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One Love
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| Posted 12/4/2009 11:25 PM (GMT -6) |   | Actually...now that I'm thinking about it...
the whole "inevitable, though not necessary" thing would be JUST WHAT Jonathon Edwards was trying to articulate about God's overflowing goodness in relationship to Creation. Greg seems to indicate this Trinity and Process, too.
Ain't that right, Tom?
I. D. G. A. F.
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One Love
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| Posted 12/4/2009 11:32 PM (GMT -6) | | | Ok. In T&P, Greg talked about how Edwards came very close to saying that Creation was a "natural outflow" of God's ecstatically loving nature, such that there was too much of a necessary God-world relationship in order for God to personally become. Greg curbs this in his take on dispositions.
I'm saying the intuition that Edwards was trying to convey (Creation as inevitability given God's essential existence as Love) can be held...without saying that Creation FULFILLED God's primary disposition to be God in any way. Greg's ideas allow for that.
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/4/2009 10:35:32 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/4/2009 11:42 PM (GMT -6) | | Dispositional ontology could be a helpful corrective to preserve Maximus' intentions (God eternally foreknowing the mystery of Christ sans Creation, etc. ) while dodging a necessary God-world relationship.
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/4/2009 10:46:40 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/5/2009 3:01 AM (GMT -6) | | Bruce,
Looking at a bit of Toronen's "The Image of the Archetype" that your link lead to (page 76-77), I thought of this that I read a bit ago. Some of it...
The pure of heart are blessed, but the mind is the gateway to the heart. Therefore, purity of heart implies purity of mind. "The divine nature may be perceived only with the eyes of the mind. But the mind that really discerns God...is the pure mind." (UB:1105)
But how? How does one achieve this childlike purity of mind and heart? Only by continual practice. That is, by practicing the presence of God always, by becoming familiar with the ways of God, by striving for unbroken prayer and communion. " The secret of his unparalleled religious life was this consciousness of the presence of God; and he attained it by intelligent prayer and sincere worship -- unbroken communion with God ...(UB:2089)
"Unbroken communion" means that the mind is pure in its focus on God. "Undistracted prayer is the highest act of the intellect...The state of prayer can be aptly described as a habitual state of imperturbable calm." 1 1 Evagrius Ponticus, The Praktikos Chapters On Prayer. c. 34 & 52
I. D. G. A. F.
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 12/5/2009 9:35 AM (GMT -6) | |
Thanks for this, T.
Tom said...D, you're there and see Greg regularly. You should make sure his Myth Project doesn't make the drastic mistake of arguing that the Greek Fathers borrowed Greek philosophical terms and concepts uncritically. Dude, make sure. But the more one realizes how much the Fathers critiqued Platonism the less one can argue they SIMPLY passed on that worldview's objectionable aspects. However, though the Father's "Christianized" Platonic terms to express a uniquely Christian view that doesn't mean they always succeeded in purging Platonism of its objectionable unbiblical concepts. Still some Platonic ideas turn up in the Fathers practically unchanged (i.e., re: time, and assumptions about perfection and change). It's not all or nothing. I hope Greg strikes the right balance. Tom
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 12/5/2009 9:38 AM (GMT -6) | |
Tom said...
I tell ya, the more I familiarize myself with EO's Christcentered cosmology (which I came to more via Process than direct involvement with the Greek Fathers), the more I shake my head at Barth. I know Barth was familiar with the Fathers, but in the end he couldn't let go of the Reformed doctrine of providence as divine determination. His whole doctrine of the concursus dei attempts to explain how it is that God's will and creaturely volition "concur" in accomplishing God's will in the end. But if you don't need to defend the idea that God's will is always accomplished...? Exactly.
Tom
Barth was friends with Georges Florovski.
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 12/5/2009 9:53 AM (GMT -6) | |
The 'culture' is to recognize that 'theology' is contemplation of God within the Trinity -- and there is precious little of that and what there is is precious. However, 'economy' is where most of our thinking belongs. (Only three Fathers ever got labeled 'theologian.')
Within THAT I can make sense of the "meaningless" of contemplation of 'theology' beyond where 'economy' leads.
But THAT is what we are doing here -- paying attention to CHRISTOLOGY. (Fr. Florovsky, where are you?)
Tom said...You're not far off the mark Starkman. I mean, I think there's really a sense in which it doesn't make sense. God is complete and self-sufficient as triune love and doesn't need creation. Creation is contingent because it comes into being, yes. But this is all compromised if we add to this what (Tollefsen says) Maximus and Orthodoxy believe, i.e., that the triune love isn't what it is apart from the free determination to create and incarnate. That's just nonsense. But the Orthodox (those I talk to, like Fr Behr in NY, and evidently Maximus and the Greek Fathers) all say that the question of whether God would exist as triune self-sufficient love APART from the determination to create is a MEANINGLESS question. But it's NOT obviously meaningless. On the contrary, several important applications for life follow from how the question is answered.
For example, Irenaeus speaks of Adam as a type of the one to come. Fine. But then he expands upon this with "the Savior existed [i.e., the Logos-to-become-Savior existed eternally] therefore he who would be saved needed to be created so that the Savior doesn't exist in vain". That's is just NOT good thinking IMO. But I'm no Church Father, so...
Tom
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 12/5/2009 10:00 AM (GMT -6) | |
D. is this Arianism? If 'state of affairs' is swapped for 'gotta be a time.'
I'd come at this with the Son being the Word of the Father, and the Father also being ecstatic -- being the fountainhead of it.
One Love said...
Does it come down to this, Tom?
For it to be true that God's determination to create is AS CONTINGENT AS the actualization of creation, it must be true that in the divine state of affairs sans Creation, God the Son existed as a totally "realized" divine person without having to be "Immanuel". In other words, it is has to be true that God the Son as uncreated hypostasis is "fulfilled" in his personal becoming in and through triune relationship WITHOUT being Immanuel...even though God the Son would always have the capability to be Immanuel. To say otherwise means that God the Son needed Creation to be "all he could be" as a divine person...which would make Creation functionally necessary to the personal becoming of God's ad intra reality.
Bottom line: There has to be some state of affairs in God's own independent reality where God the Son's personal reality is NOT constitutionally defined by being "Immanuel"...while always possessing the potential to become "Immanuel." Otherwise, there is, for all intents and purposes, a (at least functional) necessary God-world relationship for God's personal becoming...and the genuine contingency of Creation is not defended adequately.
Both God's aesity AND Creation's integrity are challenged.
Yes?
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 12/5/2009 10:07 AM (GMT -6) | |
Tom said...
D: For it to be true that God's determination to create is AS CONTINGENT AS the actualization of creation, it must be true that in the divine state of affairs sans Creation, God the Son existed as a totally "realized" divine person without having to be "Immanuel".
T: Right. But understand that in Tollefsen’s opinion Maximus could not agree to this. He found the question of the Son’s existing as fully realized hypostasis without being Emmanuel to be a meaningless question. Behr pretty much agrees.
Meaningless simply means ungrounded in economy. Academic meaninglessness--which is your turf Tom and Dwayne--is a different thing.
B.
(o) Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 12/5/2009 10:23:23 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 12/5/2009 12:44 PM (GMT -6) | | B: Meaningless simply means ungrounded in economy. Academic meaninglessness--which is your turf Tom and Dwayne--is a different thing.
T: Well, it's not ungrounded in the economy either. That's the whole point. In other words, it's presumptuous (academically, theologically, aesthetically, existentially, add more if you need to) to conclude that the economy tells us there's no God apart from God determining that there be an economy). It's perfectly reasonable (academically, theologically, aesthetically, existentially, mystical, add more if you need to) for us to conclude on the basis of the economy that God would be fully personal apart from any determination that there be an economy. The economy is intelligible and explainable on the grounds that God's triune being isn't determined by the choice to create.
Tom
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 12/5/2009 12:51 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/5/2009 1:49 PM (GMT -6) | | | Thanks for the adjustment, Bruce! By the way, where am I being Arian. I can't see it.
Actually, what you're saying goes along. God the Son IS the Father's Word (thus homoousias with the Father)...and his being the Father's Word in whom the Father's Spirit rests is "what" realizes the fulness of his divine hypostatic reality. God the Son is the Father's Word...with or without a Creation.
I'm just saying that the the Son's reality as the Father's Word in whom the Spirit rests "fulfills" the Son's personal becoming, such that when the Son consents (according to the Father's Will) to be "Immanuel", this is a contingent expression of his being the Father's Word.
I am not saying that God the Son is any kind of creation of God the Father...or anything like that.
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/5/2009 12:59:59 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 12/5/2009 2:31 PM (GMT -6) | | | Right, D. I hope POW sees our disagreement with Maximus and the EO (unless we're REALLY misunderstanding Tollefsen and Maximus, and Behr's recent email to me). Maximus (Tollefsen argues) says that part of the Son's reality as the Father's Word is fulfilled in the Father's determination (and the Son's consent) that the Son incarnate and become Emmanuel). And part of the reason (Tollefsen sees) that Maximus sees God this way is because Maximus believes that all God's acts of willing are in fact ONE eternal act of will by which God constitutes his own existence. THAT is the problem. Maximus believes this because he believes there can be NO unrealized potential in God. Whatever God CAN be, God actually is. Whatever God CAN do, God actually does. Whatever God CAN will, God actually wills. God's existence as God is the full actualization of all his potential.
The ACTUAL incarnation of the Son IN TIME isn't something ELSE God chooses to do (i.e., something in addition to the act of self-contemplation that IS God). It's just that in some mysterious way the actual existence of the world God eternally wills (as the single act of his unchanging being) isn't also eternally actual. Maximus argues that this alone (the world's having a beginning in time) secures both the world's 'contingent' (unnecessary) nature AND the 'freedom' of God's will to create. But it doesn't. It doesn't matter that the world has a beginning in time. What matters is that God's choice that there be a world doesn't have a beginning in time. Once you posit the eternal, God-constituting choice to create, the world loses it contingency and God's loses his freedom. God's no more free not to create than he is not to exist. His existence IS THIS CHOICE.
Maximus cannot get this from the Hebrew Bible. No way.
Tollefsen (p. 64) refers to Maximus' being led by 1Pet. 1.19-20 (where Christ [as man] was known before the foundation of the world) in coming to form this opinion. He says the Trinity "holds this mystery in accordance with its essence" (kat' ousian). Wow. But I've NEVER read 1Pet this way, and the passage doesn't require such an understanding. But that's how the passage is read if (as I suspect is the case) you BRING certain philosophical presuppositions (about perfection and time and potentiality, etc.) with you TO the text.
Tom
"Man is a person not by nature but by spirit. By nature he is only an individual." Nicolas BerdyaevPost Edited (Tom) : 12/5/2009 1:49:21 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 12/5/2009 2:33 PM (GMT -6) | | |
One Love said...God the Son is the Father's Word...with or without a Creation.
PoW: Amen.
One Love said...I'm just saying that the the Son's reality as the Father's Word in whom the Spirit rests "fulfills" the Son's personal becoming, such that when the Son consents (according to the Father's Will) to be "Immanuel", this is a contingent expression of his being the Father's Word.
PoW: I'll ONLY sqy contingent for the Son's humanity.
Two wills in the Son, one wil in the trinity.
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Tom
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| Posted 12/5/2009 2:52 PM (GMT -6) | | D. "this is a contingent expression of his being the Father's Word."
B. I'm not sure what this means.
T. It means the Son is the Father's Word in fulness WITHOUT consideration of or commitment to create any world. The Son doesn't possess his being AS THE SON in his consent to be the vehicle of creation and salvation. In this sense the world is a contingent (unnecessary) and free expression of the Son's being the Father's Word. Maximus disagrees.
See the issue B?
T
"Man is a person not by nature but by spirit. By nature he is only an individual." Nicolas Berdyaev Post Edited (Tom) : 12/5/2009 1:55:07 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 12/5/2009 3:12 PM (GMT -6) | | | Tom: Whatever God CAN will, God actually wills. God's existence as God is the full actualization of all his potential.
Jeff: If by "will," here, we mean volition, then you're saying Maximus would say:
"Whatever God CAN freely choose, God actually chooses. God's existence is the full actualization of all his potential."
But that creates a contradiction, to my mind. To choose, by definition, is to bring about ONE of MULTIPLE possibilities at a given point in time. To get around this contradiction, he'd have to resort to mystery in terms of the temporal aspect of a choice. I don't see what that buys us. I just don't understand the preference for mystery over analogy when mystery doesn't buy us anything. Granted, there are some brute facts that are, in that sense, mysterious. But why posit more than you need to? That approach warrants too many possibilities to choose from, thereby rendering the pursuit of the truth in these matters futile.
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