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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 10/16/2005 5:13 PM (GMT -6) |   | | Mephi-
I now have almost no idea what you believe, whether you believe, or whether you think either matters.
Here's what I'm hearing and how I'm summing up your view in my head:
There's a God.
This God is personal with himself but incapble of being personal with any other person (us).
God doesn't give a rip whether or not we live or die, love him or hate him. He could care less.
God is happy with himself and that's the only thing he's capable of taking any pleasure in.
God created this world but its existence doesn't matter to him.
Our existence is meaningless to God.
Our worship is meaningless to God.
Our blasphemy is meaningless to God.
Our putting Christ on the Cross is meaningless to God.
Nothing we do matters to God.
Since scripture says pretty much the opposite of all this, I'm guessing you conclude scripture is wrong...again. What significant biblical claims are left that you think are true?
I'm not trying to be funny. I'm dead serious. This is where I see you.
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/16/2005 9:16 PM (GMT -6) | | Now we're REALLY havin' fun! 
Tom:
Here's what I'm hearing and how I'm summing up your view in my head:
There's a God.
This God is personal with himself but incapble of being personal with any other person (us).
God doesn't give a rip whether or not we live or die, love him or hate him. He could care less.
God is happy with himself and that's the only thing he's capable of taking any pleasure in.
God created this world but its existence doesn't matter to him.
Our existence is meaningless to God.
Our worship is meaningless to God.
Our blasphemy is meaningless to God.
Our putting Christ on the Cross is meaningless to God.
Nothing we do matters to God.
Since scripture says pretty much the opposite of all this, I'm guessing you conclude scripture is wrong...again. What significant biblical claims are left that you think are true?
Tom, all YOU have to do is answer some questions for yourself. Given what we've been talking about...
Does anything I do as a Christian ultimately affect God's infinitely intense beautiful experience of loving relationality,either positively or negatively?
Would God be JUST AS HAPPY AND SATISFIED in God's heart SANS my existence as God would WITH my existence?
Would God be JUST AS HAPPY AND SATISFIED in God's heart if I went to hell as if I went to Heaven?
Let's start here with your answers. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/17/2005 5:57 AM (GMT -6) | | It wasn't about sparring. I wanted to know YOUR answer so that I could contrast with those.
To all heresy-hunters and general lames...
"I'm connected nationwide, but from the South...
Respect game, and keep my name outcha mouth!"
--adapted from T.I. From P$C's "I'm a King"
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selah
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1210
| Posted 10/17/2005 6:00 AM (GMT -6) | | not to mention
missionary work would be meaningless to God
Pastor Meph, since this is Tom's thread and Tom asked you
some questions on his thread, don't you think it would
be nice to just answer him? Why turn it around?
Oh, and while you're at it would you also please address
the selfishness of God's (meaningless) love and why He
tells us (again in scripture) that love is not self seeking
(1cor 13).
just draw your picture of God so we can see it, ok?
-selah | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/17/2005 6:24 AM (GMT -6) | |
Sheesh. 
There's a God.This is currently my position, yes. But gimme a year or two. You know how that darned "slippery slope" goes. 
This God is personal with himself but incapble of being personal with any other person (us).
No. God is personal with us. God loves us. It's just that our relationship with God is NOT a mutually-influential love relationship in that we cannot help constitute God's increased aesthetic satisfaction in experiencing loving relationality whereas God can help us do so.
God doesn't give a rip whether or not we live or die, love him or hate him. He could care less.
Nice rhetoric. God CARES about God's contingent expression, but this is relativized by implications of God's aseity such that God could WELL do without us and would go on JUST FINE if any one to love or hate him. This is not to say that God would be completely indifferent. This is to say that God's self-satisfaction would relativize that "feeling" unto meaninglessness. Mosquito-style.
God is happy with himself and that's the only thing he's capable of taking any pleasure in.
Of course its not the ONLY thing God is capable of aesthetically appreciating positively. I've said this over and over.
God created this world but its existence doesn't matter to him.
Our existence is meaningless to God.
Our worship is meaningless to God.
Our blasphemy is meaningless to God.
Our putting Christ on the Cross is meaningless to God.
Nothing we do matters to God.
Insofar as Creation's aesthetic content is SUPERFLUOUS to the fulfillment of God's chief dispositional realities, we are relatived unto a form of meaninglessness, yes. Let me just repost in answer to this one...
-----------------------
Doc again...
The beauty of grace. The beauty of God's eternal sociality is expressed in the beauty of the unnecessary, radical act which shows the unthinkable extreme to which God will go to establish sociality with another--another who in sin wants nothing more than to be rid of this sociality! The intensity of the social union of the Trinity is, when it is turned outward, the suffering intensity of God's gracious love for social union with free and fallen humanity. The enormity of the gulf and the extremity of the sacrifice needed to cross it, all reveals outwardly in time the intensity of the love and beauty which defines God inwardly throughout eternity. The suffering intensity ad extra is an expression of the divine intensity ad intra.
The intense love manifested in the cross expresses in its own way the intensity of the love which binds the eternal Trinity. But it does not yet express the intense delight (emphasis his) of God ad intra. This is shall do, however. God does not, of course, delight in dying on a cross as a man. But God does delight in the harmonic sociality between God and God's creation which this act shall bring about and is already in the process of bringing about. The cross expresses the intensity of God's social love, and it brings about the expression of God's social delight in the ultimate victory of the Kingdom of God.
Ok. It seems to me that ALL of Creational and Salvation History falls in here. ALL of this is representative of God's contingent expression of God's necessary essential existence. In the sphere of this contingent expression, God does aesthetically appreciate and operate via subjective aims. Restated, God DOES express genuine grief, pain, rage, joy, relief, happiness, etc...as well as guide and direct...in the realm of Creation. On the level of God's contingent expression, God DOES CARE about human beings inasmuch as God relates to them. I am NOT denying any of this. PLEASE HEAR THIS!
What I'm doing is reconciling this with the full implications of God's aseity and necessary perichoretic nature. The bottom line is this:
If God truly possesses aseity and Creation was truly an ABSOLUTELY FREE ACT of God (and not intended to meet any kind of need or compulsive desire in God), then this blatently means that God could have existed just fine without Creation existing at all. God would have existed in an unsurpassably intense experience of beauty WITHOUT ANY OF US! When you couple this idea with the notion that God's ultimate aesthetic satisfaction (that is, God having an unsupassably intense experience of beauty) only needs to by satisfied SOLELY by God's loving, perichoretic sociality of Godself and not by any non-divine agency (a direct implication of God's aseity), you have some logical implications that result:
1) God would be JUST AS HAPPY AND SATISFIED in God's heart SANS all of Creation as God would WITH Creation's existence. This seems self-evident at this point.
2) God would be JUST AS HAPPY AND SATISFIED in God's heart if you went to hell as if you went to Heaven. For this not to be true, one would have to say that the salvation or damnation of non-divine agents significantly impacts God's achievement of ultimate aesthetic satisfaction. But this negates the very premise which makes the aseity of a triune being possible, as I've argued.
3) Anything we do as Christians CANNOT ultimately affect God's infinitely intense beautiful experience of loving relationality,either positively or negatively. Same reasoning for #2.
Again, I'm NOT negating scripture saying these things, for I acknowledge that God expresses emotion and commitment passionate to human being in God's contingent expression of God's necessary essential existence. But I am relativizing the entire contingently expressive enterprise by what God's aseity entails.
-----------------
Hopefully this will answer the questions and please the Inquisition board.  | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/17/2005 10:09 AM (GMT -6) | | Oh, I forgot this.
Selah:
Oh, and while you're at it would you also please address
the selfishness of God's (meaningless) love and why He
tells us (again in scripture) that love is not self seeking
(1cor 13).
Are you meaning to tell me that the COMPLETELY FREE decision of God to produce a contingent expression of Godself (including the ChristWork), fill God's creation with God's beauty from God's triune love, and sweep Creation into the love that is God...is utterly selfish and self-seeking??
It'd be one thing to say that the whole enterprise is utterly self-oriented. That would be true...and there'd be no getting around that, biblically speaking. God made Creation for Godself, isn't that right? It's primarily involved with expanding the triune dance and providing a Bride for the Son, yes? (Remember "Repenting of Religion?" But the idea of "selfish" and "self-seeking" that 1 Cor 13 deals with is in no way applicable to the Ever-Giving Source of Life.
Does not compute. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/17/2005 10:54 AM (GMT -6) | | Ok. I'll throw down the guantlet here.
Is my thinking FAULTY here? If so, how?
I've thought this out 9 ways to Sunday...and I keep coming up with the same conclusions. I have yet to hear why the thinking doesn't work out the way I'm saying. I keep hearing "It's not scriptural!" and reaffirmations about us having "meaning" to God...but I'm NOT getting any solid critique of the thought process that's leading me to this conclusion!
Again, I don't CARE of a person wants to implicitly or explicitly deny God's aseity, in order to preserve the idea of a REAL mutually-influential love relationship with God. That's fine with me. I sure as heck ain't gonna burn you at the stake. What I do want is for ANYONE to show me how God's aseity (as described here) can be compossible with saying that God is "better off" WITH a contingent Bride than God was WITHOUT any contingent beings in existence!
Seriously. I'll change my perspective if someone can logically do this. Honest. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/17/2005 10:58 AM (GMT -6) | | Corey:
I'm thinking by analogy to marriage (as has been mentioned elsewhere.) As newlyweds my wife and I were satisfied in just being with each other. Our satisfaction with each other wasn't lessened because we didn't have kids. Having kids was just an outcome of our love for each other, and of course of the nature of things in regards to biology. But now that we have kids, I can't be satisfied until they are in right relation with us and with God.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the transition to having kids was a sideways one or even a downward one, in terms of our internal satisfaction. But now that I have kids, it matters greatly to our ultimate satisfaction how they decide to relate to us. Part of my new identity is that of parent, and all that entails.
Maybe it's actually that God's internal satisfaction is in a temporarily dissatisfied state now that he has created. Ultimately it will return to where it was before, but now there's more partakers in this satisfaction.
I don't know how to say that logically without admitting that Hartshorne was right.
****************************
Mr. I:
Doc said "Love (agape)…is the act of unconditionally ascribing worth to another at a cost to oneself." in Repeanting of religion. When we apply this love to God Himself, since God is love, couldn't we get a picture of God that is willing to take on disfunctional relationships and brief moments of brokenness, long enough to build relationships and bring those relationships in line? Adam was created as being a complete being. When God removed the rib and created Eve, he was no longer complete in and of himself, but only in relationship with Eve.
I have no doubt that God we willing to take on the possible dysfunctionality of a free Creation. I'm with you there. But that doesn't help the ultimate problem. Do you see why it doesn't? | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/17/2005 11:07 AM (GMT -6) | | Doc's quotes, not mine. From Trinity and Process. (I pulled these from previous posts on this thread)
"God's essential and necessary existence is most basically defined by the unsurpassable intensity of aesthetic enjoyment which characterizes the triune sociality of God. God experiences Godself with an intensity with which can under no circumstances conceivably be improved upon. As with Hartshorne, we are here most fundamentally defining God's transcendence in terms of God's aesthetic satisfaction."
"God is to be conceived as being at once unsurpassable in God's aesthetic disposition and actual eternal enjoyment of what this disposition produces within Godself."
"Against Hartshorne, we are also affirming that this aesthetic satisfaction is the same whether or not there is a non-divine world for God to enjoy. God is no 'greater' for fellowshipping with the world, for it is God's fellowship with Godself, not the world, which constitutes and characterizes the necessary unsurpassability of God's aesthetic satisfaction. God's gracious fellowship with the non-divine world simply expresses this primordial eternal fellowship."
If what Doc is saying is true, what else can I THINK here?
TOM!?! Bring yo INTP butt in here and SOLVE this! 
Selah, you LIKE Doc's theology, right? What do you DO with all this??? Post Edited (MephEternal) : 10/17/2005 11:19:23 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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MrIndifference
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 144
| Posted 10/17/2005 11:28 AM (GMT -6) | | Mephi,
Truthfully, you are way beyond me. The thing that I am reminded of is that we must always go back to the Word of God. We can't always rely on tradition, or other others interpretations, not even Dr. Gregory Boyd's. So what does the Bible say in this matter? Remember that if we cannot trust God's word, then everything we are doing is... bunk. I pray that God would further reveal Himself to you and to come to peace in your questions. I also pray that you can also have faith in Him in the midst of your questions and accept that at times we have to live in periods of ambiguity.
Grace and Peace,
Jay
MrI. :| Post Edited (MrIndifference) : 10/17/2005 11:54:35 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/17/2005 12:07 PM (GMT -6) | | Corey:
The model I've got in my head is not that God will grow in his internal satisfaction (compared with his sans-creation state), but that he is currently dissatisfied (because now part of his self-identity is that of "Creator"... it wasn't before) and will return ultimately to his original satisfaction. He didn't NEED to create, but now that he has, he's not satisfied until we're brought to harmony. Doesn't this work?
Nope. God's being a "Creator" is God's CONTINGENT EXPRESSION. In other word, God being a Creator was a contingent possibility that existed in God before Creation. It's actualization is God's ad extra actuality. This has nothing to do with God's "original satisfaction". Sure, God can (and does) seek to harmonize Creation, but this has NOTHING to do with God's aesthetic satisfaction level.
Remember...
"Against Hartshorne, we are also affirming that this aesthetic satisfaction is the same whether or not there is a non-divine world for God to enjoy. God is no 'greater' for fellowshipping with the world, for it is God's fellowship with Godself, not the world, which constitutes and characterizes the necessary unsurpassability of God's aesthetic satisfaction. God's gracious fellowship with the non-divine world simply expresses this primordial eternal fellowship."
This is why that doesn't work, Corey. Sorry.
To all heresy-hunters and general lames...
"I'm connected nationwide, but from the South...
Respect game, and keep my name outcha mouth!"
--adapted from T.I. From P$C's "I'm a King"
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selah
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1210
| Posted 10/17/2005 12:37 PM (GMT -6) | | Hi Corey, you're an INTP too?! So aM I. wow. lots of us in here, eh?
Meph, I have to run, but I REALLY want to respond to you more fully.
Call me sometime, ok?
peace and love,
selah | | Back to Top | | |
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selah
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1210
| Posted 10/17/2005 12:43 PM (GMT -6) | | MephEternal said...Oh, I forgot this. Selah: Oh, and while you're at it would you also please address
the selfishness of God's (meaningless) love and why He
tells us (again in scripture) that love is not self seeking
(1cor 13). Are you meaning to tell me that the COMPLETELY FREE decision of God to produce a contingent expression of Godself (including the ChristWork), fill God's creation with God's beauty from God's triune love, and sweep Creation into the love that is God...is utterly selfish and self-seeking?? It'd be one thing to say that the whole enterprise is utterly self-oriented. That would be true...and there'd be no getting around that, biblically speaking. God made Creation for Godself, isn't that right? It's primarily involved with expanding the triune dance and providing a Bride for the Son, yes? (Remember "Repenting of Religion?" But the idea of "selfish" and "self-seeking" that 1 Cor 13 deals with is in no way applicable to the Ever-Giving Source of Life. Does not compute.
in one minute or less...cuz I gott run:
Ok self-oriented then.
It's my view that part of the nature of love is its ability to expand. If good/healty parents co-create 5 children, their love expands out to each child AND their love between them increases over time, through trials, as they remember each unique life event etc.. Anyhoo, I think it would be pretty selfish for God to have his own love relationshp AND create unique beings in his image...who are ultimately insignificant. It seems much more likely that His lvoe expands out and each of us (or should I say EACH HAIR ON OUR HEAD) is VERY VERY significant to God.
can you hear me now?
ok, I'm gonna be late. :( boo
This: But the idea of "selfish" and "self-seeking" that 1 Cor 13 deals with is in no way applicable to the Ever-Giving Source of Life.
WHY do you think that God's own definition of LOVE doesn't apply to God? If God is love, I would think it very much applies to him...
ma;ybe I don't undersand what you mean. That wouldn't surprise me
ok bye!Post Edited (selah) : 10/17/2005 12:50:16 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/17/2005 1:52 PM (GMT -6) | | Corey:
This is what I'm not seeing, or not understanding. Probably I have more background work to do before I can engage this better. I don't see how a parent (so-to-speak) can have a full aesthetic satisfaction level until his kids are also at a full aesthetic satisfaction level. They seem very much connected to me.
This may be a problem trying to extend the "parent" metaphor to God a bit too far. I can't even imagine ANY human adult experiencing full aesthetic satisfaction. This would quite literally be a "heavenly" experience qualitatively greater than anything ever experienced by human beings.
Be all this as it may, the kind of relationality you are talking about, applied to God, would NEGATE the idea of aseity, for you are positing a very INTERDEPENDENT, mutually-influential loving state of affairs. In other words, for your conception to work, God would have to CEASE having aseity after Creation, such that God's full aesthetic satisfaction level was now dependent upon God's interaction with Creation. This would logically provide the kind of interdependency that you are talking about.
Think about it. Human parents are INTERDEPENDENT creatures, being finite beings. Having kids for them is just another form of the interdependency and interrelatedness. The parent's happiness is related integrally to the happiness of their children. I suppose you could try for that...but you run into a LOGICAL problem. If God's aseity is a product of God's NECESSARY (and unchangeable) existence, then it would not be metaphysically possible for the Triune God to divest Godself of God's aseity any more than it would be possible to God to divest Godself of God's triunity. So, this doesn't work. Can you see why? Post Edited (MephEternal) : 10/17/2005 1:55:23 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/17/2005 2:05 PM (GMT -6) | | Let's remember something:
Only GOD has aseity.
Having aseity is something that takes God out of the realm of human experience in a HUGE way. NO human being can even begin to understand what it would mean to be totally and necessarily self-existent and self-sufficient...let alone empathize with it.
We have to keep this in mind as we process this. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/17/2005 2:09 PM (GMT -6) | | Mr. I:
Truthfully, you are way beyond me. The thing that I am reminded of is that we must always go back to the Word of God. We can't always rely on tradition, or other others interpretations, not even Dr. Gregory Boyd's. So what does the Bible say in this matter? Remember that if we cannot trust God's word, then everything we are doing is... bunk. I pray that God would further reveal Himself to you and to come to peace in your questions. I also pray that you can also have faith in Him in the midst of your questions and accept that at times we have to live in periods of ambiguity.
Good perspective. Plus, I deeply appreciate your prayers. Thanks! :;-):
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