Open Theism Discussion Board

Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Questions about Christianity > (No Subject)

Forum Quick Jump

183 posts in this thread.
Viewing Page : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

[ << Previous Thread | Next Thread >> | Show Newest Post First ]

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 8/14/2008 11:46 AM (GMT -6)

Maximus on "particular" (for Tom, and the rest of us too)

http://books.google.com/books?id=7l5n6XLZ6F8C&pg=PA52&dq=maximus+the+confessor+expression+of+the+particular&sig=ACfU3U0LNoDwuiUc-Rmj5sbW8Fm381Btmw#PPA100,M1

Wordsearch for more, but this (A. T. #2) is a good place to start.

Btw, the topic popped up here, in part one:

Programs

Sacred Wild - Part 2August 14, 2008

In this segment, Fr. John discusses the "final crown" of God's creation-- man.

Play in popup Download Direct Link

Sacred Wild - Part 1August 07, 2008

Fr. John outlines his vision for an Orthodox plan of ecology.

Play in popup Download Direct Link

(o)

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 8/14/2008 11:49:26 AM (GMT-5)

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 8/14/2008 1:41 PM (GMT -6)

Just back on base, B, and (I sound like a broken record) don't know that I'll get to those recordings. But a quick glance at the online Maximus (p. 100) is a good example of where I 'disagree' with Maximus regarding the nature of created 'logoi' and their realization throughout eternity. Ed Moore points out the Maximian assimilation that he finds objectionable (as well as I).

Pax,
Tom

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 8/14/2008 7:38 PM (GMT -6)

I didn't intend to recommend the audio -- the text suffices.

Thought you'd find the variety within unity to be acceptable.

You suprised me.

Oh well.

(o)

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 8/14/2008 9:09 PM (GMT -6)

Friggin' LOVELY, Bruce.

Loved the text, man!

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 8/15/2008 8:16 AM (GMT -6)

Some quotes from the notes...

Here, in effect, is a brief encapsulation of Maximus' entire christocentric cosmology: the binding of all particular beings, in their individual modes (tropoi) of existence, and with their peculiar drives and volition, to the universal whole as manifested in the logoi of all created things.

...

In Maximus' vision, God will graciously raise his creatures from being, to well-being, and beyond this to "eternal well being" as he sometimes says.

...

Envisioning the activity of the cosmos as a whole, Maximus presupposes here, as elsewhere, that the overcoming of "intentional divergence" (gnomuka diapora), the self-centered deliberative movement of creatures, will be requisite to the restoration of all things to the Creator.

...

...Maximus projects not only the deification of human beings but of the universe as a whole: a cosmic tranfiguration.

...

...commenting on Gregory Nazianzen's celebrated phrase that the "natures are innovated" in the incarnation, Maximus explains in depth how Christ the Logos harmonizes and tranfigures the whole creation by uniting in himself the logoi of universals and particulars.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 8/15/2008 8:35 AM (GMT -6)

B: Thought you'd find the variety within unity to be acceptable.

You suprised me.

T: You're surprised that "I" find variety within unity acceptable?

I give up. (No offense to you B, really; it's just discouraging after nearly of year of harping ON the very thing you're now surprised to hear me find acceptable).

I've been the champion of variety and diversity you guys! Come on. But I insist upon a REAL variety and diversity OF PERSONS, not the sort of God-determined variety that D thinks suffices for a beautiful diversity.

If that's not enough, then who has been listen to me all year?

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 8/15/2008 10:40:42 AM (GMT-5)

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 8/15/2008 8:38 AM (GMT -6)

Ok.

So YOUR version is "real" variety and diversity. But MY perspective does NOT have "real" variety and diversity.

Hey, buddy. I give up.

Whatever.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 8/15/2008 8:43 AM (GMT -6)

D: So YOUR version is "real" variety and diversity. But MY perspective does NOT have "real" variety and diversity.

T: We're talking the eschaton OK? Eschaton...

I didn't JUST say "real variety" and stop with that. I said "a real variety OF PERSONS [divine and human]."

So, in your view all actual variety (the actualization of created forms) is determined BY GOD, by ONE will. Thus, it can ONLY be personally expressive of that ONE (God). Thus, variety or diversity of form in YOUR view is a "many determined BY one" or a "one diffused AS many." (Yes, I know Greg uses the word "diffused." But I'll show you his email if you like where he says this was a bad choice for expressing HIS view--anyhow, dudn't matter now). Variety and diversity in MY view are a "many determined BY the many who are in-relation-to God." Your variety is real in the sense that God really determines his own expression of himself in us in a variety of ways. That's not unreal exactly, but it's not an [divine-human] INTERPERSONAL reality, not interpersonally real. That's my point. It's not interpersonal because the varieties of expression are not DETERMINED by a variety OF persons. You give that up when you embrace a deterministic view of the relation.

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 8/15/2008 11:01:11 AM (GMT-5)

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 8/15/2008 11:25 AM (GMT -6)

Ok, Tom.

I think that our difference seems to be this: You see relatively relatively-autonomous creative expression as ultimately definitive of personhood. I see relatively-autonomous kenotic movement (self-giving and self-receving) as ultimately definitive of personhood. My perspective leaves things OPEN (but not necessary) for exhaustive determination...and allowing for different degrees of relatively-autonomous creative expression. Your perspective ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT allow for a high degree of divine determination of the created person.

Why? Because you say that if a human person in Christ "self-empties" and "gives up" all of themselves, freely and willing...such that they "transparently" express the ONE will of the Trinity (Christ in us via the Holy Spirit...and the Father in Christ)...you believe that they are NO LONGER persons. Even if this is what the human "heart" desired and self-disposed themselves into it completely freely, it would STILL be a removal of their personhood because they were no longer self-disposing their OWN human thoughts, feelings, and bodily movements from their OWN "particular" ego-defined perspective. And that's what's most important to you here. This is because you (like Greg and Hartshorne) say that to "to the extent that A determines B, B is just A." And that's just that. Morover, the idea is that God, wanting interpersonal difference, would NEVER have an end state where God (Personal being A) determined all aspects--thoughts, feelings, bodily actions--of a created human person (Personal being B).

This implies that Tom and Greg imply CATEGORICALLY that the more determination by God of the created person--REGARDLESS OF HOW IT OCCURS, even SELF-DISPOSITION--, the less "interpersonal relationship" between God and the created person.

Hmm...

------------------------------

Maybe this will help with how I see things...

Tom, one day you will give away one of your daughters in marriage. And they will ask you...

"Who gives this woman in holy matrimony?"

And YOU will be like...

"I do"

This "I" is not reducible to your body or mind. This "I" will be your human "heart"...the deepest element of who you are. Your "heart" will be GIVING her to her husband. This is one of the most PERSONAL experiences that you will ever have...but are you doing anything "creatively unique"? Nope. You are a father "giving" a daughter and "receiving" a new son. But even as YOU give her away...she is giving HERSELF away to her husband as well. Without HER will to give herself away, you wouldn't be giving away anything in holy matrimony.

God the Father "gave" us Himself in the Son. The Son "left" the Father to cleave to his wife-to-be, Creation. The Son "gives" us himself in loving sacrifice and identification. And WE (Creation), by the power of the Holy Spirit, give OURSELVES away to the Son in loving self-submission, self-emptying, and self-denial with respect to God's Will and God's Grace. In all this self-giving, there is a sharing of life. I say that our self-giving can include giving ALL of our "will" to God's Will such that we are "providential agents of God's Grace" through the indwelling of Christ via the Spirit. In this, our thoughts, words, and deeds, human though they are, have the power and effect of divine reality.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Post Edited (Divine Progeny) : 8/15/2008 11:52:24 AM (GMT-5)

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 8/15/2008 12:35 PM (GMT -6)

John Wesley on Christian character...

His one desire, is the one design of his life, namely, "not to do his own will, but the will of Him that sent him." His one intention at all times and in all things, is not to please himself, but Him whom his soul loveth. He has a single eye. And because "his eye is single, his whole body is full of light." Indeed, where the loving eye of the sould is continually fixed upon God, there can be no darkness at all, "but the whole is light; as when the bright shining of a candle doth enlighten the whole house." God then reigns alone. All that is in the soul is holiness to the Lord. There is not a mention in his heart, but is according to His Will. Every thought that arises points to Him, and is in obedience to the law of Christ.

I suppose that Wesley's wrong, just like all the "others"...right, Tom?

Yeah...

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Post Edited (Divine Progeny) : 8/15/2008 2:44:50 PM (GMT-5)

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 8/15/2008 12:48 PM (GMT -6)

Envisioning the activity of the cosmos as a whole, Maximus presupposes here, as elsewhere, that the overcoming of "intentional divergence" (gnomuka diapora), the self-centered (DP's note: egocentric) deliberative movement of creatures, will be requisite to the restoration of all things to the Creator.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 8/15/2008 12:58 PM (GMT -6)

Let's have some foolishness by Dallas Willard...who's also wrong...

--------------------------

Renovation of the Heart

Chapter 8: Transforming the Will (Heart or Spirit) and Character, p. 143-144

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Now we ask, What does a will or heart look like that has been transformed into Christlikeness? How is it to be characterized?

Jesus said of himself—and of course he is always the pattern—“He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him” (John 8:29).

And Paul had this to say: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.” (Galatians 2:20).

We also recall John Calvin’s words: “The only haven of safety is to have no other will, no other wisdom, than to follow the Lord wherever he leads. Let this, then, be the first step, to abandon ourselves, and devote the whole energy of our minds to the service of God.”

So we have the answer to our question: Single-minded and joyous devotion to God and his will, to what God wants for us—and to service to him and to others because of him—is what the will transformed into Christlikeness looks like. That is the outcome of Christian spiritual formation with reference to the will, heart, or spirit. And this outcome becomes our character when it has become the governing response of every dimension of our being. Then we can truly be said to have “put on Christ.”

But how far this is from the usual human will and character we hardly need say! Instead of being simple and transparent through a constant and coherent devotion to God, the usual human will is a place of chaotic duplicity and confusion if not darkness, because it is the playing field of pride and fear and lack of confidence in God, shrouded in layer upon layer of destructive habits.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 8/15/2008 1:00 PM (GMT -6)

From Abandonment to Contentment and Participation.
Pp. 151-152

Beyond contentment lies intelligent, energetic participation in accomplishing God's will in our world. We are no longer spectators, but are caught up in a vivid and eternal drama in which we play an essential part. We embrace our imposed circumstances, no matter how tragic they seem, and act for the good in a power beyond ourselves. "We are reigning---exercising dominion--in life by One, Christ Jesus" (Romans 5:17), looking toward an eternity of reigning with God through ages of ages (Revelation 22:5). We take action to accomplish the will of God in his power. Our tiny "willpower" is not the source of our strength. We hardly notice any exercise of it, though it is fully dedicated to carrying out God's purposes in every respect. But we are carried along by the power of the divine drama within which we live actively engaged. So far from struggling to resist sin, we are devoted to realization of righteousness all around us. This is the real meaning of "Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." The strongest human will is always the one that is surrendered to God's will and acts with it.

This progression towards full identification of our will with God's will is one that, perhaps for most people, may not be fully realized in this life. But that does not really matter. It is a progression that it there for us to enter into now, thought the power at work within us as disciples of Jesus Christ. It may be that at present we cannot even imagine what it would be like for us to have a will significantly identified with God's will as just described. But we must never forget that he "is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, in terms of the power that it working in us" (Ephesians 3:20, compare Isaiah 64:4). Our part is to begin as best we can.

----------------------

Boy, that Willard is an idiot...huh?

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 8/15/2008 1:50 PM (GMT -6)

On Universality and Particularity...

--------------------------

In our discussion of common properties pertaining to existence and eternity we could see the implicit conjugate factors of the particular and the universal. These conjugates are evident as such in both the void of ultimate negation and in the presence of God’s Grace.

First, in respect to existence, we will focus on particularity, the uniqueness of the individual, noting again that despair is a fragmentation of human existence at the point of selfhood. The point at which one grasps personal uniqueness, or one’s own particularity, is precisely where the disintegration of despair resides. It is the condition of the self in which factors such as “possibility” and “necessity,” “finite” and “infinite” (cf. Sickness unto Death), are split off from each other, each fragment deepening despair as it alternately dominates or succumbs to the other in the human struggle to be a particular self, an “individual” in the fullest sense.

Second, in respect to the eternal, at the same level of abstraction, we see the conjugate of particularity: universality. In (Religiousness) A, universality is an unspecifiable notion associated somewhat vaguely with preexistence, “the transcendent,” or the “Absolute,” which is “ubique et nusquam” (everywhere and nowhere). However, universality, regardless of how well formulated as a principle, will prove to be only negatively and unredemptively related to the fragmentation of human particularity. No conception of universality is any match for the ultimacy of the abyss. Such conceptions only tend to undermine the significance of particular individuals rather than relieve their despair. Thus, the interplay of these key conjugate properties—the despairing fragmentation of the particular versus the impotent allness of the universal---serves to intensify the negation and renunciation by which the modality of A as a whole is characterized.

The same conjugate properties pertain in the positive mode, Religiousness B, but now they and their relationality are transformed into key constituents of the unity of faith through confrontation with the God-man. Complementarity continues to pertain between eternity and existence, but now they conjugate aspects of particularity and universality are constitutive of a positive condition.

The knight of faith, who for Kierkegaard exemplified existence as transformed, exhibits a profound sense of the universal significance of particularity in and for human nature. Thus Kierkegaard’s scandalous claim that “subjectivity is truth” gains intelligibility in light of the conjugate relations between particularity and universality. Kierkegaard is not advocating solipsism, nor is he even talking about nihilism—subjective immersion in the universal absurdity of the human situation. Rather, he is making the claim that only through deeply indwelt particularity is universality able to be known and appropriated. Logically, the universal is not truly universal if it does not embrace particularity per se. This logical paradox, which appears in science as the problem of singularity, is resolvable at the human level only through faith and the transformative power of the God-man. In faith, one is freed from conceptual and cultural illusions of universality (universal laws of nature, ethics, society, etc.) in order to enter fully into God’s creation through the particularity of one’s own existence. The surprise is that precisely through the full appropriation of one’s own particularity, universality comes to light everywhere in all creation. Thus, Kierkegaard writes that the knight of faith “…takes delight in everything, and whenever one sees him taking part in a particular pleasure, he does it with the persistence which is the mark of the earthly man whose soul is absorbed in such things…Yet he does not do the least thing except by virtue of the absurd [the God-man received in faith].”

The God-man reverses and transforms the logical paradox in the relation of the universal and the particular precisely because that which is truly and fully universal (eternal) has already been manifested from the Godward side in the historical particularity (existence) of the God-man paradox. Once the full and true nature of the universal has been revealed in a particular historical event, then by faith, existential particularity can be appropriated in and for its universal significance. Thus the claim that “subjectivity is truth” is not subjectivism but a veiled reference (unveiled in its appropriation) to the incarnation, wherein the particular subject was, indeed, the bearer of all truth.

In this understanding, human existence should not be conceived dualistically (as in idealism) or mystically (as in some Eastern thought) as a covert bearer of the universal, as if human nature were divided half-and-half and could be unified only by yielding up existence to some vague nether state of eternal wholeness. Rather, through the affirmation of human existence as transformed by the God-man, universality and particularity become definitive conjugate terms, positively correlated by means of the same model of complementarity of particularity and universality in the despair of void and meaninglessness.

The full colorful scope of this interplay between conjugate terms is exhibited in Kierkegaard’s portrayal of the knight of faith, but it must suffice here to say that two essential conjugate properties of human nature in the context of faith are: the eternal as universality actualized in the particular, and existence as particularity embodying the universal.

James E. Loder

Knight’s Move

Chapter 5--"Complementarity and Christology: Kierkegaard and the Logic of Chalcedon"

Pages 103-105

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Post Edited (Divine Progeny) : 8/15/2008 2:08:50 PM (GMT-5)

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 8/15/2008 2:01 PM (GMT -6)

Corey,

I'd LOVE your thoughts on the last post!

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Post Edited (Divine Progeny) : 8/15/2008 2:05:51 PM (GMT-5)

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 8/15/2008 2:37 PM (GMT -6)

Ugh.

T

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 8/15/2008 2:41 PM (GMT -6)

Uproarious.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 8/15/2008 2:43 PM (GMT -6)

Hey, I'm "open" that you're right...and all these other people are wrong. Seriously.

Only God really knows, right?

So, we'll just live in love in the meantime.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 8/15/2008 2:49 PM (GMT -6)

D: Boy, that Willard is an idiot...huh?

T: Yeah, that’s what I believe. Willard is an idiot.

Speechless,
T

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 8/15/2008 2:50 PM (GMT -6)

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaayam! For REAL?????? icon_smile_shock

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Post Edited (Divine Progeny) : 8/15/2008 2:53:33 PM (GMT-5)

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 8/15/2008 2:51 PM (GMT -6)

...Maximus explains in depth how Christ the Logos harmonizes and tranfigures the whole creation by uniting in himself the logoi of universals and particulars.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 8/15/2008 2:53 PM (GMT -6)

T: Yeah, that’s what I believe. Willard is an idiot.

D: For real?

T: Yeah, sure. Everyone who doesn't agree with me is an idiot. Haven't I been saying that from the beginning?

Long sigh.

Post Edited (Tom) : 8/15/2008 2:57:39 PM (GMT-5)

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 8/15/2008 2:54 PM (GMT -6)

Are you being facetious or what? I'm unclear...

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 8/15/2008 3:08 PM (GMT -6)

Oh, I see. You were being facetious.

And OF COURSE you would see that in my stuff too...right?

Sheesh.

Longer sigh...

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 8/15/2008 4:31 PM (GMT -6)

No, I didn't see it in your stuff and was surprised by your thinking I would consider Willard an idiot. I don't understand where that came from (even as a joke; what's the point?). I was being facetious, yes, but only to try to show how incredible I thought the idiot comment was.

T

183 posts in this thread.
Viewing Page : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Forum Information

Currently it is Monday, November 09, 2026 6:14 PM (GMT -6)
There are a total of 97,718 posts in 6,040 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 0 new threads and 0 reply posts. View Active Threads

Need Support? | Forum Help Manual