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One Love
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Posted 3/15/2009 1:57 PM (GMT -6)

Tom:
Its’ WE who do the associating. WE associate our actual selves with the person we can be (our logos) or not. When we do this associating (= when we contemplate who we can be in Christ), our actual selves become conformed to the eternal pattern of our logoi. We become what God intended us to be.

This "we" that you are talking about is the locus of self-determination in our emergent ego peripheries. That which "chooses" and discriminates in our human mind/brain relational unities, right?

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

"God in Christ by His Spirit empowers, enables, energizes and enacts all Christian behavior and ministry as the dynamic expression of the life of Jesus Christ. Christianity is Christ. Christian living is the life and character of Jesus Christ lived out through the Christian." -James Fowler

One Love
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Posted 3/15/2009 1:58 PM (GMT -6)

I know, I know....we'll get back on topic after while...

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Tom
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Posted 3/15/2009 2:03 PM (GMT -6)

D: What I'm trying to highlight is this: Your self-referential memory of self-experience being "Tom, husband, father, etc." is a self-understanding perspective that comes from the ego function of the your created, emergent "soul" working on the historical embodied experience of your human mind/brain relational unity...and all of this is distinct from Christ-the-Logos' individual eternal "logos" that continually circumscribes the true you. Yes, there's no actualization of your individual logos without your self-referential ego activity as "Tom". At the same time, the true you goes BEYOND your self-referential ideation. If that weren't the case, then the individual logos within you would be lost if you, God forbid, lost your self-understanding as "Tom" through some brain damage or something.

T: Right. Both/and.

So we're back to the question: What's the soul-status of human beings who are unable for whatever reason to develop coherent self-referential perceptions of their place in the world? And we talked about another example too, D, over lunch. Remember the book about Music I was reading? There's the example of a man (a professional classical musician & professor) who had a seizure. The seizure left him with no conscious memories and only a 7 to 10 second abilty to build new memories. So he essentially woke up knowing nothing about his past every 10 seconds. What kind of prison is THAT? His language capabilities were in tact, so he could speak fine. And ALL his music was in tact (as far as they can tell from the 10 second windows they have to extract information from him). But other than that, he has NO self-perceived identity or persona, no personal history, no way of carrying on a conversation, etc.

What is he? What's his soul-status? No soul or spirit? But he speaks and communicates and blurts out music in 10 second spurts. How NOT a soul in some sense?

T

Tom
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Posted 3/15/2009 2:08 PM (GMT -6)

D: This "we" that you are talking about is the locus of self-determination in our emergent ego peripheries. That which "chooses" and discriminates in our human mind/brain relational unities, right?

T: Yes. But now I'll use 'person', because when the emergent ego periphery rests in Christ and relates in love to Christ, etc., we become persons.

The question is, if PERSONHOOD is secure in Christ, what happens when the created context (that conscious, self-perceiving, locus of self-determination) is damanged? How secure is our personhood if it's lost when the only means of its emergence is damanged? And if it's NOT lost, where's it go when its only means of actualization (our self-conscious self-determining minds) are damaged or lost?

T

One Love
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Posted 3/15/2009 3:21 PM (GMT -6)

The Man With A 30 Second Memory

This is the guy, right? Hmmm...this is "personhood"??

Interestingly enough, there's obviously a "chooser" in this guy's human hypostasis doing things, but that "chooser" is NOT linked to any solid, enduring self-understanding or personality. It's like the "chooser" of his human hypostasis is "stuck" dealing with the brain dysfunction, only able to use the information inside for limited moments of time.

It's like his chooser function (linked with mind) exists as his brain "reboots" itself every bunch of seconds. And when his "chooser" identifies with that reboot...you see the results...like when he sees his wife every time...for the first time in ever.

He walks, talks, plays piano, hugs his wife joyfully, but will never in this life enjoy a fully conscious relationship with God, himself, or anyone else. A human being walking around does NOT an instant "person" make, right?

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/15/2009 3:38:56 PM (GMT-5)

Tom
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Posted 3/15/2009 4:23 PM (GMT -6)

Yeah, I got that. I'm not saying that what he's GOT is personhood. I'm wondering where the 'person' who was there before the seizure went?

Let's take an obvious example. Billy Graham has a seizure and turns into the 30 second man. Where does the history and the person and all that unique 'spirit' way of living in Christ go? Where did the person we call Bill Graham go? Does God keep him in cold storage waiting for the resurrection and then restore it all to Billy's healed body? Fine. I can live with that. Were just totally guessing, of course, but scientists do that too. Why can't theologians? Sure. Is that your guess? Cold storage until the resurrection?

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/15/2009 4:30:01 PM (GMT-5)

One Love
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Posted 3/15/2009 8:19 PM (GMT -6)

Tom:
Let's take an obvious example. Billy Graham has a seizure and turns into the 30 second man. Where does the history and the person and all that unique 'spirit' way of living in Christ go? Where did the person we call Bill Graham go? Does God keep him in cold storage waiting for the resurrection and then restore it all to Billy's healed body? Fine. I can live with that. Were just totally guessing, of course, but scientists do that too. Why can't theologians? Sure. Is that your guess? Cold storage until the resurrection?

It would seem to me that the only place that the main persona of Billy Graham's human hypostasis could be maintained (post 30-second-man-ness) would be in the mind of God. Where else could it be kept enduringly but by the consciousness of God? And of course, it would be possible for God to reconstruct a body for the strange loop that is "Billy Graham's" existence. (Keith Ward has this view as a possibility.)

What's more interesting to me, though, is that the individual logos for Billy's human hypostasis, his "eschatological essence", would still be existent in the 30 Second Man who was Billy Graham. It's not like the chooser in the human hypostasis stopped living, self-reflecting, and even emoting. It's doing all that...and God still calls the human hypostasis into being at all times by the Holy Spirit. None of that changes...even though it's clear that "Billy Graham", for all real intents and purposes, no longer exists in his human hypostasis.

Would we say that God doesn't love the 30 Second Man who was Billy Graham right now, as he is? Sure, but who IS he?

Human personalities are frightfully fragile, transient, and empty of inherent reality.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/15/2009 8:38:32 PM (GMT-5)

One Love
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Posted 3/15/2009 8:29 PM (GMT -6)

Hey, Tom. I think all this what we are talking about is WHY Buddhists talk about the EMPTINESS of things and the NO-SELF. Basically, they look at the radical contingency and dependency of our "selves" on the skandhas (which are THEMSELVES radically transient), and the idea of some enduring, inherently real "self" doesn't seem to make sense. They would use the 30 Second Man as tacit evidence of the impermanance, emptiness, and radically derivative nature of what we call the human "self."

Ask yourself this. What was the "Clive" identity in his human hypostasis but a configuration of aggregrates that came together to experience interiority and relationship in a unique, particular way? Isn't that just what ANY persona is, even that of a D.I.D sufferer?

See skandha

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/15/2009 8:37:06 PM (GMT-5)

Tom
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Posted 3/16/2009 1:17 AM (GMT -6)

So, there’s one logos per biological hypostasis. Billy Graham has a seizure and the godly, Christ-center person checks out and goes into cold storage with God to be downloaded back into his biological hypostasis when it’s resurrected in the future. Cool. And for now, his body is just a non-person Carbon 14 unit trapped in a 30 second nightmare.

OK, what if…

The non-person snaps out of his state. Through treatment of whatever, he comes to. There’s still no memory of Billy Graham and all that. That ‘person’ is in cold storage. Gone. This revitalized non-person starts making responsible, character building choices. He hears the gospel and rejects it. He becomes a published atheist, whatever.

You see where I’m going. Surely the responsibly choosing, disposing guy that surfaces and develops after successful treatment of his condition has a destiny. He might live on for 20 years or more. So at the resurrection, you have two responsibly and freely disposed self-perceiving centers tied to one and the same…well, center. And both share the same logos? What’s God do? Billy Graham (the ‘person’ in Christ) comes out of cold storage and wants to go to heaven embodied. And the creep needs to go to hell for remedial judgment, also embodied. One brain, one and same biological hypostasis, that determined itself historical into two different destinies with respect to one and the same logos? I'm inclined to say you don't have one and the same logos here. Yes, there remains a logos, a 'word' from God, that describes God's intended perfection for the biological hypostasis that remains after Billy Graham's seizure. But that's a different 'word' than the 'word' Billy in fact conformed to and which he instantiates. If this is the case, then the only problem has to do with resurrection.

We could equally suppose that the revitalized non-person who comes to hears the gospel and accepts it and has his own freely determined history of love with God. He becomes a genuine person and conforms to what? The same logos? So at the resurrection we have two distinct persons instantiating the same logos sharing one and the same embodied space (brain, to be specific)?

One Love
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Posted 3/16/2009 5:07 AM (GMT -6)

Tom,

It seems like you are saying that God creates a different individual logoi for every persona that the "chooser" of our singular human hypostasis takes on throughout that human hypostasis' earthly existence. So, to you, God has one individual logos pattern for "Billy Graham" and another for the post-30-Second-Man-persona, "Andy the atheist." But if we extend the story such that Andy was somehow lost too in a year or so...and gave way to "Timothy", yet another persona...would this mean that God would create yet ANOTHER logos? So at resurrection time, does God have to create as many bodies as their where personalities within the one human hypostasis during its earthly lifetime, EACH with it's distinct individual logos guiding it? See the problems?

It seems that you are trying to validate a particular personality taken on by the emergent ego periphery of a human hypostasis as definite "person" when said personality has a personal relationship with Jesus (like Billy Graham.) But if we do that, then we'd have to say that the Jesus-believing persona of "Sybil", the D.I.D suffering woman, regardless of that persona's origin, was truly a person BECAUSE it related to Jesus as an actual believer. I mean, imagine it. Having a "alternate" personality taking Communion at church, reading the Bible and everything. You'd have to say that God takes that alternate personality to be a full person because of what it's doing. If you were to ask the personality "Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God", it would have said "yes" and really meant it...even though the other alters in Sybil may not have even been aware of this belief. So, did that particular alter get it's own mind/brain unity (with individual logos) from God...like a reformed, resurrected Andy the Atheist would?

Is this what you would say?

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

One Love
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Posted 3/16/2009 5:20 AM (GMT -6)

Actually, let's make this more personal.

Let's say that YOU, Tom, get into a car accident in a couple of months...and get amnesia. You have no recollection of all your family, friends, faith, etc. Your historical perspective is irreparably lost. But you do have the ability to speak and generate a new sense of past, present, and future. After a coupla years, you've decided to move on. You've changed your name to Bradley...and you've started a whole new life, interestingly enough, as a Buddhist. (You lost all of your translating ability and bible knowledge) You even remarry someone else and everything.

Now, when you die and are resurrected, will God make a TWO bodies with the SAME BRAIN for "Tom" and "Bradley"? Is that how it will work?

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Tom
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Posted 3/16/2009 9:21 AM (GMT -6)

D, I’m just asking because it seemed YOU were saying this.

Just a few posts ago, remember this:

Tom: Let's take an obvious example. Billy Graham has a seizure and turns into the 30 second man. Where does the history and the person and all that unique 'spirit' way of living in Christ go? Where did the person we call Bill Graham go? Does God keep him in cold storage waiting for the resurrection and then restore it all to Billy's healed body? Fine. I can live with that. Were just totally guessing, of course, but scientists do that too. Why can't theologians? Sure. Is that your guess? Cold storage until the resurrection?

D: It would seem to me that the only place that the main persona of Billy Graham's human hypostasis could be maintained (post 30-second-man-ness) would be in the mind of God. Where else could it be kept enduringly but by the consciousness of God? And of course, it would be possible for God to reconstruct a body for the strange loop that is "Billy Graham's" existence.

What's more interesting to me, though, is that the individual logos for Billy's human hypostasis, his "eschatological essence", would still be existent in the 30 Second Man who was Billy Graham. It's not like the chooser in the human hypostasis stopped living, self-reflecting, and even emoting. It's doing all that...and God still calls the human hypostasis into being at all times by the Holy Spirit.

------

Tom: So, D, you say BOTH...

a) that the true person that Billy Graham becomes over years of self-emptying in Christ is NOT lost when he has a seizure and the personality we call "Billy" is forever erased from his grey matter. That’s what I was asking about. THAT true person is kept in the mind of God in storage and awaits the resurrection of THAT BODY, to be united to it, and...

b) that the 'logos' TO WHICH the true 'person' in (a) above, the person who conformed successfully to his logos and who is now in cold storage in God's mind, THAT 'logos' you say remains as the expressed intended perfection for the biological hypostatsis that survived the seizure.

You have the 'two' going on. I'm just asking about it. What happens when at the resurrection you have two persons (two self-referential identities who through self-emptying emergence from ONE AND THE SAME brain/body)? For this is what you have.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/16/2009 11:08:45 AM (GMT-5)

Tom
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Posted 3/16/2009 11:30 AM (GMT -6)

D: Now, when you die and are resurrected, will God make a TWO bodies with the SAME BRAIN for "Tom" and "Bradley"? Is that how it will work?

Tom: That's what I'm asking YOU. You seemed to have offered PART of your answer. You a) believe the true, spiritual person we associated with "Tom" isn't lost but is in cold storage with God awaiting the resurrection of my body. So now I'm asking YOU about the destiny of the person (or not) who emerges (or not) in that same body?

Take biological hypostasis ‘A’. It’s born, grows, hears the gospel, responds, and over years of wonderful relationship with Christ becomes a true person. Heck, let’s say they’re divinized. Let’s say it’s Mother Teresa, OK?

Let’s differentiate between ‘A’ which is the embodied hardware (brain), the ‘biological hyspostasis’ and ‘P’ who is that true ‘Person’ in Christ. OK?

She has a seizure. “Mother Teresa” is gone. No memories remain. Nothing. No God. No conscious relationship. Nuttin.

I understand that you, D, say that ‘P’ is NOT LOST. ‘P’ is safe and secure in God and will once again enjoy its full embodied expression at the resurrection.

Back to ‘A’. ‘A’ is still a freely, disposing, choosing, biological hypostasis. Let’s say it develops freely into a serial killer, K. Upon the death of ‘A’ (the body and hardware), what happens? Wouldn’t K go to hell to suffer and be redeemed? Sure it would. You can’t just pretend there was no responsible disposing going on there for years after the seizure. But the Bible says that K goes to hell EMBODIED (that means with ‘A’). But P, the true person in Christ Mother Teresa became, awaits the same body (‘A’). What’s going on?

And you say that the eschatological essence to which Mother Teresa (or rather, ‘P’) conformed and which she fulfilled continues to define the possibilities for the biological hypostatsis ‘A’. OK, so you have two hypostatically distinct entities (P and K) who share one and the same eschatological essence. One fulfills that essence (P) and is in God’s mind awaiting the resurrection of her body. The other (K, the serial killer) fails to fulfill that same essence and thus await the same body so that she can do her embodied suffering in hell and eventually be redeemed.

You don’t see a problem?

T

One Love
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Posted 3/16/2009 1:52 PM (GMT -6)

Here's what I think. I'll try to make it clear.

A: individual logos (of the Logos) for the human hypostatic unity (dispositional ground of the m/b relational unity)
B: biological hypostasis (mind/brain relational unity of the human hypostasis)
C: emergent soul (self-relation of mind/brain relational unity of the human hypostasis, the "chooser" )
D: Personality "configuation" of self-referential embodied experience used by the "chooser";( "Tom", "Dwayne", "Corey" )

I believe that God has more than enough capability to take a "snapshot" of our current personality configurations in his divine mind...and reproduce those in their glorified, yet consistent human hypostatic unities that they had on earth. In other words, God has to power to recreate A-D of any human being who died in Christ and decomposed all the way out. Of course, God could do something like this. That's not the point.

The point is that D is not directive of A. If I may, C has a bi-polar assymetrical relationship with D, where the C is the higher level. D is expressive of A, as D uses that which B provides. D is a very contextual possible self-interpretation of embodied experience that disposes the way it does because of A's concretion as B.

Using you as an example. It seems that you want to say that if your particular human hypostasis has two Ds (for whatever reason) that, there would be two distinct As created by God for each of those Ds. It seemed to the point where you believe that if one D was "saved" and the other was not "saved, that God, at resurrection, would have to created two Bs...one for each D. To me, this centers WAY too much on spiritual overidentification with D.

Let's take the 30 second memory man, Clive. I believe that God can free "Clive's" C through a recreated, glorified B (and D) which would come from his A...all while showing Clive's C how what he experienced contributed to God's Kingdom. I believe this is possible for God.

Does this make sense?

Other thoughts:

Being "trapped" in the biological hypostasis happens when C doesn't recognize its transcendence from D and it ends in nothingness. Being released from the biological hypostasis happens when, by God's Grace, C not only recognizes its transcendence from D, but also, in indwelling A, lives divine life even as a being coming from nothingness.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/16/2009 2:16:37 PM (GMT-5)

Tom
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Posted 3/16/2009 3:35 PM (GMT -6)

I suppose there's an answer to my question in there somewhere.

T

One Love
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Posted 3/16/2009 4:08 PM (GMT -6)

Tom:
What happens when at the resurrection you have two persons (two self-referential identities who through self-emptying emerge from ONE AND THE SAME brain/body)?

You are talking about having two Ds coming from one B...and both Ds being persons. They are NOT persons per se. They are personalities that ego periphery (C) takes on. You see that, right?

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Tom
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Posted 3/16/2009 4:36 PM (GMT -6)

No, I'm talking about PERSONS, the real McCoy--abot non-divine persons in relation to Christ. Don't fit me into your A-D scheme. Just hear what I'm saying.

Let's try it one step at a time.

1. Billy Graham (forget that he's 'named' that, OK?) is a person in Christ. The real thing. I asked you, 'What happens to that PERSON if Billy has a seizure and the ego is gone (as an instrument through which the REAL person in Christ expresses himself concretely)?' Where is THAT person? YOu said, "Kept safe in God's mind to be reunited with his body at the resurrection."

Let's take JUST that much. Is that your veiw so far?

T

One Love
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Posted 3/16/2009 8:51 PM (GMT -6)

Tom:
Billy Graham (forget that he's 'named' that, OK?) is a person in Christ. The real thing. I asked you, 'What happens to that PERSON if Billy has a seizure and the ego is gone (as an instrument through which the REAL person in Christ expresses himself concretely)?' Where is THAT person? YOu said, "Kept safe in God's mind to be reunited with his body at the resurrection."

What I thought I said was that the infinite mind of God can preserve the contingent order of an "emergent soul" (via it's individual logos, which is alread in God) along with any particular personality congfiguration(s) employed by that soul at the point of it's death. God would have this knowledge perfectly. Thus, all experience of the particular person in Christ would be held by God's Mind. I also believe that, if God so chose, God could recreate the glorified biological hypostasis, both body and soul, from what God remembers, basically resurrecting the human person.

That's what I'm saying.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

One Love
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Posted 3/16/2009 9:00 PM (GMT -6)

Something else.

Maybe I'm hearing you wrong, Tom. You said...

You see where I’m going. Surely the responsibly choosing, disposing guy that surfaces and develops after successful treatment of his condition has a destiny. He might live on for 20 years or more. So at the resurrection, you have two responsibly and freely disposed self-perceiving centers tied to one and the same…well, center. And both share the same logos? What’s God do? Billy Graham (the ‘person’ in Christ) comes out of cold storage and wants to go to heaven embodied. And the creep needs to go to hell for remedial judgment, also embodied. One brain, one and same biological hypostasis, that determined itself historical into two different destinies with respect to one and the same logos? I'm inclined to say you don't have one and the same logos here. Yes, there remains a logos, a 'word' from God, that describes God's intended perfection for the biological hypostasis that remains after Billy Graham's seizure. But that's a different 'word' than the 'word' Billy in fact conformed to and which he instantiates. If this is the case, then the only problem has to do with resurrection.

Repeating...your statement, Tom...

"I'm inclined to say that you don't have one and the same logos here."

What that tells me is that you DIRECTLY link a "logos" to any persona taken by a human hypostasis that can exhibit RWE and self-reflection. For every new persona that presents itself to the "chooser" of the human hypostasis, there must be some "destiny" for that particular persona. So, if a human being went through 3 personalities in their lifetimes (because of various accidents or whatever) and in all 3 of the "lifetimes", all three personalities believed they had a love relationship with Jesus, you would say that there were three different "words" that corresponded to each of the RWE self-reflective centers. Three distinct individual logoi for each persona. And as you say "then the only problem has to do with resurrection."

Since this is the case, I'm wondering if you think that Sybil's Bible-reading, God-fearing alternate personality was a full blown PERSON to God, given your logic. Seriously. If an "alter" of a DID sufferer came to love Jesus, would that SELF-RELATIONAL, SELF-REFLECTIVE persona now be a full blown PERSON to God?

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/16/2009 9:13:17 PM (GMT-5)

Tom
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Posted 3/16/2009 11:40 PM (GMT -6)

Tom: I’d say God has a ‘will’ for each genuine, historical persona that's grounded in the actual history of a body, yes. What I WAS thinking was that God has a ‘logos’, a perfected destiny, FOR EACH BIOLOGICAL HYPOSTASIS (however many false personas it make construct). But when you said Bill Graham’s Christ-centered person is kept in God to be reunited to its body, I’m wondering what THEN would be God’s will for the new thinking, choosing self (not a false self, the ONLY self) that's now annimating Graham's body, and SOME SELF must do so. Suppose THAT new genuine self rests in Christ. Now you have TWO personally distinct selves who emerged from one and the same BODY/MIND composite.

What’s so difficult to understand about my question?

D: So, if a human being went through 3 personalities in their lifetimes (because of various accidents or whatever) and in all 3 of the "lifetimes", all three personalities believed they had a love relationship with Jesus, you would say that there were three different "words" that corresponded to each of the RWE self-reflective centers. Three distinct individual logoi for each persona. And as you say "then the only problem has to do with resurrection."

Tom: I’m ASKING you what YOU think happens in such a case. You said the first persona, Billy Graham, a person in Christ, is NOT lost, but is kept by God to be reunited to its body at the resurrection. OK, fine. Now, what if the newly emerging persona in Billy Graham’s body develops freely into another person in Christ? What happens?

D: Since this is the case, I'm wondering if you think that Sybil's Bible-reading, God-fearing alternate personality was a full blown PERSON to God, given your logic. Seriously. If an "alter" of a DID sufferer came to love Jesus, would that SELF-RELATIONAL, SELF-REFLECTIVE persona now be a full blown PERSON to God?

Tom: You tell me. But there’s a DIFFERENCE between Sybil’s SEVERAL false selves and the historical self, the self grounded in the TRUE historical becoming of that brain/body. But what I’m suggesting is different. I’m suggesting that the true self of Billy Graham up to his seizure is a genuine self grounded in a real history (not a false, imagined history), but that this persona is lost in the seizure. THEN a new history begins (not a false history imagined, as in Sybil’s case). The one RWE center, in honest conversations with God and the world, over time, develops ONE new identity with Christ, but it’s obviously not Billy Graham. Forget how many logoi are involved here OK? Just tell me what happens at the resurrection. Do you have an opinion?

So far, what I hear you saying is that there can emerge only ONE person-in-relation to Christ from each embodied human being. However many legitimate (not Sybil-like) histories ground emergent personas, ONLY ONE will survive. I don’t have a preference. I’m wondering what you think.

I’m disinclined to think God will simply create as many additional bodies as is needed to accommodate a plurality of persons who emerge from one and the same embodied human being. The whole point of resurrection is that there is continuity between this embodied state and the next.

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/16/2009 11:58:52 PM (GMT-5)

One Love
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Posted 3/17/2009 6:31 AM (GMT -6)

D: What that tells me is that you DIRECTLY link a "logos" to any persona taken by a human hypostasis that can exhibit RWE and self-reflection. For every new persona that presents itself to the "chooser" of the human hypostasis, there must be some "destiny" for that particular persona.

Tom: I’d say God has a ‘will’ for each genuine, historical persona that's grounded in the actual history of a body, yes. What I WAS thinking was that God has a ‘logos’, a perfected destiny, FOR EACH BIOLOGICAL HYPOSTASIS (however many false personas it make construct). But when you said Bill Graham’s Christ-centered person is kept in God to be reunited to its body, I’m wondering what THEN would be God’s will for the new thinking, choosing self (not a false self, the ONLY self) that's now annimating Graham's body, and SOME SELF must do so. Suppose THAT new genuine self rests in Christ. Now you have TWO personally distinct selves who emerged from one and the same BODY/MIND composite.

1) I didn't say that God was definitely keeping "Billy" for safekeeping until resurrection. Look exactly at what I wrote.

2) The one "chooser" of the human hypostasis is NOT the persona, Tom. The "chooser" uses, yet TRANSCENDS the persona.

3) I believe that the "chooser" emergent from the human mind/brain relational unity is the recipient of salvation, not particular personas.

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

D: So, if a human being went through 3 personalities in their lifetimes (because of various accidents or whatever) and in all 3 of the "lifetimes", all three personalities believed they had a love relationship with Jesus, you would say that there were three different "words" that corresponded to each of the RWE self-reflective centers. Three distinct individual logoi for each persona. And as you say "then the only problem has to do with resurrection."

Tom: I’m ASKING you what YOU think happens in such a case. You said the first persona, Billy Graham, a person in Christ, is NOT lost, but is kept by God to be reunited to its body at the resurrection. OK, fine. Now, what if the newly emerging persona in Billy Graham’s body develops freely into another person in Christ? What happens?

No. Let me get my exact quote here...

It would seem to me that the only place that the main persona of Billy Graham's human hypostasis could be maintained (post 30-second-man-ness) would be in the mind of God. Where else could it be kept enduringly but by the consciousness of God? And of course, it would be possible for God to reconstruct a body for the strange loop that is "Billy Graham's" existence. (Keith Ward has this view as a possibility.)

Again, I was saying that Billy Graham's main persona could be held as information in the mind of God...and that God could recontruct to body where the main persona can exist. This was not to say that the persona Billy was "waiting somewhere" in some nether region to be embodied, while the human hypostasis that the persona was connected to has taken on another persona over time on earth. That's NOT what I was saying.

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

Tom:
So far, what I hear you saying is that there can emerge only ONE person-in-relation to Christ from each embodied human being. However many legitimate (not Sybil-like) histories ground emergent personas, ONLY ONE will survive. I don’t have a preference. I’m wondering what you think.

I’m disinclined to think God will simply create as many additional bodies as is needed to accommodate a plurality of persons who emerge from one and the same embodied human being. The whole point of resurrection is that there is continuity between this embodied state and the next.

Yes to the bolded part. There is ONE "chooser" who is the emegent reality from the ONE "mind/brain relational unity", and it it the history of that chooser with it's mind/brain (NOT the history of particular personas) that will be intergrated in the resurrection. The chooser will be understood to be DISTINCT from the personality [or any SET of personalities] it uses...AND the chooser will understand it's intimate link with the Holy Spirit. The "chooser" has a personal history with the mind/brain, even through existences like the 30-Second-Memory-Man...and THAT's the continuity between this embodied state and the next.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/17/2009 6:53:34 AM (GMT-5)

One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 3/17/2009 6:38 AM (GMT -6)

Merton...I need Thomas Merton!

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/17/2009 6:41:33 AM (GMT-5)

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 3/17/2009 6:39 AM (GMT -6)

Ah, there you are...

"There is an irreducible opposition between the deep transcendent self that awakens only in contemplation, and the superficial, external self which we commonly identify with the first person singular. We must remember that the superficial "I" is not our real self. It is our "individuality" and our "empirical self" but it is not truly the hidden and mysterious person in whom we subsist before the eyes of God. The "I" that works in the world, thinks about itself, observes his own reactions and talks about itself is not the true "I" that has been united to God in Christ. It is at best the vesture, the mask, the disguise of that mysterious and unknown "self" whom most of us never discover until we are dead. Our external, superficial self is not eternal, not spiritual, far from it. This self is doomed to disappear as completely as smoke from a chimney."

What do you see in this, Tom, that deals with what we are talking about?

(Thank God for the mystics...)

For Kierkegaard, the culturally-embodied "I,", the loop of self-reflection (OL's Note: Hofstadter's "Strange Loop" of self-relationality) is not the self, although it may masquerade as such.
James Loder. The Transforming Moment. Page 78.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/17/2009 6:45:56 AM (GMT-5)

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 3/17/2009 6:47 AM (GMT -6)

I really, REALLY hope this is clear...

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 3/17/2009 7:26 AM (GMT -6)

Let me try to give a personal example.

"I am a Dwayne Polk!" used to be a primary identication for me. In my loop of self-reflection, my "chooser" didn't see any distinction at all between itself and the thought loop "I am Dwayne Polk." My chooser OVERidentified with thought categories found in the brain from my embodied experience with life in Texas with my family. Such that if a person would have asked me who I was, I would say "I'm Dwayne Polk", directly associating my "chooser" with the brain's "world creation" of what being "Dwayne Polk" supposedly is and supposedly is not, given what my mind/brain had experienced. I can't even tell you the struggles I've been through having THIS as a primary identity. But now, I understand what Loder was saying in "The Transforming Moment" ...

The self is a positive relationship--a "relation that relates itself to itself" as Kierkegaard put it--is "conscience" in the generic sense. It is knowing within and together with oneself (scientia and con- ). This is the self that has chosen itself and in that choice determined to be itself in , but not of, its "worlds"; in, but not of, its embodiment; "having" but not "being had." This represents a choice against the endless mirrors of self-reflection, against socially constructed selves and the superego, against world-denying mysticism (OL's note: rather than world affirming mysticism ala Orthodox logoi contemplation!) and against absorption in a world of kindly "thous." The self as conscience is generated by the power to choose. One must choose to choose the self, otherwise all choices will be consumed in self-reflection and "world" composition.

My "self" transcends the socially constructed self that self-reflectively says "I am Dwayne Polk!", but I couldn't find that out until I realized that there was INDEED a hidden relationship of the mind/brain relational unity that leads to the discovery of this self-transcendence. It is that "chooser" who is being freed for life in God...and that "chooser" which God will continue to work with.

See what I'm saying?

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/17/2009 7:39:34 AM (GMT-5)

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