Arsenios
Well-known member
Distinction of Persons is not separation of mind and will...
Not with God...
With you and me, yes...
Arsenios
ECT Our triune God
- Thread starter Lon
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Distinction of Persons is not separation of mind and will...
Not with God...
With you and me, yes...
Arsenios
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
By definition of phaino... Nope.
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
Right. We're a person and a being. All persons are beings.
Yes. And I'm a being. All persons are.
All beings aren't persons. Like rabbits and lizards.
Our existence as an essential being is underlied by our person. Being is existing as a human. All persons exist as humans. Human beings.
No way around it without silly shenanigans.
I didn't and don't. God does, and it begins in scripture.
Yes, you do. :chuckle:
Simplez. One mind/will means multiple Logoi as the three alleged hypostases each employ that mind.
Multiple minds/wills is multiple ousios.
It doesn't jive comin' or goin'. That's why you have to play the bogus mystery card. If so, then the quantity of hypostases should remain a mystery, and much else.
Too much -ystery and not enough m-------------. Loose lips sink ships. The multi-hypostatic Trinity is precariously listing. Iceberg hit. Going down. Glug-glug-glug.
enough - leave arsenios behind, he's bogging you down - :chuckle:
Arsenios
Well-known member
I say this without having read all the long posts ... but sometimes I think people make things too difficult with all their deep thinking. I believe in KISS. I just look at what the Bible says about something and keep it in mind as I study to see what the rest of scripture has to say about matters.
Did any one read my post on pg 199 # 2977? Did you have an opinion?
Did any one read my post on pg 199 # 2977? Did you have an opinion?
Jedidiah
New member
So Our Lord's prayer in the garden where He expressed a separate will from the Father...was that His human nature's will, while His divine nature's will was in unison with the Father ?
Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
Arsenios
Well-known member
A lizard has a mind and a will... Which is neither hear nor hare...
But the point is that being is an imported technical philosophical term, and people know people as persons, or they do NOT know people... And they know themselves as persons, and their own self as a person... This is koine language...
Ask a hundred people on the street if they know what a person is, and they will mostly look at you as if you are nuts, because of course they do...
But if you ask them if they know what a being is, a whole lot of them will look at you wierd for a different reason, and might ask: "Do you mean like an alien from outer space?" None will say: "Oh yes, of course, my dog and I are beings!"
ONLY IF they ask YOU, PPS, will they get THAT answer!
And this is why PERSON is the operant term here, because THAT is HOW God is encountered directly, Person to person, where the person does not know Who the Person IS, until the Person reveals it to the person, Person to person...
Charging off into $500 words is no help in this enterprise, and will short-circuit it... And the fact is, in such an encounter, ALL words depart, and ALL thoughts as well, and even one's physical presence is not a factor: "Whether in the body or out of the body, I know not. God knows." Remember?
Well, you just introduced a NEW TERM... ESSENTIAL BEING... without first establishing any foundation for it whatsoever... You just THREW IT OUT THERE, and for me, it lands like a floater in a punch bowl... Because ousia means ESSENCE AND BEING AND EXISTENCE, and then you place PERSON underneath it... A positional assertion, again posited without foundation, on the basis of your philosophical rendering of the Greek roots of the Greek term translated as person, eg hypo-stasis, which in this verbal pass you assert to mean "having an underneath position"... When in fact it means foundation(al), and thus is an etiological descriptive establishing personal responsibility in the person and for the person...
No one is trying to get around anything...
And especially calling a person a human being...
Thank-you for the RE-WRITE...
Mind/will equals or does not equal mind-will? And does it mean a mind and a will conjoined? Or are they integral features of something other than mind & will you are now calling a Logos?
And another bare assertion without first establishing any foundation...
Because ousios = being/existence/essence and mind/will = logos which itself now means ousios???
And the WHOLE of it SHIFTS as the cognitive foundations reorganize and are transmorphed into even more insightful combinations of conceptual terminology...
When silence is the language of theology, as every person who has met God in Person knows and remembers... And the words are only helpful if they say to us: "Be still [hesychia] and know that I AM God..." The rest is vanity...
Arsenios
Arsenios
Well-known member
Yes...
Exactly so...
Christ took on our HUMAN NATURE and within Himself in His Own Body,
He AS A PERSON brought it totally into obedience to the Father,
and this (in the Garden) is the peak of that obedience...
for it led to the Cross...
It was His HUMAN will, not His DIVINE will, in His HUMAN NATURE, not in His DIVINE NATURE, that the SAME PERSON, eg the same Hypostasis, the same Divine Person, subjected to obedience to the Father... He did this as a condescension FOR us, in order that we also, IN HIM, CAN ALSO do so... Indeed, it is only after we are baptized INTO Christ, indeed into His Death upon the Cross, that we can be empowered to DO the obedience which outside of this Baptism into Christ we CANNOT DO...
It's a big deal...
It is awesome...
Mortification of the flesh is the renunciation of the world...
AND...
It is obedience to Christ,
Whom we follow...
As Christ was obedient...
The Son of man...
To His Father...
So also we take up our own cross...
And follow Christ...
As He commanded us to do....
Arsenios
God's Truth
New member
Good job explaining that, how God really came as a Man; except that we can obey before being saved to be saved. We have to believe and repent when we want to be saved. Jesus gives the Holy Spirit to help us when we are saved, after we obeyed.
See John 14:23.
Arsenios
Well-known member
I continued the edit on that post...
It is longer now...
Thank-you for your kind words...
And yes, obedience is unto Salvation...
And the CALL of God unto Salvation via obedience takes MANY forms...
Arsenios
Jedidiah
New member
Why does it not trouble you that Orthodoxy claims that the Holy Spirit only proceeds from the Father and not the Son, since this makes a two-tiered divinity, and not a Tri-Unity ?
I mean this. You profess that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. This could form already a sort of two-tiered hierarchy...unless He also proceeds from the Son, which "levels" the hierarchy because since we're already confessing that the Spirit proceeds from Someone, He therefore, trivially, proceeds, and if He only proceeds from the Father then this makes Him and the Son on similar footing, as the Son is generated by the Father and not the other way around.
If He proceeds from both the Father and from the Son, then there is no distinction in eminence between the Three.
By way of example, if (this is not what I believe nor confess) the Father generates the Son, and the Spirit proceeds from the Son only and not from the Father, then we would have a sort of three-tiered hierarchy, like Russian nested dolls. Having the Father being the sole source of both the Son and the Spirit is a two-tiered hierarchy, and to have the Spirit proceed from both the Father and from the Son levels the hierarchy complete, especially in light of your helpful explanation of how the Son's human will is distinct from His divine will, which is in unison with the Father (and presumably with the Spirit also).
I mean this. You profess that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. This could form already a sort of two-tiered hierarchy...unless He also proceeds from the Son, which "levels" the hierarchy because since we're already confessing that the Spirit proceeds from Someone, He therefore, trivially, proceeds, and if He only proceeds from the Father then this makes Him and the Son on similar footing, as the Son is generated by the Father and not the other way around.
If He proceeds from both the Father and from the Son, then there is no distinction in eminence between the Three.
By way of example, if (this is not what I believe nor confess) the Father generates the Son, and the Spirit proceeds from the Son only and not from the Father, then we would have a sort of three-tiered hierarchy, like Russian nested dolls. Having the Father being the sole source of both the Son and the Spirit is a two-tiered hierarchy, and to have the Spirit proceed from both the Father and from the Son levels the hierarchy complete, especially in light of your helpful explanation of how the Son's human will is distinct from His divine will, which is in unison with the Father (and presumably with the Spirit also).
God's Truth
New member
Thank you for your kindness too. It is good that we can say things that we agree.
God's Truth
New member
Jesus is God, and Jesus is the Holy Spirit, but we do not say the Son proceeded from the Son. We say the Son proceeded from the Father.
Scriptures that say Jesus is the Spirit:
Corinthians 3:17, 18, and 1 Corinthians 15:45.
God sends the Holy Spirit
Galatians 4:6 Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father." And John 14:26.
Jesus sends the Holy Spirit.
Luke 24:49 I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high." And John 15:26; 16:7.
God pours out the Holy Spirit.
Titus 3:5, 6 He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, And Acts 2:18.
Jesus pours out the Holy Spirit.
Acts 2:33 Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear.
Arsenios
Well-known member
The reason
that we confess the Procession of the Holy Spirit out of the Father,
and the Begottenness of the Son from the Father,
is because
we also confess, in the same Nicene Creed,
"One God, The Father Almighty,
Maker of Heaven and earth,
and of all things visible and invisible..."
We confess One God,
And His Son Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior,
And His Holy Spirit as Lord and Giver of Life...
Procession is not a term of movement away from and toward,
but of manner of Origin,
and the Father is the One God out of Whom both His Son and His Spirit have their Source...
They are all Three equal in Power,
several in Person,
and One as God...
This understanding is obviously NOT a human enterprise
designed by men
to establish a logically non-contradictory and systematic
account of the God-Head...
It is instead as much as God has deemed fit to reveal to us...
We are THE Faith that worships One God in Three Persons...
The rest are perhaps far more 'humanly' "logical"...
Our confession is foolishness to the world...
And we are scorned by lovers of human logicality...
Arsenios
I actually think that our one omni-present God who is the embodiment of LIFE , power, and intellect has the potential of being more than a 'trinity of personages.'
If God began to list his attributes and say: This is my Word, this is my love, this is my mercy, this is my arm or hand, or my salvation, or this is my power... well, we can rightly conclude that each attribute is God and is alive with God ... for God is LIFE and the source of measures of life unto created beings. There is nothing lifeless within him. There are also no empty spaces of nothingness inside of him.
Yet, God is able to establish processes and functions, set rules, assign designated realms where things can exist and other realms where certain things or beings cannot exist, and he created visibility. He brought forth visible solids our of invisible spirit ... These are obvious in Genesis 1 and 2.
God is more than a trinity ... However, God has chosen to be known as three divine personages in his relationship with mankind.
The power of his spirit is alive in us ... and his Word was manifested within the world and seen with a male body and spoke truth and hope to men. Even the Father was seen in the OT times and did his works among men. As Jesus said: Heretofore my Father worked now I work. Of course, Christians understand that God's Holy Spirit works in us now.
All three of these "named divine manifestations" at work for us are the ONE God.
They work in one accord as the ONE God. As Jesus said: I do nothing except what the Father wishes ... and I speak only the words of my Father. When you have seen me, you have seen the Father ... we are ONE. I am in Him and He in me ... another place says ... without measure. IOW - no limits.
Isaiah 43:11 I, even I am the LORD, beside ME there is no Savior. Jesus was God appearing as a mortal fleshly son.
I like the idea that our risen LORD has gone to establish a realm (a place) where we will dwell as eternal beings with him.
If God began to list his attributes and say: This is my Word, this is my love, this is my mercy, this is my arm or hand, or my salvation, or this is my power... well, we can rightly conclude that each attribute is God and is alive with God ... for God is LIFE and the source of measures of life unto created beings. There is nothing lifeless within him. There are also no empty spaces of nothingness inside of him.
Yet, God is able to establish processes and functions, set rules, assign designated realms where things can exist and other realms where certain things or beings cannot exist, and he created visibility. He brought forth visible solids our of invisible spirit ... These are obvious in Genesis 1 and 2.
God is more than a trinity ... However, God has chosen to be known as three divine personages in his relationship with mankind.
The power of his spirit is alive in us ... and his Word was manifested within the world and seen with a male body and spoke truth and hope to men. Even the Father was seen in the OT times and did his works among men. As Jesus said: Heretofore my Father worked now I work. Of course, Christians understand that God's Holy Spirit works in us now.
All three of these "named divine manifestations" at work for us are the ONE God.
They work in one accord as the ONE God. As Jesus said: I do nothing except what the Father wishes ... and I speak only the words of my Father. When you have seen me, you have seen the Father ... we are ONE. I am in Him and He in me ... another place says ... without measure. IOW - no limits.
Isaiah 43:11 I, even I am the LORD, beside ME there is no Savior. Jesus was God appearing as a mortal fleshly son.
I like the idea that our risen LORD has gone to establish a realm (a place) where we will dwell as eternal beings with him.
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
LOL. Indeed.
A being that isn't a person. The mind and will are relative to the being, not the person. This applies to elephants and emus and kangas and roos, too. :chuckle:
And there would be no way for "persons" to know each other thusly were it not for the proper prosopon every hypostasis must have. There aren't any hypostases that know other hypostases apart from them all having prosopoa.
A person is the hypostasis and the prosopon, not one or the other. And the hypostasis underlies the ousia, so all persons are beings.
Every Latin and Orthodox I've ever encountered speaks of the "philosophical" term "being". And you eschew that while embracing the silly English term "person" with unparalleled vociferous adamance. It's innane.
They won't refer to the hypostasis, that's for sure. Most will reference the prosopon rather than either the hypostasis or the ousia.
They wouldn't distinguish between hypostasis and ousia, either. This is just loads of fail; and dialectic consensus of mainstream morons is no way to establish truth as intuitive rather than intellectual. You've appealed solely to the latter on the lowest level. Eek.
ONLY IF they ask YOU, PPS, will they get THAT answer!
Yeah, because I'm not an idiot. And......? :chuckle:
You have no idea that God has revealed Himself to me in exactly the terms I've put into words you don't comprehend and obfuscate in parody and caricature.
He created ALL. And He did so by His Word and His Breath, which aren't distinct individuated hypostases.
Well... So much for the Orthodox formulaic WITH WORDS. Why say anything at all? Just m...................... with no -usterion. You can't have it both ways, Bruddah.
Essence. Essential. Adjective.
Good grief and Aaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhhh!!!!
Just like substance equates in some manner to substantial. Essence equates to essential. Could you be any more exponentially pedantic instead of listening for comprehension?
Yeah, just like Orthodox Theology Proper. Sigh sigh sigh sigh.
I've lexically defined hypostasis many times on TOL... absolute assured underlying foundational substantial objective reality as subsistence for existence.
THERE's your foundation(al), just as I've defined it on TOL for over two years. Cool, huh?! :chuckle:
Ummm... Okay. Fine and dandy.
Oh, you'll do and say anything to make God three hypostases. You can't look at anything from any other perspective to even understand anything to reject.
Nope.
Yep. Typo.
Distinct faculties. Joined in functionality.
The Logos is NOT the mind and/or will. Mind and will are faculties. Logos is functionality. The nous and logos are inter-related but not each other. The logos is intelligent thought (and expression, if there is any). The nous is the intuiting faculty.
There may be better terms than faculty and functionality, but they suffice for now.
Sigh and arrrggghhhh. The entirety of Orthodox doctrine is bare assertion. I don't dismiss it for that. C'mon, Bruddah. Not cool.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
Oh, whatever. You're so busy trying convince everyone the Patristics are infallible, you can't even focus to listen. I'm not expecting you to recant. All I've ever wanted is for you to comprehend what I'm actually saying. I expect you to reject it. I have no illusions of you abandoning your position. I just want you to reject it for what it is rather than what you presume it to be.
Lotsa vanity in Orthodoxy, then. Like saying three hypostases.
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! Lookah h'yar, ya'll!!!!
The will is relative to the NATURE. The PHYSIS. The ousia has the physis.
Wow. God has four wills. NOT.
i'm not sure which label or category i fall under. when i imagine God's Holy Spirit, i don't envision a person/body, therefore, to me, God's Will/Spirit Is the Holy Ghost. Jesus as a man on earth speaks of His own Will - Matthew 26:39 KJV, i think everyone tries to visualize within their minds to make sense of it. that's why i tune in to this thread - God Bless ! ! ! -
atrol:
Arsenios
Well-known member
God as God has but one mind and one will and one ousia...
Christ God in His Hypostasis has an adopted human nature and human will, so now, by condescension and incarnation, Christ is man AND God... But He is the only one... The Father did not become man, nor did the Holy Spirit... Those two did not become man...
But the interesting kicker, from your pov, is that the one Hypostasis that Christ is HAS two wills, two minds, etc etc... Hence two ousia...
I do have a little question for you on the previous post, because I questioned the term "essential being" and you thought I was grand-standing for the crowd... Truth is, I am almost astonished when someone joins in - I only talk to you... But the question is this, and it relates to your desire to make this understanding you have communicable in a general and koine way... And you said "essential being"... What are the Greek words for the two components of this term, and what would be a "non-essential being" that made it important for you to specify this particular kind of being?
I seriously do, btw, get delerified in your vocabularics... My efforts are to show you how that works when I try to make sense of your terminology...
Arsenios