One: I'm beginning to interpret that non-God reality is primarily seen as "that which can experience privation directly."

Tom: I’m not ‘equating’, I’m ‘describing’. Humans are privated. Whatever reality (non-divine or divine) they constitute, that reality is obviously privated, fallen, and sinful, and stands in need of redemption. If these things can’t be said of God, if God can’t sin, do evil and will the unloving thing (which willing constitutes the privation that feeds upon reality), then privated reality has to be non-God reality. Just take that much as think on it. I’m not reducing the totality of “human” being to “the capacity to experience directly.” I’m saying that among those dispositions definitive of contingent, human, personhood is the capacity to private one’s self, not just “to experience privation directly” (which we might say Jesus did experience inasmuch as he suffered the consequences of our privation; but he didn’t private himself through misrelation). In essence, God can’t misrelate dispositionally, can’t choose to misrelate.

One: The whole "complicity" thing again.

Tom: Not at all. Complicity isn’t at all what I’m talking about.

One: God's omniscience and omnipotence is God's SELF-UNDERSTANDING. Don't you see it?

Tom: Here’s an “if…then” prop. Let’s assume it’s true (it seems clear to me that it’s true). IF creation is just God contingently expressing himself in diverse forms, THEN all God’s knowledge would be self-understanding. I agree with this. But it doesn’t follow that since this is true that creation is just God contingently expressing himself in diverse forms. The whole "if...then" proposition can be true but the “if” clause be false, in which case the “then” clause isn’t necessarily true. I could just offer another true “if…then” prop: IF creation is genuinely non-God, THEN God’s knowledge of it isn’t just self-understanding. That’s also true. So what?

One: Just please help me see what "non-God reality" means.

Tom: I can only know what it means for ME to not be God. It means I’m a center of volition that is not a divine center of volition, that I identify, dispose, and choose over and against God, that I dispose all my capacities for loving relationality in unloving ways (something I have every reason to believe God incapable of), and every notion I have of interdependent mutual relations between ME and other persons requires that I posit an objective over-and-againstness between ME and other persons. So far as God is a person I relate to, I can’t see myself AS that God.

How does God bring such independent centers of volition into existence? I’m sure I have no idea. But given reality as I experience it, it makes sense to me to say I’m an example of non-God reality, and I don’t see any contradiction that’s generated in my saying so.

One: I really think that the problem can be solved for me if someone would just please help me understand what "non-God reality" is. I really want help with this. If I understand this, then everything will be gravy.

Tom: Like I said, I can’t tell you what it is metaphysically speaking. I’m not that smart. But I think I have good reasons for supposing it to be true, reasons confirmed by the intuitions and reasoning I employ to direct my own personal becoming. And I can’t think of a single contradiction that’s generated by living in the assumption that it’s true. So unless you can offer me a REALLY good reason for doubting all this, I don’t know how to get motivated to give your account much more than academic consideration for the sake of discussion.

One: What IS it?

Tom: We may never know. Do we need to know? Can we have reason to believe THAT it is without knowing HOW it is? Sure we can.

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

One: Why don't we just focus on the end goal?

Tom: Cool.

One: And that seems to be our being willing to completely ALIGN OUR WILLS WITH GOD'S WILL...to self-dispose into the Dispositional Equilibrium (The Spirit of Christ)…

Tom: I’m totally cool with aligning my will with God’s. Alliiiiinngggggment, D. We must be using that word to mean different things.

If self-disposing into the divine dispositional equilibrium describes a oneness that’s the sort of oneness that results when a drop of water falls into the ocean, then I disagree that this is our end goal. I do not believe that God intends to prescribe one and only one most Godlike, most loving, choice for persons when they are ultimately unified with God. We talked about this. When a 5 year old girl comes to her Daddy and asks, “Daddy what would you like me to draw for you?” I would take it as a fundamental weakness of character for a father to want to tell his daughter just what to draw, as opposed to saying, “Hunny, you make up something for me! Surprise me! Imagine anything beautiful you want to imagine and draw it for me. That’s what will make me most happy.”

If that’s what God WANTS, D, then why would you want to separate yourself from it? Can you really not imagine God wanting this? Do you not see the unique beauty that a father and daughter enjoy which is created when the daughter creates in ways NOT determined by the father? Wouldn't the beauty that's found in such "letting go" be lost to a God who was just self-relating through us? I totally think so.

We have very different ideas about what will constitute the most beauty-yielding ultimate God-world oneness in heaven.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 4/15/2007 2:23:43 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One) : 4/15/2007 4:48:20 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (TGB) : 4/15/2007 4:59:21 PM (GMT-5)

". . . . . . . .   He drove in the last nail."

Troparia, eighth tone, once:

In the grave bodily, but in hades with Thy soul as God:

in Paradise with the thief, and on the throne

with the Father and the Spirit

wast Thou Who fillest all things,

O Christ the Inexpressible.

 

--PASCHAL HOURS--

Tom: So far as God is a person I relate to, I can’t see myself AS that God.

One: Explain Jesus' interaction with the Father. Did Jesus not believe that he was God-in-human?

Tom: Jesus WAS God incarnate. How’s this lead to the conclusion that “I” am God incarnate? See, unless I'm God incarante in the same sense Jesus is God incarnate, just holding up Jesus' way of perceiving his relationship to the Father doesn't prove anything metaphysical about how I relate to God. It's not that simple.

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

Tom: In essence, God can’t misrelate dispositionally, can’t choose to misrelate.

One: The Holy Spirit is the "higher end" of dispositional reality that can never misrelate to itself (cannot experience ignorance of self/reality). The contingent spirit is the "lower end" of dispositional reality that CAN misrelate to itself (can experience ignorance of self/reality).

Tom: I feel like Clinton, but I have to ask, What do you mean by "end"? What's the metaphysics of this “end”? What metaphysical "end" constitutes the distinction necessary to shielding Higher End God from the privating filth of Lower End God's misrelating? It has to be very substantial I imagine, something as substantial as I'm suggesting has to be the case. And if you're inclined as I am to say right relating, right perceiving in love is a definitional disposition of God that cannot fail in its exercise, then it's no longer meaningful to call Lower End God "God" (whatever might be its metaphysical makeup).

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

Tom: If that’s what God WANTS, D, then why would you want to separate yourself from it?

One: Who's trying to separate themselves from anything? Whatever God wants at the end of this thing is what God will have. I have no problem with that.

Tom: Oh but you do. You say that the end result is that the actual exercise of our wills is given over to God so wholly that God does the willing, choosing, etc. So I asked you at Greg’s, “What if God in heaven says to you, ‘D, I’m not going to tell you exactly what to do, I want you to go create your own beautiful expressions of love for me and others. Surprise me! YOU decide what to paint me’?” And you replied, “Well, I would just tell God “I don’t want to will or choose on my own. You tell me exactly what to do.”

But that looks to me like a fundamental refusal to do what God wants. God doesn’t want to decide for/in/through you. He wants there to remain a distinct center of volition that’s determining itself independent of God, that is, in ways not prescribed or determined by God’s will.

Now, I’m just imagining the scenario of course, but your response to it looked to me like a move away from (i.e., to separate yourself from) expressing yourself a manner God explicitly desires. How’s that not amount to separation? God says, “D, I don't want to prescribe what you do for me here. You do A.” (where A = choosing libertarianly from among possible beautiful acts X, Y, or Z) and you say, “No, I don’t want to do A, I’ll offer you B instead” (where B = giving the determination of X, Y, or Z back to God to decide). But maybe I totally misunderstood you at Greg’s. As I read your whole account here, it seems to me that you have to deny that the scenario I’m imagining is a possible end goal of God’s. You believe God’s purpose really is for the divine will ultimately to prescribe the minutia of our actions. That just IS what “unification with God” means. I don’t think that’s at all what God is after...

...but knowing me I’ve totally misunderstood everything!   

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 4/16/2007 12:41:18 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One) : 4/16/2007 2:07:16 PM (GMT-5)

One: What I tried to convey at Greg's is that my heartfelt desire is to only do God's will however that may look. I choose to believe that God honors the desires of the heart in relationship to Him. What I really want out of life is for Christ's Spirit to flow effortlessly from who I am in order to heal this world. I want as little resistance as possible to the leading of the Spirit. Also, I want "my" contingent becoming to be completely SHAPED by the Spirit's design for the world's becoming. I want Christ to have a totally submitted vessel in me. I am willing to submit every aspect of my life to him. Even supposed minutia. I trust that Spirit of God leads me as often as I open myself up to it. And it seems to me that God honors this.

Tom: 100% agreement here.

One: If I am willing to be totally, unconditionally submitted to God's will and way, shouldn't I expect that he will give me the desire of my heart in this case?

Tom: If you desire his will without predefining it, yes.

One: Basically this is what's going on: I want God and nothing else. I'm making the Divine Reality my Absolute in all things. I want to perfectly love all people, including myself (because all people are beautiful expressions of God)...and God is the only Person who knows EXACTLY what I need to do to be the most effective force for the Kingdom in this place…

Tom: 100% agreement here, except that I can certainly imagine that SOMETIMES, there is no ONE exactly most effective thing which alone is MOST effective. It’s conceivable that what’s most effective is that which is most diversely beautiful, in which case God’s will provides a range of equally effective possibilities and the resulting impact is partly constituted by you’re deciding among the possibilities; so that fact alone contributes something unique to the beauty God seeks.

One: So, the END RESULT of what I'm saying, Tom, is nothing essentially different from what Paul was saying: If we keep absolute primacy on being one with God via "keeping in step with the Spirit", always seeking to be "filled" with Christ's spirit, we will BE the "ambassadors of God" on the earth.

Tom: 100% yes.

One: To each their own. Let everyone be persuaded in his/her own mind.

Tom: Let’s go paint the world for Christ!   

Tom

Post Edited (One) : 4/16/2007 5:36:50 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One) : 4/17/2007 2:22:05 PM (GMT-5)

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/200118.htm

"<!---->Be therefore perfect, as your Heavenly Father.<!-- -->"<!----><!--20-0812-->

And He intersperses everywhere abundantly the name of the heavens, by the very place thoroughly elevating their minds. For as yet, I know not how, they were somewhat weak and dull.

10. Let us then, bearing in mind all the things which have been said, show forth great love even towards our enemies; and let us cast away that ridiculous custom, to which many of the more thoughtless give way, waiting for those that meet them to address them first. Towards that which has a great blessing, they have no zeal; but what is ridiculous, that they follow after.

While "be perfect" as a famous phrase always struck me as a call to be without taint, and to do everything 'spit-spot" the passage from Chrysostom strikes me as tangible and practical. But, don't let me be unclear: the emphasis on the inside is not lessened by the outside. "Love your enemies" is the best model of "teleios" I'd bet.

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 4/17/2007 7:57:19 PM (GMT-5)

This then let us pursue, in such wise as Himself commanded, and making no account of the things of men, but showing forth perfect self restraint in all things, let us so direct our own lives. For so even now, from this very time, we shall enjoy the good things of the heavens, and of the crowns that are there, walking as angels among men, going about in the earth like the angelic powers, and abiding apart from all lust, from all turmoil.

And together with all these things we shall receive also the unutterable blessings: unto which may we all attain, by the grace and love towards man of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory, and power, and worship, with the unoriginate Father, and the Holy and Good Spirit, now and always, even forever and ever. Amen.

Post Edited (One) : 4/17/2007 8:50:28 PM (GMT-5)

Tom, pipe up, dude.  This is your forte.

Post Edited (One) : 4/17/2007 8:57:42 PM (GMT-5)