continuum of lesser to greater in terms of their impact and consequences; and options 6-10 being all ‘good’ options but nevertheless also falling along a continuum of lesser to greater goods. Laika wants to say God’s freedom of choice lies within options 6-10. I’d say (a) that this still begs the question (given the line at 5/6 which Laika’s drawn between ‘good’ and ‘evil’) of whether God’s free to go with any of options 1-5 for example. If not, why isn't this a challenge to his freedom? But (b) even just considering options 6-10, I can’t see God perfectly perceiving the relative value of the options, i.e., their relative contribution to his purposes, and then his going with an option he KNOWS contributes LESS to the achieving of his purposes. That’s a failure (somewhere along the line) in perception or valuation or faculty of will. From my perspective, if God knows option 10 is really is the best course of action (because it creates the most beauty, maximizes the greatest good possible in that situation, and achieves as much as possible of God’s purposes in that circumstance), then to choose any of options 1-9 would constitute a failure of love and thus of personhood.

What do you think D?

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/9/2008 9:42:46 AM (GMT-5)