PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
not yet ! ! ! - atrol:
Hypostatically, I most certainly am. ��
Partaking of His divine nature.��
not yet ! ! ! - atrol:
nang fits the model of "advanced" disciples you're looking for ?
And this is why I KNOW you are a precious Sister in Christ. You are able to discern truth beyond your understanding.
PPS said:Arsenios said:Yet the primary feature of ANY direct encounter with God
is that one has encountered a PERSON Who IS God...
Really?
They directly encountered prosoponless hypostases?
Every hypostasis has its own proper prosopon.
Not to mention, these encounters are via physical senses.
God is not empirically reducible, either.
Why would you trust someone's physical senses to build doctrine, especially without considering all possibilities?
And how would they/you know these encounters weren't modal manifestations?
PPS said:God is a PERSONAL hypostasis. Personal can be adjectival as a descriptor, but it can't wholly define a "person". There are no non-embodied hypostases running around, invisible in their intangibility. All hypostases have their own proper prospon, and are thus visible and recognizable to be distinguished from other animate beings and other impersonal things. That's what phenomena is all about, and God is omni-phenomenal as a PERSONAL hypostasis.
This is the problem with intellectual-conceptual constructs - Words can be smooshed in all directions... Rome is a master of this - They have ALL the theories, but I digress...
Now the problem with this smoosh, which makes person into an adjective, is that it makes sub-standing the fundamental content, which is not personal, and them ADDS person to it... The Greeks, in their wisdom, understood person as the one sub-standing the mask, which makes, you see, the sub-standing into the adjective... And they did this because the person is not reducible, nor is it a modifier of "irreducibility"...
In a word, the buck stops at the person, a WHO, and not at the adjective sub-standing, given personal standing... It is the person who substands, and not the substanding that is personalized...
You have acknowledged the person as fundamental previously, but here you depersonalize person because the term CAN be used in a depersonalized way...
Which is only one of the reasons you have that book, which explains all this...
But in normal epistemological parlance, it is the noun that has the adjective, and not vice versa, which is what you did here, because of the shallowness of the concept of person in western post-modern understanding...
Arsenios
Really...
I knew God for some 14 years KNOWING He was NOT the Christian God, OK? For 14 years He let me be in this error... But I can tell you that I recognized people who had encountered Him... They were easy to spot... And as I wandered through spiritual group after spiritual group, seeking others who had experienced what I had experienced, I never found even one... But those who have encountered Him are all recognizable - Their Light is not hard to see - And each and every such encounter is reported as an encounter with a Person Who is God...
And the relationship one has with God is personal, as in person to person...
Just look at Ananias and how he talked with God about Paul... No big drama... Just an ordinary conversation... Not all that unusual at all... In fact, the feeling I got from reading the passage was that Ananias was far more comfortable talking with God than he was speaking to Paul...
Did I mention that God is a Lovely Person?
And WAY beyond Lovely?
Have you prayed the Psalm that says:
"They do His Word to hear the Voice of His Words..."
They directly encounter the Person of God...
Normally, He does not manifest in an image, although I do know one young man who was sitting in a cave meditating in Tibet when Christ appeared to him visually and told him to go back to the United States and become a Christian... Which he did... I never did ask him what Christ looked like... eg What Prosopon/Mask He was wearing... I am not sure I would get an answer...
The way it works is that God, in His encounters with men, condescends to their level in the encounter, and so men whom He is encountering "see" Him according to the condition of their particular soul, because that is all they are ABLE to 'see'... So that the Mask of God is a shifty affair that varies according to purity of heart...
The Old Man with the White Beard is for the VERY coarsely ground pepper corns, you see... And the truth is, God is Spirit, and no one has seen God at any time, as John writes...
So when you start harping on God's Mask, or Prosopon, I start getting kind of hard of hearing, you know...
WHAT?!?!?
Well, Christ had a human face... And therefore had a prosopon, I guess you could say...
But it was a shifty thing, this face of Christ... Because He could walk through crowds and not be identified, and the ones who sought Him to kill Him did NOT know what He looked like, even though they had seen Him many, many times... They needed Judas to show them Him Whom they had seen and heard many times...
They are normally NOT physically sensual encounters, but empirically noetic ones...
I take the next step and say He is not reducible at all...
Have you not been paying attention in your Orthodox Church Services? When we sing: "And by Thy Light shall we see Light..." So that those who have are lit up, and those who have not but claim they have are not... Not to mention the two behave differently...
God will let you know...
Or not...
But they ARE encounters with a Person...
One steps away from them knowing he or she has just met a Person, and that this Person is God,
and their life changes... It is not up for debate... And if it IS up for debate, then the encounter was not with God...
Arsenios
On the contrary, it distinguishes personal hypostases from impersonal hypostases.
Your problem is having English designating Greek, and it simply cannot. All of this is ridiculous English conceptualization.
In the nominal simplistic sense of predominant English perception, yes. If it's carefully qualified with semantics secondary to their true underlying meanings (get it? underlying? hypostasis?), no.
A hypostasis is not exclusively a person, for faith is a hypostasis and confidence or assurance are referred to as a hypostasis.
Hypostasis is... Absolute assured foundational underlying substantial objective reality as subsistence for existence, and is outwardly presented by/as a prosopon.
Hypostasis is irreducible to a great extent, at least as a single word-for-single word English reduction after a compromised pitstop in Latin for its first layer of translational misrepresentation as persona/ae.
When applied to God or humans rather than other animate life (or inanimate objects), a hypostasis is thus "personal", as determined by the prosopon. Neither the hypostasis nor the prosopon is wholly the "person"; and in English (which everyone erroneously thinks all terms should be reduced to, though a plethora of English words are exactly their donor term IN English) ALL persons are beings by etymology and definition (though all beings aren't persons).
Especially after the hypostases being turned into little more than gorilla-glued anthropomorphic beings CALLED "persons", NO the term "person" should not be used without MUCH scrutiny.
Why would I do that? And why would others accept bazillions of Greek terms like "diagnosis" (from the Greek "dia-" and "gnosis") for daily use, but demand the term used for the very underlying transcendent reality of existence for God and us to be dumbed down for the sake of a pan-European, late-emergent, derivative and low-context language being the greatest expression of that?
Seriously? Reduce a few Greek terms like diagnosis to a singular English word without using dia- or -gnosis in the SINGLE English word. And then do that for every unreduced Greek and Latin word in English.
But nooooooooooooooo... We have to have a reduced misrepresentational English word for hypostasis to please the dullard heretics who've conceptualized three Durabonded God-Guys as discreet individuated sentient beings playing heavenly Canasta around a celestial card table that are called "persons" and declared (wink, wink) as a singular being.
Nope. And I was lost for 28 years because of this nonsense. It is the nature of a personal being to have a mind/will for sentience and volition. Since all created persons are beings, that isn't a problem of understanding regarding humanity.
Without going further into the fallacy, the mind is relative to the physis of the ousia, both underlied by the hypostasis. (Oh, no; do I have to reduce those Greek terms to English, even though zillions of "English" words are directly Greek or Latin, etc. IN English?)
We partake of God's divine nature by being hypostatically IN Christ. That's how we're renewed in the spirit of our mind, for our breathed existence as an ousia is the human spirit. Our body is the outer portion of our prosopon, the inner being the sarx as it conjoins to the soul. And the soul is the functionalities of the spirit's mind and will faculties, along with the functionalities of the body's emotion and desire faculties.
Combined with the functionalities of both the spirit's faculties and body's faculties, the hypostasis is the soul. The "I"ness underlying the ousia as the "am"ness.
The hypostasis wouldn't have the mind/will itself, but it's resulting functionalities. Noema, not nous. Phronema, not phronimos. Boulema, not boulomai (thelema for God, with boulema as subset). The -ma suffixes should give this away.
The mind is not relative to the hypostasis, though the functionality OF the mind faculty would be the hypostasis in economy of action regarding the mind. So to have a multi-hypostatic God that is one ousia, there would be only one mind relative to the ousia, and the functionality of that mind faculty could then be relative to each hypostasis.
This is why I don't cringe so much at those professing Trinitarians who maintain an appropriate ousiac singular mind that has perichoretic "chorus" functionalities by the alleged multiple hypostases. If each has a mind, they are multiple ousios, regardless of declaration.
And since God is Uni-Hypostatic and Omni-Phenomenal rather than Multi-Hypostatic and Dyo-Phenomenal (Orthodoxy), it's wrong anyway.
Sure I can. Hypostasis is "plain Greek language", just like many other Greek terms that are "plain language". This simplistic approach is naive and peevish. Unless you're going to rid the English language of all Greek and Latin imports, this tact is patently absurd.
Why such a demand for reduction of an irreducible term? Why cater to the devices (noema) of Satan with low-contextualizing?
Sure I have. Here...God is a PERSONAL hypostasis. Personal can be adjectival as a descriptor, but it can't wholly define a "person". There are no non-embodied hypostases running around, invisible in their intangibility. All hypostases have their own proper prospon, and are thus visible and recognizable to be distinguished from other animate beings and other impersonal things. That's what phenomena is all about, and God is omni-phenomenal as a PERSONAL hypostasis.
There. Personal. Right there for you to see I don't fallaciously consider God an object or force or power, or some other nebulous whatever.
Really? They directly encountered prosoponless hypostases? There's no such thing. Every hypostasis has its own proper prosopon. Not to mention, these encounters are via physical senses. God is not empirically reducible, either. Why would you trust someone's physical senses to build doctrine, especially without considering all possibilities? And how would they/you know these encounters weren't modal manifestations?
God's inherent transcendent prosopon is in-shining within created heaven, as He dwells in that unapproachable light. The processed Logos as the Son has a sempiternal prosopon that is "shared" with the qualitatively-distinct, hypostatically co-inherent Holy Spirit.
Then the Son hypostasized to take on flesh, and at His baptism we see that co-inherent Holy Spirit descending upon His human schema in a bodily shape to "Christ" Him for His earthly mission as an heir who has fulfilled the righteousness of the Law and personified it in the flesh.
The Father and His inherent literal Logos are the same hypostasis, and that Logos proceeded forth as the Son when/as created phenomena was instantiated into existence from God's noumena. In creation, God's eternal Logos is the eternal Son. They're coterminous.
That should obviously not apply to me. I despise such de-personalizations. But a hypostasis isn't wholly the "person" apart from the inclusion of the prosopon. No binaries as false dichotomies. The mask is as much the "person" as the underlying reality of existence.
And a three-hypostasis ousia would be the height of naive non-intuitive silliness if you ever understood the omni-phenomenal truth of God's constitution. It's in inspired scripture if anyone would have ever dug it out. Paul knew, and this is what he discipled as his Gospel, entrusted to him by God.
No, it should not. And IF it were, God's singular mind should be relative to the ousia rather than multiplied.
You don't realize it, but that's functional Tritheism. And it's why Trinitarians drive others deeper toward anathema when they see that semi-Pagan silliness, however well-meaning Trinitarians might think they are.
A Multi-Sentience Multi-Hypostatic Trinity is anathema, and a Single-Sentience Multi-Hypostatic Trinity is barely acceptable. The problem is, few are the latter because of the absurd English word "person" (which is unarguably a being by etymology and definition) and the silly naive demand to reduce hypostasis to that term.
It's beyond sad, and many are likely lost as I was. Unacceptable. Anathema.
Which makes hypostasis fundamental, and not person...
When the Greek designates hypostasis as person...
When you meet God, you will meet a Person...
If you do not know God as a Person, then you do not know God...
That be dodgy...
Arsenios
I just had a big AHA moment - I have a home for you! It came with your assertion that multiple minds in multiple hypostases of one ousia then require multiple ousias... There is an Apostolic Orthodox Church that is on the same page you are in this understanding...
Coptic and Oriental Orthodox Churches split with the eastern Orthodox over this very issue at the second Ecumenical Council... You can have your cake and eat it too with these folks, if you don't get lost in criticizing other people's shallowness - THAT is another demonic sucker punch given to the unbaptized...
Arsenios
Stopping claiming to be Orthodox; you are a Roman Catholic pretending to be of Eastern Orthodox faith, but your theology smells Roman Catholic.Arsenios said:Have you not been paying attention in your Orthodox Church Services? When we sing: "And by Thy Light shall we see Light..." So that those who have are lit up, and those who have not but claim they have are not... Not to mention the two behave differently...
Stopping claiming to be Orthodox; you are a Roman Catholic pretending to be of Eastern Orthodox faith, but your theology smells Roman Catholic.
A Monophysitic Multi-Hypostatic Trinity is still invalid.
In other words, I lead you into Roman Catholic theology.I just had a big AHA moment - I have a home for you! It came with your assertion that multiple minds in multiple hypostases of one ousia then require multiple ousias... There is an Apostolic Orthodox Church that is on the same page you are in this understanding...
Coptic and Oriental Orthodox Churches split with the eastern Orthodox over this very issue at the second Ecumenical Council... You can have your cake and eat it too with these folks, if you don't get lost in criticizing other people's shallowness - THAT is another demonic sucker punch given to the unbaptized...
Arsenios
You didn't know that Hypostasis could mean a pile of **** set under something. It is an abstract word alright; and thou had the Latin Catholic gall to say the Unitarian version of the incarnation was carnal. thou has the Augustinian view of man, which is not the moderate semi-Pelegian version of Orthodoxy.You seem to be a little confused...
It is the Roman Catholic Latin Church that claims to be Orthodox...
Growing up in the West is confusing...
Your grammar seems a tad confused as well...
"Stopping claiming"???
There is a shred or three, even so - The Eastern Greek speaking Church was centered in Constantinople, which was the seat of the Roman Empire for a thousand years... So we are the Romans... And we are kata holon...
Arsenios
Really...
I knew God for some 14 years KNOWING He was NOT the Christian God, OK? For 14 years He let me be in this error... But I can tell you that I recognized people who had encountered Him... They were easy to spot... And as I wandered through spiritual group after spiritual group, seeking others who had experienced what I had experienced, I never found even one... But those who have encountered Him are all recognizable - Their Light is not hard to see - And each and every such encounter is reported as an encounter with a Person Who is God...
And the relationship one has with God is personal, as in person to person... Just look at Ananias and how he talked with God about Paul... No big drama... Just an ordinary conversation... Not all that unusual at all... In fact, the feeling I got from reading the passage was that Ananias was far more comfortable talking with God than he was speaking to Paul...
Did I mention that God is a Lovely Person?
And WAY beyond Lovely?
Have you prayed the Psalm that says:
"They do His Word to hear the Voice of His Words..."
They directly encounter the Person of God... Normally, He does not manifest in an image, although I do know one young man who was sitting in a cave meditating in Tibet when Christ appeared to him visually and told him to go back to the United States and become a Christian... Which he did... I never did ask him what Christ looked like... eg What Prosopon/Mask He was wearing... I am not sure I would get an answer...
The way it works is that God, in His encounters with men, condescends to their level in the encounter, and so men whom He is encountering "see" Him according to the condition of their particular soul, because that is all they are ABLE to 'see'... So that the Mask of God is a shifty affair that varies according to purity of heart... The Old Man with the White Beard is for the VERY coarsely ground pepper corns, you see... And the truth is, God is Spirit, and no one has seen God at any time, as John writes...
So when you start harping on God's Mask, or Prosopon, I start getting kind of hard of hearing, you know...
WHAT?!?!?
Well, Christ had a human face... And therefore had a prosopon, I guess you could say... But it was a shifty thing, this face of Christ... Because He could walk through crowds and not be identified, and the ones who sought Him to kill Him did NOT know what He looked like, even though they had seen Him many, many times... They needed Judas to show them Him Whom they had seen and heard many times...
They are normally NOT physically sensual encounters, but empirically noetic ones...
I take the next step and say He is not reducible at all...
God will let you know...Have you not been paying attention in your Orthodox Church Services? When we sing: "And by Thy Light shall we see Light..." So that those who have are lit up, and those who have not but claim they have are not... Not to mention the two behave differently...
Or not...
But they ARE encounters with a Person...
One steps away from them knowing he or she has just met a Person, and that this Person is God, and their life changes... It is not up for debate... And if it IS up for debate, then the encounter was not with God...
Arsenios
You didn't know that Hypostasis could mean a pile of **** set under something. It is an abstract word alright; and thou had the Latin Catholic gall to say the Unitarian version of the incarnation was carnal. thou has the Augustinian view of man, which is not the moderate semi-Pelegian version of Orthodoxy.
Most of all, you talk about Greek words and know nothing of what they mean.