Another thing we see in Greek philosophy and also in some Christian theology is the confusion of language with reality.
Just because we have an adjective like “human” doesn’t mean there is a thing “human-ness” that we have which makes us human. Instead I see our being human to consist of a lot of different abilities, roles, and ways of thinking and behaving.
Likewise just because we have this adjective “divine” doesn’t mean there is such a thing apart from God’s other characteristics – something that can be put in us to make us divine.
This is probably a big part of why I don’t buy into Classic theology which use arguments and ideas based on such things.
As for the experiences of Christian mysticism and Bible passages which speak of partaking of divinity in some way. I would take this to mean having an experience of God’s love or a glimpse of His vision.
Yeah… I don’t think I can buy into that. I think this equates to enslaving God to theology – to say God cannot separate Himself from any of these attributes. I think God CAN. Our list of attributes for God in theology do not confine or limit God. God not only can separate Himself from these things but He did so when He became a helpless human infant – and by doing so He did not cease to be 100% God. The power over God belongs to God and not to our theology. It is the most important part of power and omnipotence for Him to decide for Himself who and what He is. To be without that is to lack sentience altogether.
The concept of theosis is found in several places: “I am not asking on behalf of these alone, but also for those who believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one; just as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us” – John 17
Through these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature. – 2 Peter 1
In several places Paul says we are God’s offspring. He also tells us we are to “be filled with all the fullness of God” and that the goal of our salvation is “to be conformed to the image of his Son”.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard Greek philosophy used to argue for theosis, only to say what isn’t happening.
So you think God could stop being faithful? or merciful? or omnipresent?
Of course they don’t; human language can’t describe God fully in the first place. When the scripture says that God is patient, we automatically have the idea of human patience because that’s the best we know, but God’s patience is much ‘higher’ than our patience; when the scripture tells us God is merciful, our minds have the image of human mercy because that’s the best we know, but God’s mercy is much ‘higher’ than our mercy.
Ah, “essence”: what is it that makes a human human? i.e. what is the essence of humanness?
It would be more appropriate to say that God can refrain from exercising an attribute from time to time. We do that naturally because we aren’t consistent; we have ‘parts’ that don’t match and can even be in conflict. God would do it by choice.
According to philosophical theology God is omnipotent, which means God exercises all power so there is no power left for us and God’s Creation. On the othe4r hand according to Relational Theology GOD is not defined by what GOD is, but by what GOD does. GOD relates, GOD Loves. GOD created the Universe and us humans.
When GOD created the universe and humans GOD shared GOD’s power, rationality, and love with the universe and us. We have power, rationality, and the ability to love because GOD’s gave them to us and GOD does not take back GOD’s gifts.
Thus, GOD is not omnipotent. Nor is GOD omniscient, because GOD gives us freedom to choose. We have the freedom to choose for GOD, but that means putting GOD first in our lives, not ourselves as Trump would have it.
And therefore God can discard any attribute He chooses without ceasing to be 100% God.
Yes. We can. We are not like God in this. And I don’t believe in any “human essence” as a thing. We are contingent beings and a product of evolution and development (though I think what made us human is a more direct inheritance from God). But yes the things which make us human can be destroyed or discarded, and we can become little more than an animal or a beast.
How can you be a person when you deny and act against the very idea of personhood? If your actions are no more than a biological organism consuming nutrients, then that is all you are.
The only “essence” I believe in are the choices we make. What we choose is who and what we are. And I believe the same is true of God. God chooses love and thus that is His essence.
But I think God’s decisions, restraint, and self-imposed limitations have all the consistency and reliability of natural law.
Yes. The only thing in charge of God is His own will. Of course, like I have said above, you can say God’s choice to be faithful has all the consistency and reliability of natural law. As for being merciful that is always selective because it only makes sense under particular conditions.
And as for the attributes of omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience, these are about things God CAN do not what He must do. It is absurd and incoherent to construe these as limits upon God. Quite the contrary, God is just as capable as we are of taking risks, giving trust and privacy to others. He can choose not to control. He can choose not to know. And He can choose not to be present in a place – quite a few Christians describe hell as a place God is not present. Whether that is true, I do not know. But yes, I think it is possible. God CAN.
He can discard his omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence and still be 100% God. Sure he can. (That was eye.run.knee, in case you missed it. ; - ) That’s like saying a tree can be a cloud. Some like that idea because they like to invent their own god after their own imaginations without any respect for the God who is.
No it is not. A tree is not omnipotent. God is. It is God who can do anything He chooses. God can become a cloud. And that cloud would be God incarnate. Frankly I don’t that this is all that different or more difficult that God becoming a human being (we are mostly the same thing anyway… water).
You prefer a God enslaved to your theology.
That is what people do when they enslave God to their theology – with their long list of things “God cannot do.”
If something is a thing, it has attributes that define it. If you change those attributes, it is no longer that thing. It has nothing, zip, to do with enslaving God to theology – it has to do with understanding how language works.
I’m glad you’re not georgely, and I presume you’re not thinking either because that’s the word missing in your sentence. You’re right in that it very much is part of the wonderful mystery of the Trinity and the Incarnation. But the Trinity no more divested itself of its attributes that define God than a tree is missing the attributes that make it a tree.
Indeed every attribute is one that people have imputed to begin with. God doesn’t need to discard anything, He already is what he is and nothing else.
I agree that God does not fail at being God, nor do I think it is a matter of capacity or incompacity. What capacity there is comes from God, including that which is mediated by our participation. We are free to act sub-ultimately because we have been created in such a way as to be able to conceive of choices which do not flow from the rest of creation or from God.
As I see it God’s role in creation is to provide a rich field of potentiality which allows all to develop in relation to everything else. In fact I agree with pretty much everything Relates says up until the part related to the Bible. Even there it isn’t that I disagree but only that I am too ignorant to hold an opinion. But given the soundness of the conclusion I certainly don’t doubt his reasoning.
The conflict he identifies regarding the one and the many points to something I also think is important and I think we have something in science that points to a way out, quantum field theory. Causality and the search for the underlying constituent parts makes sense up until the very very small and then is revealed to have reached a limit. People have been able to make predictions in that realm which normal causal reason cannot make sense of and applying those same principles at greater scales proved sound though thankfully not necessary.
In my opinion all arguments regarding God are supported by nothing more than the internal consistency of the assumed premises. He is as He is and does as He does for the good of all. Not to ensure particular outcomes mind you but in order to maintain the rich field of potential that allows for continual viability of the field itself which is what really matters. Note that I am only stating my opinion, a limitation of not sharing enough premisesf but then I don’t care to persuade anyone to my POV.
That is what I mean by confusing language with reality. Just because in language we define words with attributes does not mean the thing the word refers to is “defined” that way or has things called attributes attached to them. And I refute this use of limitations in our language to justify enslaving God to theology with a long list of things God supposedly cannot do.
I do not believe God is a Trinity. That is a misunderstanding of Trinitarian doctrine. And I do not believe attributes define God or trees. They only define words which have more to do with arbitrary human categories than anything else.
The use of the word “mystery” only mean you don’t understand it. And I agree that you don’t understand it.
Sounds a bit like my own assertion that God chose love and freedom over power and control. But I would only say that this is His priority not that God is limited to this alone. God created for relationship, including personal relationships between Him and individuals.
On the contrary, that would make God just a thing. The God, I believe in, is a dynamic entity just as much as we are. It is not true that WE are what we are and nothing else. On the contrary we make choices about who we are and what is important to us – what our essence is. AND our choices change, so we change accordingly. A God who is not dynamic or capable of change is not something we can look up to, but is more like the laws of nature – something to manipulate to our own advantage.
In any case, Christians believe God became a human infant – something very different, defined by limitations and subjection to the laws of nature. So yes, I definitely believe God discarded a great deal to do this.
Phillipians 2:5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.
I’m afraid that is exactly the way I see most Christians regard God.
But God being God hardly makes Him a thing.
That is true for us but it hardly exalts God to see him as bouncing around in his judgement or his opinion of himself for the reasons we do. A more perfect person is more constrained in their choices precisely because they perceive what their values demand of them. And God as something still more perfect is still more constrained by the values he recognizes.
Here is a portion of a prayer written by Soren Kierkegaard (@Kendel ) which goes to the heart of the matter, I think.
Father in Heaven! What are we without You! What is all that we know, vast accumulation though it be, but a chipped fragment if we do not know You! What is all our striving, could it ever encompass a world, but half-finished work if we do not know You: You the One, who is one thing and who is all!
So may You give to the intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing; to the heart, sincerity to receive this understanding; to the will, purity that wills only one thing.
Sorry, if I was on my laptop I might be able to answer more adequately (though still limited by my perspective as are we all). On my phone I am lucky to be at all coherent.
Some perhaps. Regardless, it is not the way I regard God. I believe our inability to manipulate God is what the proper “fear of God” is all about. Just because we ask God things doesn’t mean we expect or think we are entitled to God’s obedience.
Something which simply is what it is and nothing else is a thing.
I certainly don’t see God that way. But I do see Him as responsive. Responding to those He has a relationship with and changing strategies to cope with their failures to live up to His expectations.
Perhaps when you are on your laptop you can explain why you think this goes to the heart of the matter.
I’m going to drag in a theological concept (again) I think is useful here, between God’s essence and God’s energies. The second word isn’t the best; it comes from the Greek ἐνεργέω (en-ehr-GEH-oh) which is the verb for doing work and doesn’t really mean “energy” – I presume the poor word choice is retained to make the first letters match to make them easier to remember (it would be better translated as “operations”).
God’s essence is what He is in Himself apart from anything else. His energies, then, are the outward workings of His power to interact with anything and everything that is not Himself.
I think what is missing here is that simplicity is posited of God’s essence, not of His energies, and that the dispute is really over how His energies function. I’ll toss in a common illustration from the Orthodox: the sun – its essence is being an extremely hot sphere of gas/plasma; its energies are the radiance.
LOL Are you advertising for them then? LOL Last I heard MarkD is certainly not a Christian but an atheist trying to understand the motivations for God belief.
Any changes on that from @MarkD ? ah… I see your description now is “whateverist.” What do you think about St. Roymond’s suggestion that you look into Mormonism as a possibility? LOL
But more seriously… I think the suggestion here is absurd. The Mormons are hard to categorize theological. Recently I have wondered whether they can even be called theists. But I really see no commonalities with the ideas of MarkD.
I thought he was suggesting that your take was reminiscent of Mormonism but maybe not.
I think it is possible to be grateful to Christianity for pointing to something more when the general secular trend would be against anything sacred instead of expedient without seeing it in its present form as any longer good enough. Still I think it makes sense to talk of God and what that means for we all. Christianity gets a lot right but too much is compromised in the bargain for my liking.