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One Love
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| Posted 4/15/2012 3:15 PM (GMT -6) |   | D: The (more despairing) analogy I used before was having a mosquito sting during an unsupassably intense, all-over orgasm. Would you still feel the sting? If your nervers are working properly, yeah. But it would be relativized unto virtual meaninglessness in comparison to the orgasm.
J: But the only way this can even make sense is if the two-minds view of the Logos is true. But didn't you say Greg denies the two-minds view? If the two-minds view is false, then Christ praying to have the cup pass from him if possible makes no sense if his death was the sentient equivalent of a mesquito bite at the same time as an orgasm.
I'm really, really glad that you saw that, Jeff. 
Greg currently denies the two-minds view (logos asarkos) because he is not in full consistency with his own work in T&P. Tom and I have made him very aware of this. We know his work backwards and forwards. We are right on this one, Jeff. Trust us, bro.
PS: It's Greg's trinitarian reconstruction of Hartshornian process theism that metaphysically allows for the EUR we've argued for biblically and theologically. Greg has been made aware of this as well.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/15/2012 3:20:38 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 4/15/2012 3:59 PM (GMT -6) | | Page 381, note 64....emphasis Greg's
"The metaphysical necessity of God’s self-relationality means, I believe, that it is not possible to conceive of the death of the Son as anything other than an expression of the intense love of God’s inner life. This paradox shall be discussed shortly, but it presently needs to be said that this mean that all talk about a "breakdown of the relationship that constitutes the very life of the Trinity" such as we find (for example) in Moltmann is, if taken literally, strictly impossible. See Trinity and Kingdom, p. 80. Jungel too speaks of God’s being as "a being-in-a-becoming threatened by perishing," Doctrine of Trinity, p. 84. See also Rice, God’s Foreknowledge, p. 43. If taken at face value, these positions would imply that God’s essential being, God’s triunity, is contingent. What is necessary can never "perish" or "breakdown"—though it can experience death."
Really look at this quote, Jeff. Now, if the "...relationship that constitutes the very life of the Trinity" is indeed a threefold interpersonal conscious relationship where the beauty of said relationship is unsurpassably intense unto God's aesthetic satisfication (which Greg DOES say in T&P) ...and if this uncreated state is NECESSARY (which Greg says it is)...then kenoticism cannot be true. Tom and I already have ON THE RECORD that Greg (following C. Stephens Evans) ALREADY ADMITTED that, if kenoticism is true, it is the case that..."immediately post-Immaculate Conception, the 'Son's condescension to become a zygote' is such that the Son-as-zygote is 'no longer personally interacting with the F and Sp' " BOTH OF THEM have admitted this.
Now...Greg said in the T&P quote that "what is necessary can never 'perish' or 'breakdown'...". That means that the "threefold interpersonal conscious relationship" CANNOT "breakdown" such that one of the divine persons is not conscious on every level anymore. In other words, if God's uncreated self-relationality is NECESSARILY a threefold interpersonal conscious relationship, it CANNOT BE OTHERWISE, even immediately post-Immaculate Conception onward. Unless one wants to say that the Trinity is CONTINGENT (transforming into a BINATY immediately upon Incarnation and then later went back to a Trinity), I don't see what else that could be said.
Taking Note 64 seriously would mean to posit the Son as an immutably-present participant in the uncreated, immaterial "threefold interpersonal conscious relationship" that is the Trinity...and this is something that kenoticism CANNOT say.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/15/2012 4:19:48 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 4/15/2012 4:02 PM (GMT -6) | | | In an email exchange with Greg, I said the following...
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Looking at [things] now, I see that Greg wrote this AS a kenoticist, holding to the evangelical-kenoticist-held "two natures/one person" idea of Chalcedon (rather than the actual Chalcedonian perspective which says how the uncreated, co-eternal Son personally takes on created nature) and he was localizing the achievement of the divine aim TO the human subjective aim of Jesus (effectively LOCALIZING the personal presence of the co-eternal Son of God to ONLY the human nature). It's obvious that Greg didn't think about our little "zygote" problem at this time...like Evans and McCall.
...
What needs to be taken into account is the implications of Note 64: the divine person who Jesus is an immutably-present participant in the uncreated, immaterial "threefold interpersonal conscious relationship" that is the Trinity. This would lead us to the "lucid-dream"/"dual consciousness" model rather than evangelical kenotic christology.
In short, Greg was INCONSISTENT with himself on this point in T&P...because he (like Evans and McCall) did NOT think of Jesus as zygotic and how that would be terminal to his own analysis of Moltmann and Jungel in Note 64.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/15/2012 4:11:25 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 4/15/2012 4:19 PM (GMT -6) | | | Is this a glaring oversight? Yes. But one that can be forgiven seeing as how virtually ALL the evangelical kenoticists have fallen into the same trap.
Let me make sure this sticks, Jeff. Would you agree with the following:
If someone says that the threefold interpersonal conscious relationship is a NECESSARY feature in God's UNCREATED self-relationship (sans any Creation even), then that someone HAS TO AGREE that the threefold interpersonal conscious relationship CANNOT FAIL to exist because is it NECESSARY...even immediately post-Incarnation when Jesus is a zygotic group of cells in Mary's womb.
Would you agree with that?
"The metaphysical necessity of God’s self-relationality means, I believe, that it is not possible to conceive of the death of the Son as anything other than an expression of the intense love of God’s inner life. This paradox shall be discussed shortly, but it presently needs to be said that this mean that all talk about a "breakdown of the relationship that constitutes the very life of the Trinity" such as we find (for example) in Moltmann is, if taken literally, strictly impossible. See Trinity and Kingdom, p. 80. Jungel too speaks of God’s being as "a being-in-a-becoming threatened by perishing," Doctrine of Trinity, p. 84. See also Rice, God’s Foreknowledge, p. 43. If taken at face value, these positions would imply that God’s essential being, God’s triunity, is contingent. What is necessary can never "perish" or "breakdown"—though it can experience death."
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/15/2012 4:29:11 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 4/15/2012 5:00 PM (GMT -6) | | Greg:
The metaphysical necessity of God’s self-relationality means, I believe, that it is not possible to conceive of the death of the Son as anything other than an expression of the intense love of God’s inner life.
Please get what he's saying here. Greg is saying that he could not interpret the multi-day death experience of Jesus in terms of actual cessation of the Son's being able to reciprocate the Father's love, effectively breaking the metaphysical necessity of God's self-relationality. He could ONLY see it as an expression of the "intense love of God's inner life. He specifically did NOT agree with the idea that on the Cross or in the His Tomb, the Son was actually interpersonally separated from the God the Father. That would be a fundamental "breakdown of the relationship that constitutes the very life of the Trinity". The metaphysical necessity of the interpersonal nature of God's self-relationality, it cannot be conceived to ACTUALLY "perish" or "breakdown."
But he didn't see that for this to be TRUE...and for his project to not be inherently Apollinarian (ie mutant/super zygote with spiritual, interpersonal abilities housing the person of Son)...it NECESSARILY means some dual consciousness/two minds idea in the Incarnation.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/15/2012 5:06:23 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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BBBCanada
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| Posted 4/15/2012 9:57 PM (GMT -6) | | |
I understand what you are saying D. Let me put this in a summarized more simpler form.
God who is a necessarily Trinitarian sociality also necessarily exists. The trinity exists in an unsurpassably intense joyful, loving relationship such that God is completely aesthetically satisfied within Godself.
The kenotic angle plays out like this. If God necessarily exists in said relationship then kenoticism (Jesus fully divinity is denied) can’t be true because if God exists in relationship necessarily then what are we to say about Jesus as zygote? This relationship doesn’t stop when Jesus is a zygote. If kenoticism is true then we’d have to say that the relationship “perishes” or “breaksdown” (which it can’t).
Now what Greg is saying is that even in death, this relationship can’t breakdown. So when Jesus spoke of being separated he could not have really been out of relationship as this would constitute “a fundamental breakdown” of a relationship that necessarily exists. What this means is that this would have to entail a “two minds” consciousness.
So, how would you, Jeff, say that kenoticism is compatible with divine sociality?
Brandon
Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.--Saint Augustine
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BBBCanada
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| Posted 4/15/2012 10:04 PM (GMT -6) | | Just another thought (question). Is it not the relationship itself that "makes God who God is?" This is what I believe Zizioulas teaches in, "Being as Communion."
Brandon
Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.--Saint Augustine
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One Love
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| Posted 4/15/2012 10:45 PM (GMT -6) | | But this is what I just can't get about Jeff. Sans Creation, the three persons of the Trinity are ALL THAT EXIST. There is absolutely NO REASON for any of the divine persons to be in any coma type state. They would all be CONSCIOUS and in interpersonal love relationship. If that is how God from eternity "past"...if that is how God's uncreated self-relationality works...then how in the world could it be NOT be a necessary feature of who God is?
Jeff has not really answered that.
What I've tried to tell Jeff is that, UNLIKE HIM, Greg agrees that the pre-Creation state of God where the threefold conscious interpersonal love relationship is a NECESSARY FEATURE of divine self-relationality. It's right there in Note 64 and other places. So, for Greg to be CONSISTENT, he would have to say that said necessary feature cannot fail to obtain, even immediately post-Incarnation.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/15/2012 10:48:14 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 4/15/2012 10:59 PM (GMT -6) | | Brandon:
Also, while one would say be in some positional relationship, say with their family member while they sleep, they would not be in any way in that sort of "full relationship" in such a state. So, yeah, go ahead and say, that you can positionally relate to someone, but not in a fully relational way.
Exactamundo, Brandon. And this "positional" relationality is NOT SUFFICIENT for the threefold conscious love relationship we are talking about.
Seems simple as pie, don't it?
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. | | Back to Top | | |
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Asher
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| Posted 4/16/2012 2:08 AM (GMT -6) | | Dwayne: Jeff denies that the threefold interpersonal conscious relationship is a NECESSARY feature in God's UNCREATED self-relationship. That's the issue. He believes that the Father and Spirit can be fully hypostatic/personal while the Son, for a time, can be NON-hypostatic and lacking personal awareness as a zygotic grouping of human cells. He also uses the "sleep" analogy saying that the relationships stay intact even while the Son is absolutely non-conscious. Like being in a "love relationship" of sorts with a deeply comatose partner, I guess.
Dwayne, this all just comes down to a different theistic metaphysics for Jeff. Whereas we are going to say something like this about the Trinity: three persona, one essence or being. Jeff would hold to each Divine Person having their own being. All three still necessary, but not necessarily united by a solitary essence. And once you get that, there is nothing difficult to understand about Jeff's views all up and down the line. He's consistent. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 4/16/2012 3:27 AM (GMT -6) | | Asher:
Dwayne, this all just comes down to a different theistic metaphysics for Jeff. Whereas we are going to say something like this about the Trinity: three persona, one essence or being. Jeff would hold to each Divine Person having their own being. All three still necessary, but not necessarily united by a solitary essence. And once you get that, there is nothing difficult to understand about Jeff's views all up and down the line. He's consistent.
Well articulated, Asher. As you yourself clearly described above, Jeff is a consistent tri-theist, which is what has been said before by Tom and me. Jeff is not a trinitarian monotheist, even if he uses similar language. You cannot be a trinitarian monotheist qua Christian (O)rthodoxy can say evangelical kenoticism is true. It just don't work. It ONLY works with effective tri-theism ala the "social model" of the Evangelicals. Even C. Stephen Evans himself specifically said that kenoticism ONLY worked with the "social model" of the Trinity. But Evans proved his tri-theism to be true even when he didn't want it to be. When he said that the zygotic Jesus did not reciprocate love to the Father interpersonally, he effectively not only destroyed the Trinity, but he did so because his TRI-THEISTIC assumptions allowed for it to occur in the first place (ie that the Son's uncreated, conscious, hypostatic reality is conceivably separable from that of the Father and vice versa.)
Feel me?
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/16/2012 3:40:24 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 4/16/2012 6:20 AM (GMT -6) | | | D: What I've tried to tell Jeff is that, UNLIKE HIM, Greg agrees that the pre-Creation state of God where the threefold conscious interpersonal love relationship is a NECESSARY FEATURE of divine self-relationality.
J: By my definition of "necessary," it doesn't matter what the divine persons were doing sans creation. It's the fact that creation COULD motivate a different state that renders the initial state UNnecessary (i.e., UNessential). Aren't you meaning by necessary, essential, as opposed to accidental? But I'm arguing that there really IS a NECESSARY relationship. It's just not necessary in all the particulars that you're arguing for, to my mind. And this is because of how one demonstrates THAT a divine attribute is necessary/essential. I can't demonstrate that all the particulars you are contending for are necessary/essential. But the relationship I'm contending for seems to actually be necessary given the 1) & 2) I mentioned yesterday.
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One Love
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| Posted 4/16/2012 7:37 AM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
I suppose we could talk about a kind of modal logic such that a necessary being has, sans contingent beings, attributes NATURAL to that state. In that sense, I would agree that the persons of the godhead are never unconscious sans contingent beings. In fact, it seems intuitive to me that the Father and Spirit are NEVER unconscious. Nor can I imagine another reason why the Second Person would agree to become unconscious except as a means to a loving end in a contingent creation. The plurality of the godhead gives us some diversity to work with, in that respect. All the important attributes entailed in competent, benevolent design have to inhere in the godHEAD at all times of the creational project. But they don't logically HAVE to inhere in EACH of the persons at all times of the creational project.
I know this is what you believe. You've said this before. This is pretty much what Evans would have said, using the "social model." Basically, the plurality in the godhead allows for the Second Person to leave divine divine competence, benevolence, whatever to the Father and the Spirit while the Son kenotically lives "on earth" located solely in his human nature as a means of expressing love to Creation. You know that, right?
The only real difference is that Evans KNEW what it took to stay orthodox and he cared about that...whereas you don't. That's why the FIRST time I talked to him, he specifically said that the intepersonal relationship between the Father and Son HAD (Evan's emphasis) to continue immediately pre- and -post Incarnation. He knew the theological consequences of saying the opposite of that and wanted to avoid that. He did so by inconsistency...until we met at his talk in UofM where he had no choice but to come clean, given his talk. The only thing that seems to matter to you is basal logical coherence in a view of God that explains your and Creation's existence, not maintaining Christian orthodox per se.
In other words, both of you had tritheistic ("social" ) views grounding your understanding. Evans didn't see his until it was too late. You see yours, but think it's okay because, to you, it's merely a logically possible, rationally conceivable way that explains our existence with a competent, benevolent deity.
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Who ran the universe during the incarnation? The Bible tells us that Christ holds all things today (Col. 1:17; Heb. 1:3). However, if Christ relinquished the exercise of his omnipresence and omniscience while on earth, there is no way he could have continued to perform this role.
In reply, the passages that celebrate Christ's role as Creator and Sustainer of the universe describe Christ's customary role. They do not rule out the possibility that Christ, for a season, set aside this function. The doctrine of the Trinity allows us to assert that God exists in three distinct ways at the same time. According to kenotic theorists, the second way God is God--The Second Person of the Trinity--emptied himself and became a full human. But (thankfully) the universe was not thereby vacated. The Father and Spirit continued to exercise their omnipotent and omniscient capacities.
If it were exegetically necessary, we could argue that Christ still held all things together even while he was incarnate. Consider this example: The owner of a company who goes on vacation may nevertheless be credited with "holding the company together" if he has responsibly arranged for things to carry on a certain way while he is gone. So long as Christ's wisdom and power lie behind the sustaining of the universe, it can be said that he held all things together even after he temporarily surrendered the use of his infinite wisdom and power to become a man.
--Quote from "The Kenotic View" from "Across the Spectrum"
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/16/2012 12:21:54 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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