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BBBCanada
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 2763
| Posted 4/8/2012 7:34 PM (GMT -6) |   | | I want to bounce something off you guys. I have a friend of mine. His (great?) aunt, (Freda Lindsay), started Christ for the Nations. We went to Bible school at the same time. His objection to today's Easter (and yes, I got your text D. Thanks!) celebrations went like this: "Easter: a sacred holiday during which we celebrate the ultimate sacrifice of someone with the ability to almost instantaneously come back to life."
Now of course the objection is that it can't really be much of a sacrifice if Jesus can be like Superman and allows himself to be shot at. The bullets really wouldn't do anything to him.
But then I thought, well this is where the trinity comes in. With the trinity, God the Father and the Son pay a steep price. In other words, if my foot were to be broken for about three days, the fact that it doesn't stay broken forever doesn't mean it isn't any less painful. It could be very painful during that time.
But this brings up another issue that we have talked about on these boards and that is about God's aseity. If as D and Tom have said before, God is fully aesethically satisfied--if God is so "full" of satisfaction, how can we speak of any "price" that is to some degree or another "painful?" And if it really isn't painful how can it really be costly? Does that make sense?
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 4/13/2012 8:59 AM (GMT -6) | | Sorry, Brandon. I'll respond.
Let's start with dude's objection and your discussion of the point...
"Easter: a sacred holiday during which we celebrate the ultimate sacrifice of someone with the ability to almost instantaneously come back to life."
Now of course the objection is that it can't really be much of a sacrifice if Jesus can be like Superman and allows himself to be shot at. The bullets really wouldn't do anything to him.
I'll try to put this in a stronger form. What I'm gathering is that genuine personal sacrifice assumes authentic vulnerability to be "hurt" by or for the other. When we say "hurt", let's just say at LEAST some diminished sense of well-being via emotional disruption or loss. To sacrifice IS to "risk" that emotional disruption or loss by and for the other. If someone is INvulnerable while saving the other--if there is NO real emotional disrupotion or loss incurred--then there may be willing other-centered, self-giving beneficence and compassion there, but not sacrifice as such. And the argument seems to go that Jesus, being the Son of God, was virtually "INvulnerable" because he ultimately had nothing to lose by losing his earthly life (or even being momentarily "forsaken" by the Father on the Cross or whatever); he would get everything back in spades. No emotional disruption/suffering or loss experienced would be enduring. For the joy set before Him, right? So, if Jesus IS "invulnerable" as described above, how can his giving of himself genuinely be called SACRIFICIAL?
I think that's strong enough.
Now, here are my thoughts.
1) It may be said that it seems like your friend has a serious case of ingratitude, in my opinion. If your loved ones were about to die in a fire, would you care that that flames couldn't hurt Superman while he saving your family...or would you say that human firefighters on the scene are more sacrificial because the flames involved can actually kill them. Think about it. If the person understood what LOSTNESS Christ saved us from, such a glib way of talking about Jesus' work would not be forthcoming, I don't think.
2) What is sacrificial giving but the openness to the other and willingness to give of oneself that which is necessary for the benefit of the other? To say that sacrificial type giving can ONLY obtain when "hurt" is a possibility is to say that the mutual self-giving, other-oriented love of the Trinity is NOT sacrificial in any real sense...because there is no possiblity of emotional disruption or loss in the Trinity. (This is the same reason why it can be said that LOVINGKINDNESS exists in the Trinity but not COMPASSION) If that's the case that sacrifice by God could ONLY take place if he took on a reality that COULD have emotional disruption/suffering or sense of loss: created reality. This moves us to #3.
3) Think about Jesus as we have him in the Gospels...from being born to Mary in the manger...to his Cross experience and death. In this drama, we have the divine person, the co-eternal Son of God, "learning obedience" through (human) suffering and experiencing dereliction of (human) spirit...such that his (human) soul was "sorrowful unto death" and more. This is what I would ask your friend...
How much more vulnerable to emotional disruption/suffering and loss could God--being the NECESSARILY-EXISTENT, UNCREATED, BOUNDLESS, CREATOR being that God is--have made himself...than what we see in the life of Jesus of Nazereth?
Seriously. How much more vulnerable could God have personally made himself before his Creation?
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/13/2012 9:04:55 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 4/13/2012 5:16 PM (GMT -6) | | D: Maybe I should ask this question: If God's self-giving to us in Jesus cannot be seen as "costly", is it DEVALUED then to that degree? If so, then what does THAT show?
T: Exactly. Say I'm bankrupt and need $150K to get out of the whole, another $300K to pay off my house and live comfortably for the rest of my life. Somebody who has, let us say, an infinite supply of cash, gives me what I need and in addition say, "Hey, if you need anything more, just holler. No need you could have would burdened me". So he gets me out of debt and sets me up for life.
I'm are REALLY going to say that this gift is not valuable to me UNLESS it puts the giver into financial straights? What if the giver has so much that the amount it takes to bail me out is relatively meaningless to him in terms of his net worth? Should I only be grateful if HE goes bankrupt bailing me out or if he has to take out a loan to bail me out? C'mon.
There's a dispairing sort of psychological calculus at work in the kind of cry for help that reduces God to the level of commisseration, where I have to know God has sacrficed the felt quality of his own triune bliss before I'll let myself be happy. The price of MY happiness is HIS happiness. He has to give up HIS in order to refund me MINE. I just won't permit him any imperturbable joy or delight on any level so long as I'm in pain.
I cannot now...but I hope someday to be able to...put my finger on what is in fact sinful about such a view. In the meantime, apatheia is doing more for me spiritually/practically than open theism ever did (and I'm still an open theist!). 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) : 4/13/2012 5:20:49 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 4/14/2012 9:21 AM (GMT -6) | | |
Tom: I'm are REALLY going to say that this gift is not valuable to me UNLESS it puts the giver into financial straights? What if the giver has so much that the amount it takes to bail me out is relatively meaningless to him in terms of his net worth?
Jeff: Worth is not the issue. The issue is, does sacrifice involve some sense of loss? If it doesn't, I have no idea what the word means.
1. the offering of animal, plant, or human life or of some material possession to a deity, as in propitiation or homage.
2. the person, animal, or thing so offered.
3. the surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim.
4. the thing so surrendered or devoted.
5. a loss incurred in selling something below its value.
Tom: Should I only be grateful if HE goes bankrupt bailing me out or if he has to take out a loan to bail me out?
Jeff: Is thankfulness a meaningful concept if there is no libertarian volition? And can libertarian volition be conceived of apart from a CHOICE of one or more DESIRABLE options? That's the issue I have with your view. It seems to deny the very conceivability of divine volition. God can't FREELY affect (consciously and sentiently) Himself AT ALL by your view, as far as I can tell.
Tom: There's a dispairing sort of psychological calculus at work in the kind of cry for help that reduces God to the level of commisseration, where I have to know God has sacrficed the felt quality of his own triune bliss before I'll let myself be happy. The price of MY happiness is HIS happiness. He has to give up HIS in order to refund me MINE. I just won't permit him any imperturbable joy or delight on any level so long as I'm in pain.
Jeff: No one prefers that sacrifice be necessary for volitional love. It just IS given my definition of volitional choice. To choose is to SIMULTANEOUSLY REJECT one or more OTHER desirable options. That rejection is a LOSS of a kind.
Tom: In the meantime, apatheia is doing more for me spiritually/practically than open theism ever did (and I'm still an open theist!).
Jeff: Because we differ as to what a free choice even means, I'm not sure what you mean by open theism. Open theism is just what must be true GIVEN the reality of libertarian freewill as we typically define it. Your view of aseity renders my definition of free-will false. And therefore, it renders my conception of open theism false.
As I see it, the real necessary and sufficient conditions for God's relevant sense of "invulnerability" are the COMPETENCE and BENEVOLENCE of His teleological aims. If His teleological ends are benevolent, those ends, if attained, will occasion a satisfying sympathetic experience for God. If He is teleologically competent, He is sure to ATTAIN that degree of satisfaction that renders creation WORTHWHILE. As such, this teleological project WILL be WORTH it to Him. That's the only sense in which God needs to be INVULNERABLE to render Him trustworthy for us. To posit more, as I see it, is to move beyond scripture and philosophy. That is the realm of tolerance, as I see it.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 4/14/2012 10:12:22 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/15/2012 2:37 AM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
You read Greg and hear one thing. I read him and hear something else. Greg is an exceedingly poor communicator if he's saying what you're saying, IMO. That's not to say that he doesn't use lingo that COULD sound like your own. But when he fleshes out his meaning with analogies, he ends us saying something different than you do.
You MUST be joking, Jeff. It's right friggin there, man! Part of Greg's stuff again...all emphases mine...
-------------------------------------------------
There is, it seems, no contradiction in maintaining that a being can be self-content on one level, and yet suffer at another. For example, a person need not sacrifice their self-love, their contentment with who they are, their own internal “fullness of life” in order to genuinely enter into the sufferings of another. Indeed, it seems that the person who enters into the sufferings of others with a sense of internal fullness is in a better position to genuinely enter into these sufferings than one who lacks such “fullness.”
To speak more specifically, a person who suffers for another because she needs the other—e.g., needs this other to make her “feel good” about herself, to feel loved and needed, etc.—is more inclined to yet have herself as the object of concern, and thus more inclined to be, to that extent, shut off to the real needs of the other. In contrast, one who enters into solidarity with a sufferer but who is self-content, who loves herself, who possesses an internal fullness which is not destroyed by the suffering, is free to have the sufferer as the sole object of her concern. She is free, in a sense, to “forget herself” in devotion to another.
In the case of the former person, one who “needs” the other to arrive at her self-love, the act of entering into solidarity with a sufferer is an expression of her deficiency. In the case of the latter person however, the act of entering into solidarity with a sufferer is an expression of her wholeness. And the more whole she is, the more perfectly she can suffer with and for the other. 62
There are, of course, millions of humans who hold to a superficial form of self-contentment to the exclusion of, or even at the expense of, others’ happiness. In fact, the instances of an opposite disposition are unfortunately rare. The prevalence of this attitude, especially in first world countries, is no doubt one of the reasons why we have such difficulty in seeing God as being both eternally self-satisfied and also temporally self-abased. But, as we have argued, there is no necessary connection between self-contentment and insensitivity.
We may, then, conceive of God as one who is both unsurpassably self-content in God’s essential sociality, while being, at the same time, fully incarnated in the sin and suffering of the world in God’s expressive sociality. Indeed, implied in what we have argued thus far is the supposition that God is free to enter into and redeem the sufferings of the world fully precisely because God is eternally self-sufficient within Godself.
Note 62:
The analogy has, of course, a limited application to God in that all humans need other humans to be full within themselves. Their social nature is actualized only in relation to other humans. God too is social, but this sociality is satisfied within Godself. But the analogy does articulate that, as a person may enter into selfless solidarity with another out of fullness—a fullness derived from this person’s other relationships to human and to God—so God can enter into selfless solidarity with suffering humanity out of a fullness “derived” from this One’s “other” sociality—the eternal sociality God has within Godself.
---------------------------------
Come ON now, Jeff. Greg is SPECIFIFICALLY SAYING that God's own "internal fullness" and "contentment" which is NOT "destroyed by suffering" comes from God's OWN aesthetically satisfying "eternal sociality God has within Godself." In other words, nothing that happens in the world can give or take away from this primordial contentment formed by God's own uncreated social being.
You will not be able to convince me that Greg's analogies say something different that what Tom and I have been saying, Jeff. Why? Because it's...right...friggin...there! You are way too smart NOT to see what he's specifically saying with his analogy use. I'm not trying to be an a$$ or nuthin. It's just really stetching my brain seeing HOW you can't see this, Jeff. I'm being very, very serious. I do not see how you can NOT see this. It borders on the incredible that you could miss Greg's meaning.
Let's JUST focus on the section above, Jeff. NOTHING MORE OR LESS. Just the analogy used in the section above. You REALLY, REALLY don't see the point Greg is making?
Am I dreaming this? It IS late...
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/15/2012 2:52:19 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/15/2012 2:53 AM (GMT -6) | | Maybe I'm crazy right now...but I ain't gonna let this go UNTIL Jeff at least gets this point. My sanity's in this now.
Bulldog mode...ON!
lol! 
This should do it. When I worked at St. John's Home for Children, a person I worked with said something that I feel embodies what is being said here. The person worked extensively with grief and abuse counseling. She said this about how to be grounded doing such work and I never will forget it:
"You must be able to fully with-stand...so that you can fully stand-with."
Dude, she was saying pretty much the SAME THING that Greg is saying. A grief counselor cannot be emotionally/psychological overwhelmed by or emotionally/psychologically dependent on with the emotional/psychological experiences of those she helps. Otherwise, she will NOT be able to bring her fullness and capacities to bear in "standing with" people in their deepest pain. She must have INNER STABILITY/CONTENTMENT that is NOT grounded on the positive or negative experiences of her clients. Can she be compassionate responsive to their ups and downs? Yes. Why? BECAUSE the inner groundedness ALLOWS her to be other-focused, not self-focused. This is EXACTLY what Greg was saying in his analogy!
Now, Jeff. If this don't do it...I just don't know what to say, man. That's a REAL LIVE use of Greg's analogy from LIVED experience with grief/abuse counseling. Throw me a BONE here. 
Here's how I will know that you have it: Can you RESTATE for me what is being said in your own words, Jeff?
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/15/2012 3:07:58 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 4/15/2012 9:33 AM (GMT -6) | | | D: Come ON now, Jeff. Greg is SPECIFIFICALLY SAYING that God's own "internal fullness" and "contentment" which is NOT "destroyed by suffering" comes from God's OWN aesthetically satisfying "eternal sociality God has within Godself." In other words, nothing that happens in the world can give or take away from this primordial contentment formed by God's own uncreated social being.
J: That's the part of your view that I agree with, D. But that DOESN'T imply that the contentment that the Father has with the divine sociality relationship renders Him UNABLE to be affected, sentiently, by creation. Greg's very analogy is used to prove precisely that the Father CAN be affected sentiently by the world. Indeed, that's what that very section sets out TO SHOW!
Tom is saying he disagrees with this, not only because of the death of the Son, which Greg addresses in that very section (you have claimed that Greg doesn't buy your 2-mind view, haven't you?), but also because Tom further posits a non-finite experience that renders all human analogies moot. I'm not sure we're even saying anything intelligible when we try to express a meaning for an infinite degree of pleasure. In a sense, we merely mean by "infinite" what something is NOT -- i.e. finite. But concepts need to have positive content if we're going to try to deduce conclusions from them.
Another point where Greg agrees with me, apparently, is how he trys to show that an attribute is essential. He says the reason he thinks the "internal fulness" is necessary is because the love entailed in redemption can not be explained any other way. Now I disagree with that particular claim. But I DO agree that what renders a divine attribute KNOWABLY necessary is the fact that there's something about creation that can NOT be explained any other way. This can occur in two ways, as I have explained in our debate about the ontolotical argument:
1) Something can be inexplicable PER SE,
or
2) Something can be explained a particular way, but only by denying the role of the normative criteria of "breadth of explanation" to adjudicate between merely logical possibilities.
1) is purely deductive in nature. 2) has to do with the problem of proving "too much," thereby rendering warranted belief impossible.
That debate on the trinity recently linked to in "General Chat" is a good example of how important it is to agree on how we determine whether a putative divine attribute is necessary. I've explained multiple times why my view explains all that seems necessary to me. No one has argued against me yet by saying, "Yes, but scripture saith ...," or, "Yes, but facet X of creation is inexplicable unless ..."
Post Edited (Similitude) : 4/15/2012 9:45:35 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 4/15/2012 12:40 PM (GMT -6) | | |
T: I believe God is affected sentiently by creation... HOW to combined this with the necessary fullness of God's essential aesthetic satsifaction is what we're up to. But I'm not settling for either/or thinking right now.
J: But you have articulated your inability to account for HOW God is affected sentiently by creation by an apparent contradiction in your view--what you call apparently conflicting math. My contention is that positing non-finite attributes is not positing anything we can meaningfully conceive of as explanatory. They are just negative in connotation, not positive. As such, they don't buy us anything explanatorily. Consequently, we can't know that infinite divine attributes, even if they exist, are necessary, per human modes of knowledge. Greg's thesis is written for evaluation by human modes of knowledge, best I can tell.
Greg used a human analogy which can be extrapolated to a degree of perfection (i.e., infallible) in terms of absolutely sufficient perspective and competency without positing anything non-finite.
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One Love
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| Posted 4/15/2012 1:30 PM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
But that DOESN'T imply that the contentment that the Father has with the divine sociality relationship renders Him UNABLE to be affected, sentiently, by creation.
If you can show me--anywhere in my years of writing on this--where I've ever said that God is IN ABSOLUTELY NO WAY sentiently affected by the world's existence...and I'll give you $100. What I've said for YEARS now is that Creation is relatively meaningless to God in that God doesn't need Creation to be absolutely full of infinitely intense love, joy, and peace. He doesn't need Creation to achieve that. God is just as aesthetically fulfilled in himself WITHOUT Creation as WITH Creation. Greg specifically says that God DOES value creation as EXPRESSION of the aesthetically-satisfying inner value within Godself. He says that in T&P, so how can I say that God is UNABLE to be affected by Creation in any possible way?
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/15/2012 1:35:12 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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