p.s., D. Thanks for the mention where you said "for those who need the obvious qualification "

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 5/3/2007 5:44:16 PM (GMT-5)

One: It's possible for a human to cultivate themselves such that the Spirit of God can empower the purification of their wills such that they only will one thing: God. Nothing else but God.

Tom: Really? I mean, in the eternal state you won’t will to love others? To walk along the seashore? To bake a cake for your neighbor? Or would this for you just be loving God since you’re making no distinction between others and God?

One: They would embody the Great Commandments like involuntary breathing. They would be "continually filled" with the Spirit. This would lead to what Paul says, "It's not I that lives, but Christ that lives in me."

Tom: I keep wondering about the way you use these words of Paul. I mean, he can’t be describing theosis since he’s not glorified when he writes this. But he’s describing his present experience, not exactly near the end of his life either. But in heaven we’re suppose to be “lead to” this? Something’s wrong here. The difficulty is that I don’t want to say, “Ah, heck no, it’s I who live, not Christ that lives in me” Nobody’s going to say that. But that doesn’t mean that the perspective behind Paul’s saying this is the same as the metaphysical perspective you’re arguing for.

One: There's a stage in the Unitive Way where every other desire for every other thing is QUENCHED, satisfied by living in the Ever-Presence of God. This is when the person can be free of idolatrous attachments and FREE THE WILL to truly do the good works that God has called us all to.

Tom: OK, this is tricky ya’ll. On the one hand, nobody wants to say we don’t do all we do as unto God, that all our choices aren’t ultimately an offering of ourselves to God, even (as Paul says) our eating and drinking. But it’s obvious to me that this doesn’t mean God is “all that we will.” That would make choice in other social contexts impossible. If I’m going to give D a hug in heaven, I have to “will” to give him a hug, and that means “willing” something other than God—unless D wants to say we make ZERO distinction between God and ANYTHING else, ANY other state. Maybe that’s what he’s saying. If so, I disagree.

We can be free from “idolatrous” desires while still willing the choices and actions we pursue with respect to ourselves, others, and the environment and, yes, God. All of this can be done “as unto the Lord” (to use Paul’s phrase). In fact, I think Paul describes just the kind of approach I’m suggesting, an approach we're growing into now and which is culminated in theosis: SEE others as others, make the distinction between them and God, recognize the diversity, and celebrate it in unfailingly loving ways now that there’s no worry of privation and evil all the while fundamentally oriented toward God. “Whatever you do in word or deed, do it as unto the Lord.” This does NOT mean never “willing” to do the things we do in word or deed. Obviously we’re willing if we’re ‘doing’—unless our ‘doing’ is, as One suggests, analogous to involuntary breathing that just happens without our consciously choosing to do so. I categorically deny that our choosing and loving and living and worshipping in heaven are reduced to this. We love ‘unfailingly’ (because our characters are perfected through glorification), not ‘involuntarily’.

-------------------------

Don: Sometimes God has very specific things that He desires of us, sometimes His desire is that we "create our own beauty". Both are equally, totally submitted to the Spirit of God.

One: BRILLIANT! YES! That's what I'm saying. God can get glory from EITHER ONE. That's why I don't understand Many's issues. I can respect them. But I don't understand.

Tom: There’s something very important that hasn’t made it to the surface yet. It’ll eventually make it up. We’ll see.

I hear Don saying, “Sometimes God has something specific he wants us to do,” in which cases I’ve said it would be my undying joy to perform whatever God specifically prescribes. Do you see me conceding this One? OK. Just so you hear me. I’m not saying God doesn’t get pleasure in our obeying his commands. On the other hand, as Don says, “Sometimes God isn’t interested in prescribing any particular action on our part; he just wants us to create on our own.”

Ask yourself what KIND of context creates the concern and occasion for commands (and our obedience) on the one hand, and the occasion for not even needing such commands on the other. Therein lies what it is I’m getting at with regard to the nature of our existence in heaven.

Our debate, One, has to do with what it is God’s really after in all of this. Just get clear on THAT, without worrying about the metaphysics of it, and then let the chips fall where they may. I think the fundamental joy and pleasure that God seeks are interpersonal relationships where God doesn’t have to prescribe specific actions for others but in which persons freely love God, others, and the environment in ever-creative and beautiful ways determined by them by the self they and God together worked to perfect. The kind of hands-on management and prescription that require ‘submission’ and ‘obedience’ (as you keep mentioning) is appropriate for the fallen and conflicted context in which we non-perfected beings find ourselves, yes. But God wants to get BEYOND the trappings of this probationary crap into a perfection which does away with prescribing, commanding, directing, ordering, etc. There will one day be no need, no context, and so no occasion for such management. That’s what we’ve got to come THROUGH, not where we’re HEADED. Heaven is having come through it and left it behind, not embracing an absolute form of it forever.

Will God issue ANY commands or directives to us in heaven? I don’t know. There might come along a need for one or two every 10 million years or so, but I doubt it. Will God, more subtly, prescribe by means some dispositional equilibrium resident in our DNA what it is his will really commands so that God nevertheless ends up being the only freely creating ‘ousia’ around? I’m beating my head against the wall here D! Come on. I honestly can’t imagine a single reason why God would want to do this, and I’m trying hard. Give me SOME reason why God would want to do this with beings who are perfected in their characters and loving? I’m conceding to you that SHOULD God issue a directive or command in such a context that we’ll all joyously do what God desires because that’s the only loving response a perfectly loving human being would give to a divine request or command, but I don’t at all think God will be in the least interested in deciding just how we express ourselves in heaven. For me to imagine God doing so is to imagine a whole new paradigm of interpersonal relationality—one that I’ve been arguing against.

Tom

PS I’m taking a break to post this. But I’m swamped with work. Will probably work through the night. So I can’t talk on the phone! Rats!

Post Edited (MANY) : 5/3/2007 5:23:16 PM (GMT-5)

"Let everyone be persuaded in their own minds."

Let's just drop this and love people in Christ, ok?

I love you, man!  May God richly bless you.

Post Edited (ONE) : 5/3/2007 5:53:04 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Starkman) : 5/3/2007 6:34:39 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (BBBCanada) : 5/4/2007 11:34:13 AM (GMT-5)

May I please have some attention while giving this a less abstractness? I don't deserve much attention, but I'd like to help.

FROM WHAT I'VE PICKED UP...

One said...
...the Spirit of God can empower the purification of their wills such that they only will one thing: God.

History Buff...
Notice I've separated D's statement into two parts. Let's just put our attention for this moment on the part that says the wills (noun) will (verb).

The Canons of Dort describe sin as "sin, which has spread through the whole human race, did not abolish the nature of the human race but distorted..." And it adds that "divine grace of regeneration. . . does not act in people as if they were blocks and stones; nor does it abolish the will. . . and its properties or coerce a reluctant will by force, but spiritually revives, heals, reforms. . ., and—in a manner at once pleasing and powerful—bends it back"

A will is a will. So Tom is right. But if D is taken more historically, and less 'experiementally,' we get something insightful. I hope that I see in Dort a 'reflection' (pun intended) of the patristic illustration of sin being the maring, bending unto distortion, and muddying up of us, the mirror that is is which is created to reflect divine glory.

SO... D could say: the UNBENDING "(purification) of their selves (wills) such that they only REFLECT (will) one thing: God"

I'm hoping and betting that everyone can and does embrace that illustration.

Then One said...
...(will) Nothing else but God.

History Buff...
I notice a reaction to this. And I understand it. And I react the same way. It seems like our will vanishes -- at least what a will is created to be. The Canons of Dort would not say this; but D. did. Dort says: " does not act in as if (the human will) were...stones. . .but spiritually revives, heals. . .bends it back."

I'd substitute into D's "REFLECT nothing else but God's glory." I'd say "bend" it back to factory specs. Put the car on the rack and restore the unibody integrety.

Tom: I keep wondering about the way you use these words of Paul. I mean, he can’t be describing theosis since he’s not glorified when he writes this.

History Buff...
It is consistent with the way Eastern Orthodox have always treated "theosis" that it is not a permanent thing. Go back to the "reflective" illustration above. Orthodox speak of attaining, for while, a degree of refelctiveness. But is is "western" to think of it as being a permanent feature of a person.

So, I'd a gree with Tom's objection. But I'd say that the "eastern" tradition reflects Paul, while the "western" more the "created grace" of the Thomist traditions. Vlathos writes:  "According to Saint Gregory Palamas theologians are the God-seers; those who have followed the "method" of the Church and have attained to perfect faith, to the illumination of the nous and to divinisation (theosis). Theology is the fruit of man's cure and the path which leads to cure and the acquisition of the knowledge of God."

-

The Holy Fathers have presented in their works this Orthodox method, which is summarized in the three fundamental stages of spiritual life: purification of heart, illumination of the nous and theosis. If we study the works of the Holy Fathers, we shall find these three stages of spiritual life everywhere. Evagrios Ponticos defines Christianity as "the dogma of our Saviour Jesus Christ consisted of the practical and natural and theological". St. Dionysios the Aeropagite speaks of three stages, which are purification, illumination and perfection. St.Gregory of Nyssa uses the same distinction. St.Maximos the Confessor speaks of practical philosophy (purification), natural vision (illumination) and mystical theology (theosis). St.Symeon the New Theologian divides certain of his chapters into practical, gnostic and theological. In all the Orthodox tradition these three stages of perfection are spoken of. This is how man is healed and this is how he lives the Tradition. He "becomes" Tradition and creates Tradition. He is a bearer of Tradition.

Therefore, what makes a person an Orthodox is not only his persistence on external sides of the Tradition, but the experiencing of its inner aspect, which is the ascetic method- purification, illumination and theosis. This method, these stages of spiritual life are the foundation of dogmas, the basis of ecclesiastical art, but also the creative cause of habits and customs of our people, because it is this theology which imbued our forefathers before we were westernized.

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 5/5/2007 11:18:41 AM (GMT-5)

http://www.pelagia.org/htm/b02.en.orthodox_psychotherapy.02.htm#de

Thus a person living in the Church and aided by divine grace purifies the passible part of his soul, then his nous is illuminated and he ascends to mystical theology, blessed deification.

In the theology of St. Maximus the Confessor these three stages are expressed as practical philosophy (negative and positive purification), natural theoria (illumination of the nous) and mystical theology (deification). The Fathers of the Church, having withdrawn from all creatures, ascend to the vision of God, and this vision reaches its highest degree in "theological science" or "theological mystagogy" or "mystical theology", which is also called "unforgettable spiritual knowledge" (28).

So the Fathers living in theoria (vision of God) are the real theologians or even the real theology, since theology fills their whole existence.

Moses, according to St. Maximus, was a theologian, because he pitched his tent outside the camp, "that is, when he established his will and mind outside the world of visible things he began to worship God". The three chosen disciples were also proven to be theologians on Mount Tabor when they were granted to see the light of the trisolar divinity. St. Paul too, who was caught up to the third heaven, was a theologian. St. Maximus explains that the three heavens correspond to the three degrees of man's mystical ascent, namely, practical philosophy, natural theoria and mystical theology (29).

We have presented this patristic teaching in order to go on to correlate it with the subject which concerns us in this chapter. St. Maximus links the three stages of the spiritual life with the three degrees of the priesthood. He writes: "He who anoints his nous for spiritual contest and drives all impassioned thoughts out of it has the quality of a deacon. He who illuminates his nous with the knowledge of created beings and utterly destroys false knowledge has the quality of a priest. And he who perfects his nous with the holy myrrh of the knowledge and worship of the Holy Trinity has the quality of a bishop" (30).

. . .

http://www.pelagia.org/htm/b02.en.orthodox_psychotherapy.02.htm

Since according to the patristic teachings it is the priest's task to illuminate others, his ordination presupposes that he has an illuminated nous, which, as we have seen, is a degree of theoria. Thus the priest must remember God unceasingly in prayer, must know spiritual work, be fluent in Holy Scripture and be able to contemplate the inner principles of all created things. As for the bishop, since his primary task is to perfect the people by the inner principles of theology, he must experience the mystical theology, live in communion with God. This close relationship with God makes him a prophet, a divine initiate capable of mystically imparting the word of truth to the people of God.

http://www.pelagia.org/htm/b02.en.orthodox_psychotherapy.06.htm

PRAYER

 

"Make me worthy, O Lord, to know and love Thee, not with knowledge from the exercise of a scattered nous; but make me worthy of that knowledge whereby, beholding Thee, the nous glorifies Thy nature, in divine vision which robs the mind of awareness of the world. Account me worthy to be lifted above my will's wandering eye which begets imaginings, and to behold Thee in the constraint of the Cross's bond, in the second part of the crucifixion of the nous, which willingly ceases from its conceptual imagings to abide in Thy continuous vision that surpasses nature. Implant in my heart an increase of Thy love, that it may be drawn back from this world by fervent love for Thee. Awake in me understanding of Thy humility, wherewith Thou didst sojourn in the world in the covering of flesh which Thou didst bear from our members by the mediation of the Holy Virgin, that with this continual and unfailing recollection I may accept the humility of my nature with delight.

St. Isaac the Syria
Hom.36 (Gk.),Hom.16 (Eng.)

 

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 5/5/2007 2:26:02 PM (GMT-5)