ECT Our triune God

[1Mind1Spirit]

Wouldn't you consider the hypostasis the "real self"? The underlying "who" as our distinct individuality?

Along with the functionalities of the human spirit and body faculties, wouldn't this be the "soul" of man as our "self"?

:surf::banana::surf::banana:

No.

The soul is our consciousness, our awareness.

Therefore it is the foundation.

If the hypostasis underlies the foundation then it cannot be the soul.

What the hypostasis is is the objective reality God imaged that we exist in.

All according to his soul's purpose.

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

No.

The soul is our consciousness, our awareness.

Consciousness is one of the functionalities of the mind as an intuiting faculty, including self-awareness. The hypostasis, as the "underlying self", is what has this functionality.

Therefore it is the foundation.

By definition, the hypostasis is the foundation. The underlying foundational substantial objective reality.

If the hypostasis underlies the foundation then it cannot be the soul.

The hypostasis IS the foundation. It's the individuality. The self.

What the hypostasis is is the objective reality God imaged that we exist in.

All according to his soul's purpose.

I think we're saying the same thing.

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

Schaffer and a large number of their best do, and have moved into the Orthodox Faith... Once properly perceived, it is hard to say no...

That doesn't help...

Phaino - to shine; to appear, be conspicuous, be seen; to seem, appear, be thought. (Check out Mark 14:64).

It simply means "to bring to light"...
In the middle voice it means to come to light...
In the passive, to be seen...

The basic cognate is Phos, Light - As in Phosphorescence...
It means something coming to light so it can be SEEN,
because as an old pre-Socratic once said:
"Darkness loves to hide..."

The fundamental meaning is exposure of what was hidden for any or all to see...
"And the Light in the darkness is shining, and the darkness hath not overcome it..."
Darkness hates the light...
The other thing that old pre-Socratic said was
"Physis (Nature) loves to hide..."
It is hard to figure things out sometimes...
Nature is fallen too...

I think the Greek phi sounds like the FIZZ of phosphorizing bubbles
in the hiss of the surf rising over the sand as waves come to shore...

But your notion that it does not necessarily entail a beholder is in error,
because if nothing else, the self of the beholder becomes apparent in it to the I beholding the self,
because we are hidden within ourselves...
And what that translates into for God-in-HimSelf,
Who is not like us except in image,
whatever image may mean,
is transcendently unknowable to us...
We can conceptualize about it until hell freezes over
and we will still have not the slightest clue,
because we are created, and God is not,
and is the Author of creation,
which we cannot be,
except and to the degree
that God acts in us...

Another misconception...
This formulaic seems headed for the Platonic Idealism you love to roast me with...
Mental concepts are what fallen mankind regard as thoughts,
and such thoughts are but a small portion of noumenal reality,
in which we find the Person of Christ IS Truth,
and no concepts either needed or permitted...

So you have turned the noumenal world into a realm of ideas conceived in the mind,
and now you will doubtless proceed from this fallen and human conception of human thoughts to God,
and ascribe such an existence to His Mind and His Ideas and HismConcepts...

"Your thoughts are not My Thoughts..."

It can also have an unreality behind it, when sin comes to light...

Think Hannibal Lector...

Or when Satan APPEARS (phainomai) as an Angel of Light...

It means to become, or to be, visible...

The definition is "to seem" or "to deem" and there can be overlap,
as when "Satan APPEARS as an Angel of Light"...
And he SEEMS to be what He is NOT in his APPEARANCE...

This is skewed, because you are defining Hypostasis as Subsistence, and they are the same word...

"HYPOSTASIS is underlying foundational HYPOSTATIC objective reality for HYPOSTASIS as existence."
This is what you just said...
And it makes no epistemological sense...

And this is just plain false, because phaino is a verb, and not a noun,
and you are saying that "To come to light IS the appearance of an hypostasis"...
You must say a thing CAN come to light,
but not that it IS the coming to light...

It IS the THING so illumined...

Which completes the transition from our created fallen human concepts
to their importation upon the unfallen, uncreated God
Whose Thoughts are NOT OUR thoughts...

Thank-you -

I get it now...

And yes, we do disagree!

Arsenios

In your haste to consider only some kind of physicality, you've forgotten the key application of this term for/to God.

To appear to the mind; to seem to one's judgment.

God is timelessly pre-existent and His immutability includes His mind which cannot change. So for God to ever physically appear, including any prosopon/a, He would have to have timelessly appeared to His own mind.

For there to ever be any manifestation of Himself, including the Incarnation of the Logos, He would be timelessly and immutably appearing to/in His own mind. This timeless action would have to precede the time-interactive action of creating time and any kind of manifestation in creation, including the created heaven.

That would be His Self-Consciousness for His Self-Existence. This would be the ad intra if there is any that can be applied to God; and the ad extra would be the manifestation in time.

In scripture, we see many times that God personally says "I" and "my" and "me", etc. That's Self-consicousness, and it's not difficult at all to see it.

You see, it's His Word that reveals Him. And He Self-consciously said those personal pronouns.

And it's because He timelessly appeared to His own mind so that He could create by His Logos.

God is uncreated Self-Phenomenon and Self-Noumenon. And along with the definition for Rhema and the created heaven and God's inhabitation of it; this is what the Patristics missed in not comprehending how timelessness interfaces with creation and its forms of time.

To deny God's Self-Phenomenon is to deny His omniscience and omnisapience and immutability and aseity, at the very least.

To make God's Logos into an individuated hypostasis of three is to leave God without a literal Logos.

"Your thoughts are not His thoughts." There is nothing of Himself that God is not exhaustively and unabridgedly aware of... timelessly. That's His divine Phenomenological and Noumenological Self-Conscious Self-Existence.

We cannot know the content OF such, but we "MUST believe that He IS (esti, pin, 3rd person singular of eimi, to be) and that He is (ginomai, pinm) a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." Knowing Him is the only reward that matters. All else is dust. Dung.

Get out of your own intellect and intuit God and His timelessness.

 

[Ps82]

I apologize for getting off the topic of this thread in post # 3238, but it arose out of a some comments made in post I wrote to Arsenios and his response.

 

[Arsenios]

In your haste to consider only some kind of physicality, you've forgotten the key application of this term for/to God.

To appear to the mind; to seem to one's judgment.

God is timelessly pre-existent and His immutability includes His mind which cannot change. So for God to ever physically appear, including any prosopon/a, He would have to have timelessly appeared to His own mind.

For there to ever be any manifestation of Himself, including the Incarnation of the Logos, He would be timelessly and immutably appearing to/in His own mind. This timeless action would have to precede the time-interactive action of creating time and any kind of manifestation in creation, including the created heaven.

That would be His Self-Consciousness for His Self-Existence. This would be the ad intra if there is any that can be applied to God; and the ad extra would be the manifestation in time.

In scripture, we see many times that God personally says "I" and "my" and "me", etc. That's Self-consicousness, and it's not difficult at all to see it.

You see, it's His Word that reveals Him. And He Self-consciously said those personal pronouns.

And it's because He timelessly appeared to His own mind so that He could create by His Logos.

God is uncreated Self-Phenomenon and Self-Noumenon. And along with the definition for Rhema and the created heaven and God's inhabitation of it; this is what the Patristics missed in not comprehending how timelessness interfaces with creation and its forms of time.

To deny God's Self-Phenomenon is to deny His omniscience and omnisapience and immutability and aseity, at the very least.

To make God's Logos into an individuated hypostasis of three is to leave God without a literal Logos.

"Your thoughts are not His thoughts." There is nothing of Himself that God is not exhaustively and unabridgedly aware of... timelessly. That's His divine Phenomenological and Noumenological Self-Conscious Self-Existence.

We cannot know the content OF such, but we "MUST believe that He IS (esti, pin, 3rd person singular of eimi, to be) and that He is (ginomai, pinm) a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." Knowing Him is the only reward that matters. All else is dust. Dung.

Get out of your own intellect and intuit God and His timelessness.

Phaino means to come to light...

Your understanding below applies only to creation, to created man:

To appear to the mind; to seem to one's judgment.

And you then are arguing that the same RULES of fallen human mental cognition are IMPOSED on God:

God is timelessly pre-existent and His immutability includes His mind which cannot change. So for God to ever physically appear, including any prosopon/a, He would have to have timelessly appeared to His own mind.

Human cognition NOW is FALLEN in ADAM...

Imposing such fallen human cognition upon God
so as to bring God under fallen human cognition
is crackers...

Attributing a mind to the Creator of mind who created ALL creation from nothing is simply wrong... As fallen human beings we are clueless on God's internal processes... He is known ONLY by revelation, first by the nature of creation itself, second by the Prophets and the Law, and third by His coming Himself as the man Jesus Christ.

God is not Mind - He is the Creator of minds...
He is not self-appearing mind...
He is not coming-to-light mind...

God is not INFERRED, where He MUST have a thought to have a manifestation of that thought...

He is not a system of thoughts that CANNOT CHANGE...

For there to ever be any manifestation of Himself, including the Incarnation of the Logos, He would be timelessly and immutably appearing to/in His own mind. This timeless action would have to precede the time-interactive action of creating time and any kind of manifestation in creation, including the created heaven.

You have a lot of strange notions here...

God does not reduce to if-then and would-have-to fallen human cognates...

Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

What The hypostasis is the objective reality (that) God imaged (and) that we exist in.

You are working in IMAGE, and PPS is working in MIND...

You are not that far apart...

You are saying that God IMAGINED us...
That this IMAGE is an OBJECT (objective reality)
That we exist in this OBJECTIVE REALITY...
And that the hypostasis IS the IMAGED objective reality...

IF that SEEMS unclear...
THEN it IS unclear...

Arsenios

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

Phaino means to come to light...

That is ONE of the meanings, yes.

Your understanding below applies only to creation, to created man:

To appear to the mind; to seem to one's judgment.

How would you know? The problem with absolute apophatics AS cataphatics is that they eliminate. How could you possibly know what to eliminate in regards to what is unknowable?

And you then are arguing that the same RULES of fallen human mental cognition are IMPOSED on God:

No. God said "I" and "me" and "my", etc. We know Him by His Word. He intelligently expressed Himself. I take Him at His Word.

God is timelessly pre-existent and His immutability includes His mind which cannot change. So for God to ever physically appear, including any prosopon/a, He would have to have timelessly appeared to His own mind.

Human cognition NOW is FALLEN in ADAM...

Imposing such fallen human cognition upon God
so as to bring God under fallen human cognition
is crackers...

I don't impose fallen human cognition upon God.

Attributing a mind to the Creator of mind who created ALL creation from nothing is simply wrong...

Really? God having Logos reflects that He has a mind. And how would you know He doesn't?

As fallen human beings we are clueless on God's internal processes...

Not when He speaks of them and reveals them.

He is known ONLY by revelation,

Has God revealed to you that He explicitly has no mind? If not, how can you know He doesn't?

first by the nature of creation itself,

...in which, all sentient volitional creation in His image has a mind.

second by the Prophets and the Law,

...by/through whose minds prohecy is made.

and third by His coming Himself as the man Jesus Christ.

...who had a mind. Are you presuming the only mind He had was human? That would be an odd dual-physis Theanthropos to only have a human mind.

God is not Mind - He is the Creator of minds...

How would you know? You can't state an apophatic about what you consider unknowable?

He is not self-appearing mind...
He is not coming-to-light mind...

Again, how would you know?

God is not INFERRED, where He MUST have a thought to have a manifestation of that thought...

I've said nothing of thoughts (dokei), except to distinguish them from phaino by definition.

It's clear you've never considered all the Greek terms for such things. There are over 80, and I'm not referring to fiat as thought, etc.

Phaino is not thinking.

He is not a system of thoughts that CANNOT CHANGE...

I've never said such a thing. Phaino has nothing to do with merely thinking.

For there to ever be any manifestation of Himself, including the Incarnation of the Logos, He would be timelessly and immutably appearing to/in His own mind. This timeless action would have to precede the time-interactive action of creating time and any kind of manifestation in creation, including the created heaven.

You have a lot of strange notions here...

No. You've just never spent the time in theosis for noesis regarding the 80+ words that define the minutiae of all God expressed in His Word.

God does not reduce to if-then and would-have-to fallen human cognates...

Arsenios

I don't engage in Reductionism or Deconstructionism. They are modern silliness.

I have only enquired because WE are reduced and deconstructed.

You don't understand phaino OR the many other Greek terms that it is not, by definition. Phaino is the inverse of dokeo, to think; and it isn't about images and imagery.

Apophaticism is a great tool, but in the end it cannot be the cataphatic; especially when you're misapplying the tool.

And as usual, you hear what I say through your filter, and only to correct instead of comprehend.

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

You are working in IMAGE, and PPS is working in MIND...

You are not that far apart...

You are saying that God IMAGINED us...
That this IMAGE is an OBJECT (objective reality)
That we exist in this OBJECTIVE REALITY...
And that the hypostasis IS the IMAGED objective reality...

IF that SEEMS unclear...
THEN it IS unclear...

Arsenios

Just because this is somehow your erroneous perception, that doesn't mean it's applicable.

The nous intuits as a faculty. Intellect is far more secondary as a functionality.

The former is the human spirit. The latter is the human soul.

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

Phaino means to come to light...

Your understanding below applies only to creation, to created man:

To appear to the mind; to seem to one's judgment.

And you then are arguing that the same RULES of fallen human mental cognition are IMPOSED on God:

God is timelessly pre-existent and His immutability includes His mind which cannot change. So for God to ever physically appear, including any prosopon/a, He would have to have timelessly appeared to His own mind.

Human cognition NOW is FALLEN in ADAM...

Imposing such fallen human cognition upon God
so as to bring God under fallen human cognition
is crackers...

Attributing a mind to the Creator of mind who created ALL creation from nothing is simply wrong... As fallen human beings we are clueless on God's internal processes... He is known ONLY by revelation, first by the nature of creation itself, second by the Prophets and the Law, and third by His coming Himself as the man Jesus Christ.

God is not Mind - He is the Creator of minds...
He is not self-appearing mind...
He is not coming-to-light mind...

God is not INFERRED, where He MUST have a thought to have a manifestation of that thought...

He is not a system of thoughts that CANNOT CHANGE...

For there to ever be any manifestation of Himself, including the Incarnation of the Logos, He would be timelessly and immutably appearing to/in His own mind. This timeless action would have to precede the time-interactive action of creating time and any kind of manifestation in creation, including the created heaven.

You have a lot of strange notions here...

God does not reduce to if-then and would-have-to fallen human cognates...

Arsenios

The oddest thing about all this is that the Orthodox formulaic is three persons in one being (in English).

All persons are beings. One person per being.

But even if that weren't true, then all persons have a mind or all beings have a mind. So God would have either three minds or one mind.

You can't validly use the English term person OR being and then insist upon mindlessness for persons and/or beings.

It's irrationality upon irrationality. And that upon Neo-Platonism.

Why? Why would anyone utilize "person" and "being" and then insist on mindlessness? That's not much of a being if it has no mind. And that's in English.

There's your Saltines and Clubs and Triscuits and all the rest combined.

A non-Self-conscious God couldn't say "I", and surely couldn't say "I Am" (nor could a non-(Self-)existent God).

You reduce God to an impersonal, unknowable nothingness. God has completely revealed Himself (HIS SELF, that He is quite aware of) in the Son. That's why He spoke.

And He didn't stutter.

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

From Hierotheos (page 73, paragraph 2)

(Per St. John of Damaskos) Essence (ousia) is a thing which subsists in itself and has no need of another for its existence. Likewise essence is everything that subsists in itself and does not have its existence in another - that is to say, that which is not because of any other thing, nor has need of another to be formed, but which is in itself. Essence (ousia) gets its name from being. Therefore it exists of itself, it does not owe its existence to anything else.

It sure sounds to me like the Patristics are representing God as a SELF-EXISTENT ousia. I see the very words in the writings of the ancient Eastern theologians AND the modern Eastern theologians.

 

[Ps82]

Here are my thoughts about the trinity and how I perceive it.

There is only ONE God. He is an omni-present infinite invisible spirit.

Yet:
He manifested his presence among men in a literal way by creating a super-natural bodily image for himself. This manifestation of God within our world, which he created, ultimately became known as God the Father.

Once again God manifested his presence among men in a literal way by using his bodily image to appear among mankind as mortal flesh. This manifestation of God ultimately became known as God, the begotten Son.

Yet, scripture makes it clear that the infinite Spiritual God is able to impart of his spirit in measured degrees. Jesus is the only fleshly being of whom it was said that the Father God had given of His spirit without any degrees of measure. Jesus told us that he had "water" to give a person from which people would never have to thirst again. It is explained that he was talking about "eternal spiritual life." There for the SPIRIT that is in us ... is God, but is the measure of God's spirit that will give us eternal life and even an eternal glorified body.

There are the three manifestations of God within our realm that I would say are the ONE God and are the trinity of God identified to mankind.

Resurrected and glorified mankind will never be equal to God ... but we will have enough of what we need to live in the presence of our LORD happily forever after.

 

[Arsenios]

From Hierotheos (page 73, paragraph 2)

(Per St. John of Damaskos) Essence (ousia) is a thing which subsists in itself and has no need of another for its existence. Likewise essence is everything that subsists in itself and does not have its existence in another - that is to say, that which is not because of any other thing, nor has need of another to be formed, but which is in itself. Essence (ousia) gets its name from being. Therefore it exists of itself, it does not owe its existence to anything else.

It sure sounds to me like the Patristics are representing God as a SELF-EXISTENT ousia. I see the very words in the writings of the ancient Eastern theologians AND the modern Eastern theologians.

Which book title? "The Person in the Orthodox Tradition"?

There is something that needs to be said here regarding apophatic Theology, which is this:

When we speak of God as timeless, a-temporal, this does not mean that He is excluded from Time, but that in terms of created time, He is not bound by it, being the Creator of Time...

Likewise with every other apophatic term...

So we say that God is indeed eternal and everlasting and without beginning, being Himself the Beginning of all time... So that cataphatics flits around the edges of apophatics, but is not in any way definitive of them... It is very scholastic, for instance, to say that because God created time, He either is or is not bound by it in the creation He created... Such a notion can be argued either way..(and fallen() And reasons can be given on both sides... And they can be catalogued, pigeon-holed, cross-permutated and thought through in ascetic labours... All to no avail... Likewise, when we say that God spoke creation into existence, we are but accepting Moses' account in Genesis as a descriptive... We are still clueless as to HOW creation came into existence out of nothing at God's Word... WE cannot do it, so we do NOT understand it, except insofar as it is rev.ealed by God to us as a condescension to our created (and fallen) human nature...

So that with any cataphatic attribute, when it is apophaticized, it is understood to include, yet not delimit, the category of description...

Arsenios

A.

 

[Arsenios]

From Hierotheos (page 73, paragraph 2)

(Per St. John of Damaskos) Essence (ousia) is a thing which subsists in itself and has no need of another for its existence. Likewise essence is everything that subsists in itself and does not have its existence in another - that is to say, that which is not because of any other thing, nor has need of another to be formed, but which is in itself. Essence (ousia) gets its name from being. Therefore it exists of itself, it does not owe its existence to anything else.

It sure sounds to me like the Patristics are representing God as a SELF-EXISTENT ousia. I see the very words in the writings of the ancient Eastern theologians AND the modern Eastern theologians.

I found it... You are being disingenuous here, PPS - This is where he is setting up the two schools in the early Church that interpreted hypostases differently - The Alexandrian and the Cappadocian...

The one school understood hypostasis as ousia, and the other understood it as person... And in the first Creed of the First Ecumenical Council, it was interpreted as essence/ousia, and in the second, as person - eg it changed... And Hierotheos is careful to point out that the doctrine/understanding did not change in the slightest, but the terminology shifted to meet heretical incursions...

So that these terms, which apply to and are derived from creation, when applied to the Three Hypostases that are God, shift again in their application as definitives to descriptives, because the person is associated with the distinctively personal - eg the individual, whereas the essence or ousia is associated with the term nature, or physis, and indicates a genus or kind comprised in particular hypostases/persons/individuals... Such that the OUSIA is NOT SELF EXISTENT but ONLY SUBSISTS in an EXISTENT HYPOSTASIS/INDIVIDUAL...

So that when reading the fathers, this dual understanding of hypostasis must be kept in mind, whether meaning ousia/essence/physis/nature, or meaning person/individual/particular...

And it can mean either...

The Latins only understood hypostasis as substance, which is ousia...

IF I have them aright... And ousia as essence or being... Which also gets confusing, because the essence of a thing is an attribute of its existence or being...

This is why it is exhausting to read your formulaics, because they are not careful in their development and bounce willy-nilly from term to term without maintaining an explicitly and simply and clearly held line... And when I hold you to that discipline, the errors become apparent...

At least to me...

And not in the least to you...

Arsenios

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

Which book title? "The Person in the Orthodox Tradition"?

There is something that needs to be said here regarding apophatic Theology, which is this:

When we speak of God as timeless, a-temporal, this does not mean that He is excluded from Time, but that in terms of created time, He is not bound by it, being the Creator of Time...

Likewise with every other apophatic term...

So we say that God is indeed eternal and everlasting and without beginning, being Himself the Beginning of all time... So that cataphatics flits around the edges of apophatics, but is not in any way definitive of them... It is very scholastic, for instance, to say that because God created time, He either is or is not bound by it in the creation He created... Such a notion can be argued either way..(and fallen() And reasons can be given on both sides... And they can be catalogued, pigeon-holed, cross-permutated and thought through in ascetic labours... All to no avail... Likewise, when we say that God spoke creation into existence, we are but accepting Moses' account in Genesis as a descriptive... We are still clueless as to HOW creation came into existence out of nothing at God's Word... WE cannot do it, so we do NOT understand it, except insofar as it is rev.ealed by God to us as a condescension to our created (and fallen) human nature...

So that with any cataphatic attribute, when it is apophaticized, it is understood to include, yet not delimit, the category of description...

Arsenios

A.

I well understand the subsumation of the created within the uncreated. This doesn't change the fact that the transcendent uncreated God intrinsically exists and is inherently Self-aware.

His Hypostasis is His "Self". He isn't oblivious to Himself, somehow unaware that He IS. Seriously? He's a total unrevealed mystery to Himself?

Aseity.

Immutability.

Impassibility.



Sigh.

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

I found it... You are being disingenuous here, PPS -

No, I most certainly am not. I'm not conflating the Alexandrian and Cappadocian.

This is where he is setting up the two schools in the early Church that interpreted hypostases differently - The Alexandrian and the Cappadocian...

No, it's St. John of Damaskos' quote, who also equates the essence with the nature and the hypostasis with the prosopon; just like the final Cappadocian usage in the formulaic.

The one school understood hypostasis as ousia, and the other understood it as person... And in the first Creed of the First Ecumenical Council, it was interpreted as essence/ousia, and in the second, as person - eg it changed... And Hierotheos is careful to point out that the doctrine/understanding did not change in the slightest, but the terminology shifted to meet heretical incursions...

I am exhaustively aware of the divergent East/West terms and their ultimate standardization by the Cappadocians.

So that these terms, which apply to and are derived from creation, when applied to the Three Hypostases that are God, shift again in their application as definitives to descriptives, because the person is associated with the distinctively personal - eg the individual, whereas the essence or ousia is associated with the term nature, or physis, and indicates a genus or kind comprised in particular hypostases/persons/individuals... Such that the OUSIA is NOT SELF EXISTENT but ONLY SUBSISTS in an EXISTENT HYPOSTASIS/INDIVIDUAL...

Yeah. An EXISTENT hypostasis. Not a non-existent hypostasis.

Have you ever considered that "transcendent" clearly emphasizes what the silly and inaccurate apophatic "non-existent" attempts to mean?

So that when reading the fathers, this dual understanding of hypostasis must be kept in mind, whether meaning ousia/essence/physis/nature, or meaning person/individual/particular...

And it can mean either...

The Latins only understood hypostasis as substance, which is ousia...

IF I have them aright... And ousia as essence or being...

Yes. I know.

Which also gets confusing, because the essence of a thing is an attribute of its existence or being...

This is why it is exhausting to read your formulaics, because they are not careful in their development and bounce willy-nilly from term to term without maintaining an explicitly and simply and clearly held line... And when I hold you to that discipline, the errors become apparent...

At least to me...

And not in the least to you...

Arsenios

Only to you. I'm rigorously consistent. You just don't track well because of your presuppositions, etc.

God exists. He's transcendent. Beyond. Other. Uncreated. But He exists. And He knows He does. He said so. I believe Him. For some reason, the Orthodox don't. Go figure.

Ousia = eimi.

 

[Arsenios]

No, I most certainly am not. I'm not conflating the Alexandrian and Cappadocian.

No, it's St. John of Damaskos' quote, who also equates the essence with the nature and the hypostasis with the prosopon; just like the final Cappadocian usage in the formulaic.

PPS, I am really in your debt... For citing that quote... I had to go digging for it, and I have not read that tomb in a dozen years or so, and when I did, I was very new to this Faith, and I was devouring everything I could find to read, so it passed into the foundations of my understanding, and now, RE-reading it, I am finding it better than I had first comprehended...

So thank-you for prodding my sorriness into a needed re-read of "The Person in the Orthodox Tradition"...

The conflation of the hypostasis with the prosopon, meaning the person, the particular anthropos, the singular self-aware center of being/ousia that each person IS, was adopted for good reason... Your certainty that this hypostasis IS being/ousia is, if I have it aright, the Latin error. We are living fallen lives, and in this fallen condition of freedom of the will, it is the PERSON WHO determines WHAT KIND of ousia he or she will BECOME... Our actions in this life will determine our OUSIA for the Age to Come, after the Last Judgement... We were stripped of our original OUSIA in the Fall of Adam... Our hypostatic life now is one of decisioning our ousia. We are either in the activity of doing good or falling further away from the good. Some of us even turn positively evil, and in this fallen life, that is permitted...

And the root core of that PERSON, who is making the decisions that are determining his or her ousia right now for the age to come, is the hypostatis... An ultimate Mystery...

Yeah. An EXISTENT hypostasis. Not a non-existent hypostasis.

A PRE-EXISTENT HYPOSTASIS - The One that CREATED existence...

Have you ever considered that "transcendent" clearly emphasizes what the silly and inaccurate apophatic "non-existent" attempts to mean?

NOT non-existent, but pre-existent...

You just don't track well because of your presuppositions, etc.

I don't play all that well with my siblings either...

God exists. He's transcendent. Beyond. Other. Uncreated. But He exists. And He knows He does. He said so. I believe Him. For some reason, the Orthodox don't. Go figure.

Ousia = eimi.

Humanly speaking, you are right...

Divinely speaking, you have to go, not with eimi, but with estan...

en arche ein O Logos... [εν αρχη ην ο λογος]

In the Beginning WAS [and not IS] the Logos/Word...

The Word is PRE-EXISTENT...

And to insist that He IS EXISTING in His ontology, when He is pre-existent and is creating existence, is not reflective of the text...

OF COURSE He exists, and self-exists, and is the Source of existence, but this does not mean that we can conceive Him as He WAS prior to the ONSET of existence... Not as impure, fallen and created man can we do this... And those who can appear and disappear and pass through walls do not say that they can do so either...

Arsenios

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

Which book title? "The Person in the Orthodox Tradition"?

There is something that needs to be said here regarding apophatic Theology, which is this:

When we speak of God as timeless, a-temporal, this does not mean that He is excluded from Time, but that in terms of created time, He is not bound by it, being the Creator of Time...

Likewise with every other apophatic term...

So we say that God is indeed eternal and everlasting and without beginning, being Himself the Beginning of all time... So that cataphatics flits around the edges of apophatics, but is not in any way definitive of them... It is very scholastic, for instance, to say that because God created time, He either is or is not bound by it in the creation He created... Such a notion can be argued either way..(and fallen() And reasons can be given on both sides... And they can be catalogued, pigeon-holed, cross-permutated and thought through in ascetic labours... All to no avail... Likewise, when we say that God spoke creation into existence, we are but accepting Moses' account in Genesis as a descriptive... We are still clueless as to HOW creation came into existence out of nothing at God's Word... WE cannot do it, so we do NOT understand it, except insofar as it is rev.ealed by God to us as a condescension to our created (and fallen) human nature...

So that with any cataphatic attribute, when it is apophaticized, it is understood to include, yet not delimit, the category of description...

Arsenios

A.

Okay, this is all pedantic; possibly from both of us.

God is "beyond". "Other". Incongruent with all we could assign to Him from what we could ever know in any manner from creation as created and fallen humanity. He's "un-" and "non-" everything relative to creation. We know that. I've presumed you recognized I understood that.

Yet He cataphatically refers to Himself as "I, me, my", and is referred to by inspired scriptural authorship as "He, Him, Himself", etc. In whatever way we can process that information and represent it with language (dialektos, from lego/logos, BTW), then the best way we can refer to God is in certain terms; but never reducing or deconstructing Him according to creation or the created.

Whatever equivalent there is for "mind" and "Self-consciousness" and "Self-existence" that those meager terms reflect (but must also be included BY subsumation of created within created) and attempt to represent is still valid as a descriptor, if not a definer.

God's Aseity is a long-held recognized attribute, and it's a cataphatic/apophatic term. His "From-Self-ity" would be exactly what I'm referring to when I say Self-Phenomenal and Self-Noumenal.

What you don't realize is I'm making the critical distinction for why there have been so many historical formulaics for Theology Proper, and none have accounted for the created heaven (don't even get me started on Aquinas' paltry and fallacious Scholastic attempts).

Aseity and Immutability and Impassibility and Immateriality and Infinity and Eternity and Simplicity and Persesatisity (Self-sufficiency) and Omniscience and Omnisapience are all represented in what I delineate into appropriate terms like Self-Phenomenon and Self-Noumenon.

These are the historical inherent uncreated incommunicable attributes of God, among others.

God innately and intrinsically is "From-Self-ness". He is uncreated and transcendent as non-phenomenon and non-noumenon; but because there is created phenomenon and noumenon, they are subsumed within the uncreated.

So just as you insist, the apophatic co-inheres with the cataphatic. You take that position for yourself, but disallow it for others.

In the best possible valid terms that are within creation, God is transcendent uncreated Self-Phenomenal and Self-Noumenal as a Hypostasis underlying an Ousia with a Physis, and having a Prosopon. And AS Spirit, He has a Logos.

This is His timeless pre-creational existence that is beyond existence AND non-existence, represented in meager terms of language by whatever revelation we can have in our miniscule and nominal created existence with minds and wills and tangible restrictions to which God has/does condescend for our sakes and for His own glory.

Can you begin to process that I'm not Scholastically or cataphatically attempting to define God and ascribe to Him limitations of creation?

I use Self-Phenomenal and Self-Noumenal in the same apophatic manner you insist for the Orthodox representation of God as hypostases/ousia, etc. I had thought that would be recognized and presumed rather than you employing a double standard.

God is "un-" and "non-" and every other possible apophatic imaginable relative to the created. Yet we must approach Him with hearts that will speak words in human languages. Please don't allow that for yourself and disallow it for others. It's a grievous inequity.

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

PPS, I am really in your debt... For citing that quote... I had to go digging for it, and I have not read that tomb in a dozen years or so, and when I did, I was very new to this Faith, and I was devouring everything I could find to read, so it passed into the foundations of my understanding, and now, RE-reading it, I am finding it better than I had first comprehended...

So thank-you for prodding my sorriness into a needed re-read of "The Person in the Orthodox Tradition"...

ALL Protestants should read it post haste!!

The conflation of the hypostasis with the prosopon, meaning the person, the particular anthropos, the singular self-aware center of being/ousia that each person IS, was adopted for good reason... Your certainty that this hypostasis IS being/ousia is, if I have it aright, the Latin error.

NO. You've continuously thought I've conflated them, when all I've done is point out the ineptitude of the English language in utilizing the word "person", and thus my avoidance of it.

The English term "person" does not and cannot distinguish between hypostasis and ousia, for all "persons" are both hypostases and ousios. It's not a conflation on my part, but evasion OF conflation.

In English, ALL persons are ALSO beings. So to say three "persons" in English is to say "three persons that are beings". You've never gotten this. You've always presumed I conflate hypostasis and ousia when the reality is I don't want then COMBINED, which is what English does by definition.

I know the difference between hypostasis and ousia and prosopon. My Gawd, do I ever know the difference. It's the bain of my life that so few understand the differences.

We are living fallen lives, and in this fallen condition of freedom of the will, it is the PERSON WHO determines WHAT KIND of ousia he or she will BECOME... Our actions in this life will determine our OUSIA for the Age to Come, after the Last Judgement... We were stripped of our original OUSIA in the Fall of Adam... Our hypostatic life now is one of decisioning our ousia. We are either in the activity of doing good or falling further away from the good. Some of us even turn positively evil, and in this fallen life, that is permitted...

And the root core of that PERSON, who is making the decisions that are determining his or her ousia right now for the age to come, is the hypostatis... An ultimate Mystery...

I utterly understand and completely agree. You have never understood me, presuming I'm conflating terms.

A PRE-EXISTENT HYPOSTASIS - The One that CREATED existence...

NOT non-existent, but pre-existent...

Right and right.

I don't play all that well with my siblings either...

I disagree. You have always borne the fruit of the Spirit in every post, unlike myself and so many others.

Humanly speaking, you are right...

Divinely speaking, you have to go, not with eimi, but with estan...

en arche ein O Logos... [εν αρχη ην ο λογος]

Okay.

In the Beginning WAS [and not IS] the Logos/Word...

The Word is PRE-EXISTENT...

Right. The Logos. Not an individuated hypostasis of an alleged three.

And to insist that He IS EXISTING in His ontology, when He is pre-existent and is creating existence, is not reflective of the text...

He is all of the above. The all in all.

OF COURSE He exists, and self-exists, and is the Source of existence, but this does not mean that we can conceive Him as He WAS prior to the ONSET of existence...

And we're saying the same thing. You just don't give as wide a berth for expression as you take for yourself regarding apophatics that are inclusive of creation in their applications.

Not as impure, fallen and created man can we do this... And those who can appear and disappear and pass through walls do not say that they can do so either...

Arsenios

I'm not doing so. I'm doing exactly what you're doing. Representing apophatics that are relative to cataphatics that are our only reference.

If you'll read my previous post, it is my hope that you see my expressions in the appropriate context; which is recognizing the utter and inexpressable "other-ness" of God while still attempting to utilize human language as best we can in this fallen cosmos.

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

For simple clarification...

The English term "person", by ALL definitions, qualifies as a "being" (though all "beings" don't qualify as "persons").

So the concern is not whether the term "person" conflates hypostasis and ousia, but that it COMBINES them and makes every hypostasis ALSO an ousia. English CANNOT differentiate between hypostasis and ousia by the term "person".

So in English, all "persons" are ALSO "beings", which is why low-context English minds readily conceptualize the Trinity as functional Tritheism of multiple beings.

THIS is an epidemic, and should cause great potential concern for salvific faith. I was lost for 28 years because of this functional conceptual Tritheistic misrepresentation. And it's a huge part of the reason for such opposition from non-/anti-Trinitarians.

 

[1Mind1Spirit]

I disagree. You have always borne the fruit of the Spirit in every post, unlike myself and so many others.

Not really.

I've seen homosexuals give a better false imitation.

The dude's been overcome and brought into bondage.