Very quickly, in relation to 1 Samuel 15: 10-11 Melito of Sardis sees God's 'regret' as a 'change of His procedure' rather than a change within God himself.
Tertullian saw it in terms of a judgement against Saul's character rather than any self-recrimination on God's part.
St Augustine, Luther's friend and ours, maintained that God's 'repentance' did not negate his foreknowledge but was a change in how humanity expects God to act. In this sense God acts contrary to our expectations.
Which is pretty much in line with what Lamb Chopped wrote, I think.
I’ve read a fair bit so far but no obvious summary link I can refer to.
My reading so far tells me the following things.
1. Belief in impassibility was universal in the writings of Fathers from the beginning of the third century to the 5th and the 6th Century. One might say it was a given.
2. So far I’ve not found a reading which says why they believe that.
3. But because of this belief, any scriptures which state or imply that God is not impassible must not be taken literally. Such scriptures must at best teach some deeper spiritual message.
The evidence suggests that belief in divine impassibility was a presupposition drawn at least in part from the arguments of the Greek philosophers. Particularly Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics. Those arguments use the concepts of perfection, immutability, self sufficiency and freedom from irrational emotional impulses. They are arguments from reason.
Philo of Alexandria, a 1st Century Hellenistic Jew, wrote a treatise seeking to harmonise the Hebrew Bible with Greek Philosophy. His view of the Hebrew Bible was that where scriptures could be found which did not harmonise with these concepts the scriptures should not be taken literally. There could be no harmonisation otherwise.
Philo of Alexandria, a 1st Century Hellenistic Jew, wrote a treatise seeking to harmonise the Hebrew Bible with Greek Philosophy. His view of the Hebrew Bible was that where scriptures could be found which did not harmonise with these concepts the scriptures should not be taken literally. There could be no harmonisation otherwise.
This is where I get hung up, I think. I guess just don’t see any reason why Greek philosophy should have that authority.
I’m not saying at all that Greek philosophy should be ignored or rejected. But I see no reason to give it the kind of primacy this seems to be suggesting, and I see what to me, at least, are compelling reasons not to.
Philo of Alexandria, a 1st Century Hellenistic Jew, wrote a treatise seeking to harmonise the Hebrew Bible with Greek Philosophy. His view of the Hebrew Bible was that where scriptures could be found which did not harmonise with these concepts the scriptures should not be taken literally. There could be no harmonisation otherwise.
This is where I get hung up, I think. I guess just don’t see any reason why Greek philosophy should have that authority.
I’m not saying at all that Greek philosophy should be ignored or rejected. But I see no reason to give it the kind of primacy this seems to be suggesting, and I see what to me, at least, are compelling reasons not to.
Yes, this is my problem too. I can see why they did it, in the wreck of Rome and facing the need to preserve whatever learning they could--and it WAS the equivalent of the most up-to-date science they had. But from this vantage point there's no reason to go on giving it such a high place that we make the very Scripture bow to it (" where scriptures could be found which did not harmonise with these concepts the scriptures should not be taken literally.").
There are two different theologies that come to mind here, one is the classical way of thinking.
To use Gamma's statement
God is love. That love is unchanging.
A classical theologian would say something like this illustration
God's love is like a burning white light. It never changes. But when that light passes through the prism of human history, it refracts into different colors. Mercy, judgement patience, grief, joy. The colors change because we change, not because God does.
Another way of looking at it is God's love is like the sun. It shines with constant unchanging radiance. But the experience of that light changes depending on where you stand.
In winter, it feels distant.
In summer, it feels warm.
In a desert, it feels harsh.
In a garden, it feels life giving.
The sun has not changed, your position has.
I would answer God's essence is love, but love is inherently relational. Love is not a static perfection but a relational energy.
If God truly loves the world, then Godis open to the world, responsive to the world and changed by the world. God is not changed in divine goodness, but in divine experience. God is unchanging in love, but ever-changing in how that love is felt, expressed, and experienced in how the world unfolds.
When I was in seminary there was a short book entitled Water Buffalo Theology written by Kosuke Koyama (1974). In it he explained Buddhist always had trouble with the Christian God because our God seems so angry, so hot. They valued detachment, coolness.
The reason why I think our God seems so angry is because of the impact of the world's suffering and injustice on God's loving nature.
Our God's anger is not the loss of control, it is not an irrational passion, it is love encountering what destroys life.
Classical theology says God is perfect because God cannot change. The way I look at it is God is perfect because God responds perfectly, pefect empathy, perfect receptivity, perfect solidarity, perfect creativity offering new possibilities.
For me God's love is not stagnant. God's love is not detached. God's love is not cool. God's love is alive.
Going back to the classical illustration of the sun, we know now that the sun is constantly changing. We have solar flares, magnetic storms, convectional currents. It is in constant motion. While we see it as a star of a certain mass, composition and gravitational structure we know it is dynamic.
The "flux" of the sun becomes a metaphor for the flus of divine experience.
God is like the sun: constant in identity, dynamic in life. The sun's storms don't make it imperfect; they reveal its vitality. Likewise, God's dynamic responsiveness is not weakness but the living expression of perfect love engaging in a changing world.
Something I've thought about a bit lately, because of recent life, is that emotions aren't removed from logic. Emotions have their own logic. And I think the idea that God can't have feelings is yoked to the idea that feelings are just "irrational," even "effeminate." And that's to me some bullshit. I think men especially disregard and even mutilate themselves when they disregard the logic that goes along with feelings, or maybe that was just me.
In that sense, it's no insult to God to say that God has feelings. I think it's plenty sensible to say God has feelings. To posit an emotionless God is to posit no God at all, but a clock. And if you think God is effectively a clock, you might as well be an atheist, and I mean that with no disrespect to atheists. It's a valid worldview, just not mine at the moment.
I agree the significant influence of Greek philosophy is an issue. As I said earlier it was an issue for Martin Luther. But it seems to be what we’ve got. I’m pretty sure @Gamma Gamaliel said as much.
And to be fair to the early Church Fathers. As the evidence of their writings makes clear they were highly intelligent, imaginative and creative members of a culture which was significantly affected by Greek philosophy. They accepted the authority of scripture but not necessarily in the same way the Reformers did. Without the formative and clarifying work of the Ecumenical Councils, I’m not sure Christianity would have survived. And a very great deal of Christian understanding today owes much to that work. Whatever our views of their intellectual influences I feel that the grace of God was at work in their often ferociously argumentative cogitations. Trinitarian belief and the understanding of the fully divine fully human Christ were not the only concepts around in the diversities of understanding in various segments of the early church history. That’s they became authoritative is a blessing.
Early church history was argumentative! That’s a fact.
On a different tack, I much appreciated Bullfrog’s post and Gramps49’s observation that Love is a relational energy.
Secondly, I'd suggest that Luther didn't have as much of a downer on the classical and Hellenistic influences within Christianity as @Barnabas62 suggests. He accepted the hypostatic union for a kick-off and that came from the 'Greek Fathers' of course.
What Luther was railing against it seems to me was late medieval accretions and developments to the Patristic witness.
As an Orthodox Christian I wouldn't posit some kind of 'seperation' between scripture and Tradition in the way @Lamb Chopped appears to do. As if the scriptures were there and all fine and dandy in a 'stand-alone' way until the Fathers came along and submitted them to Hellenistic and classical thought.
We can see Hellenistic influences on the way John frames the concept of the Logos in his Gospel for instance. Hebraic ways of thinking are very evident in the Epistle of James.
Both/and.
I'd also suggest that Lamb Chopped is coming at this from a very 'Western' view of history. The Roman Empire in the West collapsed in the 5th century. It continued in the East until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.
It wasn't a case of the early Fathers rescuing classical learning from the ruins of Rome - although monasteries did do that to some extent in the Christian West.
There were also some egregious instances of the destruction of libraries and classical texts in the Christian East although historians argue about the extent of that.
If we are not careful we can look at these things through individual or sectional telescopes rather than through binoculars.
From where I'm sitting, @Lamb Chopped, @Nick Tamen and @Barnabas62 are all looking through a 'Western' telescope which is rather 'Latin-centric' and 'Rome/Reformation-centric'.
@Gramps49 seems to be offering more of a 'bridge' or binocular view on this issue.
Me? Well I have adopted the 'Greek' telescope to some extent but as someone who has moved that way from a 'Western' Christian background I hope I can also offer a binocular view, however partially.
In a different context one of the Popes described Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy as the twin-lungs of the Church.
Like all analogies this will only take us so far of course and Protestants might say, 'Hey! What about us?'
But the point is that if we combine Hebraic and Hellenistic perspectives, if we combine 'Latin and Greek' perspectives, 'Western and Eastern' perspectives we can achieve a binocular view.
I'm still not convinced that @Barnabas62 and others have fully grasped my position on these issues - because I'm not sure I always articulate them clearly enough and also because they are using telescopes and not binoculars.
😉
It's not that Philo of Alexandria has the 'definitive' take on these things, or St Augustine of Hippo, or Martin Luther, or Jean Calvin or St John Chrysostom or Hildegard of Bingen or St Nina Equal-To-The-Apostles or St Hilda of Whitby or Gamma Gamaliel or Uncle Tom Cobleigh and All ...
It's a collegial and conciliar process. A binocular not a telescopic one.
Re Martin Luther, you’re certainly right about his disputes with the writings of the medieval scholastics. And he certainly accepted Trinitarian and two natures beliefs.
And you’re probably right that his positions were more nuanced than I’ve summarised. He was a complex, interesting, sometimes self-contradictory man.
Sure, although to complicate matters, we Orthodox would say that Luther, and more particularly Calvin, were 'in line' with late medieval Scholasticism to a great extent.
That doesn't mean that there aren't overlaps and points-of-contact between Lutheran, Reformed and Orthodox theology. There are, of course, but we would argue that they are coming at things from a Western and 'Latin' perspective that we don't share - hence how RCs and Protestants on the one hand (two sides of the same coin from an 'Eastern' perspective) and Orthodox on the other end up 'talking past' each other on many issues.
But we need binoculars rather than telescopes ourselves.
I've learned a lot about Lutheran and Reformed perspectives here on the Ship, for instance. But if I wanted to really get 'under the skin' of these traditions I'd be better advised to read Luther and Calvin and perspectives from the respective traditions that drew from them than reading something from 'outside' those traditions - such as RC or Orthodox responses.
Those non-Lutheran and non-Reformed perspectives might be useful and may even provide valuable 'correctives' but wouldn't be the same as going to the source material from within those traditions themselves.
We've all got a shared heritage in pre-Schism and pre-Reformation/Post-Reformation Christianity and although I have come down on one side of the fence, I still take a 'paleo-orthodox' approach to some extent - ie. anything pre-Schism, both 'Western' and 'Eastern' is fine, it's what happened in the West after that which can be problematic.
That's not to write off everything that happened post-1054 in Western Europe.
Nor is it to say that everything that happened in the Christian East was squeaky-clean - the 'Massacre of The Latins' anyone?
I'll come back to the Reformed tradition another time, but elements of Lutheranism resonate strongly with the Orthodox - 'Christus Victor', what our Lutheran friends here have posted about 'fiery love' if I can put it that way, and so on.
Indeed, the Wesleyan 'warmth' is another 'Western' tradition/emphasis we'd recognise as common ground, and that was very much kindled by influences from Lutheran pietism.
I often think of Bach's music as exemplifying the 'best' of Lutheran influence, if I can put it that way. It's highly formal and 'controlled' but equally remarkably inventive, dynamic and has the capacity to move mind, heart and soul (as it were).
I can't stress enough that the 'classic' Patristic emphasis on divine 'impassibility' does not make God into some kind of robotic algorithm.
Anything but.
It is perhaps no accident that the 14th century controversy between the RCs and the Orthodox over the Divine 'essence/energies' was wrapped up with disagreements over hesychasm and claims that the Byzantine hesychasts could sometimes perceived God's 'Uncreated Light'.
Our God is a consuming fire.
It's perhaps time I started the promised (threatened? ) new thread on the 'essence/energies' distinction as I feel that is pertinent to the 'passible'/'impassible' debate but may be worth a thread of its own.
A not necessarily related thought but, like many, I deeply regret the dramatic and self-contradictory change in Luther’s attitude towards Jews. “On the Jews and their Lies” stands in stark contrast to his earlier “Jesus Christ was a Jew”. Given its later use by National Socialism (Naziism) it bears some responsibility for later 20th century horrors as well as whatever damage it did in his own time. “On the Jews and their Lies” is very horrid and has been denounced by the Lutheran Church.
A classic illustration of the truth that those capable of great insight may also be guilty of great and damaging prejudice.
Re Patristic emphasis on divine impassibility I accept that it does not present God as a robotic algorithm. That doesn’t invalidate the criticism by Bullfrog re implicit connections with earlier views of the irrationality of feelings.
From where I'm sitting, @Lamb Chopped, @Nick Tamen and @Barnabas62 are all looking through a 'Western' telescope which is rather 'Latin-centric' and 'Rome/Reformation-centric'.
I’m not sure one can get much more “Western” than Greek philosophy, the Greeks being considered the source of so-called “Western Civilization.”
(And yes, I’m aware this doesn’t fit easily with the traditional East-West church division.)
And it would seem to me no more surprising that we tend to look through a Reformation-centric, or at least Reformation-influenced, lens than it is that you’re employing an Orthodox-centric/Orthodox-influenced lens.
And to be fair to the early Church Fathers. As the evidence of their writings makes clear they were highly intelligent, imaginative and creative members of a culture which was significantly affected by Greek philosophy. They accepted the authority of scripture but not necessarily in the same way the Reformers did.
Of course Greek philosophy was an influence. As has been noted, John draws on Greek philosophy heavily in his Gospel, and it certainly came into play in the Councils, too. The NT arose in a world influenced by Greek philosophy heavily
But I wasn’t expressing discomfort with the idea of influence of Greek philosophy. I was expressing discomfort with the bolded here;
Philo of Alexandria, a 1st Century Hellenistic Jew, wrote a treatise seeking to harmonise the Hebrew Bible with Greek Philosophy. His view of the Hebrew Bible was that where scriptures could be found which did not harmonise with these concepts the scriptures should not be taken literally. There could be no harmonisation otherwise.
It’s unavoidable that we all bring our predispositions and assumptions to biblical texts. And I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that. But why, in considering the Hebrew Scriptures/OT, should Greek philosophy carry more weight than, say, the Hebrew/Near Eastern philosophy/philosophies and understandings of the people who actually wrote the Hebrew Scriptures/OT, the understandings that are actually behind the text? That’s where I see a problem.
Nor does it obviate what I've said about us not having to subscribe to ancient or classical forms of anthropology in order to accept the 'classic' view on divine 'impassibility'.
Heck, Martin Luther seems to have accepted it. He may have challenged other aspects of inherited Christian tradition but he doesn't appear to have challenged that one. Yes, he did posit a 'hidden God' supremely revealed through the Cross of Christ, but he doesn't appear to have 'innovated' on traditional Christology, the hypostatic union or 'divine impassibility' as understood in late medieval terms.
Perhaps my new thread on the Palamite distinction between God's essence and energies may help?
A not necessarily related thought but, like many, I deeply regret the dramatic and self-contradictory change in Luther’s attitude towards Jews. “On the Jews and their Lies” stands in stark contrast to his earlier “Jesus Christ was a Jew”. Given its later use by National Socialism (Naziism) it bears some responsibility for later 20th century horrors as well as whatever damage it did in his own time. “On the Jews and their Lies” is very horrid and has been denounced by the Lutheran Church.
A classic illustration of the truth that those capable of great insight may also be guilty of great and damaging prejudice.
Antisemitism has a long and inglorious history going way back. We can see it in some of the 'sub-apostolic fathers' and indeed some potential sources in the pages of the New Testament if not 'balanced out' sufficiently.
St John Chrysostom was also particularly egregious in this respect.
Luther was by no means unique and like all of us a product of his time.
I've come across populist RC and Orthodox polemics that make Luther responsible for the Nazis, the Holocaust and destructive forms of later Lutheran liberal theology and all manner of evils besides.
I think that's pushing things too far but as the old Russian proverb has it, 'Greatness casts a long shadow.'
Luther was certainly a remarkable figure and had great insights from a Western theological perspective.
Some of his views resonate with Eastern Christian insights - including a propensity towards Antisemitism which has bedevilled the Christian East.
There are more positive echoes and parallels of course, but I can't see the Orthodox making him a Saint anytime soon ... 😉
Nor does it obviate what I've said about us not having to subscribe to ancient or classical forms of anthropology in order to accept the 'classic' view on divine 'impassibility'.
No, it doesn’t.
I’m going to be honest, @Gamma Gamaliel. I’m struggling to figure out exactly what’s going on in, what you want to accomplish. I certainly may be wrong, and I apologize in advance if I am, but I’m starting to feel like the goal is to have us all say “yes, Orthodoxy is right.”
Perhaps my new thread on the Palamite distinction between God's essence and energies may help?
It’s unavoidable that we all bring our predispositions and assumptions to biblical texts. And I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that. But why, in considering the Hebrew Scriptures/OT, should Greek philosophy carry more weight than, say, the Hebrew/Near Eastern philosophy/philosophies and understandings of the people who actually wrote the Hebrew Scriptures/OT, the understandings that are actually behind the text? That’s where I see a problem.
I agree.
Did you see my reference to Abraham Heschel in an earlier clip?
It’s a long quote but probably worth repeating in full.
As far as Old Testament theology goes, the Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel has been particularly influential. Originally in his 1936 dissertation and later in his major work The Prophets, he developed from the Old Testament prophets a theology of the divine pathos. From his own background in kabbalistic and Hasidic Judaism, Heschel was able to recognize in the prophets a quite different understanding of God from that of the Greeks, and in deliberate opposition to the doctrine of divine apatheia he used the word pathos to describe God’s concern for and involvement in the world. The ‘anthropopathisms’ of the Old Testament, in which God is represented as emotionally involved with and responding to his people, are not to be set aside as rather crude ways of speaking of God which are not really appropriate to the reality of God, but should be seen as a central hermeneutical key to the prophetic theology. ‘The most exalted idea applied to God is not infinite wisdom, infinite power, but infinite concern.‘Not self-sufficiency, but concern and involvement characterize His relation to the world. In order to conceive of God not as an onlooker but as a participant, to conceive of man not as an idea in the mind of God but as a concern, the category of divine pathos is an indispensable implication.’ Heschel is even prepared to say that the divine pathos shows that ‘God is in need of man’. He is not, it should be noted, guilty of the kind of naive dismissal of philosophical theism for which biblical theologians can sometimes be criticized. His account of the doctrine of divine apatheia is no caricature, but a serious and indeed illuminating treatment. Although the difference between Greek and Hebrew thought is a theme which has been much abused in biblical theology, Heschel’s case for significant differences at this point is a good one.
God’s suffering, of course, is an aspect of his pathos. He is disappointed and distressed by his people’s faithlessness; he is pained and offended by their lack of response to his love; he grieves over his people even when he must be angry with them and because of his concern for them he himself suffers with them in their sufferings. It is a merit of Heschel’s exposition of the prophets that he finds the note of divine sorrow and suffering not only in the obvious proof-texts but in many parts of the prophetic oracles.46 He also finds the divine pathos reflected in the pathos of the prophets themselves. The prophets, by sympathy with the divine pathos, are themselves intimately involved in God’s concern for his people.Thus just as divine apatheia had its anthropological corollary, so does divine pathos: ‘The ideal state of the Stoic sage is apathy, the ideal state of the prophets is sympathy.’
Finally, Heschel’s treatment of the problem of ‘anthropopathy’ is of interest.The Old Testament itself recognizes that God is not to be compared with humanity but this does not mean that language about divine emotions is mere anthropopathism, not to be taken seriously. Rather, it means that, in Heschel’s adaptation of Isaiah 55:8–9: ‘My pathos is not your pathos.… For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My pathos than your pathos.’
Now that’s profound and full of insight. It deserves proper attention.
It’s unavoidable that we all bring our predispositions and assumptions to biblical texts. And I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that. But why, in considering the Hebrew Scriptures/OT, should Greek philosophy carry more weight than, say, the Hebrew/Near Eastern philosophy/philosophies and understandings of the people who actually wrote the Hebrew Scriptures/OT, the understandings that are actually behind the text? That’s where I see a problem.
I agree.
Did you see my reference to Abraham Heschel in an earlier clip?
Yes but ..
As far as Old Testament theology goes, the Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel has been particularly influential. Originally in his 1936 dissertation and later in his major work The Prophets, he developed from the Old Testament prophets a theology of the divine pathos. From his own background in kabbalistic and Hasidic Judaism
I think there are problems inherent in using traditions that are developed long after patristic times to re-interpret ideas of orthodoxy. Apart from anything else, we risk taking those traditions out of the context they are developed (and in the process not really according them with much respect).
To posit an emotionless God is to posit no God at all, but a clock.
I have been trying, without success to find a passage from C.S.Lewis, in which he talks of the appearance in some allegorical poem of Reason as a goddess figure. Lewis comments that the passage may be all but incomprehensible to modern readers for whom reason is little more than a calculating machine. Our idea of reason is much narrower (and concomitantly our idea of passion much broader) than it was when these doctrines were developed.
It’s unavoidable that we all bring our predispositions and assumptions to biblical texts. And I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that. But why, in considering the Hebrew Scriptures/OT, should Greek philosophy carry more weight than, say, the Hebrew/Near Eastern philosophy/philosophies and understandings of the people who actually wrote the Hebrew Scriptures/OT, the understandings that are actually behind the text?
Greek philosophy generally argues for its conclusions. If Greek philosophy without the Biblical witness ends up with an abstract uncaring entity, the Biblical witness without philosophy ends up with a version of Zeus (or more accurately Enlil) who verges on Blake's Nobodaddy and who probably violates scientific plausibility.
At some point I think we will need more syncretism between the great religious systems of the world. It seems odd to jettison what has been an apparently intellectually coherent instance of that syncretism, between the Greek and Hebrew traditions.
It’s unavoidable that we all bring our predispositions and assumptions to biblical texts. And I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that. But why, in considering the Hebrew Scriptures/OT, should Greek philosophy carry more weight than, say, the Hebrew/Near Eastern philosophy/philosophies and understandings of the people who actually wrote the Hebrew Scriptures/OT, the understandings that are actually behind the text?
Greek philosophy generally argues for its conclusions. If Greek philosophy without the Biblical witness ends up with an abstract uncaring entity, the Biblical witness without philosophy ends up with a version of Zeus (or more accurately Enlil) who verges on Blake's Nobodaddy and who probably violates scientific plausibility.
I’m afraid I don’t really understand what you’re saying here. I’m sure, though, that’s totally a failure on my part; I had one philosophy class in my school days, and it was completely over my head. It’s a foreign language to me, and one that I’ve never been able to learn. (Or, to be honest, felt much need to learn.)
I was probably out of my depth just by wading into a discussion centered on philosophy. And rather than referring to a Hebrew/Near Eastern “philosophy” upthread, it would have been closer to what I was thinking to refer to a Hebrew/Near Eastern “worldview.”
It seems odd to jettison what has been an apparently intellectually coherent instance of that syncretism, between the Greek and Hebrew traditions.
Where have I said anything about jettisoning anything? I tried to be clear that I wasn’t talking about jettisoning anything, but rather about giving one particular system power of veto.
'Again, and again in peace, let us pray to the Lord ...'
And again let me posit a both/and here ...
'Jews ask for a sign and Greeks seek wisdom.'
In an Orthodox Bible study once I heard someone posit that just as Christ fulfilled the Law in the Jewish sense - the Pauline idea of the Law as a 'school-master' to lead us to Christ - so the 'wisdom' or philosophical aspects of the Christian revelation also 'fulfilled' something for the Greeks.
Early Christianity drew on both Hebrew and Hellenistic thought. Both/and.
It's not that we are giving one system the power of veto over the other.
That doesn't mean that early Christian Fathers couldn't be anti-semitic at times or that the Christian Church has always acted appropriately towards Jewish people.
But we have to be cognisant of both the Hebrew and Hellenistic influences on our faith.
The early Christians believed that the Law had taken Israel so far but that Christ was the fulfilment of the Law. There was a stage further. A 'New Testament.' They also had a soft spot for the Stoics and other Hellenistic philosophical systems and believed that these things had taken the Gentiles so far but they needed Christ to 'fulfil' their desires for 'wisdom.'
'Jews seek a sign and Greeks seek wisdom.'
I have some idea that C S Lewis observed something along these lines.
The Apostle Paul had issues with the 'Judaisers', those who insisted that Gentile converts be circumcised and observe the Jewish Law. A fair proportion of the Pauline corpus deals with that issue. In essence, it's what Romans and Galatians are all about. Whoever wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews was also dealing with those questions.
I submit that it is possible to both overly 'Hebrai-sise' on the one hand or 'Hellenise' on the other. I have a friend who loves anything he considers to be 'Hellenic' within Christianity and rejects, in a Marcionite kind of way, anything he thinks is too Semitic. It's a wonky way of thinking.
He was delighted when I became Orthodox as he thought I'd become more 'Hellenic' in outlook. He was appalled when I told him there's fasting and abstinence involved as that didn't fit his romanticised notion of Hellenism. There were certainly ascetic practices among the Ancient Greeks as there were among the Hebrews.
In our various Christian traditions we all talk about 'holding truths in tension.'
This is another area where I believe we need to do that.
I'd suggest that concepts like the hypostatic union, 'synergia', the Palamite distinction between the divine essence and energies can help us do that.
To the point of Luther's antisemitic views--goes to show how fallible he was--after all, he was a saint and sinner--those views have been repudiated by most Lutheran bodies. Besides, he wrote those remarks quite late in life when he was very polemical about other groups as well.
Nor does it obviate what I've said about us not having to subscribe to ancient or classical forms of anthropology in order to accept the 'classic' view on divine 'impassibility'.
No, it doesn’t.
I’m going to be honest, @Gamma Gamaliel. I’m struggling to figure out exactly what’s going on in, what you want to accomplish. I certainly may be wrong, and I apologize in advance if I am, but I’m starting to feel like the goal is to have us all say “yes, Orthodoxy is right.”
Perhaps my new thread on the Palamite distinction between God's essence and energies may help?
I wouldn’t count on it, at least not on my part.
(I’ll go post there now.)
Of course 'Orthodoxy is right' - the clue is in the title - Ortho right doxy glory or 'worship.'
I also believe that small o orthodoxy is right too - before anyone accuses me of exclusivity.
I'm not here though to persuade @Nick Tamen to become 'Nicolae Tamenov' or to abandon his Reformed Christian tradition. Far from it.
Believe it or not, I am concerned to celebrate all that we share in common rather than those issues that continue to divide us.
I first encountered Orthodoxy on a board I visited prior to boarding the Ship and I continued conversations about it here and in 'real life'.
It took me a lo-oo-ooo-oong time to come down off the fence and I exasperated many Shipmates in the process.
I probably still do now I've come down on one side rather than another.
I'm still working these things through of course - I've only found out this week about some particular prayers we are supposed to pray during the Dormition Fast, for instance. That's praxis of course but there are also beliefs and emphases I'm working on and I don't pretend to have all the answers. I often think aloud on these boards.
I recognise that things like the Palamite distinction between the divine essence and divine energies might not make much sense outside of my particular Christian paradigm - in the same way that some 'Western' Christian concerns might not make much sense to someone who comes at these things from a more 'Eastern' direction.
I'd like to think I'm exploring these and sharing these in good faith rather than to score points or go 'I've got a bigger O than you-oou-ou ...'
I think you’re trying to understand why we don’t understand. At least in your terms it may be that we simply disagree. That’s not the end of the world.
I can, of course, understand the position you are coming from given your frame of reference and the way you have deployed and interpreted the various scriptural references you've cited across the various related threads on this issue.
Don't forget that I share a similar background to yourself in ecclesial and theological terms.
If anything, I'm more puzzled by some of the comments both @Lamb Chopped and @Nick Tamen have made as I'd always thought that the Lutheran and Reformed traditions had pretty much inherited the Roman Catholic understanding of these things - which are more 'Aristotelian' than ours - pretty much intact.
Things 'move on' of course and I wouldn't expect modern day Lutheran and Reformed Christians to have identical views in every respect to Luther and Calvin.
I cited the Westminster Confession in one of these threads, I forget which, and that clearly sets out a belief in divine impassibility.
I'm not saying that Calvin's Institutes or The Westminster Confession occupy the same place in Reformed theology as the great Ecumenical Creeds do across Trinitarian Christianity as a whole. Neither Calvin nor the Westminster Divines would have considered themselves to have 'Papal' authority.
But both the Lutheran and Calvinist traditions strongly emphasised 'divine impassibility', at least in their early stages as far as I can make out and that in a more 'Aristotelian' way than we Orthodox do, truth be told, given the influence of Aquinas and late-medieval Scholasticism.
The Orthodox have never subscribed to the idea of the 'Unmoved Mover'. We consider that entirely inadequate. It's not how we approach this issue.
That isn't to go 'Nur na nah-na-nah!
Neither is it to say that Aquinas was entirely 'wrong' - there are Orthodox theologians around, as I've said before, who are calling for the Orthodox to revise some of their more populist and knee-jerk reactions against him. Equally, as we have seen from the link you very helpfully provided on the essence/energies thread, there have been moves on the RC side to understand or accommodate some of the Orthodox emphases on that particular issue.
I'm happy to agree to disagree on things but equally where possible I strive to find common ground, overlaps and parallels.
Philo of Alexandria, a 1st Century Hellenistic Jew, wrote a treatise seeking to harmonise the Hebrew Bible with Greek Philosophy. His view of the Hebrew Bible was that where scriptures could be found which did not harmonise with these concepts the scriptures should not be taken literally. There could be no harmonisation otherwise.
This is where I get hung up, I think. I guess just don’t see any reason why Greek philosophy should have that authority.
I’m not saying at all that Greek philosophy should be ignored or rejected. But I see no reason to give it the kind of primacy this seems to be suggesting, and I see what to me, at least, are compelling reasons not to.
But what about the primacy, in cases like this, of the Church Fathers?
the Hebrew/Near Eastern philosophy/philosophies and understandings of the people who actually wrote the Hebrew Scriptures/OT, the understandings that are actually behind the text?
Those understandings are certainly part of how we should read those texts, but of course, there are other levels going on there which they did not know, and can be best understood in the light of Jesus and His Incarnation. And the Church Fathers and Ecumenical Councils who synthesized it all into basic Christian doctrine and dogma, too.
To posit an emotionless God is to posit no God at all, but a clock.
I have been trying, without success to find a passage from C.S.Lewis, in which he talks of the appearance in some allegorical poem of Reason as a goddess figure. Lewis comments that the passage may be all but incomprehensible to modern readers for whom reason is little more than a calculating machine. Our idea of reason is much narrower (and concomitantly our idea of passion much broader) than it was when these doctrines were developed.
He does have Reason as a character in his excellent Pilgrim’s Regress…
To posit an emotionless God is to posit no God at all, but a clock.
I have been trying, without success to find a passage from C.S.Lewis, in which he talks of the appearance in some allegorical poem of Reason as a goddess figure. Lewis comments that the passage may be all but incomprehensible to modern readers for whom reason is little more than a calculating machine. Our idea of reason is much narrower (and concomitantly our idea of passion much broader) than it was when these doctrines were developed.
He does have Reason as a character in his excellent Pilgrim’s Regress…
Found it! From The Discarded Image, which I really need to read again:
The importance of all this for our own purpose is that
nearly every ref erence to Reason in the old poets will be
in some measure misread if we have in mind only ' the
power by which man deduces one proposition from
another'. One of the most moving passages in Guillaume
de Lorris' part of the Romance of the Rose (5813 sq.) is
that where Reason, Reason the beautif ul, a gracious lady,
a humbled goddess, deigns to plead with the lover as a
celestial mistress, a rival to his earthly love. This is frigid
ifReason were only what Johnson made her. You cannot
turn a calculating machine into a goddess. But Raison la
bele is 'no such cold thing'. She is not even Wordsworth's
personified Duty; not even-though this brings us
nearer-the personified virtue of Aristotle's ode, 'for whose
virgin beauty men will die' (o-O:s TIEpt, 1rap6eve, J.!Opcpas).
She is intelligentia obumbrata, the shadow of angelic nature
in man. So again in Shakespeare's Lucrece we need to
know fully who the 'spotted princess' (719-28) is:
Tarquin' s Reason, rightful sovereign of his soul, now
maculate. Many references to Reason in Paradise Lost
need the same gloss. It is true that we still have in our
modern use of' reasonable' a survival of the old sense, for
when we complain that a selfish man is unreasonable we
do not mean that he is guilty of a non sequitur or an
undistributed middle. But it is far too humdrum and
jejune to recall much of the old association.
(The weird gibberish in parentheses above is in Greek letters which did not copy correctly here…)
Philo of Alexandria, a 1st Century Hellenistic Jew, wrote a treatise seeking to harmonise the Hebrew Bible with Greek Philosophy. His view of the Hebrew Bible was that where scriptures could be found which did not harmonise with these concepts the scriptures should not be taken literally. There could be no harmonisation otherwise.
This is where I get hung up, I think. I guess just don’t see any reason why Greek philosophy should have that authority.
I’m not saying at all that Greek philosophy should be ignored or rejected. But I see no reason to give it the kind of primacy this seems to be suggesting, and I see what to me, at least, are compelling reasons not to.
But what about the primacy, in cases like this, of the Church Fathers?
Please note that in my comments the imposition of Greek philosophy, I have focused exclusively on giving Greek philosophy the prerogative of controlling interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures.
I don’t discount or lightly dismiss the Church Fathers. But if they impose on, say, the Torah an understanding that would be foreign to those who wrote the Torah and the community in which the Torah was formed, or the communities to which the prophets were addressed, then I think it is valid, and perhaps even faithful, to question that imposition.
I cited the Westminster Confession in one of these threads, I forget which, . . .
I’m afraid I think having multiple threads going at the same time that deal with related topics has made discussion much more difficult, not easier.
. . . and that clearly sets out a belief in divine impassibility.
I don’t recall what portion of the Westminster Confession you cited, and I’m not searching through multiple threads to find it (see comment about multiple threads above), but I’ll assume that portion doesn’t actually use any form of the word impassibility, as I did a word search in my e-edition of the Book of Confessions and got 0 hits. I could guess Chapter 2—“There is but one only living and true God, who is . . . without . . . passions, immutable . . . .”
I go back to what I said earlier in this thread (or another one)—I don’t think the word impassible is helpful, and I think its continued use in these discussions has in fact been unhelpful. It seems to me that the majority of views expressed in this thread have actually been broadly in agreement. But because people are using different vocabulary, that broad agreement isn’t necessarily being recognized.
I take your point. But does it affect the quality of Heschel’s argumen?
Or the quality of the arguer?
With respect, both are rather besides the point. Every theologian is in dialogue with their own tradition. One have to unpick that tradition somewhat to work out whether his reasoning was useful or applicable in an entirely different context (for a start whether the resemblance with what he was arguing against had more than a coincidental correspondence, and whether his reasoning could be successfully transposed)
Why so-called? I know right now there are terrible people who have made an idol out of that, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real.
Partially because those terrible people have made the term less useful, partially because I think a case can be made that there are actually many civilizations under the umbrella of “Western Civilization,” and partially because I don’t particularly want to associate myself with the racism and assumed supremacy that is often assumed by those who talk about “Western Civilzation.” In the U.S., at least, there is an irony in extolling the Ancient Greeks as the ones who gave birth to Western Civilization, while their descendants were viewed as inferior and were discriminated against as “ethnic,” in contrast to the white inheritors of Western Civilization.
@Nick Tamen I don't like the word 'impassible' either which is why I've tended to put inverted commas around it on the threads which deal with it.
I wish someone could suggest a better term we could all agree on.
Why does there need to be a better term? Just stop using the word impassibility (with our without quotation marks) and read what people are describing, without worrying whether or not there is a specific label for what they’re describing.
Where exactly do you see people disagreeing here?
You did find the Westminster Confession quote I cited.
Sounds clear cut to me.
Likewise Calvin's views on this issue, which, confusingly, I've alluded to on another thread 😀...
Just to complicate things further ...
Not that I'm saying you have to agree with the Westminster Confession or Calvin on all points of course.
The thing is, when you express being “puzzled” that I don’t agree (or perhaps more to accurately, your impression is that I don’t agree) with a bit of the Westminster Confession or Calvin, or being “puzzled” at your impression that a Lutheran disagrees with Luther, it seems to me that the message that you do expect us to agree with Luther or Calvin or the Westminster Divines is unavoidable, disclaimers not withstanding. There’s no reason to be puzzled if you don’t expect it to start with.
And that said, where exactly do you see me disagreeing with Calvin or the Westminister Divines?
Heschel’s book “The Prophets”, from which these arguments come, has been widely praised and counted as seminal within Judaism and further afield. The quality of the theological analysis has also been praised by Christian theologians, particularly Jurgen Moltmann.
But his arguments actually have nothing to do with Christian belief. There are different rabbinical understandings about what the Prophetic texts say about God. Heschel starts with the Hebrew Scriptures, details the texts which draw him towards his understanding and summarises views. What I provided was a brief summary of a 600 page book. Some have called it a masterpiece, others a modern classic.It has clarified Jewish theological understanding of an important topic about which. as I say, there were different and opposing traditional rabbinical views
I’m very tempted to buy it and look at the detailed analysis myself.
So much for the quality of the argument. From the biographical link I’ll let the quality of the man speak for itself.
His arguments can be trusted as a sound analysis of Hebrew Scriptures. They do not contain any obvious presuppositions.
By contrast. the many comments I read from the early Church Fathers set out to defend what they clearly believed was the sound principle of divine impassibility. They were apologetics for a stated position. And when scripture was introduced into the argument the prevailing view was that any scripture (and there are many in the Old Testament) which attributed emotions to God could not be taken to mean what they said. The proper interpretation must be allegorical, not the obvious meaning.
I’m not saying that those arguments were without value. But I am saying they were apologetics for a particular position. From the summary and the reviews, Heschel’s analysis and argument is not like that.
It's the wee small hours again and I woke up with some physical discomfort I experience from time to time and which has now subsided which means I should be able to sleep again soon.
Nothing to worry about.
I'll try not to use the offending 'i' word in future @Nick Tamen and may use 'unchangeability' or 'constancy' or 'constant consistency' or 'immutability' or any other term or phrase that might prove more acceptable.
Any suggestions as to what that might be?
'Loving consistency'?
I can understand the objections to what might be described as the 'classic' position on this one. It's rather like the 'monergist' objections to 'synergism' though ss far as I can see.
Monergists and synergists both end up with the idea that God is all-loving, all-faithful and the author and perfector of our faith even though they approach things from somewhat different angles.
However we approach this issue we all agree that God is faithful and loving, gracious, long-suffering, omniscient, ever-present ...
On the issue of Heschel and Rabbinic understandings of these issues, I've only read a Jewish commentary on the Psalms which I very much enjoyed and one or two articles in an interfaith dialogue context.
I'm aware that there are varied Jewish understandings on this and all sorts of other issues.
I don't know a great deal about Moltmann but have read a wee bit about him in the past. I know that some conservative Protestants find him a bit 'iffy' on some of the issues we are discussing here and in connection with the 'i' word I've been asked not to use.
That isn't necessarily a deal-breaker in and of itself, of course. Those conservative Protestants may need to adjust. I don’t know.
Neither do I know what the Orthodox 'take' on Moltmann would be, but imagine it'd be similar to the approach taken with any Protestant (or RC or Coptic or ...) theologian. We'd go along with whatever accords with our own understanding on things and disagree with elements that mightn't accord and reserve judgement on areas where we couldn't arrive at a clear-cut conclusion one way or another.
The same would happen in reverse with RC or Protestant assessments of Orthodox theologians.
I'm not sure what I'm expecting Lutheran or Reformed contributors to believe on this issue, but elsewhere @Gramps49 has articulated views that accord closely with my limited understanding of Lutheranism and also with how I understand Orthodoxy to approach these issues.
Perhaps there's less daylight between us than may appear at first sight.
Any 'surprise' I've expressed has been at how much variance I've seen here with what I've understood to be both Luther's and Calvin's 'takes' on these issues which I've always taken to have been pretty much in line with RC perspectives at that time.
As I've said, that's a more 'Aristotelian' understanding than we Orthodox have ever entertained even though the Greek Fathers are being accused here of prioritising Hellenistic philosophy over the scriptural texts.
Whatever the case, I'm not saying I'm expecting contemporary Lutheran or Reformed understandings to be identical to those of the Reformers, but I'd expect at least some echoes/congruence with what their position may have been.
I may have misunderstood their position of course in which case I stand to be corrected.
We share that wee small hours affliction but probably for different reasons. I live with diverticulitis and failing arteries which cause abdominal pain and dizziness. At any rate I’m awake too. Profound sympathies. The suffering passes.
It’s a tangent of course but I found these heartwarming.
It’s may be the influence of reading those links and the painkillers I’ve taken. But I think it’s a benign influence.
So I feel it might be helpful to share this thought. I understand the purpose which causes folks to explore the Pefection of God.
Picking up on that thought and what Bullfrog wrote. Also the feelings and the passion of Abraham Heschel. This very simple thought has occurred to me.
“If God is perfect. He cannot not feel. He must feel perfectly”.
That’s in line with Heschel’s reworking of a famous scripture here.
“ Rather, it means that, in Heschel’s adaptation of Isaiah 55:8–9: ‘My pathos is not your pathos.… For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My pathos than your pathos”.
Thanks @Barnabas62 - my 'momentary light affliction' is nothing compared to what you describe. 😞
I don’t have to take painkillers and the discomfort soon passes. I don't know what it is but the doctors say it's normal and happens to some people from time to time.
I haven't read all of your second link but have read the first, the tribute from Heschel's daughter. From that and what I read of his friendship with Dr Martin Luther King he comes across as a very attractive character.
I take on board @chrisstiles's point that we must beware of reading our own proclivities and concerns into other people's traditions but it is impossible not to draw parallels or make 'connections.'
I like the combination of a 'conservative theology with a liberal politics', for instance.
I also like your aphorism about God 'feeling perfectly.' It might not 'square' with how things might be framed from a classic Patristic perspective but I like the 'feel' of it ... 😉
However we approach this issue I think we'd all agree that God is perfect - 'I the Lord do not change' - and that his 'work is perfect and all his ways are just.'
Or perhaps some of us do believe that God can and does change?
In which case those people would still agree that 'his work is perfect and all his ways are just.'
It’s unavoidable that we all bring our predispositions and assumptions to biblical texts. And I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that. But why, in considering the Hebrew Scriptures/OT, should Greek philosophy carry more weight than, say, the Hebrew/Near Eastern philosophy/philosophies and understandings of the people who actually wrote the Hebrew Scriptures/OT, the understandings that are actually behind the text?
Greek philosophy generally argues for its conclusions. If Greek philosophy without the Biblical witness ends up with an abstract uncaring entity, the Biblical witness without philosophy ends up with a version of Zeus (or more accurately Enlil) who verges on Blake's Nobodaddy and who probably violates scientific plausibility.
I’m afraid I don’t really understand what you’re saying here. I’m sure, though, that’s totally a failure on my part; I had one philosophy class in my school days, and it was completely over my head. It’s a foreign language to me, and one that I’ve never been able to learn. (Or, to be honest, felt much need to learn.)
Which bit am I not being clear about?
I think if you just read the Hebrew witness you're likely to end with a god who is just one of the Middle Eastern gods - more caring than most of them, but not in essence different. And I don't think that's intellectually credible. More to the point, I think any such god is just another authority figure - a version of Superman. No matter how benevolent Superman is, one shouldn't worship him.
It seems odd to jettison what has been an apparently intellectually coherent instance of that syncretism, between the Greek and Hebrew traditions.
Where have I said anything about jettisoning anything? I tried to be clear that I wasn’t talking about jettisoning anything, but rather about giving one particular system power of veto.[/quote]
I don't think the Fathers are doing anything essentially different from what Christians have always done with the Genesis passage that states that the moon is a light in the sky like the sun; or as modern Christians do with passages that state that the sun moves, or that everything was created in six days.
Yes, we agree. It’s impossible to avoid the challenge of Matthew 5 v 48.
The classic translation is a bit misleading. “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect”. I think it’s best seen as a continuous present challenge for us, an eternal reality for God. I think of it as “be being perfected”.
Of course God is perfect. Else He could not be God. Insofar as we do diverge, we do so from that agreed starting point.
I'm afraid I disagree; to put it another way, he's engaged in a conversation with rabbinical scholars that is quite separate to the conversations on this thread. To say that is not to comment on the quality of the conversation itself.
I think it can be fruitful to read such books, but often the best thing thing one can get from such an exercise is a better understanding of the questions they pose, rather than the answers they give.
His arguments can be trusted as a sound analysis of Hebrew Scriptures. They do not contain any obvious presuppositions.
They are a particular analysis in a particular tradition, with which the interlocutors within that tradition do not find universal agreement. And I'm sorry but to say that something like that is free from presuppositions is a nonsense.
Perhaps we can agree that all personal analyses are subject to human fallibility? A good scholar tries to avoid this by self criticism and putting findings up for continuing peer review. The act of publication means that one’s ideas are open to criticism from anyone.
So far as “The Prophets” is concerned you will find much admiration from a wide range of theologians of varying and different persuasions. I have looked but can’t find any serious criticism. So it’s in that sense I use the term “sound” and “can be trusted”. It seems to be a general corporate view.
Feel free to come up with something that says different with reasons.
I’m not claiming that Abraham Heschel is infallible. But I’m happy to assert that he is a very good scholar and teacher, well worth reading.
Feel free to make up your own mind about that. He’s not a difficult read.
It’s unavoidable that we all bring our predispositions and assumptions to biblical texts. And I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that. But why, in considering the Hebrew Scriptures/OT, should Greek philosophy carry more weight than, say, the Hebrew/Near Eastern philosophy/philosophies and understandings of the people who actually wrote the Hebrew Scriptures/OT, the understandings that are actually behind the text?
Greek philosophy generally argues for its conclusions. If Greek philosophy without the Biblical witness ends up with an abstract uncaring entity, the Biblical witness without philosophy ends up with a version of Zeus (or more accurately Enlil) who verges on Blake's Nobodaddy and who probably violates scientific plausibility.
I’m afraid I don’t really understand what you’re saying here. I’m sure, though, that’s totally a failure on my part; I had one philosophy class in my school days, and it was completely over my head. It’s a foreign language to me, and one that I’ve never been able to learn. (Or, to be honest, felt much need to learn.)
Which bit am I not being clear about?
I did specifically say that I was sure my understanding was my fault—not that you weren’t clear, but that I just don’t get it.
But specifically, I don’t quite get what is meant by “Greek philosophy generally argues for its conclusions.”
I think if you just read the Hebrew witness you're likely to end with a god who is just one of the Middle Eastern gods - more caring than most of them, but not in essence different. And I don't think that's intellectually credible. More to the point, I think any such god is just another authority figure - a version of Superman. No matter how benevolent Superman is, one shouldn't worship him.
Maybe Judaism started off as henotheistic but the refined monotheistic understanding is very clear from the prophetic writings. I don’t think you find that in the middle eastern gods.
From our perspective as Christians, the Judaic revelation lacks the culminating insight of the incarnation. But I don’t think that reduces it to a “just anything”. Judaism is profound.
I’ve read a lot of Dafyd. Perhaps we’re missing something?
Comments
Tertullian saw it in terms of a judgement against Saul's character rather than any self-recrimination on God's part.
St Augustine, Luther's friend and ours, maintained that God's 'repentance' did not negate his foreknowledge but was a change in how humanity expects God to act. In this sense God acts contrary to our expectations.
Which is pretty much in line with what Lamb Chopped wrote, I think.
My reading so far tells me the following things.
1. Belief in impassibility was universal in the writings of Fathers from the beginning of the third century to the 5th and the 6th Century. One might say it was a given.
2. So far I’ve not found a reading which says why they believe that.
3. But because of this belief, any scriptures which state or imply that God is not impassible must not be taken literally. Such scriptures must at best teach some deeper spiritual message.
The evidence suggests that belief in divine impassibility was a presupposition drawn at least in part from the arguments of the Greek philosophers. Particularly Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics. Those arguments use the concepts of perfection, immutability, self sufficiency and freedom from irrational emotional impulses. They are arguments from reason.
Philo of Alexandria, a 1st Century Hellenistic Jew, wrote a treatise seeking to harmonise the Hebrew Bible with Greek Philosophy. His view of the Hebrew Bible was that where scriptures could be found which did not harmonise with these concepts the scriptures should not be taken literally. There could be no harmonisation otherwise.
I’m not saying at all that Greek philosophy should be ignored or rejected. But I see no reason to give it the kind of primacy this seems to be suggesting, and I see what to me, at least, are compelling reasons not to.
Yes, this is my problem too. I can see why they did it, in the wreck of Rome and facing the need to preserve whatever learning they could--and it WAS the equivalent of the most up-to-date science they had. But from this vantage point there's no reason to go on giving it such a high place that we make the very Scripture bow to it (" where scriptures could be found which did not harmonise with these concepts the scriptures should not be taken literally.").
To use Gamma's statement
God is love. That love is unchanging.
A classical theologian would say something like this illustration
God's love is like a burning white light. It never changes. But when that light passes through the prism of human history, it refracts into different colors. Mercy, judgement patience, grief, joy. The colors change because we change, not because God does.
Another way of looking at it is God's love is like the sun. It shines with constant unchanging radiance. But the experience of that light changes depending on where you stand.
In winter, it feels distant.
In summer, it feels warm.
In a desert, it feels harsh.
In a garden, it feels life giving.
The sun has not changed, your position has.
I would answer God's essence is love, but love is inherently relational. Love is not a static perfection but a relational energy.
If God truly loves the world, then Godis open to the world, responsive to the world and changed by the world. God is not changed in divine goodness, but in divine experience. God is unchanging in love, but ever-changing in how that love is felt, expressed, and experienced in how the world unfolds.
When I was in seminary there was a short book entitled Water Buffalo Theology written by Kosuke Koyama (1974). In it he explained Buddhist always had trouble with the Christian God because our God seems so angry, so hot. They valued detachment, coolness.
The reason why I think our God seems so angry is because of the impact of the world's suffering and injustice on God's loving nature.
Our God's anger is not the loss of control, it is not an irrational passion, it is love encountering what destroys life.
Classical theology says God is perfect because God cannot change. The way I look at it is God is perfect because God responds perfectly, pefect empathy, perfect receptivity, perfect solidarity, perfect creativity offering new possibilities.
For me God's love is not stagnant. God's love is not detached. God's love is not cool. God's love is alive.
Going back to the classical illustration of the sun, we know now that the sun is constantly changing. We have solar flares, magnetic storms, convectional currents. It is in constant motion. While we see it as a star of a certain mass, composition and gravitational structure we know it is dynamic.
The "flux" of the sun becomes a metaphor for the flus of divine experience.
God is like the sun: constant in identity, dynamic in life. The sun's storms don't make it imperfect; they reveal its vitality. Likewise, God's dynamic responsiveness is not weakness but the living expression of perfect love engaging in a changing world.
In that sense, it's no insult to God to say that God has feelings. I think it's plenty sensible to say God has feelings. To posit an emotionless God is to posit no God at all, but a clock. And if you think God is effectively a clock, you might as well be an atheist, and I mean that with no disrespect to atheists. It's a valid worldview, just not mine at the moment.
I agree the significant influence of Greek philosophy is an issue. As I said earlier it was an issue for Martin Luther. But it seems to be what we’ve got. I’m pretty sure @Gamma Gamaliel said as much.
And to be fair to the early Church Fathers. As the evidence of their writings makes clear they were highly intelligent, imaginative and creative members of a culture which was significantly affected by Greek philosophy. They accepted the authority of scripture but not necessarily in the same way the Reformers did. Without the formative and clarifying work of the Ecumenical Councils, I’m not sure Christianity would have survived. And a very great deal of Christian understanding today owes much to that work. Whatever our views of their intellectual influences I feel that the grace of God was at work in their often ferociously argumentative cogitations. Trinitarian belief and the understanding of the fully divine fully human Christ were not the only concepts around in the diversities of understanding in various segments of the early church history. That’s they became authoritative is a blessing.
Early church history was argumentative! That’s a fact.
On a different tack, I much appreciated Bullfrog’s post and Gramps49’s observation that Love is a relational energy.
Firstly, I love what @Gramps49 wrote.
Secondly, I'd suggest that Luther didn't have as much of a downer on the classical and Hellenistic influences within Christianity as @Barnabas62 suggests. He accepted the hypostatic union for a kick-off and that came from the 'Greek Fathers' of course.
What Luther was railing against it seems to me was late medieval accretions and developments to the Patristic witness.
As an Orthodox Christian I wouldn't posit some kind of 'seperation' between scripture and Tradition in the way @Lamb Chopped appears to do. As if the scriptures were there and all fine and dandy in a 'stand-alone' way until the Fathers came along and submitted them to Hellenistic and classical thought.
We can see Hellenistic influences on the way John frames the concept of the Logos in his Gospel for instance. Hebraic ways of thinking are very evident in the Epistle of James.
Both/and.
I'd also suggest that Lamb Chopped is coming at this from a very 'Western' view of history. The Roman Empire in the West collapsed in the 5th century. It continued in the East until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.
It wasn't a case of the early Fathers rescuing classical learning from the ruins of Rome - although monasteries did do that to some extent in the Christian West.
There were also some egregious instances of the destruction of libraries and classical texts in the Christian East although historians argue about the extent of that.
If we are not careful we can look at these things through individual or sectional telescopes rather than through binoculars.
From where I'm sitting, @Lamb Chopped, @Nick Tamen and @Barnabas62 are all looking through a 'Western' telescope which is rather 'Latin-centric' and 'Rome/Reformation-centric'.
@Gramps49 seems to be offering more of a 'bridge' or binocular view on this issue.
Me? Well I have adopted the 'Greek' telescope to some extent but as someone who has moved that way from a 'Western' Christian background I hope I can also offer a binocular view, however partially.
In a different context one of the Popes described Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy as the twin-lungs of the Church.
Like all analogies this will only take us so far of course and Protestants might say, 'Hey! What about us?'
But the point is that if we combine Hebraic and Hellenistic perspectives, if we combine 'Latin and Greek' perspectives, 'Western and Eastern' perspectives we can achieve a binocular view.
I'm still not convinced that @Barnabas62 and others have fully grasped my position on these issues - because I'm not sure I always articulate them clearly enough and also because they are using telescopes and not binoculars.
😉
It's not that Philo of Alexandria has the 'definitive' take on these things, or St Augustine of Hippo, or Martin Luther, or Jean Calvin or St John Chrysostom or Hildegard of Bingen or St Nina Equal-To-The-Apostles or St Hilda of Whitby or Gamma Gamaliel or Uncle Tom Cobleigh and All ...
It's a collegial and conciliar process. A binocular not a telescopic one.
A both/and one ... 😉
Dare I say, a hypostatic one.
Re Martin Luther, you’re certainly right about his disputes with the writings of the medieval scholastics. And he certainly accepted Trinitarian and two natures beliefs.
And you’re probably right that his positions were more nuanced than I’ve summarised. He was a complex, interesting, sometimes self-contradictory man.
I’m wading through this comprehensive link to improve my understanding.
My own viewpoint? Lots of underlying factors. Not just a “Western telescope” though I do recognise the effects.
We certainly agree re Gramps49’s post. That’s binocular. Helpful in many ways.
That doesn't mean that there aren't overlaps and points-of-contact between Lutheran, Reformed and Orthodox theology. There are, of course, but we would argue that they are coming at things from a Western and 'Latin' perspective that we don't share - hence how RCs and Protestants on the one hand (two sides of the same coin from an 'Eastern' perspective) and Orthodox on the other end up 'talking past' each other on many issues.
But we need binoculars rather than telescopes ourselves.
I've learned a lot about Lutheran and Reformed perspectives here on the Ship, for instance. But if I wanted to really get 'under the skin' of these traditions I'd be better advised to read Luther and Calvin and perspectives from the respective traditions that drew from them than reading something from 'outside' those traditions - such as RC or Orthodox responses.
Those non-Lutheran and non-Reformed perspectives might be useful and may even provide valuable 'correctives' but wouldn't be the same as going to the source material from within those traditions themselves.
We've all got a shared heritage in pre-Schism and pre-Reformation/Post-Reformation Christianity and although I have come down on one side of the fence, I still take a 'paleo-orthodox' approach to some extent - ie. anything pre-Schism, both 'Western' and 'Eastern' is fine, it's what happened in the West after that which can be problematic.
That's not to write off everything that happened post-1054 in Western Europe.
Nor is it to say that everything that happened in the Christian East was squeaky-clean - the 'Massacre of The Latins' anyone?
I'll come back to the Reformed tradition another time, but elements of Lutheranism resonate strongly with the Orthodox - 'Christus Victor', what our Lutheran friends here have posted about 'fiery love' if I can put it that way, and so on.
Indeed, the Wesleyan 'warmth' is another 'Western' tradition/emphasis we'd recognise as common ground, and that was very much kindled by influences from Lutheran pietism.
I often think of Bach's music as exemplifying the 'best' of Lutheran influence, if I can put it that way. It's highly formal and 'controlled' but equally remarkably inventive, dynamic and has the capacity to move mind, heart and soul (as it were).
I can't stress enough that the 'classic' Patristic emphasis on divine 'impassibility' does not make God into some kind of robotic algorithm.
Anything but.
It is perhaps no accident that the 14th century controversy between the RCs and the Orthodox over the Divine 'essence/energies' was wrapped up with disagreements over hesychasm and claims that the Byzantine hesychasts could sometimes perceived God's 'Uncreated Light'.
Our God is a consuming fire.
It's perhaps time I started the promised (threatened?
A classic illustration of the truth that those capable of great insight may also be guilty of great and damaging prejudice.
(And yes, I’m aware this doesn’t fit easily with the traditional East-West church division.)
And it would seem to me no more surprising that we tend to look through a Reformation-centric, or at least Reformation-influenced, lens than it is that you’re employing an Orthodox-centric/Orthodox-influenced lens.
Of course Greek philosophy was an influence. As has been noted, John draws on Greek philosophy heavily in his Gospel, and it certainly came into play in the Councils, too. The NT arose in a world influenced by Greek philosophy heavily
But I wasn’t expressing discomfort with the idea of influence of Greek philosophy. I was expressing discomfort with the bolded here;
It’s unavoidable that we all bring our predispositions and assumptions to biblical texts. And I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that. But why, in considering the Hebrew Scriptures/OT, should Greek philosophy carry more weight than, say, the Hebrew/Near Eastern philosophy/philosophies and understandings of the people who actually wrote the Hebrew Scriptures/OT, the understandings that are actually behind the text? That’s where I see a problem.
Heck, Martin Luther seems to have accepted it. He may have challenged other aspects of inherited Christian tradition but he doesn't appear to have challenged that one. Yes, he did posit a 'hidden God' supremely revealed through the Cross of Christ, but he doesn't appear to have 'innovated' on traditional Christology, the hypostatic union or 'divine impassibility' as understood in late medieval terms.
Perhaps my new thread on the Palamite distinction between God's essence and energies may help?
Antisemitism has a long and inglorious history going way back. We can see it in some of the 'sub-apostolic fathers' and indeed some potential sources in the pages of the New Testament if not 'balanced out' sufficiently.
St John Chrysostom was also particularly egregious in this respect.
Luther was by no means unique and like all of us a product of his time.
I've come across populist RC and Orthodox polemics that make Luther responsible for the Nazis, the Holocaust and destructive forms of later Lutheran liberal theology and all manner of evils besides.
I think that's pushing things too far but as the old Russian proverb has it, 'Greatness casts a long shadow.'
Luther was certainly a remarkable figure and had great insights from a Western theological perspective.
Some of his views resonate with Eastern Christian insights - including a propensity towards Antisemitism which has bedevilled the Christian East.
There are more positive echoes and parallels of course, but I can't see the Orthodox making him a Saint anytime soon ... 😉
I’m going to be honest, @Gamma Gamaliel. I’m struggling to figure out exactly what’s going on in, what you want to accomplish. I certainly may be wrong, and I apologize in advance if I am, but I’m starting to feel like the goal is to have us all say “yes, Orthodoxy is right.”
I wouldn’t count on it, at least not on my part.
(I’ll go post there now.)
I agree.
Did you see my reference to Abraham Heschel in an earlier clip?
It’s a long quote but probably worth repeating in full.
Now that’s profound and full of insight. It deserves proper attention.
Yes but ..
I think there are problems inherent in using traditions that are developed long after patristic times to re-interpret ideas of orthodoxy. Apart from anything else, we risk taking those traditions out of the context they are developed (and in the process not really according them with much respect).
At some point I think we will need more syncretism between the great religious systems of the world. It seems odd to jettison what has been an apparently intellectually coherent instance of that syncretism, between the Greek and Hebrew traditions.
I was probably out of my depth just by wading into a discussion centered on philosophy. And rather than referring to a Hebrew/Near Eastern “philosophy” upthread, it would have been closer to what I was thinking to refer to a Hebrew/Near Eastern “worldview.”
Where have I said anything about jettisoning anything? I tried to be clear that I wasn’t talking about jettisoning anything, but rather about giving one particular system power of veto.
I take your point. But does it affect the quality of Heschel’s argumen?
Or the quality of the arguer?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Joshua_Heschel
And again let me posit a both/and here ...
'Jews ask for a sign and Greeks seek wisdom.'
In an Orthodox Bible study once I heard someone posit that just as Christ fulfilled the Law in the Jewish sense - the Pauline idea of the Law as a 'school-master' to lead us to Christ - so the 'wisdom' or philosophical aspects of the Christian revelation also 'fulfilled' something for the Greeks.
'What you worship as Unknown, I now proclaim to you ...' Acts 17:23
https://biblehub.com/acts/17-23.htm
Early Christianity drew on both Hebrew and Hellenistic thought. Both/and.
It's not that we are giving one system the power of veto over the other.
That doesn't mean that early Christian Fathers couldn't be anti-semitic at times or that the Christian Church has always acted appropriately towards Jewish people.
But we have to be cognisant of both the Hebrew and Hellenistic influences on our faith.
The early Christians believed that the Law had taken Israel so far but that Christ was the fulfilment of the Law. There was a stage further. A 'New Testament.' They also had a soft spot for the Stoics and other Hellenistic philosophical systems and believed that these things had taken the Gentiles so far but they needed Christ to 'fulfil' their desires for 'wisdom.'
'Jews seek a sign and Greeks seek wisdom.'
I have some idea that C S Lewis observed something along these lines.
The Apostle Paul had issues with the 'Judaisers', those who insisted that Gentile converts be circumcised and observe the Jewish Law. A fair proportion of the Pauline corpus deals with that issue. In essence, it's what Romans and Galatians are all about. Whoever wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews was also dealing with those questions.
I submit that it is possible to both overly 'Hebrai-sise' on the one hand or 'Hellenise' on the other. I have a friend who loves anything he considers to be 'Hellenic' within Christianity and rejects, in a Marcionite kind of way, anything he thinks is too Semitic. It's a wonky way of thinking.
He was delighted when I became Orthodox as he thought I'd become more 'Hellenic' in outlook. He was appalled when I told him there's fasting and abstinence involved as that didn't fit his romanticised notion of Hellenism. There were certainly ascetic practices among the Ancient Greeks as there were among the Hebrews.
In our various Christian traditions we all talk about 'holding truths in tension.'
This is another area where I believe we need to do that.
I'd suggest that concepts like the hypostatic union, 'synergia', the Palamite distinction between the divine essence and energies can help us do that.
Just sayin'.
I also believe that small o orthodoxy is right too - before anyone accuses me of exclusivity.
I'm not here though to persuade @Nick Tamen to become 'Nicolae Tamenov' or to abandon his Reformed Christian tradition. Far from it.
Believe it or not, I am concerned to celebrate all that we share in common rather than those issues that continue to divide us.
I first encountered Orthodoxy on a board I visited prior to boarding the Ship and I continued conversations about it here and in 'real life'.
It took me a lo-oo-ooo-oong time to come down off the fence and I exasperated many Shipmates in the process.
I probably still do now I've come down on one side rather than another.
I'm still working these things through of course - I've only found out this week about some particular prayers we are supposed to pray during the Dormition Fast, for instance. That's praxis of course but there are also beliefs and emphases I'm working on and I don't pretend to have all the answers. I often think aloud on these boards.
I recognise that things like the Palamite distinction between the divine essence and divine energies might not make much sense outside of my particular Christian paradigm - in the same way that some 'Western' Christian concerns might not make much sense to someone who comes at these things from a more 'Eastern' direction.
I'd like to think I'm exploring these and sharing these in good faith rather than to score points or go 'I've got a bigger O than you-oou-ou ...'
Lord have mercy!
I can, of course, understand the position you are coming from given your frame of reference and the way you have deployed and interpreted the various scriptural references you've cited across the various related threads on this issue.
Don't forget that I share a similar background to yourself in ecclesial and theological terms.
If anything, I'm more puzzled by some of the comments both @Lamb Chopped and @Nick Tamen have made as I'd always thought that the Lutheran and Reformed traditions had pretty much inherited the Roman Catholic understanding of these things - which are more 'Aristotelian' than ours - pretty much intact.
Things 'move on' of course and I wouldn't expect modern day Lutheran and Reformed Christians to have identical views in every respect to Luther and Calvin.
I cited the Westminster Confession in one of these threads, I forget which, and that clearly sets out a belief in divine impassibility.
I'm not saying that Calvin's Institutes or The Westminster Confession occupy the same place in Reformed theology as the great Ecumenical Creeds do across Trinitarian Christianity as a whole. Neither Calvin nor the Westminster Divines would have considered themselves to have 'Papal' authority.
But both the Lutheran and Calvinist traditions strongly emphasised 'divine impassibility', at least in their early stages as far as I can make out and that in a more 'Aristotelian' way than we Orthodox do, truth be told, given the influence of Aquinas and late-medieval Scholasticism.
The Orthodox have never subscribed to the idea of the 'Unmoved Mover'. We consider that entirely inadequate. It's not how we approach this issue.
That isn't to go 'Nur na nah-na-nah!
Neither is it to say that Aquinas was entirely 'wrong' - there are Orthodox theologians around, as I've said before, who are calling for the Orthodox to revise some of their more populist and knee-jerk reactions against him. Equally, as we have seen from the link you very helpfully provided on the essence/energies thread, there have been moves on the RC side to understand or accommodate some of the Orthodox emphases on that particular issue.
I'm happy to agree to disagree on things but equally where possible I strive to find common ground, overlaps and parallels.
But what about the primacy, in cases like this, of the Church Fathers?
Not in my understanding, as posted above.
Those understandings are certainly part of how we should read those texts, but of course, there are other levels going on there which they did not know, and can be best understood in the light of Jesus and His Incarnation. And the Church Fathers and Ecumenical Councils who synthesized it all into basic Christian doctrine and dogma, too.
He does have Reason as a character in his excellent Pilgrim’s Regress…
Also this 1925 poem of his own, “Reason”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_(poem)
Found it! From The Discarded Image, which I really need to read again:
(The weird gibberish in parentheses above is in Greek letters which did not copy correctly here…)
I don’t discount or lightly dismiss the Church Fathers. But if they impose on, say, the Torah an understanding that would be foreign to those who wrote the Torah and the community in which the Torah was formed, or the communities to which the prophets were addressed, then I think it is valid, and perhaps even faithful, to question that imposition.
I’m afraid I think having multiple threads going at the same time that deal with related topics has made discussion much more difficult, not easier.
I don’t recall what portion of the Westminster Confession you cited, and I’m not searching through multiple threads to find it (see comment about multiple threads above), but I’ll assume that portion doesn’t actually use any form of the word impassibility, as I did a word search in my e-edition of the Book of Confessions and got 0 hits. I could guess Chapter 2—“There is but one only living and true God, who is . . . without . . . passions, immutable . . . .”
I go back to what I said earlier in this thread (or another one)—I don’t think the word impassible is helpful, and I think its continued use in these discussions has in fact been unhelpful. It seems to me that the majority of views expressed in this thread have actually been broadly in agreement. But because people are using different vocabulary, that broad agreement isn’t necessarily being recognized.
Why so-called? I know right now there are terrible people who have made an idol out of that, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real.
With respect, both are rather besides the point. Every theologian is in dialogue with their own tradition. One have to unpick that tradition somewhat to work out whether his reasoning was useful or applicable in an entirely different context (for a start whether the resemblance with what he was arguing against had more than a coincidental correspondence, and whether his reasoning could be successfully transposed)
I wish someone could suggest a better term we could all agree on.
You did find the Westminster Confession quote I cited.
Sounds clear cut to me.
Likewise Calvin's views on this issue, which, confusingly, I've alluded to on another thread 😀...
Just to complicate things further ...
Not that I'm saying you have to agree with the Westminster Confession or Calvin on all points of course.
Why does there need to be a better term? Just stop using the word impassibility (with our without quotation marks) and read what people are describing, without worrying whether or not there is a specific label for what they’re describing.
Where exactly do you see people disagreeing here?
The thing is, when you express being “puzzled” that I don’t agree (or perhaps more to accurately, your impression is that I don’t agree) with a bit of the Westminster Confession or Calvin, or being “puzzled” at your impression that a Lutheran disagrees with Luther, it seems to me that the message that you do expect us to agree with Luther or Calvin or the Westminster Divines is unavoidable, disclaimers not withstanding. There’s no reason to be puzzled if you don’t expect it to start with.
And that said, where exactly do you see me disagreeing with Calvin or the Westminister Divines?
They aren’t beside the point
Heschel’s book “The Prophets”, from which these arguments come, has been widely praised and counted as seminal within Judaism and further afield. The quality of the theological analysis has also been praised by Christian theologians, particularly Jurgen Moltmann.
But his arguments actually have nothing to do with Christian belief. There are different rabbinical understandings about what the Prophetic texts say about God. Heschel starts with the Hebrew Scriptures, details the texts which draw him towards his understanding and summarises views. What I provided was a brief summary of a 600 page book. Some have called it a masterpiece, others a modern classic.It has clarified Jewish theological understanding of an important topic about which. as I say, there were different and opposing traditional rabbinical views
I’m very tempted to buy it and look at the detailed analysis myself.
So much for the quality of the argument. From the biographical link I’ll let the quality of the man speak for itself.
His arguments can be trusted as a sound analysis of Hebrew Scriptures. They do not contain any obvious presuppositions.
By contrast. the many comments I read from the early Church Fathers set out to defend what they clearly believed was the sound principle of divine impassibility. They were apologetics for a stated position. And when scripture was introduced into the argument the prevailing view was that any scripture (and there are many in the Old Testament) which attributed emotions to God could not be taken to mean what they said. The proper interpretation must be allegorical, not the obvious meaning.
I’m not saying that those arguments were without value. But I am saying they were apologetics for a particular position. From the summary and the reviews, Heschel’s analysis and argument is not like that.
Here is a review by Dr John C Merkle. Dr Merkle is a senior US academic with a particular interest in interfaith dialogue.
Nothing to worry about.
I'll try not to use the offending 'i' word in future @Nick Tamen and may use 'unchangeability' or 'constancy' or 'constant consistency' or 'immutability' or any other term or phrase that might prove more acceptable.
Any suggestions as to what that might be?
'Loving consistency'?
I can understand the objections to what might be described as the 'classic' position on this one. It's rather like the 'monergist' objections to 'synergism' though ss far as I can see.
Monergists and synergists both end up with the idea that God is all-loving, all-faithful and the author and perfector of our faith even though they approach things from somewhat different angles.
However we approach this issue we all agree that God is faithful and loving, gracious, long-suffering, omniscient, ever-present ...
On the issue of Heschel and Rabbinic understandings of these issues, I've only read a Jewish commentary on the Psalms which I very much enjoyed and one or two articles in an interfaith dialogue context.
I'm aware that there are varied Jewish understandings on this and all sorts of other issues.
I don't know a great deal about Moltmann but have read a wee bit about him in the past. I know that some conservative Protestants find him a bit 'iffy' on some of the issues we are discussing here and in connection with the 'i' word I've been asked not to use.
That isn't necessarily a deal-breaker in and of itself, of course. Those conservative Protestants may need to adjust. I don’t know.
Neither do I know what the Orthodox 'take' on Moltmann would be, but imagine it'd be similar to the approach taken with any Protestant (or RC or Coptic or ...) theologian. We'd go along with whatever accords with our own understanding on things and disagree with elements that mightn't accord and reserve judgement on areas where we couldn't arrive at a clear-cut conclusion one way or another.
The same would happen in reverse with RC or Protestant assessments of Orthodox theologians.
I'm not sure what I'm expecting Lutheran or Reformed contributors to believe on this issue, but elsewhere @Gramps49 has articulated views that accord closely with my limited understanding of Lutheranism and also with how I understand Orthodoxy to approach these issues.
Perhaps there's less daylight between us than may appear at first sight.
Any 'surprise' I've expressed has been at how much variance I've seen here with what I've understood to be both Luther's and Calvin's 'takes' on these issues which I've always taken to have been pretty much in line with RC perspectives at that time.
As I've said, that's a more 'Aristotelian' understanding than we Orthodox have ever entertained even though the Greek Fathers are being accused here of prioritising Hellenistic philosophy over the scriptural texts.
Whatever the case, I'm not saying I'm expecting contemporary Lutheran or Reformed understandings to be identical to those of the Reformers, but I'd expect at least some echoes/congruence with what their position may have been.
I may have misunderstood their position of course in which case I stand to be corrected.
We share that wee small hours affliction but probably for different reasons. I live with diverticulitis and failing arteries which cause abdominal pain and dizziness. At any rate I’m awake too. Profound sympathies. The suffering passes.
It’s a tangent of course but I found these heartwarming.
An appreciation of my father
The friendship between Martin Luther King and Abraham Heschel
So I feel it might be helpful to share this thought. I understand the purpose which causes folks to explore the Pefection of God.
Picking up on that thought and what Bullfrog wrote. Also the feelings and the passion of Abraham Heschel. This very simple thought has occurred to me.
“If God is perfect. He cannot not feel. He must feel perfectly”.
That’s in line with Heschel’s reworking of a famous scripture here.
“ Rather, it means that, in Heschel’s adaptation of Isaiah 55:8–9: ‘My pathos is not your pathos.… For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My pathos than your pathos”.
I don’t have to take painkillers and the discomfort soon passes. I don't know what it is but the doctors say it's normal and happens to some people from time to time.
I haven't read all of your second link but have read the first, the tribute from Heschel's daughter. From that and what I read of his friendship with Dr Martin Luther King he comes across as a very attractive character.
I take on board @chrisstiles's point that we must beware of reading our own proclivities and concerns into other people's traditions but it is impossible not to draw parallels or make 'connections.'
I like the combination of a 'conservative theology with a liberal politics', for instance.
I also like your aphorism about God 'feeling perfectly.' It might not 'square' with how things might be framed from a classic Patristic perspective but I like the 'feel' of it ... 😉
However we approach this issue I think we'd all agree that God is perfect - 'I the Lord do not change' - and that his 'work is perfect and all his ways are just.'
Or perhaps some of us do believe that God can and does change?
In which case those people would still agree that 'his work is perfect and all his ways are just.'
I think if you just read the Hebrew witness you're likely to end with a god who is just one of the Middle Eastern gods - more caring than most of them, but not in essence different. And I don't think that's intellectually credible. More to the point, I think any such god is just another authority figure - a version of Superman. No matter how benevolent Superman is, one shouldn't worship him.
Where have I said anything about jettisoning anything? I tried to be clear that I wasn’t talking about jettisoning anything, but rather about giving one particular system power of veto.[/quote]
I don't think the Fathers are doing anything essentially different from what Christians have always done with the Genesis passage that states that the moon is a light in the sky like the sun; or as modern Christians do with passages that state that the sun moves, or that everything was created in six days.
Yes, we agree. It’s impossible to avoid the challenge of Matthew 5 v 48.
The classic translation is a bit misleading. “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect”. I think it’s best seen as a continuous present challenge for us, an eternal reality for God. I think of it as “be being perfected”.
Of course God is perfect. Else He could not be God. Insofar as we do diverge, we do so from that agreed starting point.
I'm afraid I disagree; to put it another way, he's engaged in a conversation with rabbinical scholars that is quite separate to the conversations on this thread. To say that is not to comment on the quality of the conversation itself.
I think it can be fruitful to read such books, but often the best thing thing one can get from such an exercise is a better understanding of the questions they pose, rather than the answers they give.
They are a particular analysis in a particular tradition, with which the interlocutors within that tradition do not find universal agreement. And I'm sorry but to say that something like that is free from presuppositions is a nonsense.
Perhaps we can agree that all personal analyses are subject to human fallibility? A good scholar tries to avoid this by self criticism and putting findings up for continuing peer review. The act of publication means that one’s ideas are open to criticism from anyone.
So far as “The Prophets” is concerned you will find much admiration from a wide range of theologians of varying and different persuasions. I have looked but can’t find any serious criticism. So it’s in that sense I use the term “sound” and “can be trusted”. It seems to be a general corporate view.
Feel free to come up with something that says different with reasons.
I’m not claiming that Abraham Heschel is infallible. But I’m happy to assert that he is a very good scholar and teacher, well worth reading.
Feel free to make up your own mind about that. He’s not a difficult read.
But specifically, I don’t quite get what is meant by “Greek philosophy generally argues for its conclusions.”
I’m afraid I don’t see that at all.
Maybe Judaism started off as henotheistic but the refined monotheistic understanding is very clear from the prophetic writings. I don’t think you find that in the middle eastern gods.
From our perspective as Christians, the Judaic revelation lacks the culminating insight of the incarnation. But I don’t think that reduces it to a “just anything”. Judaism is profound.
I’ve read a lot of Dafyd. Perhaps we’re missing something?