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| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Theological Q&A > Experience, Actuality, and Aesthetic Value...oh and Satan too. | Forum Quick Jump
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 11/16/2009 7:40 AM (GMT -6) |   | Corey:
Look, there's got to be a dialectic going on here, and to collapse it to EITHER pole is wrong. We have to continually live in the tension: I'm chief of sinners and I have the righteousness of Christ.
It's equally important to see yourself as a saint as it is to see yourself as a sinner.
Luther AND Kierkegaard, right?
But you then realize the paradox: one can ONLY see themselves as a sinner BEFORE GOD, and even then, one can only adequately see themselves with aid from the Holy Spirit (ie conviction of the believer). A forgiven sinner who lives in Divine Grace moment by moment also lives "face-to-face" with God through Christ, continously receiving Christ's righteousness (perhaps in and through use of Jesus Prayer) is what we are talking about, right? A person who exists in the tension by grace through faith.
That's the dialectic. Can't have a forgiven sinner without a Forgiving God who defines what sin is. Can't have a sinner "before God" without a God who reveals what sin is to said sinner. Both are needed in the person who is self-aware of being reconciled to God in Christ.
This dialetic is seen in mystical Judaism (Kabbalah) as Shiflut or "lowliness." It's basically a state of enduring repentance by a person knowledgable of their own "distance" from God. Seen in SK's "On the Edification Implied in the Fact that Before God We Are Always in the Wrong."
"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
Know me, Eternal Lover...and help me to know You... Post Edited (One Love) : 11/16/2009 6:58:12 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 11/16/2009 8:05 AM (GMT -6) | | | Heh. Judgement day.
"Ok, Satan. Who's your Daddy? Last chance for a right answer. Well, maybe another chance after that..."
"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
Know me, Eternal Lover...and help me to know You... Post Edited (One Love) : 11/16/2009 7:08:26 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 11/16/2009 8:23 AM (GMT -6) | | |
Tom:
Just leave me to get used to the idea that "I" am "THE" most privated, evil being in all creation.
Trying to drive Tom crazy with mystic speak... ------------------------------------ Kallistos Ware. The Orthodox Way. Page 63."When anyone falls," states Aleksei Khomiakov, "he falls alone, but no one else is saved alone." Should he not have said also that no one falls alone? Dostoevsky's Starets Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov comes closer to the truth when he says that we are each of us "responsible for everyone and everything.":
"There is only one way to salvation, and that is to make yourself responsible for all men's sins. As soon as you make yourself responsible in all sincerity for everything and everyone, you will see at one that this is really so, and that you are in fact to blame for everyone and for all things." ------------------
Oooh. I hear Tom's circuitry frying right...about...NOW...
Dang those EOs...
"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
Know me, Eternal Lover...and help me to know You... Post Edited (One Love) : 11/16/2009 7:28:18 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 11/16/2009 8:30 AM (GMT -6) | | Likely American response?
"Don't tread on me, pal. I'm not responsible for anyone's sins but my own!"
"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
Know me, Eternal Lover...and help me to know You... | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 11/16/2009 8:36 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
Likely American: I'm not responsible for anyone's sins but my own!
Tom: That's the same mistake on the opposite end of the pole.
Right. It's a both/and.
Then I said, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips (individual sin), And I live among a people of unclean lips (individual-in-community sin); For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts."
"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
Know me, Eternal Lover...and help me to know You... | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 11/16/2009 8:49 AM (GMT -6) | | D: The concept of "overexaggeration for pedagogical effect" seems be lost on you, man.
T: Oh, now that's different. TELL ME you're doing that. Exaggeration is a legitimate pedagogical tool. Sure.
Is that all this is?
Ok. It's that. Surely not even Ware himself would say that any human being is personally responsible for every sinful thought and action in Creation at any given time or for all time. That just wouldn't even make sense logically speaking...because angels antedate humans. I believe that it's a perspective to take to override overexaggeration in the other direction that is NOT helping the process of growing in humility before God. Call it a corrective to the pendulum swing towards the individualistic pole dealing with sin. That's how I see a lot of this. I'd bet you money that we see MUCH MORE "I'm not responsibile for anyone else's sin but my own." than "All sin is my fault."...ESPECIALLY in contemporary American Christianity.
It's EXACTLY this failure of tension-holding in American Christianity between individual and corporate sin (which collapses MORE to the pole of individualism and "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps" ) that makes social and systemic sin (like RACISM and SEXISM) so hard to talk about ...particularly in evangelical situations. See "Divided By Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America" by Michael Emerson and Christian Smith
"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
Know me, Eternal Lover...and help me to know You... Post Edited (One Love) : 11/16/2009 7:58:44 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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