'I have said you are "gods" '

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/19/2008 2:54:15 PM (GMT-6)

Posted By : Imago Dei - Today 2:05 PM

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. So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them...

Posted By : Imago Dei - Today 2:09 PM

Bruce: Does this lack a proper dose of assymeticality? The assymetrical nature IS there. It just needs to be articulated. So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them...

Posted By : Imago Dei - Today 2:19 PM

The "stuff" of the world is WHAT IT IS for the sake of God's plan of salvation for human beings. And this includes all implications of the IRREDUCIBLE RELATIONALITY we see are discovering in the created order through scientific and anthropological discovery. Chaos theory. Systems theory. Quantum entanglement. Indra's Net. Dependent Origination. Everything affects EVERYTHING ELSE...because all is interrelated. Touch one "thing" in the universe...and you've touched the universe as a whole. So, for God to pick up one end of the proverbial stick (an human incarnation of divine personhood in time and space)...would be to pick up the other end (time and space being created to allow for human incarnation of divine personhood). For God the Logos to "personally own" a human hypostasis IN ITS TOTALITY would be for God the Logos to "personally own" the spatio-temporal context in which the human hypostasis exists...because of the irreducible relationality between all things in Creation. So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them... <!-- Edit --> Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/19/2008 2:44:40 PM (GMT-6)

Posted By : Imago Dei - Today 2:34 PM

Christ's DEAD BODY was sanctifying the Universe while still cold in the Tomb... Ain't that right, Bruce?

I guess it's nothing new though...right?

...what George Florovsky once called an "asymmetrical union" of God and man in Christ: while the hypostatic source of life — the goal and pattern — remains divine, man is not diminished or swallowed by the union; he becomes again fully human. This notion is also expressed in the Eucharistic sacrifice, a unique act in which no single action of Christ’s is represented in isolation or reduced to purely human concepts, such as an "exchange," or a "satisfaction." Christ as the Synodikon proclaims every year on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, "reconciled us to Himself by means of the whole mystery of the economy, by Himself, and in Himself and reconciled us also to His God and Father and of course to the most holy and life-giving Spirit."⁵

 

^{. . . . .}

 

This fundamental position has two important implications:

(a) There is no absolute symmetry between divinity and humanity in Christ because the unique hypostasis is only divine and because the human will follows the divine. It was precisely a "symmetrical" Christology, which was rejected as Nestorian in Ephesus (431). This "asymmetry" of Orthodox Christology reflects an idea which Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria stressed so strongly: only God can save while humanity can only cooperate with the saving acts and will of God. However, as we have emphasized earlier, in the patristic concept of man, "theocentricity" is a natural character of humanity; thus asymmetry does not prevent the fact that Christ is fully and "actively" man.

(b) The human nature of Christ is not personalized into a separate human hypostasis, which means that the concept of hypostasis is not an expression of natural existence, either in God or in man, but it designates personal existence. Post-Chalcedonian Christology postulates that Christ is fully man and also that He is a human individual, but it rejects the Nestorian view that He is a human hypostasis, or person. A fully human individual life was en-hypostasized in the hypostasis of the Logos without losing any of its human characteristics. The theory associated with the name of Apollinaris of Laodicea and according to which the Logos in Jesus had taken the place of the human soul is systematically rejected by Byzantine theologians since it implied that the humanity of Christ was not complete. Cyril’s celebrated formula — wrongly attributed to Athanasius and, in fact, uttered by Apollinaris — "one nature incarnate of God the Word" was accepted only in a Chalcedonian context. Divine nature and human nature could never merge, be confused, or become complementary to each other; but in Christ, they were united in the single, divine hypostasis of the Logos: the divine model matched the human image.

. . .

 

I'M TIRED............................

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/20/2008 2:16:53 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (HumanHypostasis) : 1/20/2008 4:58:06 AM (GMT-6)

Otche Nash -- Our Father (Father Our)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNZ3YGJWt40&NR=1

OUR FATHER in Russian

TRANSLITERATION
Otche nash, susthiy na nebesah,
Da svyatitca imya tvoye,
Da priidet tsarstvye tvoye,
Da budet volya tvoya
I na zemle kak na nebe.
Hleb nash nasusthnyiy dai nam na sey den,
I prosti nam dolgi nashi,
Kak i myi prosthae dolnikam nashim,
I ne vvedi nas v iskushenye,
No izbav nas ot lukavogo. Amin.

T

____O

________M

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http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2008/01/20/the-theological-task-of-orthodoxy-a-further-word/

(Whole thing.)