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One Love
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| Posted 12/8/2009 1:52 AM (GMT -6) |   | D: I think Greg's straight up WESTERN on this.
T: I don't know what 'western' means.
It means that Greg, from what I know about him, does NOT believe that grace is literally God himself working directly in Creation through God's energies. More likely, he believes that grace is DIVINE INFLUENCE on Creation. This is inaccurate, as Payton showed.
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Tom:
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'm not disagreeing with any of this. I'm just saying that Greg pretty much things of "grace" in T&P as freely-given benevolence as INFLUENCE...and NOT as God himself directly working.
See what I'm saying?
I. D. G. A. F.
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One Love
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| Posted 12/8/2009 2:23 AM (GMT -6) | | Looking around for info on Ambigua 41. Found two things that seem kinda helpful...
The Anthropic Cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor
Dragos Bahrim (Start at "Man, The Mediator of Deification" on pages 25-28)
The Unity of the Human Person: The Body-Sould Relationship in Orthodox Theology
Kallistos Ware (Whole thing)
But I'm with you. I'd like to see it for myself.
From Ware's stuff...
We humans are the bridge and meeting point between the spiritual and the material. As St Gregory the Theologian puts it, each of us is «earthly yet heavenly, temporal yet immortal, visible yet intelligible, midway between majesty and lowliness; one selfsame being, but both spirit and flesh». In this way, each is a «second cosmos, a great universe within a little one»; we contain within ourselves the diversity and complexity of the total creation. It is significant that, in St Gregory's understanding, the «great universe» is not the world around us, the outer space that is measured in millions of light years, but the world that is within us, the inner space of the human heart. Moreover, continues St Gregory, because we are not only an image of the world but an image of God, we are capable not simply of uniting the spiritual and the material -of rendering the material spiritual, and of rendering the spiritual incarnate- but it is our vocation also to attain «deification» (theosis), thereby uniting ourselves and the whole created world with God.
The human person is in this way called to be both microcosm and mediator. But we cannot fulfil this vocation as unifiers and bridge-builders -we cannot unite matter and spirit, the earthly and the heavenly- unless we each see our own self as a single, undivided whole. If we reject our body as alien to our true personhood, if we sever our links with our material environment, then we cease to express our true character as microcosm and we are no longer able to mediate. «One selfsame being», says St Gregory; and this is all-essential.
This truth is underlined with great clarity by St Maximus the Confessor(5). (OL's Note: From Ambigua 41) If according to the account of creation in Genesis 1 Adam, was created last of all, after the rest of the created cosmos, that is because the human person is -as St Maximus puts it- «a natural bond of unity», mediating and drawing together all the different levels of the outside world, because related to them all through the different aspects of his own being. In the words of St Maximus, each of us is «a laboratory (ergastirion) that contains everything in a most comprehensive fashion», and so «it is the appointed task of each one of us to make manifest in ourself the great mystery of the divine intention: to show how the divided extremes in created things may be reconciled in harmony, the near with the far, the lower with the higher, so that through gradual ascent all are eventually brought into union with God». Having united all the levels of creation with each other, then -through our love for God (a key concept in St Maximus) and through the gift of theosis which God in His divine love confers upon us- we finally unite created nature with the uncreated, «becoming everything that God Himself is, save for identity of essence».
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/8/2009 1:42:22 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/8/2009 2:36 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
In other words, if "God present in X" means "God showing X grace" then wouldn't we say the generation of the Son is an act of "grace"? But it's news to me if the Father generates the Son "as an act of grace."
Payton
Light from the Christian East
Chapter: What is Grace?
Section: Created or Uncreated?
Pp 162-163
"We cannot assert, though, that grace is involved in the relationship of the three persons of the Trinity with each other, for they dwell in perfect love and harmony from eternity; there is no need or place for grace in the intertrinitarian communion."
In other words, "grace" is God Himself working BY HIS UNCREATED ENERGIES (ad extra)...not in his ESSENCE (ad intra). The whole chapter is worth reading, if ya got it.
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/8/2009 1:43:53 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 12/8/2009 3:58 AM (GMT -6) | | D: In other words, "grace" is God Himself working BY HIS UNCREATED ENERGIES (ad extra)...not in his ESSENCE (ad intra).
T: Exactly. Carefully then, what needs to be said is that grace not only describes HOW God relates to creation (not in terms of just influence but of God's real presence at work) but also THAT there is a creation at all. Otherwise HOW God relates within creation cannot be viewed as 'grace'. So, God's presence in Creation AS GRACE is undermined if THAT there is to be a creation at all is determined by God's own self-determining triune act. For if 'that-there-is-to-be-a-creation' is entailed in God's very act of being, then 'grace' can no more describe creation than it can describe God himself. And if "grace" doesn't describe the act by which God IS God, but DOES describe God's creating (as you and I are saying), then it has to be because God's determination to create is not entailed in God's choice to be God (contra John Webster, McCormack, Robert Jensen, et. al., AND MAXIMUS).
T
"Man is a person not by nature but by spirit. By nature he is only an individual." Nicolas BerdyaevPost Edited (Tom) : 12/8/2009 4:05:40 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 12/8/2009 8:01 AM (GMT -6) | | That's what i was looking for...
One Love said...Tom: In other words, if "God present in X" means "God showing X grace" then wouldn't we say the generation of the Son is an act of "grace"? But it's news to me if the Father generates the Son "as an act of grace." Payton Light from the Christian East Chapter: What is Grace? Section: Created or Uncreated?Pp 162-163 "We cannot assert, though, that grace is involved in the relationship of the three persons of the Trinity with each other, for they dwell in perfect love and harmony from eternity; there is no need or place for grace in the intertrinitarian communion."
In other words, "grace" is God Himself working BY HIS UNCREATED ENERGIES (ad extra)...not in his ESSENCE (ad intra). The whole chapter is worth reading, if ya got it.
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One Love
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| Posted 12/8/2009 9:17 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
There's something very interesting here. Consider for a second that the TRADITIONAL orthodox view on Creation as an eternal determination such that any consideration of who or what God is or or like APART from his intention to create is at best meaningless speculation and at worst irreverence to the tradition of the Fathers. I mean, as far as I can tell (in the East) this WAS orthodox Christian believe. There were no other views really.
And then consider how widespread is the denial of this view today among those who object to open theism because has no precursors in the ancient Church.
Hahahahaha!
I feel ya!  I think it may be for different reasons though. Given the end goal of Christianity is growing into the Risen Jesus Christ ala theosis/theoria, they may believe it a waste of time (as it were) to endlessly ponder such things. Maybe they thought it took away from truly pursuing that end. If people spend more time on the "what ifs" than on the lived reality of Jesus in the heart, then the point of "theology" is STILL being missed. And it takes a lot of TIME, INTENTION, and ENERGY to "enter the heart" where God is found. None to be misplaced. Just guessing.
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/8/2009 8:32:07 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/8/2009 9:19 AM (GMT -6) | | Something else...
Just had a "duh" moment. Jesus couldn't be a full microcosm OR mediator, if he didn't have all the essential elements of humanity. (human spirit, mind, etc) And if Jesus didn't FULFILL humanity's "job" of being microcosm and mediator, salvation would not be available. Why? Because the essential task of humanity would NOT have been accomplished. ("It is finished" ? ) He wouldn't have been our NEW ADAM or our great "high priest".
Let's see. The five fold things for HUMANITY to reconcile...
Uncreated---Created
Intelligible---Sensible
Heaven---Earth
Paradise---Inhabited earth
Man---Woman
Yep. Jesus united all of these without fusion or confusion in his own being: his spirit, soul (including the dianoia), and body. The perfect example of unity-in-diversity in Creation.
Yeah...
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/8/2009 8:28:31 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 12/8/2009 12:39 PM (GMT -6) | | D, you can download Andrew Louth’s Maximus the Confessor on Scribd. He’s got several of the Difficulties (Ambigua) there translated with his own notes an comments. 41 is among them. I’ve read it several times now and can’t for the life of me see what it is that Thunberg is referring to when he says of Amb. 41 that we shall “receive God as a substitute for our own egos.” Nothing close. Moore references Thunberg’s comment on 41 but doesn’t exegete Maximus.
Here’s the only thing in 41 that comes close:
“And finally…the human person unites the created nature with the uncreated through love…showing them to be one and the same through the possession of grace, the whole creation wholly interpenetrated [perichoresis] by God, and become completely whatever God is, save at the level of being [of ‘ousia’], and receiving to itself the whole of God himself, and acquiring as a kind of prize for its ascent to God the most unique God himself….”
Now, in the whole of 41 Maximus does spend a lot of time say all ‘particulars’ and ‘divisions’ are overcome, i.e., dissolved. And maybe that’s what Thunberg is using to conclude that we don’t continue to be separate individuals at all. For example, Maximus says the distinction between ‘male’ and ‘female’ is eradicated. We shall be “simply human beings,” whatever that means. Maximus thinks human beings fell (via sin) into the distinction between male and female and that had we not fallen we would have procreated without having to have sex (this was God’s original plan, God’s logos for us). In fact, interestingly, Maximus says “I think that there was perhaps another way, foreknown by God, for human beings to increase, if the first human being had kept the commandment and not cast himself down to an animal state by abusing his own proper powers. Thus [Christ] has done away with the difference and division of nature into male…without which it would perhaps have been possible [to procreate].” Interesting how he speaks of God forknowing things that could have been but never were. And what else would that LOOK like prior to their not having been but that they might and might not be.
Tom
"Man is a person not by nature but by spirit. By nature he is only an individual." Nicolas Berdyaev | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 12/8/2009 1:19 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 12/8/2009 1:28 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/8/2009 3:02 PM (GMT -6) | | And this...
“And finally…the human person unites the created nature with the uncreated through love…showing them to be one and the same through the possession of grace, the whole creation wholly interpenetrated [perichoresis] by God, and become completely whatever God is, save at the level of being [of ‘ousia’], and receiving to itself the whole of God himself, and acquiring as a kind of prize for its ascent to God the most unique God himself….”
Dispositional translation:
When the self-disposing created being disposes itself into it's own "eschatological essence" (only possible by the "way of love", which include "death to self" ), it doesn't turn into God, but perfectly expresses God's subjective aim within and relates to the Divine Disposition, "seeing" all things through God's Spirit (who IS in us and who IS God Himself)
In being Spirit-bearers by Grace through faith, we are truly human in being GOD-bearers.
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/8/2009 2:05:38 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 12/8/2009 3:17 PM (GMT -6) | | Yep. I thought so...
Page 52.
"The second [passion of the biological hypostasis] is that this "failure" of the survival of the biological hypostasis is not the result of some acquired fault of a moral kind (a transgression), but of the very constitutional make-up (Zizy's emphasis here)of the hypostasis, that is, of the biological act of the perpetuation of the species."
Heh...wait till you see the NOTE...
St. Maximus the Confessor, following Gregory of Nyssa..., comes to the very root of the problem of human existence when he regards the biological mode of procreation as a result of the Fall. Those who attribute this view of Maximus to a monastic or asectic bias ignore the fact that he is not an ordinary thinker but perhaps one of the greatest and most creative geniuses in history, and that it it therefore impossible for him to say something without this being an organic and integral part of his whole thought. Maximus' position on this question on this question is inspired by Matt. 22:30, that is, by the basic presupposition that the true "being" of man is found only in his eschatological state. Victory over death, the survival of the person, is incomprehensible without a change in the constitutive mode of the human hypostasis, without a transcendence of the biological hypostasis. This does not imply Manichaeism: the biological and the eschatological hypostases are not mutually exclusive.
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All. Post Edited (One Love) : 12/8/2009 2:22:51 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 12/8/2009 4:16 PM (GMT -6) | | Ha! I'm not surprised.
Well, I'll be lucky to get on board with 50% of their agenda.
1) There is no root problem to human existence. Human existence per se is wonderful, good, and beautiful.
2) If there's a root problem we who exist experience, it's the root problem of FALLEN human existence.
3) Nothing, as in n-o-t-h-i-n-g is gained by locating the ROOT of fallen humanity's existential problem in a biological mode of procreation. That's perhaps close to being the most ridiculous thing I've heard coming out of the EO. Talk about shabby biblical work. Gender differentiations precede the Fall and are grounded IN THE DIVINE IMAGE.
4) Look, even if we go with Maximus' supposed unfallen (asexual) means of procreation, you still have SOME means of procreating, of bringing INTO EXISTENCE, finite persons who have to traverse the epistemic distance. That epistemic distance, definitive of created being per se, is what occasions our existential fall.
Silly old Greek men. Sheesh.
T
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