This and what preceded and followed in your post is why having a discussion with you turns enervating. I am doing my best to converse, but you make it difficult by implying I do not operate from the same presuppositions you do. If you consider the air you are breathing is so much more rarefied than my own, what hope is there for progress?
See above for my semi-rambling response. LOL.
I maintain that insisting upon peppering the discussion we are trying to have with various and sundry Greek forms of nouns and verbs is unproductive.
And I vehemently maintain the contrary. English is the problem; and it didn't even exist in primitive Anglo-Saxon form until long after the primary (and ancillary) languages from which it is derived (and is being perverted constantly in modernity, to boot).
I'm teaching a short series on agape and what it is/isn't. Not one living human I've ever encountered seems to know what it means to "have" (echo) "love" (agape); much less the succeeding Greek words and their extensive functional meanings from the 1Corinthians 13 passage.
English skims every definition like skipping rocks across a pond. That's because of its ultra-low-context structure that depends on concept over context and content.
I "pepper" my expression with "GrEnglish" because nobody knows what hypostasis means. Or agape. Or pistis (which is functionally replaced by elpis). Or charis (especially, and ironically, by the "Charismatics" of various ilks). Or rhema and logos. Or just about any individual Greek term from the inspired text that pillars the Faith and the Body.
One can craft English sentences about Theology Proper that are explanatory of things explained.
Not really. And the problem is language-sculpted modern minds that innately conceptualize rather than contentualizing.
English does not and cannot determine definitions in arrears to be projected upon Greek (or Hebrew; or Latin, for that matter).
English doesn't do well in word-to-word translation. It requires paragraphs or pages to deal with most significant singular terms in Greek.
Doing otherwise becomes word salad more often than not to reader.
Yet in live teaching, this "word salad" is meat for everyone who hears it, because it dispels their English conceptualizations.
English promotes the death of the letter like no historical language extinct or extant. Yet when foundational and structural corrections are made and understood, its low-context nature can then become the most prolific expression of truth in history.
Try substituting the English explanation of these Greekisms each time you want to use them and see where it leads.
I provided a partial listing of lexical references. People don't even know the Oxford or Webster definitions of all the words they use constantly, much less the etymological and translational significance of such meanings from their donor languages.
This isn't because people are stupid. It's because English language structure isn't predicated preeminently upon intricate word meanings, but upon conceptual results of phases, etc.
That is the method I used when parsing your prior post.
Yes, and it didn't really represent what I was saying.
Your own "grid" notwithstanding, of course, no? :AMR:
My "grid" has been divested of English-driven conceptual bias over the last 17 years. There's a pragmatic and significant difference.
Rather than lisping with me,
I am not, regardless of such presumption or perception.
suggest modifications to my words without resorting to Greek words and see how it goes.
I've done so in the lexical portion so there could be better understanding when I necessarily intermix English and Greek.
My goal here is to flesh out what you are saying in English only.
...which is only possible when exhaustively examining the Greek words that English can only represent with paragraphs and pages.
For example... echo ("have"). It has extensive depth and breadth of meaning that "have" doesn't and can't express. The same is true of the vast majority of Greek terms.
Words from languages provide the subjective realization of objective reality. Mess with this and it messes with everything. To think Satan has not intentionally and maliciously jacked-up lanugage is to be ignorant of both his devices AND his agenda.
Our salvation and redemption is the Logos made flesh as Theanthropos. All creation was instantiated into existence by the word of the Lord (and the breath of His mouth).
Satan's primary agenda is to mess with language and words to change belief in men's hearts. Faith cometh by hearing, by the rhema. He can intervene in matters of faith at the very foundation by skewing rhema and logos as the instrument of creation. He has to. He has no power of his own; and He IS a lie and the father of it.
I am confident that can be done and you will appreciate it down the road.
I already do, but not in the manner you would presume to install. But using one translational English word for every Greek word is the height, depth, and breadth of fallacy.
To demand hypostasis, for example, must be replaced with a singular English word is inane and insane. The scope of both its meaning and application requires much, much more.
All the time you spend teaching others that finally see the dawn coming up like thunder may actually be reduced when more plainly used word constructions are employed. You seem to be implying that this is impossible. I disagree.
This is a false binary, just like most opposing extremes of competing doctrine(s). I gladly take the necessary time to copiously and exhaustively define Greek words in English. Then the inserted Greek words include a built-in lexical breadth every time I use them.
You simply have no idea how effective this is in changing hearts and lives. English-speakers use words their whole life with ridiculously shallowing meaning and no real understanding. And that's by design and influence by the spirit of antichrist in this cosmos.
How so in the "broad sense"? Do you include the created universe in this sense? You write "there are no aspects of creation ascribable to God", so how is God ascribed to that which He created?
I was speaking of projecting time and space, etc. upon God theologically, while doing lip-service to not having done so.
The entire Arian controversy, for example, was based on a false premise in arguing over "whether there was a TIME when the Son was not", or not. For God, there is no time. So the entire frame for the "argument" was invalid.
The most common default is projecting creation upon the Uncreated, and that is most commonly related to the gross misperceptions about "eternity/eternal", etc. There is no "eternity past"' for instance.
Your hair-trigger sensitivity to this is showing. Was not my intent. Rather my intent was to seek clarification to avoid the usual tendency for someone to read modalistic notions into your words.
Well... I suppose my "hair trigger" comes from novice nominal functional Tritheists (professing to be Trinitarians) constantly referring to me pejoratively as a Modalist; which any kindergarten theologian should readily see that I'm not. Sorry. I'll attempt to be less reactive.
I am looking a better construction of "created phenomenalities" being used to represent the Persons of the Son and the Holy Spirit.
They're not created phenomenalities. The Son and Holy Spirit are each UNcreated phenomenon and noumenon. All else is created phenomena.
You see, I am actually trying to aid you here.
I believe that.
Assume I am but a reasonably knowledgeable editor of a book you are writing. My task is to great your waxing eloquent and distill it into something consumable by more than a few high priests.
My never-ending quest, hindered by the culture-sculpting of low-context language and the demand for its utilization at the expense of true meaning.
Again, the lexical portion I posted should help immeasurably.
As explained above, no caricature was intended.
I know. I don't for a moment think it was/is intentional rather than in incidental.
In effect my comment was along the lines of "How, when using this phrase, do you avoid the charge of the casual reader of modalistic tendencies?" I am really trying to help you out and crisp up what you are saying.
The Modalists (well... some of them; not the Dynamic Monarchians) were trying to represent multi-phenomenality. They missed, and merely substituted manifestations for hypostases. Very bad move.
Beyond multi-phenomenality (which nobody understands but everyone is compensating for), the distinction is my representation that the Son has a distinct prosopon from the Father's prosopon (even though it is shared with the co-inhering Holy Spirit.
And this is not merely replacing multiple hypostases with prosopoa.
The vBulletin software here supports posting of images as visual aids. Or just link to them posted at the usual image based web sites where they can be uploaded. I am very interested in seeing them if you think they will help. Save them as pdf files and add them as attachments to your posts. Pdf files must be less than 295Kb in size, so you may have to post multiples of single images if the file sizes for multiple images are larger.
I know they willl help; I've been intentionally attempting to convey everything through the written word for several reasons. I may resort to that very soon, but I'd almost rather drive to meet you at a Phoenix coffee shop for a few hours.
"Live" makes a difference, for whatever reasons.
I am not in disagreement. I hope you know this.
I was unsure. Now I'm not.
I also hope you know that when we speak of the creative acts of God, as in the universe, in our finitude we often resort to time based words, all with the full knowledge that these are but accommodations to our finitude. Think of the typical question by the lay person, "If God has always existed, why did God take so long to create the universe? What was He doing before He created?"
Yes. MADDENING, I tell ya.
I think it is possible to provide an answer that does not require first laying so much pipe that the question gets buried in the process.
Though I agree to an extent, I've found it actually requires laying an adjacent pipeline rather than attempting to re-plumb what's there from low-context language sculpting of the heart and mind. I hope to meet you "in the middle" somehow. I hope you know THAT.
When you toss out careful constructions as in "re--presented in created..." you cannot just let them stand naked.
Yes, I know. Doing so in this venue will take great effort on my part. I'm wrestling with it. I hear you.
You need to follow up with something along the lines, "By 're--presented in created' I mean the following...{please complete the sentence}
Summarily... It means the singular hypostasis of God is re- -presented in the created phenomenalities with a distinct prosopon.
The problem is attempting to convert uni-phenomenal grids of perception to mutli-phenomenal grids. That's been the historical challenge no one has ever undertaken, and all have misrepresented.
In other words, do you mean to say..
Time and space is the eternal uncreated that which is observed to exist (phenomenon) and knowable by the senses (noumenon) of God proceeding forth into all created existence (phenomena).
No. Time and space were instantiated into phenomenal existence. The Son and Holy Spirit are the above. All created existence was merely noumenon until given phenomenon by the word (rhema) of God's power (dunamis).
This is where I truly have to lay a new replacement pipeline instead of tapping in to old pipes.
Feel free to suggest better wording of my constructions of the trigger words.
I'll work on it and continue to post.
How do you describe that interface?
There is an innate incompatibility that is not historically accounted for, instead projecting time upon God in various ways (though involuntarily, and while doing lip-service to the contrary).
Is this not tautological?
No.
Of course the formulation came after creation, as there was no one around to formulate the same, not to mention no special revelation (Scripture). Have I misunderstood?
Yes. I was referring to the formulaic beginning after creation, but the formulators presuming to have begun "before" creation. They did not account for creation of aeviternity and all forms of time, though presuming to.
We have been at it for more than a few hours here and about. Time for you to break out those visual aids you say speak louder than words.
AMR
Maybe soon. I'm really wanting to pursue a dismantling of English concepts that falsely drive truths in the Greek text.
