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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
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| Posted 1/19/2008 11:25 AM (GMT -6) |   | Tom: I'd NEVER use "God became man that man may become God." Sorry.
D: Wow. Don't you think this reticence of yours is going to play out in our theological discussion? Because the reality being described by the statement is foundational in my understanding of things.
Tom: Yeah, I know Bro. Of course it’ll play out in our discussion. But we disagree, remember? As foundational to your understanding of things is the belief that as a person you are God is the belief that we are not God foundational to my understanding of things.
I notice that nobody has answered my question. I asked for a passage in the NT that says we “become God.” 2Pet ain’t it. It’s ambiguous at best. Jesus’ use of “ye are gods” is also ambiguous at best. There’s nothing in these two passages that gives us “man becomes God.”
The NT says nothing about our “becoming God.” Whatever we might want to claim about it we have to deduce from general descriptions of glorified human existence in heaven. From Athanasius onward it remains a theological conclusion. But the NT doesn’t use such terms/expressions. So I’d be very cautious about making something like ‘theosis’ (becoming God) part of the “common faith” that all believers embrace. No, all believers DON’T embrace such a view. It’s not part of our “common faith.”
Yes, we are ‘sons’ of the Father, and “children of God.” Yes, God will “clothe us with immortality,” etc. But these don’t EQUATE with “becoming God.”
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Tom: I'd NEVER use "God became man that man may become God." Sorry.
D: Pick and choose as you wish.
Tom: Pick and choose as I wish?
D: I like 1 John 3:1 __ "See how great a love the Father has bestowed/lavished on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are.”
Tom: I believe we are children of God. Dude, who has employed the analogy of parents and children in this whole discussion more than me? Nobody. I’m the one insisting that having kids is a GOOD analogy for expressing our relationship with God. But you hear “children of God” and conclude without argumentation that it entails “becoming God” or “becoming divine.” But the passage doesn’t say that.
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I’m not budging: If we shall remain free in some respects to determine the shape our loving expression shall take, and if such freely creative love is an irreducibly hypostatic/personal activity, then in this respect we are personally distinct from God.
Tom
Haven't read your last post on the previous page, POW. I'll try to get to it.
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One Love
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| Posted 1/19/2008 11:32 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
Yes, we are ‘sons’ of the Father, and “children of God.” Yes, God will “clothe us with immortality,” etc. But these don’t EQUATE with “becoming God.”
1) Children of God are "gods", Tom. Created "gods" born and borne of the Uncreated God. By God's Word and God's Spirit...there is divine humanity.
2) You know as well as I do that Jesus' deeply filial association with the Father is WHY the Jewish religious leaders felt he was IDENTIFYING HIMSELF WITH GOD. The religious leaders killed him because (in part) they felt he was calling himself God by relating himself to himself so deeply as "God's Son" in the true Abba, Father spirit.
Calling oneself "God's Child" has religious implications...and the Pharisees knew that.
So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them... Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/19/2008 10:35:24 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/19/2008 11:38 AM (GMT -6) | | Then came the Festival of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the temple courts walking in Solomon's Colonnade. The Jews who were there gathered around him, saying, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly."
Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father's name testify about me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all ; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one."
Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, "I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?"
"We are not stoning you for any good work," they replied, "but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God."
Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are "gods" ' ? If he called them 'gods,' to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, 'I am God's Son'? Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father." Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.
Then Jesus went back across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing in the early days. Here he stayed and many people came to him. They said, "Though John never performed a sign, all that John said about this man was true." And in that place many believed in Jesus.
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One Love
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| Posted 1/19/2008 12:10 PM (GMT -6) | | "Whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit."
"I and the Father are one."
Will I experience silence, gentlemen? Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/19/2008 11:20:49 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/19/2008 12:20 PM (GMT -6) | | Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was put in charge of us until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.
So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
What I am saying is that as long as heirs are underage they are no different from slaves, although they own the whole estate. They are subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by their fathers. So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father." So you are no longer slaves, but God's children; and since you are his children, he has made you also heirs.
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Do not love the world or anything in the world. If you love the world, love for the Father is not in you. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful people, the lust of their eyes and their boasting about what they have and do—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.
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He said to another man, "Follow me." But he replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."
Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God."
Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family."
Jesus replied, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God." Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/19/2008 11:39:34 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/19/2008 1:49 PM (GMT -6) | |
Imago Dei said...
Bruce:
And that man's humanity belonged to God the Son himself.
Please just indulge me this, Bruce.
So, every "atom" in Jesus' humanity directly belongs to God the Son himself through the hypostatic union, right? (It's still the case right now. The human being Jesus is risen.)
What if Jesus' "atoms" are all over the universe at the same time, because Jesus' "atoms" were inseparable from the rest of the universe? Would that imply that the whole universe would hypostatically "belong" to God the Son through the Incarnation?
I just want to be clear on this for my own sake...
Sorry, D., I was having a evening with my high boys -- a bowling charity event benefiting my school. Fun.
I was surprised by your question. Taken as a whole I can't answer it, as I've never wondered that.
I don't take my own thoughts very seriously when or if I wonder, nominalistically -- as seemingly your question suggests to me -- whether in two thousand the atoms of Christ's body have been mixed with the other atoms (and gamma rays, dark matter, etc) of the universe. Attacking that notion (and with it any presumed requirement) is that one would have to ask why the question should be asked now, and not in two hundred years instead; and why it should not, then, be asked immediately upon the passion or resurrection -- at which point I think that the answer would have to be "no." The only other nominalistic question as followup to that would be whether someone wanted to presume that Christ held within himself on the Cross a representative sampling of atoms, waves, particles and other matter -- and that would immediatly beg the question of WHY would that be significant or important, at all.
The problem emerging, by such nominalistic questions, is "What's important?"
The answer is that BOTH the incarnation and the passion are important. Merely taking "every atom" in his body (or their representative, or disseminating his pieces in mixing with everything else). Your question seemed to me to focus only on incarnation.
Oh, to answer your final question (whether "the whole universe 'hypostatically' belongs" to Christ), while you might want a "yes" to "hypostatically" I have to FIRST answer that from all time (the Creation) the whole world BELONGS TO GOD. So it seems to me that the question does not focus on molecules in Jesus body. It focuses INSTEAD on Salvation.
And a weakness in lots of discusions on this board -- at times -- is a lacking of central-focus on the matter of "for us men and our salvation." And THAT leads us to Maximus the Confessor's literary contribution.
Maxiums pointed out that Christ's work of salvation was a whole AND showed us its universiality in the parts that the narrative. Some parts are his ascending through the air, being baptized in water, being buried in the earth, hungry, in pain (I'm beginnning to make these up, but the list can easily be found in common quotes of Maximus!). ALL of Creation gets renewed, eventually and in ways now, by the savior. And salvation extends to all aspects of our lives and being.
THAT is why -- imho -- they are mentioned by Maximus. BUT...the reason for Christ's ascenstion through "THAT" air was not based on a nominalistic representative sampling! Imho.......its importance to me (this is only me talking) is that Christ was both tempted in every way and in every way he confronted and abided in everything of the cosmos in his passion: he suffered ignorance, subjugation to law, being misunderstood, he needed physically, he was tempted, etc.
And it is THERE that I focus my attention, on salvation. And incarnation -- merely by itself -- could NEVER be saving by itself. It took, takes, the Cross. And the reign of the risen Lord
And I don't think Christ's reign is accomplished by which molecules were in his body.
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 1/19/2008 1:57 PM (GMT -6) | |
Imago Dei said...
Oh, and Tom...
Please do me a favor. I want you to answer the question I asked Bruce:
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Bruce:
And that man's humanity belonged to God the Son himself.
.....
Jesus saving us was accomplished while and and in and through his living in and suffering through our flesh and our world.
I simply meant that Christ became man, and even if he was the only human soneone quoting Irenaus could still say "man became God." And it is because OF THAT that we say 'man beame engodded. And it is IN CHRIST that we participate in that engoddedness. And it is by the Spirit's indwelling that that engoddedness is particpated in.
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One Love
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| Posted 1/19/2008 1:58 PM (GMT -6) | | No one is separating incarnation from salvation here, Bruce. I'm talking about the truth of Jesus' post-death body in the Tomb being the body of God the Logos. If God the Logos personally "owned" all of the human constitution of Jesus' BODY...then he owned ALL of the physical and metaphysical relationships that that human body would have with the rest of the created order. If Jesus' body is actually inseparably connected to the universe in which it manifests, this means that part of the God the Logo's hypostatic union INCLUDES all those interrelationships.
That just makes sense, right?
So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them... Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/19/2008 1:05:05 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/19/2008 2:29 PM (GMT -6) | |
HumanHypostasis said...
Tom: I'd NEVER use "God became man that man may become God." Sorry.
Niether would I. Not in my culture. I would get out the number two pencil and make it read "become 'god.'"
I've learned to become comfortable with "deified" though, as the only exposure I have to it in american culture is with Hollywood stars being deified. And since that has nothing to do with God i don't feel any danger of confusing Cary Grant and the Holy Spirit.
To my sensibility I have a harder time with "becoming divine" as a door to the slppery slope of changing natures. "Becoming participators in the diivne nature in Christ by the Spirit" is fine by me.
I was the one who originaly posted 1 John 3:1 __ "See how great a love the Father has bestowed/lavished on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are.” as a good verse to begin with, from which to oriient us to the meaning of the Iraneus/Athanasius quote. And I think that Athanasius was pointing to the salvation in "for us men nad our salvtion" rather than making declarations comparing "be god" with "be God." (I doubt he'd anticipate our discussion.)
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Tom says: "I’m not budging: If we shall remain free in some respects to determine the shape our loving expression shall take, and if such freely creative love is an irreducibly hypostatic/personal activity, then in this respect we are personally distinct from God."
D., what do you have against that?
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Tom: "Haven't read your last post on the previous page, POW. I'll try to get to it.
B.: I'd be interested in that. Thanks.
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PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/19/2008 2:35 PM (GMT -6) | |
Imago Dei said...
. . . I'm talking about the truth of Jesus' post-death body in the Tomb being the body of God the Logos. If God the Logos personally "owned" all of the human constitution of Jesus' BODY...then he owned ALL of the physical and metaphysical relationships that that human body would have with the rest of the created order. If Jesus' body is actually inseparably connected to the universe in which it manifests, this means that part of the God the Logo's hypostatic union INCLUDES all those interrelationships.
OK, but did those relationships change any, or are they different from your left hand's relaitonhsip with anything the North Star emitted yesterday? And further, was there anthing different from anything the red chord hanging down in jericho had from the sweat in the Garden?
If not, then what's the significance of your question.
I feel like you are baiting me.
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 1/19/2008 2:36 PM (GMT -6) | |
Imago Dei said...
No one is separating incarnation from salvation here, Bruce.
I don't completely believe that. I think it is far to easy to discuss without proper framing by salvation.
Seen it here, so I believe it.
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 1/19/2008 2:44 PM (GMT -6) | |
Imago Dei said...
The ultimate effect of this dynamic Incarnation [Christ's] is the redemption of the world. In the expansion of the divine sociality to essentially include the man Jesus, the process of the Trinity expands to include the process of the world (Jn. 17:24ff). The ceaseless achievement of the expression of God’s deity in the Trinity will now eternally include the expression of beauty of the non-divine order, and all of this through Christ. This is the Good News of the New Testament.
--Greg Boyd. Trinity and Process. Page 400, "The Two Natures of Christ"
Whoa!
Does this lack a proper dose of assymeticality?
And we'd better not try to read this back into Athanasius!!!
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One Love
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| Posted 1/19/2008 3:05 PM (GMT -6) | | Bruce:
Ok, in one place. . .simply. . .explain or enumerate the cosmological implications you are thinking about. Please. You say you "are saying" -- say it.
Nesteruk on the Incarnation. Page 228. Light from the East.
Christianity rearticulated the biblical idea of the fullness of humanity by referring it to Christ, the incarnate Logos of God. Ireneaus of Lyons, in developing the idea that it is in the incarnation that the fullness of humanity was recapitulated by Christ, writes that "in times past it was said that man was made in the image of God, but not shown, because the Word, in whole image man was made, was still invisible." In the incarnation of flesh, "God recapitulated in Himself that ancient handiwork or His which is man," and "He recapitulated in Himself the long history of mankind." Irenaeus asserts that by taking human flesh, make of the substance of this world, and uniting it to the Divine in Christ, God confirmed that substance, which God used initially to create human beings, is linked to God's first place to save humanity, and that the incarnation fulfills this plan. This means that the substance of the world has a fundamental importance for the fulfillment of God's plan. It implies that for the Incarnation and recapitulation of all human nature in Christ to take place, the substance of the world was chosen by God in his plan of creation of the world and salvation of humanity, thus making this particular substance to be closely linked to the Divine hypostatically (relationally), that is, existing not as it is in itself but only in the hypostasis of God, who created it. This was demonstrated by the incarnation of the Logos of God with a new force.
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One Love
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| Posted 1/19/2008 3:43 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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