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Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 5/19/2012 4:53 PM (GMT -6) |   | Something just dawned on me. I hold a position that grounds a definition of deity such that all 3 members of the godhead and, therefore Jesus, are fully divine. And also, Jesus is fully man. We need only define fully divine as follows:
A fully divine being is a necessary being that depends upon all other necessary beings for the instantiation of one or more of its essential (and, therefore, necessary) attributes.
None of this implies each divine being has to be omnipotent or omniscient. And yet one of them could incarnate into a human embryo and take on humanity in THAT SENSE. In short, that would mean that a human person DEPENDS upon a body for the instantiation of SOME of its attributes. By these definitions of human and divine, a being could be fully divine and fully human. Moreover, it doesn't involve a full polytheism since each divine person depends on all other divine beings for the instantiation of some necessary/essential attributes. In that sense, the multiplicity isn't an independent multiplicity as is true of ancient polytheism.
Moreover, once creation is totally characterized by natural (or at least non-libertarian) as opposed to libertarian causality, creation might very well be relatively meaningless to the divine persons as compared to their OWN love of one another. But so long as the libertarian feature is intact, our volitional actions are part and parcel of the degree of satisfaction the divine persons experience from creation. Divine diversity is what renders this understandable in scriptural terms.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 5/19/2012 6:41:39 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 5/20/2012 5:16 PM (GMT -6) | |
I just read Greg's appendix on-line about the Trinity. It says:
Issue 2: The Psychological and Social Models of the Trinity
The Bible teaches that there is only one God. At the same time, it teaches
that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each fully God. For this reason the
church has always affirmed the doctrine of the Trinity, which teaches that God
has one substance (ousia) but eternally and fully exists as three distinct Persons
(hypostases personae).
I'm not aware of any verse that even uses language like "fully God" about Jesus--much less about the Holy Spirit--or about the co-substantiality of the Three. What's more relevant is that Jesus used the flexibility of the meaning of "god" in the Greek and Hebrew language to show how it easy it is to explain how Jesus is god:
John Chapter 10, verses 30-36 (KJV)
10:30 I and [my] Father are one.
10:31 Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.
10:32 Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?
10:33 The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.
10:34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?
10:35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;
10:36 Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?
John Chapter 17, verses 21-22 (KJV)
17:21 THAT THEY ALL MAY BE ONE; as thou, Father, [art] in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
17:22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; THAT THEY MAY BE ONE, EVEN AS WE ARE ONE:
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 5/21/2012 1:13 AM (GMT -6) | | Jeff: God is just WAY more benevolent than you think if you think everyone that disagrees with you about this stuff is hurling unto damnation.
Tom: I don’t remember saying anything about going to hell for getting the Trinity wrong. Those who trust Christ honestly are his, and I’m glad it’s not our job to decide whose faith is sufficiently informed to be genuine and whose isn’t. With Justin Martyr I think Christ the Logos is present in the perception of all truth by whomever and weighs the thoughts and intentions of the heart relative to the light each of us has. We’ll leave who gets hurled into damnation to God. I haven’t brought that up.
But establishing and growing the Church on earth as the community whose being/existence is centered in a certain embrace of orthodoxy on the fundamentals and is identifably the Body of Christ, now that's different. That's something we can know something about and are to participate responsibly. I don’t personally doubt you’re a brother in Christ, Jeff. But--if it were up to me, and it isn't--I wouldn’t let you teach Sunday school. That was my point. I’m talking about maintaining the core, definitive affirmations of the faith for the sake of perpetuating that faith hand to shoulder in continuity with the historical Church. I’m not talking about who gets thrown into hell. That you're going to heaven because of your trust in Christ alone doesn't mean that your views on God or the Trinity are identifiably "Christian." Whatever might be the state of an individual’s heart—God knows—neither unitarianism nor polytheism can be called “Christianity.”
Jeff: Tom, both you and D have implied or stated that Greg is unorthodox.
Tom: His disdain for orthodoxy is a matter of public record.
Jeff: Do you ask him what the name of his new religion is?
Tom: Yes. I also told Greg I couldn’t tell the difference between his present view of the Trinity (which he now admits isn’t compatible with T&P) and polytheism.
Tom
"The aesthetic value the world has for God is in expressing, not constituting, the aesthetic value God eternally finds within Godself." Greg BoydPost Edited (Tom) : 5/21/2012 1:57:17 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 5/21/2012 6:06 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom: I don’t remember saying anything about going to hell for getting the Trinity wrong. Those who trust Christ honestly are his, and I’m glad it’s not our job to decide whose faith is sufficiently informed to be genuine and whose isn’t. With Justin Martyr I think Christ the Logos is present in the perception of all truth by whomever and weighs the thoughts and intentions of the heart relative to the light each of us has. We’ll leave who gets hurled into damnation to God. I haven’t brought that up.
Jeff: When D says gates of heaven are still open, and when you say I'm doing another religion, it sure sounds like you're both doing that. But I'm glad to know you're not.
Tom: Whatever might be the state of an individual’s heart—God knows—neither unitarianism nor polytheism can be called “Christianity.”
Jeff: There's nothing in scripture that says anything about co-substantial monotheism. And yet the very creed D quoted above claims that scripture IS consistent with the creed. And I don't hold to independent polytheism.
Jeff: Tom, both you and D have implied or stated that Greg is unorthodox.
Tom: His disdain for orthodoxy is a matter of public record.
Jeff: You told me he wanted to be consonant with tradition.
Tom: Yes. I also told Greg I couldn’t tell the difference between his present view of the Trinity (which he now admits isn’t compatible with T&P) and polytheism.
Jeff: How can that be? He agrees with the co-subtantiality of the 3 doesn't he?
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 5/21/2012 9:48 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
I also told Greg I couldn’t tell the difference between his present view of the Trinity (which he now admits isn’t compatible with T&P) and polytheism.
Worded another way. Greg understands that in positing a "one hypostasis-in-two-natures" Jesus, given the metaphysical assumptions within T&P about what is divine and non-divine, he would HAVE to posit a dual consciousness (being a subject of both divine and non-divine realities, simultaneously experiencing both) in one hypostasis, the Co-Eternal Son/Word of God the Father by the Spirit. Along the lines of what the w.i.l.d analogy is to represent. Basically, Greg held (and still holds) to kenoticism when he wrote T&P and expressed it in his christological application of T&P, unfortunately misunderstanding the full implications of his own metaphysical assumptions about divinity and non-divinity specifically brought forth in his ontology in T&P. Thus, T&P's "authentic" view of Christ and the Trinity is not compatible with the social-trinity grounded kenoticism he holds.
My thought is that, if he had known more about the Fathers at the time of writing T&P, he could have seen the ALIGNMENT almost instantly with the TRUE Chalcedonian understanding of the Hypostatic Union. But...honestly, I kinda like that about the whole thing. Because of Greg's not knowing the Fathers in depth, his work effectively INDEPENDENTLY CONFIRMS and METAPHYSICALLY AFFIRMS the Orthodox idea of Trinity, God as Beauty, Logos/Logos, apetheia, etc from a reconstructed Harthorninan PROCESS standpoint.
You can't get more real than that in my mind.
What y'all think?
Doc's stuff is the perfect bridge between orthodox Trinitarianism and process theology.
PS for Jeff. When I say "Jesus loves us all and the gates to His Father's house are ALWAYS open." I say that as being something I feel like whatever ELSE we disagree on, we would agree 1) Jesus loves universally and 2) we are BOTH holders of scripturally-justifiable EUR. Just a trying to leave on common ground thing. I know I've used the Jesus loves us all thing in situations like this before. That's interesting that you took that how you did (ie I would believe that being errant on the Trinity warrants "hell" ) But hey, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 5/21/2012 10:14:02 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 5/21/2012 6:42 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom: The consubstantiatlity of the Father and Son are pretty evident in Scripture. But we've been around the block on that, so there's no need to go there.
Jeff: On the contrary. Everything that you've said about Jesus/Beloved, minus co-substantiality, could be true even if the 3 are distinct beings. There is no verse that I recall that even hints at trying to address whether the 3 are co-substantial.
Tom: Anybody can read the Bible and say what they think it means.
Jeff: And that's what the creed says its authors believed they were doing.
Tom: But it doesn't follow that the interpretations of those who "trust in Christ as Savior" are by virtue of that trust "Christian" interpretations.
Jeff: Nor does it follow "that the interpretations of" creedal authors "are by virtue of that" authorship "'Christian' interpretations." You see that, surely.
Tom: You have an interpretation of the Scriptures that's not eccelsially Christian.
Jeff: And nothing with respect to right-relating follows from that PER SE. That's the point. Do you really think there's anything like a Christian unity out there that has ANY significance to those "without?" Indeed, the professing church is one of the biggest reasons avowed unbelievers give for the falsehood of Christianity. And this is not unexpected: Paul said the same thing about the Jews' orthodox "witness" to the Gentiles--that they caused the name of God to be blasphemed. The professing "orthodox" church is, just as were the Corinthians, a body divided into many sects. Indeed, they are sects divided over matters that, unlike co-substantiality, are at least written about in scriptural texts. That is no grounds for boasting that they put more weight on unity over matters scripture doesn't even mention than those it does.
And D, no need for an apology. I was not troubled for myself. As always, I'm troubled by groundless and weakly-grounded public judgment of others. I think this shuts down discussion. Scripture tells us to have an answer for every man. It never says be unified for unity's sake. So I'm interested in the development of the art of fruitful engagement with others, not being in any particular group.
And Tom, thanks for the clarification about Greg. It helps make more sense of the scattered comments about his perspective.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 5/21/2012 7:15:03 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 5/22/2012 10:26 AM (GMT -6) | | |
Tom: The consubstantiatlity of the Father and Son are pretty evident in Scripture. But we've been around the block on that, so there's no need to go there.
Jeff: On the contrary. Everything that you've said about Jesus/Beloved, minus co-substantiality, could be true even if the 3 are distinct beings.
Tom: So you believe, and that’s fine. But this is just the point on which we disagree.
Tom
"The aesthetic value the world has for God is in expressing, not constituting, the aesthetic value God eternally finds within Godself." Greg BoydPost Edited (Tom) : 5/22/2012 10:29:06 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 5/22/2012 6:06 PM (GMT -6) | | No, with respect to co-substantiality being evident in scripture, that's just wrong. It's hard to imagine how such a subject could be addressed other than explicitly unless it's natural to suppose that even humans or human persons are not beings either. But if that's the case, why do we constantly hear the phrase "human being" used all the time? We have no reason whatsoever, to my knowledge (and you haven't attempted to inform me otherwise), to suppose that 1st century Christians didn't believe humans or human persons weren't beings. And on the other hand, the only time the NT speaks of God being one in number, it speaks of the Father only. So this point (about scriptural evidence) is not even controversial, deductively or inductively speaking.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 5/22/2012 9:25:16 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 5/23/2012 10:00 AM (GMT -6) | | Jeff: No, with respect to co-substantiality being evident in scripture, that's just wrong.
Tom: I'm not familiar with the term "co-substantial." I know "CONsubstantial" (the Latin term used to translate the Greek "homoousios" ). But look, Jeff, I respect your view as your view. We just disagree, and your insisting I'm "just wrong" doesn't add anything to the fact that we disagree.
Tom
"The aesthetic value the world has for God is in expressing, not constituting, the aesthetic value God eternally finds within Godself." Greg Boyd Post Edited (Tom) : 5/23/2012 10:56:42 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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