Well, please ... do go on.
ECT Our triune God
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Well, please ... do go on.
Arsenios
Well-known member
Only if you choose not to follow Jesus, Who WAS baptized by human hands and DID receive the Holy Spirit Who abided on Him, come down from the heavens as a Dove as He arose from those WATERS...
Well, it says that the doctrine of Baptisms is a foundational teaching, which means we need to get baptized...
Then it says that after Baptism, if one should taste the gifts of that rebirth, and then fall away, he or she cannot be renewed again by repentance unto the renewal of Baptism...
This is the Greek describing Baptisms:
τον της αρχης του χριστου λογον
The of the first principles of Christ doctrine...
Baptism is a doctrine of the first and foundational principles of Christ.
Do you know what the doctrine of baptisms is?
Arsenios
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
Though scattered, the basic content is within my posts in this thread.
It begins with God's Rhema and Logos according to the depth of their applied definitions. Couple that understanding with phenomenon and noumenon, and gleaning God's constitution of hypostasis, ousia, physis, and prosopon; it's also necessary to comprehend the integration of exerchomai/heko/apostello for the Son's co-procession with that of the ekporeuomai/para/pempo for the Holy Spirit.
It's a series of 10 2-hour illustrated teachings that I've developed over the last 17 years; along with attendant other teachings to reconcile the vast majority of dichotomies within mainstream systematic theologies. Ponerology, Hamartiology, Anthropology, etc. are all included.
God created and inhabited heaven, where He tents as His everlasting abode while also remaining eternally transcendent to all immanent creation. God's inherent eternal phenomenal and noumenal Self-conscious Self-existence is distinct from created phenomenon, meaning God is Multi-Phenomenal as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit rather than Multi-Hypostatic.
This has proven to be virtually impossible to convey online in the forum venue, requiring 3D illustration to accompany extensive and explicit lexicography for all the various Greek terms.
For those I'm privileged and blessed to disciple, it is epiphanal at an intermediate point in the teaching; which includes a healthy dose of apophaticism, and omission of a handful of fallacious presuppositions.
I'm not being cryptic, but it's extensive and not readily filtered through mainline 2D understandings.
Hello,
I have read bits and pieces of this thread so forgive me if this was covered (it's a long one!)
In the absence of a created order, would God's Logos and Pneuma not be/have processed?
I'm trying to understand the emphasis being placed on created eternity as being crucial for a proper understanding of the ontology of God.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am a Trinitarian Christian in the Western tradition and I largely (if not completely) share Aquinas' view (though I am not Roman Catholic)--though I should add I have not made up my mind on the implications of the Filioque and attendant controversy (and am not entirely convinced it is/should be one).
Arsenios
Well-known member
Great question.
Welcome aboard, Sister...
Taking creation OUT of the discussion of the UN-created God should prove fruitful...
I think PPS will say one cannot do so...
And THAT will lead to the necessity of creation...
But let's see how he addresses it...
Arsenios
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
It would seem to be, but is a question based on not understanding the immutability of God nor the inevitability of creation.
You'd have to, of course, then remove heaven; thus beginning to prove my points.
Sure one can. The one true and living God is the Father, who is Spirit and has an eternal Logos.
No, but the imminent inevitability. Yahweh is He who exists to covenant. He wouldn't have not created.
It's not difficult.
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
No, but that wouldn't have happened; so it's a fallacious question based in created time and not understanding God's immutability.
He eternally thought and willed to create; just as He eternally thought and willed for His Logos to proceed forth as the Son, and the noumenon of His Spirit to proceed as the Holy (set apart) Spirit. He wouldn't have not created, or He isn't immutable.
The distinction between uncreated and created phenomenon is the key, which has never been broached in history. Its omission is the core reason there has been such a plethora of competing historical formulaics for Theology Proper.
It's because the plurality is the Multi-Phenomenality of God's singular hypostasis rather than an alleged Multi-Hypostaticism.
Eek. I wholly eschew Aquinas' Scholasticism, and applaud his much-belated desistance in leaving the third volume of his Summa Theologica unfinished. But the damage was done.
Many share your view and this quandry.
I must admit that I have long seen competing Christian theologies as verification of Paul's warning that such things would be (Acts 20:29-30). That, combined with the passages that indicate a scattered flock to be collected at Christ's return I don't foresee a reconciliation of people or theologies shy of said return despite our best intentions. 'Til then our theology will be every bit as scattered as we are I fear.
What I have seen is the various hands and feet and ears spoken of by Paul in 1 Cor 12 segregating themselves and insisting that all others are not of the body. I suspect this goes far in explaining our current ineffectuality as a functional body.
I think that, being the constructs of men, there are inherent deficiencies in all theologies that render them irreconcilable. I would suggest that there is no replacement for each individual supplicating the Spirit of Truth concerning understanding at whatever point along the path of understanding that we find ourselves as we were admonished to do (John 14: 15-26, 16:12-15). That said I think we have much to offer each other if we were to allow for the possibility.
Setting aside for the moment the matter of God's eventual mailing address (a discussion I'm having on another thread at this juncture as fate would have it), You seem to suggest that what contemporary Christianity might refer to as the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are different aspects of the same uncreated being as opposed to the notion they are three separate entities one or two of which may or may not have been a part of God's creation. I think this whole argument misses a more important point but it points to it. Given that Angels by birthright, and men by adoption, have been offered membership in the family called “Elohim” to what extent do we/they share the singular hypostasis you describe?
Arsenios
Well-known member
Well, it is one thing to say someone does not understand the immutability of God, and it is quite another to afford the price of that statement by demonstrating the TRUE UNDERSTANDING of God's immutability... I mean, so far, you have not paid the price, so you do not yet own your own words, which in their practical unsupported reality amount to a taunt...
It is one thing to say: "Your question presupposes THIS understanding of the immutability of God, which is in error for the following reasons: 1,2,3 etc....." It is totally another matter to proclaim without any support whatsoever: "Your question is based on not understanding the immutability of God."
Then you throw in the "inevitability of creation" presumably as a FEATURE of God's Immutability, since the context you established with your previous clause in the same sentence is the ruling setter of context... Again without support, and leaving the field with two conjoined concepts: God's Immutability and His Inevitability thereby in His creation of creation...
So moving on, you have just said God can't change, because He is immutable, and therefore He HAD to create creation... Which places God under NECESSITY...
Or those of the Orthodox...
Removing ALL considerstions of creation IN ORDER THAT we can focus ONLY on that which is UN-CREATED should lead to the Truth...
You cannot avoid discussing creation IF creation is inevitable according to the immutability of God's Nature...
All you did here was close your lips after not mentioning this immutable inevitability...
Your point is not in your latter words, because the former ones insist not that he would not have not created, but that because of His Divine Immutable Nature, He COULD NOT HAVE not created...
Iminent Inevitability = Necessity, at least in all my dictionaries...
So then show us the MONEY...
We need some ousia to pay for your rhema!
I mean, it is those dirty-dog New York BANKERS!
They want their loans to be paid...
We can't just keep borrowing to pay the loans...
We gotta create some wealth here!
And make an actual payment...
Arsenios
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
Much practical truth here. But I would profer that I am referring to Paul's strong admonition for all Believers to speak the same thing. My pursuit to reconcile all facets and areas of dichotomy Christian doctrinal extremes is not a naive and nominal one; nor do I presume others will readily overcome cognitive dissonance and abandon their scattered dogmas.
I'm just doing as Paul instructs, and that without engaging in Relativism. All divergences in every aspect of doctrine can be reconciled. Not to each other in their diametric opposition, but each to the central singular and absolute truth. Part of that begins with Theology Proper, and abandoning minutiae of the belated Patristic formulaic by addressing their few omissions to also rid us of the anathemas.
And herein you set forth my very driving motivation for doing so, since God IS one being in traditional Orthodox Trinitarian formulaic; and an entity is a being, by definition.
Your statements are the core reason for my search and resolution beyond the accepted Patristic declarations, because the Trinity is widely and erroneously perceived as you represent... multiple beings / entities, rather than a multi-person singular being. And it's because He's NOT a multi-hypostatic singular divine being, but a multi-phenomenal singular being.
My focus on the plurality of God's singular being as multi-phenomenal rather than multi-hypostatic is because of perceptions as you have expressed above. Many conceptualize Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as multiple beings or entities because of modern low-context language and its reinforcement by an ignorant embrace of alleged unknowable mystery, declared prematurely at the precipice of one's own limited understanding.
The linguistic subtelties between a Triune God and three gods is razor thin. There is no precedent for a multi-entity God as a singular being, since those terms are synonymous.
This is the problem. Multi-phenomenality has historically never been broached as the plurality for God. Hence all the various external non-Trinitarian formulaics AND the endless differing internal Trinitarian formulaics. NONE account for the verticality of multi-phenomenality while constantly attempting to represent it in some differing form of horizontality. All are 2D (mis-)representations of a 3D God.
God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is in no way created, but are eternal and uncreated.
Elohim is a representational titular description, not representative of ontological divinity.
As Believers in hypostatic union with the risen, ascended, seated Christ, we are partakers of God's divine nature. The physis of His ousia, wherein is His transcendent pre-creational eternal immutable mind and will.
He foreknew us in pre-creation to predestinate us in conformity to the image of His Son because we commune with Him from time into His innate timelessness. His foreknowledge of us "before" creation is our communion with Him in and from creation. We commune with Him in His foreknowledge "before" He created; but with God there is no "before", for He is timeless.
This is why He tents in the created everlasting heaven as His abode. For us to transcend time and be born from above by putting on Christ. We are translated into God's Incarnate Logos by faith, living this life in the flesh by the faith of the Son of God.
Time, like all creation, is a construct of created existence and reality by which God subsumes those whom He foreknew and predestinated; and this is NOT a Calvinist contruct of tunneled time with God restricted to the time sequence He created and looks down through like a telescope to observe inevitable results.
I am foreknown because I am NOW communing with God in pre-creation "before" He created. That's because I've put on Christ by faith, and have access by faith into the grace wherein I stand. Grace is God's divine influence of His nature upon man's. My intimate communion is of partaking of His divine nature by my translation into Christ.
In Christ I live and move and have my... BEING. I have never been divine; am not divine; and will not be divine for all everlasting: but I am partaking of God's divine nature, both NOW and ever more.
THIS is faith. Not the hope/trust (elpis) that the Church has been decieved to understand as faith (pistis).
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
No, its simple. God eternally thought and intended to create. That did not and cannot change. There was no "time" at which the timeless God decided to create that would represent there being some previous "time" that He hadn't thought and decided to create.
There was no necessity, only immutability. Are you saying God didn't eternally plan exactly what He did? Are you saying God somehow took counsel at some point of linearity and sequentiality of His innate non-linear and non-sequential timelessness?
God never changed His mind and will. He eternally thought and intended to create; and creation didn't occur "after" anything, including a period of pondering and determining and deciding. God is timeless, and has eternally known and willed all things, including the entirety of creation.
Answer this simple compound question, my Brother...
"When did God take willful thought and action to create? And what change of His eternal immutable counsel was this?"
Sorry, but few have spent much time or effort for divine understanding beyond nominal conceptualization to have any clue about God's eternal immutability and other attributes.
Right. God, His Word, and His Wisdom. Just like the pre-Nicene understanding.
The one true God is the Father AS Spirit, as is His Logos.
I haven't avoided it. I just discussed it. You don't understand God's eternal attributes. That doesn't mean you deny them or are oblivious to them. It means you haven't spent time in theosis for noesis of them in particular as a foundation for all your understanding.
God's timeless and immutable counsel has eternally been to create. If not, the act of creation would have been post-creational according to created time, which would be paradoxically impossible. There would have been a "before" and "after" God's counsel to create if it weren't eternally immutable as an inevitability. Not of necessity, but of eternal counsel to do so.
If not, then "when" did the timeless God create, including created time?
I suppose it was an overestimation of presumption that you would have an epiphany that time cannot be the determinant for the timeless God creating time. God's timeless counsel was to create time. There was no "when" at which "time" God took counsel to create.
No. Yahweh exists to covenant. You divorce His eternal immutable counsel from Him. He IS love, so He would never NOT have created and demonstrated that love.
I'm fine with pursuing better lexicography for semantics, if that's what's necessary. But not at the expense of God's immutable eternal divine counsel to create.
So then show us the MONEY...
We need some ousia to pay for your rhema!
I mean, it is those dirty-dog New York BANKERS!
They want their loans to be paid...
We can't just keep borrowing to pay the loans...
We gotta create some wealth here!
And make an actual payment...
Arsenios
There was "never" a "time" that the timeless immutable uncreated eternal God took counsel to create. His immutable eternal counsel was to create. He "never" (in His timelessness) changed His mind or will to take counsel to create "after" having not done so "until" that "time" He took counsel to create.
It's an issue of His thelema, not of some mandated lack in possibility. Nothing constrains God's will. "Impossibility" for God is only outside His Rhema (and there is nothing outside or besides God); though creation is not ontologically divine, and any form of PanEntheism/PanenTheism is fallacious. Him speaking and creating confirms this.
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Thank you so much for the warm welcome, Virile one! :crackup:
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
I get the impression you already know Arsenios personally. If so, you are blessed with a true Brother.
Well I disagree its a fallacious question because I do understand (and subscribe to) God's immutability. The intent was to get at the question of God as He is in Himself without reference to creation.
I would say that it is in His very nature to create.
May I have one example each of uncreated and created phenomenon as relates this discussion?
How does created eternity lead to the conclusion there is multi-phenomenality rather than multi-hypostaticism?
No, I don't--he was playing off my user ID and so I played off his. But I will add that in what little I've read of him here, he seems to have a halo around him as there is a genuine otherwordly warmth and peace (and gentle humor) about him!
God's Spirit seems intentionally absent here. Is there a reason for that or am I misunderstanding?
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
Copy/pasted from another thread in which this was mistakenly posted...
Yes, they only delineate between two of the three necessary distinctions. You have demonstrated this yourself previously and still don't have a grid for it.
Not enough. There was an omission.
Which is why I've spent great time and effort to provide them, to not much avail.
No, I'm not mis-caricaturizing. There aren't three hypostases. The formulaic for three hypostases is what begins post-procession and post-creation to compensate for having done so; and the presumed multiple hypostases ARE that (fallacious) compensation.
The plurality is multi-phenomenality, not multi-hypostaticism.
No, that's the only way you can perceive what I say because you think only in horizontality of uni-phenomenality rather than in verticality of multi-phenomenality.
You've just posited a created realm for the created angelic host. That is neither the created cosmos nor the uncreated God. This is a hint of what you somehow don't understand. The angelic created realm is the created heaven in which God dwells, having created and inhabited it when/as He did so by His Word and the Breath of His mouth.
Timeless God
Created everlasting heaven
Temporality
Everlasting is not temporal. Neither is it timeless.
Sure it did. There was insufficiency and omission from the beginning, hastily declared as unchangeable Orthodoxy and promptly defied at every turn thereafter.
NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. I start with God as the eternal uncreated singular hypostasis/ousia/physis/prosopon AS Spirit, and His Logos. There was no thing (nothing) else. No creation. No heaven. No "realm" for His Self-Existence. No time. Only God, His Word, and His Wisdom according to His eternal uncreated inherent incommunicable attributes.
Don't tire yourself.
Hence the reason for my posting it here...
Yes, they only delineate between two of the three necessary distinctions. You have demonstrated this yourself previously and still don't have a grid for it.
Not enough. There was an omission.
Which is why I've spent great time and effort to provide them, to not much avail.
No, I'm not mis-caricaturizing. There aren't three hypostases. The formulaic for three hypostases is what begins post-procession and post-creation to compensate for having done so; and the presumed multiple hypostases ARE that (fallacious) compensation.
The plurality is multi-phenomenality, not multi-hypostaticism.
No, that's the only way you can perceive what I say because you think only in horizontality of uni-phenomenality rather than in verticality of multi-phenomenality.
You've just posited a created realm for the created angelic host. That is neither the created cosmos nor the uncreated God. This is a hint of what you somehow don't understand. The angelic created realm is the created heaven in which God dwells, having created and inhabited it when/as He did so by His Word and the Breath of His mouth.
Timeless God
Created everlasting heaven
Temporality
Everlasting is not temporal. Neither is it timeless.
Sure it did. There was insufficiency and omission from the beginning, hastily declared as unchangeable Orthodoxy and promptly defied at every turn thereafter.
NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. I start with God as the eternal uncreated singular hypostasis/ousia/physis/prosopon AS Spirit, and His Logos. There was no thing (nothing) else. No creation. No heaven. No "realm" for His Self-Existence. No time. Only God, His Word, and His Wisdom according to His eternal uncreated inherent incommunicable attributes.
Don't tire yourself.
Hence the reason for my posting it here...
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PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
I'm not challenging your assent or embrace and partial understanding of God's immutability; only the depth, breadth, and height of such.
God (AS Spirit) and His Word (Logos). The Father is the one true God, as is His Logos.
And His eternal immutable counsel was to create.
Right. His immutable nous (mind) and thelema (will) are "faculties" of His immutable physis (nature) of His immutable ousia (essence/being); all underlied by His hypostasis (substance) and outwardly presented by His transcendent prosopon. The latter as the "face" that no man can look upon and live; and the in-shining of His apparent transcendence into immanence as the unapproachable light in which He dwells.
God alone is uncreated phenomenon (including His Logos and His inherent eternality as Self-Phenomenal and Self-Noumenal Spirit).
All else is created phenomena, carried forth and upheld by the Rhema of His dunamis.
Because God's inherent uncreated Self-Noumenon and Self-Phenomenon as His eternal immutable Self-Conscious Self-Existence is the only uncreated phenomenon, and is innately ontologically incompatible with created non-divine phenomena. His Logos proceeded forth to "format" His uncreated phenomenality for condescended compatibility with created phenomenality, while He immutably also remains transcendent to immanent creation.
The Holy Spirit is the perichoretic for the inherently and eternally phenomenological and noumenological Logos, proceeded forth as the eternally begotten Son; and is also the perichoretic for us to be hypostatically united with Christ by faith.
The Son is the eternal uncreated Logos rising forth from uncreated phenomenon into created phenomena, when/as God instantiates invisible and visible creation into existence. Same hypostasis, different phenomena. Creation is noumenological potentiality that is given phenomenal actuality when uttered and breathed forth.
God, as Self-Noumenal and Self-Phenomenal Spirit, set apart the noumenon of Himself as Spirit into creation from His phenomenal uncreated Spirit; pierced and divided asunder (merismos is NOT separation, but is partitioning and distribution [from uncreated phenomenon into created phenomenon]) by His Logos.
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PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
You are misunderstanding. God IS Spirit. Holy (hagios) is "set apart". God set apart the Self-Noumenon from His Self-Phenomenon as Spirit from Himself into creation. His inherent uncreated phenomenon isn't ontologically compatible with the properties and constraints of created phenomenon, so He externalized His Spirit in such a manner to be perichoretically joined with His Son as the processed Logos; and also as the perichoretic for those regenerated into His image by being hypostatically translated into Christ by faith for redemption, sanctification, and salvation.
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