Now,after reading this, tell me this ain't Tom and Corey!!


Interestingly enough, I am an ENFJ

For longer description: http://www.bestfittype.com/enfj.html

This is why I LOVE to preach and teach. I really like to communicate, influence, inform, and persuade. I like promoting thought and sparking positive change in people. I love helping to provoke critical thinking about life and issues. I adore spirited dialogue and discussion.  I want people to "wake up" to themselves and be aware of what they really think, NOT just what they've been told or what they've been socialized to think. (I'm a GREAT fan of Socrates and Jesus in this regard)  Due to my upbringing, I have a very developed Introverted Thinking process that's powered by my Feeling preference, especially when dealing with issues of philsophical and theological discussion. As a result...

--I only get passionate about discussing ideas and concepts that bear out on people's lives in terms of worldview, self-concept, and behavior. This is why I dig the social sciences, as well as philosophy and theology. I don't like talking ideas just to see them meander up to the heights of the ivory towers.

--I can get ultra-anal and somewhat frustrated when I see what I perceive to be inconsistency or incoherence of thought. I will follow a line of thought out to it's farthest conclusions when I'm examining it. And if I'm going to except the idea, I'm taking ALL of it or none of it. I do "both/ands" as I can, but otherwise...

I have a VERY high Judging preference (in DRAMATIC contrast to the number of Perceiving people here. With my Intuition, This leads me to want conclusion and closure on things fairly quickly. I connect dots quicker than most, and I'll just want to say...

Well, there it is. Don't you see that?

...whereas Perceivers like Tom and Corey will be like...

Now, hold on! Let's think this out some more. Let's try all the angles we can find before we come to that conclusion.

One of the interesting things is that I OFTEN end up having theological discussions with Percievers, who by definition like TAKING THEIR TIME coming to conclusions...whereas I like coming to conclusions much more quickly. Seriously, once you know the type preferences, you can see them playing out ALL the time.

For example, Doc is a very interesting INFP. He's, of course, very logical and philsophically minded. Brilliant. But when his Introverted Feeling gets riled up and he gets on that pastoral/"people need Jesus" tip, some of that may go out the window, if it looks like straight up logic might derail the becoming process of a person finding the love of God in Jesus. If using rigorous logic will get people closer to living in love, he'll use it to the hilt (ie. Letters to a Skeptic).  If it may bring about what he feels to be a skewed view of God, he'll toss it just as quick. (the damnable marriage analogy!  )  His theologizing is strongly informed by his Feeling. Mine is as well, but in the other direction. My unusual Introverted Thinking won't let me dismiss inconsistencies and incongruities...and my Feeling makes me all the more passionate about that! If following the logic of one's position all the way out leads one AWAY from faith, I can't help that. (yeah, yeah..."booooo, Meph!   More heart, sir!" I know, I know...Selah. ) This is what makes me the quintessential "devil's advocate" and why I began calling myself "Sir Mephistopheles" in the first place. I'll follow the logic wherever it leads...and no where else. THIS, actually, is how I came to be open to open view theism from a very solid theological determinism position. The logic, when fully grasped, was undeniable to me.

Anyways...here's just some info on the stuff. Check it out at your leisure.

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 10/30/2005 2:11:55 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (selah) : 10/30/2005 7:32:30 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (selah) : 10/30/2005 8:36:38 AM (GMT-6)

Hey Meph, are you familiar with the social style personality assessment scheme?  It breaks folks down into analyticals, amiables, expressives, and drivers, respectively.  These groups have as personal measures of value (translation: the main-most thing) respect, acceptance, recognition, and power/control, respectively.  Interesting stuff.  But I would agree with Selah--spiritual growth means transcending our natural tendencies and limitations, both intellectual and emotional.

It's valuable seeing these "types," though.  Because it helps us to understand our own predilections as the constraining limititations they tend to be.  Plus, it helps us be tolerant to those other styles that we have a hard time relating to, knowing we ALL have to deal with each other's very different perspectives and approaches.

I don’t have a lot of time. I really AM unsurpassably busy. Something God knows nothing about! So by Mephi’s definition any post I make on this site must necessarily be an act of grace! Ha ha ha.

My hunch, intuition, feeling, conviction, goo-goo gaa-gaa idea, is that creation is not ‘necessary’ to God in any sense of the world. That is:

(1) God really is self-existent (he’s the cause, reason, and sufficient explanation for his own existence) and self-sufficient (his experience of himself is unsurpassably satisfying, lacks nothing, and can’t be improved upon or robbed). We’ll call this DA: Divine Aseity.

But I also want to affirm something else, something regarding which Mephi still seems confusing (not confused, but confusing to me). And it’s this:

(2) God really feels, emotes, and is touched by the events of our world. He experiences changing states of emotion—is pleased, angered, rejoices, grieves, all in relation to us on a personal mutually influential level. Let’s call this ER: Emotional relations.

When he’s working it, Mephi’s explanation of (1), or DA, appears to me to logically entail divine impassibility. God’s unsurpassably satisfied with his own loving relationality, that satisfaction is something like a cosmic orgasm (sorry ya’ll, just trying to be accurate), something infinitely intense, unsurpassable, unimprovable, and inaccessible. For Mephi, this means ALL of God’s personal and loving relationality is maxed out. It can’t possibly be added to or taken away from. It’s immutable. Whatever God CAN be (in terms of loving relationality) he IS and MUST be (that is, is necessarily—just keep eating your oat meal Sahid!). This is very like the classical idea of God as pure actualtity. Same basic reasoning, except where the classics located everything about God in that actuality, Mephi only puts ‘loving relationality’ in that actuality.

So it seems to me that Mephi has to deny (2). But he doesn’t want to say God is impassible. He’s actually said God isn’t impassible. He’s said God DOES feel and emote, but he does his emoting (his rejoicing and grieving) outside the divine essence. Fine. God emotes in and through his energies, and in such a way that the “emotions” are not constitutive of a mutually influential loving relationship with those who cause these emotions in God. They’re emotions, they’re “felt” and experienced, but in such a way that nothing about God’s unsurpassably intense satisfaction in divine relationality is accessed or otherwise touched or affected.

And this is where I’m confused by Mephi. On the one hand, it just sounds like he’s saying exactly what I wanna say, namely:

(3) There is on the one hand an inaccessible, immutable, and unsurpassable intensity of loving relationality THAT IS GOD, something nothing in the world can access because it’s God’s Godness, and yet this God relates emotionally to us, is angered by us, rejoices over and with us, feels compassion, and is otherwise moved and affected by us.

But on the other hand when Mephi starts denying things, I get confused. He keeps saying things like, “Yeah, God experiences emotions, but he doesn’t REALLY experience them” and uses “really” in a way that (to me) undermines the reality of God’s emotional relationship with us. It seems that for Mephi “really” is only real if it affects God’s Godness, that inner sanctuary of God’s unsurpassable satisfaction. So God emotes and relates through his energies with us, yeah, but we don’t know what that really means and it’s somehow not ‘really’ emotional or ‘really’ felt. My fear is that in Mephi’s view it ends up not meaning much of anything…emotionally…for God.

I don’t know what to do with that. How are emotions like joy, anger, and grief genuinely experienced and felt by a God who is love and who created out of love but who can’t be in a mutually influential love relationship with other persons (as Mephi argues)? I honestly don’t know. Until Mephi gives some explanation of this real emotion that’s experienced by God but not really felt by him, I’m just gonna assume that the same divine impassability of the classical view is entailed in his view.

I agree that God didn’t need to create. I agree any meaning we have is an act of grace on God’s part. I agree that nothing about the world can affect God’s own Trinitarian loving relationality. All the things Mephi and I agreed on and danced over last week. But I honestly don’t think this means God doesn’t really feel grief and joy in relationship with us.

Let me try this. Mephi, let’s go sans creation, OK? There’s nothing around but God and his unsurpassably intense Trinitarian experience of love. I want to try to show you how I think God can do REAL, personal, loving mutuality with the world and also remain unsurpassably satisfied. Well, I want to try to show you at least how something you already believe in might help you edge toward this.

Consider the UT (Unsurpassability theorem). Sans creation, how much of God is unsurpassably intense? I mean, what of God contributes this unsurpassably loving satisfaction? I think we’d probably say everything, right? That is, ALL that God is, ALL God’s capacities (cognitive/rational, emotional, whatever else God is sans creation) feeds into and constitute this unsurpassabilty. I think it would have to be so. If God withheld some of himself, some of his capacities, wouldn’t that at least suggest that God’s intensity level would be less than he could be? If some divine aspect or capacity of God were not involved in constituting and in turn celebrating this unsurpassabilty, it wouldn’t BE unsurpassable. And we don’t want to say God is less than or other than ALL he possibly can be in terms of loving relationality, right? Every fiber of God’s being kicks in and feeds into constituting what God is—an indivisible and unsurpassably intense loving relationality. So everything about God, his knowing, his feeling, his experiencing, his acting, his choosing, all of it, necessarily feeds into constituting this unsurpassability. Nothing about God, no capacity God possesses, could be excluded from this unsurpassability—everything about God contributes to and is part of this unsurpassable intensity. Not only that, but ALL of everything about God contributes to and constitutes this unsurpassability.

Before I go on…would you agree with this much? Would you agree with UT?

Tom

Forget the ad extra crap. Just where are you on how much of God necessarily constitutes God's ad intra sans creational satisfaction.

UP baby...thumbs up or thumbs down?

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 10/31/2005 12:05:30 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (TGB) : 10/31/2005 5:48:40 PM (GMT-6)

Example: Overeating.  At one sitting, a person has the CAPACITY to eat well more than they truly need to feel "full".  This capacity is not taken up at the point of "feeling full."  So, the "full feeling" does NOT equal the total amount of food that be consumed by one person at one sitting.

Hope this helps.

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 11/1/2005 9:23:51 AM (GMT-6)