Synergy in Christ

[Daniel Jones]

I think many here would enjoy my paper I wrote for my Christology class this past semester.

Link to article... (http://www.energeticprocession.com/archives/Synergy%20in%20Christ%20According%20to%20Saint%20M aximus%20the%20Confessor.pdf)

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I'm a graduate student in Theology at University of Dallas considering converting to Orthodoxy from RC.

Daniel

[leandros]

Dear Daniel Jones,

I read your paper, and I think that you are in the right path. Congratulations from your work. If I am free to make a personal remark, I am really impressed by the soundness of your synthetic capacity.

I also welcome you in the fellowship of this forum – though I am not the most suitable member for this - as I am also a newbie.

Let me take the opportunity to comment over one issue in your paper, as an attempt to communicate with you personally (not in an academic approach). Although you approach the issue from the right path – taking in account your paper as a whole - it seems to me that you on this specific issue you have to answer to some question that are left un-answered.

You say that the phrase “Not my will, but thine will be done” expresses that “Christ initially wills two good objects”. Because from His “two natural faculties, each one of them directed towards the good, the 'objects of willing' are self-preservation of his life and the Salvation of humanity. Since the faculty of the will is rooted in the nature as we have stated, and nothing natural is in opposition to God, then it is not possible on the mere basis of Christ having a natural human will for him to sin in opposition to God for self-preservation of his own life
which is a good to will.”

At the Gethsemane Garden there were two Persons present, Christ and the Father. Christ is talking to His Father. He is not taking to Himself. The answer that Christ is giving to Father “Not my will, but thine will be done” is an act of personal transcendent self-determination, and it is a testimony of Personal relation between the Father and the Son.

In your paper, it seems to me, that both “my will” and “thine will” are taken for natural wills of the “two natural faculties” of Christ. “my will” as his natural human will of self-preservation and the “thine will” as His natural divine will of salvation of humanity. If this is the case, then Christ is making a choice between two different natural faculties of His own double natures, and the Father as a Person is absent. Of course the divine nature of Christ is homoousios (identical in nature) to Father’s and the divine natural will of Son is identical to the divine natural will of Father but that is like saying, in an analogy, that as you and me are having the same natural will “to eat”, each time you are eating you are doing so according to my natural will and in this context we are related in a personal relationship.

Further, the adoption of “my will” as a will for “self-preservation” and the adoption of “thine will” as will of “salvation of humanity” (originated respectively from Christ’s two natures, human and divine) will guide us to accept that the “salvation of humanity” is a natural will of the divine nature. By that we introduce the “human factor” into divine nature. The will of “salvation of humanity” is a will that is originated from the Personhood of the Father, it is a Personal subjective Uncreated will.

Another point, is that the human natural will for self-preservation is not an “a sin that is in opposition to God”. It seems to me that by saying “…Christ having a natural human will for him to sin in opposition to God…” you correlate two different subjects: the human natural will of Christ and the will of the Godhead as a Person. Let me say that, from this starting you follow a wrong path.

According to theology of St. Maximos, Christ is having, as a human being, a natural will to exist (logos of beings). He has the natural functionality of being, as a man, that every human is having, as existence is a God given attribute of human nature, according to His uncreated Personal will, that humans enjoy according to their created natural will.

Then, Christ as a singular Person, the Son, experientially transforms this common natural will to exist into a Personal will of “self-preservation” (tropos of beings). This personal will of “self-preservation” is experienced in an exclusive individual way from every human, in a self-determined way of realization of the common “natural will to exist” (logos of beings).

For everybody else, except Christ, the personal self-awareness of this personal will for “self-preservation” is an exercise of freedom of choice, performed by each person individually (gnomie of beings), as long as the person is free to self-originate his opinion over the experience that the person’s natural will provides as its energy (if the nature was “will-less” then the person would have been void of experiential realities and the person would have vanished to nothingness).

This freedom of choice refers to the freedom to choose a “self” that will be adopted as the true person who will determine the true substance of the realization that the natural will is presenting as a natural reality. In this context, “tropos” is an inactiveness self-realization of “logos”.

If I say that, every human being has the natural will to exist (the natural functionality of being) and that, Leandros who hypostasize a human nature realize his natural will to exist into a personal will for “self-preservation”, I fail to present a person in “movement”; I just present two functional realities, human nature and Leandros the person, that produce no personal reality, they remain “motionless” according to St. Maximus terminology. (This of course is impossible for a being)

If I say that, every human being has the natural will to exist (the natural functionality of being) and that, Leandros who hypostasize a human nature realized this natural will into a personal will for “self-preservation” as he stole a bank, then I present Leandros as a person in “movement”. It is the self-identification that the person Leandros did, by choosing to identify himself with a “thief person” in order to support his personal will for “self-preservation”, that offered him the answer to the question “who is Leandros?” and that presented him as an acting realization of personhood (a being in movement according to St Maximus terminology).

Leandros had the personal will for “self-preservation” in a “motionless” manner, by “tropos” and “logos”, as Leandros the human being. But he had to identify himself with a person according to “gnomie”, in order to manifest the reality that he existentially incarnates as Leandros a person “in movement”.

So what makes the different in St. Maximus anthropology is the “movement” of person, an action of identification with our true authentic personhood, which will provide the true and authentic subjective realization (gnomie) of the objective realities that the “logos” and “tropos” are. Failing to “choose” the right person that “we are existentially”, has as a result, that we will never be able to experience the actuality of our authentic existence. And this failure, of personal experience, has dramatic consequences because in personal experiences are included both human created experiences and Divine uncreated Ones.

In case of Christ’s will, such a “movement” is absolutely missing. “Gnomie” is not an issue, because Christ has His uncreated Personhood given by His uncreated Sonship which is given by the Father before time. This same uncreated Person is Jesus incarnated in a human realm with two natures. So, He is realizing as a personal will, the will of “self- preservation”, in the authentic existentially experience both in His human and in His divine nature.

This will, His Personal will, has not realized in a “movement” towards a good (either the preservation of His human Life, or the salvation of humanity), it stayed un-moveable, because He originated as a Person from the Father, and not from his choice of a personhood in which he was to find His authentic Self.

God bless us all.

[Daniel Jones]

Leandros,

Thanks for the comments.

I never state that Christ is talking to himself. I state that the choice in the garden is a non-dialectical one (not a choice between good and evil), and for Pyrrhus it is a dialectical one (because of simplicity).

I never argue in my paper, by Maximus's lights, that Christ willing self-preservation is in opposition to God, but in fact the exact opposite. It was Pyrrhus because of his notion of absolute simplicity, given that the Father will X, Christ could not do otherwise and uphold impeccability and non-contradiction.

As to the rest of your comments, I fail to see a contradiction with what I stated in my paper. Perhaps you could present a dialectical argument with quotes?

If I may say one thing about the paper, it is my contention and I think it becomes more and more obvious from reading Maximus that without the real plurality of goods within the Good (God), i.e. the essence/energies distinction, the whole argument and refutation of Monenergism collapses. This would have significant ecclesiological implications by my lights.

Daniel Jones

[leandros]

Dear Daniel,

My remarks were focused on the issue that there was not a "choice" involved at Gethsemane. Relationship between Father and Son refers to relation of Persons. In this context when One person says to the Other “Not my will, but thine will be done”, He is not making a “choice between two good courses of action”. He takes a personal position in relation to another Person.

As you quote St. Maximus says:“ For the things that exist came to be out of nothing, and have therefore a power that impels than to hold fast to existence, and not to non-existence, which [power] is simultaneously an inclination towards that which naturally maintaineth them in existence, and a drawing back from things destructive [to their existence]. Consequently, the super-essential Word, by virtue of His humanity, had of His humanity this self-preserving power which clingeth to existence. And [in fact], He exhibited both [aspects of this power], willing the inclination and the drawing back on account of His [human] energy.”

If Christ, as a person, would have not “drawn back”, then He would choose not to be the Son of God according to Father’s will, and by that He would have self-determine His existential Sonship.

If He would have “drawn back”, then He would choose to be the Son of God according to Fathers’s will, and by that He would have self-determine His existential Sonship.

In both cases He would have been the self-determined origin of His Sonship (Personhood). But in Christ, His Sonship is caused by the Father. In this context, His human nature was willing and drawing back as a natural energy, not as a personal energy and as such the “drawing back” is a self originated energy that returns to its self, it has nothing to do with the Father(referring to the Father’s Personal will), it is an exclusively esoteric natural energy. That is why St. Maximus is saying “…by virtue of His humanity…” as he is talking of Christ’s human nature that has “logoi” and “tropoi” but does not have “gnomoi”. Because “gnomoi” for Jesus is the already "given" existential reality of Sonship by the Father before time as an uncreated Personhood, while for every other human being is a created personhood/sonship that has to be achieved.

You say that, as “Christ exhibited both [aspects of this power], willing the inclination and the drawing back on account of His [human] energy”, “He then freely wills the salvation of the world without any determinism, since the choice is between two good courses of action.”. If the “willing” and “drawing back” resulted as an exercise of having “true free-choice, as of existence of alternate courses of action that are all equally good, all the while excluding the possibility of sinning”, then Father’s will is just the best created option. But this denial of existence of options is the base of St Maximus Christology, in order to "protect" Christ's & Father's uncreated personal will to become created.

The “willing” and “drawing back” according to St Maximus is a motionless-movement. It is a choiceless-choice. It is the lack of “gnomie”, because “gnomie” is exactly the realization of “choice” as self-determination of self-awareness and otherness-awareness and its energy is the motion of the personhood from non-existence to existence. "gnomie" as a natural function results in having a created Personhood. In Christ, as a Person, the natural aftermath of realization of free choice in the genesis of Personhood, is absolutely absent as He is self-Existence Person caused by the Father.

According to St. Maximus anthropology created beings are going through a course towards Eschaton of “immobility” – “motion” – “immobility”, in the context of “non-existence”(non experiential functionality)” – “natural and personal existence in an authentic and genuine way (logoi, tropoi, gnomie)” – “theosis (transgression of time as timelessness, transgression of division of created and uncreated, transgression of movement and alteration”.

The “Eschaton” is the stoppage of all created energies by all created beings, which will continue to “move” in an uncreated fashion. As this Eschatological movement is uncreated and by its nature is unable to be experienced, it is an immobility of the nature of created beings.

Such an Eschaton is not an issue of choice, free will, and possibility of sin. It is not an issue of simplicity or of plurality of goods.

Escaton is the absence of the functional change of those qualities and quantities. As such, Escaton is to be realized as an absent of natural/personal created experiences, in the presence of uncreated personal experiences of Trinity Life.

In this context, Jesus in relation with Father he says to Him, “Not my will, but thine will be done”, just like saying “I express to you my natural will for self-preservation as a functional immobility of my human will 'functionality' that I experience as a reality of my human nature, and I identify myself as a Person in the realization of Your personal will, and I do not personally partake in any further movement of my natural human will to be transformed into a personal experiential self-determined self-awareness."

He implies that, in the case He had chosen to self-determine the denial of his natural self-preservation will as Personal will, by either accepting or denying it as a personal choice, then that Personal will would have been “the same with His Father’s” and not “of His Father’s”, resulted in isolation from the cause of His existence, as a Self justified human nature that wills in an autonomous Personal self-aware rightfulness fashion.

In this context, the Monenergism is failing because it fails to realise that created and uncreated realms are absolutely incompatible, the one being “movement” and the other being “immobility”, while at the same time they are both expressed by the Person of Son, because His Personhood is uncreated caused before time by Father through "genesis".

In this context, the questions over “simplicity and of plurality of goods within the Good” are answered by the denial of both, as the personal experience of God’s will is the denial of our self-determined awareness of self and of otherness. (When st Paul was shifted up to seventh heaven he lost the natural experience of his body and of the whole creation, by having the personal experience of the presence of the God - not the experience of God’s nature).

This experience is testified by the saints of the Orthodox Church as “vision of the Uncreated Light”.

Dear Daniel, the Orthodox theology is in a way non-logical because it is experiential and it refers to realization of uncreated realities through personal relationships.

In the first place, this Orthodox theology/anthropology asks Christians to restore the "functionality" of their natures in order to "produce" their authentic genuine personhoods with whom they partake into uncreated Trinity Life, for which life afterwards, their human natural “functionality” has no function to perform.

Nevertheless, in Eschaton the human nature is not wasteful because it will be also divinized, in the context of wholeness of human being as an embodied being. Such a restored nature embodies the human nature of risen Christ and such a body will be offered to everyone in our common resurrection. Our human bodies transgress the division of created and uncreated existence not by natural restoration but by Christ’s Grace.

[Daniel Jones]

leandros,

It's helpful to make a distinction between first and secondary power. Let me give you an example: God did not need to create anything out of necessity. As Maximus says, God never ceases from the goods, BECAUSE HE NEVER BEGAN THEM. The idea of genuine plurality of the goods WITHIN the good that is God, implies that the object of the will is not singular or simple as it is for Origin, Augustine, Scholasticism, etc. The idea here is that creation is eternal logoi that does not need to be actualized (Orthodoxy denies that God is pure act or pure being, because God essentially is no being at all. God is on the 'other side of being.') Hence God has infinite capacity in loving himself and not all logoi need be actualized. This is why you have the freedom of creation and creatio ex nihilo in the Christian tradition, and that doctrine's coherence by my lights is dependent on a real, genuine, metaphysical distinction between God's essence and God's power/energy. Likewise, in Gethsemane, the notion that Christ says "not my will" implies that Christ in his mode of willing (tropos), by way of his human energy, wills to stand fast in self-existence. The idea to stand fast in self-existence is a logoi and is an UNCREATED principle. The key here is to recognize in the Garden that it is the divine will that Christ do both, it's just that Christ isn't moved by those things "in the middle" (inquiry, examination, deliberation, and judgment). Both principles that Christ has as 'objects of the will' are uncreated, so the idea that the Father's will (which is also the Son's) is the best of created options is clearly false. The principles (logoi) stay the same and unchanged, regardless of whether they are actualized by His mode of existence as the Logos (primary/secondary power again).

You say:


"The “Eschaton” is the stoppage of all created energies by all created beings, which will continue to “move” in an uncreated fashion. As this Eschatological movement is uncreated and by its nature is unable to be experienced, it is an immobility of the nature of created beings."

"Such an Eschaton is not an issue of choice, free will, and possibility of sin. It is not an issue of simplicity or of plurality of goods."

I reommend you take a look at Dr. Joseph P. Farrell's book "Free Choice in Saint Maximus the Confessor", particularly Chapters 2, 5, and 6. As these are the very keys in which Maximus argues against in his refutation of Monenergism and its Origenistic presuppositions of dialectic, stasis, and simplicity.

Daneil

[leandros]

Dear Daniel,

As I read your last post, I have the feeling that you describe Virgin's way of life, and for that, you are not far from the truth, although Christ’s way of Life is not the same as of His Mother. Let me explain what I mean:

There is a similarity, in Virgin’s life and in Christ’s Life. When the Virgin was asked to give Birth to Christ she replied: “How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?" The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God. I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her.” (Luke 1:34-38)

Then John the Baptist, from his mother’s womb declared: “Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!” (Luke 1:45)

And then Godmother said: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. … he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.”

When the time was closing for Christ to die He prayed to Father: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." (Luke 22:42)

Before this hour He said: "Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!" Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and will glorify it again. The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. Jesus said, "This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." (John 12:27-32)

There is an identity of both Christ’s acceptance of Father’s will and of His Mother’s acceptance of God’s will.

They both said that the divine “will” was against the human nature :
Christ: "Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? Virgin: "How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"
They both accepted this un-natural will :
Christ: “No (I will not ask to be saved from this hour), it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!" Virgin : "I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said."
They both knew divine will’s context, which was incomprehensible by nature, but comprehensible by the personhood:
Christ: “Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” Virgin: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. … he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.” John the Baptist gave testimony over this non-natural reasoning: “Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished.” (because, belief finds a place, when reason departs)

These two instances are showing that both Virgin and Christ are exactly the same “sinless” human natures, while Christ is the only sinless Person.

What Virgin did as a human being, Christ also did as a human being. But the difference is in their personhoods. Virgin had a turnable (she had gnomie) personality while Christ had an immobile (He had not gnomie) personality.

As St Nicolaos Kabasilas says: “the one reality offered the other: by turning (herself) a human being (Virgin) into sinless through her struggle resulted in the existence of carrying inside her the immobile gift of absolute Good. It was her movement that powered the presence of Immobility among humans.

In this context Virgin humanly achieved the same thing that Christ humanly achieved for Himself, they both aligned their human nature into the proper “functionality”. This achievement made Virgin sinless, but had no result on Christ, because He is sinless regardless of His natural “functionality”.

Virgin as a person had a path to go along as a human being, in order to assume a sinless place, not that she went through sin – she had never walked on the path of sin- but she was not at a sinless position in the first place. Her sinless personality was the result of self-determined awareness of proper human “functionality”. In this context, her sinless was “created sinless”. Nevertheless, her created, self-determined, subjective reality of being was existential identical with her authentic genuine personhood.

Let me use an analogy: The human life, after the presence of sin, resulted in being a “Theater of the Absurd”. Humans while being present into the real functionality of their natural being, they fail to experience this reality in a proper existential manner. So, their personhood was a pretended personhood that had a role to play. If Christ was to present Himself to human beings, not as a player of the actual human play “I am, who I proclaim myself to be as an acting role”, not just as another “role”, but as a Person that gives His incomprehensible testimony of Life that exists beyond “stage”, he should addressed to a person that, also, while being there “on stage” would have not playing the “role” of the play, to a person that realized his/her self as self-experience of non-playing reality. That person was Virgin. So, neither Virgin, nor Christ participated in the “sinful” human play, although they were both on stage. But there is a difference between the two persons. Virgin was a non-player by choice, while she existed on stage herself as a "role" (or else she would never be there at all), and Christ was a non-player because he existed on stage without being related to “role playing” at all.

In this context, choice, free will, and possibility of sin, and the issue of simplicity or of plurality of goods are all parts of the human “Theater of the Absurd” and they have no meaning for the Life beyond “stage”.

It is an Orthodox tradition, to reach a valid Christology, through a proper Theotokology.

I pray that, Mother of God has mercy on us, all.

[Daniel Jones]

Dear leandros,

The issue that I stated in my previous post is about whether or not God and Christ have libertarian free-will, not about the difference between the mode of willing of Christ and Mary. Every contingent being is moved by those things "in the middle" as Maximus says in Ad Thalasium 1 (inquiry, examination, deliberation, and judgment) until they are intergrated in virtue. This means that the gnomic will is an accidental quality or state and not essential to being human. The pyschology of willing for contingent being, which is not fully integrated in virtue is thus:
Concept
Wish
Inquiry
Examination
Deliberation
Judgement
Decision, Election, or Free Choice

For Christ (and the Saints in the Eschaton) the psychology of the will is this:
Concept
Wish
Decision, Election, or Free Choice

Farrell, p. 113-114

Christ is not moved by those things in the middle. The things "in the middle" are what constitute gnomie. Hence, most of what you wrote is a red-herring to try and show reductio ad absurdum. It would helpful to continue this discussion if you got a hold of Farrell's book and then I think you will be able to map onto the concept.

The issue that my post raises is the difference between certain types of action theory, and that the reference point of God creating is only consistent with one type of action theory, namely libertarian free-will and a real distinction between essence and energy. That is why my paper spends a good portion of tracing out Plotinus' and Origen's concept of simplicity. Does God have libertarian free-will to create? The idea of libertarian free-will in philosophical theology is that an agent is 1) the source of his actions and 2) that alternate possibilities is a necessary condition. The choice of God creating or not creating is a choice of two good courses of actions (hence the AP condition), which is why we don't have to gloss libertarian free-will (like Plotinus, Origen, Protestants and Rome does) as objects of differing moral worth. The Origenist dialectic and its concept of simplicity cannot be disentagled from unity and plurality. Same goes for Pyrrhus and Monenergism, which is why it so relevant. It not only commits you to a heretical Christology but to a heretical doctrine of God. A simple proof shows its incompatibility:

Hypothetical Syllogism (HS)

If A, then B
If B, then C
If A, then C

This is a valid inference rule. If the premises are true, it will always lead you to the truth. The same can be said for Modus Ponens.

If P, then Q
P
Therefore Q

Clear? Good. Now try this,

1. IF p, then q
2. IF q, then r
3. Then, If p, then r (1,2 HS)
4. p (premise)
5. Therefore r, (3,4 MP)

Clear? Good. Now try this...

1. If God is absolutely simple (P), then his act of will to create is identical with his essence (R).
2. If God's act of will to create is identical with his essence (R), then his act of will to create is necessary. (Q)
3. If God is absolutely simple (P), then his act of will to create is necessary. (Q) (From 1,2 by Hypothetical Syllogism)
4. God is absolutely simple. (Premise S)
5. Therefore, God's act of will to create is necessary (R). (From 3,4 by Modus Ponens)

Support for (2) is given by the following argument.

(2)If God's act of will to create is identical with his essence (R), then his act of will to create is necessary. (Q)

6. If God's essence is had by him necessarily, then if anything is identical with his essence it is necessary.

7. God's essence is had by him necessarily. (Premise)

8. Therefore, anything identical with his essence is necessary. (From 6, 7 MP)

Seven (7) I take to be uncontroversial and by that I mean that any Christian should agree with it on its face.

(6) can be supported by Liebniz's Law:

(x) (y) [(x = y), then (P) (Px, = Py)]

For any x and any y, if x is identical to y, then if x has a property P then y must have that same property P and vice versa.

Notice the type of necessity that is being used here is one of absolute. The kind of necessity that is had by God's existence is not contingent by any means, and if it is an identity relation between the will and essence, then any act that is predicated of the divine essence, is had by God of the same type of necessity.

Daneil

[nurse-aid]

we do not speak math, we do not singing algebra, and even do not use our brain for the logical things...ALAS!

nurse aid only knows medicine...if someone is in hurt...paitience, if someone sick called doctor to heal, if dying being there...

becuse nurse have no clue what will be next day, and just have deal with right now situation, also have no name, but the nurse..or girl...who come when called, and to do what asked...no math...just do what been asked...

[leandros]

Dear Daniel,

you can find the following passages in the Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (http://www.monachos.net/patristics/damascene/exposition.shtml) as it is declared by St John of Damascus :

"...
But neither do we know, nor can we tell, what the essence of God is, or how it is in all, or how the Only-begotten Son and God, having emptied Himself, became Man of virgin blood, made by another law contrary to nature, or how He walked with dry feet upon the waters. It is not within our capacity, therefore, to say anything about God or even to think of Him, beyond the things which have been divinely revealed to us, whether by word or by manifestation, by the divine oracles at once of the Old Testament and of the New.
...

It is plain, then, that there is a God. But what He is in His essence and nature is absolutely incomprehensible and unknowable
...
God then is infinite and incomprehensible and all that is comprehensible about Him is His infinity and incomprehensibility. And the whole of what we can affirm concerning God does still not shew forth God's nature, but only the qualities of His nature. For when you speak of Him as good, and just, and wise, and so forth, you do not describe God's nature but only the qualities of His nature. Further there are some affirmations which we make concerning God which have the force of absolute negation: for example, when we use the term 'darkness' in reference to God, we do not mean darkness itself, rather that He is not light but above light; and when we speak of Him as light, we mean that He is not darkness.
...
That God Who is invisible by nature is made visible by His energies, we perceive from the organisation and government of the world.
...
Further the divine effulgence and energy, being one and simple and indivisible, assuming many varied forms in its goodness among what is divisible and allotting to each the component parts of its own nature, still remains simple and is multiplied without division among the divided, and gathers and converts the divided into its own simplicity. For all things long after it and have their existence in it. It gives also to all things being according to their several natures, and it is itself the being of existing things, the life of living things, the reason of rational beings, the thought of thinking beings. But it is itself above mind and reason and life and essence
...
Further the divine effulgence and energy, being one and simple and indivisible, assuming many varied forms in its goodness among what is divisible and allotting to each the component parts of its own nature, still remains simple and is multiplied without division among the divided, and gathers and converts the divided into its own simplicity. For all things long after it and have their existence in it. It gives also to all things being according to their several natures, and it is itself the being of existing things, the life of living things, the reason of rational beings, the thought of thinking beings. But it is itself above mind and reason and life and essence.
..."

According to such an Orthodox faith both of your clauses:

(1) If God is absolutely simple (P), then his act of will to create is identical with his essence (R).

(7) God's essence is had by him necessarily. (Premise)

are not valid.

According to Orthodox theology, the divine essense is not a necessity for the existence of Trinity Life. The only cause for everything is the Father, as self-existed self-caused Personhood.

[Daniel Jones]

you said:
According to such an Orthodox faith both of your clauses:

(1) If God is absolutely simple (P), then his act of will to create is identical with his essence (R).

(7) God's essence is had by him necessarily. (Premise)

are not valid.

Ugh, of course. That's why it was a proof against Origenism, Augustinianism, and Scholasticism. What, you thought that was a proof FOR an Orthodox view of God? It was a knockdown argument against views that hold to absolute simplicity, not the Orthodox view. Please be more careful in reading my statements.

I'm very familiar with St. John's work on the Orthodox faith.

Daniel

[Owen Jones]

My understanding of Orthodox tradition (as well as Thomistic tradition) is that God is pure intellect, and will is subordinate to Intellect. Thus, God does not will anything that contradicts Pure Intellect. Nominalism on the other hand posits that God's will is supreme, and that He can will anything that He wishes. All else is subordinate to that. The simplicity in the Godhead, it seems to me, need not require that Intellect and Will are the same or equal, only that they do not conflict. Perhaps that's where some of the confusion arises.

Of course, every conceptual assertion leads to other questions. Christian anthropology says that man comprises intellect, will and passions. The Greek tradition is that the FAther is passionless. The Syriac tradition (and of course the Jewish tradition) is that God is subject to passions such as anger, revenge, etc.

In Christology, it is established tradition since St. Maximos that Christ has two natures AND two wills. But there is still simplicity in Christ because there is no conflict. The human will is subordinated, in freedom, to the Will of the Father. But this is not due to a nominalistic understanding of the function of will.

[leandros]

Daniel,

I have to read everything again from the start, because now I am even more confused !

Unfortunately I do not have Farrell's book.

[Daniel Jones]

leandros,

No problem.

Check the bibliography of my paper and you get some other good works too. Dr. Farrell's book is more than worth the effort getting. I believe there are a few former students of his that participate on this message board (e.g. Fr Raphael Vereshack for one) and perhaps others.

Daniel Jones

[Elias Young]

Joseph Farrel is a brilliant man. He was a friend when we both lived in Tulsa, OK. I lost track of him though over time.

elias

[katya]

aid...i wasn't asked my HIM to try to show off what is not mine...desn't meter WHAT is it...When HE wants it to be shown...it is happened...IF IT IS WHAT HE WANTS...no meter IF we do not get the point WHY? then it is clean, becuse this is obidience...BUT if we are show this off, when we want it...we become....i'll not say it here, who we become...and the same showing off of goods become dirty...becuse the reason was ours...fallen, not HIS profitable...so that what gives great pain...to brake HIS WILL!

[katya]

so if i'll continuin my point....then if we try to use, or to show, or to know what is not ours, and not because of it, becuse what we have is what HE gave...but when we try to use as we want, or when we want, or want to use at all...then we first steal, then using for wrong, becuse HE didn't appoved it...Adam and Eve....there it goes, come back to the start...and it is endless...untill it is become no our will at all...

[Marie-Duquette]

Leandro,

In your post no. 74 above, you quote Scripture verse Luke 1:45 as John the Baptist who speaks from his mother's womb .....

I have always read and understood that it was Elizabeth who was filled with the Holy Spirit, when the babe leapt in her womb at the meeting with Mary. Then she, Elizabeth, cried out "Blessed is she who has believed, there will be a fulfillment of the things spoken to her from the Lord."

I just wonder where you got that quote from Luke:1:45 stating that it was John who spoke from his mother's womb.

marie_duquette

[leandros]

Dear marie-duquette ,

Of course you are right; it was St Elizabeth, the mother of St John that had praised the Virgin, while she was filled by the Holy Spirit, as embryo-St John leapt in her womb. You are absolutely right.

My comment was not to be taken literally. I used a metaphor. I take the freedom to say that was St John who praised Virgin, in the same context that we say in matins canon of St John's feast, in 7th of January, as we address St John: "By becoming full, of Holy Spirit, at the time you was being carrying inside your mother's womb, with a joyful move, being rejoiced, you announced and you bow to the fruit of Virginity, venerable Prophet.”

[Marie-Duquette]

Leandro,
Thank you for responding ... If you meant your quote as a metaphor and not literally, why did you state it as a verse in Scripture. I find that misleading to be sure, for anyone who is not versed in the Scriptural context.

True, at the meeting of the Mary with Elizabeth, the Holy Spirit was profoundly active in both women, as Christ was present in the womb of Mary. And, I can understand that John was also Divinely affected, touched and filled with the Holy Spirit. Why else would he have leapt for joy! But, surely he did not speak as an embryo in the womb of his mother, Elizabeth.

But, I do appreciate your accepting my remark concerning this verse from the Gospel of Luke.
It seems to me that if something is taken out of context and used to point out a Truth, it could have been put in another way of expression, as you later expressed in your quote #89.

Forgive me, for sometimes in reading the lengthy posts, I lose the trend of thought that posters are trying to express.

marie_duquette

[leandros]

Dear marie-duquette,

If it would be someone, I am the one to “Thank you for responding”.