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Sahid
Megistered Rember
Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 2013
| Posted 12/31/2005 4:59 AM (GMT -6) |   | Lee: But "dynamic" may not explain dynamis! Many is the time I have heard preachers say dynamis means "dynamite". But it doesn't, the derived word does not explain the root word, so we need to consult the Greek (and not even the Latin) dictionary:
Zach: I'm not saying anything about dynamite. The point is power is ability. I wasn't trying to address the etymology but the concept. You definition agrees with me:
Lee: "(1) as able to produce a strong effect power, might, strength (AC 1.8), opposite weakness; plural, as universal or supernatural rulers powers (MT 24.29); (2) as capacity for something ability, capability (2C 8.3); (3) as ability to communicate through language meaning, force (1C 14.11); (4) as supernatural manifestations of power miracle, wonder, powerful deed (HE 2.4); (5) as the value and usefulness of money wealth, resources, riches (RV 18.3)" (Friberg Lexicon)
Zach: Even here power cannot be spoken of without referrence to ability or potential.
Lee: To us, maybe! But do we need to say it's impossible for God? I don't think changing the past introduces any logical contradictions.
Zach: If the "past" changes, it is not really the past. Just like if a football is rectangular it's not really a football. You would have to define the past as something that changes in the present. S is not not-S.
Lee: Yes, so then "blind" would be recognizing helplessness, and coming to God, and not unintentional sin, and thus Leviticus could then also be correct.
Zach: Ok. It still remains that a man who rubs mud on you and then punishes you for being dirty is not a moral person. If God makes it so that we must necessarily be sinful, he's got no one to blame but himself. In that case God would need to be made holy by us. A God who forces unholy things to happen is not holy.
Lee: Actually, I don't believe that God is by definition good! It could have been otherwise...
Psalm 136:1 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
Zach: OK. But not all that is associated with God should inspire thanks. What should inspire thanks are his decisions - his good actions. I don't think power in itself is good or worthy of thanks. Only power well used. We don't praise Jesus for having power but never using it. We praise him for how he has used it. It's not God's raw potential as something itself that we should give thanks for. It's his wonderful use of that raw potential.
I want to talk about what is necessarily divine. Goodness, you've agreed, isn't part of it.
Lee: Or we could try and understand how God could give such an order in his goodness. Do not all men die? That is more than making all of one nation die, I would say. Here is more discussion from me on this.
Zach: So God could be bad. How? It seems to me that you will automatically assume that any action that the Bible applies to God is somehow good. Why? The Canaanites could make the same claims about Baal or Molech with as much justification. "Yes, Molech tells us to kill our children, but I'm sure he has a good reason." Or "Of course Hitler is good; he may be committing genocide, but 'do not all men die?'" Can Osama bin Laden get off with the "Do not all men die" defense? If not, then why can God? If we can't tell the tree by it's fruit, then how can you claim that the God of genocide is "good." What do you mean by "good?"
Lee: In every instance? That would be my question here, would eternal life here on earth as it is now be the highest good?
Job 7:16 I despise my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone; my days have no meaning.
Zach: Yes, but why did he despise his life? Because God did something that he knew would cause Job intense suffering (according to a determinist viewpoint). If this is goodness then I didn't tease my sister enough when I was younger. After all, all things work together for good and suffering produces perseverance. As long as I torment her out of love, it must be good. If I kill her, it's even better. She's a Christian and she'll go to eternal life in heaven sooner. Do not all sisters die eventually? It's not as though I have a different presepective than God. I know that he lovingly causes suffering and death for the higher good, and I know he's told me to be holy as he is. The essential matters of perspective are all there. I know that all things work together for good, so lets get people to heaven as quickly as possible.
I'm sure that's just as horrible to you as it is to me. But ought I to be good? And it seems to me that you define good as lovingly pushing things to their best possible end regardless of any "evil" means we might need to use. That's why it was a good thing to create mankind with the certainty that it would suffer. I believe we are to be holy as he is holy. But I also happen to believe that commanding people to stone adultresses is unholy. At the very least it's not Christ-like.
Lee: That's a good point, I would say that doing a really sinful deed implies a sin nature in the heart, that an unintentional sin brings guilt to men because if they were really holy, they would not have sinned even unintentionally, as in heaven, there will be no sin there, intentional or unintentional.
Zach: But I don't think this gets you around the problem. We've just renamed the problem "internal unholiness" instead of "unintentional sinful actions." You can say that God is internally holy and that gets him off for killing babies, but you've abandoned your only reason for believing God to be holy in the first place.
Let's put it this way. God does things that look bad, infanticide for one. You claim that he does this from pure motivations. But why do you claim that? We are excusing what he says and does, because we know that deep down he's acting out of purity. But how do we know that? How can we tell what's deep down inside God apart from his words and actions? Should we not judge the tree by it's fruit? Should we not taste and see that he is good?
If you claim that Pilot's actions are sinful, because of his internal state, how in the world do you know his internal state. We have just as much reason to believe Pilot was acting out of holiness as we have reason to believe that God (as portrayed in places) acted out of holiness when he commanded genocide and infantcide. We can't judge the tree by it's roots, because we can't see the roots. God can, but not us. So when we decide this day who we will serve, we cannot assume with any certainty that God's alleged evil is actually good.
Lee: No, I mean the being that is all three persons. Just as a court of law does not say only a person's hand did a deed, they say the whole person did it, though only the hand may have moved.
Zach: So do you believe that Jesus was a part of God, like a hand is part of a person? That kind of thing would get you burned in previous centuries. I think I agree with you though. It's just that the person's defense can't be that only his hand is guilty. If only a finger pull the trigger, the whole person is guilty. And so with God. If someone steps on my finger, I am in pain. If someone crucifies Jesus, God is bleeding.
Lee: But God the Father and God the Spirit did not sleep, nor was the Father dying on the cross, nor was the Spirit raised from the dead.
Zach: Agreed. Still the Father and Spirit limit themselves in other ways.
Lee: Well, then why was Jesus worshipped, with his approval, if on earth he did not have ultimate power?
Matthew 28:18 Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me."
Implying that it was not his at some time before.
Zach: But I believe Jesus did have ultimate power. But he chose not to do every single thing in his ability, but to practice restraint, to limit himself. This is why we should worship him. For the way he chooses to live and use that power. And I don't think the verse necessarily implies that there was some time when Jesus did not have authority. It could be something similar to atemporal procession or begotteness.
Lee: Then God might be weaker than we are?
Zach: Sure. But I don't think he is. God could choose to permanently destroy himself, but that doesn't mean he has. It's like that Gorilla with the kitten. The gorilla could have killed the kitten or it could have killed itself, but instead it was gentle. It restrained itself and took the role of a servant. But the analogy gets lost quickly.
Lee: No, I meant that God has to operate within the bounds of logic, as you also were arguing for previously.
Zach: Ok. But that boundary is a limitation on God. For God to be more than the perfectly simple, unchanging, unfeeling God of Aristotle he must in some way abandon certain potentials. That he does so is great grace.
Watch me fly. Freedom like wings and I will use them. Freedom like wings and I will spread them wide. - StavesacrePost Edited (Sahid) : 12/31/2005 4:04:27 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Sahid
Megistered Rember
Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 2013
| Posted 12/31/2005 5:22 AM (GMT -6) | | |
POW, I know we got into this before, but I don't believe in the impassibility of the divine. I believe that this doctrine was adopted as Christianity became mixed with the prevalent philosophy of the time. You'll understand that it doesn't make sense to me that:
1. God cannot suffer.
2. Jesus is God.
3. But still Jesus suffered.
I've heard it called mystery, but that sounds more like an argument stopper to me. The person of Jesus suffered, and that suffering person was fully divine. I know that makes me a heretic, and I'm ok with that.
Watch me fly. Freedom like wings and I will use them. Freedom like wings and I will spread them wide. - Stavesacre | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 12/31/2005 2:30 PM (GMT -6) | |
Sahid said...
POW, I know we got into this before, but I don't believe in the impassibility of the divine. I believe that this doctrine was adopted as Christianity became mixed with the prevalent philosophy of the time. You'll understand that it doesn't make sense to me that:
1. God cannot suffer.
2. Jesus is God.
3. But still Jesus suffered.
I've heard it called mystery, but that sounds more like an argument stopper to me. The person of Jesus suffered, and that suffering person was fully divine. I know that makes me a heretic, and I'm ok with that.
The point is, that NATURES DON'T SUFFER -- PERSON'S DO.
So there is nothing to 'get into' this time.
Humanity can merely vanish. Jesus suffered. (Deity cannot vanish, thougth--but that's another issue..)
"The Second Person of the trinity Suffered."
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 12/31/2005 2:35 PM (GMT -6) | |
Sahid said...
The person of Jesus suffered, and that suffering person was fully divine. But don't stop there. Pay attention and don't forget that he IS (not just 'was') human too. Truly/fully God with respect to his divinity, and truly/fully human with repect to his humanity.
Jesus "suffered under Pilot, died and was buried, rose again of the third day, and ascended to heaven..."
----------------------
If you don't acknowledge that Jesus is truly man, or that he IS God, THEN......
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PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 12/31/2005 3:53 PM (GMT -6) | | The person of Christ suffered in his humanity (begotten) because it is humanity that needed saving.
"by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man."
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/1/2006 9:46 AM (GMT -6) | |
Sahid said...
I agree that it was a person, not a nature, who suffered. I believe that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine while on the cross. What I don't believe is that he was "impassible in His deity." I'm not even sure that phrases like "in his humanity" or "in his deity" make any sense. It's like saying I experienced the new year in my maleness but not in my blue-eyedness. Before we can say that these statements are true or false, we must establish that they actually are statements.
(BTW -- I want to amend your "both fully human and fully divine while on the cross' to include now and forever too.)
Before establishing that they actually are statements, you've got to get out of my own phrasiology (which even I don't trust) and into whatever the correct phrasing is. I'd agree that "in his deity", to my own ears, sounds a bit like a guy riding two skateboards...likely to do the splits. 
So, go the Creed (in Greek, or in a really good translation). And for this instant I'm pulling from my ears another couple phrases: "as to" and "with respect/regards to." Doing this while realiaing that their helpfulness might be limited.
I can let you pull the actual phrases from the Nicene Creed (and Athanasias for that matter), and the Formula of Calcedon. What is needed here more than that is something concrete. You remarked "I'm not even sure that phrases like "in his humanity" or "in his deity" make any sense." But that I take you to mean "refers to anything." So lets refer to parentage.
I think it absolutely concrete (one thing and not another) to say that Christ was "begotten from the Father without a mother" AND "born of a Virgin without a father." The first is "as to his divinity" -- or however they chose to say it. The second is "as to his humanity" -- tith the same stipulations. This is in credal/doctrinal woodwork. It is also widespread in hymnology. And why is that?
This is such widely distributed material BECAUSE it is about our salvation. The economy. WE need saving, and Christ assumed OUR humanity. Christ died, which is to say that his heart stopped, his brain function ceased, and his spirit and body became separated. But, following the confession of doctrine...his body was still his body, and his human spirit was (still is for both body and human spirit) For us and our salvation...Chirst became truly human. And he did this without ceasing to be God, or changing with regards to his divinity.
You and I want some concreteness there. The Son did not cease being a full part of the divine Trinity, or change his relationsihp with the Father or Spirit when he became incarnate. He did not change with regards to his divinity. That is what is said in the familiar language of the Athanasian Creed -- look at its phrases.
For us and our salvation...Chirst became truly human. And he did this without ceasing to be God, or changing with regards to his divinity. Neither did he become something that we are not. He became "truly man" with respect to his humanness. Do you like "with respect to his humanness?" And THAT TOO speaks to our salvation.
Christ could be fully, truly, really human, all the while being God, BECAUSE there is nothing in the creational norm (as Reformed like to say), in the created design, in the pattern, the spoken-word of our nature that is incompatable with COMPLETE FELLOWSHIP between God and man. THAT is one of the most important things for me to remember, every day of my life.
I am not part of the trinity -- were it so, the number of the Godhead would be in the billions, giving McSonals a challenge...  BUT..."In Christ" I can participate in the divine life, love, felllowship of the Trinity. Mystically, described most concretely as "his Body" the Church partakes and can and will partake of everything said by Chirst in the Gospel of John. We can both go read that. I'm not God, but in Chirst's words, I can be "god." For which I enjoy the word "Christified" -- "made to conform to the divine image" and "fashioned into Christ's..." something. (I'll have to find the verse.)
...........................
Now, something you raise, that I am not emphasizing: "impassible in His deity." What would that mean? We don't' even know what "deity" is -- do we?
I suppose one thing in that phrase its author might have meant is that our salvation (something we can know, in part) is through Chirst's humanity: born, lived, died, buried, resurrected, ascended, ruling. That's something. And Christ's body and spirit did suffer separation. No such separation of the "nature" of the Trinity (such as it becoming 2+1 instead of 3 for a while) occurred. Didn't have to, Didn't have to. Even without separation from the Father and the Spirit, the SON experienced "separation" from "God." What does that mean? We get a glimps when we remind ourselves as to the why. Why? Sin. Sin, sin, sin. Bearing the full weight of our sin, it was not the Father turning his back on his Son, but the Son experiencing the full, terrible, alienating separation from the nature of the divine communion that constituted his bearing our every weakness, and "guilt." The Fathe did not cease to love the Son. But the Son, fulfilling the very love, the very will of the Father, "bore our shame."
Whatever these phrases mean, and whether you disagree with this, or that, of what I've written, let me just suggest that they have to do with our salvation, and are written to remind and direct us to our salvation in Chirst. They do not pretend or attempt to analize God, or discect the Trinity.
We only know what is revealed to us, and what we are at that moment capable of comprehending based on our experience.
Only a Christian can truly say "Our Father..." and know what s(he) is saying. In the liturgical life of the church only the Baptized would ever say it.
Thanks for your request for clarification.
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Lee Merrill
booted
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 723
| Posted 1/1/2006 4:49 PM (GMT -6) | | Hi everyone,
various folks said...
Zach: I'm not saying anything about dynamite. The point is power is ability. I wasn't trying to address the etymology but the concept. You definition agrees with me:
Lee: "(1) as able to produce a strong effect power, might, strength (AC 1.8), opposite weakness; plural, as universal or supernatural rulers powers (MT 24.29); (2) as capacity for something ability, capability (2C 8.3); (3) as ability to communicate through language meaning, force (1C 14.11); (4) as supernatural manifestations of power miracle, wonder, powerful deed (HE 2.4); (5) as the value and usefulness of money wealth, resources, riches (RV 18.3)" (Friberg Lexicon)
Zach: Even here power cannot be spoken of without referrence to ability or potential.
Yes, but not to possibility! "Ability" is different, and dynamis means the latter, and not the former, the concepts are different, and making a choice does not reduce your strength.
Sahid said...
Zach: If the "past" changes, it is not really the past.
Well, maybe, I would disagree, but perhaps we should just leave it at that...
Sahid said...
Zach: Ok. It still remains that a man who rubs mud on you and then punishes you for being dirty is not a moral person. If God makes it so that we must necessarily be sinful, he's got no one to blame but himself.
Then God is sinful according to the Open View! You have the same exact problem here, for God must have foreseen the possibility of injustice, when he made the world, and then the Open View goes farther, and says that some injustice is irremediable, in the warfare worldview.
Within the Open View, God was the primary cause of the world, and thus at least a necessary cause, if not a sufficient cause, of all sinful actions.
Sahid said...
I don't think power in itself is good or worthy of thanks.
I agree.
Sahid said...
I want to talk about what is necessarily divine. Goodness, you've agreed, isn't part of it.
Well, let's be careful here! I do believe that our God is necessarily good. But it is conceivable that there could be an all-powerful ruler who was not good. I was trying to focus on what is necessarily part of the nature of the God of Israel, which would include goodness, but some other god (not Jehovah!) might not be good.
Sahid said...
The Canaanites could make the same claims about Baal or Molech with as much justification. "Yes, Molech tells us to kill our children, but I'm sure he has a good reason."
First I need to know if Molech is the one who determines human life spans, though. If he is not, then he does not have that prerogative, I would say, so there is a difference. But again, how is it that you do not charge God with guilt in all deaths?
Sahid said...
... how can you claim that the God of genocide is "good." What do you mean by "good?"
I mean a good purpose, even in suffering, and the best outcome, as in the cross.
Sahid said...
After all, all things work together for good and suffering produces perseverance. As long as I torment her out of love, it must be good.
You can indeed do what you want to a child of God, and it will all do them good. Only you can't just do what you want! You left God out of the picture, and it is his intervention and control that brings good about.
You are talking as if you were God here, I think, and we are not in that position, and suffering is not always best, we simply don't know enough to make these decisions.
Sahid said...
But ought I to be good?
Yes indeed! And that comes through obeying the only One who is good (Mk. 10:18), for which there are great rewards, and a good result for everyone involved. And that might involve inflicting pain on people at times. Or helping them up. Or encouragement, or rebuke, or a prayer for them, or a tray of fresh muffins.
Sahid said...
Zach: But I don't think this gets you around the problem. We've just renamed the problem "internal unholiness" instead of "unintentional sinful actions." You can say that God is internally holy and that gets him off for killing babies...
No, it is the motive, and the result, and even the process itself that we must look at here, I would insist. A person with a sinful nature will sin without realizing it, and God will not do this.
Sahid said...
We are excusing what he says and does, because we know that deep down he's acting out of purity. But how do we know that? How can we tell what's deep down inside God apart from his words and actions? Should we not judge the tree by it's fruit?
Yes, actually, that is the best answer, to know God. Remember Job and all his questions, and his challenges to God! And what he said when he saw him. To seek to know God is really the answer here.
But as far as judging by the fruit, how is a judgment of death chargeable with guilt and not all human deaths? How is it that Pilate knows as much as God does? By what means does Pilate have love in his heart, and thus a good motive, is he a source of love?
Sahid said...
Zach: So do you believe that Jesus was a part of God, like a hand is part of a person?
No, that was a simple analogy, my point was different, to say God did something must include all persons of the Trinity.
Sahid said...
Zach: I don't think [Mt. 28:18] necessarily implies that there was some time when Jesus did not have authority. It could be something similar to atemporal procession or begotteness.
I'm not sure what you mean here, though. And Open View people tend to emphasize taking passages at their plain apparent meaning!
Sahid said...
Zach: God could choose to permanently destroy himself, but that doesn't mean he has.
I would say some hypothetical god could do this, but not God. But maybe that's another topic...
Sahid said...
Zach: For God to be more than the perfectly simple, unchanging, unfeeling God of Aristotle he must in some way abandon certain potentials. That he does so is great grace.
Well, I will let God tell us if he could be different in these ways! But I agree that God is not unfeeling and unemotional, and I also would say that that is not heresy. As in an article in Modern Reformation Journal saying just the same thing...
Blessings,
Lee
==================================================
"Even now we seem to have dim glimpses into regions
from which we receive no word to bring away" (George MacDonald)Post Edited (Lee Merrill) : 1/1/2006 3:52:59 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Sahid
Megistered Rember
Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 2013
| Posted 1/1/2006 5:53 PM (GMT -6) | | POW, I guess the issue is defining divinity and humanity. I don't think I'd draw as sharp a distinction as most. I think divinity is the ability to do anything (at the present moment, if that needs to be said). Humanity might be the capacity for free will. I might very well be wrong about these definitions, but I agree that we don't need to view divinity and humanity as mutually exclusive.
So, I still don't know about "in his ---ity" language. I think it is possible for a divine being to do anything a human being might do, and vice versa.
As far as impassibility goes, if the word means "unable to suffer," then many of the early Church fathers were wrong. A divine being can suffer (in his divinity, if that is meaningful).
Watch me fly. Freedom like wings and I will use them. Freedom like wings and I will spread them wide. - Stavesacre | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/1/2006 8:17 PM (GMT -6) | | Brief challenge to second paragraph... I'm human, and cannot create ex nihilo.
Third paragraph... I don't know if "suffer in his divinity" is meaningful.
Off my own cuff, suffering seems to involve change. I suffer in my going-on-fifth joints--they change from early morning to evening.
That is why I like the phrase "persons suffer, not natures."
Come to think of it, my human nature abandons me, not really suffers. But I suffer.
But IN his humanity, Christ suffered. So, following the phrase I've grown to like, his humanity didn't suffer--it just died. But HE suffered IN his humanity. Pain was experienced in his assumed human nature. No pain came from his divinity. And divinity did not suffer. And I'm considering that maybe humanity did not suffer either. But that's a new bit of rhetoric... THEN, if anything is suffering of human nature it is death: the separation of human soul and body. THAT seems to fit the bill for suffering of human nature. In THAT case we all are suffering, as sin brought corruption, death. And further, "the sting of death is sin." Death leads to more sin. Death, sin, death, sin...
Putting aside those Fathers, what "suffers impassibly" brings to my mind right now is that God suffered without being changed in his resolve to become sin for us. Let me back away, and then come back to that.
Unlike some parts of western theological history--not all--Greek Christianity considers FIRST the Person, and then moves to the Nature.
So, returning to the statement... Christ, the Person who is the Son and Word, suffered. Divinity is a nature. So for us it is like an after-the-fact observation, and for God the experience of being God-in-trinity ( which we can't know directly, but can participate in "in Christ." ) Suffering, Christ never backed down, backed away, begged off. Feeling in his body and soul the abandonment of God through suffering and death in the flesh, he did not call down angels, or cause the earth to open and swallow the soldiers. Nothing divine was done in change from the divine will's purpose. Not one aspect of divinity moved a shaddow's worth. Crying aloud in his humanity he expressed the horror of a cursed death. HE died. The Father and Spirit exprerienced through their relationship with the Son the pain of our sin. But they did not experience it individually. Through his person, who personally suffered, the God head knows our pain.
And God's nature does not change. God is not forced to do this or that because of a "nature" -- but rather has ALWAYS purposed to redeem the world. One Father wrote that "There was a cross in the heart of God before the foundation of the world." Paul wrote something similar.
God does not change/suffer in his eternal nature. But he does not have to. God is too big to need to, too expansive to be small in the face of our suffering and our need.
If God were not, then perhaps we'd say his changes/suffers-in-nature.
But personally, God suffers. He knows our passions as his own, because he is one of us.
My jargon. (May God forgive me my errors.)
..............................................................
Cyril is the most extreme in language. But you have to read him in historical context to understand why. (Sorry you never seemed to have any handle on the differentiations on Cyril & Co. at all. So lets leave that.)
(o) Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 1/1/2006 7:21:57 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Sahid
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Total Posts : 2013
| Posted 1/3/2006 5:49 PM (GMT -6) | | | POW: Brief challenge to second paragraph... I'm human, and cannot create ex nihilo.
Zach: But that's not because of your humanity. You can't veto Congress either, but that's not because you are human. It's for another reason entirely. I doubt that we need to create and define the category of "human" in order to exclude creation ex nihilo. BTW, is it the orthodox position that the Son took on a new nature at the Incarnation or was he always two natures, one person? I would imagine that the early Church would want to portray the Son as unchanging as possible.
Am I right in saying that you define impassibility as unchanging in his resolve to become sin for us? I agree that he demonstrated this quality, it's just a funny term to use for it. It's like calling grass red, and then explaining that red is the name for that color in between yellow and blue.
I guess I can see that Jesus suffered in two distinct ways (or natures). When the nail pierced him suffering was transmitted through nerves to his brain and somehow to his conscious mind. Also he suffered emotionally from estrangement from the Father and Spirit and from his fellow man. This second suffering is surely human, but I don't see why it can't also be "in his divinity."
The most charitable I can be to the church fathers I've read is to say they might have been right in their intended meanings, but they chose very loaded terms to explain themselves (such as impassibility). If impassibility doesn't mean unable to suffer, then red might as well mean green.
Watch me fly. Freedom like wings and I will use them. Freedom like wings and I will spread them wide. - Stavesacre | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/3/2006 6:55 PM (GMT -6) | | |
POW: Brief challenge to second paragraph... I'm human, and cannot create ex nihilo.
PoW-addendum: I'm human -- and therefore a created-creature, and therefore cannot create exhihilo. Only God can do that. The Christian God. Not the God of Arias, or Aristotle. But I'm only a creature.
Zach: ...I doubt that we need to create and define the category of "human" in order to exclude creation ex nihilo.
PoW: For sure. Agree with you there. As in my addendum above.
. . .
Zach: BTW, is it the orthodox position that the Son took on a new nature at the Incarnation or was he always two natures, one person? I would imagine that the early Church would want to portray the Son as unchanging as possible.
PoW: This is nothing about a "want" to portray "as unchanging as possible." (Just the opposite: into the helenistic world the Greek fathers thrust the God of the OT and NT who changed from being 'uncircumscribable' to be enclosed by an animal's feed bin.)
He has come on earth, while being Whole in heaven; and while complete in heaven, He is without diminution on earth. Though He was God, He became Man; not denying Himself to be God. Though being the impassable Word, He became flesh; that He might dwell among us, he became flesh, He did not become God, He was God. Wherefore He became flesh so that He Whom heaven did not contain, a manger would this day receive. He was placed in a manger so that He, by Whom all things are nourished, may receive an infant's food from His Virgin Mother. So, the Father of all ages, as an infant at the breast, nestles in the virginal arms, that the Magi may more easily see Him. Since this day the Magi too have come, and made a beginning of withstanding tyranny; the heavens give glory, as the Lord is revealed by a star. (John Chrysostom)
And in boldy preaching the God who is alive and active, and not confined by some concept of "nature" but is "free" to love and to chastize, the expressions are SALVIFIC in orientation (not theoretical or defining).
He Who is above, now for our redemption dwells here below; and he that was lowly is by divine mercy raised. . . .
. . . And ask now how; for where God wills, the order of nature yields. For He willed, He had the power, He descended, He redeemed; all things move in obedience to God. (John Chrysostom)
. . .
Zach: Am I right in saying that you define impassibility as unchanging in his resolve to become sin for us?
PoW: Way back Tom defined it that way too. And I agree.  Let's keep it at that. Keep it on the level of salvific language.
Zach: I agree that he demonstrated this quality, it's just a funny term to use for it.
PoW: We're now talking about Cyrilian expressions, or of those before or after him. HIS emphasis too was on the SALVIFIC, but what is not handy to you is to know the challenges to salvation that called up language such as he used. So let it lie. You don't need it. Keep with what you need--the salvific.
"Suffered impassibly" MEANS SUFFERING that is done by someone _un-wavered_ (I realize I'm mixing direct and indirect verb tenses--at least as would be in German grammar.), un-cajoled by anything outside of His sovereign self. As I appreciate it (not knowing Greek, but only reading in English) it's seeming paradox draws my attention (at least me--you're welcome to your own thoughts, etc.) to the theatre of both the uncreated Godhead of the Only-begotten and the assumed humanity in which the Savior chose to be born, suffer, die, and raise fallen humanity from the dead.
Like any historical term, in its context, I appreciate it in its context...and don't bring it up in public.
. . .
Zach: I guess I can see that Jesus suffered in two distinct ways (or natures). When the nail pierced him suffering was transmitted through nerves to his brain and somehow to his conscious mind. Also he suffered emotionally from estrangement from the Father and Spirit and from his fellow man. This second suffering is surely human, but I don't see why it can't also be "in his divinity."
PoW: The PERSON of the Trinity chose to suffer "in his humanity." WHO suffered? The Son. WHAT suffered? (And here more is at stake than you have recently put on the table.) A human body along with a human soul. A human will wrestled (Not deliberated back and forth, but strained at the unprecidented difficulty of doing what He wanted to, against greater forces than the world ever knew!) And WHY? "For us (wo)men and our salvation..." I have absolutely NO idea what sort of thing might be "suffering of divinity." No handle at all on which to begin... BUT, we all have plenty of awareness (any atheists included) as to what fallenness, brokenness, sin (though Budhist's don't define it that way) is. Athanasias said "That which is not assumed is not healed." From THAT, the need for healing, is where the understanding of what the Christ's action in his life-long passion and death on the Cross entailed.
Unlike the pagan Greeks, Christians believe -- along with John Chrysostom above -- the salvific message that "where God wills, the order of nature yields. For He willed, He had the power, He descended, He redeemed; all things move in obedience to God." Their message was, and is, that humanity needed healing, and ONLY humanity can save humanity. (Why else the incarnation???) And everything broken about humanity needed "recapitulation" (Irenaeus). And Christ met every need!
. . .
Zach: The most charitable I can be to the church fathers I've read is to say they might have been right in their intended meanings, but they chose very loaded terms to explain themselves (such as impassibility). If impassibility doesn't mean unable to suffer, then red might as well mean green.
PoW: Glad you are charitable.
They had challenges you fortunately don't have to face. Some of them were vanquished for you by them. Thanks be to them! You don't have to mess around with "the language of paradox" if you don't want to. But that language is not the source of their convictions -- scripture and their faith are.
But if you like the expanded utility of that language, rest assured that "impassibility doesn't mean 'unable to suffer.'" It just means not being naturally vulnerable to being forced not to suffer.
Simply, it means being PERSONALY ABLE to respond as Christ did in the garden.
So. . .Lets meet at that text, in Palestine. And not in Alexandria.
Shall we?
(o) Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 1/3/2006 6:01:03 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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JEE
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2004
Total Posts : 1466
| Posted 1/4/2006 4:00 AM (GMT -6) | | The Suffering of God by Terrence Fretheim, a Lutheran scholar and professor, is absolutely a must-read, in my o.
Fretheim, an Old Testament scholar, demonstrates that the God revealed to us in the Old Testament is indeed a God who truly suffers personally, generally due to his love and disappointment over the waywardness of His children.
I honestly don't see how a person can suffer and yet not suffer "in their nature." That would be like me saying I experienced being beaten up, being drunk, or having sex "as a person," but somehow not "in my nature." This would require that one's "nature" be something separate from one's existence and/or personhood. That makes absolutely no sense to me anyway, and I honestly can't see how it can make sense to anyone. But that's just me.
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/4/2006 7:30 AM (GMT -6) | | Hi JEE.
Whatever you do or don't, notice that in this Breck quote (from a link I began) SAYS that God suffers, that the Father and the Spirit suffer...BUT do NOt suggest that this suffering is of a "sitting back" sort. God suffers in/while that God EMBRACES (in Breck's words) THE WHOLE WORLD.
That tasting of death was not limited to the Cross. It involves His ongoing suffering in the life of every sparrow that falls to the ground, every victim of a natural disaster, and every tormented soul who contemplates suicide. Christ’s suffering – and with it, the suffering of God the Father – embraces the whole world and every particular life within it, including yours and mine. There is no true love without suffering. And God is and always will be the God of Love.
God suffers without change in his divine nature. This is true of his suffering in the flesh, and his embrace of the whole world.
And what does this mean? Just what Tom said more than a year ago --that he does not change in his divine character. Bingo!
S.'s concern's about word-choice are worthwhile...For us the reason to keep the word "impassibly" on the books has to do not with God but with US. WE have both good passions (zeal for God, love...) and also run-away passions, passions that enslave and snare. It is THIS sort of passions that we pray the Spirit to root out. And it is in this respect that the witness that "God suffered impassibly" is good witness to us. It says "Chirst is Victor" and "Christ is our perfect example."
I think we agree about the strange sound of the wording. And that we agree about the Victory and the witness of Christ. And about God's Love!
(o) Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 1/4/2006 6:38:03 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/4/2006 8:10 AM (GMT -6) | | |
" B e y o n d N a t u r e " . . .
..............................................................................
http://www.luthersem.edu/NCPST/Nichols_Nov-05.pdf
Thursday, Nov. 1O -- 7:3O PM
A Lecture by Dr. Terence Nichols, Chair, Department of Theology • University of St. Thomas
Human free choice {libertarian freedom} is often denied in modern science, or explained as a natural result of a complex brain and social system. Dr. Nichols will consider the arguments against free choice, and also criticize the notion of liberty being a naturally emergent property. He will make the case for our freedom being beyond nature, proposing that it comes into being as a result of a personal relationship with God.
OEC Auditorium, University of St. Thomas // Free and open to the public. // Maps available online at http://www.stthomas.edu/campusmaps/
(o) Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 1/4/2006 4:48:23 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Lee Merrill
booted
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 723
| Posted 1/4/2006 7:13 PM (GMT -6) | | Hi Don,
might-be-don said...
Jim built a building on 5th and Vine on Feb 2, 2005 . I go to work on the third floor of that building on Jan 4,2006. God decides to change the past and the building is never built. Do I just fall on the ground as the building disappears?
Why, sure! Actually, this is all sheer speculation on my part, but certainly if one aspect of the past would change, then many other aspects would change as well. I just mention it to show that God may have abilities we don't reckon on, which are yet logically possible.
might-be-don said...
If the past and the present ( and future for that matter ) exists at the same time how am I affected in the now ?
Not much, I would say! They exist to God, is what I hold to, but not to us, in that we don't experience this timelessness...
Blessings,
Lee
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