ECT Our triune God

[Arsenios]

That was in reference to others not knowing the many various "Trinities" by comparison. Cappadocian, Augustinian, Aquinasian, and many others. You apparently weren't listening again.

Sorry, I thought it was broader...

Yes, consistently. I referred to phaino and gave the extensive lexical definition indicating it wasn't restricted to creation. But you ignored all that and insisted, in Neo-Platonist fashion, that God doesn't exist. So you've disregarded God's Self-existence and Self-consciousness.

Phaino, meaning to appear, to come into view, not restricted to creation?? When you say such a thing, you are saying that God appears to God... When God comes into view of God, I have no idea what that might mean, because of Who and what God IS... Or, more technically, is NOT...

I insist that God is the Source and Creator of ALL existence... And Himself is neither existence nor non-existence... For this is strictly and apophatically true... And when I do so, you accuse me of denying the existence of God... I can live with that...

So your lack of understanding is because you reject the truth, maintaining that God's Logos is a distinct hypostasis; leaving God with no intelligence or ability to think and speak.

Now THAT is a bazaar accusation... I wish to speak of the Persons of God as Father and Son and Holy Spirit, each always with the others, one God... And I understand Hypostasis to be a DEEP meaning of the English word Person... Because when God noetically APPEARS to a person, He does so AS a Person, whether seen of unseen... And this understanding leaves God with no intelligence??? Because I see God as Tri-Personal of the Father? I can live with that too, but it is really strange...

This has evidently caused you to also vacate your logos to think and speak intelligently.

You can trust me when I tell you that I have been more vacuous and less legible...

Odd how several PM and rep me to say I actually do that.

I wish they would chime in and explain it to me...

Having committed the truth unto faithful men, I don't stand alone.

I hope not...

First of all, there's no reason to believe the silly propaganda of Hitler's alleged historical death.

How about his perverted sexual proclivities? Blow them off too?

Oh... So now I'm Hitler.

Well, you did write that you were grieved that nobody understood you, which I was corrected to see wasn't quite what you said, and was not what you meant, so isolation seems less an issue now, I pray...

Not a Believer who has noetically reconciled the paradoxes and omissions of the Trinity; but a genocidal egomaniacal narcissistic warlord and demented dictator. Got it. That makes total sense to Neo-Platonists, I suppose.

Only if you are the only one holding the view and cannot communicate it... But you deny that, so the charge doubtless comprises an unjust accusation... Would you like my apology?

When you deny God's uncreated eternal Self-Conscious Self-Existence, you resign yourself to a 2D view of the 3D God. And after denying God's uncreated eternal Self-Noumenon and Self-Phenomenon, you're left with caricaturing a parody of everything I say.

YOU and I have self-consciousness, because that is how God created us... We experience our SELVES consciously as EXISTING... So AT BEST, IF God is as you think in some way, then it is only so in iconic relationship, because we are created in the icon or image of God, and not in the REALITY of God

What YOU are doing (ignoring lexicography for phaino, etc.) is what isn't working. When you see something you disagree with, you just ignore it and attempt to filter through your own view.

I do run out of patience and shut down - In flight training, we called this "cockpit overload", and when a student pilot got to that point, and stopped functioning, the instructor would 'take' the plane and land it and debrief the student for the next day's lesson... A night's sleep would do the trick... That has not worked so far here for me with you...

You could be hypothetical in such things. You could indulge rather than ignore. Your ignorance is not on me. I've appropriately represented God's Self-Noumenal Self-Phenomenal uncreatedness.

And what I think that means to you is God's self-aware and self-enacting uncreatedness, and I humbly submit that you cannot, as a created being, understand uncreatedness in any form...

So maybe that is our impasse...

You ignore that and think you can somehow still see the cube with your sheet of paper. I can't change that for you. Your clogged filter is your own.

OK...

THIS is exactly why the Patristics omitted the truth and then had to compensate with three hypostases. They never accounted for God's true Self-existence and the created heaven.

I can see that you posit God's uncreated Self-awareness...
I counter that you cannot know it...
Because God is radically OTHER than His creation...
And you and I are created...

So that anything we SAY in this regard is without content...
Because God is fundamentally unknowable...

Hence we have revelation...
And Communion...

Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

For the life of me,
if you had a God experience,
I'll never understand why you went to religion.

My first response was to ask to go as far as was possible in Him...

He then led me into the Orthodox Faith...

14 years later...

Because these, the Saints of the Church, are MY guys!

And for 14 years I turned over a lot of rocks looking...

And had 36 years of atheist damage done to my soul...

And am only now in the final stages of THAT recovery...

All thanks to God and the Orthodox Faith...

Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

I will pray for you.

Thank-you...

A.

 

[1Mind1Spirit]

The question was based on a misperception that I was intimating the Holy Spirit was coterminous with creation rather than the uncreated God as Spirit.

I missed that and thought maybe AMR might be gettin' a clue.

Phenomenom and nouemon is where I'm lookin' for more understanding.

Just wanted yuh to know.

However I do have a bone with yer statement that Hypostasis was a soul.

All souls are God's including His son's.

Since Jesus' resurrection,God has given all that is His to Him.

Including power over the Holy Spirit.

Everything in due time.

 

[1Mind1Spirit]

My first response was to ask to go as far as was possible in Him...

He then led me into the Orthodox Faith...

14 years later...

Because these, the Saints of the Church, are MY guys!

And for 14 years I turned over a lot of rocks looking...

And had 36 years of atheist damage done to my soul...

And am only now in the final stages of THAT recovery...

All thanks to God and the Orthodox Faith...

Arsenios

God is not under a rock.

He is at hand for the asking.

You shoulda left that detestable imitation under the rock that caught yer carnal eye.

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

The question was, as I recall, Psalm 82...

And I discerned what PJ needed to hear, so I answered with that summary background. It wasn't an expounding of exegesis, but an introduction to timelessness interfacing with time, which is very much what Psalm 82 is about.

If God is timeless, and creation is forms of time; then if we commune with God by hypostatic union with Christ, then we are communing with God in His timelessness... from time. It's this intimate intuitive spiritual communion that is His foreknowledge, by which He predestinates us to be conformed to the image of His Son.

It's a closed open loop, almost like an electrical circuit to which electrical current is added. He knows the end before the beginning, because of His Aseity and Immutability and other inherent uncreated attributes. Have you spent much time in stillness, pondering God's attributes as defined by the Patristics? I have and do, and He is SO gloriously "beyond" and "other", yet at hand and such a... Father.

In His pre-creational immutable mind, that can never change but has the multiversity of all contingent potentialities (arrogant scientists and physicists think string theory and quantum fields are in creation, but they're in God's uncreated mind), God has never learned or acquired knowledge (omniscience) or wisdom (omnisapience) or passions (His impassibility)

God intricately and eternally (timelessly) knows every permutation of plausibilities for all creation; including every expenditure of His grace and mercy; and of His love and of faith; and of every last response from mankind on an individual basis. There is nothing in creation beyond or besides the exhaustive scope of His all-encompassing omnisapient omniscience, including the minutest detail of every possible thought and movement of each of all mankind. Trillions of potentialities every moment; and He has eternally known them all as the timeless God.

But His Logos doesn't express all of those thoughts, for then there would be endless infinities of universes. Cosmoi. So understanding God's Rhema and how His Logos is the eternally begotten Son is the crucial background and foundation for Theology Proper. The Patristics started POST-procession and POST-creation; omitting the transcendent Self-existence of God and the created heaven (which is not the "realm of God", but had an inception like all creation).

Yes, God is beyond created phenomenal existence. But one of the reasons for the apophatic is to eliminate all but the cataphatic that God reveals through theosis in noesis. Emptying one's heart and mind of all else but of knowing Him and communing with Him, by which He can intuitively reveal Himself over time until one recognizes communing with Him in timelessness (which includes "pre"-creation).

What if... What if God... What if God is answering your prayer/s to know Him as fully as a man can. Here. On this earth. In this physical life. The highest blessedness of the creature... Zoe. Life. What if that means there's truth beyond the "almost" of St. Basil's understanding. What if all that truth and revelation and noesis was but the stepping stone to a finality they subtly missed in formualic. What if... there's the mystery revealed much more fully. What if... it's time to open those lips and speak the mystery revealed in the Incarnate Christ. What if... all historical formulaics fell short; including Basil and Augustine and Aquinas, and all others.

And your accusation that I simply no idea HOW God's timelessness interfaces with all forms of time is doubtless true... I mean, I ASKED God how that works - Because it is in this interface that miracles occur, and a lot of them flat out dumbfoundable... And all He would say was: "It's easy..." He NEVER said HOW He did it...

Maybe your answer is right here. And maybe never is now. Maybe He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Those who seek Him only to know Him rather than to get something for themselves. Those who seek Him to give themselves fully to Him; and in that reckoned death, to have but a glimpse of Him in this life. To whom He reveals the mystery, for they will believe nothing else... think nothing else... speak nothing else. You are such an one. I know you... in Him.

The general idea here, that you think you can understand by ideas HOW it is that TIMELESSNESS [the NON-existence of time, yes??]

Yes.

interacts with TIME [the existence of time, yes?],

Yes.

which we Orthodox call a Mystery, using 3D epistemology glasses, is itself a great mystery to me...

But there's a time for the pursed lips of the "m-", and there's a time to speak the "-usterion" when one has truly heard and has entered the mystery. Beyond the veil, while others have merely stitched up the rending.

And the REASON it is such a mystery is because I can ONLY understand time, because I only live in time, because I am a creature created in time, and so are you, and time is created...

Since it's not your faith, is it your noema and phronema? No. You have the mind of Christ. Is it your grace? Your love? Your anything? No. It's all Him and His. He's given us all things that pertain to life and godliness. And Jesus' prayer was for us to know the one true God and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent.

Now I DO understand that God's timelessness interfaces with all time, because out of that timelessness, God CREATED all time, so that foundationally speaking, the HOW of God's interface with all time is God's Creation of all creation... Not particularly helpful, I know, but true enough even so...

It's a start. God is nowhen, yet He's everywhen. Just as He's nowhere, yet He's everwhere. That's because God created all whens and wheres (and whats), and He supercedes and transcends and pervades them all. Heaven is a where with whens and whats as whos. He created heaven and tents there as His everlasting abode. With us. Yet He is also eternally transcendent to creation, including heaven. Beyond. Other.

All I've done is back up before the Patristic formulaic belatedly began and gave us what LOOKS and FUNCTIONS like three Uni-Phenomenal hypostases in a created heaven. The how of Him pitching that tent and going into it is part of the mystery revealed.

And if I am the only one not "getting it", and you are getting all your kudos of pos reps and have great social backing here, then leave me behind and go on to your teaching of the class... I am only holding you up...

Alas... I cannot. I am compelled. You prayed. You want to know Him as fully as He can be known in this life. And you took the best path, which is Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy points to the mystery like the Latins and Sectarianism cannot.

As for me, I simply will not affirm an understanding I do not have... And you have not explained your 3D understanding which you want to show us on Skype... And the more you explain, the less I understand... And I have tried to show you why, and you belittle me for my inability to do the 3D thing...

It is not a belittling. Belittling would be me ignoring and dismissing you. I do not. I simply want to jar you into at least recognizing what I'm saying instead of filtering Multi-Phenomenality through Uni-Phenomenality.

Maybe it is like one of those 3D flat screen pictures that you have to just stare at long enough to see the holographic images hidden beneath the flat repetitional patterns on the surface... I don't know...

But you have to be looking at the 3D image for it to "pop"; not looking at a 2D image and expecting to see the 3D. All I want you to do is consider the lexicography for phaino applying to God as uncreated. I'll repost if you want to discuss it. And it in no way is some intellectual limitation or reduction of God. It's the opposite, as the means to truly see how beyond and other He really is in terms we can begin to comprehend. Not apprehend, but apprehended OF. And only for His glory.

So God bless you, Bro...

Thank you, and multiplied returns. I seem harsh. It's not what I wish to convey.

Sorry I am too lame to get the picture...

You most certainly are not.

Please pray for me...

Arsenios

I have, do, and will. Your prayers have changed my life. Thank you for them.

 

[Arsenios]

God is not under a rock.

He is at hand for the asking.

You shoulda left that detestable imitation under the rock that caught yer carnal eye.

I left all of them, helping where I could, but that was never very much... You see, I was looking for others who knew what I knew, who knew God as I know God... (There was one - I met him for 10 minutes in a dark parking lot passing through town - We knew each other on sight - That was it...) And for 14 years, I turned over every rock I could find, including western Christianity... And there was no one, not even one, anywhere I looked... I knew, loved, and hung with God, and I also knew I was NOT a Christian... But He kept telling me to read the Book of John in the Bible, and I finally caved, and read it, after 14 years of what I thought of as nagging...

And it was no good in English, 13 translations later, I couldn't get past chapter 1... Or even verse 1... So I found a Greek Bible and a Lexicon, and it opened for me... I knew what logos was, and the gloss "Word" was utterly misleading... And it was during this reading from the Greek that God came and told me that "The same Spirit that brought you forth out of darkness caused this book to be written..." I was working my way through chapter 12 just then, and I casually leaned back over my left shoulder, for that is where the noetic thought came from, and said:"That's crap..." and went back to the translation problem I was working on... And I stopped... And I said "Wait - That's God!" And I turned back and said, by way of explaining my rejection of the idea, "That would mean I am a Christian!" And that put an end to the matter... Except that I heard a very small murmer: "Uh-huh..." And I replied aloud and emphatically: "But I don't even LIKE Christians!" And He said quietly: "Don't attack them."

I almost shrieked back: "I'm a CHRISTIAN???" I should tell you, I was scandalized. It was unthinkable. It was ANATHEMA! And even today, looking back, I cannot chuckle, because so holy was this exchange... It was not a turn around into a closet thinking you are headed out of the house slapstick at all...

And I pleaded back: "Lord! Who will minister unto their ministers? These guys are SERIOUSLY messed up!" And He replied: "Don't attack them." Second time... And I stood up, text forgotten, and paced the room in a figure 8, utterly confounded, my whole knowledge of God blashphemed by God Himself. I am a Christian... It was the beginning of my Christian path into the Orthodox Christian Faith which at that time, I had never heard of...

So you do not need to tell me God is not under a rock...
And that He is at hand for the asking...
And that what I THINK is God is some detestable carnal thing I FOUND under a rock...

God has not given you the Gift mind reading (Prophesy)...
And you do not know me...

Gal 5:22-3
But the fruit of the Spirit is
love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, gentleness, goodness,
faith, meekness, temperance

These are the treasury of God's abidance in me...
I do not turn from them...
Genuineness of person -
They are why PPS likes me...

Gal 5:19-21
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these;
Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations,
wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like:

The arguing of one's own point of view against another person, and getting all riled up when they do not agree with one's own ideas, normally ends up in the heretical ideas from which it originates...

eg It is the ABSENCE of Love, Peace and Joy that normally identify Heresy, and NOT the failure of definitional consistency through multidimensional conceptual permutations of spiritual terms...

So when you find yourself in a theological dog fight attacking the guy who disagrees with you because he or she is all messed up and is not nearly so "spiritual" as you yourself ARE, instead of peacefully and calmly, in love and joy, having a discussion of the issues that interest you both, it is pretty much book that heresies are involved, because such is the only way to impose them...

The point of any fight is isolation of the opponent and stripping him or her of power, and then destroying them... Communion is the opposite of isolation... And the Communion of God is the greatest Power, because it does not have to fight back... Our witness is martyric... A joyful and radiant martyrdom of self in the service of God in the Marriage of the Lamb...

In this pursuit, we are combatants without weapons, lambs among wolves... The Church Canons even forbid Priests to own guns, for instance... Newly ordained Deacons give their guns to their kids and make sure they become good shots! Bishops do not drive, lest they get into an accident and bring harm or death to another, even inadvertently...

Thank-you for the kindness of your prayers for me...

Arsenios

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

They are why PPS likes me...

Yeppers.

 

[1Mind1Spirit]

I left all of them, helping where I could, but that was never very much... You see, I was looking for others who knew what I knew, who knew God as I know God... (There was one - I met him for 10 minutes in a dark parking lot passing through town - We knew each other on sight - That was it...) And for 14 years, I turned over every rock I could find, including western Christianity... And there was no one, not even one, anywhere I looked... I knew, loved, and hung with God, and I also knew I was NOT a Christian... But He kept telling me to read the Book of John in the Bible, and I finally caved, and read it, after 14 years of what I thought of as nagging...

And it was no good in English, 13 translations later, I couldn't get past chapter 1... Or even verse 1... So I found a Greek Bible and a Lexicon, and it opened for me... I knew what logos was, and the gloss "Word" was utterly misleading... And it was during this reading from the Greek that God came and told me that "The same Spirit that brought you forth out of darkness caused this book to be written..." I was working my way through chapter 12 just then, and I casually leaned back over my left shoulder, for that is where the noetic thought came from, and said:"That's crap..." and went back to the translation problem I was working on... And I stopped... And I said "Wait - That's God!" And I turned back and said, by way of explaining my rejection of the idea, "That would mean I am a Christian!" And that put an end to the matter... Except that I heard a very small murmer: "Uh-huh..." And I replied aloud and emphatically: "But I don't even LIKE Christians!" And He said quietly: "Don't attack them."

I almost shrieked back: "I'm a CHRISTIAN???" I should tell you, I was scandalized. It was unthinkable. It was ANATHEMA! And even today, looking back, I cannot chuckle, because so holy was this exchange... It was not a turn around into a closet thinking you are headed out of the house slapstick at all...

And I pleaded back: "Lord! Who will minister unto their ministers? These guys are SERIOUSLY messed up!" And He replied: "Don't attack them." Second time... And I stood up, text forgotten, and paced the room in a figure 8, utterly confounded, my whole knowledge of God blashphemed by God Himself. I am a Christian... It was the beginning of my Christian path into the Orthodox Christian Faith which at that time, I had never heard of...

So you do not need to tell me God is not under a rock...
And that He is at hand for the asking...
And that what I THINK is God is some detestable carnal thing I FOUND under a rock...

God has not given you the Gift mind reading (Prophesy)...
And you do not know me...

Gal 5:22-3
But the fruit of the Spirit is
love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, gentleness, goodness,
faith, meekness, temperance

These are the treasury of God's abidance in me...
I do not turn from them...
Genuineness of person -
They are why PPS likes me...

Gal 5:19-21
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these;
Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations,
wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like:

The arguing of one's own point of view against another person, and getting all riled up when they do not agree with one's own ideas, normally ends up in the heretical ideas from which it originates...

eg It is the ABSENCE of Love, Peace and Joy that normally identify Heresy, and NOT the failure of definitional consistency through multidimensional conceptual permutations of spiritual terms...

So when you find yourself in a theological dog fight attacking the guy who disagrees with you because he or she is all messed up and is not nearly so "spiritual" as you yourself ARE, instead of peacefully and calmly, in love and joy, having a discussion of the issues that interest you both, it is pretty much book that heresies are involved, because such is the only way to impose them...

The point of any fight is isolation of the opponent and stripping him or her of power, and then destroying them... Communion is the opposite of isolation... And the Communion of God is the greatest Power, because it does not have to fight back... Our witness is martyric... A joyful and radiant martyrdom of self in the service of God in the Marriage of the Lamb...

In this pursuit, we are combatants without weapons, lambs among wolves... The Church Canons even forbid Priests to own guns, for instance... Newly ordained Deacons give their guns to their kids and make sure they become good shots! Bishops do not drive, lest they get into an accident and bring harm or death to another, even inadvertently...

Thank-you for the kindness of your prayers for me...

Arsenios

Blah blah blah.......... with love to you Arsenios.

God can love and teach a pimp just the same as those in yer harlot club.

Because I run out of patience with yer ignorance does not mean I dont love you.

I dont have to have mind reading capabilities to see the error in yer words.

As far as Greek, you dont even know English well enough to try and learn it.

You continuously refuse instruction and paddle right along in ignorance.

:sigh:

 

[Arsenios]

Okay:

Introduction to my interpretation.
I take the chapter literally and like to organize it in the form of a play with scenes and dialogue.

It was written to be chanted in the liturgical Synagogue services of the Jews... Why would you attempt to take it out of this context and place it in the form of a play with scenes and dialogue? These are utterly foreign to its native matrix, wouldn't you agree? And thus they would degrade the authenticity of the original meaning of the text.

The Masoretic Text is very different from the LXX text. Vs 6, for instance, reads from the Masoretes:

"Therefore I decree that,
though you are of heaven,
and all of the household of the Most High..."

And the LXX reads:

"I have said,
ye are gods,
and all sons of the Most High."

So that literal is problematic, see what I mean?

And Christ's words echo the LXX...

When HE is being judged BY the Jews for claiming Divinity...

So He then throws them back on this Psalm...

Not that they cared...

"Literal" I agree is the best way to do an exegetical study here... My only question being: "Which literal?"

Arsenios

 

[Ps82]

It was written to be chanted in the liturgical Synagogue services of the Jews... Why would you attempt to take it out of this context and place it in the form of a play with scenes and dialogue? These are utterly foreign to its native matrix, wouldn't you agree? And thus they would degrade the authenticity of the original meaning of the text.

The Masoretic Text is very different from the LXX text. Vs 6, for instance, reads from the Masoretes:

"Therefore I decree that,
though you are of heaven,
and all of the household of the Most High..."

And the LXX reads:

"I have said,
ye are gods,
and all sons of the Most High."

So that literal is problematic, see what I mean?

And Christ's words echo the LXX...

When HE is being judged BY the Jews for claiming Divinity...

Snf He throws them back on this Psalm...

Not that they cared...

Arsenios

Thank you for reading my post and responding. I enjoy discussing ideas with others.

I write what I do about Ps82 because I don't make things so difficult, mysterious, and figurative.

There are characters, a dialogue, and a location where it took place. I don't mind if the Jews chanted it or not. That is irrelevant to the context.

God is the judge over his creation as Abraham once said and he is a just judge - who does not deal unjustly over his children

Satan is the accuser of mankind

Mankind was subjected to infirmities; became like wicked fatherless children of God; and it was because of man that whole earth became out of course because of the consequences of their rebellion.

God, as judge, told Satan that he would meet the same fate as MAN ... and die like one. Revelation describes the death that both Satan and lost man will face - the second death.

As stated in Isaiah 43:11 God explains that he is the LORD and besides HIM as God and LORD there is no Savior; therefore, the God who was commanded to arise and judge and inherit the nations in Ps82 was God himself come as the Messiah.

Jesus fulfilled that foreshadow when he died and arose from the dead ... and is now in the bosom of the Father as stated in John 1:18.

Quite frankly, I don't think the Jewish religious experts ever really got that revelation of who the Messiah was; so, I don't think I would always consider them to experts on all issues. Jesus even said that they needed to search the scriptures further for they talked about Him!

I love to hear what the Jews, who have realized that Jesus is the Messiah, have to say about scripture.

God's word is deep ... and actually we are ALL Bible students seeking truth and I think scripture supports my interpretation of Ps82.

Do you know how God introduced death into the world and into mankind?
Do you know how God made it possible for Satan to face the same fate as lost humanity - the second death?
Do you know how God will finally renew the world and make mankind righteous?

I do ...

 

[Arsenios]

God's word is deep ... and actually we are ALL Bible students seeking truth and I think scripture supports my interpretation of Ps82.

Do you know how God introduced death into the world and into mankind?

Yes, because He did not give us what He did not have... (eg death)

Do you know how God made it possible for Satan to face the same fate as lost humanity - the second death?

Christ ascended the Cross and overcame death by His Own Death...

Satan GAVE death to lost humanity, whom Christ redeemed...

The fate of the cause is not the same as that of the effect...

God only made it possible for Satan to prove himself wrong...

Do you know how God will finally renew the world and make mankind righteous?

Christ will come again in Glory,
and judge the Living and the dead,
Whose Kingdom will have no end...

I do ...

Does this mean that you will give a literal translation of Psalm 82?
And will it be from the Greek text?
Or a different one?

And I LOVE that humility!

Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

Blah blah blah.......... with love to you Arsenios.

God can love and teach a pimp just the same as those in yer harlot club.

Do you think that YOU are NOT a harlot and pimp like ME??

I sure am...

And worse...

linger:

Because I run out of patience with yer ignorance does not mean I dont love you.

So does that mean you DO? :cheers:

I dont have to have mind reading capabilities to see the error in yer words.

You were ascribing motives, not errors...
If I remember aright...
Not that MY memory matters...
Nor that my motives are not in error...

Mind you!

As far as Greek, you don't even know English well enough to try and learn it.

I translated a fair amount of Aristotle and Plato back in my days at SDSU - An atheist then, I thought I would find my answers in ancient Philosophy... I was too arrogant to LOWER myself to that childish and gibberish pig-latin of the Koine Greek of the Bible... I would ONLY address the GREAT MINDS of the ATTIC writers... THAT is why I went to the Greek to understand John 1... The LOGOS is a well known pre-Socratic philosophic term, so I knew when I read it in John 1:1 exactly what he was talking about, and then got it that he understood this Logos as a PERSON, and not merely a PRINCIPLE, as the ancient Greeks had understood it...

You continuously refuse instruction and paddle right along in ignorance.

Knowledge is identity...

Consciousness is identification...

:sigh:

Back at ya!

Arsenios

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

Sorry, I thought it was broader...

The point I was trying to make was...

Since there were multitudinous post-Nicene differing formulaics, and many still remain today; along with consistent continued proliferation of formulaics, with few recognizing the differences; then I should be quite free to do the same over the period of my lifetime, when the induced false concept of functional tritheism left me without salvific faith for 28 years.

At the very least, the Cappadocians, Augustine, and Aquinas aren't on the same page. And Protestsants don't even know what Filioque means or why it should matter to exclude it.

Though I decry the three hypostases, I'm more a Trinitarian than any Protestant who's ever lived.

Phaino, meaning to appear, to come into view, not restricted to creation?? When you say such a thing, you are saying that God appears to God... When God comes into view of God, I have no idea what that might mean, because of Who and what God IS... Or, more technically, is NOT...

You have likely never had reason to even approach the term for more than a passing consideration. Few have or do, and that's the problem.

From Zodhiates...

Phaino - to shine; to appear, be conspicuous, be seen; to seem, appear, be thought. (Check out Mark 14:64).

It indicates how a matter phenomenally shows and presents itself with no necessary assumption of any beholder at all. This suggests that soemthing may shine without anybody necessarily seeing it, contrasted to something that exists but does not shine.

Noumenon is that which is conceived in the mind but does not have any objective existence and does not necessarily manifest itself.

Phainomenon is that which manifests itself, appears or shines, and must have a reality behind it. It cannot be just the figment of the imagination.

Therefore, phainonomai is often synonymous with eimi, to be, and ginomai, to become. It may also have no substance, but presupposes one.

Noumenon is not dokeo, to think; which has in contrast the subjective estimate which may be formed of a thing, not the objective showing and seeming which it may actually possess. One may dokei, think, something which may not have an objective reality.

Hypostasis is underlying foundational substantial objective reality for subsistence as existence. Phaino means that which is a hypostasis and appears (prosopon). The distinction can then be made between God as uncreated phaino while all other phaino is created.

To deny God is uncreated phaino is to deny His very hypostasis/es and prosopon/a. And that's why someone would further deny God's existence.

The Father dwells in unapproachable light. The Son is the light that lighteth all mankind. Both are phaino. They shine. They appear.

I insist that God is the Source and Creator of ALL existence... And Himself is neither existence nor non-existence... For this is strictly and apophatically true... And when I do so, you accuse me of denying the existence of God... I can live with that...

Yes, I have Lossky's "The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church" and am familiar with the Aeropogitic writings that insist this. And they are at odds with scripture. God is a hypostasis. The Father has a prosopon, per His own words to Moses. Paul tells us Jesus had a prosopon.

God exists. The Son exists. Ego eimi.

Now THAT is a bazaar accusation... I wish to speak of the Persons of God as Father and Son and Holy Spirit, each always with the others, one God... And I understand Hypostasis to be a DEEP meaning of the English word Person... Because when God noetically APPEARS to a person, He does so AS a Person, whether seen of unseen... And this understanding leaves God with no intelligence??? Because I see God as Tri-Personal of the Father? I can live with that too, but it is really strange...

To convert God's Logos into another "person" is to remove His literal Logos. How, if the Son is the Logos as another hypostasis, does God the Father have intelligent and wisely pondered rational reason with comprehension and apprehension as His literal Logos.

How is the Son the Logos?

You can trust me when I tell you that I have been more vacuous and less legible...

As have we all.

I wish they would chime in and explain it to me...

I think they recognize it intuitively more than understanding it intellectually to explain it.

I hope not...

How about his perverted sexual proclivities? Blow them off too?

I see no reason to discuss Hitler, and am curious why you do unless you're equating me with his psychopathy.

Well, you did write that you were grieved that nobody understood you, which I was corrected to see wasn't quite what you said, and was not what you meant, so isolation seems less an issue now, I pray...

A mere exaggeration. But few understand.

Only if you are the only one holding the view and cannot communicate it... But you deny that, so the charge doubtless comprises an unjust accusation... Would you like my apology?

No. All I've wanted is for you to see the distinctions I'm making for what they are. I'm not Orthodox. I don't embrace the false beginning of Theology Proper being AFTER procession and creation. I reconcile it all to its foundation of God's uncreated transcendence and His creation of ALL, including heaven.

YOU and I have self-consciousness, because that is how God created us... We experience our SELVES consciously as EXISTING... So AT BEST, IF God is as you think in some way, then it is only so in iconic relationship, because we are created in the icon or image of God, and not in the REALITY of God.

This again denies God's literal Logos. And it gives mankind superior attributes to God if He isn't even aware of Himself and His existence.

I do run out of patience and shut down - In flight training, we called this "cockpit overload", and when a student pilot got to that point, and stopped functioning, the instructor would 'take' the plane and land it and debrief the student for the next day's lesson... A night's sleep would do the trick... That has not worked so far here for me with you...

That's because you're wanting to convert me rather than attempt to understand what I'm saying. Phenomenon is an example. Because you don't believe God can be uncreated phenomenon, you try to comprehend what I'm saying without it. That's a caricature. A parody.

And what I think that means to you is God's self-aware and self-enacting uncreatedness, and I humbly submit that you cannot, as a created being, understand uncreatedness in any form...

So maybe that is our impasse...

It is. God expressed Himself in His Son, eternally begotten from timelessness. He didn't stutter.

You're denying God's Aseity. His "From-Self-ity".

If God doesn't exist, then we comprise something that is beyond HIM rather than Him being beyond US. We exist. He must include existence or we supercede Him amd are beyond the scope of His own state of being.

OK...

I can see that you posit God's uncreated Self-awareness...
I counter that you cannot know it...

God spoke and said the words "my, I", etc. He's Self-aware. This isn't hard.

Because God is radically OTHER than His creation...

Then we are above and beyond HIM. Not possible.

And you and I are created...

Existence did not come from non-existence.

So that anything we SAY in this regard is without content...

The content is God's Rhema, thrust by His Logos.

Because God is fundamentally unknowable...

Fundamentally, yes. In Christ, we know Him.

Hence we have revelation...
And Communion...

Arsenios

Right. That's what I present the result of.

 

[Arsenios]

At the very least, the Cappadocians, Augustine, and Aquinas aren't on the same page. And Protestsants don't even know what Filioque means or why it should matter to exclude it.

Schaffer and a large number of their best do, and have moved into the Orthodox Faith... Once properly perceived, it is hard to say no...

Though I decry the three hypostases, I'm more a Trinitarian than any Protestant who's ever lived.

That doesn't help...

From Zodhiates...

Phaino - to shine; to appear, be conspicuous, be seen; to seem, appear, be thought. (Check out Mark 14:64).

It indicates how a matter phenomenally shows and presents itself with no necessary assumption of any beholder at all. This suggests that something may shine without anybody necessarily seeing it, contrasted to something that exists but does not shine.

It simply means "to bring to light"...
In the middle voice it means to come to light...
In the passive, to be seen...

The basic cognate is Phos, Light - As in Phosphorescence...
It means something coming to light so it can be SEEN,
because as an old pre-Socratic once said:
"Darkness loves to hide..."

The fundamental meaning is exposure of what was hidden for any or all to see...
"And the Light in the darkness is shining, and the darkness hath not overcome it..."
Darkness hates the light...
The other thing that old pre-Socratic said was
"Physis (Nature) loves to hide..."
It is hard to figure things out sometimes...
Nature is fallen too...

I think the Greek phi sounds like the FIZZ of phosphorizing bubbles
in the hiss of the surf rising over the sand as waves come to shore...

But your notion that it does not necessarily entail a beholder is in error,
because if nothing else, the self of the beholder becomes apparent in it to the I beholding the self,
because we are hidden within ourselves...
And what that translates into for God-in-HimSelf,
Who is not like us except in image,
whatever image may mean,
is transcendently unknowable to us...
We can conceptualize about it until hell freezes over
and we will still have not the slightest clue,
because we are created, and God is not,
and is the Author of creation,
which we cannot be,
except and to the degree
that God acts in us...

Noumenon is that which is conceived in the mind
but does not have any objective existence
and does not necessarily manifest itself.

Another misconception...
This formulaic seems headed for the Platonic Idealism you love to roast me with...
Mental concepts are what fallen mankind regard as thoughts,
and such thoughts are but a small portion of noumenal reality,
in which we find the Person of Christ IS Truth,
and no concepts either needed or permitted...

So you have turned the noumenal world into a realm of ideas conceived in the mind,
and now you will doubtless proceed from this fallen and human conception of human thoughts to God,
and ascribe such an existence to His Mind and His Ideas and HismConcepts...

"Your thoughts are not My Thoughts..."

Phainomenon is that which manifests itself,
appears or shines, and must have a reality behind it.
It cannot be just the figment of the imagination.

It can also have an unreality behind it, when sin comes to light...

Think Hannibal Lector...

Or when Satan APPEARS (phainomai) as an Angel of Light...

Therefore, phainonomai is often synonymous with eimi, to be, and ginomai, to become.
It may also have no substance, but presupposes one.

It means to become, or to be, visible...

Noumenon is not dokeo, to think; which has in contrast the subjective estimate which may be formed of a thing, not the objective showing and seeming which it may actually possess. One may dokei, think, something which may not have an objective reality.

The definition is "to seem" or "to deem" and there can be overlap,
as when "Satan APPEARS as an Angel of Light"...
And he SEEMS to be what He is NOT in his APPEARANCE...

Hypostasis is underlying foundational substantial objective reality
for subsistence as existence.

This is skewed, because you are defining Hypostasis as Subsistence, and they are the same word...

"HYPOSTASIS is underlying foundational HYPOSTATIC objective reality for HYPOSTASIS as existence."
This is what you just said...
And it makes no epistemological sense...

Phaino means that which is an hypostasis and appears (prosopon).

And this is just plain false, because phaino is a verb, and not a noun,
and you are saying that "To come to light IS the appearance of an hypostasis"...
You must say a thing CAN come to light,
but not that it IS the coming to light...

It IS the THING so illumined...

The distinction can then be made between God as uncreated phaino while all other phaino is created.

Which completes the transition from our created fallen human concepts
to their importation upon the unfallen, uncreated God
Whose Thoughts are NOT OUR thoughts...

Thank-you -

I get it now...

And yes, we do disagree!

Arsenios

 

[1Mind1Spirit]

Do you think that YOU are NOT a harlot and pimp like ME??

I sure am...

And worse...

linger:

Sure I am, it is you who claims that yer immitation club is not.

So does that mean you DO? :cheers:

Nope either way.

It means I need more patience.

You were ascribing motives, not errors...
If I remember aright...
Not that MY memory matters...
Nor that my motives are not in error...

Mind you!

Not at all.

As I have spoken truth, yer motives came to light in yer own mind and you screamed like a stuck hog.

I believe you said I jumped you ugly.

If the shoe fits?:idea:

I translated a fair amount of Aristotle and Plato back in my days at SDSU - An atheist then, I thought I would find my answers in ancient Philosophy... I was too arrogant to LOWER myself to that childish and gibberish pig-latin of the Koine Greek of the Bible... I would ONLY address the GREAT MINDS of the ATTIC writers... THAT is why I went to the Greek to understand John 1... The LOGOS is a well known pre-Socratic philosophic term, so I knew when I read it in John 1:1 exactly what he was talking about, and then got it that he understood this Logos as a PERSON, and not merely a PRINCIPLE, as the ancient Greeks had understood it...

Funny..... as you cant even get past schoolhouse rock.:doh:

Knowledge is identity...

Consciousness is identification...

This proves you are not paddling along in ignorance, how?

Yer admission of having false motives has proved to be ineffective..

 

[1Mind1Spirit]

Hypostasis is underlying foundational substantial objective reality for subsistence as existence.

That's better.

Thank you.

 

[Ps82]

Hi Arsenios,
I like the answers you gave to my questions and can't say that I disagree with much. Christ, being God, takes care of every thing. I guess I just wanted to get a bit more detailed into something I discovered as I studied.

The only disagreement I can see is with this answer ...
quote Arsenios:

Yes, because He did not give us what He did not have... (eg death)

God is LIFE itself ... but he did establish mortality and the evidence is that physical death does exist and as you said: ("Christ ascended the Cross and overcame death by His Own Death")... At that point even God tasted death for our sake. Thank you Jesus my Lord.

I promise not to use any Greek to explain myself ... all I need is my KJV and to know how to read well and use contextual clues for comprehension.

You will find most of the answers to my questions in Genesis 3, but there are a couple of other places too.

I'll just summarize my findings in scripture in list form.

1. God formed a body for humanity out of the elements of the ground ... it was dust before HE added a mist of water to it. A "mist" is a measured amount of water. Figuratively speaking "water" has been used in scripture to refer to spiritual life. Just as Christ explained to the woman at the well that he had "water" to give her from which she would never thirst again. We are told he was taking about the gift of eternal life (water) coming from our spiritual God to believers.

2. Knowing the figurative use of "water" and knowing what Christ explained ... I conclude that God gave only a measure of "life" to Adam's original body and that it would probably require a daily supply from the creator to sustain that life within that body on an on-going basis. This was no problem in the beginning for Adam and woman were in a personal relationship face to face with the LORD God.

3. Yet, rebellion occurred, and the time came to fulfill the promise of death and this is what God did to usher in mortality within the body of mankind.

4. God cursed the ground and told Adam that he did if for mankind's sake! That means: The curse would seem like an awful pill to swallow, but it was ultimately to be for the good of mankind.
Therefore, with the cursing of the ground death entered mankind and the whole world ... and anything containing the elements of "ground." This is why scripture says something similar to this: The whole world is wearing out like an old garment and groans for its transformation.

5. The cursing of the "ground" at that time only brought on physical death for Adam and not the death of the inner spiritual man ... keep in mind that God can save the spiritual man and even the body of saved souls if he wishes.

6. Now, watch what the LORD told "that ole serpent - Satan." Genesis 3:14 KJV
And the LORD God said unto the serpent, "Because you have done this (tempted woman), thou art cursed above (cursed more than) all cattle, and above (more than) every beast of the field (on the earth); upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.

7. Just wow! If Adams body was formed from watered ground ... then the partking of dry dust would mean he had the right to partake of lifeless dust of the ground from which Adam's body had been formed.

8. If you take a close look at the verse ... you will see the LORD saying something very unusual to Satan ... for most people conclude that he is an eternal angelic sort of being. God says you will partake of lifeless dust for all the days of your life. "All the days of your life" denotes that an end is coming one day! His days are numbered and not eternal. Did you know that God said the same thing to Adam in Genesis 3:17? The good news for Adam is that God planned to circumcise man's inner spirit from the mortal body and give a new one to "the saved." Satan does not have a mortal body that can be renewed by doing away with it.

9. Think about what this meant ... he had been cast down to the lowest level of ground and had a right to partake of the lifeless mortal bodies of humanity. Knowing this is it any wonder that Satan argued with an angel of God over the possession of the body of Moses? He felt he had a right to that mortal body because Moses had sinned against God. I guess he didn't get the concept that God owns the bodies of those he saves and will resurrect them when the time comes.

10. Now, if Satan is allowed to partake of the dead dusty bodies of the lost ... then ... SO GOES SATAN ... SO GOES THE BODIES OF THE LOST.

11. So, Satan and the lost soul's of mankind become attached because neither of them are circumcised from the cursed ground. These will go together into the Lake of Fire when God shakes the heavens and the earth to rid it of all unwanted cursed elements.

12. God will renew the world and give saved souls a new body that will not thirst for "life" but will live eternally,

13. God demonstrated that He was able to partake of our mortal bodies and overcome the curse upon the ground by taking up that body again by arising from the dust and taking that body to the Father ... where he received his now glorified body. Christ demonstrated the example (THE WAY) of how God WAS able to reverse the curse of Genesis 2 and save those who will trust in Christ and honor him as their hero and Lord.

14 Satan and all heavenly bodies that were sentence at the trial in Ps82 are destiined to experience the "SECOND DEATH." For Satan and the angels it will be a first death... but for humanity it will be a second death experience ... for they will accompany Satan and his cohorts into the Lake of Fire because they will rightly belong to Satan and he will own their dust. There will be no resurrected and glorified bodies for them.

So goes the dust of the ground ... so goes all the lost.

Shoot ... must leave ... without editing. Hope all is readable.
Bye.

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

That's better.

Thank you.

Wouldn't you consider the hypostasis the "real self"? The underlying "who" as our distinct individuality?

Along with the functionalities of the human spirit and body faculties, wouldn't this be the "soul" of man as our "self"?

:surf::banana::surf::banana:

 

[Arsenios]

It is you who claims that yer immitation club is not.

I am the one who just said we are...

Are you fantasizing?

Nope either way.

It means I need more patience.

Here is the prayer for patience:

"Lord...

Please give me patience...

And I want it RIGHT NOW!"

So feel free to take my advice...

Because I am not using it right now...

Arsenios