Well sadly many people treat theory as fact...just talk to an evolutionist.
ECT Our triune God
- Thread starter Lon
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Well sadly many people treat theory as fact...just talk to an evolutionist.
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
I'm not suggesting we give up; I'm just saying when I address sub-topics, you already have a filter in place (or establish one) that leads to a tangential understanding of what I'm saying.
I'm adamantly not an empiricist, and we're not referring to the same thing with the terms high-context and low-context.
I whole-heartedly accept and believe this.
But I'm not making such a binary.
I don't think it's such fatalism at all. I just think it's the forum venue at this level of attempting such depth of communication.
And this was my point in distinguishing between impersonal and personal hypostases adjectivally instead of with the term "person"; and I wasn't making the prosopon superordinate to the hypostasis by doing so. It was merely for distinction, since there are many impersonal hypostases in the cosmos.
Yes, but they're not combined, either.
A live interaction would likely be much more fruitful.
Yes. I agree with much, likely most. But it's still a Uni-Phenomenal approach for a Multi-Phenomenal truth.
The question as to the role that limbic physiology plays in one's internal psyche is still an open one I think. The experiments that have been done on this subject have been, up to this point, crude in the extreme. Whether the limbic system is merely a passive mechanical conduit or a pliant organism subject to the vagaries of experience and language (surgery excluded of course) is yet to be determined to my satisfaction in that arena. What empirical evidence I have concerning the matter makes me think the truth lay somewhere betwixt the two. It's like the ongoing argument about whether people are who they are at birth or are a product of their environment ... I think there is a reality in which both things are contributing factors. Like so much of what some folks see as dichotomies in the Bible, I think they aren't either /or propositions but pieces of a conceptual puzzle to be reconciled by those so inclined.
The word “psyche” is itself a case in point concerning the metamorphosis of words and their effect on our “psyche”. The name of an alleged human turned Greek goddess becomes the name for the soul in the English that once borrowed so freely from other languages but now finds itself increasingly pidgin.
The fact that we wax and wane in our cognitive abilities over the course of a life would seem to argue for a physical aspect to this phenomenon that is related to our age, and hense, the state of our physical growth and deterioration during this journey. That said, I think all things that manifest themselves in the physical plane have their root in the spiritual realm and any proper understanding of any given physical phenomenon must take this into account. We and all we see and do and think are shadows of that greater thing whose essence lay in a realm we now have but a limited access to and that casts the shadows we now perceive as reality as they pass through and/or are perceived by this body.
I think here you point to leaven in the realm of language and I would agree that leaven of any kind is best avoided. As Jesus said, a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. I have often said that I have found that most any question I had about what the Bible was saying was soon cleared up by consulting the original language. I have to confess that I too have been guilty of intellectual laziness and, instead of going to the dictionary to look for a word definition, I would glean the meaning of through inference. This places what is likely too much trust in the author.
As it regards “the Edenic lie” I would point out that there were two; “Ye shall be as gods and ye shall not surely die.” This was a half truth. Adam and Eve became as gods (Elohim) in that they then perceived good and evil. The leaven was that deal about not dying. Their access to the tree of life was cut off to prevent this. Mankind will not have access to this tree again until after the “White Throne Judgment.”
“Ye shall be as gods and ye shall not surely die.” Distilled to their essence this is the promise of the philosophies and religions competing with the Word of God. I think that indicates a common author.
Arsenios
Well-known member
I prefer to think of the issue as that of the hard-wiring of the personality, vs the soft-wiring... The hard-wiring being pre-verbal absolute presuppositions acquired VERY early on, and normally pre-natal... "In sins did my mother bear me..." [Ps 51]
And normally the soft wiring is at least verbal-perceptual, and can be accessed by memory. It exists in a field of increasing remember-ability as one's development outside the womb continues to establish the physiology of the person from the pre-mature birth we all have relative to the rest of the animal kingdom...
Accessing the hard-wiring and doing repairs at that level is a spiritual endeavor normally only approached by Christian monastics, and not all that many of them... I have been engaged in that field some 60 years now... [Not monasticism, but the hard-wiring...]
Apparent 'cognitive abilities' are not what this life is about, so that their waxing and waning, while true enough, do ONLY argue, as you said, for a physical aspect... But when metania for the sake of Marriage to the Lamb is the objective, it is not one's cognitive abilities that are relevant - And indeed at least in monastic praxis, they are relegated to the role of guard-dog in identifying and destroying demonic intrusions... And instead, cognitive obedience is the virtue that then completes the destruction of the "Old Man" of sin... This being understood as freedom, and requires an Elder who KNOWS what he or she is doing...
I think the process of Salvation [eg metania] is much more specific than this watery and shadowy understanding would permit...
Act_8:26 And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, "Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert."
Act_8:29 Then the Spirit said unto Philip, "Go near, and join thyself to this chariot."
Notice the specificity of the interaction between God and Philip. And remember his disappearance upon doing the Baptism of the Eunuch... This is a high grade Apostolic event of a kind that has never stopped occurring since Christ rose from the tomb... And the Way of THAT kind of Life is KNOWN and discipled now upon the earth for some 2000 years...
Christ the New Pascha is the Leaven that leaveneth the whole lump... A tiny bit of the Body and Blood of our Lord on a little spoon from the Chalice... And we receive the Whole... It is Fire...
Probably worth a thread by itself, but I would counter that in the unfallen condition of the Garden, to "KNOW" Good AND evil was to BECOME both... And it was for THAT reason that they were denied access to the Tree of Life, lest that combination become a permanent condition in man not yet ontologically conjoined to God [eg the Marriage of the Lamb]...
It is the Serpent's promise... In Christ we CAN know Good and evil and never die... But prior to that Marriage of Union with Christ, to KNOW evil is to BE DEAD...
It is the Holy Fathers who have existed for 2000 years in personal succession now who by this calling are ABLE to intercede with God for the Salvation of YOUR soul... And MINE... This is the TRUE Apostolic Succession, which has, sadly, little to do these days with the POLITICAL Apostolic Succession of Church Organizational Administration... The latter has devolved in many cases to being a Typos for a very HIDDEN reality...
But a vibrant reality nonetheless...
Arsenios
Arsenios
Well-known member
PPS said:
So you have set up a dichotomy between concept and content.
I would like you to take this in baby steps with a non-doctrinally charged example.
Here is a concept: "SPOTTED APALOOSA"
Here is the content: "ALL HORSES IN THIS GROUP"
What do you understand by the DICHOTOMY between Apaloosas and Horses?
Arsenios
It has been my experience that the emotionally and spiritually wounded are best served by those who have been there, done that and come out the other side intact. One would think that the isolation involved in monasticism would leave one ill equipped to commiserate with and offer solace to those whose experiences they have not shared. As a case in point my wife, who had previously been through years of sexual, physical, mental and emotion abuse was directed to seek counseling which she did. She found herself facing two fresh faced college grads half her age that had experienced nothing remotely analogous to what she had experienced. Suffice to say that was her first and last visit. I experienced a sort of self imposed monasticism myself but, at a certain point, I understood that I had to go out into the world and brace my fellow man for any of what I had learned to have any meaning. As soon as I did I found that what I thought I had to offer and what was needed of me by my fellow man were, as often as not, two different things. I would suggest that isolating yourself from your fellow man in some artificial and isolated spiritual greenhouse allows for an accelerated opportunity to familiarize yourself with the word of God but it leaves you ill equipped to help those outside of that construct. Gotta get out there and get your hands dirty.
I am unfamiliar with the term “mentania” and so cannot offer a cogent reply to this portion of your offering.
I'm guessing that here you are referring to what is commonly referred to as Communion or the Eucharist. This is another subject that I am something less than qualified to hold forth on in that I've never participated in this observance. Considering the admonition concerning those who did so unworthily I figured better safe than sorry.
I think I see your point. Could well be.
I think knowing evil and choosing it are two different things. However, the two certainly converged in the Garden and many times since.
Here we must part company. I have yet to find a verse that places anyone between us and Christ's promise though, since His death, there has been an unending procession of those who have sought to do so. We have one Father and He has appointed His Son our judge. None others need apply for either position.
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Arsenios
Well-known member
Orthodoxy regards this wounding as the spiritual inheritance of every single individual and particular human being who ever walked the face of this fallen creation called earth...
Including Christ, who overcame it all as Son of Man...
That is a common enough western perception of monasticism, and God knows that much of what passes for monasticism might just as well find employment at Harry's Garage and have a house full of hateful children... But there are those who are called to this monastic life early, and some who enter it late... It is not a place for dead-end failures living in the vanity of their impassioned imagination, but for those who are serious about union with God through the Marriage of the Lamb in the Holy Spirit... Everything flows from the success or failure in this enterprise... It is a quest of the heart that places the pilgrim with the Beloved Disciple [John, the youngest of them, and a virginal youth, who DID give up ALL worldly experience to follow Christ], at rest on the bosom of Christ... THAT, you see, is the Narrow Way, forsaking ALL in one's pursuit of union with God... Up to and including one's own life... Following Christ, Who IS that union...
So that it is FROM that union that the so-called isolated monastic while living in the flesh is in the service of all humanity, because Christ is in that same service, and desires that all be saved, and come to the knowledge of the Truth, which IS the Marriage of the Lamb to the person whose soul has been purified in renunciation of all that is not God... This process of purification, the walking of the hard and narrow and ascetical Way, is called metania, or repentance... (Sorry, I did not mean to lay an unfamiliar Greek term on you and not define it...)
You are preaching to the choir... But simply look at the standard by which behaviors are evaluated - And in this, we are back to the previous post - Cognitive functionality... And this in terms of the fallen person's need, whether individual or social... So that we have as our standard the fallen life we inherit from Adam in which we are dead and will die...
And beyond that, in realistically fallen terms, very few psychologists are able to help those with mental dysfunctions... And at the lower levels of such dysfunction, they simply turn their backs and put them in jail... They can only help the victims a little, and the victimizers not at all...
If one retreats into one's cave to figure things out that need answers, then one is involved in a carnal enterprise... And God normally will honor that effort with an answer that occurs to the person seeking it, or a vision, or whatever, and you are right, such an answer is more often than not fairly particularized to the conditions of the soul of the person seeking it... And in one's excitation with the answer, it is easy to over-generalize, and thereby create a "school" of thought concerning this feature of the human experience, and so we find the psychology 'schools' of Freud, Adler, Pearls, Milt Erickson, and on and on... And in Churches, we find the Latins, the Protestants, the Lutherans, the Calvinists, the Charismatics, and on and on... Most progress in the human experience comes from these kinds of particular insights...
Again, forgive me - It simply means repentance... A "change" (meta) of mind/heart (noia=nia)...
Orthodoxy offers assistance in such safety by NOT offering Communion to those not Orthodox, and not to Orthodox who are not properly prepared for it... There are minimum ascetical standards which must be met in order for the Orthodox to receive Communion, simply because if not, the results are not recommended...
John 6:53
Then Jesus said unto them,
"Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of man,
and drink His Blood,
ye have no life in you."
And this is the Leaven [Christ] that leaveneth the whole lump [us]...
I think I see your point. Could well be.
The Garden changed everything for man, in that death entered into the world, and on account of death, sin... Biblically, to KNOW is to BE ONE WITH... The "knowing evil" that you distinguish from "choosing it" is not what is meant in the garden, and this because of the deception involved of the doers of evil by the serpent...
Early Man, Adam, not yet united with Christ, was not yet prepared to be united with evil and not die... So that when he did so, he cut himself off from the Source of Life, which is God... "I the Lord Thy God am a JEALOUS God..." And the Adam into whom we are born committed ADULTERY... Turned his back on God in order to BE God without being joined with God...
You see...
This is why authentic union with Christ is so crucial, because only this union enables us to beget children through the Gospel of Repentance from dead works and Baptism into Christ...
To wit:
1Cor 4:15
For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ,
yet have ye not many fathers:
for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you
through the gospel.
This is the high calling of those called to Christ...
Paul calls it the wretchedness of "those called to be Apostles"...
His litany of wretchedness is vast... The hard and narrow way...
For it is Christ Who is begetting, by Paul's hand...
Arsenios
1Mind1Spirit
Literal lunatic
Wrong you bungling dufus or whatever name you used for yerself to lay a guilt trip on pps.
Adam was not deceived.
He disobeyed God by listening to his wife Eve.
She was his flesh, he chose his flesh over God.
He was never married to Christ therefore he committed no adultery.
Death entered the world through Adam the sinner.
ERRRRRR!!!!!!!:shut:
Arsenios
Well-known member
Good grief 1n1, did I lay a guilt trip on PPS?
I mean, if I did, I sure didn't mean to...
PPS is dear to me...
Would you settle for "He was wrong in his thinking."??
That is the deception of Adam through Eve...
I think the Bible says that she was flesh of his flesh...
Well, he didn't go to a justice of the peace and take out a marriage license, so I guess you are right??
He was not a sinner until he sinned...
So what is the big deal if we disagree on this?
Why all the drama?
You think Adam was not deceived, and I think he was...
Life still goes on...
It is called freedom in the US of A...
Arsenios
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1Mind1Spirit
Literal lunatic
What's the big deal?
Yer a windbag full of deceit.
1 Timothy 2:14 KJV
14 And Adam was not deceived , but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
:jawdrop:
1Mind1Spirit
Literal lunatic
Yuh think? LOL. :Shimei:
yep. not that it matters at THIS POINT in God's Plan, but sin entered through Adam, and therefore death -
Romans 5:12-13 KJV -
Romans 5:14 KJV - Romans 5:15 KJV - Romans 5:16 KJV -
Romans 5:17 KJV - Romans 5:18 KJV - Romans 5:19 KJV -
Romans 5:20-21 KJV -
Colossians 2:18 KJV -
Colossians 2:19 KJV -
1Mind1Spirit
Literal lunatic
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1Mind1Spirit
Literal lunatic
No problem, long as it aint this angel and his band of demons.
2 Corinthians 11:14 KJV
14 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
Fire on the mountain, run boys run.
Devil's in the house of the risin' sun.
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
I think I'm speaking more generally of that which is sub-cognitive as lower and upper limbic versus cognitive. In Greek, the strong implication is that nous (mind) and kardia (heart) as conscious and subconscious are metonyms; the meta prefix indicating "amidst" and inter-conditional.
Agreed. It seems there's enough definitive evidence that it isn't really a dichotomy in that regard. Genetic and epigenetic.
Agreed.
And it points to the distinction between intuitive knowledge of the spirit as access versus experiential knowledge as acquisition.
As long as we're staying a safe distance from Platonism, etc., this is appropriately descriptive for functionality.
Absolutely. And it's too bad most don't adequately explore lexicography by foundational intuitive spiritual knowledge; defaulting to presumed low-context nominal and conceptual definitions instead.
Indeed.
And I would add that Adam and Eve were to ultimately have received an intuitive knowledge of tov and ra'a by spiritual communion rather than the tree of (physical senses) knowledge.
Yes, exactly.
Arsenios
Well-known member
Yes - We are having a discussion about a difference we have in the interpretation of Scripture, and we are seeing it differently...
And YOUR response is this:
Yer a windbag full of deceit.
My question to you is this?
Why hurl invective and insults?
What do you hope to accomplish?
Now THAT is helpful
14 And Adam was not deceived , but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
At least I can see the basis for your disagreeing with me...
And THAT :jawdrop: is just more ego-hoser-posing...
I had forgotten that line in Scripture, so thank you for providing it.
The context of the statement was the role of women in the Church, and was not Adam's participation in the Fall, and reflects the classic understanding, Jewish and Christian, that the Serpent did not approach Adam to deceive him, but approached Eve and deceived her, and thereby induced her to eat of the forbidden fruit. And through this subterfuge and deception, he succeeded in inducing Adam to eat the forbidden fruit by this deception of the serpent...
So that what it means, in context, is that Adam was not deceived BY THE SERPENT DIRECTLY... But only THROUGH [eg by means of...] the woman did he transgress. And the wording of the Greek is a little odd in this passage, so I went to the Orthodox New Testament vol 2 translation by Mother Mary, who is a stickler for accuracy, and she has it thus:
11 - Let a woman learn in silence, all subordination.
12 - And I do not permit a woman to teach...
Nor to have authority over a man...
Bit to be in silence.
13 - For Adam first was fashioned, then Eve...
14 - And Adam was not deceived.
But the Woman,
Having been deceived,
Hath come to be in transgression.
I would quibble with her last 'hath come to be' because it is a 2nd perfect verb of gignomai, and would translate it as "HAD come to be in transgression", which means that she sinned first, and somewhat because of this, that she HAD ALREADY sinned, Adam joined her in that sin of which she was already guilty, instead of correcting her.
And your point is that Adam followed the Woman, and therefore was not deceived, but only the woman... Hence the sin of Adam, in your view, is the more serious of the two... Adam, in your view, KNEW he was sinning when he ate... The woman was merely deceived...
I can live with that interpretation - Mine was that Adam too was deceived through the woman having been deceived, and at this point, it seems plausable, but not so plausable as your view... Yours is a better understanding, in my view...
So I owe you for a change of mind...
Welcome to the freedom of the US of A...
Revised thinking and understanding is what the free exchange of ideas is all about...
God bless you, my angry Brother...
Arsenios
it may seem that way, unless you read more than 10 or 20 previous posts = :chuckle:
Lon
Well-known member
I've tried to explain this to those who bring this thread down to basal/fleshly interests. It is a thread that 'has' good explanation and discussion about our God and the necessity of Christ being God and man to bridge the gap between God and man. Unfortunately, despite asking disruptors to take it someplace else, and debators to raise the bar, there is a continual endeavor to remind those of these requests.
That necessitates that good posts must be mined from within the noncompliant. My apologies but I wasn't the one who promised a cerebral satisfaction
You may have a bone to pick with that person who promised such.
-Lon