I don’t like Jay Dyer’s theology. Theistic personalism makes very little sense to me. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if theistic personalism were the only option we had — that is, if we could not accept divine simplicity and classical theism — then I would be an atheist. If God is just some Zeus character then there is no reason to accept the Christian God over any of the other thousands of gods out there. This is the same argument that atheists use when arguing against theism in general, not realising that their argument only refutes theistic personalism. However if God is what he says in the Exodus — “I am that I am” — then at once all the atheist arguments are exposed as silly and fraudulent.
Well from the videos I’ve watched attacking Catholics he always stresses that divine simplicity is a heresy. Is it possible to reject divine simplicity and remain a classical theist?
I've read persuasive articles attempting to reconcile divine simplicity with Palamite essence/energy distinction.
There's a lot of good faith in that history which it would be silly to overlook. But I think Dyer just causes scandal with his uncharitable aggressive attitude.
To say nothing of the rather depressing contradiction between an extremely online zoomer boomer vaporwave youtube film critic larping as orthodox.
I mean, I know it's harsh to accuse him of LARPing, but the Orthodox have historically been against all these crazy modern technological advances.
It's like Jay (and many other online orthodox) can't see that the medium is, in some sense, the message. You're not a desert anchorite. You're some guy with a blog.
Catholicism hasn't really reconciled modernity to itself yet, but there's at least some attempt to do so that isn't as cringeworthy. Some possibility of catching up with history and time.
There's nothing wrong with the Orthodox being on this wavelength of golden byzantine timelessness. It's just... don't try to mesh that with whatever hyper late capitalism e-celeb thing you're trying to do. It's not good (IMO).
2 years ago
Anonymous
>I've read persuasive articles attempting to reconcile divine simplicity with Palamite essence/energy distinction.
Can you send them to me please?
He has an idiosyncratic view that the Thoomistic position is "absolute divine simplicity". In Dyers mind the difference between "Divine Simplicity" and "Absolute Divine Simplicity" is that ADS collapses ALL distinction, including that of the Trinity, into a monad. Now this is of course moronic but it's a core part of Neo-Palamite polemic.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>is that ADS collapses ALL distinction, including that of the Trinity, into a monad.
That would have to be the case if you were to consistently follow the conclusions from the premises, yes.
I've read persuasive articles attempting to reconcile divine simplicity with Palamite essence/energy distinction.
There's a lot of good faith in that history which it would be silly to overlook. But I think Dyer just causes scandal with his uncharitable aggressive attitude.
To say nothing of the rather depressing contradiction between an extremely online zoomer boomer vaporwave youtube film critic larping as orthodox.
I mean, I know it's harsh to accuse him of LARPing, but the Orthodox have historically been against all these crazy modern technological advances.
It's like Jay (and many other online orthodox) can't see that the medium is, in some sense, the message. You're not a desert anchorite. You're some guy with a blog.
Catholicism hasn't really reconciled modernity to itself yet, but there's at least some attempt to do so that isn't as cringeworthy. Some possibility of catching up with history and time.
There's nothing wrong with the Orthodox being on this wavelength of golden byzantine timelessness. It's just... don't try to mesh that with whatever hyper late capitalism e-celeb thing you're trying to do. It's not good (IMO).
Yes, your critiques of Jay Dyer's intense worldliness giving away the impression that he treats his faith as a LARP are correct. But, philosophically, he's more sound than other youtube apologists. He's undefeated in debates, not because he's particularly good at debating, but simply because everyone else he has debated is incompetent.
2 years ago
Anonymous
How ironic also that Dyer wins at debates but doesn't seem to practice what he preaches when the (perhaps modern) Orthodox stereotype or distinctive feature is that praxis > intellectual theology (or to give the Orthodox more credit, the position is that intellectual theology, while useful, is nothing without prayer... 'he who prays is a theologian')
Yes, that is ironic. Being intellectually correct is good, and a part of the faith, but if it's the only part. Fr. Seraphim Rose did say that "absolutely correct theology" would be part and parcel of the Anti-Christ's fake Orthodoxy
I don't believe that Thomism and the Orthodox teachings that St Gregory Palamas expounds are compatible. Side note - we reject the term "Palamism" since there are no "isms" in Orthodoxy, either someone in Orthodoxy teaches Orthodoxy or they do not.
The only attempts I've seen to try and "reconcile" St Gregory Palamas with Thomism, is simply to ignore the troublesome parts of St. Gregory Palamas's writings, and to subjugate his writings to a Thomist hermeneutic by brute force.
This is particularly clear if you read the Triads in the section where St. Gregory Palamas talks about the uncreated light of Mt. Tabor and how in the Barlaamite(pretty much Thomist) position that this must be a created glory, but that this glory is identified as the glory of God by the Fathers - and also that we will be participating in the Glory of God in the eschaton. If this light is a created light, but something distinct from the human nature (since it is a similar sort of light seen in the Old Testament, seen prior to Christ's incarnation), then Christ must have not two, but three natures - the divine nature, the created divine glory light, and the created human nature, and we will be participating. It's on the back of arguments like these, that he says that the light of Mt. Tabor is in fact the uncreated energies of God, which is the eternal glory of God, that we will participate in, in the eschaton.
2 years ago
Anonymous
* but if it's the only part you care about, that's a problem.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I'm sure this is an old objection, but doesn't it say in the Bible that we can't see God in this life?
How can we see Him before we die?
Obviously (to me) it can't be the same as the beatific vision. So what is it?
2 years ago
Anonymous
I'm not aware of where in the scriptures it says we can't see God in this life, given that this would directly contradict the Old Testament theophanies (Moses seeing God, Isaac wrestling with God, many prophets worshipping the Angel of the Lord [You can't worship created beings, that's idolatry, so the Fathers identify the Angel of the Lord as the pre-incarnateChrist]).
I know that in the Gospel of John, He says that no man has seen God at any time, but they have seen Christ - and in this case, the word "God" is referring to the Father, and often times scripture refers to the Father by the word God, despite the fact we know that both Christ and the Holy Spirit are God by virtue of participating in the same essence. Christ is the one mediator between God(the Father) and man, and this has been true even in the Old Testament times.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Moses saw the back of God. As God Himself said: “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”
There are different interpretations of the episode with Jacob and the angel where he does not see God in His essence:
It seems like it is impossible to see the essence of God (the beatific vision) in this life. See the above quote from Exodus.
St. John also says:
"We see now through a glass in a dark manner, but then face to face."
So perhaps even in this life we can see God obscurely, as St. John said, but not in the way that we will see Him in heaven.
But I'd be hard pressed to give you an account of how one could see God, even obscurely. Nevertheless I do think some reconciliation is possible.
2 years ago
Anonymous
The Neo-Palamite synthesis was invented by Lossky. It's 20th Century innovation. Orthodox before that were scholastics
2 years ago
Anonymous
Begone, Jesuit. You'll only fool the ignorant with your lies - people who know their Orthodox Patristics know you're full of shit, especially since countless Athonite and Optina Elders, and local Councils confirmed the doctrine of the direct experience of God by His uncreated energies before Lossky was even born.
2 years ago
Anonymous
This. There are icons and texts talking/imaging about the Divine light and Palamas that predate Lossky for centuries and that just in my smaller Orthodox country.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>That would have to be the case if you were to consistently follow the conclusions from the premises, yes.
Only if you accept Dyers strawman version of Thomism.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Isn't a fundamental proposition of Thomism that there are absolutely no distinctions, precisely because distinction necessarily implies composition in Thomism?
2 years ago
Anonymous
Palamas says the energies transcend the essence, but both are God. That is polytheism. Something cannot transcend and be identical with itself.
This cannot be salvaged with appeals to the Trinity as the Trinity is not analogous to a distinction between Gods essence and activities.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Palamas says the energies transcend the essence, but both are God. That is polytheism. Something cannot transcend and be identical with itself.
Didn't I already address this in a previous thread, a few weeks ago? You're taking quotes out of context.
If you read what Palamas was writing in context, it's extremely clear that Palamas is talking about this in relation to creatures - that the energies transcend the essence, not ad intra, but ad extra, that creatures can continually participate in the energies, but will never participate in the essence.
I'll even copypaste my prior response:
>>You tried to retreat to the Thomist position.. Saying "from our perspective" means that it's only a logical distinction not a real distinction.
>I'm not appealing to subjectivist nominalism by saying "From our perspective.".
>To demonstrate this, you can clearly see that past events from before our creation completely transcends our experience. We are, by ontological necessity, unable to experience them. However, within the whole context of time since time began, prior moments of time do not transcend the whole context of time, and from the context of persons created prior to us, they are capable of experiencing creation in a state that completely transcends our capacity to experience.
>All of this is completely true, and does not require an appeal to nominalism.
>I'm saying that, from our perspective ontologically, we cannot reach the divine essence. That is, from our ontological position as created beings, the essence of God infinitely transcends the energies of God, which we do experience.
>This is absolutely clear if you read the surrounding context in the Triads a few paragraphs right before what you cited. Surely, you're being intellectually honest enough to look at the whole context of a quote, instead of simply quote mining and ignoring context?
>It is there that St Gregory Palamas cites St Maximus in saying that the Essence infinitely transcends the energies - it is within the context of created beings, and therefore beings bound by time, participating in the uncreated energies of God to the degree that created beings are ontologically capable, since everything that exists must be sustained directly by the energies of God, but cannot participate in them outside of the ontological capacities of their created natures.
>From the ontological position of God, God does not transcend Himself, since God eternally knows His own essence. In exactly the same way that God is undividedly yet distinctly in unity of the three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God is undividedly yet distinctly in unity of three ontological realities: Essence, Person, and Energy.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Maximus the Confessor is in agreement with Aquinas, not Palamas. You're confusing the analogy of being with ontological seperation
2 years ago
Anonymous
>You're confusing the analogy of being with ontological seperation
Are you responding to the right person?
2 years ago
Anonymous
>In exactly the same way that God is undividedly yet distinctly in unity of the three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God is undividedly yet distinctly in unity of three ontological realities: Essence, Person, and Energy
This was already ruled out. You cannot apply the doctrine of the Trinity to create any arbitrary distinction within the godhead you want. The logic of the Trinity does not support God being sliced into pieces to support Palamite theology. Extreme hubris to think the Orthodox have thr right to create a new theology on par with the Trinity.
Remember this all comes from Lossky, its innovation with no basis in past doctrine
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Reaffirmations with no refutations
Many such cases for people who understand in their heart that their false doctrine is completely empty, but are too proud to give it up.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Palamite theology is polytheism. Your only response is to claim that it's a nominal distinction which is wtong because Palamites absolutely stress that the distinction between Essence and Energies must be acknowledged as a REAL distinction, otherwise its heresy. Then they claim that thrle EE is justified by the Trinity whichbit absolutely is not. Its essentially adding in Energies as a fourth hypostasis
Follow Bulgakov, not Lossky.
2 years ago
Anonymous
This is not a response to
Isn't a fundamental proposition of Thomism that there are absolutely no distinctions, precisely because distinction necessarily implies composition in Thomism?
Are these propositions and conclusions taken for granted as true in Thomism, or not?
1. Distinction necessarily implies composition.
2. God is absolutely simple, with no parts.
3. There are no distinctions in God, because God has no parts.
Don't dodge the question. Answer yes or no.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Distinction can only be analogically applied to God. You're applying it univocally. Rookie mistake.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Distinction can only be analogically applied to God.
So then what logically follows is that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are only *analogically* distinct, and not actually distinct persons.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Dyer and American Orthodoxy (Seraphim Rose), come out of this mileu: >Holy Order of MANS
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Order_of_MANS >Good channel with a rundown on it:
Dyer is also a "crypto-traditionalist", has ties with dugin going back years to his very beginning, he is an FSB Asset,
How onto the "question" of muh Orthodox vs. muh Catholic, such debate IS pseudhomosexualry so shut up, noone cares, the Trinity painted as a multitude and multiplicity is a determination, the Trinity as an indeterminable ineffable apophatic Monad is not,
Christian theology is as simple as this
Ineffable => Unity => Triadic Unicitiy
In order of determination, Unity is the first, the Triadic Unicity which is really the first actual plurality and multiplicity - but nonetheless Unicity, is the second, the Ineffable is acknowledged by Christians as beyond even the hypostatic relations of Trinity.
Essentialy - Unity in Trinity is the personal God and is firstly the method of purification along with all the archetypes, the Saints, the Mother of God, and then Ineffable Unity is the ends of that purificatory personality,
Also the Christian attitude against demons is also perfectly reasonable, that causes the Christian to go beyond his ego, and beyond reason. Ultimately the byzantine hesychast tradition on Mt. Athos is for me peak Christianity and is actually different from the "Newer" Russian hesychast tradition - as pointed out in the channel above, it has roots in the anchorites, hermeticists, stoics, epicureans, platonists.
False, even then there is still an "ineffability" accounted for which cannot be polytheism, all palamism does is further establish the panentheist position, that God is everything but everything is not God, and that the everything must be viewed as strictly contingent, or that God is unmanifest and indeterminable but "determined" and "manifested" in the sense that God is the essential principle of all manifestation, but never actually enters into that creation, that's all.
The necessary distinction between energies and essence essentialy is palamas reconciling the above, but ultimately the ineffability, and metaphysical infinity of the essence is what is substantiated there,
Essentialy "Energies" are the actualisation of potentials, from potency to act, or substance and is analogous to prakriti, and then the essence is analogous to purusha,
That's what I think palamas was trying to get at.
He always stresses that ABSOLUTE divine simplicity is a heresy, which is not the same as divine simplicity as understood by Orthodoxy. Absolute Divine Simplicity is where there are no distinctions in God whatsoever, which immediately results in the impossibility to believe in the Apostolic Christian faith, since the true difference of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are required, in order for only the Son to have acquired a Human nature, and for the Father and the Holy Spirit to not have been crucified, since patripassianism is a condemned heresy.
I know that classical theists who identify as Apostolic Christians like to affirm that the three persons are truly ontologically different persons, but this is simply not possible to consistently maintain with so-called "classical theism", and Islam refutations of the Trinity from the position of commitment to Absolute Divine Simplicity are correct.
In Orthodoxy, divine simplicity is retained, since God in the Orthodox understanding is not composed of parts, since the ontological distinctions of essence, person, and activity do not imply division into parts for the uncreated, divine nature.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>since the true difference of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are required
The best way to explain the Trinity is in terms of God's self-knowledge. Just like our minds can reflect about themselves, and create images of themselves, so God's mind does this too, but in a much more perfect way. God knows himself completely. The Father reflects about himself (similar to how we do) and generates the Son, which is the object of his self-reflection. The Father and the Son, beholding each other in their absolute splendour for all eternity, then breathe out a sigh of love, and this sigh is the Holy Ghost.
So the Father is the knower, the Son is the object of this knowledge, and the Holy Ghost is the sigh of self-love that God releases beholding himself.
Is God's self-knowledge identical to his love? Yes. His goodness? Yes. His mercy? yes. His justice? Yes.
So God is absolutely simple, yet is three persons.
2 years ago
Anonymous
If I'm not mistaken, that conception of the trinity is Augustinian, correct?
My 'Thomistic' picture of it is that the persons of the trinity are relations.
Just as the road from Thebes to Athens may slope up, although the road from Athens to Thebes may slope down. They are the same road, just considered as different relations.
I'm not pitting St. Augustine and St. Thomas against each other. I just think the roads thing also works to (sort of) understand what must ultimately remain the most ineffable mystery.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Yes it is a relation. The knower (father), object known (the Son), and the act of self-knowledge (the Holy Ghost). That's how Thomists describe it.
The ironic thing is if God is absolutely simple and self-referential, as classical theists claim, then the Trinity is almost a necessary implication of this view. Of course it would be hard to see without revelation, but putting all the pieces together it makes perfect sense. That's why that anon is so wrong to say divine simplicity contradicts the Trinity. No, divine simplicity implies the Trinity.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>So the Father is the knower, the Son is the object of this knowledge, and the Holy Ghost is the sigh of self-love that God releases beholding himself.
This makes it sound like the three persons are not in fact three persons, but simply three aspects of one person.
We reject this idea - and say that the Father eternally begets the Son, and eternally spirates the Spirit, as two distinct modes of eternal causation. Then, the Father and Son share in selfless love of the Spirit, The Son and Spirit share in selfless love of the Father, and the Father and the Spirit share in selfless love of the Son. None of them love themselves selfishly, since they all perfectly share in selfless love with each other.
In your scheme, this implies at least two (mutually exclusive) problems:
1. If the Holy Spirit is exclusively the sigh of love between the Son and the Father, the Holy Spirit Himself remains eternally unloved.
2. If God is truly a single subject, and his self-knowledge is identical to love, then this would mean that the eternal love of God is an eternal egotistical self-love. If this is attempted to be solved by self-dividing the subject in reflection, like you mentioned, then this is a schizophrenic self-love, where parts of the self remain unloved due to one of those parts being the love itself, as I mentioned in the above example.
2 years ago
Anonymous
On reflection, the problems are not necessarily mutually exclusive since I encapsulated the first point in the second point.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Not him, but I would reply that the relations of the persons in God are reflected in the structure of human consciousness, not identical to it.
The soul is like the Father. Self-consciousness is like the Son. The natural love between self and self-image is like the Holy Spirit.
But these are shadows of the reality of God.
God also said "It is not good for man to be alone."
God is not someone who only thinks about Himself. Rather, the structure of our subjectivity simply bears His image in a special way.
The same is true of our communities, of the love between friends or between man and wife.
In conjugal love and in human communities, something is generated which is greater than the some of its parts. This too is a reflection of the trinity. But the image is not identical with the original.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Sure, and as a created icon of understanding the trinity, I can understand its application, and the limits of created hints towards God's triune nature. The pedagogical use of images and icons is not in question here.
But the question is about explicit metaphysical doctrines about the reality of the three persons of the Godhead: Are the persons truly distinct persons, or not? Are they simply "aspects" of one thing that loves itself, where all of these aspects are ultimately metaphysically self-identical?
I haven't seen these answered to any satisfactory degree.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I think the position is that they're distinct persons, not aspects of one being. A person is not three persons. God is.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>three aspects of one person.
It's not it's the act of God's self-love and self-knowledge understood completely. When you think about yourself, you create an image in your mind as to who you are, right? Since we are not perfect we can create false images, eg. I could think I am smarter and better-looking than I really am. But with God this act of self-knowledge is perfect. He knows himself completely. The Father contemplates himself and generates an "image" of himself, which is the Son, and the Holy Spirit is this act of self-knowledge and self-love. The Trinity is a relation of persons, and these persons are identical to the divine essence, which is absolutely One.
So the doctrine of the Trinity is a necessary implication of classical theism; it doesn't contradict it.
>If God is truly a single subject, and his self-knowledge is identical to love, then this would mean that the eternal love of God is an eternal egotistical self-love. If this is attempted to be solved by self-dividing the subject in reflection, like you mentioned, then this is a schizophrenic self-love, where parts of the self remain unloved due to one of those parts being the love itself, as I mentioned in the above example.
It's not "egotistical" in the human sense because God is the ultimate metaphysical principle, ground and source of all goodness and being and love. There is nothing better to contemplate than himself. I don't know about the Holy Ghost being unloved, but I don't see what's wrong with me saying God loves his own love. He is Love itself.
2 years ago
Anonymous
aspects of one person. >It's not
Okay, time to see the explanation for how it isn't
>it's the act of God's self-love and self-knowledge understood completely. When you think about yourself, you create an image in your mind as to who you are, right? Since we are not perfect we can create false images, eg. I could think I am smarter and better-looking than I really am. But with God this act of self-knowledge is perfect. He knows himself completely. The Father contemplates himself and generates an "image" of himself, which is the Son, and the Holy Spirit is this act of self-knowledge and self-love. The Trinity is a relation of persons, and these persons are identical to the divine essence, which is absolutely One.
I'm sorry, but I'm not seeing anything here that would actually imply that the Holy Spirit and the Son are actually distinct persons, if the Son is a self-image(an image of which self? Only the Father is mentioned here.) and the Holy Spirt is self-love(the love of which self? Only the Father - or the self-love of the Father between the Father and his Self-Image)
Even if I were to ignore these problems, and grant that these propositions somehow did provide an explanation for the existence of the three persons, then the Holy Spirit remains unloved.
>I don't see what's wrong with me saying God loves his own love.
It's quite simple: With which love would God love his own love?
That would mean that the Holy Spirit would have to love itself. This self-relation of love the Holy Spirit to itself to the Holy Spirit wasn't mentioned above, but then there would be no way for the Father to love the Spirit.
However, if the spirit's love of itself is a self-love, then how does the Father love the Spirit? The Spirit does not need the Father to love itself, if it itself is love. This poses two problems: In one case, the Spirit needs to generate another Spirit-Son-image, and the love between its own Spirit-Son-Image and the Spirit would be a Spirit-Spirit, but then this Spirit-Spirit needs to self-love somehow... You get an infinite regress of self-image in order for the persons to self-love, if they were to truly be distinct persons.
In the other case, the Spirit does not need a Spirit in order to self-love. In that case, why does the Father need the Spirit to self-love? That would imply that the Father is simply deficient, whereas the Spirit is not deficient, fully self-sufficient as a person, whereas the Father is reliant on the Spirit to love Himself, and the Son.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Well the Father and Son aren’t different persons in the same sense as you and I are different persons. They have a single united will, we have different wills. They have the same essence. They have the same knowledge. They are totally united in love. What you seem to be doing is appealing to your intuition of personhood in the human sense and applying it to God. I don’t think it has to be that way, and I still think the analogy of self-knowledge is the best way of articulating the Trinity without sounding like a polytheist.
As for the Holy Ghost being unloved, I don’t have a good answer now because I’ve never thought about this. But still I maintain that it is possible for me to love my own self-love. And if God is love itself, as absolute divine simplicity teaches, then clearly there is never a shortage of love in God.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Well the Father and Son aren’t different persons in the same sense as you and I are different persons. They have a single united will, we have different wills. They have the same essence. They have the same knowledge. They are totally united in love.
Yes, I agree with these propositions on the face of it. The nature of that unity is understood differently in Orthodoxy, to the point that the internal love of God is never considered a self-love, since their eternal love is both shared and selfless, like explicated here.
>So the Father is the knower, the Son is the object of this knowledge, and the Holy Ghost is the sigh of self-love that God releases beholding himself.
This makes it sound like the three persons are not in fact three persons, but simply three aspects of one person.
We reject this idea - and say that the Father eternally begets the Son, and eternally spirates the Spirit, as two distinct modes of eternal causation. Then, the Father and Son share in selfless love of the Spirit, The Son and Spirit share in selfless love of the Father, and the Father and the Spirit share in selfless love of the Son. None of them love themselves selfishly, since they all perfectly share in selfless love with each other.
In your scheme, this implies at least two (mutually exclusive) problems:
1. If the Holy Spirit is exclusively the sigh of love between the Son and the Father, the Holy Spirit Himself remains eternally unloved.
2. If God is truly a single subject, and his self-knowledge is identical to love, then this would mean that the eternal love of God is an eternal egotistical self-love. If this is attempted to be solved by self-dividing the subject in reflection, like you mentioned, then this is a schizophrenic self-love, where parts of the self remain unloved due to one of those parts being the love itself, as I mentioned in the above example.
>Then, the Father and Son share in selfless love of the Spirit, The Son and Spirit share in selfless love of the Father, and the Father and the Spirit share in selfless love of the Son. None of them love themselves selfishly, since they all perfectly share in selfless love with each other.
After all, it's self-love that we're trying to overcome with our lives of asceticism. The Fathers & Ascetics are unanimous on the necessity to kill the passion of self-love, and replacing it with the virtues of selflessly loving God, and selflessly loving others. If God Himself has self-love, then what hope do we have to overcome our own self-love?
2 years ago
Anonymous
>three aspects of one person.
It's not it's the act of God's self-love and self-knowledge understood completely. When you think about yourself, you create an image in your mind as to who you are, right? Since we are not perfect we can create false images, eg. I could think I am smarter and better-looking than I really am. But with God this act of self-knowledge is perfect. He knows himself completely. The Father contemplates himself and generates an "image" of himself, which is the Son, and the Holy Spirit is this act of self-knowledge and self-love. The Trinity is a relation of persons, and these persons are identical to the divine essence, which is absolutely One.
So the doctrine of the Trinity is a necessary implication of classical theism; it doesn't contradict it.
>If God is truly a single subject, and his self-knowledge is identical to love, then this would mean that the eternal love of God is an eternal egotistical self-love. If this is attempted to be solved by self-dividing the subject in reflection, like you mentioned, then this is a schizophrenic self-love, where parts of the self remain unloved due to one of those parts being the love itself, as I mentioned in the above example.
It's not "egotistical" in the human sense because God is the ultimate metaphysical principle, ground and source of all goodness and being and love. There is nothing better to contemplate than himself. I don't know about the Holy Ghost being unloved, but I don't see what's wrong with me saying God loves his own love. He is Love itself.
Also I want to say that your personalist (I won’t say Orthodox; there are Orthodoc such as David Bentley Hart who accept absolute divine simplicity) understanding of God and the Trinity makes no sense. It sounds like you’re saying the Father just arbitrarily generates the Son and Spirit “just because” which isn’t a good answer. At least from the perspective of absolute divine simplicity you can give a satisfactory account of God and the Trinity.
Also if God is just a personality then what priority does the Christian God have over Zeus and all the thousands of personalist Gods that have been worshipped throughout history? If God is just a personality, then his actions are subservient to the principles which drive him, such as Goodness and Mercy and Love etc.. But if God IS Goodness and Mercy and Love and Being then he retains complete freedom. This is why classical theism is so much superior to personalism.
2 years ago
Anonymous
DBH believes condemned heresies. Stop propping him up as an exemplar of Orthodoxy.
Calling him Orthodox would be as dishonest as calling Reinhard Marx Catholic, when he explicitly says that Catholic social teaching is identical to and reliant on Karl Marx.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I didn’t prop him up as an exemplar I merely cited him as an example of an Eastern Orthodox who believes absolute divine simplicity. I’m sympathetic to Hart’s universalism, though, so I’m interested to see where you think it’s been “condemned”?
2 years ago
Anonymous
>I’m sympathetic to Hart’s universalism, though, so I’m interested to see where you think it’s been “condemned”?
It was condemned along with all facets of Origenism at the 5th ecumenical council, and specifically anathematized those who believe the torments of hell have an end. The only ‘universalists’ in Orthodoxy that have slipped through are St. Isaac the Syrian and *maybe* St. Gregory of Nyssa, but we can find passages which seem to support either interpretation. And even then, just because some saint believed it doesn’t make it true. They are far outside of the consensus of the Fathers. Anything more than Kallistos Ware’s ‘hopeful universalism’ is nonsense.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>‘hopeful universalism’
Is this similar to the Catholic Balthasar's "dare we hope" thing?
I believe that his idea is that, because the prayer and liturgy asks for the salvation of all men, it may not be impious to hope (in the sense of wish, not EXPECT) that all men be saved.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Yeah, that’s exactly what it is. I admit though as well that I am sympathetic towards that sort of view, but what the Bible says doesn’t let one get too far with such views.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I sort of take St. Augustine's tack and say that whatever interpretation of scripture makes for the greatest charity is the one which we should follow.
I think that before the 20th century, the idea that most were in hell served somehow to make people more loving. Now the idea just enervates us. I don't personally hold to universalism, but I do hope that everyone I know accepts God's love.
I also have the idea (perhaps borrowed from St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross) that, just as all men irresistibly sin, yet are still culpable, perhaps Christ's love is so efficacious that it draws all men to loving Him, yet with a necessity that is as efficacious yet as virtual as the power of sin. For goodness is more powerful than evil.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>I also have the idea (perhaps borrowed from St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross) that, just as all men irresistibly sin, yet are still culpable, perhaps Christ's love is so efficacious that it draws all men to loving Him, yet with a necessity that is as efficacious yet as virtual as the power of sin. For goodness is more powerful than evil.
That said, this view could easily lead to indolence, so maybe it's best not to entertain it.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>DBH believes condemned heresies
To be fair so does anyone who accepts the E/E distinction
2 years ago
Anonymous
E/E is implicitly affirmed in the ecumenical councils and has been excplicitly affirmed in the so-called Hesychast/Palamite synods, Jesuit.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>E/E is implicitly affirmed in the ecumenical councils
No it is not.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Pic. If no e/e distinction, no need to enumerate both the essence and the energy for both natures.
>has been excplicitly affirmed in the so-called Hesychast/Palamite synod
Has as much weight as a Mormon meeting. A group of excommunicated heretics cannot hold a valid council since they must be ratified by the Pope, as per Maximus the Confessors statement.
I thought I was responding to someone who was trying to tell me that E/E was condemned in Orthodoxy. If you're Catholic, then I don't care what you consider to be condemned or not.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Pic somehow didn't upload.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>has been excplicitly affirmed in the so-called Hesychast/Palamite synod
Has as much weight as a Mormon meeting. A group of excommunicated heretics cannot hold a valid council since they must be ratified by the Pope, as per Maximus the Confessors statement.
Jay Dyer is a sedevacantist who turned to EO for the aesthetics. It's no wonder he acts like an Orthodox version of John MacArthur and most learned EO Christians consider him a neophyte who has a vague conception of EO but no real grasp on its scope.
>comedian
Claiming to be a comedian is the only funny thing Jay Dyer has ever said. If the Native Americans gave him a name its meaning would be "He who speaks much yet says little".
People call Jay Dyer dumb just because he goofs around and makes jokes a lot, but when he is seriously discussing theology and philosophy he is obviously very intelligent and well read.
That's where it's a bit more sketchy. He's intelligent enough to understand the implications of positions, and he has a good memory, but I haven't seen proof that he's intelligent enough to address new points on the fly, that he hasn't explicitly researched and rehearsed beforehand.
On the contrary. He lashes out and yells: Listen to me! Y-youre dumb if you don’t agree with me! Here let me make an impression of you to try to distract from the fact that you caught me off guard and I don’t have a scripted answer!
>adress new points on the fly
I'm assuming you mean philosophical points interlocutors make or questions? He gets them all the time and answers them on live streams, it's often open channel.
If you pay attention, there are many times that Jay Dyer doesn't ever actually answer the interlocutor's point directly.
I've listened to him for a long time, and so it took a while for me to notice this pattern, but he does have set responses and set doctrinal scripts that he recites and goes to, in order to "brute force" his listener into accepting what he's saying.
And while what he said may be technically correct in addressing the interlocutor's point, it's clumsy and doesn't play off of what the interlocutor says. He just takes advantage of his place as the talk show host to go on a tirade about his set doctrinal script, and a lot of the time the person is just so out of their element they just accept what he says and follows up what he suggests, even though he isn't treating their question uniquely. In the case of a hostile interlocutor, this just results in them repeating their points without the core of their point being addressed. Sometimes a person is just dumb and repeats themselves, but many times, Jay just ignores what they say, and refutes a point *attached* to their point or question, but not the point or question itself.
2 years ago
Anonymous
After reading your replies It's pretty obvious that you are projecting.
Get a hobby.
>popular comedian
Stopped reading. Into the trash he goes. As a rule, I don't listen to anyone who has ever had a career in show business, because they never have anything of import to say. I haven't been steered wrong so far.
I'm not even Orthodox but it is nice to hear a Christian who actually has a spine and doesn't apologize or try to find "common ground" with atheists by cucking out and accepting evolution or things like that.
Despite Jay's numerous flaws, his videos refuting evolutionism, and stressing the necessity of the literal history of Genesis helped me when I was converting to Christianity. If I thought it was OK to just believe contrary to the bible, then I could just make up whatever else I want - like God making multiple universes, alien worlds with Jesus-incarnations for those different species, other made-up nonsense. There's no point in believing Christianity without actually accepting that it's true - if you wanted to just make stuff up, you would want to go full Theosophy nonsense or something.
Can someone digitally buy the book and crack it to share with us?
Should be trivial, done this once. Calibre + some software to download from google store.
How much more in the case of the clergy and Church of the Romans, which from old until now, as the elder of all the Churches which are under the sun, presides over all? Having surely received this canonically, as well from councils and apostles, as from the princes of the latter [Peter & Paul], and being numbered in their company, she is subject to no writings or issues of synodical documents, on account of the eminence of her pontificate, even as in all these things all are equally subject to her according to sacerdotal law‘
Rome is not subject to synodal decisions, all churches are subject to Rome
>Literally everyone except for Rome has fallen to monothelitism >St Maximus the Confessor praises Rome in staying steadfast to the faith and the canons >Everyone therefore is subject to Rome by necessity of Rome's Orthodox confession of faith, not by any charisma of infallibility
If St Maximus were truly talking about Papal supremacy, then in his conversation with Theodosius, he would have mentioned the necessity of the Pope of the arbiter of accepting doctrine, instead of Theodosius's appeal to the Emperor.
>Theodosius: ‘That document [about monothelitism] has been taken down and thrown out.’
>Maximus: ‘It has been taken down from the stone walls, not however, from rational souls. Let them accept the condemnation of those men which was made public in Rome by the synod by means of both orthodox teaching and canons, and the dividing wall is removed and we will not need encouraging.’
>Theodosius: The synod at Rome was not ratified, because it was held without the order of the emperor.’
>Maximus: ‘If it is the orders of emperors, but not orthodox faith that confirms synods which have been held, accept the synods which were held against the “homoousios,” because they were held at the order of emperors. I mean the first one in Tyre, the second in Antioch, the third in Seleucia, the fourth in Constantinople under the Arian Eudoxius; the fifth in Nicaea in Thrace; the sixth in Sirmium; and after these many years later, the seventh, the second one in Ephesus, at which Dioscorus presided. For the order of emperors convened all of these synods, and nevertheless all of them were condemned on account of the godlessness of the impious teachings that were confirmed by them. Why don’t you reject the one with deposed Paul of Samosata under the holy and blessed Dionysius, pope of Rome and Dionysius of Alexandria, and Gregory the Wonder-Worker, who presided over the same synod, because it was not held on the order of an emperor? What kind of canon declares that only those synods are approved which are convened on the order of emperors, or that generally speaking synods are convened at all on the order of an emperor? The devout canon of the church recognizes those synods as holy and approved which the correctness of their teaching approved. […]
>And Bishop Theodosius said: ‘It is as your say: it is the correctness of the teachings which approves synods.”
Notice, St Maximus appeals to the truth of the faith that ratifies a synod - no mention of the idea that it's Rome that ratifies synods, or that a Pope ratifies synods - which would be the most logical and straightforward refutation, in contradiction to the idea that the Emperor must convene a council to approve it, since the Pope would also be a person with authority to convene a council to it.
He even mentions councils presided over by Popes, and doesn't appeal to Papal authority, when he had the perfect opportunity to!
It's weird seeing an internet link on the back of a book
I don't think you can do a hyperlink on a paperback.
The last book I got from iUniverse was complete shit.
I don’t like Jay Dyer’s theology. Theistic personalism makes very little sense to me. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if theistic personalism were the only option we had — that is, if we could not accept divine simplicity and classical theism — then I would be an atheist. If God is just some Zeus character then there is no reason to accept the Christian God over any of the other thousands of gods out there. This is the same argument that atheists use when arguing against theism in general, not realising that their argument only refutes theistic personalism. However if God is what he says in the Exodus — “I am that I am” — then at once all the atheist arguments are exposed as silly and fraudulent.
Is Jay a theistic personalist? That's strange. I thought he was big on the whole Essence / Energies distinction.
Well from the videos I’ve watched attacking Catholics he always stresses that divine simplicity is a heresy. Is it possible to reject divine simplicity and remain a classical theist?
I've read persuasive articles attempting to reconcile divine simplicity with Palamite essence/energy distinction.
There's a lot of good faith in that history which it would be silly to overlook. But I think Dyer just causes scandal with his uncharitable aggressive attitude.
To say nothing of the rather depressing contradiction between an extremely online zoomer boomer vaporwave youtube film critic larping as orthodox.
I mean, I know it's harsh to accuse him of LARPing, but the Orthodox have historically been against all these crazy modern technological advances.
It's like Jay (and many other online orthodox) can't see that the medium is, in some sense, the message. You're not a desert anchorite. You're some guy with a blog.
Catholicism hasn't really reconciled modernity to itself yet, but there's at least some attempt to do so that isn't as cringeworthy. Some possibility of catching up with history and time.
There's nothing wrong with the Orthodox being on this wavelength of golden byzantine timelessness. It's just... don't try to mesh that with whatever hyper late capitalism e-celeb thing you're trying to do. It's not good (IMO).
>I've read persuasive articles attempting to reconcile divine simplicity with Palamite essence/energy distinction.
Can you send them to me please?
I posted it earlier in the thread. Here:
https://www.academia.edu/26922293/The_Flexibility_of_Divine_Simplicity_Aquinas_Scotus_Palamas_International_Philosophical_Quarterly_57_2_July_2017_123_139
Let me know what you think... but it'll take a while probably, it's pretty dense.
He has an idiosyncratic view that the Thoomistic position is "absolute divine simplicity". In Dyers mind the difference between "Divine Simplicity" and "Absolute Divine Simplicity" is that ADS collapses ALL distinction, including that of the Trinity, into a monad. Now this is of course moronic but it's a core part of Neo-Palamite polemic.
>is that ADS collapses ALL distinction, including that of the Trinity, into a monad.
That would have to be the case if you were to consistently follow the conclusions from the premises, yes.
Yes, your critiques of Jay Dyer's intense worldliness giving away the impression that he treats his faith as a LARP are correct. But, philosophically, he's more sound than other youtube apologists. He's undefeated in debates, not because he's particularly good at debating, but simply because everyone else he has debated is incompetent.
How ironic also that Dyer wins at debates but doesn't seem to practice what he preaches when the (perhaps modern) Orthodox stereotype or distinctive feature is that praxis > intellectual theology (or to give the Orthodox more credit, the position is that intellectual theology, while useful, is nothing without prayer... 'he who prays is a theologian')
Here's the paper I was talking about btw:
https://www.academia.edu/26922293/The_Flexibility_of_Divine_Simplicity_Aquinas_Scotus_Palamas_International_Philosophical_Quarterly_57_2_July_2017_123_139
Yes, that is ironic. Being intellectually correct is good, and a part of the faith, but if it's the only part. Fr. Seraphim Rose did say that "absolutely correct theology" would be part and parcel of the Anti-Christ's fake Orthodoxy
I don't believe that Thomism and the Orthodox teachings that St Gregory Palamas expounds are compatible. Side note - we reject the term "Palamism" since there are no "isms" in Orthodoxy, either someone in Orthodoxy teaches Orthodoxy or they do not.
The only attempts I've seen to try and "reconcile" St Gregory Palamas with Thomism, is simply to ignore the troublesome parts of St. Gregory Palamas's writings, and to subjugate his writings to a Thomist hermeneutic by brute force.
This is particularly clear if you read the Triads in the section where St. Gregory Palamas talks about the uncreated light of Mt. Tabor and how in the Barlaamite(pretty much Thomist) position that this must be a created glory, but that this glory is identified as the glory of God by the Fathers - and also that we will be participating in the Glory of God in the eschaton. If this light is a created light, but something distinct from the human nature (since it is a similar sort of light seen in the Old Testament, seen prior to Christ's incarnation), then Christ must have not two, but three natures - the divine nature, the created divine glory light, and the created human nature, and we will be participating. It's on the back of arguments like these, that he says that the light of Mt. Tabor is in fact the uncreated energies of God, which is the eternal glory of God, that we will participate in, in the eschaton.
* but if it's the only part you care about, that's a problem.
I'm sure this is an old objection, but doesn't it say in the Bible that we can't see God in this life?
How can we see Him before we die?
Obviously (to me) it can't be the same as the beatific vision. So what is it?
I'm not aware of where in the scriptures it says we can't see God in this life, given that this would directly contradict the Old Testament theophanies (Moses seeing God, Isaac wrestling with God, many prophets worshipping the Angel of the Lord [You can't worship created beings, that's idolatry, so the Fathers identify the Angel of the Lord as the pre-incarnateChrist]).
I know that in the Gospel of John, He says that no man has seen God at any time, but they have seen Christ - and in this case, the word "God" is referring to the Father, and often times scripture refers to the Father by the word God, despite the fact we know that both Christ and the Holy Spirit are God by virtue of participating in the same essence. Christ is the one mediator between God(the Father) and man, and this has been true even in the Old Testament times.
Moses saw the back of God. As God Himself said: “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”
There are different interpretations of the episode with Jacob and the angel where he does not see God in His essence:
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-god-can-wrestle-without-a-body
It seems like it is impossible to see the essence of God (the beatific vision) in this life. See the above quote from Exodus.
St. John also says:
"We see now through a glass in a dark manner, but then face to face."
So perhaps even in this life we can see God obscurely, as St. John said, but not in the way that we will see Him in heaven.
But I'd be hard pressed to give you an account of how one could see God, even obscurely. Nevertheless I do think some reconciliation is possible.
The Neo-Palamite synthesis was invented by Lossky. It's 20th Century innovation. Orthodox before that were scholastics
Begone, Jesuit. You'll only fool the ignorant with your lies - people who know their Orthodox Patristics know you're full of shit, especially since countless Athonite and Optina Elders, and local Councils confirmed the doctrine of the direct experience of God by His uncreated energies before Lossky was even born.
This. There are icons and texts talking/imaging about the Divine light and Palamas that predate Lossky for centuries and that just in my smaller Orthodox country.
>That would have to be the case if you were to consistently follow the conclusions from the premises, yes.
Only if you accept Dyers strawman version of Thomism.
Isn't a fundamental proposition of Thomism that there are absolutely no distinctions, precisely because distinction necessarily implies composition in Thomism?
Palamas says the energies transcend the essence, but both are God. That is polytheism. Something cannot transcend and be identical with itself.
This cannot be salvaged with appeals to the Trinity as the Trinity is not analogous to a distinction between Gods essence and activities.
>Palamas says the energies transcend the essence, but both are God. That is polytheism. Something cannot transcend and be identical with itself.
Didn't I already address this in a previous thread, a few weeks ago? You're taking quotes out of context.
If you read what Palamas was writing in context, it's extremely clear that Palamas is talking about this in relation to creatures - that the energies transcend the essence, not ad intra, but ad extra, that creatures can continually participate in the energies, but will never participate in the essence.
I'll even copypaste my prior response:
>>You tried to retreat to the Thomist position.. Saying "from our perspective" means that it's only a logical distinction not a real distinction.
>I'm not appealing to subjectivist nominalism by saying "From our perspective.".
>To demonstrate this, you can clearly see that past events from before our creation completely transcends our experience. We are, by ontological necessity, unable to experience them. However, within the whole context of time since time began, prior moments of time do not transcend the whole context of time, and from the context of persons created prior to us, they are capable of experiencing creation in a state that completely transcends our capacity to experience.
>All of this is completely true, and does not require an appeal to nominalism.
>I'm saying that, from our perspective ontologically, we cannot reach the divine essence. That is, from our ontological position as created beings, the essence of God infinitely transcends the energies of God, which we do experience.
>This is absolutely clear if you read the surrounding context in the Triads a few paragraphs right before what you cited. Surely, you're being intellectually honest enough to look at the whole context of a quote, instead of simply quote mining and ignoring context?
>It is there that St Gregory Palamas cites St Maximus in saying that the Essence infinitely transcends the energies - it is within the context of created beings, and therefore beings bound by time, participating in the uncreated energies of God to the degree that created beings are ontologically capable, since everything that exists must be sustained directly by the energies of God, but cannot participate in them outside of the ontological capacities of their created natures.
>From the ontological position of God, God does not transcend Himself, since God eternally knows His own essence. In exactly the same way that God is undividedly yet distinctly in unity of the three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God is undividedly yet distinctly in unity of three ontological realities: Essence, Person, and Energy.
Maximus the Confessor is in agreement with Aquinas, not Palamas. You're confusing the analogy of being with ontological seperation
>You're confusing the analogy of being with ontological seperation
Are you responding to the right person?
>In exactly the same way that God is undividedly yet distinctly in unity of the three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God is undividedly yet distinctly in unity of three ontological realities: Essence, Person, and Energy
This was already ruled out. You cannot apply the doctrine of the Trinity to create any arbitrary distinction within the godhead you want. The logic of the Trinity does not support God being sliced into pieces to support Palamite theology. Extreme hubris to think the Orthodox have thr right to create a new theology on par with the Trinity.
Remember this all comes from Lossky, its innovation with no basis in past doctrine
>Reaffirmations with no refutations
Many such cases for people who understand in their heart that their false doctrine is completely empty, but are too proud to give it up.
Palamite theology is polytheism. Your only response is to claim that it's a nominal distinction which is wtong because Palamites absolutely stress that the distinction between Essence and Energies must be acknowledged as a REAL distinction, otherwise its heresy. Then they claim that thrle EE is justified by the Trinity whichbit absolutely is not. Its essentially adding in Energies as a fourth hypostasis
Follow Bulgakov, not Lossky.
This is not a response to
Are these propositions and conclusions taken for granted as true in Thomism, or not?
1. Distinction necessarily implies composition.
2. God is absolutely simple, with no parts.
3. There are no distinctions in God, because God has no parts.
Don't dodge the question. Answer yes or no.
Distinction can only be analogically applied to God. You're applying it univocally. Rookie mistake.
>Distinction can only be analogically applied to God.
So then what logically follows is that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are only *analogically* distinct, and not actually distinct persons.
Dyer and American Orthodoxy (Seraphim Rose), come out of this mileu:
>Holy Order of MANS
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Order_of_MANS
>Good channel with a rundown on it:
Dyer is also a "crypto-traditionalist", has ties with dugin going back years to his very beginning, he is an FSB Asset,
How onto the "question" of muh Orthodox vs. muh Catholic, such debate IS pseudhomosexualry so shut up, noone cares, the Trinity painted as a multitude and multiplicity is a determination, the Trinity as an indeterminable ineffable apophatic Monad is not,
Christian theology is as simple as this
Ineffable => Unity => Triadic Unicitiy
In order of determination, Unity is the first, the Triadic Unicity which is really the first actual plurality and multiplicity - but nonetheless Unicity, is the second, the Ineffable is acknowledged by Christians as beyond even the hypostatic relations of Trinity.
Essentialy - Unity in Trinity is the personal God and is firstly the method of purification along with all the archetypes, the Saints, the Mother of God, and then Ineffable Unity is the ends of that purificatory personality,
Also the Christian attitude against demons is also perfectly reasonable, that causes the Christian to go beyond his ego, and beyond reason. Ultimately the byzantine hesychast tradition on Mt. Athos is for me peak Christianity and is actually different from the "Newer" Russian hesychast tradition - as pointed out in the channel above, it has roots in the anchorites, hermeticists, stoics, epicureans, platonists.
False, even then there is still an "ineffability" accounted for which cannot be polytheism, all palamism does is further establish the panentheist position, that God is everything but everything is not God, and that the everything must be viewed as strictly contingent, or that God is unmanifest and indeterminable but "determined" and "manifested" in the sense that God is the essential principle of all manifestation, but never actually enters into that creation, that's all.
The necessary distinction between energies and essence essentialy is palamas reconciling the above, but ultimately the ineffability, and metaphysical infinity of the essence is what is substantiated there,
Essentialy "Energies" are the actualisation of potentials, from potency to act, or substance and is analogous to prakriti, and then the essence is analogous to purusha,
That's what I think palamas was trying to get at.
Take your meds.
No.
He always stresses that ABSOLUTE divine simplicity is a heresy, which is not the same as divine simplicity as understood by Orthodoxy. Absolute Divine Simplicity is where there are no distinctions in God whatsoever, which immediately results in the impossibility to believe in the Apostolic Christian faith, since the true difference of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are required, in order for only the Son to have acquired a Human nature, and for the Father and the Holy Spirit to not have been crucified, since patripassianism is a condemned heresy.
I know that classical theists who identify as Apostolic Christians like to affirm that the three persons are truly ontologically different persons, but this is simply not possible to consistently maintain with so-called "classical theism", and Islam refutations of the Trinity from the position of commitment to Absolute Divine Simplicity are correct.
In Orthodoxy, divine simplicity is retained, since God in the Orthodox understanding is not composed of parts, since the ontological distinctions of essence, person, and activity do not imply division into parts for the uncreated, divine nature.
>since the true difference of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are required
The best way to explain the Trinity is in terms of God's self-knowledge. Just like our minds can reflect about themselves, and create images of themselves, so God's mind does this too, but in a much more perfect way. God knows himself completely. The Father reflects about himself (similar to how we do) and generates the Son, which is the object of his self-reflection. The Father and the Son, beholding each other in their absolute splendour for all eternity, then breathe out a sigh of love, and this sigh is the Holy Ghost.
So the Father is the knower, the Son is the object of this knowledge, and the Holy Ghost is the sigh of self-love that God releases beholding himself.
Is God's self-knowledge identical to his love? Yes. His goodness? Yes. His mercy? yes. His justice? Yes.
So God is absolutely simple, yet is three persons.
If I'm not mistaken, that conception of the trinity is Augustinian, correct?
My 'Thomistic' picture of it is that the persons of the trinity are relations.
Just as the road from Thebes to Athens may slope up, although the road from Athens to Thebes may slope down. They are the same road, just considered as different relations.
I'm not pitting St. Augustine and St. Thomas against each other. I just think the roads thing also works to (sort of) understand what must ultimately remain the most ineffable mystery.
Yes it is a relation. The knower (father), object known (the Son), and the act of self-knowledge (the Holy Ghost). That's how Thomists describe it.
The ironic thing is if God is absolutely simple and self-referential, as classical theists claim, then the Trinity is almost a necessary implication of this view. Of course it would be hard to see without revelation, but putting all the pieces together it makes perfect sense. That's why that anon is so wrong to say divine simplicity contradicts the Trinity. No, divine simplicity implies the Trinity.
>So the Father is the knower, the Son is the object of this knowledge, and the Holy Ghost is the sigh of self-love that God releases beholding himself.
This makes it sound like the three persons are not in fact three persons, but simply three aspects of one person.
We reject this idea - and say that the Father eternally begets the Son, and eternally spirates the Spirit, as two distinct modes of eternal causation. Then, the Father and Son share in selfless love of the Spirit, The Son and Spirit share in selfless love of the Father, and the Father and the Spirit share in selfless love of the Son. None of them love themselves selfishly, since they all perfectly share in selfless love with each other.
In your scheme, this implies at least two (mutually exclusive) problems:
1. If the Holy Spirit is exclusively the sigh of love between the Son and the Father, the Holy Spirit Himself remains eternally unloved.
2. If God is truly a single subject, and his self-knowledge is identical to love, then this would mean that the eternal love of God is an eternal egotistical self-love. If this is attempted to be solved by self-dividing the subject in reflection, like you mentioned, then this is a schizophrenic self-love, where parts of the self remain unloved due to one of those parts being the love itself, as I mentioned in the above example.
On reflection, the problems are not necessarily mutually exclusive since I encapsulated the first point in the second point.
Not him, but I would reply that the relations of the persons in God are reflected in the structure of human consciousness, not identical to it.
The soul is like the Father. Self-consciousness is like the Son. The natural love between self and self-image is like the Holy Spirit.
But these are shadows of the reality of God.
God also said "It is not good for man to be alone."
God is not someone who only thinks about Himself. Rather, the structure of our subjectivity simply bears His image in a special way.
The same is true of our communities, of the love between friends or between man and wife.
In conjugal love and in human communities, something is generated which is greater than the some of its parts. This too is a reflection of the trinity. But the image is not identical with the original.
Sure, and as a created icon of understanding the trinity, I can understand its application, and the limits of created hints towards God's triune nature. The pedagogical use of images and icons is not in question here.
But the question is about explicit metaphysical doctrines about the reality of the three persons of the Godhead: Are the persons truly distinct persons, or not? Are they simply "aspects" of one thing that loves itself, where all of these aspects are ultimately metaphysically self-identical?
I haven't seen these answered to any satisfactory degree.
I think the position is that they're distinct persons, not aspects of one being. A person is not three persons. God is.
>three aspects of one person.
It's not it's the act of God's self-love and self-knowledge understood completely. When you think about yourself, you create an image in your mind as to who you are, right? Since we are not perfect we can create false images, eg. I could think I am smarter and better-looking than I really am. But with God this act of self-knowledge is perfect. He knows himself completely. The Father contemplates himself and generates an "image" of himself, which is the Son, and the Holy Spirit is this act of self-knowledge and self-love. The Trinity is a relation of persons, and these persons are identical to the divine essence, which is absolutely One.
So the doctrine of the Trinity is a necessary implication of classical theism; it doesn't contradict it.
>If God is truly a single subject, and his self-knowledge is identical to love, then this would mean that the eternal love of God is an eternal egotistical self-love. If this is attempted to be solved by self-dividing the subject in reflection, like you mentioned, then this is a schizophrenic self-love, where parts of the self remain unloved due to one of those parts being the love itself, as I mentioned in the above example.
It's not "egotistical" in the human sense because God is the ultimate metaphysical principle, ground and source of all goodness and being and love. There is nothing better to contemplate than himself. I don't know about the Holy Ghost being unloved, but I don't see what's wrong with me saying God loves his own love. He is Love itself.
aspects of one person.
>It's not
Okay, time to see the explanation for how it isn't
>it's the act of God's self-love and self-knowledge understood completely. When you think about yourself, you create an image in your mind as to who you are, right? Since we are not perfect we can create false images, eg. I could think I am smarter and better-looking than I really am. But with God this act of self-knowledge is perfect. He knows himself completely. The Father contemplates himself and generates an "image" of himself, which is the Son, and the Holy Spirit is this act of self-knowledge and self-love. The Trinity is a relation of persons, and these persons are identical to the divine essence, which is absolutely One.
I'm sorry, but I'm not seeing anything here that would actually imply that the Holy Spirit and the Son are actually distinct persons, if the Son is a self-image(an image of which self? Only the Father is mentioned here.) and the Holy Spirt is self-love(the love of which self? Only the Father - or the self-love of the Father between the Father and his Self-Image)
Even if I were to ignore these problems, and grant that these propositions somehow did provide an explanation for the existence of the three persons, then the Holy Spirit remains unloved.
>I don't see what's wrong with me saying God loves his own love.
It's quite simple: With which love would God love his own love?
That would mean that the Holy Spirit would have to love itself. This self-relation of love the Holy Spirit to itself to the Holy Spirit wasn't mentioned above, but then there would be no way for the Father to love the Spirit.
However, if the spirit's love of itself is a self-love, then how does the Father love the Spirit? The Spirit does not need the Father to love itself, if it itself is love. This poses two problems: In one case, the Spirit needs to generate another Spirit-Son-image, and the love between its own Spirit-Son-Image and the Spirit would be a Spirit-Spirit, but then this Spirit-Spirit needs to self-love somehow... You get an infinite regress of self-image in order for the persons to self-love, if they were to truly be distinct persons.
In the other case, the Spirit does not need a Spirit in order to self-love. In that case, why does the Father need the Spirit to self-love? That would imply that the Father is simply deficient, whereas the Spirit is not deficient, fully self-sufficient as a person, whereas the Father is reliant on the Spirit to love Himself, and the Son.
Well the Father and Son aren’t different persons in the same sense as you and I are different persons. They have a single united will, we have different wills. They have the same essence. They have the same knowledge. They are totally united in love. What you seem to be doing is appealing to your intuition of personhood in the human sense and applying it to God. I don’t think it has to be that way, and I still think the analogy of self-knowledge is the best way of articulating the Trinity without sounding like a polytheist.
As for the Holy Ghost being unloved, I don’t have a good answer now because I’ve never thought about this. But still I maintain that it is possible for me to love my own self-love. And if God is love itself, as absolute divine simplicity teaches, then clearly there is never a shortage of love in God.
>Well the Father and Son aren’t different persons in the same sense as you and I are different persons. They have a single united will, we have different wills. They have the same essence. They have the same knowledge. They are totally united in love.
Yes, I agree with these propositions on the face of it. The nature of that unity is understood differently in Orthodoxy, to the point that the internal love of God is never considered a self-love, since their eternal love is both shared and selfless, like explicated here.
>Then, the Father and Son share in selfless love of the Spirit, The Son and Spirit share in selfless love of the Father, and the Father and the Spirit share in selfless love of the Son. None of them love themselves selfishly, since they all perfectly share in selfless love with each other.
After all, it's self-love that we're trying to overcome with our lives of asceticism. The Fathers & Ascetics are unanimous on the necessity to kill the passion of self-love, and replacing it with the virtues of selflessly loving God, and selflessly loving others. If God Himself has self-love, then what hope do we have to overcome our own self-love?
Also I want to say that your personalist (I won’t say Orthodox; there are Orthodoc such as David Bentley Hart who accept absolute divine simplicity) understanding of God and the Trinity makes no sense. It sounds like you’re saying the Father just arbitrarily generates the Son and Spirit “just because” which isn’t a good answer. At least from the perspective of absolute divine simplicity you can give a satisfactory account of God and the Trinity.
Also if God is just a personality then what priority does the Christian God have over Zeus and all the thousands of personalist Gods that have been worshipped throughout history? If God is just a personality, then his actions are subservient to the principles which drive him, such as Goodness and Mercy and Love etc.. But if God IS Goodness and Mercy and Love and Being then he retains complete freedom. This is why classical theism is so much superior to personalism.
DBH believes condemned heresies. Stop propping him up as an exemplar of Orthodoxy.
Calling him Orthodox would be as dishonest as calling Reinhard Marx Catholic, when he explicitly says that Catholic social teaching is identical to and reliant on Karl Marx.
I didn’t prop him up as an exemplar I merely cited him as an example of an Eastern Orthodox who believes absolute divine simplicity. I’m sympathetic to Hart’s universalism, though, so I’m interested to see where you think it’s been “condemned”?
>I’m sympathetic to Hart’s universalism, though, so I’m interested to see where you think it’s been “condemned”?
It was condemned along with all facets of Origenism at the 5th ecumenical council, and specifically anathematized those who believe the torments of hell have an end. The only ‘universalists’ in Orthodoxy that have slipped through are St. Isaac the Syrian and *maybe* St. Gregory of Nyssa, but we can find passages which seem to support either interpretation. And even then, just because some saint believed it doesn’t make it true. They are far outside of the consensus of the Fathers. Anything more than Kallistos Ware’s ‘hopeful universalism’ is nonsense.
>‘hopeful universalism’
Is this similar to the Catholic Balthasar's "dare we hope" thing?
I believe that his idea is that, because the prayer and liturgy asks for the salvation of all men, it may not be impious to hope (in the sense of wish, not EXPECT) that all men be saved.
Yeah, that’s exactly what it is. I admit though as well that I am sympathetic towards that sort of view, but what the Bible says doesn’t let one get too far with such views.
I sort of take St. Augustine's tack and say that whatever interpretation of scripture makes for the greatest charity is the one which we should follow.
I think that before the 20th century, the idea that most were in hell served somehow to make people more loving. Now the idea just enervates us. I don't personally hold to universalism, but I do hope that everyone I know accepts God's love.
I also have the idea (perhaps borrowed from St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross) that, just as all men irresistibly sin, yet are still culpable, perhaps Christ's love is so efficacious that it draws all men to loving Him, yet with a necessity that is as efficacious yet as virtual as the power of sin. For goodness is more powerful than evil.
>I also have the idea (perhaps borrowed from St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross) that, just as all men irresistibly sin, yet are still culpable, perhaps Christ's love is so efficacious that it draws all men to loving Him, yet with a necessity that is as efficacious yet as virtual as the power of sin. For goodness is more powerful than evil.
That said, this view could easily lead to indolence, so maybe it's best not to entertain it.
>DBH believes condemned heresies
To be fair so does anyone who accepts the E/E distinction
E/E is implicitly affirmed in the ecumenical councils and has been excplicitly affirmed in the so-called Hesychast/Palamite synods, Jesuit.
>E/E is implicitly affirmed in the ecumenical councils
No it is not.
Pic. If no e/e distinction, no need to enumerate both the essence and the energy for both natures.
I thought I was responding to someone who was trying to tell me that E/E was condemned in Orthodoxy. If you're Catholic, then I don't care what you consider to be condemned or not.
Pic somehow didn't upload.
>has been excplicitly affirmed in the so-called Hesychast/Palamite synod
Has as much weight as a Mormon meeting. A group of excommunicated heretics cannot hold a valid council since they must be ratified by the Pope, as per Maximus the Confessors statement.
Jay Dyer is a sedevacantist who turned to EO for the aesthetics. It's no wonder he acts like an Orthodox version of John MacArthur and most learned EO Christians consider him a neophyte who has a vague conception of EO but no real grasp on its scope.
>he acts like an Orthodox version of John MacArthur
what do you mean
One who says much while saying nothing at all.
Jay makes a lot of good points. He is always very clear and precise with what he means.
>He is always very clear and precise with what he means.
lol okay jay
Every grifter pseud thinks they can write books now.
Yeah books should be outlawed to prevent pseuds from publishing absolute garbage.
Easier just to restrict literacy.
Just like the ones who couldn't stand it when God went silent after Malachi. Ecclesiastes 12:12, "of making many books, there is no end".
>the popular comedian
>is an armchair theologian
of course
Dyer is a moron
>comedian
Claiming to be a comedian is the only funny thing Jay Dyer has ever said. If the Native Americans gave him a name its meaning would be "He who speaks much yet says little".
Not Orthodox but Jay Dyer is very based and he makes midwits, atheists, catholics, gnostics, and liberals seethe.
People call Jay Dyer dumb just because he goofs around and makes jokes a lot, but when he is seriously discussing theology and philosophy he is obviously very intelligent and well read.
He has a fantastic memory and his mind is quick as well.
I don't understand why Jay Dyer makes this board so angry, yet they worship boring midwits like Jordan Peterson or Karl Marx.
>IQfy is one person
cool looking cover
Even if you don't like Jay's personality, you have to admit that he is very philosophically well read and intelligent tbh anons
>intelligent
pseudo
He knows what he is talking about
most of what he is talking about is pseud so it's a pseud souffle
not true
No I don’t
Yes you do!!
He has done videos specifically against Calvinism
Well-read I'll admit, but intelligent?
That's where it's a bit more sketchy. He's intelligent enough to understand the implications of positions, and he has a good memory, but I haven't seen proof that he's intelligent enough to address new points on the fly, that he hasn't explicitly researched and rehearsed beforehand.
On the contrary. He lashes out and yells: Listen to me! Y-youre dumb if you don’t agree with me! Here let me make an impression of you to try to distract from the fact that you caught me off guard and I don’t have a scripted answer!
>On the contrary.
What are you contradicting?
That he can address points on the fly
Read the original post you responded to again.
>adress new points on the fly
I'm assuming you mean philosophical points interlocutors make or questions? He gets them all the time and answers them on live streams, it's often open channel.
If you pay attention, there are many times that Jay Dyer doesn't ever actually answer the interlocutor's point directly.
I've listened to him for a long time, and so it took a while for me to notice this pattern, but he does have set responses and set doctrinal scripts that he recites and goes to, in order to "brute force" his listener into accepting what he's saying.
And while what he said may be technically correct in addressing the interlocutor's point, it's clumsy and doesn't play off of what the interlocutor says. He just takes advantage of his place as the talk show host to go on a tirade about his set doctrinal script, and a lot of the time the person is just so out of their element they just accept what he says and follows up what he suggests, even though he isn't treating their question uniquely. In the case of a hostile interlocutor, this just results in them repeating their points without the core of their point being addressed. Sometimes a person is just dumb and repeats themselves, but many times, Jay just ignores what they say, and refutes a point *attached* to their point or question, but not the point or question itself.
After reading your replies It's pretty obvious that you are projecting.
Get a hobby.
???
It's weird seeing an internet link on the back of a book
Jay is a crypto Calvinist boomer
More like Gay Die-r
>popular comedian
Stopped reading. Into the trash he goes. As a rule, I don't listen to anyone who has ever had a career in show business, because they never have anything of import to say. I haven't been steered wrong so far.
I'm not even Orthodox but it is nice to hear a Christian who actually has a spine and doesn't apologize or try to find "common ground" with atheists by cucking out and accepting evolution or things like that.
Despite Jay's numerous flaws, his videos refuting evolutionism, and stressing the necessity of the literal history of Genesis helped me when I was converting to Christianity. If I thought it was OK to just believe contrary to the bible, then I could just make up whatever else I want - like God making multiple universes, alien worlds with Jesus-incarnations for those different species, other made-up nonsense. There's no point in believing Christianity without actually accepting that it's true - if you wanted to just make stuff up, you would want to go full Theosophy nonsense or something.
Can someone digitally buy the book and crack it to share with us?
Should be trivial, done this once. Calibre + some software to download from google store.
No, I don't buy Protestants.
How much more in the case of the clergy and Church of the Romans, which from old until now, as the elder of all the Churches which are under the sun, presides over all? Having surely received this canonically, as well from councils and apostles, as from the princes of the latter [Peter & Paul], and being numbered in their company, she is subject to no writings or issues of synodical documents, on account of the eminence of her pontificate, even as in all these things all are equally subject to her according to sacerdotal law‘
Rome is not subject to synodal decisions, all churches are subject to Rome
t. Maximus the Confessor
[citation needed]
https://archive.org/details/a620530200chapuoft/page/26/mode/2up
>Literally everyone except for Rome has fallen to monothelitism
>St Maximus the Confessor praises Rome in staying steadfast to the faith and the canons
>Everyone therefore is subject to Rome by necessity of Rome's Orthodox confession of faith, not by any charisma of infallibility
If St Maximus were truly talking about Papal supremacy, then in his conversation with Theodosius, he would have mentioned the necessity of the Pope of the arbiter of accepting doctrine, instead of Theodosius's appeal to the Emperor.
>Theodosius: ‘That document [about monothelitism] has been taken down and thrown out.’
>Maximus: ‘It has been taken down from the stone walls, not however, from rational souls. Let them accept the condemnation of those men which was made public in Rome by the synod by means of both orthodox teaching and canons, and the dividing wall is removed and we will not need encouraging.’
>Theodosius: The synod at Rome was not ratified, because it was held without the order of the emperor.’
>Maximus: ‘If it is the orders of emperors, but not orthodox faith that confirms synods which have been held, accept the synods which were held against the “homoousios,” because they were held at the order of emperors. I mean the first one in Tyre, the second in Antioch, the third in Seleucia, the fourth in Constantinople under the Arian Eudoxius; the fifth in Nicaea in Thrace; the sixth in Sirmium; and after these many years later, the seventh, the second one in Ephesus, at which Dioscorus presided. For the order of emperors convened all of these synods, and nevertheless all of them were condemned on account of the godlessness of the impious teachings that were confirmed by them. Why don’t you reject the one with deposed Paul of Samosata under the holy and blessed Dionysius, pope of Rome and Dionysius of Alexandria, and Gregory the Wonder-Worker, who presided over the same synod, because it was not held on the order of an emperor? What kind of canon declares that only those synods are approved which are convened on the order of emperors, or that generally speaking synods are convened at all on the order of an emperor? The devout canon of the church recognizes those synods as holy and approved which the correctness of their teaching approved. […]
>And Bishop Theodosius said: ‘It is as your say: it is the correctness of the teachings which approves synods.”
Notice, St Maximus appeals to the truth of the faith that ratifies a synod - no mention of the idea that it's Rome that ratifies synods, or that a Pope ratifies synods - which would be the most logical and straightforward refutation, in contradiction to the idea that the Emperor must convene a council to approve it, since the Pope would also be a person with authority to convene a council to it.
He even mentions councils presided over by Popes, and doesn't appeal to Papal authority, when he had the perfect opportunity to!
Source: https://au1lib.org/book/867151/9aae49 , page 89.