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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/26/2008 9:42 AM (GMT -6) |   | Give an example of this belief in action.
It's 1997. I'm working with a ministry in Bay City, Texas under Pastors Kevin and Doriss Johnson. They really acted as some "spiritual parents" for me then. Anyways, we are at a service and I'm running the sound. Pastor is preaching...and I'm behind the musical equipment. At some point, I start thinking about all of the bad things that I had done...and how I'd so disbelieved in God. (I'd had suicidal ideations at that time!) And I said in my mind...
"God, why in the world would you want to $#&# with someone like me. I've hurt people. I damn near hate myself. I deserve hell. Why do you keep messing with me??"
And as sure as I'm sitting here at this computer...these were the LIFE CHANGING WORDS I heard...
"I want to make you beautiful...like I am beautiful."
I cried for the rest of the service...uncontrollably.
I'd NEVER EVEN IMAGINED that I could be beautiful to someone. I had NEVER thought of myself as beautiful...nor did I think I could be. No one had ever told me that I was beautiful..or could ever be so.
But God told me that he could do it.
And I wept...trusting that this Person I'd given my life to could do the impossible...
And he's shown me...
"With God, nothing will be said to be impossible."
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
"Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."
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One Love
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| Posted 7/26/2008 9:49 AM (GMT -6) | | Corey:
Well, my question in this thread is regarding the differences you and Tom are discussing. Do you hold it as conviction (which in my mind is the sorts of things I'd be willing to martyr over) or persuasion (the sort of things without which the world becomes incoherent for me) or opinion (everything else)?
To me, Tom and I are describing the SAME REALITY from two diferent standpoints. I truly believe that they are NOT mutually exclusive. He does. I can't change that.
I'm willing to die for the Love of Jesus, inseparable from the Trinity's Presence with and in me.
I am fully persuaded of the "strange loop"/"bi-polar assymetrical relational unity" motif (Hofstadter, Loder, Shults, etc) and it's explanatory power in the my living out the Love of Jesus in the world.
All else is whatever.
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
"Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."
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Tom
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| Posted 7/26/2008 11:29 AM (GMT -6) | | |
D: My personal experience with God has been grounding everything I've been writing.
T: So has mine. So this isn’t the heart of our differences (not that you were trying to express what our differences are).
D: This is my chief conviction, around which I can see all of my faith journey centering: God is a personal being who talks to me...and I can talk to Him. He tells me he loves me and created me. I listen and do what he wants because I believe he is God.
T: That’s MY chief conviction too. So this is also not the heart of our differences.
What’s the heart of our differences? It’s right there in the bold portion of D’s comment. We disagree over “what God wants.” That’s the whole of it.
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One Love
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| Posted 7/26/2008 11:51 AM (GMT -6) | | www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRuCRoCO2mc&NR=1
Yes, Lord...
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
"Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."
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One Love
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| Posted 7/27/2008 7:57 AM (GMT -6) | | Bruce,
As I'm seeing things, Tom is more miaphysitic than I am, probably yeah. Tom really does want to talk about the UNIQUENESS of the "nature of the Incarnate Word" (Cyril), and in so doing say that our deification/theosis does NOT parallel Christ because of the miaphysite uniqueness. Because I am more EO, I'm saying otherwise.
But as you know, miaphysitism and dyophysitism are NOT incompatible beliefs, with respect to there being two natures in Christ. (Miaphysitism is NOT monophysitism...although Apollinarianism is, where the divine person (Logos) assumes the totality of the human noetic faculty, displacing the human "heart") And the EO and Copts are seeing that.
Why the miaphysitic way for some? From what I can tell, going that route, one doesn't have to ponder any TWO-MINDS-IN-CHRIST view (correlative to the TWO-WILLS-IN CHRIST, correlative to the TWO-NATURES-IN-CHRIST). One nature of the Incarnate Word (that has differentially united natures: divine and human). One Divine Person. ONE MIND. One doesn't have to posit two distinct minds working in Christ. It would be seen as TOO CLOSELY RESEMBLING two persons. In short, to the natural miaphysite, dyophysitism would "feel like" Nestorianism.
This seems a lot like what Tom's been saying to me...as I've been holding to dyophysitism according to Chalcedon and Constantinople.
One thing that had been bothering me though. In thinking about it, I don't see how miaphysitism doesn't LOGICALLY NECESSITATE monothelitism. If there is ONE divine person with ONE divine/human "nature of Incarnation" and there is only ONE noetic faculty in Jesus...then there could ONLY be one will, a divine will of the divine person. No truly human will ANYWHERE! Maybe this is why the Oriental Orthodox (including the Copts, I'm thinking) ended up condemned as heretical as of the 6th Ecumenical Council. Monothelitism is implicit in even miaphysitism.
The Sixth Ecumenical Council met on November 7, 680 for its first session; it ended its meetings, said to have been eighteen in number, on September 16 of 681. The number of bishops present was under three hundred and the minutes of the last session have only 174 signatures attached to them.
The conclusion of the council was that Jesus has two wills as well as two natures (divine and human), and that those two wills did not conflict with or strive against each other. It thus refuted the heresy of monothelitism, which held that Jesus Christ had only one (divine) will. Further, it posthumuously restored Pope Martin I and Maximus the Confessor to communion with the church.
(They "restored" him because HE WAS RIGHT...and they knew it. And they cut...his...friggin...tongue...out...FOR...BEING...RIGHT!)
That's what I see.
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
"Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."
Post Edited (Shekinah) : 7/27/2008 8:37:45 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 7/27/2008 9:32 AM (GMT -6) | | Wiki: The number of bishops present was under three hundred and the minutes of the last session have only 174 signatures attached to them.
Tom: Oh my goodness. What a jo...never mind. So few. I guess that was Bazaar day in downtown Constantinople. Maybe they were having a sale on men’s togas and Baklava.
Wiki: In recent theological discourses, some Eastern Orthodox...have begun to embrace this Christology [miaphysitism] as being consistent with, though different from, the Chalcedon formulation.
Tom: Yes. Different in the manner of expression and formulation, but not contrary to the essentials being affirmed.
Ronald W. Leigh, “Jesus: The one-natured God-man.” Christian Scholars Review 11, no. 2: 124-137. It’s fun. Give it a try!
I don’t care what label you attach to me, really. All I believe is that God's interest in creating us include the permanent, creative, self-determining, loving expression of human persons with others and God and that this IS the union with us which God seeks. Nothing about this is incompatible with Chalcedon. The claim that the Incarnation is ‘the’ relational pattern for how all human beings are to relate to God nowhere appears in the Chalcedonian definition, and as both D and POW know, not all Eastern Orthodox agree that this is how Chalcedon ought to be applied.
But it doesn't really matter. I'm not Orthodox!
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One Love
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| Posted 7/27/2008 10:06 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
All I believe is that God's interest in creating us include the permanent, creative, self-determining, loving expression of human persons with others and God and that this IS the union with us which God seeks.
Is does human nature contain "permanence", in and of itself? Isn't God's fulness NECESSARY for human nature to have "permanence" of any real sort?
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
"Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."
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Tom
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| Posted 7/27/2008 10:12 AM (GMT -6) | | I could never find it online. I think I made a copy at Lutheran Sem. there in St. Paul. Any of the theological schools that carry CSR will do, and you can check online with them to make sure they carry it so you don't waste the trip down there! It's actually a good article. He's gotten criticized for it, but it's clear it still believes that all the kind-essential qualities of human being are possessed by the Son in the flesh. They don't bleed away into his divinity. It's really more semantics than anything else I think. Maybe that's part of the problem with ALL Statements of Faith and Creeds. They're usually motivated to combat error (among other things); so they're more concerned to say something that avoids a particular error than to affirm something positive (if I'm wording that rightly, probably not!).
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Tom
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| Posted 7/27/2008 10:13 AM (GMT -6) | | | D: Does human nature contain "permanence", in and of itself?
T:  I can't believe you just asked me that. After all these months you wonder whether I think human nature/being can self-sustain its own permanence. 
D: Isn't God's fulness NECESSARY for human nature to have "permanence" of any real sort? T: Depends on what you mean by "fulness." Define it for me. Sure, God's sustaining presence is necessary for us to even exist. And we'll perceive God's grace and love in that presence. We'll relate personally to God and be full of the Spirit. But you probably have something ELSE in mind by "fulness" don't you? Something like "asymmetrical relational bipolarity"? 
So no; human nature cannot self-sustain its own permanence.
I still can't believe you just asked me that.
T Post Edited (Tom) : 7/27/2008 10:31:02 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/27/2008 10:14 AM (GMT -6) | | What is not assumed is not healed...
heh...
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
"Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/27/2008 10:16 AM (GMT -6) | | Heh.
Hey, Corey. What do you think Tom would think of Hofstadter's thoughts on the "I"?
I bet he'd love it. 
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
"Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/27/2008 10:20 AM (GMT -6) | | D: Does human nature contain "permanence", in and of itself? Isn't God's fulness NECESSARY for human nature to have "permanence" of any real sort?
T: Yeah, we generate our own permanece. We're self-sustaining beings who don't depend upon God.
Oh brother. ;o)
Stop that. 
I'm talking glorification.
In your view, isn't the immortality and glory FOR OUR CREATED PERSONAL "SELVES" (your "I" that is free from God) pretty much GOD HIMSELF (God's Empowering Presence/Grace)?
In other words, the only way that creaturely personhood can be "eternal" is by God alone...right?
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
"Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."
Post Edited (Shekinah) : 7/27/2008 10:23:08 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 7/27/2008 10:45 AM (GMT -6) | | |
D: In other words, the only way that creaturely personhood can be "eternal" is by God alone...right?
T: The only way creaturely personhood can go on forever is if God goes on forever sustaining/willing the existence of the persons in question as persons. So yes, God is a necessary cause of all that is, so long as it is (so long as he wills that it be). But it’s no problem for the creaturely self-determining creative expression that I'm imagining for me to say that such expression requires God’s sustaining presence if it is to go on forever (any more than it is problematic for you to claim that God sustains your one, eternally perpetuated self-determining choice to relinquish all creative self-determination). We both believe God will forever sustain some level of self-determining freedom in us. You just limit that freedom to one particular choice (a choice I view as the abdication of creative self-determination and so for all intents and purposes of creaturely personhood, but never mind that--we've agreed to disagree on that) while I believe God wills, and so will sustain us in, the most creative self-determination possible.
T Post Edited (Tom) : 7/27/2008 12:22:09 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 7/27/2008 10:47 AM (GMT -6) | | D: Does human nature contain "permanence", in and of itself? Isn't God's fulness NECESSARY for human nature to have "permanence" of any real sort?
T: Yeah, we generate our own permanece. We're self-sustaining beings who don't depend upon God. Oh brother.
D: Stop that. I'm talking glorification.
T: So am I! I was poking back on purpose, but come on D. Do you REALLY think I believe that contingent beings become non-contingent (i.e., able to self-sustain their own permanence) just because they're glorified? What have I ever said that would suggest I'd lose my mind and say such a thing?
Pax,
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One Love
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| Posted 7/27/2008 10:54 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
You just limit that freedom to one particular choice alone while I believe God will sustain the MOST creative self-determination of creatures possible.
This is what I said to you before. Your belief then minimizes (unto negation, it would seem) any deterministic activity by God at all in the glorified human person. Your "most creative self-determination" means "least God-determined, it seems. God would "sustain" glorified beings that, for all intents and purposes, are never "determined" by God in any of self-disposing in creative expression of the self. The HUMAN PERSON (the created human "I") would be in TOTAL CONTROL and DETERMINATION of what gets created when and how in and through the human person's human body, NOT God. The human "I" would be the FINAL CAUSE of any creative expression of the human being.
Right?
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
"Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."
Post Edited (Shekinah) : 7/27/2008 10:59:56 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 7/27/2008 11:03 AM (GMT -6) | | Not only this, but BECAUSE what God "really wants" is the "most creative self-determination" defining the non-divine personal other into eternity (basically the immortalization, purification, and glorification of the human "I" and its creaturely self-determination process)
God would NEVER allow a human "I" to relinquish total control of itself over to God. God "wouldn't want that" because it would go against God's plans, right, Tom?
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
"Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."
Post Edited (Shekinah) : 7/27/2008 11:06:48 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 7/27/2008 11:15 AM (GMT -6) | | |
D: Your belief then minimizes (unto negation, it would seem) any deterministic activity by God at all in the glorified human person. God would “sustain” glorified beings that, for all intents and purposes, are never “determined” by God in any of self-disposing in creative expression of the self.
T: Dude. Yo dude. Man I love you! But if choices X, Y, and Z are possible futures for me and God “determines” that I do X, it follows (for me) that X cannot be a creative expression of my self. It would be a creative expression of God’s self (taking contingent form in me--but isn't this just what you believe creation is about anyhow?). Creative expression follows the determining will. If there are ten equally loving things that my unique and unrepeatable history has uniquely shaped and qualified me to choose from in doing something loving for you on a particular day in heaven, the only way any one of them will be a ‘creative expression of my self’ in reflecting God and being like God is if “I” determine which I do.
If there’s only one loving thing to do, then obviously I’ll do that…but even then it won’t be because God determines me in the performing of X. I still chose in self-determining fashion (albeit compatibilistically).
D: The HUMAN PERSON is in TOTAL CONTROL…
T: Total control? Like God’s not even there sustaining me? No. Total control in the sense that the self-determinations of my will aren’t ALSO a perfect fulfillment of the divine will? No. Because as we know, God defines love. He determines/grounds all the possibilities for loving expression that my history has uniquely shaped me for. So even when I choose, I’m choosing (a) to obey God’s will (he wills that I choose), and I’m choosing (b) from among a smorgasbord of beautiful options each of which are an expression of the loving nature and will of God. But I determine which. That’s the small part God wishes me to play and the part in which my uniqueness and unrepeatability are allowed to forever say “I love you” and so (to my small mind) put a smile on his face.
I believe that whenever there are two or more equally loving options for any of us to choose from, God will wish us to make that choice. And to tell you the truth, D, the only ‘one option’ scenarios in heaven that I can imagine would be the singular choice of good over evil. But that won’t even be an option. In truth, D, I can’t imagine glorified, perfected, fully redeemed creation in God’s presence ever being limited to a single future in any circumstance.
Condemn me for being TOO optimistic! 
Tom Post Edited (Tom) : 7/27/2008 12:26:29 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/27/2008 1:29 PM (GMT -6) | | | www.log24.com/log07/saved/070712-LoopReview.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/play.html?pg=3
“I am a mirage that perceives itself.”
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
"Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."
Post Edited (Shekinah) : 7/27/2008 1:32:33 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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