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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
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| Posted 12/7/2009 9:13 AM (GMT -6) |   | Guess who said this?
In my book,..., I was taking a stance against Maximus' view that our ego will be replaced by the divine presence, as he states explicitly in Chapters on Knowledge 2.88. If our ego becomes overwhelmed by the absolute presence of God (as Lars Thunberg has put it) then I see no possibility for creative expression, nor even celebration; for we have become, as I write in my book (and elsewhere), "functions of the Godhead." We must retain our freedom as persons, which means we must retain memory of the historical development that led us to the eskhaton.
I. D. G. A. F.
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One Love
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| Posted 12/7/2009 9:19 AM (GMT -6) | | Now, this is where I was right. I had said...
This is pretty much what I thought he was saying. Human memory (which IS a function of the Loderian "lived world" and "self" emergent from the human mind/brain interaction) provides the personal context for human ego continuity...just as it provides the context for the emergence of that human ego. This is nothing surprising at all...and I wouldn't disagree. And it's definitely not problematic with Loder's view (which I honestly think is a good middle ground between Origen and Maximus). As Loder builds significantly on Kierkegaard, who was solidly AGAINST Hegelian abstraction, and FOR the faith of the individual human being. (Subjectivity is truth, he said)
and...
"Loder has said ad nauseum, the ego is NOT destroyed...but truly freed to be itself in God."
I. D. G. A. F.
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One Love
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| Posted 12/7/2009 9:26 AM (GMT -6) | | The Christian Neoplatonism of St. Maximus the Confessor
Author: Edward Moore
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According to Maximus, when the human being (understood as a composite of soul and body) achieves salvation “only God shines forth through body and soul when their natural features are transcended in overwhelming glory.”[17] Lars Thunberg elaborates on this Maximian conception by stating that the human being “should receive [God] as a substitute for his own ego ...”[18] Yet such a reception requires preparation, and Maximus remarks – in a statement deemed wonderfully paradoxical by certain theologians – that the human soul receives deification to the extent that it has deified itself.[19] Maximus explains:
God rests from his natural activity in each being by which each of them moves naturally. He rests when each being, having obtained the divine energy in due measure, will determine its own natural energy with respect to God. (Chapters on Knowledge 1.47, tr. Berthold)
This reciprocal relationship between the human and the divine is, according to Maximus, maintained and perfected through the continual effort of the soul to attain the aptitude (epitêdeiotês) for deification or theôsis.[20] For the quest of temporal existence is to fashion the human being into a fitting receptacle of divinity.[21]
This situation necessitated, for Maximus, the transformation of the “volitive faculty” or “gnomic will” (gnômikê epitêdeiotêti) from a tool of sin, into a tool of personal transformation. Describing the divine attributes bestowed upon humanity by God, Maximus writes:
[T]o the volitive faculty [gnômikê epitêdeiotêti] [God] gives goodness and wisdom in order that what [God] is by essence the creature might become by participation. For this reason [the human being] is said to be made “to the image and likeness of God.” (Capita de caritate 3.25, tr. Berthold)
This does not mean that the human soul is, in its temporal incarnation, passive and lacking its own energy. Rather, the activity of the temporally subjected human soul is ideally trained toward a final passivity in which it will participate in the divine energies without mediation.
Note 17: Maximus, Chapters on Knowledge 2.88, tr. George C. Berthold, in Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press 1985), p. 167.
I. D. G. A. F.
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One Love
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| Posted 12/7/2009 9:32 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
Does Maximus actually say the 'self' (the 'autos') is replaced by the divine presence?
Doesn't seem to me like he does.
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Tom:
I remember Moore saying he admits that there are passages in Maximus where he says the human person doesn't lose his own self-identity and unique hypostatic creativity, but that the FUNDAMENTAL tenor and direction of Maximus' most cherished convictions undermind this freedom. In the end, we're overwhelmed. Dunno.
Maximus' "fundamental tenor" is satisfied by saying this:
When deification happens, the choices with which deified humans may exercise personal freedom...are all GOD'S options presented to the person via the logoi, empowered via divine activity. There is human freedom and choice, but only in exploring GOD'S sanctioned possibilities.
This would be the RELATIVIZATION (not annihilation or elimination) of the human ego in relationship to Divine Presence. Loder's "mundane ecstasy."
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/7/2009 8:35:35 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/7/2009 9:40 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
The individual is overwhelmed perhaps in the sense that ONLY the divine logoi constitute the perceived scope of possible actions.
Yeppers. 
I. D. G. A. F.
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One Love
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| Posted 12/7/2009 9:54 AM (GMT -6) | | That's the only thing.
It's not like we garner divine energy until we have created perfection of thought, will, and behavior. It's not that human beings POSSESS perfected being in and of themselves after enough "exposure" to Divine Presence. No. The deified being works by faithful chosen reception of God HIMSELF bringing divine activity in and through the defied being.
Last paragraph of the Tollefsen book...
The received exis or habitus, mentioned in connection with the vocabulary of participation in section 1 above, is not to be understood in the way Balas, for instance, seems to take it. To metechomenon, according to Balas, is either understood as the transcendent divine perfection or as this perfection as possessed by us. As far as I can understand, what is participated, as Balas sees it, is a created quality held by the creature. For Maximus, on the other hand, a received exis could be nothing else than God Himself, viz. by the presence of His activity. According to St. Maximus, created beings, in their essential otherness from God, are drawn into the presence of being and deification by the presence of the divine activity itself.
This goes RIGHT ALONG with the EO view of Grace...as opposed to the more Western view. See Payton's "Light from the Christian East." Page 165 has Payton's conclusions on Grace. Some of it...
This understanding of grace is a startling thought for Western Christians to consider: that grace of which we so frequently speak is nothing less or other than God himself. The grace for which we praise God is not merely an influence that God mercifully imparts to or pours out upon us. The divine grace we receive and that works within us is God.
Western Christianity has emphasized, in keeping with biblical teaching, that grace deals intimately with us, drawing us to God and uniting us to Christ, working the full effects of salvation within us. Grace transforms us, in keeping with God's purposes for us in creation and salvation. Grace brings us into fellowship with God. Even so, the instinctive sense of Western Christianity unreflectively views grace as an influence God exerts on us--a wonderful and transforming incfluence which he somehow imparts to us. The Eastern Orthodox presentation of what grace is immeasurably deepens and enriches that awareness of the intimacy of grace. Grace is nothing less than God himself, at work within us. All that grace does within and to us is done not at arm's length or merely through influences, but directly by God.
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/7/2009 9:05:34 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/7/2009 10:07 AM (GMT -6) | | | How does Greg understand grace? THAT'S definitely gonna have to be addressed. I think when he talks about "grace", he's really talking about the freely-given benevolence that God shares with non-God reality. But is that really "grace"? Hmmm...
I think Greg's straight up WESTERN on this. I bet if we ask him what grace is RIGHT NOW...he's say something more along the lines of freely given benevolence which energizes us for, but doesn't necessitate, loving response to God. An influential power. I DON'T think he's say "Well, grace is God Himself directly working in Creation."
What do YOU think?
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/7/2009 9:13:29 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/7/2009 10:16 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
don't you think this is undermined (as Greg showed) by supposing the choice to create is definitive of God's triune constitution? If God has his triune being in the determination to difuse his goodness as 'creation', then how is creation a 'grace'?
I would say that the idea of freely-given benevolence to Creation is undermined that way.
I. D. G. A. F.
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Tom
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| Posted 12/7/2009 11:54 AM (GMT -6) | | D: How does Greg understand grace? THAT'S definitely gonna have to be addressed. I think when he talks about "grace", he's really talking about the freely-given benevolence that God shares with non-God reality. But is that really "grace"? Hmmm...
T: Lost me.
D: I think Greg's straight up WESTERN on this.
T: I don't know what 'western' means.
D: I bet if we ask him what grace is RIGHT NOW...he'd say something more along the lines of freely given benevolence which energizes us for, but doesn't necessitate, loving response to God. An influential power. I DON'T think he'd say "Well, grace is God Himself directly working in Creation."
What do YOU think?
T: I see no difference between freely-given benevolence that God shares with non-God reality and freely given benevolence which energizes us for, but doesn't necessitate, loving response to God. To ME these are identical. But maybe you have something else in mind.
I think you might be missing Greg's point in Trinity&Process. As I understand him, what he wants to say there is that creation as a whole, as an EVENT that offers ad extra participation in God to non-divine creatures, is an unnecessary gift of God, i.e., grace. Whether created beings can refuse divine influence or how God energizes us, etc., is all beside the point. The point is the NATURE of creation as UNNECESSARY (i.e., as GIFT). That's Greg's point against Process thought. If you posit a necessary God-world relationship then the world's EXISTING AT ALL isn't a grace or a gift. Same thing applies to Maximus. If God's existence as triune ENTAILS the determination to create, then in what sense is creation a GIFT OF THE TRIUNE GOD? It's just not, for God's very essence determines the choice to create.
I don't think it's a Western/Eastern/Norther/Southern thing at all.
T
"Man is a person not by nature but by spirit. By nature he is only an individual." Nicolas BerdyaevPost Edited (Tom) : 12/7/2009 11:33:41 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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