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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 11/6/2005 1:08 PM (GMT -6) |   | There's no escaping mystery, for sure. And I honestly don't know if aseity implies a necessary dual-consciousness to God-incarnate. I don't know. If it does, fine. If not, fine.
What sort of concept of aseity would you argue FOR, Jeff? What do you take 'necessary self-sufficiency' to mean? If it doesn't mean there is a necessary, immutable something that is God's Godness that creation cannot tinker with, then what can it possibly mean? Whatever it is, it would by defintion relativize everything else into meaninglessness in at some SOME respects ('relative' being the important term). We're 'relatively' meaninglessness, not absolutely meaninglessness. We're meaningless in one important sense, and that is with respect to our not constituting the cause or explanation of God's existence or God's Godness. That's all. Not even the incarantion redefines that I don't think. It can't make what is necessarily true about God contingently true about God. That's not possible. So the only question is, what constitutes God necessarily? And then, how would loving relationality NOT be part of that necessary, God-defining, existence?
Tom
Post Edited (TGB) : 11/6/2005 12:13:53 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 11/6/2005 5:13 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom: What sort of concept of aseity would you argue FOR, Jeff? What do you take 'necessary self-sufficiency' to mean?
Jeff: Well, I would start with what we know of God apart from the bible--simply as creator. I think that means that He is either one of a series of created beings, or an eternal being. This is because my intuition of causality requires me to posit that SOMETHING has always existed.
It would also mean He is a person. Because it seems natural to suppose that a designer must VALUE the end(s) which He adapts means to. But VALUE implies SENTIENCE. Moreover, insomuch as He has designed volitional, rational, sentient beings who naturally think ethically, it is natural to suppose that God is a BENEVOLENT, personal being.
When we go to scripture, we find these facts re-affirmed. We are told that there has been no god created before Him, leading us to conclude that the creator of our world IS an absolute, unconditioned person. We even find that, while there is ONE God OUT of whom are all things, there is another person (Christ) THROUGH whom are all things. And there is a Spirit, also, who is sometimes called God's spirit. Thus, we have not merely a personal God, but seemingly, an essentially RELATIONAL God. This leads us naturally to the idea that these persons have probably ALWAYS been experiencing CONSCIOUS societal relationality, apart from exceptional cases like the incarnation. And since God is benevolent, this experience has been loving. scripture explicitly says as much with respect to the Father loving Christ, before creation.
I say "apart from exceptional cases like the incarnation" because I don't know to what extent a fetus can experience societal relationality, CONSCIOUSLY. But do I therefore posit dual consciousness? I don't see why I need to. Because scripture explicitly declares that Christ EMPTIED himself of his equality with God and was found as a man. I have no way of knowing whether that requires a dual consciousness. But I think I'm still left with enough to hold to the 'necessary self-sufficiency' you claim a basic aseity would require. For none of this requires that God can go out of existence.
A dual consciousness would seem to imply 4 persons in relationality instead of 3. At least it would seem to have implications about the definition of "PERSON" or "PERSONALITY" with respect to Christ. Granted, humans can have mutliple personalities, but I have always understood that they exist one at a time, allowing us to posit only one CONSCIOUS PERSON as the agent manifesting multiple PERSONALITIES. And of course, we know demon possession can account for multiple CONSCIOUS PERSONS, also.
So if I stick with the notion of a single consciouness of Christ, I am left with the fact that at least CHRIST did NOT experience at all times during his incarnation a BLISSFUL trinitarian society. But rather, as a fetus, he may have had the same limited consciousness as any other fetus. But again, this would not contradict the 'necessary self-sufficiency' required by a basic doctrine of aseity.
Granted, Christ by this view was not truly self-sufficient in an absolute sense during the incarnation. He depended on the Father. But he also could not have gone out of existence, either. I'm not even sure we can go out of existence. But even assuming that annihilation is possible with God, He could NOT have annihilated His son because of the relationality they had (and have). For that OBJECTIVE relationality existed even when Christ was a fetus and when he was asleep. The fact that Christ may have been oblivious to that relationship at times during the incarnation is irrelevant--the Father loved him with a perfect love, regardless. Just like there is an objective relationship between you and your loved ones even when you are not experiencing conscious, societal relationality with them.
What this implies about how significant we are to God is not clear. But I think we can infer from the facts that 1) God said all things were created FOR Himself and FOR Christ, and 2) the Father and the Son suffer from this creation, that the creation IS significant to God somehow and someway--at least in the sense that Christ endured the cross CONSIDERING THE JOY set before him. There must be some JOY derived from the redemption of created beings that made God and Christ's suffering WORTH IT. And at least for the one consciousness of the incarnated Christ, that suffering was PROFOUND and SIGNIFICANT. Seemingly more significant than would count, subjectively, as a mere mosquito bite in the midst of unimaginable BLISS.
Remind me to bring up a couple of verses in John that I think might shed light on the significance idea.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 11/6/2005 4:39:56 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 11/6/2005 9:40 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom: The eternal Logos "died"? God the Second Person of the Trinity died? What's that mean? I'm no expert on Luteranism though.
Jeff: I'm no Lutheran either. But if you believe that the soul "sleeps" unconsciously in death (as I do), Christ could have been dead in that sense just like he may have been "asleep" as an early fetus. But he still existed. And he still held an objective relationship to the Father as the Beloved. He also still held an objective relationship to the creation as one THROUGH WHOM it came into being--i.e., he was it's co-creator even while he was a fetus, when he may not of been conscious of that fact.
So it's just the CONSCIOUS social relationality that I'm questioning is ESSENTIAL to God's aseity. The objective relationality would be ESSENTIAL even in the single consciousness view. Just like my wife is my wife, objectively, regardless of our subjective consciousness of it.
Another thing to consider is the meaning of Christ's statement "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" These KINDS of experiences seem to suggest that the CONSCIOUS sociality might not be ESSENTIAL to trinitarian aseity. But the Father's love for Christ would necessitate that Christ's deprivation of that sociality would be momentary compared to what he would gain from it.
I realize the traditional orthodox view might seem to play down the fact that Christ "gained" anything from the creation, but several verses suggest otherwise, IMO. That might leave us with mystery. But a dual consciousness view is also a bit mysterious. If mysteries are simply inevitable, it is no vice to concede them. So the only question is: Are the verses that suggest that Christ gains something from the redemption to be taken at face value or not? And if so, is LFW significant to that benefit or not? I would say both questions should be answered affirmatively.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 11/6/2005 9:21:42 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 11/7/2005 6:26 PM (GMT -6) | | Let's say it this way:
We GET our worth and value from being loved by others, namely by God. If God were not to love us we would have nothing in which to ground our worth, value, or significance, try as hard as we may. This is what it means to say we are NOT self-sufficient. Not only do we depend FOR OUR EXISTENCE upon causes outside ourselves, we also depend for our IMPORTANCE/VALUE upon lovers (God) other than ourselves.
God does NOT GET his worth and value from being loved by us, any of us. And I don't see how he can. If I refuse to love God, God is not WORTH LESS than if I choose to love him. God's love of me determines my value. My love of God does not, indeed cannot in my view, determine God's value. GOD determines God's value. But to say God determines God's own value necessarily (it seems to me) means that God's subjective enjoyment of value (love) is fulfilled by God. And there's nothing we can do to affect THAT. God, being triune, creates and sustains his own loving relationality and grounds his own existence, worth, value, and importance. In THAT God is self-sufficient. This is basically what I think Mephi and I have come to agree upon. We cannot AFFECT God's worth and value or God's understanding and enjoyment of his own worth and value, for God's value is not contingent upon us (though ours is certainly contingent upon him).
Whatever ways God is able, in grace, to open Godself up to being affected emotionally and relationally by us, it can't be said that these contingnet subjective experiences of God conribute to whatever necessary God-defining realities there are.
Mephi?
about applying Jeff's soul-sleep to the crucified Christ? Wow. God in soul-sleep? Hmmm.
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