We talk about a ‘relational ontology’ in which you can’t talk about ‘what’ a thing is without talking about ‘how it relates’, an ontology that gives primary ontological weight to relations. And then at the peak or summit of this ontology is a ‘personal ontology’ in which you are a person only in so far as you’re lovingly disposed in-relation-to other persons, giving and receiving loving expression and affirmation of value and beauty.

So it looks like what we want to say is that ontologically speaking, persons are the most real thing there is. Ontology becomes the study of personhood per se.

Fine.

So wouldn’t it follow that being ‘ontologically distinct’ from God is the same as being ‘personally distinct’ from God? If this is not the case, then do we not in effect posit a more fundamental reality or form of being than ‘personal’ being? And if that’s the case, we no longer have a ‘relational ontology’ that gives primacy of place to ‘persons’ but some other mode of being or existence that underlies or grounds the ‘personal’, upon which the ‘person’ depends. And that’s problematic too (for the Trinity).

The problem is that if “ontologically distinct” means “personally distinct” then isn’t the reverse true, so that distinct persons can’t be “ontologically one.” But isn’t “ontological oneness” the oneness we affirm of God when we say God is “one nature” and there persons?

I have some ideas on this, but I wanna check Papainkalaou’s Being With God first. I remember he was really good on this. In comparing Lossky and Zizy, Papa finds a middle way that captures the strengths of each while avoid the weaknesses of each. Have you got this book yet D?

Tom

Rather, it seems to me personhood is ontologically about the potential for relationship, not just the actuality of the relationship itself. If the (non-)person at the bottom of the spectrum still has the capacity for relationship, then it makes sense that God would continue to pursue them. If not, I don't know why God would, and I don't have any good reason to believe universalism.

Post Edited (Corey) : 4/1/2008 11:32:03 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Corey) : 4/1/2008 12:31:02 PM (GMT-5)

Tom:
My point was to point out that if we are agreed that human beings and God are 'ontologically' distinct, and we adopt a 'relational ontology' in which the 'persons' are ultimate, and we say we're 'ontologically' distinct from God, then we have to be 'persons' distinct from God.

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 4/1/2008 1:55:51 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 4/1/2008 1:55:30 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Tom) : 4/2/2008 7:41:31 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Tom) : 4/2/2008 7:42:31 AM (GMT-5)

I don't want to hijack this thread, sorry if I'm off topic. I was sincerely asking if the important thing is the actual relationship per se, or merely the potential or capacity or faculty (or whatever!) for a love relationship with God that makes us human. That is, I wonder if our being imago dei is the definitive aspect of our ontology, whereas our actual love relationship to God follows secondarily from that. Just because we're presently not reciprocating in that relationship does not make us non-human. But if we didn't at least have the potential, if we aren't imago dei image-bearers, I wonder if that would indeed render us as such.

I'm asking about the dehypostasizing stuff because I understand (maybe incorrectly) that according to D this is essential to our being. Yet he talks about Satan, who is sheer spirit - a non-hypostatic existance - as also being in the category, so I'm confused.

Post Edited (Corey) : 4/2/2008 8:20:24 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 4/2/2008 12:39:44 PM (GMT-5)

Corey: I don't want to hijack this thread, sorry if I'm off topic. I was sincerely asking if the important thing is the actual relationship per se, or merely the potential or capacity or faculty (or whatever!) for a love relationship with God that makes us human.

Tom: I believe it’s the relationship per se that’s the important thing. That is, it’s the experience of personal intimacy itself, not the potential for this experience, that’s ultimate in and of itself. But the potential for this is crucial, necessary even, because as contingent beings we have to freely choose our way into such relationships of personal intimacy (unlike God). So long as that potential is there, God won’t give up working with us, addressing and inviting, coaxing and drawing, that potential into fuller becoming, and finally into fully realized personal existence. I feel very confident saying that much (viz., that God would never abandon, under any circumstance, any potential for personal becoming). The question is, can human beings themselves dispose, freely and irrevocably, out of their potential for becoming? I’m less sure about this, but I think a case for it's not being possible.

Corey: That is, I wonder if our being imago dei is the definitive aspect of our ontology, whereas our actual love relationship to God follows secondarily from that. Just because we're presently not reciprocating in that relationship does not make us non-human. But if we didn't at least have the potential, if we aren't imago dei image-bearers, I wonder if that would indeed render us as such.

Tom: Right, the divine image is definitive of human being, but that image itself, in our case, has to be what constitutes our potential for becoming fully and personally intimate. So if that image defines us, if it’s ‘given’ to us through God’s sustaining presence, then we can’t deny it ultimately. At least that’s the idea. It’s difficult to imagine how we can have the capacity to utterly destroy the ‘form’ or ‘shape’ of ‘human being’ per se, since we get that from God’s sustaining presence and will and not from any choice of our own. We derive that potentiality from God. How do we utterly destroy that? If we could, I think destroying it would be equivalent to our annihilation.

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D: Remember when Jesus rode the donkey into town? What if our human spirits were analogous to the ‘donkey’ that, via the Holy Spirit, God the Son ‘rides into town’ in our everyday existences? Both the donkey and Jesus experience the ‘Hosanna!’ experience...but clearly only ONE of them is God the Son.

Make sense?

Tom: What the he**…? Yo, just kiddin’! But really, WHO is singing the ‘hosanas’ that the Son and the donkey experience? You be the donkey. I'll be one of WHOMEVER it is who is singing those praises and hosanas to God.

I guess your analogy is alright IF you say the donkey is a self-determining, self-conscious freely creative, lover and worshipper of the Son as well. I don't mind if I LOOK like a donkey, but I wanna BE a person.

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D: What if I say "I am God's son."...and that's all I ever say and think about myself?

Tom: Fine with me so long as you’re not the SAME son of the Father that the Logos is.

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Corey: If the hypostatic aspect of Jesus was essential to our salvation, what would this have to do with Satan (being non-hypostatic) and his possible salvation?

Tom: THAT is a great question. How does the Cross redeem non-human, angelic beings?

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 4/2/2008 12:46:10 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Sahid) : 4/2/2008 7:54:47 PM (GMT-5)

Sabid:

This lack of freedom precludes interpersonal love.

On God's loving unilateral covenants...


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Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!"
"Here I am," he replied.

Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you."

Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you."

Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?"
"Yes, my son?" Abraham replied.
"The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"

Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together.

When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.  But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"
"Here I am," he replied.

"Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son."

Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided."

The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, "I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me."

This is a tyrant? For real?

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 4/2/2008 8:18:03 PM (GMT-5)