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Source: (consider it) Thread: Purgatory: Is this unitarian or trinitarian?
Dave Marshall

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quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
What Andrew said

You and Andrew are going round in circles, I think because you are committed to the artificial notion of a God about which nothing can be known but yet must known experientially in order to, er, be known. It's epistemological gibberish.

There is only value in claiming something is real if we have some means other than our own interpretation of experience to support it. If there is no verifiable support, the only reasonable conclusion is that is a product of our mind. Saying as you do that you 'just know' it's more is fideism and has no positive value.

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PataLeBon
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If the Father can exist outside of the Son and Spirit (AKA, if they did not exist anymore, he still could...)

Then are we still only talking about one God (as the Trinity would imply - the Three in One and One in Three)? And if so, why, when he can be permanently divided? Otherwise it seems that we are implying the One and Two in One etc...

And Dave, I've been thinking that if it is impossible to explain God outside of Church, then how can one believe that anyone can be converted from non-belief in God to belief?

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That's between you and your god. Oh, wait a minute. You are your god. That's a problem. - Jack O'Neill (Stargate SG1)

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Father Gregory

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Hypotheticals. How can we debate hypotheticals? As it is we have Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

As far as "explaining God" is concerned ... who said anything about that? I merely said that it is not possible to construct the Trinity from first principles or analogical pseudodata (the Augustinian vestiges of the Trinity). We can explain what we have encountered and what we have believed ... but that's an invitation not a cogent reason by itself to know the same thing existentially without a step of personal knowledge (by which some use the word "faith.")

I have never in all my years of priesthood ... Anglican and Orthodox, 26 years now ... I have NEVER seen a person argued into the kingdom of God. You can render something plausible by argument but not "real" in the existential sense.

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Now the Father and the Son and the Spirit all exist together. There's no Father without the Son and no Spirit or Son without the Father. As the Father exists so the Son and the Spirit exist. So their existence is not independent: they share one existence.

This is a rejection of the Father's monarchy... If the Father exists because of the Son, then the Father is not the sole cause of the Trinity, but essentially, there is no cause, than some sort of a blind (impersonal) necessity in the Trinity...

The Father causes the Son (outside time or ages) and He is the Father of the Son... but not because of the Son.

I did not say that the Father exists "because of" the Son. Of course, the Father is the cause of the Son and Spirit. There's not any impersonal necessity in the Trinity.

But because the Father exists the Son exists. If the Father isn't the sufficient cause of the Son, if the Father also has to decide to beget the Son, then in effect you're saying that the Father creates the Son - you just won't use the word.
The Father begets the Son freely by existing.

quote:
As for us having bodies... I didn't say the divine persons have bodies. Having a body is not part of the definition of a person... Angels do not have bodies either. Would you say there is one Angel?
It would be helpful if you argued against arguments that other people have put forward and not against arguments that they haven't put forward.

Angels have individual essences and operations. (I do not pretend to know anything about angels.) But the three divine persons share one essence and operation.

The problem though is although you say that the divine persons don't have bodies, as far as I can tell you think that this makes absolutely no difference to the way in which we talk or think about them.

quote:
I never denied that we have bodies. But EVEN THAT, will not prevent us from becoming one "exactly like" they are one... because it's not the body that divides us, not the absence of a body that would unite us.

The anthropological implications of the oneness of God you are proposing here are disastrous: there can be no salvation of man, because we have bodies or whatever, which the three divine persons do not have.... our union is not possible, and therefore our salvation, in Christian terms, impossible as well.

Jesus does not say 'that they may be one in every way that we are one'. You've decided to add the word 'exactly' to support your interpretation, but that's not in the text.

Anyway, here is Athanasius, Statement of Faith:
quote:
Neither can we imagine three Subsistences separated from each other, as results from their bodily nature in the case of men, lest we hold a plurality of gods like the heathen. But just as a river, produced from a well, is not separate, and yet there are in fact two visible objects and two names. For neither is the Father the Son, nor the Son the Father. For the Father is Father of the Son, and the Son, Son of the Father. For like as the well is not a river, nor the river a well, but both are one and the same water which is conveyed in a channel from the well to the river, so the Father’s deity passes into the Son without flow and without division. For the Lord says, ‘I came out from the Father and am come’ (Joh. xvi. 28). But He is ever with the Father, for He is in the bosom of the Father, nor was ever the bosom of the Father void of the deity of the Son. For He says, ‘I was by Him as one setting in order’ (Prov. viii. 30). But we do not regard God the Creator of all, the Son of God, as a creature, or thing made, or as made out of nothing, for He is truly existent from Him who exists, alone existing from Him who alone exists, in as much as the like glory and power was eternally and conjointly begotten of the Father.
I draw your attention especially to the first sentence, in which Athanasius says that because of our bodily natures the three divine persons are not 'exactly like' us.

--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

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El Greco
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
But the three divine persons share one essence and operation.

From the text you linked us to, just one sentence BEFORE the part you quoted:

quote:
For neither do we hold a Son-Father, as do the Sabellians, calling Him of one but not of the same essence, and thus destroying the existence of the Son.
The phrase "one essence" does not mean what you think it does. (which is why in the creed we don't say one essence, but same essence... think about what the quote above means) What you said, is what that text you linked to rejects, just one sentence before what you quoted to "support" your claim!

For the fathers, all humans are of the same essence. In MIgne's Liber de definitionibus, under Athanasius, it is explained what essence is, and why we say there is one divine essence...

And if you don't believe me, just look at the way the controversy on Christ's wills and operations was resolved. All humans are of one operation... and of one will...

You are making a distinction, between the one divine operation, and the many human operations that is just not there.

What is different is not the operation being one... it is one in both cases. What's different is the union, so we end up with the dialog I posted earlier... "I call one those that are of one heart".

That's what it's all about. Else, if the operation or the essence was like a rope being held by all three persons, that would be unitarianism, as the very text you quoted from says!

Anyway, this isn't getting us anywhere. The chasm is so big, and communication is so difficult... Sigh.

--------------------
Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.

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Dave Marshall

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quote:
Originally posted by PataLeBon:
And Dave, I've been thinking that if it is impossible to explain God outside of Church, then how can one believe that anyone can be converted from non-belief in God to belief?

Well, yes. I don't happen think that simple belief/non-belief is a good way of looking at this, but Andrew and Father Gregory seem to delight in making becoming Orthodox a logical impossibility.
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
I have never in all my years of priesthood ... Anglican and Orthodox, 26 years now ... I have NEVER seen a person argued into the kingdom of God. You can render something plausible by argument but not "real" in the existential sense.

That might be because you're defining 'the kingdom of God' in such a way as to make it impossible. This sounds like you think you can judge who's in and who's not, but of course you'll claim you don't. It's this kind of inconsistency that makes me think Orthodoxy only holds together if you avoid the rigorous theological and philosophical questions you're trying to answer here.

[ 01. December 2008, 12:39: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

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Father Gregory

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Dave

quote:
That might be because you're defining 'the kingdom of God' in such a way as to make it impossible. This sounds like you think you can judge who's in and who's not, but of course you'll claim you don't.
Oh pardon me! I won't speak. I am obviously a knave or a fool. How wonderful it must be to be you with YOUR insight. Thanks a bunch. [Mad]

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Fr. Gregory
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Dave Marshall

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quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
I won't speak.

Course you will. But getting all huffy won't change the fact that if you define the essence of Orthodoxy/the kingdom of God as experiential, you effectively exclude the possibility of useful rational discussion about either.

[ 01. December 2008, 17:08: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

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Father Gregory

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Why isn't experience a worthwhile endeavour for you Dave? Do you think that "thinking" is superior? Do you think that "experience" is hermetically sealed against all rational discourse, a vortex of the fundamentalist? What an astonishing and ludicrous idea ... oh but I forgot ... you tend to solipsism don't you so subjectivity is a private enterprise. Don't you allow for experience being shared?

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Timothy the Obscure

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I'm with you all the way on the primacy of experience, Fr. G. I just don't see how you get from that to the requirement of a single, definitive-for-all-time logico-verbal formulation that preemptively defines everyone's experience. (Especially a formulation depending on obsolete philosophical constructs like "essence" and "substance," which were originally invented to explain the material world but would never be used for that these days.) But maybe that's Andrew more than you.

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When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
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Father Gregory

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Dear Timothy the Obscure

quote:
I'm with you all the way on the primacy of experience, Fr. G. I just don't see how you get from that to the requirement of a single, definitive-for-all-time logico-verbal formulation that preemptively defines everyone's experience.
You don't because the words were not chosen to create, define and delimit the experience but rather make sense of the preceding experience.

Words are understood as they are used. What keeps them in use is a certain fittingness to the task. To me, they are still fit, although I dislike the Latinate derivation of substance (as in "substance abuse" [Big Grin] ).

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Dave Marshall

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quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Why isn't experience a worthwhile endeavour for you Dave? Do you think that "thinking" is superior? Do you think that "experience" is hermetically sealed against all rational discourse, a vortex of the fundamentalist? What an astonishing and ludicrous idea ... oh but I forgot ... you tend to solipsism don't you so subjectivity is a private enterprise. Don't you allow for experience being shared?

Who said anything about experience 'not being a worthwhile endeavour', whatever that means? And I've no idea how you get 'tend to solipsism' from what I've posted.

Shared experiences are what make the world go round. They build relationships and allow people to know each other. But they don't reliably describe anything. They generate a mass of biased, subjective impressions that at best only reflect people and places at the time and in the contexts in which they were experienced.

To get information anyone can rely on we use empirical methods and cross-reference our results to catch the errors. We don't read the diary of a medieval monk to find out how to build a computer. Neither, I suggest, does it make sense to assume that a history of interpretations of experiences, selected because they fit a pattern claimed by some ancient to reflect ultimate truth (he just knew it was God), actually correlates with reality.

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Father Gregory

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quote:
Shared experiences are what make the world go round. They build relationships and allow people to know each other. But they don't reliably describe anything.
(my emphasis)

This is why we will never agree here Dave. You and I have mutually exclusive models of cognition.

Mind you it also means by your own reckoning that I needn't take too seriously anything you say either. Since this will inevitably be based on your own experience (or lack of it) that also won't reliably describe anything either. That's the problem with all the variants of non-realism. They disinvent themselves.

[ 02. December 2008, 07:17: Message edited by: Father Gregory ]

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El Greco
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Dear Timothy

I didn't say it defines experience. We can't use words to describe what actually exists. We can't do that with nature (as modern science affirms) and we can't do that with metaphysics (as modern philosophy affirms). Orthodoxy has been saying that for the past few thousand years, but anyway.

This doesn't mean that the dogma itself can't be described in a clear way...

Also

I have heard a very nice metaphor.

It's like having someone who is blind from birth, and someone else explaining to him that there are two doors, one red and one blue. If you open the red door you find salvation, but if you open the blue door you find damnation. Red is a warm color, but not warm in the sense your tea is warm. And blue is a cold color, but not cold in the sense ice is cold. You will understand when you get to see.

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Dave Marshall

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quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Mind you it also means by your own reckoning that I needn't take too seriously anything you say either. Since this will inevitably be based on your own experience (or lack of it) that also won't reliably describe anything either.

Um, I'd hope no-one takes anything I might say about my 'experience of God' as if it were reliable evidence. I wouldn't. What we can do is pool ideas about how to make best sense of actual, known, testable reality, including how Christian tradition can help with that.

'Experience of God' (if it's identified as different to any other human experience) can only be an unverifiable subjective interpretation. Criteria for evaluating such experiences that are in fact other people's interpretations of their own similar experiences only perpetuate and reinforce an essentially arbitrary tradition. If those traditions are useful, fair enough. But that's no good reason to believe they represent, are reliable evidence for, any ultimate reality or truth.
quote:
That's the problem with all the variants of non-realism.
I'd be interested to know how you think my views are a variant of non-realism. You seem to be confusing your own assertion of a reality that is completely 'other' and what can actually be shown to be real.
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Father Gregory

Orthodoxy
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quote:
including how Christian tradition can help with that.

Ahhhh! At last!!! (And don't you dare mention the word "Orthodoxy" ... because I haven't).

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Dave Marshall

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quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Ahhhh! At last!!!

Don't get carried away. You make it sound like that's not always been my position.
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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
But the three divine persons share one essence and operation.

From the text you linked us to, just one sentence BEFORE the part you quoted:

quote:
For neither do we hold a Son-Father, as do the Sabellians, calling Him of one but not of the same essence, and thus destroying the existence of the Son.
The phrase "one essence" does not mean what you think it does. (which is why in the creed we don't say one essence, but same essence... think about what the quote above means) What you said, is what that text you linked to rejects, just one sentence before what you quoted to "support" your claim!

The reason I didn't quote that previous sentence is that I didn't think for a moment that you'd believe I was disagreeing with it.
I was working with the idea that 'essence' is pretty much the same as 'nature'.

Anyway, as you say, for some reason or other we're not going to get anywhere.

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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

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