Post Edited (Tom) : 11/20/2008 12:40:22 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (One Love) : 11/20/2008 2:33:55 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Tom) : 11/20/2008 2:49:43 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Corey) : 11/21/2008 8:09:22 AM (GMT-6)

Myself, I'd still have problems with, "You can know things that you don’t appropriate." Here I'm referring to SK's bit about "Truth is Subjectivity." If you're not on the inside, existentially experiencing something, I think at best you know about it, but don't actually know in the fullest sense.

Post Edited (Corey) : 11/21/2008 10:57:25 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (One Love) : 11/21/2008 1:22:45 PM (GMT-6)

If it's impossible for God AS PERSON to separate knowledge and will, thus having the capacity to experience ignorance and emotionally lived falsehood "first-hand" as it were, then there's really NO explanation for how the One Person of Christ could ACTUALLY have any 1st person experience of absence of God at all.

Post Edited (One Love) : 11/21/2008 1:52:16 PM (GMT-6)

 

If the "day or the hour" is NOT aletheically settled in the Father's (God's) mind, then that would mean that the Father would just know the reality of this occurance as something that MIGHT or MIGHT NOT occur at any future time T that God could choose.  It would pretty much just be like the Father "knowing" the day and hour...insofar as he knows that he's going to do it sometime in the future, up until JUST WHEN he's actually going to do it...and not before.   The Father would know the coming day or the hour as a "might" and "might not" that even he doesn't know when will be actualized.

But then it would make sense to say...

"NO ONE KNOWS when that day or hour will ACTUALLY occur, not even the Father, because the future's open...and the God the Father knows that truth as such."

Maybe I'm just off here...

Post Edited (One Love) : 11/21/2008 2:23:51 PM (GMT-6)

Hi all-

Rachel’s been busy. But she did a presentation on UR for her class. I don’t think she’d mind my sharing her telling me how it went:

“Well, I'm sorry I'm getting back to you on this a little late. The past couple weeks have been pretty busy, the first quarter is finally over! Ok. So. It went well. I was the one in the class who would be presenting UR, and there was another kid who was supposed to be presenting Annihilationism. I thought, “Ok, well, that’s good. I won’t be the only one presenting something the class wouldn’t agree with.” But it turned out Stefan came to class giving the definition of Annihilationism but no REAL information (pros or cons) for it. He pretty much just said it was a waste of time to talk about because it was a ridiculous idea that the Bible could not support. So when it came to me, I had the rest of the class period, and I had prepared quite a bit and hit the main points you mentioned: 1. History 2. How the Bible supports UR 3. Vocabulary (aion, aionios) 4. Theology and also included some of your answers to Moreland as well as some stuff Gregory McDonald gave on his site...

“Overall I felt it went OK. I made my point quite clear, and there were a couple kids who were open to it because they weren't satisfied with ECT, but most of the students were pretty narrow-minded, which I was expecting anyway. This one kid, though, after my presentation pretty much just said I was wrong. And when I asked him why he held the ECT view he couldn’t answer me. It seemed as if he didn't know the pros for that view (neither did he know the cons, until I mentioned some in my UR presentation). But my teacher was quite pleased, and was glad it made an impression on the class. He thought I did a good job, and later stressed the importance of respecting others for believing differently. When it comes down to it, we all love Christ and are brothers/sisters in him, and that it was immaturity to claim that you’re right and someone else is wrong when it all comes down to opinion on how we interpret the Bible.”

Not bad for a 10^th grader.

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 11/23/2008 3:43:26 AM (GMT-6)

With "Truth is subjectivity" SK wasn't intending an ontology. He was simply offering a corrective to the rationalist paradigm of his day. He wanted people to recognize that they've got skin in the game; we're players, not spectators. That's all.

Post Edited (Corey) : 11/23/2008 10:13:36 AM (GMT-6)

D: In Jesus, we already know that God's subjectivity CAN include human subjectivity.

T: “A” single human being’s subjectivity, namely, the human being God became. Of course THAT human being’s subjectivity IS God’s since that human being is God. So in Jesus what we know is that God can become a human being and that this human being's experience, as the experience of God the Son, comes to share in constituting the subjective perspective of God the Son as a human being. I never said God couldn't subjectively have such an experience. He can, but he--God--must have this experience, and that's what he did when he incarnated. But that's different than saying EVERY human being's experience comes to share in constituting the subjective experience of God the Son.

D: In Jesus, God's subjectivity HAS included the assertion of the "truths", "My soul is sorrowful unto death", "I am now separated from God, " and/or "I now feel forsaken by God." So, the subjective perception of creaturely inner struggle of faith before God, God's absence and being forsaken by God IS constitutive of God's own "I". You are agreeing to this, right?

T: Again, these claims are the claims of God the human being and that human being’s experience. Sharing creaturely experience by having his own creaturely experience is something Christ obviously knew (knows). And whatever (first-person) truths the Logos's human experiences are the grounds of would be known by the person of the Logos, obviously, just as with any person's experience. But we are personal subjects ‘other’ than the Logos, and it’s the first-person perspective of persons and beings other than the Logos that I don’t conflate with the first-person perspective of the Logos.

So: I’m denying two things— (a) that God (or any personal subject) can have as part of his subjective perspective the subjective perspective of other personal subjects, and (b) that Jesus’s own subjective perspective (though creaturely) ever included ‘knowledge of personal guilt’.

D: Let's talk about the glorified, defied human heart. I'll assume that we are talking about the state where God Himself (Grace) is working in a fully receptive, fully conscious human being...permeating their creaturely being all the time. "I, not I but Christ" to the max type stuff. Would the subjective first-person perspective of a “Christified” human being share in constituting God's own first-person persepctive AT ALL? If not, why not?

T: You’re kidding right? We talked about this for 18 months, Bro. I don’t share your application of ‘I, not I, but Christ’. I think we’re persons other than the triune persons, so I’m going to deny that God is the subject of first-person assertions I make about myself. I’m the subject of those assertions, not God.

D: If God knows all truths that can be known...it has to be shown HOW God's perspective (this includes God's essential existence/essence AND God's contingent expression/energetic working...which BOTH comprise God's experience of Reality and Self) ABSOLUTELY CANNOT include the perspective of sinful misrelation in a sentient creature.

T: Why must this be shown? The Church has never believed as a rule that omniscience includes ‘experiential’ knowledge incompatible with that experience definitive/constitutive of deity. If anything, I think you’re the one to show why it must be the case that God’s knowledge must include such things.

D: If it's not possible, WHY is it not possible?

T: That’s pretty easy. God is, for example, necessarily sinless. So “I am sinless” is a belief God knows to be true about himself at all times. Can God come to believe (about himself) “I am sinful” or “I am guilty of sin”? I don’t think so, no. So God’s own subjective perspective (if we can even apply such language to him safely) can’t include contradictory beliefs about himself. God can’t ‘know’ that he’s sinful because he isn’t sinful. But I can know this about myself. Why ‘must’ knowing this about myself translate via panentheism to God’s knowing this about himself? I wouldn’t know how to differentiate that essentially from pantheism.

Omniscience means God knows all truths. This has never meant that we can just take all truths spoken truthfully by subjects about themselves in the form “I am…” and put God in as the subject (because he’s the Great “I am”) and then have God owning these first-person perspectives as constitutive of his own and then uttering these claims about himself as God. All omniscience requires is that if Tom admits truthfully “I’m a sinner,” God knows that Tom is a sinner and knows that “I’m a sinner” spoken by Tom is true of Tom. Omniscience means knowing whatever actual distinctions between entities there are, and since I posit an actual distinction between ‘persons’ divine and human, I also posit a distinction between the personal subjectivity of those persons.

D: I guess I'm trying to visualize this. So, God knows our spirt/mind/brain's activity to it uttermost depths, knowing each and every conscious, pre-consious, sub-conscious, and unconscious motivation, prehension and response that we have. God as subjectivity is actually the grounding interiority of ALL subjective activity in Creation, seeing everything from "it's center" as it were... (I don't think you'd disagree with this, Tom)

T: I’ve been on record for months as disagreeing with this.

What I can’t visualize at all is God not making the distinction between the truth about me and the truth about himself.

D: But at the same time, God CANNOT experience the idea “I am guilty of sin” held by a creaturely being as ANY PART of God's own self-experience as “subjectivity.”

T: God can only know he’s a guilty sinner if God IS a guilty sinner. I don’t think God’s a guilty sinner. I think God knows he’s NOT a guilty sinner. So I don’t think the proposition “I am a guilty sinner” can truthfully express the subjective experience of God.

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 11/23/2008 2:00:33 PM (GMT-6)

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

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

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

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

Post Edited (One Love) : 11/23/2008 8:55:28 PM (GMT-6)

Again, whatever experiences Jesus had on the cross are the experiences of God the Son and are compatible with the Son’s having them in his human nature as incarnate. I’m not disputing that. I’m sure none of us knows precisely what the experience of the cross amounted to for the Son. In the end, those experiences are HIS. He had them, and he’s the subject of them. I'm fine with that.

I don’t doubt that perichoresis characterizes the Triune persons, and that would include the incarnate Jesus, who is God the Son. No ‘fourth’ person to consider. But I deny that we come to relate to the Triune persons in the same manner Jesus did and have the same perichoresis define us. We’re not God the Son. We’re non-divine persons other than the person of the Son. So the question of how the divine person of the Son can "have his own" human experience (viz., subjectively perceive his experience as such) has nothing to do with whether he can have my experience (viz., subjectively perceive my subjectivity as his own). The first doesn't get you the second.

Seems like I’m on record as having said this a lot. We're just repeating our positions and restating that we disagree.

So let me clarify again. I’m all for having my view of God stretched and challenged. I’m sure there’s a lot of that ahead of me. But I see no reason--to be clear--to believe that the subjective, first-person beliefs of any non-divine person can come to constitute the subjective, first-person beliefs of any other non-divine person or of any divine person. If the Son felt via his human experience some manner of absence, fine. That's not an example of the Son’s assuming the subjectivity of some other person, and it certainly doesn’t demonstrate the Son’s coming to know (truthfully) that he’s guilty of evil.

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 11/24/2008 3:36:45 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Tom) : 11/24/2008 3:50:13 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (One Love) : 11/24/2008 7:42:57 AM (GMT-6)