A few quotes from a good book—Alistair I. McFadyen’s The Call to Personhood (Cambridge Univ. Press: 1990):

“My basic conception of the person in this discussion is both dialogical (formed through social interaction, through address and response) and dialectical (never coming to rest in a final unity, if only because one is never removed from relation). In dialogue the partners are simultaneously independent (otherwise the listening and speaking of both would be unnecessary) and inseparably bound together in a search for a mutuality of understanding. The basis of a dialogical understanding of personhood is that we are what we are in ourselves only through relation to others. Persons are unique centers or subjects of communication, but they are so only through their intrinsic relation to other persons. So they are centered beings, but they become centered in a personal way only through relation with other personal centers….”

“What I am suggesting is that the form of God’s address determines the structure of human being as response without determining the form or content of that response.”

“The image cannot, therefore, be lost, but it can be distorted by a refusal to reciprocate the intention of God’s communication in response. That refusal too is a response, and so the ontological structure of freedom as being-in-response remains intact even when the intention of dialogue-partnership is maintained only on God’s side and there is a distortion of the image on the human side.”

“For subjectivity is neither the product of any private, internal process (for instance of thought or reflection) nor the designation of some individually held capacity; rather it is a way of being and relating as an I which is ‘called out’ in which one is intended as a dialogue-partner….”

“Person and relation are inseparable but not the same thing.”

“Dialogue is a bipolar process involving both distance (individual discreteness from the relation) and relation. Distinct identity is impossible except through relation, and relation possible only through the distance which separates the partners. Dialogical relations require structured distinction as well as relatedness.”

“Our relationships are properly structured only where Christ takes form within them.”

“Individual identity is attributable to a person’s spirit of communication, the communicative form in which he or she enters relations which, in turn, is derived from previous relations. An individual’s spirit organizes his or her communication and relatedness which, through communication becomes formed and structured into an individual identity.”

“The Holy Spirit may then be conceived as the organizational energy of communication open to others and to self-transformation which, through co-inherence with the Word, the ordering logos, produces open forms of individual and communal life. The Spirit is neg-entropic energy (i.e. energy which produces ordered openness in systems, as opposed to the disorder of closed systems, which is entropic), which is the organizational life-force; Word is the form-giver to organized life. Where Spirit and Word co-inhere, they create undistorted forms of individuality and relatedness which, whilst structured, are open and, whilst open, are structured.”

“Individual identity denotes the way one enters relations and is for others.”

“Our personal identity is the way we relate to others. We are the way we are for others.”

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OK, D, you’ll remember back last year I wrote a post (which you really dug) about how to account for the emergence of non-divine personhood in us while maintaining that such a thing didn’t emerge in Christ. McFadyen helps me express this when he says “the form of God’s address determines the structure of human being.” I said then that the ‘letting go’ accomplished in us by God which accounts for the emergence of non-divine personhood is just God’s choice to address human nature in us in one way and address human nature in Christ in another way. The ‘letting go’ doesn’t take place in Christ (that ‘letting go’ simply being God’s free choice to address us as personal others [McFadyen’s “the form of God’s address determines the structure of human being”]; God doesn't extend to Christ’s human natural capacities the same invitation to become that God extends to us.

I pretty much agree with McFadyen here. I can even live with the use of the term “bipolar” (though I don’t like it). But D, if it’s the case that ‘personal identity and uniqueness’ obtains in the “way we are for others,” then we have to discuss ‘freedom’. Because from where I stand we’re only as personally distinct from God as we are free in the determining of the ‘way we are’ in relationship to God. This is why I harp on the necessity of free and creative self-determination for creatures as constitutive of their telos. There’s no personal existence outside of it. I hope you can see why this is non-negotiable for me. I’m completely unable to conceive of our being non-divine persons whose ‘way they are’ is wholly determined by God as an option. In that sense, we cease being personally distinct from God when we cease being self-determining in relation to God.

T

Post Edited (One Love) : 4/7/2009 7:35:09 AM (GMT-5)

And Tom...please don't ask me "Well, D, why would God want that kind of existence for the eschaton?"  That's not the point.  I want to know LOGICALLY how it's the case that Person B freely choosing to be a functional extension of Person A NECESSARILY removes all demonstration of personhood from Person B, ESPECIALLY when reciprocity (from the bi-polar, dialectical operations between Uncreated God and created hypostasis) never ceases to exist.

I won't be satisfied with anything less probably.

Post Edited (One Love) : 4/7/2009 6:12:26 AM (GMT-5)

"...Christ-as-us..."

Post Edited (One Love) : 4/7/2009 6:52:28 AM (GMT-5)

And the Head/Body, Divine Presence/Created Temple, Bridegroom/Bride concepts.

Post Edited (One Love) : 4/7/2009 7:09:08 AM (GMT-5)

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I think that this perichoretic relationship is utter faith in and self-renouncing humility before God.

"May it be it unto me according to Your Word." - The Theotokos

Post Edited (One Love) : 4/7/2009 7:28:19 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Tom) : 4/7/2009 8:27:41 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One Love) : 4/7/2009 8:40:24 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One Love) : 4/7/2009 8:52:38 AM (GMT-5)

Reposting...

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Loder was nothing short of a genius.

From "The Transforming Moment", Chapter 4: Convictional Knowing, pp. 109-111.

All emphases mine.

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When one's being is gracious recreated by the Holy One, one is free to indwell and compose his World in all of it's particularity, fascination, and beauty. One's eyes are opened to the particularity of goodness and the goodness of being-itself when one's particular being has been embraced and affirmed by Christ Jesus, in whom being-itself became particular. In this "transparency" of faith, as Kierkegaard spoke of it, is exhibited not only by the self toward its ground in Christ but also toward the World as the creation of Christ's intention.

Such an intramundane ecstasy has serious, long-range consequences about which I will say more later. At this point, it should be noted that such an ecstasy is a affront to those personal, social, and cultural systems that are built on a systematic repression of the Void and the Holy. Confrontation of "worlds" is inevitable; hence the power of new being endowed by the indwelling presence of the Holy must reengage the Void concealed in those "worlds" designed to deny it. [OL's Note: Singleminded love of the Father and love of the "worlds" created by the fallen ego are mutually exclusive!] Christian ecstasy necessarily makes history precisely because it is given to faith for the sake of the World that God intends to compose, a World to be manifested through the anguish, tears, and joy of sacrificial love.

There is a second important distinction to be made here between the Christian spiritual process and the way of Zen. As I noted, the contemplative Zen practitioner makes an effort to attain release at the beginning in order that the "world" he or she creates may be engaged and molded "spiritually"; whether it be through a tea ceremony, sword fighting, or archery, the practitioner is seeking freedom and power to gain mastery over the "world" by submission to the Supreme Doctrine. This is, of course, distinctly different from the Christian's Worldly ecstasy in which one see in bold outline the particularity and goodness of the World [that] God intends.  Consequently, in the mundane ecstasy* of Christian conviction, the ecstatic does not do what he or she, the ecstatic, chooses or sees as good, but what Christ's Spirit intends through his action in the clash of "worlds."

To be sure, the Christian ecstatic is liberated by a new awareness; the "I," as in therapeutic knowing, is set in the position of being free to choose for or against the new World that Christ intends. Yet this sort of freedom and power to create depends entirely on discerning the intentionality of Christ. The point is not to discover how to do things "spiritually," but to discover what the Spirit of Christ is doing so as to choose for his [Christ's] World.

Thus the Christian response is less likely to be marked by manifestations of spiritual power than by sacrificial love. But even here, one does not decide ahead of time what is loving and then seek spiritual power for doing that; rather, one seeks the Presence of Christ and receives discernment regarding His Intention so that freedom, power, or whatever may be called for will have contours that fit what God is already doing. In Christian terms, one seeks to compose only the World that God is composing.

Post Edited (One Love) : 4/7/2009 1:14:01 PM (GMT-5)