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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
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| Posted 12/22/2009 10:56 AM (GMT -6) |   | | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/22/2009 10:59 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
What do you think?
Well, if the Son's humanity AS ARCHETYPE of Creation is taken into account...AND the Son is the "lamb slain before the foundation of the world"...then God ALWAYS empathizes and "suffers" with Creation through the Son. Creation and Redemption are NEVER to be separated.
Right?
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All.
"God resists the proud, and give His grace to the humble." | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/22/2009 11:01 AM (GMT -6) | | Yep...
That subjective suffering, borne by each Person of the Holy Trinity, is not limited to the historical moment of the Cross. Like divine Love, divine suffering is a reality that characterizes God's personal existence as He relates to the world He has made. Consequently, there is no human or cosmic suffering that is not part of God's own personal experience. This is not "patripassionism." It is the simple Gospel truth that the triune God indeed shares in He knows and drinks to the bitter dregs the cup of our suffering, whatever its cause, however devastating to us it might be.
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All.
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/22/2009 11:02 AM (GMT -6) | | Greg can't just ignore ALLLLLLLLL of this...can he?
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All.
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/22/2009 11:06 AM (GMT -6) | | | I would say that God is the SUPREME EXAMPLE of "godliness with contentment." Surely, Paul would say that we "mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice"...while AT THE SAME TIME believing that in the Holy Spirit, there is IMMUTABLY "righteousness, peace, and joy."
Genuinely mourning other's pain is NOT mutually exclusive from having unceasing peace and joy.
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All.
"God resists the proud, and give His grace to the humble." Post Edited (One Love) : 12/22/2009 10:09:04 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/22/2009 11:06 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/22/2009 11:10 AM (GMT -6) | | I will say this. You can't look at what we are saying (and seeing) here...and then argue "that there's NO sense in which we (Christians) can or should affirm a doctrine of 'apatheia' "
No friggin way! That's just wrong. 
Balderdash!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All.
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/22/2009 12:19 PM (GMT -6) | | The quote is from the "Can God Suffer" article by Fr. Breck.
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All.
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/22/2009 12:21 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
I just wish there was a better word than "IM"-passibility.
Is "superpassible" taken? Let me check...
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All.
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/22/2009 12:24 PM (GMT -6) | | Hmmmm...closest thing I've found on Google. Don't know if it's true or not.
from some poster on a discussion board...
C.S. Lewis said that God was neither passible, nor impassible; rather He was superpassible.
Understanding that the passibility that we as humans experience are so tainted by sin and error, therefore being incomprehensible to attribute them to an allperfect God.
Likewise understanding that by definition an impassible God (without emotion) could not experience love or hate or anger.
Therefore we must understand God to experience all these emotions (love, hate, anger) and yet not experience them in a tainted humanly way.
Therefore the superpassibility of the Lord Almighty.
If C.S. Lewis DIDN'T really use the term...then it's MINE!
Muwaahahahahahaaaaaaa! 
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All.
"God resists the proud, and give His grace to the humble." Post Edited (One Love) : 12/22/2009 11:27:53 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 12/22/2009 12:29 PM (GMT -6) | | Let's see.
The Bible: God loves, rejoices, grieves, has compassion, weeps, is angry, etc.
Just say it. No special language. Just revelation. Just put it out there. People are gonna get the point that God doesn't have temper tantrums! Ha.
I mean, I won't say God's atemporal, timeless, or even supertemporal. He's just temporal. THEN I'll qualify myself by saying he doesn't "age" or lose his memory and isn't subject to corruption. You know, that's a good point. People think TIME is corrupting. But it's not. It's finite being per se (supassability of beauty and limitation of perspective) that's corruptible. But TIME doesn't make it so.
Wheeew baby! I'm needing a meetin' of the Knights of the Roundtable when I get home.
T
"Man is a person not by nature but by spirit. By nature he is only an individual." Nicolas BerdyaevPost Edited (Tom) : 12/22/2009 11:32:23 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/22/2009 12:36 PM (GMT -6) | | You could live with super-passible or super-im-passible? I was confused.
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All.
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/22/2009 12:39 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
People think TIME is corrupting. But it's not. It's finite being per se (supassability of beauty and limitation of perspective) that's corruptible. But TIME doesn't make it so.
I dig that. 
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All.
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 12/22/2009 1:09 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
Well, I prefer superpassible.
Me, too.
************************
Tom:
Dude I need to party...get out, dance, have some good food, be with great friends, enjoy good conversation, beat up on Greg. A perfect evening out.
Then, hurry up and get your butt home...so we can do this!
*************************
Tom:
Fr. Breck is SPOT ON. You got get Greg to read this stuff DISpassionately. Hahahaha!
I'll email him the link...
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All.
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 12/23/2009 11:36 AM (GMT -6) | | |
God "IS ALL and IN ALL."
That includes IN TIME but also exceeds the boundaries of time.
D?
http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/features/funeral_vigil_for_archbishop_job
Tom said...Let's see. The Bible: God loves, rejoices, grieves, has compassion, weeps, is angry, etc. Just say it. No special language. Just revelation. Just put it out there. People are gonna get the point that God doesn't have temper tantrums! Ha. I mean, I won't say God's atemporal, timeless, or even supertemporal. He's just temporal. THEN I'll qualify myself by saying he doesn't "age" or lose his memory and isn't subject to corruption. You know, that's a good point. People think TIME is corrupting. But it's not. It's finite being per se (supassability of beauty and limitation of perspective) that's corruptible. But TIME doesn't make it so.
Wheeew baby! I'm needing a meetin' of the Knights of the Roundtable when I get home. T
(o)Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 12/25/2009 7:02:43 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 12/23/2009 6:08 PM (GMT -6) | |
Tom said...
What's meant by "exceeds the boundaries of time" B?
Does not exactly be defined and limited by things defined by time.
It's a made-up phrase, of the moment, by me.
But I'd go back to the "IS all and is IN all" to define what it would mean: IN speaks--to me--of what's in time for God's energies; while IS exceeds-exceeding everything created.
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Asher
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Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 477
| Posted 12/24/2009 8:04 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom, D, check it out:
Couple of books by Dr Anna N. Williams. She is Lecturer in Patristic and Medieval Theology at the University of Cambridge.
"The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas" and "The Divine Sense: The Intellect in Patristic Theology"
Product Description (The Divine Sense)
A. N. Williams examines the conception of the intellect in patristic theology from its beginnings in the work of the Apostolic Fathers to Augustine and Cassian in the early fifth century. The patristic notion of intellect emerges from its systematic relations to other components of theology: the relation of human mind to the body and the will; the relation of the human to the divine intellect; of human reason to divine revelation and secular philosophy; and from the use of the intellect in both theological reflection and spiritual contemplation. The patristic conception of that intellect is therefore important for the way it signals the character of early Christian theology as both systematic and contemplative and as such, distinctive in its approach from secular philosophies of its time and modern Christian theology.
Today, I listened to the introduction to "The Divine Sense" and then skimmed the rest of the book.
I am lovin' this book! It addresses my concerns from my post earlier and also addresses you guys critique of Greg's insistence that "the Fathers were duped by pagan philosophy"
Here's some excerpts:
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Page 4 "The insistence on human reasonableness, even in its postlapsarian
state, follows from the assertion of its origin in divine wisdom;
to impugn the former would, in the Fathers’ view, necessarily impugn the
latter. Their relatively sanguine estimation of human intellect thus differs
fundamentally from any Enlightenment exaltation of Reason: not human
dignity and autonomy is celebrated, but the beauty of divine Mind,
reflected in creation. Equally, however, because rightly glorifying God
entails acknowledging the human capacity for rational reflection, the
Fathers cannot slide into a pessimistic apophaticism holding that the
order of the universe, or indeed divine nature itself, lies entirely beyond
human ken. Again, to impugn our capacity to know God, at least dimly,
would amount to claiming God had deliberately left us bereft of the only
means to good, happy and purposeful lives, and would deny, therefore,
any conceivable telos to creation. Inasmuch as theology purports to state
what is the case about God, the cosmos and the relation of the two, it
must reflect both divine ratio and the divinely-given human capacity to
grasp this ratio, and must, therefore, be in itself systematic, that is, logical,
orderly and coherent."
Page 6 "The relationality of the human intellect pertains not only ad extra,
towards the divine, but ad intra, to the other constituents of human
nature, notably, the will and the body. For although the Fathers, following
Genesis, took our similarity to God as the cornerstone of their
anthropology, they also followed Genesis in taking our divinely-given
bodies to be constitutive of our nature. No anthropology that would
qualify as Christian can omit the body or regard it as a temporary nuisance
or ill, an obstacle to salvation or the knowledge of God, a point on
which the supposedly Platonising Christian tradition parts company with
most varieties of Platonism. However much a Christian theology stresses
the mind and its apprehension of the divine, it must simultaneously state
this mind’s relation to the body in a way which neither does violence to
either element, nor impugns the creative intention behind their being
yoked together.
The mind’s relation to the body portends its broader role as the head of
the ‘household’ that is the human person, and is an indicator of the will’s
significance to the schema, for without the latter, what the mind envisages
could not translate into action, body or no body. Equally, however,
actions in which there is no element of deliberate intent are not properly
speaking willed, so the will moves at the mind’s behest and is therefore in
some sense always secondary to it. This necessary and systematic relation
of mind and will indicates a further relationship: that of contemplation to
ethics, of theology to ascesis"
Page 7-8 "Following what the Fathers have to say of the mind, therefore,
necessarily leads the reader to see various kinds of unity in their writings.
The inseparability of what we now call theology from spirituality (in both
theory and practice) is one such unity. Another is the psychosomatic
unity of the human person, and another, the unity in knowledge and love
of the human person and God. The likeness to God we are given in virtue
of the imago is the dynamic basis of that evolving likeness of holiness
which comes from ascesis and contemplation. We might put the matter
in a slightly different way: the personal union of the Trinity with human
persons is reflected in two methodological unities, one at the level of
systematic theology (the unity of the doctrine of God and theological
anthropology) and the other at the subdisciplinary level (of theology
proper to ascetical theology or spirituality, as well as to ethics). The
treatment of the intellect is not the only means by which the Fathers hold
all these together coherently, but it is one of the most powerful and
important ones. Because the themes under consideration converge on
such questions, the study is as much an investigation of the nature of
Christian theology, as illuminated by the mind of the early church, as it is
in inquiry into particular theological loci. Evagrius wrote: ‘The spiritual
knowledge [gno¯sis] of God is the breast of the Lord; the one resting upon
it will be a theologian’,6 and in a way, this study represents nothing more
than a detailed exposition of what he means.
Grasping these unities is vital if we are to understand the complex
relation of this theology to the philosophical systems which preceded it,
or, as in the case of neo-Platonism, developed alongside it. Studies of
patristic theology, church history and the cultural history of the ancient
world often assume an immediate connection between ancient philosophy
of one variety or another and early Christian theology. Any talk of
ascent is taken to be neo-Platonic, for example, and appeals to reason as
the ruling principle frequently traced to the Stoic notion of the
hegemonikon. The difficulty with such assumptions lies both in their
unverifiability and their too-easy assumption of causality; one can certainly
show similarities between one assertion and another, but with
much greater difficulty does one establish that the reason for the similiarity
lies in influence."
Page 9 "The ancient world offered a smorgasbord of philosophical options, making any one of them
rather less than inevitable, and Christians always maintained a certain
critical distance from philosophy, mingled as it frequently was with views
in one sense or another religious. Given the range of options available, the
adoption of any philosophical datum represents a choice on the theologian’s
part, a choice that at least precludes the ascription of any
mechanical notion of influence."
Page 10 "Obviously, this interpretation of influence assumes we properly speak
of it only when a view is adopted in significant part because it is commended
by the authority of the writer advocating it. Influence in this
sense would tend to exert itself, by definition, in more than piecemeal
fashion: if one adopts Plato’s views because they are those of a thinker
whose stature is such that his views are accorded an almost indubitable
rectitude, then presumably that thinker’s views would merit adoption as a
whole, or at least in large part. This kind of wholesale adoption of any
Greek philosophy is precisely what we do not find in patristic theology."
Page 17-18 "One
problem with the attempt to posit influence as the explanation for any
parallel one might see between a claim in a patristic text and a similar one
found in a body of philosophical writings is the Fathers’ bricolage
methodology: none of them takes a single school, let alone a single
thinker, and uses that philosophical system as the consistent basis for a
theology. By selecting a term here, a notion there, the Fathers display an
opportunistic mentality that amounts to a form of virtual indifference to
the status of their sources, a disregard bordering on disdain for the
integrity of any philosophical system, of even the greatest of the Greek
philosophers. Those commentators who see the Fathers’ Christian
judgement overridden by their enthrallment to ‘the wisdom of the
Greeks’ not only fail to take full account of how much they reject or
adapt, as well as how much they modify simply in virtue of the way in
which they combine. Such judgements moreover rest on unexamined
presuppositions about what is and is not authentically Christian, the
latter being virtually defined by its non-overlap with any notion clearly
derivable from Greek philosophy. If, to take the example of contemplation
again, we do not see this as a major theme in the Bible, it
must be Greek, and if Greek, somehow alien to Christianity. Such
determinations often reveal more about the unacknowledged ecclesial
sympathies of their authors, a prefabricated notion of what Christianity
is, than they illumine about the theology of another age.
The patristic penchant for bricolage not only stands as a strong contraindication
to blithe ascriptions of influence to any one philosophical
school, but also points again to one of the dominant features of both
Aristotelian and presocratic philosophies: the significance of system. The
theologians of the early church are systematicians, not in the sense that
they order texts in ways that would later become conventional, but in the
sense that they consider all that a Christian theologian might truly
say will fit together into an intricate pattern of pieces which interlock
because divine wisdom has fashioned them to do so. Their theological
method and the content of their theology reflect the same underlying
conviction of divine ratio, a ratio that must ultimately evoke the awe of
contemplation."
--------
And that's just the skeleton of the introduction, not even the meat.
She then goes on throughout the book citing theological works of many of the Fathers...showing similarities with the philosophers were similarities exist, but also showing difference and rejection of philosophical thought and sometimes baptism of philosophical thought...and also how early theological thought is distinct from modern thinking.
page 236 "This survey of
patristic literature should indicate that whatever resemblance early
Christian theology may bear to ancient philosophy, it proceeds from
axioms, many of which are Biblical and definitively Christian, and argues
within a systematic framework that is equally distinctive. One may be
able to explain isolated similarities by recourse to theories of influence,
but the complex as a whole suggests that the advent of Christian theology
represents a striking caesura (Rob: I had to look that word up, it means a pause or interruption (as in a conversation) so I thought I would ironically do just that right here )
in Western thought. One can dismiss the
notion that there is a complex as a whole, claiming the idea of systematisation
enters the tradition only with the rise of scholasticism and is
therefore anachronistically applied to patristic theology. The latter move,
however, falters in light of Greek philosophy’s own appeal to the notions
of rational, structured arguments whose internal coherence betokens their
correspondence to the order of divine nature and the world God created,
an appeal present even in the earliest fragments of the Western philosophical
tradition. If we acknowledge a similarity between these philosophical
principles and those underlying patristic theology, then we
would also have to acknowledge that Christian theology could only adopt
specific tenets of other philosophical systems to the degree that these were
compatible with a specifically Christian framework, one which included
Biblical givens and the church’s sacramental and liturgical practice. In
light of the latter, there could be no question of a wholesale, or even
uncritical, adoption of philosophical ideas. The question of influence can
only be considered in light of the systems implicit in this theology, and,
once considered in that light, assertions of influence must become much
more tentative."
So yeah, well worth taking a look at and maybe sending on Greg's way.Post Edited (Asher) : 12/24/2009 7:13:20 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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