I guess you're going to ignore that heaven and angels are created and exist, but you can't show me their phenomena. So I guess heaven and angels don't exist.
They are heavenly phrnomena, all created... And yes, they can be shown, but not unless they do the showing...
And by your standard, God doesn't exist and isn't Self-Conscious or Self-Existent.
We anthropomorphize God in these kinds of formulaics, and indeed, God Himself does so, in condescension to us who only have our fallen conceptual understanding to rely upon...
God makes existent that which was not, and makes non-existent that which was. THEREFORE: Is God existent or non-existent? And the answer is: Neither... His Self-existence serves merely to differentiate Him from our contingency of existence...
Likewise with the existence and non-existence of consciousness in creation... We possess the Image of God in OUR created self-awareness... We can have no clue as to what that may mean in its Divine Essential and Original Form...
God tells us:
"My thoughts are not your thoughts..."
We take Him at His word...
He evidently doesn't shine as uncreated phenomenon, and has no prosopon/oa. How tragic and unfortunate.
He is the Creator of Phenomenon/a... A Ford automobile cannot reason backwards from its steering wheel to the emotional life of Henry Ford...
God is Self-phenomenal uncreated existence.
Then you believe God is created, because ALL phenomena are created... A Self-phenomenon of uncreated existence, when existence is created by a Creator who is beyond existence and non-existence, is self-contradictory...
This is why Orthodoxy is heterodox, but very close. Close doesn't count in horseshoes, hand grenades, or Theology Proper that omits God's uncreated transcendent Self-Conscious Self-Existence.
I think we would reject such a notion as anthropomorphizing the nature of God the Creator from nature of creation...
What if I'm right and Orthodoxy is fallible in this regard? What then?
THAT proof is in the Life lived, and not in a doctrine professed...
You walkin' on water these days?
And the most grievous thing for me is you insisting my nous intuition is intellect. It's a very handy semi-polite ad hominem to resort to in response to any challenge to Orthodoxy.
Well, if it isn't, and you are wrong, what then? It is worse... It is a noetic infusion that is either from God or is NOT from God...
Modalists of certain types are about as close as Multi-Hypostatic Trinitarians. Any creative act relative to the Son or a denial of homoousios divinity for the Holy Spirit is moving away from truth dramatically. But EVERYONE is wrong by degree, having never had their incomplete doctrines reconciled to Christ.
Apophatics deconstructed the neo-Platonism of Greece and all the pre-Socratics...
And you've insisted Jesus revealed the truth to His followers, but it was all by extended formulaic.
That sounds strange... Jesus revealed HIMSELF to His followers, and He is a Person... And in this, He revealed that God is Person... And that Jesus, Who IS God, was obedient to His Father, so that there are two Persons Who are One God.... And the same with the Holy Spirit, making Three... Who are One God... We do not pretend to know HOW this is, simply THAT it is...
What you're saying on this topic is that God is not Self-aware or Self-conscious in any way as a being that is Self-existence.
We re saying that ALL of these terms pertain to creation, and not to the Creator, although they CAN be used to help us who are fallen in a fallen creation to know Who God IS...
We say: "God exists." And we do well... But this existence, whatever it may be, is not anything we even begin to understand... We can say that God's existence is
"Unconditional Transcendent, Self-Conscious Self-Existence" and give it a drum roll and trumpets and a choral halelulia, and we still don't know Schnartz about God...
When it comes to God Himself, not one human being except Christ Himself, has ever met Mr. Schnartz...
"My THOUGHTS are NOT your thoughts..."
Yet Christ took on our thoughts in His Person, and was victorious...
You say God doesn't have phenomenological or noumenological existence, yet He created existence as phenomena. That's Neo-Platonism, and God then isn't really a "who".
Noumena is a created phenomenon of the human heart... The Nous is the Eye of the Heart... It is the director of the intelligence... It is Janus-faced, in that it can be scattered among the phenomena of existence, or it can be concentrated into the Love of God in ongoing purification of the Heart...
God is not a product of our noumenal existence... And indeed, demons have noetic access to our bodies and souls... The Nous of man can perceive both God and Creation insofar as God is willing to be seen... And insofar as we have enough purity of heart to see Him...
I mean, answering you, God CREATED noumenal existence in man... And of course He can access it... But this does not mean that God has His "existence" in some category of creation known as "Noumenological Phenomenology" or whatever...
God Himself said "I Am". Jesus said "I Am".
You say God is not "I Am", but without recognizing it.
Oh He is the Great I AM, no question, but for us, to whom this conceptual and verbal condescension was given, to sieze upon it and think we KNOW God because we can UNDERSTAND the meaning of the words, just won't cut it...
Arsenios
