Nang
TOL Subscriber
C'mon . . . you cannot be serious!
ECT Our triune God
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C'mon . . . you cannot be serious!
TFTn5280
New member
Just can't help yourself can you, Nang. Have you ever thought before ya spoke?
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Arsenios
Well-known member
Then it is a human endeavor... In Orthodoxy, we simply say we cannot know it... You seem to be saying the same, with an added BUT that functions as a spring-board into an ocean of words...
How CAN it be IF it is NON-temporality?
We can say that God exists without respect to time...
We cannot then go on to describe with a ton of words that are temporal... Simultaneity and concurrence are temporal words, however much you then deny duration and sequence and linearity and elapsation...
This is fairly apophatic, except that if you are going to be rigorous, you cannot even say God IS, because it opens the door to the converse, IS NOT... Self-existent is perhaps better, because a butterfly IS... And then is NOT...
And here you slip off from being rigorous again, for you are speaking of God's Essence of which one can know nothing, the "Line" which is unknowable, as you acknowledged, yet insisted that this is the only way to TALK ABOUT IT... And after all the apophatic things you said about how there is no where and when that are at all ascribable to God, you then say that there IS a where and when for this no-where and this no-when...
And what you do not have to work with is the Orthodox distinction between the uncreated Essence of God, which is utterly unknowable and cannot be uttered at all, vs the uncreated Energies of God which created all of creation, which we can only know by revelation from God... These are the "backward parts" of God that Moses encountered... No man can survive a face to face encounter, as God told Moses...
So that it is at the beginnings that I would choose to dwell, because the words following the beginnings are in violation of the beginnings, as you admit, and are so for the sake of the words, or as you later say, to make the move from cataphatics to apophaticism in a fairly gradual way... The truth is, this is a bottom to up approach, when what is needed for a clean apprehension is to begin with the unknowability of God in an absolute sense, and then to work toward His revelation to mankind created in His Image... First through the Prophets, and then in Person, and now in His Saints...
I do not have enough time to go through these long posts, and it seldom helps very much... Us 9 year olds need smaller bites...
The other matter involves the use of your theological language in worship... What does it look like there? Or does it even go there?
Arsenios
Arsenios
Well-known member
Thomas - You can delete a posting by clicking edit, then delete, then confirm delete...
Arsenios
TFTn5280
New member
Hmmm, doesn't work (me dunce)
Arsenios
Well-known member
Lower right in the edit box, then lower left in the pop-down box - It will kick you back to the first OP...
I just did it in my reply to you...
At least I don't think it is some advanced feature I have and you don't have...
???
A.
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
No. It's an apophatic descriptor to cataphatically say what creation IS, since Orthodoxy missed giving us a truly transcendent God and compensated with three sempiternal hypostases instead.
Yes, I know; yet Orthodoxy says many things (like God IS three hypostases) while never having accounted for created sempiternity, Self-phenomena versus noumena as created phenomena, quantitative versus qualitative, and missing the most crucial meaning for any term in human history...Rhema.
I'm not Orthodox; and the more I've approached Orthodoxy, the more Theology Proper keeps me away. In His uncreated Self-conscious Self-existence, God is a singular hypostasis. You could never embrace that as the truth. And I can never again embrace the fallacies surrounding Orthodox false limitation for God that are prematurely assigned as mystery.
Only His immutable ousia is mystery, and we are partaking of the divine physis OF that ousia. Engrafted into His very Logos, and communing with Him "into" trans-creation. The noema and phronema of His immutable nous is supposed to be in us.
It's a part of apophaticism without being paranoid as Eastern. The only way of demonstrating the ray of sempiternity that the Orthodox missed and diluted the faith, is to make sure others understand the ray is NOT a line and there's a huge difference between semptiernity and eternity rather than combining them as has been the constant foundational error from Orthodoxy.
The Orthodox misapply the term temporal because of this. God is inherently asempiternal, not atemporal. Temporality came for only the cosmos from the Edenic calamity. Heaven, just like the cosmos before "the fall", is sempiternity NOT eternity. Heaven is created. It had a beginning. It had an inception. It is NOT eternity. God alone is eternity, and He created sempiternal heaven and the cosmos, from which the cosmos "fell" to temporality and will be destroyed/restored.
In using such language above, I'm not trying to explicitly anything to God, but to correct the Orthodox errors about creation. For that, I use descriptors to correct the damage of false concepts.
There is no line. But Orthodoxy has said there is no ray, making any understanding of "lineness" into heaven while still giving lip service that it is created. And still calling creation temporal. It's not. Heaven and the cosmos are everlasting (sempiternal; a RAY), with temporality ONLY being the "fallen" cosmos for an age/aion of created agelessness/aionios (SEMPITERNITY).
Orthodoxy has misapplied apophaticism to unintentionally represent an omission and then compensate with three hypostases that misrepresent God.
That's the whole point. It ISN'T non-temporality. It's NON-SEMPITERNALITY. Temporality is merely an earth age (or ages) post-creation. Before and after (in the future), the cosmos is sempiternal.
Not recognizing and understanding this is the ONE error of Orthodoxy that leads to a series of other issues. It's why I'm not and can't be Orthodox, for it's foundation of the erroneous compensation of God as three hypostases.
I cannot trust the apophaticism of the Easterns when it promotes mystery where mystery is revealed. You're focusing on my attempts to illustrate sempiternity, and if I go to far it's because Orthodoxy both went too far and not far enough, and I'm having to reconcile it.
God created and inhabited sempiternity, which is heaven AND the cosmos until the cosmos became "temporarily" (get it?) temporal for an earth age (aion) of agelessness (aionios).
Eternity is transcendence. Eternity is God. Eternity is NOT sempiternity and sempiternity is NOT eternity. The entire focus of what I've expressed is to correct the Orthodox error that eternity and sempiternity are combined, while Orthodoxy still claims heaven is created and creation is temporal to God's atemporality.
Even the term atemporal is an inaccurate and incomplete semi-accurate and misleading) Orthodox apophatic. It's maddening. The. Orthodox are wrong, and it led to three hypostases as compensation for that singular error.
Not good.
Words are sempiternal, not temporal. I can no longer reciprocate such a term when it is misapplied. There are words in heaven and the pre-fall cosmos. Words are not temporal. Words are sempiternal, and originated in eternity from God's own Logos (which is NOT an individuated hypostases from Himself, but is qualitatively His own singular transcendent hypostasis expressed forth into noumenal creation as phenomena.
Compensation for the Orthodox error of misdefining eternal as combined with everlasting while resigning creation to temporality, all ignoring sempiternity's distinction from eternity AND temorality while mandating God to fallaciously be three hypostases when He is ONE hypostasis in transcendence and they've just observed the post-procession Logos as the Son and asserted the multiples while not discerning eternity as "other" and "beyond". Error of incompleteness and compensation by concepts of the human mind that are intellect over intuition... no matter how much you and the Orthodox decry and deny it.
The multi-hypostatic Trinity denies eternity fro what it is AND sempiternity for what it is; and it's an anthropomorphic superimposition of a triplicate of man's image for plurality to quantify an unquantifiable God. So please don't distort my apophatics about CREATED SEMPITERNITY (that IS knowable) that are used to clarify Orthodox error. I've already indicated I use apophaticism as a tool rather than slavery to Orthodox error.
I'm not. I'm going to be expedient and correct Orthodox error with apophatics that clarify sempiternity is NOT eternity nor temporality.
God said "I AM". Jesus said "I AM". I'm going to say "God IS". And I'll continue to craft my apophatics, but not be enslaved to Orthodox extremes that misrepresent God's constitution and His created sempiternity.
No, I was speaking of God's hypostasis, His processed Logos and Pneuma, and the economy of His actions; not His ousia and physis and prosopon that inherently remain unknowable and transcendent (though with His transcendent prosopon in-shining as the unapproachable light in which He dwells as co-processed hypostasis in sempiternity.
One can know God has/is an ousia, and that the ousia has a physis, and that the ousia snd physis are underlied by His hypostasis, and that He has a prosopon, and that He is Spirit, and that He exists, and that He's conscious, and that He's uncreated, and that He has many incommunicable and communicable attributes, etc.
That's not nothing. And it's because He took action as economy from the energies of His essence, which has the physis, of which we are partakers by hypostatic union with the ascendend Christ.
To correct fallacies about Orthodox representation of created sempiternity, etc. And He expressed it by His Logos, into which I have been translated by faith from hearing His Rhema.
You're side-stepping the issue. The issue is eternity is NOT sempiternity is NOT eternity, and sempiternity is NOT temporality, and God is NOT three hypostases. The rest is you focusing on apophatics that aren't used as you presume.
INCORRECT. This is misplaced and pedantic.
Yes, I do and have. You just can't face the fact that Orthodoxy is wrong and omitted the created sempiternal heaven and cosmos.
You've missed them, not me. Orthodoxy missed this AND misrepresented it. The created sempiternity is the backside God showed Moses as His glory. The heavens declare the glory of God.
You still do not understand what I've said, instead attempting to correct my apophatics and ignore the distinctions I've made that Orthodoxy erroneously omitted in their fallacious apophatics.
Orthodoxy has no created sempiternity as heaven and the cosmos. Only eternity and temporality, and both wrongly referenced.
No. What's needed is to address it all to correct the omissions of Orthodoxy that egregiously gave us three hypostases for a singular hypostasis God, His Logos, and His Holy Spirit. And to present eternity, sempiternity (invisible and visible), and temporality for exactly what they are.
And I do this by beginning with God's attributes and His unknowableness. Just not in this venue of required word volume for such things.
...and three hypostases. Unless Orthodoxy corrects this error, I can ever be part of the holy communion.
I don't know what you're specifically referring to unless it's liturgy. Protestant "liturgy" is... deficient. I know of no Protestant fellowship which worships totally in Spirit and in truth. But Antiochian liturgy refers to three persons at times, so...
I do love the liturgy, if that's what you mean. Alas...
Orthodoxy gives us three sempiternal hypostases, and isn't even aware of the fallacy. It grieves me.
Arsenios
Well-known member
Oh, I was just wondering what liturgical prayers would look like in your theological language... "Glory to our Timeless, Eternal, Sempiternal and temporally transcendent singular monohypostatic Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ processing from the Father as His undivided singular Hypostatic Rhema..."... Say in Tone 8... It is just that your terminology doesn't seem to lend itself well to worship services...
At least you found some peace with us...
Even though you scorn our 2000 year theological basis for that very Peace which was so eluding you in the insanity of the personal attacking that was going on here so very recently... And for that I thank God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit... A thanks which I think we can both affirm...
Arsenios
1Mind1Spirit
Literal lunatic
1Mind1Spirit
Literal lunatic
LAY down, Satan.
Arsenios
Well-known member
There was when there wasn't a when.
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
They'd look about 99% like the Orthodox equivalent; just slightly altered to correctly represent any distinction in eternal and everlasting and temporal, and any reference to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three "persons" (hypostases).
Why would you make such a caricature? I don't mock Orthodoxy and I'm a Trinitarian. I just reconcile what you won't address as Patristic error of omission.
I'm disappointed all you did was address degree of apophaticism rather than the real of issue of Orthodoxy combining eternal and everlasting while misrepresenting temporality in the process.
Surely you see this. But this is what grieves me. The Orthodox, when confronted with this even cordially, must resort to dishonesty on some level. You did so by side-stepping the issue of eternal versus everlasting, and instead merely focusing on me being more rigorously apophatic instead of being able to acknowledge that I've uncovered the singular foundational error in Orthodoxy.
This is at least slightly sarcastic and condescending, instead of seeing that Orthodoxy doesn't appropriately distinguish between eternal (eternity - God ONLY) and everlasting (sempiternity - heaven and the cosmos) and temporal (the fallen cosmos ONLY).
Eternal, everlasting, temporal, substance, essence, etc. all lend themselves to worship services just fine. No need for multiple non-existent "persons" to be mentioned, especially when a hypostasis isn't even a "person". Faith is a hypostasis.
Yes, and with AMR and other Protestants during that same season.
I scorn nothing and no one. I'm grieved by the naivete' and dishonesty of having eternal and everlasting clearly depicted as distinct and unaccounted for, and yet the topic being side-stepped because one would refuse to admit any possibility of being wrong.
It's no different than the knucklehead Arians and Unitarians and Sabellians and other heretics. It's maddening.
Please explain how eternal is the same as everlasting.
The Multi-Hypostatic Trinity doctrine was NO peace for me. It's been the bane of my existence. It was you and other Believers who helped bring that peace, not the false doctrine of the Orthodox Trinity formulaic.
The functionality is the same, just as I've observed in modern Sabellians (Oneness). God accomplishes His grace in hearts despite doctrinal understanding.
Yeah, like I'm the only one on TOL engaged in that then or now. Sigh. And I've certainly seen you less than charitable to others, just as I have been. Why point that out? False piety?
I embrace Eastern Orthodoxy more than any non-Orthodox/-Latin you could find. I reject the singular error of not recognizing eternal and everlasting are quite distinct, and it results in the necessity of a UniHypostatic Trinity to consider the layers of phenomena.
Of course. But not as three hypostases with individuated consciousness and volition as mutliple "souls" resulting in multiple beings falsely called "persons".
Stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. In this, the Orthodox are no different than others.
I believe it was Hippolytus, among others, who referred to the Trinity as "God, His Word, and His Wisdom". And the post-Tertullian adoption of the Latin "persona/ae" was preceeded by referring to three "aspects, forms, or modes" (changing mostly because of Monarchians' usage of "modes").
Those were closer, by far. But the refusal to understand Orthodox error of not distinguishing eternal from everlasting, and the need to subtly reformulate, is inexcusable when it's been clearly presented enough to grasp at least a glimpse of "UH-OH".
Anything else is just oblivious dishonesty, even if it's cognitive dissonance.
God is eternal. By His Logos, He created the everlasting heaven and cosmos; inhabiting them by His Logos and Pneuma as the Son and Holy Spirit when/as everlasting was instantiated into existence. The cosmos became temporality for an earth age/s after Edenic spiritual death and sin, and will be destroyed/restored to everlasting as new heaven and earth.
Eternal is not everlasting, and the cosmos wasn't created as temporal.
Oops. God as three hypostases is fallacious, and all the non-/anti-Trinitarians have been driven to deeper anathema by the stubbornness of Orthodoxy and other professing Trinitarians who are just as wrong as all the anathemas. You are complicit along with the entirety of Orthodoxy, whether you can admit it or not.
It's an unequivocal shame, and more wrong than the insufficient formulaic itself. An Ecumenical Council could STILL change this. But that won't happen. Too much pride in the traditions of men.
Grievous.
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Arsenios
Well-known member
fwiw, I must say that liturgically speaking, some of the formulaics of the EOC are just as dodgy as whatever your monohypostatic formulaic might turn out to be... It was in the light of some of these that the question arose...
I reminded you of what your doctrine did not give you, which you attribute to me giving you, and not the EOC in which I was birthed... I was hoping to give an ad-hominum against the doctrine... eg Showing it to not give peace... I didn't want to bring in prayers, but now I guess I should... Peace does not come from doctrines, you see, but from the Person of Christ, or the Father, or the Holy Spirit... It is given, you see, sometimes through intercessory prayer, and sometimes just by someone listening and caring...
The Mystery of the Faith, you see, is the Mystery of Marriage, which is the Mystery of the Union of two hypostases, that of Christ and that of the sinner baptized INTO Christ... This elevates man in a manner that is without upper limits...
And if you affirm that this is what happens in the "knowing the One True God, and His Son, Jesus Christ, then you affirm that two hypostases can be joined and remain two even as they are conjoined as one... This then, from your own experience, provides for you the cognitive basis for grasping the Mystery of the One God being Three while remaining one and remaining three...
I do not know what drove you into difficulties as a Trinitarian child... Modern doctrines have all manner of stuff wrong with them... But the fact that it drove you to starving yourself almost to death to formulate your own constructs to recover from whatever evil there was besetting you is not a theologically sound pedigree...
The reason I balk at your distinction and then reconnection of eternity and sempiternity is apophatics... In your terms, if Eternal is God's time, and sempiternal is created time, we are already off track, because God does not have time, but instead is the creator of time... So that we cannot compare and contrast God's time with Created time, and the latter with fallen created time... We find no compulsion to address time in that manner...
And to say that God's eternal time is endless time without a beginning time is simply not true, because God's time is apophatically timelessness... And this cannot be known to man... And it must be left there... At least by Orthodox Christians...
Have you looked at the roots of Mysterion?
Arsenios