Re: Bill Schlegel Videos
Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2021 8:38 pm
darinhouston>>>I think the first key is understanding that John isn't saying that the Logos is the self-same individual as (numerical identity of) Jesus. Whatever the "word" is, it was "enfleshed' in or "became" flesh. That is not to say there was a pre-incarnate sentient, individual person from all eternity "called" the word that was merely transformed from a pre-incarnate self to an incarnate self.<<<
Yes...this is where our differences begin. In that the Logos is identified AS God, the Logos IS, therefore, I AM (for this is WHO and WHAT it means to be identified as GOD). The Logos is the pre-incarnate Son Who is the (image and likeness) of the (type of) son that I AM seeks in His creation of Man. This is why that when He incarnates His (preferred?) title of Himself is the (S)son of Man. This is what (a) Man is created to be as a son whose Father is God. The Logos is the Alpha (the predestined purpose) of Creation, and He is the Omega (the predestined fruit) of Creation. God's plan (Logos) is His Own Image and Likeness (Logos) as the Personal Center and Personal Circumference of Creation, and all that is created consists (lives, and moves, and has its being) in Him, and must (in the end) subject itself (be subjected) to Him, that God may be all in all.
As I've said previously, at the heart of (all?) the objections to the trinitarian formulation is the “created i am's” inability(?) to step outside of its own ontological makeup and (simply) recognize that the aseity of I AM is “something” from above, and it (itself), in its self-centeredness, is (in bondage to what is) from below. The created “i am,” having nothing within itself to reason out the aseity of I AM, continually defaults to reasoning that I AM cannot exist in a true Trinitarian State because to be an I am means what a “created I am” intuits itself to be.
darinhouston>>>How do you reconcile it? Merely by appeal to mystery? That does not seem to be a very reliable way to reconcile difficult texts as it has no bounding conditions.<<<
I expect you'll be sorry you asked :
No...not an appeal to mystery. I reconcile it along the lines of the thread that I started elsewhere in this Forum. To begin with, from a Scriptural standpoint, there is no need to repeat the information found in Steve's excellent presentation of the subject in his Topical Lectures. Rather, I come to the subject from a Natural Theology perspective that accepts the testimony of Scripture and looks to the testimony of Creation as a corroborating witness.
Having accepted the “given” that God is triune (from the scriptural evidence) I let go of the question of “how” this is possible, and asked “why” He exists this WAY. I have come to understand that this is Who and What He IS in His desire to create the wondrous beings that we are becoming (are to become) in Christ. In our natural state we have little to no sensitivity to the wonder that we (even) have existence as real beings who are truly ontologically other beings (than God). That is, we are not ethereal, ephemeral, phantom beings only in the mind of God, but truly real beings living in the “womb” He prepared in Himself by being in this creative state we call The Trinity.
Taking Paul's cue (1 Corinthians 15:46) the thought process here starts with the natural, and then goes on to the spiritual. We live at a time when the Creator is taking back to Himself the witness of the natural world on its own terms. Listen to a practicing atheist, Nobel Laureate Sheldon Glashow, as he laments that “contemplation of superstrings may evolve into an activity as remote from conventional particle physics as particle physics is from chemistry, to be conducted at schools of divinity by future equivalents of medieval theologians…for the first time since the Dark Ages, we can see how our noble search may end, with faith replacing science once again.” Glashow's lamentation here goes to the heart of what science has, relatively recently, discovered about the nature of reality at its deepest depths. Quite literally, in the words of Niels Bohr, one of the earliest pioneers of Quantum Theory, “everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” This is just another way of stating the very thing that Hebrews 11:3 asserts : “...(the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that) the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” In other words, the visible (material, natural, physical) emerges from the invisible (immaterial, non-physical, “spiritual”), exactly as Quantum Field Theory reveals. This theory has it that “all that really exists” is a undulating fluid-like, non-material field of “Something” from which emerges the “Everything” we know as the Cosmos. Matter (particles) is (are) an epiphenomenon arising from vortices in this field.
So...the Cosmos emerges from “the (creative) waters” – mysteriously : “the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). I AM expresses His thoughts, and the “fluid-like field” takes the form of these words (expressed thoughts). Alternately, per Sir James Jean, a leading voice in the Quantum Revolution : “the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine.” This great imposing phenomenal world of concrete mountains and endless galaxies is an ingenious non-material construct that is -- as Max Planck, the originator of Quantum Theory, asserted – “derivative from consciousness.” The reality of the world around us, the world in which we are embedded, is generated by Consciousness (I AM). The whole of the natural world is expressed thought!
The picture of the nature of reality that has been put together (by science) in the last one hundred years is so counter-intuitive that some of its brightest lights have described it as “magical” (John Wheeler) and “absurd” (Richard Feynman). More prosaically put, “quantum mechanics is the first theory in human history that violates the basic a priori principles that have shaped human thought since immemorial times.” (Miguel Ferrero, David Salgado, José Luís Sánchez-Gómez. QUANTUM MECHANICS AND MAGIC: AN OPEN DISCUSSION. 2014).
One of those violated a priori principles can be traced at least as far back as (actually further than) Aristotle (the father of the scientific method). His empirically based epistemology assumes that the scientist (observer) is (can be) an objective agent vis-a-vis the object being observed. Quantum Theory demonstrates that this is a naive presupposition because the cosmos, and everything in it (including us), is an organic whole. That is, it is impossible, within the closed system that the cosmos is, to have such a thing (concept, reality) as Objectivity.
Objectivity is not a (native) quality of the closed system of (our) reality, nor is it a quality that (pure) Science can co-opt for itself (out of thin air) because (one of) its a priori assumptions is the cosmos is all there is (philosophical naturalism). However, objectivity IS (actually) a quality of (our) reality for the reason that it derives its ontology from outside (other than) the cosmos. That is, the (ontic) reality of object / object existence is grounded in the Creator Himself because He (self-willfully) exists in this State of Being. As a matter of fact, it is precisely because the One (I AM) [Who IS Who (That) He Is (Exodus 3:14)] exists as Trinity that He is (can be) the Creator of a truly objective – OTHER – reality.
Why is that? For the very reason that, as stated above, the true nature of our created reality is immaterial (spiritual) in that it is (simply) expressed thoughts – words. But...where is the place that these expressed thoughts are spoken (into)? The Apostle Paul proclaims that it is “ in Him (that) we live and move and have our being, (Acts 17:28), and he says this to un-regenerate people. How can this be? The answer is that it is for the same reason that the bush and the Fire were able to co-exist during Moses' encounter on Mount Horeb (Exodus 3). The bush and the Fire existed as wholly (ontologically) other realities to one another (each in its own dimension), occupying “the same time and same place.”
The dimension in which Creation exists is generated “(super)naturally” in I AM in that He “lets” (as used in Genesis 1) a “separation / emptiness / void” exist in His Being. This KENOSIS in His Being is the WOMB of the wholly OTHER Reality that we experience as our Cosmos.
In the Love of God....
Yes...this is where our differences begin. In that the Logos is identified AS God, the Logos IS, therefore, I AM (for this is WHO and WHAT it means to be identified as GOD). The Logos is the pre-incarnate Son Who is the (image and likeness) of the (type of) son that I AM seeks in His creation of Man. This is why that when He incarnates His (preferred?) title of Himself is the (S)son of Man. This is what (a) Man is created to be as a son whose Father is God. The Logos is the Alpha (the predestined purpose) of Creation, and He is the Omega (the predestined fruit) of Creation. God's plan (Logos) is His Own Image and Likeness (Logos) as the Personal Center and Personal Circumference of Creation, and all that is created consists (lives, and moves, and has its being) in Him, and must (in the end) subject itself (be subjected) to Him, that God may be all in all.
As I've said previously, at the heart of (all?) the objections to the trinitarian formulation is the “created i am's” inability(?) to step outside of its own ontological makeup and (simply) recognize that the aseity of I AM is “something” from above, and it (itself), in its self-centeredness, is (in bondage to what is) from below. The created “i am,” having nothing within itself to reason out the aseity of I AM, continually defaults to reasoning that I AM cannot exist in a true Trinitarian State because to be an I am means what a “created I am” intuits itself to be.
darinhouston>>>How do you reconcile it? Merely by appeal to mystery? That does not seem to be a very reliable way to reconcile difficult texts as it has no bounding conditions.<<<
I expect you'll be sorry you asked :
No...not an appeal to mystery. I reconcile it along the lines of the thread that I started elsewhere in this Forum. To begin with, from a Scriptural standpoint, there is no need to repeat the information found in Steve's excellent presentation of the subject in his Topical Lectures. Rather, I come to the subject from a Natural Theology perspective that accepts the testimony of Scripture and looks to the testimony of Creation as a corroborating witness.
Having accepted the “given” that God is triune (from the scriptural evidence) I let go of the question of “how” this is possible, and asked “why” He exists this WAY. I have come to understand that this is Who and What He IS in His desire to create the wondrous beings that we are becoming (are to become) in Christ. In our natural state we have little to no sensitivity to the wonder that we (even) have existence as real beings who are truly ontologically other beings (than God). That is, we are not ethereal, ephemeral, phantom beings only in the mind of God, but truly real beings living in the “womb” He prepared in Himself by being in this creative state we call The Trinity.
Taking Paul's cue (1 Corinthians 15:46) the thought process here starts with the natural, and then goes on to the spiritual. We live at a time when the Creator is taking back to Himself the witness of the natural world on its own terms. Listen to a practicing atheist, Nobel Laureate Sheldon Glashow, as he laments that “contemplation of superstrings may evolve into an activity as remote from conventional particle physics as particle physics is from chemistry, to be conducted at schools of divinity by future equivalents of medieval theologians…for the first time since the Dark Ages, we can see how our noble search may end, with faith replacing science once again.” Glashow's lamentation here goes to the heart of what science has, relatively recently, discovered about the nature of reality at its deepest depths. Quite literally, in the words of Niels Bohr, one of the earliest pioneers of Quantum Theory, “everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” This is just another way of stating the very thing that Hebrews 11:3 asserts : “...(the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that) the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” In other words, the visible (material, natural, physical) emerges from the invisible (immaterial, non-physical, “spiritual”), exactly as Quantum Field Theory reveals. This theory has it that “all that really exists” is a undulating fluid-like, non-material field of “Something” from which emerges the “Everything” we know as the Cosmos. Matter (particles) is (are) an epiphenomenon arising from vortices in this field.
So...the Cosmos emerges from “the (creative) waters” – mysteriously : “the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). I AM expresses His thoughts, and the “fluid-like field” takes the form of these words (expressed thoughts). Alternately, per Sir James Jean, a leading voice in the Quantum Revolution : “the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine.” This great imposing phenomenal world of concrete mountains and endless galaxies is an ingenious non-material construct that is -- as Max Planck, the originator of Quantum Theory, asserted – “derivative from consciousness.” The reality of the world around us, the world in which we are embedded, is generated by Consciousness (I AM). The whole of the natural world is expressed thought!
The picture of the nature of reality that has been put together (by science) in the last one hundred years is so counter-intuitive that some of its brightest lights have described it as “magical” (John Wheeler) and “absurd” (Richard Feynman). More prosaically put, “quantum mechanics is the first theory in human history that violates the basic a priori principles that have shaped human thought since immemorial times.” (Miguel Ferrero, David Salgado, José Luís Sánchez-Gómez. QUANTUM MECHANICS AND MAGIC: AN OPEN DISCUSSION. 2014).
One of those violated a priori principles can be traced at least as far back as (actually further than) Aristotle (the father of the scientific method). His empirically based epistemology assumes that the scientist (observer) is (can be) an objective agent vis-a-vis the object being observed. Quantum Theory demonstrates that this is a naive presupposition because the cosmos, and everything in it (including us), is an organic whole. That is, it is impossible, within the closed system that the cosmos is, to have such a thing (concept, reality) as Objectivity.
Objectivity is not a (native) quality of the closed system of (our) reality, nor is it a quality that (pure) Science can co-opt for itself (out of thin air) because (one of) its a priori assumptions is the cosmos is all there is (philosophical naturalism). However, objectivity IS (actually) a quality of (our) reality for the reason that it derives its ontology from outside (other than) the cosmos. That is, the (ontic) reality of object / object existence is grounded in the Creator Himself because He (self-willfully) exists in this State of Being. As a matter of fact, it is precisely because the One (I AM) [Who IS Who (That) He Is (Exodus 3:14)] exists as Trinity that He is (can be) the Creator of a truly objective – OTHER – reality.
Why is that? For the very reason that, as stated above, the true nature of our created reality is immaterial (spiritual) in that it is (simply) expressed thoughts – words. But...where is the place that these expressed thoughts are spoken (into)? The Apostle Paul proclaims that it is “ in Him (that) we live and move and have our being, (Acts 17:28), and he says this to un-regenerate people. How can this be? The answer is that it is for the same reason that the bush and the Fire were able to co-exist during Moses' encounter on Mount Horeb (Exodus 3). The bush and the Fire existed as wholly (ontologically) other realities to one another (each in its own dimension), occupying “the same time and same place.”
The dimension in which Creation exists is generated “(super)naturally” in I AM in that He “lets” (as used in Genesis 1) a “separation / emptiness / void” exist in His Being. This KENOSIS in His Being is the WOMB of the wholly OTHER Reality that we experience as our Cosmos.
In the Love of God....