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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 6/4/2009 1:19 PM (GMT -6)

As I changed my avatar today I got to thinking about a possible analogy of how the incarnation effects healing within the created order. When I uploaded a new jpeg as an avatar and confirmed its place within the matrix that is this website, under the conditions defined by its laws of operation, that avatar was immediately filtered down into every post I’ve ever made and replaced the old avatar with the new one. I only had to upload it in ONE instance and the effects got communicated through the whole matrix.

Anybody see an application here?

My thought is that the incarnation of the Son is like the uploading of a new avatar into the matrix. It has to obey the operational rules of the site. And since the entire site is held together by a single set of operational laws that define the scope of the matrix, the right instance or application of a single upload and command can filter its effects throughout the system and apply to every instance (every avatar) that's similar-in-kind. The laws of the computational language (this ‘site’ in its concrete form) just IS the all-present, all-pervasive supervening presence of God, what Joseph Bracken calls "the Divine Matrix." The incarnation is the uploading of a perfect, uncorrupted form of human being ('human being' being the form of communicative expression that this site is; each of us taking up a unique place and form of expression within the matrix. The effects of Christ's having “done it right” under the laws/rules that govern the operation of the matrix thus get filtered down to every instance of human being wherever it is within the system.

True, we have to freely dispose ourselves into Christ’s benefits before they become concrete in our own personal lives, and it’s difficult to figure this into this particular example (or it might be easy, I don’t understand computer language; one could just say that each participant has to sign off on the reception of a new avatar, so to speak), but as an analogy it KIND OF captures the ‘how’ of Christ’s redeeming the whole.

I wonder how computer viruses (that can be SO pervasive, corrupting the operation of any entire system) can nevertheless, given that system, be targeted and purged in a similar way. But we HAVE to assume that viruses don't absolutely corrupt the operating language, for that operating language has to serve as the context (the matrix) within which the virus is identified, addressed, and purged. This is why I am wont to agree with the Reformed view that human nature is t-o-t-a-l-l-y depraved. Given what we've said about God's indestructible presence at the core of every human being speaking that specific creature's 'logos' (its purpose/telos, the form of its fulfilled being) as the sustaining act of its existence, it would follow that this arrangement--the concrete form of the creator/creature distinction--is indestructible. D, human nature can't be totally depraved because God is part of what defines that nature--transcendently & immanently--part of the operating language that manages the 'how' of human nature. God's 'logoi' are indestructible, thus human being cannot be TOTALLY deprave-able (my new word).

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 6/4/2009 2:28:52 PM (GMT-5)

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 6/4/2009 3:28 PM (GMT -6)

Here's the thing...

I don't think we should understand the incarnation's fundamental role in bringing the created order to fulfillment primarily in terms of healing us from the corruption of sin (as we presently do). If it's true that the incarnation was ALWAYS planned and was always intended to be the way God brought the created order and human being to completion and fulfillment, then limiting what the incarnation means to what it means to fallen humanity misses other (more important I think) fundamental ways the incarnation functions. I think the analogy above would still apply. The perfecting effects and function of the incarnation would still be mediated to us the same way even in the event humanity wasn't corrupted by sin.

Still thinking on it.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 6/4/2009 3:32:15 PM (GMT-5)

PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 6/4/2009 6:29 PM (GMT -6)

I'll get back. Need to read this and give it some thought.

(o)

Starkman
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747

Posted 6/4/2009 9:10 PM (GMT -6)

I think, Tom, that the crux of Romans 5 is just what you've said. For Romans 5 talks about the filtering of the Christ-presence-involvment directly into the human bloodstream in order to effect the ratification of sin, as well as bring in a ton of other aspects into the creator-creation element.

Starkman

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 6/4/2009 10:38 PM (GMT -6)

Yessir.

Indra's Net, man. Everything is interdependent. Touch one thing in the universe, you've touched everything. So, when God becomes creaturely dispositional reality (a human being)...well, what would that mean for Creation as a whole?

Yeah...

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
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 6/4/2009 10:45 PM (GMT -6)

Tom:
D, human nature can't be totally depraved because God is part of what defines that nature--transcendently & immanently--part of the operating language that manages the 'how' of human nature. God's 'logoi' are indestructible, thus human being cannot be TOTALLY deprave-able (my new word).

I don't disagree with that. I would just want to affirm the creaturely tendency to idolize time-space experience...and how fallen human existence "binds the will" such that free obedience to God's commands (Great Commandments) are functionally impossible for the "naturally minded" human being. It takes the specific working of God's Spirit to give the blind human spirit "sight" of God and itself.

I'm not disagreeing with ya, though. Good stuff.

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) : 6/4/2009 10:51:04 PM (GMT-5)

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 6/5/2009 1:25 AM (GMT -6)

Thanks all. Good to see you Starkman! Hope you're well.

Pax,
T

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