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Tom
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| Posted 11/24/2009 9:21 AM (GMT -6) |   | |
I was thinking about all we’ve discussed re: human and divine personhood and the inter-personal nature of divine-human relationships. While I do see an asymmetrical aspect to it (i.e., ways in which the relationship defines us personally but doesn’t equally define God personally), I’m increasingly uncomfortable with where the asymmetry takes me. I don’t want to surrender the sense in which God is personally unsurpassably fulfilled sans creation, but I also don’t want to locate all the effects we have upon God outside of ‘who’ God is. I want to say there’s something abiding about who God is which we do not determine (thus, asymmetrical) but also locate the relationship we have with God and what we MEAN to God right there in ‘who’ God is, not outside of that somewhere.
I feel we have to do this to be able at all to say the relationship is INTER-personal. For me, interpersonal relations are relations that are consequential for each person in terms of ‘who’ they believe they are. They’re mutually defining on a personal level. A personal other contributes to who I am and who I believe myself to be and I in turn contribute in the same way to the other. If only one contributes on this personally defining level, then the relation isn’t ‘inter’-personal, whatever else it may be. Inter-personal relations are relations that contribute to defining the persons in relation, so that ‘who’ I am, viz., “what I mean” (the meaning of my particular existence) is impossible apart from my experience of you, and visa versa.
I was thinking about personhood again in terms of ‘meaning’, i.e., our ‘meaning’ in the world. If we stay with this analogy we can switch to the ‘language’ analogy in general. I’d compare grammar/meaning with nature/person. What nature is to person, grammar is to meaning. Grammar is the nature of meaning, the ‘how’ of meaningful communication. It’s just an analogy, that’s all. Thus, to have an interpersonal relationship with God is to share in the underlying grammar of God’s experience of the world so as to play a part in defining the consequent meaning of that experience in personal terms. Just think about the relationship between ‘grammar’ and ‘meaning’. Grammar makes meaning possible. Grammar is all the rules/laws of meaning, how words have to relate and find their place in a particular sentence in order for some ‘meaning’ to emerge from all that.
But for our relationship to be interpersonal with God, there has to be this ‘meaningful exchange’, and the exchange has to be consequential in personal terms even for God. Where it’s asymmetrical is that only God can tell us who we are. But God doesn’t need us to know who he is. But…and this is my issue…this doesn’t mean God can’t LET US share in determining God’s self-perception. On a trinitarian God-constituting level we can’t possibly contribute. But that doesn’t mean ‘who’ God is can’t accommodate novelty, so that when God self-perceives AFTER creation (especially after incarnation), creation has taken its place WITHIN God’s own perception of Godself. There can now be no God sans creation to speak of—except only abstractly within a doctrine of Creation that says God’s choice to create was unnecessary. God’s experience as incarnate is definitive of the Son’s identity as hypostasis. THIS divine hypostasis disposes of its identity in terms of human nature. The incarnation doesn’t take place in some sphere of energies outside the person-defining experience of the Son. It IS this Son’s, this person’s, experience.
Tom
KIXYTΘEMTAPost Edited (Tom) : 2/10/2010 1:46:44 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 11/24/2009 3:52 PM (GMT -6) | | Dude, let's just say it like this...and it should satisfy your criteria.
For me, interpersonal relations are relations that are consequential for each person in terms of ‘who’ they believe they are. They’re mutually defining on a personal level. A personal other contributes to who I am and who I believe myself to be and I in turn contribute in the same way to the other. If only one contributes on this personally defining level, then the relation isn’t ‘inter’-personal, whatever else it may be. Inter-personal relations are relations that contribute to defining the persons in relation, so that ‘who’ I am, viz., “what I mean” (the meaning of my particular existence) is impossible apart from my experience of you, and visa versa.
"I Am Immanuel"
--Jesus, the Incarnate Eternal Word, to Creation
"You Are Immanuel."
--Creation to Jesus
For us, believing that we are "with God" makes all the difference in our self-perceptions, insofar as we come to know that we were created FOR our Creator.
For God, believing that he is "with us" make all the difference in God's self-perception, because God know beholds God through human eyes.
All of this comes forth in the personal loving intimacy between God and a created person in the Holy Spirit of Jesus. Being "one in Spirit."
Mutually defining on a personal level. God wouldn't be "Immanuel" without a self-referential created being who can be AWARE of God being "with them" to say "God, You are with us." God couldn't believe himself to be "Immanuel" when there's no "us" to be with. At the same time, we wouldn't be "God's Children" (a definite personal change) without God communicating Godself to us. In short, we contribute to God seeing Godself as Immanuel....and God contributes to our seeing ourselves as being in God's Image and Likeness.
This is about what you're sayin', right?
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All. Post Edited (One Love) : 11/24/2009 3:05:49 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 11/24/2009 4:08 PM (GMT -6) | | God DOESN'T need Creation to be God.
God DOES need Creation to be "God with us", a contingent expression of God's essential existence of God being God for Godself...but in such a way that it is of, for, and with created reality.
I. D. G. A. F.
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 11/24/2009 4:10 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 11/24/2009 4:14 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Starkman
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| Posted 11/24/2009 7:42 PM (GMT -6) | | One Love said...
Mutually defining on a personal level. God wouldn't be "Immanuel" without a self-referential created being who can be AWARE of God being "with them" to say "God, You are with us." God couldn't believe himself to be "Immanuel" when there's no "us" to be with. At the same time, we wouldn't be "God's Children" (a definite personal change) without God communicating Godself to us. In short, we contribute to God seeing Godself as Immanuel....and God contributes to our seeing ourselves as being in God's Image and Likeness.
So, is it fair, then, to say that the meaningful exchange from us to God is in recognizing what He already knows but would not have been "known" until Immanuel. In other words, as we cry out "Immanuel," He cries out, "You recognize, and thus contribute in our exchange with regard to, who I am," something, though that wouldn't have been possible prior to the incarnation.
But what about meaningful exchange prior to the incarnation? Perhaps the contextual relationship criteria is the same: we cried out, "You are YHWH," and He cried out, "You recognize, and thus contribute in our exchange with regard to, who I am."
Does this working?
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One Love
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| Posted 11/24/2009 8:02 PM (GMT -6) | | Starkman:
So, is it fair, then, to say that the meaningful exchange from us to God is in recognizing what He already knows but would not have been "known" until Immanuel. In other words, as we cry out "Immanuel," He cries out, "You recognize, and thus contribute in our exchange with regard to, who I am," something, though that wouldn't have been possible prior to the incarnation.
I would say that meaningful exchange from us to God would not have been possible if Creation didn't have the Incarnation of God "at heart." In other words,the idea of the Incarnation of God and Creation's Liberation/Salvation preceded Creation...and circumscribed Creation's parameters and becomings. God has ALWAYS been with us..."us" being Creation. It's only just RECENTLY that we human beings, the self-conscious microcosmic and mediatorial agents of Creation, are able to RECOGNIZE and DECLARE this truth...hallowing and sanctifying the whole universe...and thus contribute in the mutual defining of God's self-understanding.
"I will be their God and they will be my People."
How? By God's Spirit within both God AND God's people!
Because of "us", God has a PEOPLE...a BRIDE...a BODY...where God did not before. We do this by recognition of who God is and who we are in God.
*******************************************
Starkman:
But what about meaningful exchange prior to the incarnation? Perhaps the contextual relationship criteria is the same: we cried out, "You are YHWH," and He cried out, "You recognize, and thus contribute in our exchange with regard to, who I am."
Does this working?
Sure.
I. D. G. A. F.
Christ is All. Post Edited (One Love) : 11/24/2009 7:06:36 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 11/25/2009 1:23 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
So, (1) there's no interpersonal relating to God going on prior to the incarnation? Is that it? King David and all that intimacy. But not INTERPERSONAL? I kinda doubt that. And (2) there's not interpersonal relating apart from our knowing about the incarnation even after it happens?
Neither is what I'm saying. I'm saying that the reason that King David was able to relate to God with the intimacy that he had was because of the Holy Spirit / human spirit operation that was made available through the Archetype of Humanity, Christ. Because of the template laid down by God for humanity in Christ before Creation's foundation, divine/human intimacy was intended and made possible as part of the design for human beings in God's image. King David is a human being in the image of the Archetype, Christ.
Let me use another example. Elijah. Didn't see death, right? Came back in the Transfiguration, right? I'd want to say that the only reason that "deified human flesh" exists is because of God's intention for humanity in Christ. And the only reason that Elijah could be there AT Mt. Tabor with Jesus like that is because deified human flesh had been a metaphysical possibility for humans...again, made available through the Archetype of Humanity, Christ.
I can post a really good Nesteruk quote for you on this if you want...
I. D. G. A. F.
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BBBCanada
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| Posted 2/4/2010 9:47 PM (GMT -6) | | | Quick question for ya D. I'm reading some Brueggemann right now. In his book called, "An Unsettling God: The Heart of the Hebrew Bible" there's a chapter entitled, "YHWH as Dialogical Character." In there, Brueggemann talks about God as a God "in relation" contra the other god's of the Near East. Speaking of Buber's, "I and Thou" he says:
"From the initial encounter of the burning bussh in which YHWH gave (and did not give!) the divine name, YHWH has been a confrontive, engaged agent in the life of Israel and in the life of the world. While Buber will insist that YHWH is always, "Thou"--and does not entertain the thought that Israel may be the Thou" for "YHWH's "I"--it is clear that the "Thou" of YHWH is not only generative for the "I" of Israel; even as "Thou," YHWH is impinged upon by the "I" of Israel, called to account, adn pushed in new directions. Buber stops before he goes further. In my judgment, however, it would be congruent with his work to entertain a provisional reversal of roles, so that on occasion YHWH might be the "I" authorized by Israel's "Thou." I think, for example, of Ps 22:3, wherein YHWH is "enthroned upon the praises of Israel." If Israel did not engage in doxology, YHWH's throne-and therefore YHWH's governance--would be diminished. It is for this reason that Israel's doxologies begin with a vigorous summons to praise. There is much at stake for YHWH in Israel's doxology!"
Not only does this seem to contradict what you are saying about God being God without creation but it has implications concerning the very nature of God as being a contingent-self-in-relation-to creation.
Brandon
It is the purpose that makes strong the vow, but vows to every purpose must not hold.--A friend.
To love without love is slavery--Mother Teresa
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BBBCanada
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| Posted 2/10/2010 6:34 AM (GMT -6) | | |
First, I was thinking of God's self-perception of Godself. In other words, something along the lines of what Tom was saying. God’s self-perception of Godself (though God does not lack interpersonality) is to some degree lacking or even (to use Brueggemann’s term) “diminished.” I’m wondering if because of this diminished GOVERNANCE on God’s part (as Brueggemann IS saying) which is due to OUR response to the dialogical character of God, that this somehow, some way affects who God perceives Godself to be. God’s self perception is DEPENDENT to some degree upon his creatures. This seems to me to be what the logical outcome of Brueggemann's thought is). Just wondering.
Brandon
It is the purpose that makes strong the vow, but vows to every purpose must not hold.--A friend.
To love without love is slavery--Mother Teresa
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BBBCanada
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| Posted 2/10/2010 11:58 AM (GMT -6) | | Yes. I think you are right that that is the logical outcome of Brueggemann's thought here. Not saying I agree with it, (nor that that IS what Brueggemann is saying. From reading the material he doesn't seem to be saying this only that God's governance is diminished) just that I'm wondering about it. It seems that God's self-perceptions of who God is is related to his experience of the world such that in some way it is constitutive of who God is as God. In other words, God percieves his governance as diminished because his creation is not responding as it should. Does this affect not only God's perceptions but God's being (as they are intrinsically related to God's perceptions)? In other words, is a part of what constitutes who God is related to his governance and thus to his creation's "yes?"
Brandon
It is the purpose that makes strong the vow, but vows to every purpose must not hold.--A friend.
To love without love is slavery--Mother Teresa
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Tom
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| Posted 2/10/2010 1:55 PM (GMT -6) | | Brandon: In other words, God perceives his governance as diminished because his creation is not responding as it should.
Tom: I think this has to be true, if by governance we mean ‘how things are actually working out’ (i.e., everything taken into consideration). Yes, if things suck, God knows they suck. But if we just mean God’s part in it all, then I don’t think that’s diminished per se. His part (his acts in the world) are always perfectly loving, right? So they’re not diminished. But the governed world can be diminished in the sense of being less than what God in perfect love and fullness would do IN THAT SITUATION, certainly. But I can say they're diminished in the sense that what God intended the world to be (in response to him) is less than what it could/should be.
Brandon: Does this affect not only God's perceptions but God’s being (as they are intrinsically related to God’s perceptions)? In other words, is a part of what constitutes who God is related to his governance and thus to his creation’s “yes?”
Tom: I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t think God gets ‘who’ God is from the world. He gets his ‘personhood’ (his personal identity) from the triune relations. We don’t play a part in that. So as awful as things might get in the world, as stubborn as our “No” might be, the Father, Son, and Spirit remain the same ‘persons’. Their personal identities aren’t diminished when we say “No” to God, just as they aren’t improved upon when we say “Yes” to God.
It’s different for us though. Our personal identity would be come crashing down into nothingness if God were to say “No” to us because we do GET “who” we are from God.
Just as I see it.
Tom
KIXYTΘEMTAPost Edited (Tom) : 2/10/2010 12:58:35 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 2/10/2010 2:09 PM (GMT -6) | | TOM1: But that doesn’t mean ‘who’ God is can’t accommodate novelty, so that when God self-perceives AFTER creation (especially after incarnation), creation has taken its place WITHIN God’s own perception of Godself
TOM2: I mean, I don’t think God gets ‘who’ God is from the world.
Jeff: Why can't we say there are contingent aspects of WHO God is that arise CONTINGENTLY. But there are non-contingent aspects of God that are what we would call essential. God could know what He would DO in a hypothetical situation without having the FULL conscious experience of the non-imaginary situation. I don't see why that is problematic. Indeed, if God gets anything out of creation in terms of satisfaction, it is hard to imagine why He would have risked REAL suffering for others UNLESS God experiences bona-fide novel experiences FROM a creation that He could not otherwise experience. This gets into what it even means to say it's better to exist than not exist. That sounds like logical non-sense. If you don't exist, you're not sentient, therefore there are no normative criteria to even apply.
Granted, this ability to experience novelty could be indirect for the Father. The Father may only be able to experience this kind of novelty from extra-godhead realities BECAUSE He creates FOR the Son. IOW, sympathy for a REAL EXISTING being is the Father's motivater for producing novel beings. We on the other hand can experience sympathy for imaginary characters. God may not be able to fool Himself thus since He knows they aren't REALLY sentient.
There's got to be some reason why scripture always says the Father is He OUT of whom and for whom are all things while it says the Son is he THROUGH whom and for whom are all things. Why else consistently use the different language unless that language is conveying a bona-fide distinction?
Maybe the Father and the Son can not experience bona-fide sympathy for an imaginary being, as we can, and yet the Father, at least, still knows He has the CAPACITY to experience bona-fide sympathy for creatures independent of ever having created a sentient being. Then he would have a motivation to create, both for Himself and for the Son. And maybe the Son never thinks of creating at all since he's not the one OUT of whom we were created. Maybe the Son, sans creation, just revels in his relationship with the Father with no conscious desire for novelty. There are ways we can think about this without giving up certain essentials of deity.
Post Edited (Similtude) : 2/10/2010 1:16:16 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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