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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 7/14/2008 8:24 AM (GMT -6)

I just had the freakiest thought.

The Holy Spirit of God (The Father's Spirit) is the Father's dispositional "personal power" to know, see, and love Himself in the Son, the Father's Perfect Image. The Holy Spirit is the ground for God's Triune Self-Knowledge. The Holy Spirit is the Father's power for self-experience and the ground for God's Triune self-willing/choosing and self-knowledge/understanding...and the Trinity is that "power's" eternal exercise. (Creation, I believe, is God's contingent expression of this eternal exercise of self-perceiving, self-choosing, self-communion, where God "knows, sees, and loves" Godself in a new way: created personal beings.) And when we participate in Grace (God's Empowering Presence, the Spirit of the Holy One)...indwelling and being indwelt by Christ's Spirit...the Father loves His Image IN US and the Trinity exists in the redeemed human soul that is conformed to that image. We can have the "mind of Christ" as the very Self-Understanding of God "works" in us. Through this personal relationship betweeen Creator and created being, The Father "knows" us as his creaturely Children...and we "know" the Father as truly our Heavenly Father...in Christ, by the Spirit. The Indwelling, Omnipresent Power of the Holy Spirit unifies the Knower (the Holy One) and the Known (his created "Temple" ) in eternal, inseperable UNION of love.

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

We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God's wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:
"What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived—
these things God has prepared for those who love him"—

for God has revealed them to us by his Spirit.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except that person's own spirit within? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for,
"Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?"
But we have the mind of Christ.

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

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful humanity to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in human flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind controlled by the sinful nature is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. The sinful mind is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.

You, however, are not controlled by the sinful nature but are in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then can condemn? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
"For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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

Does ANY OF THIS make sense?

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) : 7/14/2008 8:28:52 AM (GMT-5)

Tom
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Total Posts : 10353

Posted 7/14/2008 9:13 AM (GMT -6)

It makes sense if your name is Plotinus (or Hegel or Spinoza).

Tom

One Love
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Total Posts : 13888

Posted 7/14/2008 10:24 AM (GMT -6)

Or Greg Boyd.

This is HIS metaphysic, Tom. Greg's whole dispositional idea (with respect to the Trinity) is based on JUST this idea in Jonathon Edwards...as seen in Greg's "Trinity and Process."

Remember our whole discussion about the God the Father being "dispositional actuality"? And the dispositional aspect of the Father being the Holy Spirit of the Father? Greg said that this was a VIABLE idea, when I talked to him. You didn't forget any of that, did you?

Yeah... biggrin

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."

Post Edited (Shekinah) : 7/14/2008 10:27:56 AM (GMT-5)

One Love
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Total Posts : 13888

Posted 7/14/2008 10:44 AM (GMT -6)

Also...

Tom:
God, I think, is fully realized personal being, the truest instantiation of personal being possible, and thus the truest lover possible.

God is the "truest instantiation" of self-experience and self-relationship who EXEMPLIFIES the Great Commandments to an infinite degree: Loving God, loving "self", and loving the "other" as oneself. God does all three within God's own triune self among the three divine persons of the one divine being. (Remember the Shema!!) Creation is an contingent expression of this uncreated "love fest", and the human being is a created personal other (the human being) to become BY GRACE what God is BY NATURE.

Moreover, what God is by nature and what we are made by Grace is brought about by SAME PERSON that enabled the Incarnation of the Father's Image: the ONE Holy Spirit of God that eternally "proceeds" from the Father and eternally "rests" in the Son.

God was an actual LOVER "before" he was a actual CREATOR, yes?

You mean to tell me that this ain't workin', 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."

Post Edited (Shekinah) : 7/14/2008 11:01:45 AM (GMT-5)

Tom
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Total Posts : 10353

Posted 7/14/2008 1:40 PM (GMT -6)

I had this (of yours) in mind:

T: Greg and I spent an entire evening discussing this when I was home. I wanted to hear it from him. I don’t suppose my belaboring the point will convince you, but Greg does not reduce creation to divine self-relation and self-love, nor does he feel his thesis argues this. God’s love of us is love of a non-divine, personal ‘other’. But we’ve been all through this before. I won’t pursue it any farther here. I just wanted to say that Greg would not sign his name next to Plotinus, Hegel, and Spinoza as sharing their essentially monist-emanationist view of creation.

D: God is the "truest instantiation" of self-experience and self-relationship who EXEMPLIFIES the Great Commandments to an infinite degree: Loving God, loving "self", and loving the "other" as oneself. God does all three within God's own triune self among the three divine persons of the one divine being.

T: True. God is the truest instantiation of personal being. But this doesn’t reduce creation to an instance of divine personal being or loving. That is, God’s being loving relationality (self-giving and receiving, address and response, etc.) doesn’t mean the God-world relationship reduces to the God-God relationship, which is what I hear you say when you say creation is all about divine ‘self’-communication, ‘self’-communion, and God’s love of us being just an instance of his love for himself. I don’t dispute that creation can be or is an act of inner-trinitarian love, the same way Anita’s and my having children was in a real sense a gift from me to her and from her to me. But the gift itself is a non-Anita, non-Tom entity which is loved by Tom and Anita as a non-Tom, non-Anita entity, so that my love of my kids isn’t one and the same as, or reducible to, my loving Anita. But that’s nowhere in your comments. It always disappears from view, which is the reason for my recurring doubt in your belief of it.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/14/2008 1:43:20 PM (GMT-5)

One Love
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Total Posts : 13888

Posted 7/14/2008 2:41 PM (GMT -6)

D: Creation, I believe, is God's contingent expression of this eternal exercise of self-perceiving, self-choosing, self-communion, where God ‘knows, sees, and loves’ Godself in a new way: created personal beings. And when we participate in Grace (God's Empowering Presence, the Spirit of the Holy One)...indwelling and being indwelt by Christ's Spirit...the Father loves His Image IN US.”

T: Greg and I spent an entire evening discussing this when I was home. I wanted to hear it from him. I don’t suppose my belaboring the point will convince you, but Greg does not reduce creation to divine self-relation and self-love, nor does he feel his thesis argues this. God’s love of us is love of a non-divine, personal ‘other’. But we’ve been all through this before. I won’t pursue it any farther here. I just wanted to say that Greg would not sign his name next to Plotinus, Hegel, and Spinoza as sharing their essentially monist-emanationist view of creation.

I am meeting with Greg tomorrow morning for breakfast. I'm going with "Trinity and Process" IN HAND...and we're gonna settle this. I will make sure to post all responses (whatever those may be) that Greg feels comfortable with here...for you.

I'm also going to bring my "Theological Aesthetics" reader...and Egan's book on Christian Mysticism. Both books have thoughts from Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor. Straight fire.

We'll see how this goes... biggrin

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."

Post Edited (Shekinah) : 7/14/2008 2:45:13 PM (GMT-5)

One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 7/14/2008 2:55 PM (GMT -6)

D: God is the "truest instantiation" of self-experience and self-relationship who EXEMPLIFIES the Great Commandments to an infinite degree: Loving God, loving "self", and loving the "other" as oneself. God does all three within God's own triune self among the three divine persons of the one divine being.

T: True. God is the truest instantiation of personal being. But this doesn’t reduce creation to an instance of divine personal being or loving. That is, God’s being loving relationality (self-giving and receiving, address and response, etc.) doesn’t mean the God-world relationship reduces to the God-God relationship, which is what I hear you say when you say creation is all about divine ‘self’-communication, ‘self’-communion, and God’s love of us being just an instance of his love for himself. I don’t dispute that creation can be or is an act of inner-trinitarian love, the same way Anita’s and my having children was in a real sense a gift from me to her and from her to me. But the gift itself is a non-Anita, non-Tom entity which is loved by Tom and Anita as a non-Tom, non-Anita entity, so that my love of my kids isn’t one and the same as, or reducible to, my loving Anita. But that’s nowhere in your comments. It always disappears from view, which is the reason for my recurring doubt in your belief of it.

The Trinity is the event of Uncreated-to-Uncreated interpersonal relationship.

Creation is the event of Uncreated-to-Created interpersonal relationship.

Insofar as the Created "POINTS TO" the Uncreated and is continually SUSTAINED/RECREATED by the Uncreated...THEOPHANY-STYLE...God "knows, sees, and loves" the Created ALL THE WAY DOWN to it's Uncreated Ground of being.

Man, I can't WAIT till tomorrow. I'm going to ask Greg what HE thinks a "theophany" is...

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."

One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 7/14/2008 2:58 PM (GMT -6)

Oh...and I'll bring Loder...LOOOOOOOOOOOOOTS of Loder!

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."

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 7/14/2008 3:10 PM (GMT -6)

We'll go HERE and work backwards...

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

Greg's "Trinity and Process". page 399-400 "The Two Natures of Christ"

All emphases mine.

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

Our modified understanding of Edwards’ understanding of disposition can, we believe, also lay the groundwork for a fruitful understanding of the person of Jesus Christ in line with the Chalcedonian Confession as well as with modern non-substantival categories. On this too, nothing more than a summarizing word can be said.

As has been frequently pointed out in recent times, the most fundamental difficulty which the traditional understanding of Christ poses for the modern mind concerns its substantialist categories: Christ is said to be “two natures” in “one person.” If the concept of an “enduring substance” as the ground of an entity’s actual attributes has become problematic to the categories of modernity, how much more problematic is the concept of two such realities “crammed” into one person…”without division,” and “without confusion”?

A dispositional understanding of “essence”, however, while it by no means abrogates the paradox of the God-man, does render this paradox more intelligible within the dynamic categories of our contemporary milieu. Within the framework of this ontology, Christ may be said to be distinct from all other humans in that in this one person the disposition which defines God as God, and the disposition which defines humanity as human, converged. In Christ, and through Christ, the unsurpassably intense sociality of God is replicated ad extra.

Thus, we might say that the dynamic essence of the man Jesus was wholly taken up into the dynamic essence of God so that God now “aims” at Godself—as God eternally does—but now
God does so through this one man. In this one man, God achieves God anew. The necessary triune disposition for primordial satisfaction now encompasses this spontaneous feature: it now encompasses the person and work of this one man. The event of God, one might say, now includes the event of the man Jesus, and through him, the event of the entire creation. The Incarnation is thus must fundamentally the dynamic convergence of these two events.

Christ does not here cease to be a man, for his non-divine relationality, his non-divine perspective on, or role within being, is retained. The concrescence of his human disposition is yet what it is. But just as this human, God is disposed to be God. “The Word became flesh” (Jn. 1:14). Precisely through the subjective aim which constitutes the man Jesus, the subjective aim which constitutes God as God is creatively (viz. unnecessarily) achieved anew. The dynamic nature of dispositions allow this to be affirmed without the problematic connotations which the traditional substantival categories have for the modern mind. And it arrives at this dynamic conception without the radically unorthodox implications which, we have seen, the Process scheme necessitates.

The ultimate effect of this dynamic Incarnation is the redemption of the world. In the expansion of the divine sociality to essentially include the man Jesus, the process of the Trinity expands to include the process of the world (Jn. 17:24ff). The ceaseless achievement of the expression of God’s deity in the Trinity will now eternally include the expression of beauty of the non-divine order, and all of this through Christ. This is the Good News of the New Testament.

We, of course, yet live primarily as through we were “in Adam.” Our history is the history of “putting off the old” and “putting on the new.” We live in the “time of transition” from our old orientation towards self-destruction to our new grace-given orientation to become who we really are—in Christ. But the promise of the gospel is that this will certainly be accomplished, and the mission of the Church is to proclaim this promise and strive for the accomplishment and exemplification of this Shalom throughout the whole of God’s creation.

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."

Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 7/14/2008 3:55 PM (GMT -6)

1) Maximus' view did not allow for a continuing, created 'self' other than God which determined itself and related "inter-personally." He just went too far. In Maximus the human self evaporates into God. Read Edward Moore's work (his PhD thesis) on Maximus. Louth agrees. So whatever fire you got from Maximus, it's already burt up the human self. No thank you.

2) Where in the Bible does it say Creation is a "theophany"?

3) Say hi to Greg for me.

Tom

Tom
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Total Posts : 10353

Posted 7/14/2008 3:58 PM (GMT -6)

Oh yeah...

Why are you disussing Christology with Greg? Christ is NOT an example of divine-human inter-personal relationality. There's no non-divine person relating to God in Christ.

Here we go again.

T

One Love
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Posted 7/14/2008 4:31 PM (GMT -6)

The Golden Road To Unlimited Devotion: The Christian Neo-Platonism of St. Maximus Confessor
Edward Moore, St. Elias Orthodox Theological Seminary

James Loder describes the VERY SAME reality that Maximus is referring to where there is "absorption" in Christ but NOT at the removal of creaturely self-willing. I've tried to explain Loder's thinking here WAY too many times to try that again. OVER and OVER again. Maybe I can get Greg to see what I'm saying. We'll 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."

Post Edited (Shekinah) : 7/14/2008 5:20:47 PM (GMT-5)

One Love
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Total Posts : 13888

Posted 7/14/2008 5:17 PM (GMT -6)

Tom:
Why are you disussing Christology with Greg? Christ is NOT an example of divine-human inter-personal relationality. There's no non-divine person relating to God in Christ.

There is a non-divine, created (human) PERSPECTIVE in Christ that is relating to it's divine, uncreated ground (God)...just like in every other human being. According to Greg's thesis, Christ has a "non-divine relationality, his non-divine perspective on, or role within being" from whence he experiences the "achievement" of "the necessary triune disposition for primordial satisfaction". In Christ, essentially non-divine and divine perspectives DYNAMICALLY CONVERGE in one person in one human being. (Two natures, two minds, two wills, one person)

This has LOTS to say for us about the created capacity of the human being to relate to it's ground, God...and experience divine life in human experience. Especially when we talk about theosis.

Ooooooh, I can't wait!! Greg betta ante up on this...

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."

Post Edited (Shekinah) : 7/14/2008 5:20:01 PM (GMT-5)

Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 7/14/2008 5:36 PM (GMT -6)

D: The Golden Road To Unlimited Devotion: The Christian Neo-Platonism of St. Maximus Confessor
Edward Moore, St. Elias Orthodox Theological Seminary. James Loder describes the VERY SAME reality that Maximus is referring to where there is "absorption" in Christ but NOT at the removal of creaturely self-willing. I've tried to explain Loder's thinking here WAY too many times to try that again. OVER and OVER again. Maybe I can get Greg to see what I'm saying.

T: Maybe you could get MOORE to see what you're saying. smilewinkgrin

Get his PhD thesis: Origen of Alexandria and St. Maximus the Confessor: And Analysis and Critical Evaluation of the Eschatological Doctrines.

Moore disagrees with Maximus on this point. Did you miss that?

Tom

Tom
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Posted 7/14/2008 5:45 PM (GMT -6)

D: There is a non-divine, created (human) PERSPECTIVE in Christ that is relating to it's divine, uncreated ground (God)...just like in every other human being.

T: It is certainly not "just like every other human being." And you've agreed with me on this. You agreed that where God in our case "let's go" the human natural capacities whose free exercise grounds the emergence of a non-divine 'self' or 'person' (viz., 'identity', a 'who'), God does NOT so "let go" human nature in Christ. Those faculties are assumed by the person of the Logos.

So sure, the Logos takes on human nature, which means a will, mind, and of course the perceiving and willing that go with that. But this does NOT constitute a perceiving 'self' which relates to God as an other "just like every other human being" relates to God. You only get that if God "let's go" the free exercise of those faculties to develop without assumption by the Logos.

And if Greg agrees with you that there is a non-divine, human, self who relates to God as an other, then I'll say the same thing to him.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/15/2008 5:36:57 AM (GMT-5)

Tom
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Total Posts : 10353

Posted 7/14/2008 6:02 PM (GMT -6)

D: The Trinity is the event of Uncreated-to-Uncreated interpersonal relationship. Creation is the event of Uncreated-to-Created interpersonal relationship.

T: Fine. Then it cannot be the case that creation reduces to the God-God (or uncreated-to-uncreated) relationship, in which case it's NOT all about divine self-expressoin. It's also about non-divine self-expression. It's about God relating to someONE he's never related to before, other PERSONS, non-divine persons, who are not God. And God does NOT get that IN THE INCARNATION itself. The relationship between the divine and the human in Christ is not an instance of uncreated-to-created interpersonal (between two-persons) relating. It just isn't.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/14/2008 6:27:43 PM (GMT-5)

One Love
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Posted 7/15/2008 10:45 AM (GMT -6)

Just got through talkin' to Greg. Great conversation.

I'll say more later...but I will say this now. Stuff I'm definitely firm on...and that I know Greg wouldn't mind me saying.

Greg DOES NOT believe that I am a monistic/emanationist. He saw where my esoteric-sounding language could be taken that way, and said as much. But he confirmed, once I answered his questions, that I was NOT a emanationistic monist.

Greg DOES understand that I am a panENtheist in an ORTHODOX sense of the term, consistent with his REconstruction of the Process Metaphysic. He even saw how the "essential existence/contingent expression" idea in his work CORRELATES to the "Essence/energies" idea in EO. (HAYELL, YEAH!)

More later...

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."

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 7/15/2008 12:08 PM (GMT -6)

D-

I can see now that I'm going to have to devote some serious space to Christology in my thesis. More specifically, I'm going to have to make the needed distinctions in how the incarnation is and is not a model for divine-human relationality or the pattern for divine-human relationality. If you agree, D, with my earlier claim that God “let’s go” of human natural capacities IN US so as to foster the emergence of a ‘personal other’ and does NOT do this in Christ, then you are in fact stepping outside the incarnational pattern to claim something ‘relationally’ in our case that isn't the case with Christ. This was my fundamental claim, and perhaps it'll prove more controversial when I flesh it out--namely: the incarnation does not delimit/define en toto the patter of divine-human relationality as it is to be experienced by all believers. There's something unique about the incarnation, and it's not just the eternal origin of the Logos. It's also the very MANNER or WAY in which the divine and the human relate. In effect, when you've said ALL there is to say about how the divine and the human are related in Christ, you still haven't said everything there is to say about how God relates TO US. That's what my earlier claim was, the one you agreed with so much. But I'm guessing that agreement will evaporate now that you see the implications which it has for how we understand and apply the incarnation as a model of divine-human relationality. My point is that there is a way in which God relates to human beings as non-divine persons which is NOT instantiated by Christ, and equally a way in which the divine and the human relate in Christ which is not instantiated by us. We cannot look at JUST the incarnation and see therein exemplified nothing more nor less than what is exemplified relationally between God and us.

I think you SAY some things that exempt you from being categorized as a monist-emanationist. But I think the heart of your approach has you with one foot at least firmly on that side of the divide.

Love ya,

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/15/2008 1:09:01 PM (GMT-5)

PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890

Posted 7/15/2008 8:11 PM (GMT -6)

Dwayne, I'm not sure that this rings true.

Compare to this, seriously:

Programs

How We Speak Of God - Part 1
Posted Thursday, July 10, 2008

Fr. Thomas begins a four-part series on naming God and the language and words we use in the process.
How We Speak Of God - Part 2
Posted Monday, July 14, 2008

Fr. Tom continues his discussion, this time focusing on the Divine Attributes of God.

..................

Shekinah said...
I just had the freakiest thought.

The Holy Spirit of God (The Father's Spirit) is the Father's dispositional "personal power" to know, see, and love Himself in the Son, the Father's Perfect Image. The Holy Spirit is the ground for God's Triune Self-Knowledge. The Holy Spirit is the Father's power for self-experience and the ground for God's Triune self-willing/choosing and self-knowledge/understanding...and the Trinity is that "power's" eternal exercise. (Creation, I believe, is God's contingent expression of this eternal exercise of self-perceiving, self-choosing, self-communion, where God "knows, sees, and loves" Godself in a new way: created personal beings.) And when we participate in Grace (God's Empowering Presence, the Spirit of the Holy One)...indwelling and being indwelt by Christ's Spirit...the Father loves His Image IN US and the Trinity exists in the redeemed human soul that is conformed to that image. We can have the "mind of Christ" as the very Self-Understanding of God "works" in us. Through this personal relationship betweeen Creator and created being, The Father "knows" us as his creaturely Children...and we "know" the Father as truly our Heavenly Father...in Christ, by the Spirit. The Indwelling, Omnipresent Power of the Holy Spirit unifies the Knower (the Holy One) and the Known (his created "Temple" ) in eternal, inseperable UNION of love.

(o)

PotOnWheel
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Posted 7/15/2008 8:17 PM (GMT -6)

I need to bow out.

CHECK BACK NEXT WEEK *ON* HOPKO'S AFR SITE ( http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/hopko ) FOR THE LAST INSTALLMENT.

(o)

PotOnWheel
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Posted 7/15/2008 8:23 PM (GMT -6)

Dwayne, listen to Hopko and his categories.

(o)

One Love
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Posted 7/15/2008 10:27 PM (GMT -6)

Bruce,

I've listened to the first one already. I don't see anything I disagree with at all...or that conflicts with what I've said. I don't see the issue. Good stuff, though.

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."

Tom
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Posted 7/15/2008 11:04 PM (GMT -6)

D-

Unless you come back to say otherwise, I'm assuming that you posit exactly the same pattern of relationality in us that you posit in Christ, so that the incarnation models for us exactly how God relates to all human beings, no "letting go" in us that does not occur in Christ. That would 'break the pattern'. But if you do come back to qualify yourself and agree with me that God adopts a way of relating in us ("lets go" to permit the emergence of other persons) that is not the case with Christ, then I need to hear you concede my point that this means the incarnation does not say all there is to say about how God and human beings relate. Can you do that for me?

Thanks,
Tom

One Love
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Posted 7/16/2008 6:51 AM (GMT -6)

Tom:
Unless you come back to say otherwise, I'm assuming that you posit exactly the same pattern of relationality in us that you posit in Christ, so that the incarnation models for us exactly how God relates to all human beings, no "letting go" in us that does not occur in Christ. That would 'break the pattern'. But if you do come back to qualify yourself and agree with me that God adopts a way of relating in us ("lets go" to permit the emergence of other persons) that is not the case with Christ, then I need to hear you concede my point that this means the incarnation does not say all there is to say about how God and human beings relate. Can you do that for me?

For context, you can re-check the "Trinity as Eternal Love Song" thread and look at our discourse. We ended up disagreeing again by 5/25/08, from your own desciption. Here's a quote with your original stuff and my response...

**************************************************************

Tom:
Let’s say the human ‘spirit’ is an event, the event of God’s “letting go” (while also sustaining) at the psycho-somatic level of human being, of God’s essentially standing in the event that’s me and saying, “Let there be…,” and what it is God let’s there be in this instance is a combination of capacities (volitional, mental, physical, etc., all the ‘natural’ capacities). What makes these capacities pregnant with the ability to become human (as opposed to mere animal) is God’s abiding presence and the extension of his invitation, his calling these capacities toward a particular telos. So the real difference between human being and sloth being, or plant being, is the nature of the invitation which God’s sustaining presence extends to created reality. That’s all. God doesn’t stand in plants inviting plant being to become persons. He doesn’t equip plant being with the necessary natural perceptive, affective, and volitional capacities to become persons. But he does endow us with those capacities. And the human spirit essentially is the seat, or the event, where God stands in the midst of those capacities and “let’s go” his invitation to become. It’s God’s invitation. He makes the difference. But it’s “let go” so that created reality is non-divine.

Now, D wants to say that Christ, as a human being, had such a human ‘spirit’. To me this means that God the Son was in Christ inviting the human complex of natural capacities into their fullest expression, and this non-divine human being chose freely to relate to the Son by never attempting to erect an identity for itself other than that of ‘the Son’ himself. So though the natural capacities reached full personal expression, there was only ever ONE identity, ONE self-perceived ‘meaning’, that of the Son’s own eternal identity.

Friggin EXCELLENT ways to state things!

In my mind, this is all another way of saying that the Incarnated Word had NO GNOMIC WILL from whence any false self-understanding or false sense of identity could come into being. He had no gnomic will (and corresponding propensity for creating false selves) BY NATURE of the being the ONE Incarnation of God in human "flesh". All other humans, created in the image of Christ, the Archetype, have to--through struggle, humility, and trust in God--have the inherited gnomic will (and corresponding propensity for creating false selves) eroded and eliminated over time... through FAITH and GRACE. Christ's human ego development as "Jesus, Mary's Baby" was NEVER separated from the Uncreated Personal Presence of God.

****************************************************

Some problems came later though. Your end goal seemed to be this...

"I meant my words to differentiate the presence of the Son in us from the presence of the Son in Christ. That’s what the “let go” AND the “God does NOT insert himself” mean. So the Son is present in Christ in a manner in which he cannot be present in us."

Basically, you said that Christ-the-Logos not "inserting himself" in other human beings the exact way that he "inserted himself" in the Incarnate Word, Jesus...and for that reason, you believed that Kallistos Ware was WRONG in his statement from "The Orthodox Way"...

Just as the Spirit sends the Son at the Annunciation, the Baptism, and the Transfiguration, and just as the Son in his turn sends the Spirit at Pentecost, so after Pentecost it is the Spirit's task to bear witness to Christ, rendering the risen Lord ever present among us. If the aim of the Incarnation is the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost, [then] the aim of Pentecost is the continuing of Christ's Incarnation within the life of the Church. This is precisely what the Spirit does at the epiclesis in the Eucharistic consecration; and this consecratory epiclesis serves as a model and paradigm for what is happening throughout our whole life in Christ.

I said that the spiritual "letting go" DOES occur in Jesus just like every other human in terms of the relative autonomy of (and utter reliance of) Christ's human spirit related to it's grounding center in Divine Presence. THIS is what I heard you describing with your first post that about the "event" of the human spirit. Christ's human spirit is NOT divine...and it was "let go" to BE non-divine (THIS HAD NO APOLLINARIANISM SO I LOVED IT!). Also, I said that Christ doesn't DISPLACE the creaturely personal/gnomic will through enhominization in any other human being. The Incarnate Word is a "singularity" in that way...utterly unique. This is how Christ, in his humanity, would be insured not turn away from God. So, even though Christ's natural human will in Christ was "freely obedient" to the divine will in Christ (6th Council following up Chalcedon!!), his personal/gnomic will was not "let go" to fall into false self-identification...effectively living in existential despair by false identities. The personal/gnomic will of EVERY OTHER HUMAN BEING is "let go" to be able to do so.

Now, check this out...Light from the Christian East:An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition by James R. Payton, Jr. Chapter 8: The Application of Salvation, p. 143

As the Son of God, the Logos was unquestionably like God; indeed, he is God. In his incarnation, however, the Logos did not simply bring that divine likeness to the humanity he assumed. As the last Adam, he fulfilled the first Adam's created purpose. The incarnate Son of God lived in utter faithfulness to God, always walking in his ways: all his decisions and actions, all the manifestations of his will and energy, were performed in submission to and conformity with God's will. The Incarnate Logos, as human, thus acquired likeness to God. As the last Adam, he accomplished this not only for himself but for all those who are "in him. " In the recapitulation achieved by the last Adam, he assured the fulfillment of humanity's ultimate calling, including likeness to God: "He takes into himself what is ours and in exchange he gives us what is His own, so that we become by grace what God is by nature, being made sons and daughters in the Son." (Ware) In the application of salvation, humans increasingly receive that likeness in the process known among the Orthodox as deification.

Long story short, God did "let go" in the Incarnate Word for him to be a relatively autonomous, free, non-divine spiritual reality that could freely relate to it's divine ground and other human beings. In this, he was absolutely "homoousias" with all humankind. This is how he was able to fulfill the First Adam's screw-ups as a genuinely human being, not some Apollinarian flesh-suit. At the same time, God did NOT "let go" in the Incarnate Word such that the personal will had the ability to have a fragmented, false self...like everyone else can. But again, this is linked to God's inhominization as Jesus, as "singularity."

Make sense?

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."

Post Edited (Shekinah) : 7/16/2008 7:02:29 AM (GMT-5)

One Love
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Posted 7/16/2008 7:12 AM (GMT -6)

I'll tell you this, Tom...just like I told Greg when we met yesterday.

The Incarnate Word is the ARCHETYPE and TEMPLATE for how a human being are DESIGNED to operate in it's ground (God) and it's environment (God's World). In Jesus, we see the full intention that God had for human beings. When we look at Jesus's life (especially the Transfiguration) we see what happens when human reality operates as it's supposed to! Deification/Theosis (non-divinity experiencing divine life) is METAPHYSICAL POSSIBLE because God designed it so through the work of Incarnation/Enhominization of God that existed in the mind of God BEFORE CREATION WAS CREATED! In this way, "God became human so that humanity could become God." AND the Incarnation DOES model how God relates to all human beings...all human beings being HOMOOUSIAS with Christ.

Greg AGREED with this!

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."

Post Edited (Shekinah) : 7/16/2008 7:15:27 AM (GMT-5)

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