Human Deification

[T.J. Maxx]

Ok, I was asked by a Mormon friend to take a poll. How many of you agree with this doctrine: "Becoming gods."

Or at the least, what are your thoughts.

[Kevin W. Graham]

Well, I'm that "Mormon friend" again. I guess there aren't too many opinions on this subject.

[ollie]

03-27-2003 @ 11:57 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=#post)
T.J. Maxx:

Ok, I was asked by a Mormon friend to take a poll. How many of you agree with this doctrine: "Becoming gods."

Or at the least, what are your thoughts.
Never heard of it. Is it important to salvation? :huh:

[Dave]

03-27-2003 @ 11:57 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=#post)
T.J. Maxx:

Ok, I was asked by a Mormon friend to take a poll. How many of you agree with this doctrine: "Becoming gods."

Or at the least, what are your thoughts.

Well in the context of LDS theology it's wrong. If used in the ECF sense that in Heaven we will possess holy attributes b/c of no sin, then that would be orthodox.:bonk: I love that one.

[Gavin]

I thought human deification was an important mormon doctrine.

"As God is, so man may become."

[phantaz sunlyk]

**7** the doctrine of theosis is essential. it teaches that man's salvation comes via participation in God via being in the Son. it is biblical, and it is unquestionably present in the writings of the Fathers. today, it is expounded most faithfully by the Eastern Orthodox Church, and though not as emphasized in the Catholic Church, it is nonetheless present. i think that this doctrine needs far more attention than it is given by those of us in the West.
this, however, is quite far from the Mormon teaching insofar as i understand it. whereas orthodoxy understands our deification as participation in God as a gift of God's grace--and recognizes that we can never become God by nature, Mormonism seems to understand deification as the emergence of a distinct ontological divinity. i find no justification for this in the Bible, the Fathers, or Tradition. it is dogmatically rejected by Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
that said, i think that there are probably parts of the Mormon understanding that, if placed within a different theological context, could be justified and held on to. the notion of a distinct ontological divinity however must, if i understand it correctly, be abandoned.
peace.

[Bartholomew]

04-05-2003 @ 04:49 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=55724#post55724)
phantaz sunlyk:

**7** the doctrine of theosis is essential. it teaches that man's salvation comes via participation in God via being in the Son. it is biblical, and it is unquestionably present in the writings of the Fathers.

Perhaps you would be willing to qualify your statement about theosis; exactly how it is essential to salvation?

Also, is Theosis the same as a combination of the Reformed doctrines of Justification/Sanctification?

Thank you for your thoughts on this,
~Matt

[phantaz sunlyk]

**7** say hey InKind, peace in Christ--

Perhaps you would be willing to qualify your statement about theosis; exactly how it is essential to salvation?

**8** well, it may be somewhat an accident of words to ask how it (i.e., the doctrine of theosis) is essential to salvation (as a doctrine). i would rather put it this way--theosis is a word which describes what salvation is. hence if you are saved, theosis therefore is (necessarily) already being realized in you right now, whether or not you have actually completely analyzed and accepted it as an article of faith.
again, this is a good distance away from the Mormon idea. rather, its roots are to be found, for the most part, in the writings of John and Paul. we are in Christ--God sends "the Spirit of his Son into our hearts" and we are thus "hidden with Christ in God". the doctrine can be found all over the Patristic map--it is implicit throughout Ignatius, stated brilliantly by Irenaeus (recapitulation), through Clement of Alexandria and (in however unsatisfactory a form) in Origen, from thence it passes on to Athanasius and is to be found throughout the writings of the Cappadocians, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus Confessor (the "Kosmic Liturgy"), John Damascene, and on and on. to part company with it is to part company with Christian history.
the eternal Sonship of the Son is unbridgeably distinct from our sonship via adoption--the Son is son by nature and eternally; we are children through grace and adoption.
i've written a little more on this subject in part of an essay on the Trinity at Tekton, if you're interested.

Also, is Theosis the same as a combination of the Reformed doctrines of Justification/Sanctification?

**7** hmm, i'm not certain. my initial instinct, however, tells me that it would overlap with them at certain points while at the same to filling them out and going beyond them. if by "justification" you simply mean "by an act of faith in Christ as risen Lord, God applies the sufferings of Christ to our debt of sin, thereby putting us right with God", then theosis certainly goes beyond Protestant justification (while assuming it, be it noted). if, however, by the combo of just/sanct, you mean "when God looks at us, he sees Christ", then there is room for dialog.
peace in Christ.

[Bill the Cat]

Phantaz, I agree and always have with theosis. We are adopted sons of God. Apart from Him, we are nothing. IF God ceased to exist we would too. Our entire existence is reliant on Him.

And I must agree with you on the Mormon idea of Deification. As I have been debating Kevin on the issue of Heavenly Grandpa, I did leave out the fact that no mention of HG is ever made in Mormon theology. So naturally speaking, if we become Gods in the Mormon thinking, and inherit our own world, then to our children, our God would be as irrelivant to them as H.G. is to us.

[George Blaisdell]

Taz writes:

"...theosis is a word which describes what salvation is."

Nice job, Taz -

The Mormon idea of us 'becoming gods' at one time was accredited by Mormons to the Eastern Orthodox Church. They no longer do so, for their idea and the EO doctrine are entirely different, and the Mormon teaching has been entirely rejected by the EO Church. The Mormon idea appeals to vanity - "***I*** can become God!" [I can have my own universe - People will worship me - and on and on... Just like God does in this here one particular universe - Yaaaargghhhh!!]

The reason the apostolic Church is miraculous is because of the unity of its saints with God in Christ. It never lost this miraculous character, by the way - It exists today as it did in the first century. We become one with Christ progressively by repentance, killing the old man, and growing in the new that blossoms forth as a new-born at baptism, and walks through the fires of trials and tribulations and chastizements that bring such a new creature into maturity in Christ.

I remember Paul talking to the Corinthians, I think it was, how he wqs speaking AS IF to the mature, but actually to but babes in Christ, who still need milk, and that he has meat to feed them, but that they cannot stand it yet. This maturation by progressively increasing askesis is what he was referring to, and indeed, the teaching is in the deeds, the acts, the praxis of the faith, and like any athletic endeavor, to which it is compared so often by Paul, it requires conditioning. Michael Jordan did not just wake up one morning as the best in the NBA - He trained for years... And so it is with a Christian... The turning away from the cares of the world and the concerns of the flesh, and the turning toward God in all things, is a progressive matter, and not to be undertaken without parents holding your hand [the elders of the Church, who have walked where you cannot even yet crawl], and praying for you, instructing you, and interceding for you against the opposition when you fall... This tending of children, so to speak, is the bread and butter of the saints, the spiritually mature in Christ, of the Holy Fathers of the Eastern Orthodox Church, just as Christ did for His followers, and they in turn for those who followed after them, and those again following them, from generation to generation, passing on the faith received once for all by the apostles...

Theosis IS salvation - Becoming one with Christ is salvation. It is the participation by humans in the uncreated energies of God - It is God's grace overshadowing and healing the fallen and repentant human soul...

geo

[phantaz sunlyk]

**8** tight post, Geo Blaze. pray for me during Holy Week--that the light whereby i see will be the Light of Mt. Tabor.
glad we agree on this issue Bill the Cat. pray for me during the week afor Easter, and stay on top of Kay Gee while i'm gone.
peace in Christ, y'all cool cats.

[George Blaisdell]

phantaz sunlyk:

**8** ...Geo Blaze. pray for me during Holy Week--that the light whereby i see will be the Light of Mt. Tabor.

You will be in my prayers, Taz... I will pray that God grant your prayers that are unto salvation and life eternal... For the Uncreated Light of Tabor, you need to ask someone who bathes in it...

geo

[phantaz sunlyk]

**8** yo, Geo--

For the Uncreated Light of Tabor, you need to ask someone who bathes in it...

**7** if you know of any, implore for me.
peace.

[George Blaisdell]

phantaz sunlyk: writes:

**8** yo, Geo--

Ho Taz!

> > For the Uncreated Light of Tabor, you need to ask someone who bathes in it...

**7** if you know of any, implore for me.

I have met only one - A bishop... And I don't hang out with bishops! And especially not this one! I would not presume to ask him for anyone, but you never know what will happen in prayers... Be vigilant!

geo

[Kevin W. Graham]

George Blaisdell said:

== The Mormon idea of us 'becoming gods' at one time was accredited by Mormons to the Eastern Orthodox Church. They no longer do so, for their idea and the EO doctrine are entirely different, and the Mormon teaching has been entirely rejected by the EO Church. The Mormon idea appeals to vanity - "***I*** can become God!" [I can have my own universe - People will worship me - and on and on... Just like God does in this here one particular universe - Yaaaargghhhh!!]

This reeks of pure ignorance. I've been LDS for nearly 14 years now, and I've never received the "idea" in any of the wards of the three countries and 6 states I've attended, that *****I***** can have my own universe etc. Much of this is speculation in LDS folklore, as I would guess also existed in the early Church. But you don't get this stuff from official LDS doctrine anymore than you'll get it from the creedal professions. The problem you guys have is trying to reincorporate the "we can become gods" jargon back into modern Christianity. This isn't so much of a problem if you're already Greek Orthodox of course. But such doctrine language did exist. It wasn't taught that one could simply become "like" God. It was stated quite emphatically that we could BE GODS.

Of course the Church fathers eventually began to qualify this by highlighting the creature-creator dichotomoy as outlined by Plato. God is above all and his "essence" and "energies" are entirely unreachable by created beings (notice the extra non-biblical jargon). But not all Church fathers took this position. At least, if they did, they did a poor job of expressing it. “Every one who participates in anything, is unquestionably of one essence and nature with him who is partaker of the same thing," said Origen. Of course you can call him a heretic and think that settles it, but this merely begs teh question. Later orthodoxy would toss out any of their past heroes whose teachings became incompatable with the newer theology. Ditto with Tertullian. This idea is further supported by the Jewish-Christian Clementine Homilies which teaches that man is already of the “same substance” as God, by virtue of the fact that it is His breathe from whence we came.

The underlying theme in the theosis of Irenaeus and Clement, was that we can become gods in the same manner Christ became man. So did Christ become man only in a "moral" sense or did he partake of human nature? The answer to this question should give us an idea how man was to become God according to the pre-Nicean fathers who frequently reiterated this couplet. I think we can all agree that Christ did not taken on human morals. He was sinless. He became man ontologically, so therefore man can become God ontologically. It makes no sense at all to say we can become Gods if it only means moral attributes. It is the rest of the "divine" stuff that makes God, God. So whyw ould it be any different for us? Oh yes, the presuppositions of creature-creator and of strict monotheism. Forget what the fathers said, let us worry about how we can spin it to match what we already believe.

== Theosis IS salvation - Becoming one with Christ is salvation. It is the participation by humans in the uncreated energies of God - It is God's grace overshadowing and healing the fallen and repentant human soul...

I agreed with everything you said until you argued that we become Gods but we don't REALLY become Gods, because of the "uncreated energies" that are beyond our reach. This is Plato speaking and it is nowhere near biblical. Show me where the Bible speaks of God's inaccessible "energies," "essence" or "incommunicable attributes."

The question is simple: Can we become Gods?

Bible: Yes
Church Fathers: Yes
Mormonism: Yes
Evantgelicals: NO WAY!

What I find interesting is that LDS are usually accused of abusing "Christian terminology" and applying different meanings. Well in this case modern Christians are running from an established vocabulary because it obviously conflicts with a modern theology. Any reference to "becoming Gods" in Evangelical circles is always hidden behind terms like "theosis, sanctification, one in Christ, etc." They can't seem to bring themselves to admit that this is exactly what their Church History dictates. LDS are then criticized for sticking to a vocabulary that was abandoned by modern Christianity.

"The Latter-day Saints are owed a debt of gratitude by other Christians because the Saints remind us all of our divine potential. The historic Christian doctrine of salvation—theosis, i.e., human divinization—for too long has been forgotten by too many Christians"(Father Jordan Vajda "'Partakers of the Divine Nature': A Comparative Analysis of Patristic and Mormon Doctrines of Divinization")

[phantaz sunlyk]

**7** say hey Kevin, may the peace of Christ be with you--

It wasn't taught that one could simply become "like" God. It was stated quite emphatically that we could BE GODS.

**8** and since the word "God" didn't then have the same theological force that it does now, it is question begging to automatically assume that when they spoke as such, they therefore had to have understood it in a sense which supports your anthropology.
i would be interested in seeing a rebuttal of my thesis statement on this issue--that the early fathers understood deification as participation in the Son of God as opposed to becoming an ontologically distinct God (in the modern sense of the word).

Of course the Church fathers eventually began to qualify this by highlighting the creature-creator dichotomoy as outlined by Plato.

**8** blaiming anything on "corruption from Plato" is, in my opinion, a very weak and misguided move. first, it must be shown that Plato was wrong, and if so, in what sense. second, to act as though the creator-creature distinction was clearly not existent in early Christianity (first 3 centuries)--and you seem to act as though this fact should be accepted as obviously true--is false. third, it must be shown that even if an early father didn't accept the traditional/orthodox distinction, he held in place of it anything near your understanding (i'm thinking here of Origen, who i'm studying in depth at present).
fourthly, and ironically, it should be noted that several points where you claim the fathers for support are precisely those points wherein philisophical or Platonic influence is present, such as...

“Every one who participates in anything, is unquestionably of one essence and nature with him who is partaker of the same thing," said Origen

**8** which is an epistemic doctrine more than an anthropological or theological one. it comes from the Greek notion that only like can know like, and Origen, in this sense, would have said the same about man and rocks (which we can also know).
furthermore, Origen makes evident in fragment 73 of the Homilies on Luke his concern that the distinction between the Son by nature and the sons by adoption, and the priority of the former over the latter, should be maintained. Even after we have become sons of God, the difference between us and the Son remains. Lest there be any confusion, Origen advises his listerners that although the words of John 1:12-13 testify to the fact that we may become sons, the do not mean that we are transformed into God's nature (ousia); rather, it is through the grace of Christ that we are enabled to call God "Father". Peter Widdicombe, _The Fatherhood of God from Origen to Athanasius (Oxford Theological Monographs)_, pg. 99

God is above all and his "essence" and "energies" are entirely unreachable by created beings (notice the extra non-biblical jargon).

**7** no offense, but this comment is quite revealing. ask George whether or not the East has ever denied that we can participate in the divine energies.
this is precisely what Orthodox theosis affirms. we can't approach the ousia of God, but we can truly participate in God via his energies (which are God).
and Catholic theosis states that The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature": "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of Man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God." "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods." Catechism of the Catholic Church, 460
where did you get the idea that, according to us (George, who is Orthodox, and myself, being Catholic) deny that we can participate in the energies of God?

Later orthodoxy would toss out any of their past heroes whose teachings became incompatable with the newer theology.

**8** this statement needs to be severely qualified.

The underlying theme in the theosis of Irenaeus and Clement, was that we can become gods in the same manner Christ became man.

**7** the underlying theme in the theosis of Irenaeus is that we can participate in the life of the Trinity by being in the Son of God, and Clement's (orthodox) gnostic notion of theosis doesn't go beyond Origen's participative notion in any sense that helps your case.
the idea is that we are, in a sense, plugged into the Son, hence the divine life flows through us. it is not that we become ontological distince powers, or that the divine life within us becomes our own and proper to us.

Forget what the fathers said, let us worry about how we can spin it to match what we already believe.

**7** again, no offense, but this is precisely what you are doing. you are sifting the fathers for proof-texts which you take out of their historio-theological context in order to support yourself.

I agreed with everything you said until you argued that we become Gods but we don't REALLY become Gods, because of the "uncreated energies" that are beyond our reach.

**8** George NEVER SAID that--he said exactly the opposite.

This is Plato speaking and it is nowhere near biblical.

**7** so Plato made the distinction between God's energies and God's ousia? cite a source!
for the Biblical support of this notion, see Vladmir Lossky's _The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church_.

Any reference to "becoming Gods" in Evangelical circles is always hidden behind terms like "theosis, sanctification, one in Christ, etc." They can't seem to bring themselves to admit that this is exactly what their Church History dictates.

**8** let it be granted that Evangelicals often have an underdeveloped understanding of theosis--from this it follows neither that you are any closer, nor that their gaining such an understanding would bring them any nearer to you.
second, as mentioned above, you aren't dealing with Evangelicals here. you're dealing with a Catholic and an Orthodox, and this calls for a change in your modus operandi.
may the peace of Christ be with you.

[Kevin W. Graham]

Hey Phantaz, how ya been>?

== and since the word "God" didn't then have the same theological force that it does now, it is question begging to automatically assume that when they spoke as such, they therefore had to have understood it in a sense which supports your anthropology.

Likewise, it is question begging to assume "God" meant something entirely different to the Church fathers as it did to the later Church fathers. But then again, this is beside the point since how God is meant NOW isn't really an issue.

== i would be interested in seeing a rebuttal of my thesis statement on this issue--that the early fathers understood deification as participation in the Son of God as opposed to becoming an ontologically distinct God (in the modern sense of the word).

Essentially what you are doing is proposing to speak for all church fathers in this instance.

== blaiming anything on "corruption from Plato" is, in my opinion, a very weak and misguided move.

Not blaming, just stating a fact. Many theologians admit this but argue that Plato was inspired.

== first, it must be shown that Plato was wrong, and if so, in what sense.

No, it must be shown that Plato was right. You're shifting the burden of proof are you not? Merely asserting creature/creator dichotomies don't justify their existence.

== second, to act as though the creator-creature distinction was clearly not existent in early Christianity (first 3 centuries)--and you seem to act as though this fact should be accepted as obviously true--is false.

My position is that there is clear ambiguity on this issue. The creature-creator distinction became highlighted moreso in Athanasius/Augustine and those who followed. You can assume their predecessors adopted the same idea, but this is assumption. Their words don't make this as clear as many imply.

== third, it must be shown that even if an early father didn't accept the traditional/orthodox distinction, he held in place of it anything near your understanding (i'm thinking here of Origen, who i'm studying in depth at present).

Why must it be shown? You are the one who made the claim that ALL the Church Fathers believes XYZ. I'm saying the burden of proof is on your shoulders if you want to make such a generalization. That there was a clear trend which emphasized the dichotomy after Nicea is well testified by scholarship.

"If we limit our view of the teaching of the Fathers by what they expressly state, St. Ignatius may be considered as a Patripassian, St. Justin arianizes, and St. Hippolytus is a Photinian. . . . Tertullian is heterodox on the doctrine of our Lord's divinity. . . . Origen is, at the very least, suspected, and must be defended and explained rather than cited as a witness of orthodoxy; and Eusebius was a Semi-Arian"(John Henry Cardinal Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845; reprint, Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1960), 43. )

== which is an epistemic doctrine more than an anthropological or theological one. it comes from the Greek notion that only like can know like, and Origen, in this sense, would have said the same about man and rocks (which we can also know). furthermore, Origen makes evident in fragment 73 of the Homilies on Luke his concern that the distinction between the Son by nature and the sons by adoption, and the priority of the former over the latter, should be maintained. Even after we have become sons of God, the difference between us and the Son remains. Lest there be any confusion, Origen advises his listerners that although the words of John 1:12-13 testify to the fact that we may become sons, the do not mean that we are transformed into God's nature (ousia); rather, it is through the grace of Christ that we are enabled to call God "Father". Peter Widdicombe, _The Fatherhood of God from Origen to Athanasius (Oxford Theological Monographs)_, pg. 99

Perhaps, but this does not change the fact that Origen was perfectly aware of 2 Pet 1:4. To "participate" in the divine nature should therefore be understood as, according to Origen, "of one essence and nature." Origen also believed that “with respect to His mortal body, and the human soul which it contained, we assert that not by their communion merely with Him, but by their unity and intermixture, they received the highest powers, and after participating in His divinity, were changed into God.”

That rocks and man are the same essence is due to our created nature. But if we partake of the essence of the creator, then we become what he is.

== no offense, but this comment is quite revealing. ask George whether or not the East has ever denied that we can participate in the divine energies. this is precisely what Orthodox theosis affirms.

Ok, but my point was that this is all irrelevant to those who do not adopt such jargon. It is unbiblical, and to cite the Catechism instead of the Bible only underscores this fact.

== the underlying theme in the theosis of Irenaeus is that we can participate in the life of the Trinity by being in the Son of God, and Clement's (orthodox) gnostic notion of theosis doesn't go beyond Origen's participative notion in any sense that helps your case. the idea is that we are, in a sense, plugged into the Son, hence the divine life flows through us. it is not that we become ontological distince powers, or that the divine life within us becomes our own and proper to us.

Citation please? This sort of detail is more apparent in later fathers, but not the earliest fathers. I see Irenaeus saying we were to be made gods at length, and "overcome the substance of created nature."

"For we cast blame upon Him, because we have not been made gods from the beginning, but at first merely men, then at length gods; although God has adopted this course out of His pure benevolence, that no one may impute to Him invidiousness or grudgingness. He declares, "I have said, Ye are gods; and ye are all sons of the Highest."But since we could not sustain the power of divinity, He adds, "But ye shall die like men," setting forth both truths-the kindness of His free gift, and our weakness, and also that we were possessed of power over ourselves. For after His great kindness He graciously conferred good [upon us], and made men like to Himself, [that is] in their own power; while at the same time by His prescience He knew the infirmity of human beings, and the consequences which would flow from it; but through [His] love and [His] power, He shall overcome the substance of created nature"

He does say we will participate in God's glory, but how does this negate the fact that he still taught we would BECOME GODS? He said we would become God like Jesus became Human. So now we must ask, how did Christ ebcome Human? In nature right? He didn't become human "morally" speaking did He?

== again, no offense, but this is precisely what you are doing. you are sifting the fathers for proof-texts which you take out of their historio-theological context in order to support yourself.

Not at all, I am simply responding to the common charge that LDS adopt Christian language and redefine terms. It is a case in point that this is precisely what is taking place here. Uncomfortable with the language of Christian history, modern Christians have neglected this doctrine. Now I never said the Church Fathers taught the LDS doctrine of theosis. This is a strawman argument that won't go far with me. I have always maintained the creature/creator dichotomy that prevailed in the post Nicea period. I have always taken into account everything that was said by the fathers, although I am not at all convinced that claims like "all the fathers believed XYZ" can in any way be supported. I have scholars that agree with me in that they did NOT all agree.

What I am saying is that modern Christians have attacked the LDS for believing we can become gods while at the same time ignoring the fact that their own fathers taught the same thing. Since a big beef of theirs involves terminology, then why aren't they using teh same terminology? Because their concept of GOD evolved? This would admit a change in theology since their own fathers laid down the groundwork. And whose fault is that exactly?

The creature/creator issue has very little to do with the fact that the earliest fathers believed we would be transformed into whatever God was. The underlying theme was that the human nature was to be conquered by Christ and we would become sons of God and inherit all that He has. That this would include only moral attributes and exclude any ontological identity is the huge assumption you guys adopt, and it is not biblically based. It is rather based in Greek philosophy.

== George NEVER SAID that--he said exactly the opposite.

Energies, substance, "essence" whatever. It is all Greek to me. It is all unbiblical and relies on the premise that Greek philosophy was an inspired gift from God to help us further understand the mystery of His nature.

== so Plato made the distinction between God's energies and God's ousia?

No, Plato made it clear that the creature and creator were practially pola opposites. The "energies,substances,essences" were simply innovative products of the Greek environment. Where they fit into orthodoxy is for you guys to figure out. I have no clue as i've admitted before. What I do know is that these concepts rest on Greek philosophy not the Bible or revelation. Of course this doesn't prove they are false.

== let it be granted that Evangelicals often have an underdeveloped understanding of theosis--from this it follows neither that you are any closer, nor that their gaining such an understanding would bring them any nearer to you.

When was this ever my goal? I'm pointing out hypocrisy here.

== second, as mentioned above, you aren't dealing with Evangelicals here. you're dealing with a Catholic and an Orthodox, and this calls for a change in your modus operandi.
may the peace of Christ be with you.

Agreed. Unfortunately I've been finishing up my review of chapter 7 the past three days and this involved a ton of research in the Evangelical realm. Much of it is entirely negative and pretty ridiculous. Sorry if I let my frustrations spill over onto this forum.

Peace.

[George Blaisdell]

Kevin W. Graham:[ writes:

George Blaisdell said:

== The Mormon idea of us 'becoming gods' at one time was accredited by Mormons to the Eastern Orthodox Church. They no longer do so, for their idea and the EO doctrine are entirely different, and the Mormon teaching has been entirely rejected by the EO Church. The Mormon idea appeals to vanity - "***I*** can become God!" [I can have my own universe - People will worship me - and on and on... Just like God does in this here one particular universe - Yaaaargghhhh!!]

> This reeks of pure ignorance. I've been LDS for nearly 14 years now, and I've never received the idea in any of the wards of the three countries and 6 states I've attended, that *****I***** can have my own universe etc. Much of this is speculation in LDS folklore,

I was patiently, if reluctantly, taught this by Mormon missionaries when I was a 15 year athiest seeking God in Minot, ND in 1960...

I re-affirmed that understanding when I attended Utah State University in '64.

> as I would guess also existed in the early Church.

Wrong guess... It has never been in the Church... Early or late.

> The problem you guys have is trying to reincorporate the "we can become gods"; jargon back into modern Christianity.

I am not a modern Christianity...

> This isn't so much of a problem if you're already Greek Orthodox of course.

The Eastern Orthodox Church has no difficulty with that passage at all, and utterly repudiates the Mormon understanding of it.

> It was stated quite emphatically that we could BE GODS.

Got a quote?

> Of course the Church fathers eventually began to qualify this by highlighting the creature-creator dichotomoy as outlined by Plato.

The Church Fathers do not follow Plato...

> God is above all and his "essence" and "energies" are entirely unreachable by created beings (notice the extra non-biblical jargon).

You need to do your homework here, my friend... The Orthodox speak quite plainly...

> But not all Church fathers took this position. At least, if they did, they did a poor job of expressing it. “Every one who participates in anything, is unquestionably of one essence and nature with him who is partaker of the same thing," said Origen.

The Church corrected this heresy...

> Of course you can call him a heretic and think that settles it, but this merely begs teh question.

So you say...

> Later orthodoxy would toss out any of their past heroes whose teachings became incompatable with the newer theology.

Origen's was the newer... We keep to the original... The deposit of the faith given once for all to the apostles...

> Ditto with Tertullian. This idea is further supported by the Jewish-Christian Clementine Homilies which teaches that man is already of the “same substance” as God, by virtue of the fact that it is His breathe from whence we came.

Well, you are not the one to whom I would turn for an understanding of the thought of the early fathers...

> The underlying theme in the theosis of Irenaeus and Clement, was that we can become gods in the same manner Christ became man.

First I've ever heard of this...

> So did Christ become man only in a "moral" sense or did he partake of human nature? The answer to this question should give us an idea how man was to become God according to the pre-Nicean fathers who frequently reiterated this couplet. I think we can all agree that Christ did not taken on human morals. He was sinless. He became man ontologically, so therefore man can become God ontologically.

No quotes from the early fathers for this one either?

> It makes no sense at all to say we can become Gods if it only means moral attributes.

The vanity of fallen human reasoning has no impact on the humility of the Fathers...

I am out of time, and really not all that interested in pursuing this thread... Thank-you for your response...

geo

[Kevin W. Graham]

== Wrong guess... It has never been in the Church... Early or late.

It is foolish to propose to speak for every church father when there are people who have studied them their entire lives who would laugh at such a notion. I admit being in Kindergarten on this issue, but I've read enough to know that any assertion such as this would fly in the face of schoalrship.

== The Eastern Orthodox Church has no difficulty with that passage at all, and utterly repudiates the Mormon understanding of it.

Isn't that what I just said? The Greek Orthodox wouldn't have a problem with it, but it is far fetched to say they have "repudiated" anything relating to the LDS position. All you can do is claim the church fathers came to a different understanding of deification as in reference to God's eternal chasm between mankind. And you would be right, although I believe the earliest church fathers were more in line with the LDS position. But this hardly repudiates anything unless we first take the church fathers as a source of authority. We don't. That is why I keep pointing out the fact that this great distinction between creature creator is not biblical. If it were, you guys would have pointed it out by now. In my review I point out that Blomberg, Owen, Mosser and Holding keep referring to this distinction as if it were supposed to be a given, but nobody bothers to demonstrate it from the Bible.

== Got a quote?

You can't seriously be that out of touch with your own church history as to suggest no quotes exist.

== The Church Fathers do not follow Plato...

Actually the church fathers moved from Platonism to Neo-Platonism. The Neo-Platonism forbids any connection with man and the divine while Platonism thought of man as immortal spiritual substance. See Etienne Gilson, God and Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941), p. 56.

== You need to do your homework here, my friend... The Orthodox speak quite plainly...

After centuries of councils, bickering, exiles, and denounced heretics? Heck, they ought to be now.

== The Church corrected this heresy...

Which supports my point that the Church didn't always believe XYZ. You can put it in a nutshell without dealing with the so called heresies that weren't even heresies until later on. "Church History" spans several generations and some people would be declared a heretic posthumously because of what would later be called orthodoxy. To say these are rightly called "corrections" is simply begging the question.

== So you say...

Yes, and so do the rules of logic. It begs the question.

== Origen's was the newer... We keep to the original... The deposit of the faith given once for all to the apostles...

More question begging. It is silly to assume the later orthodoxy would be the original and the predecessors were just too blind to grasp it. You know, the guys who lived closer to the time of the "original" gospel. Folks like Martyr, Tertullian, Tatian, Origen etc. Declaring them heretics in hindsight means very little.


== Well, you are not the one to whom I would turn for an understanding of the thought of the early fathers...

That doesn't respond to the citation. The point is there was ambiguity when the entire picture is looked at. It is silly to suggest ALL the fathers believed so and so. Heck, even Paul Owen says as much, right before he contradicts himself by saying "all" church fathers believed in the creature-creator dichotomy. "it is extremely difficult to define precisely the doctrine of deification among the church fathers because it meant various things to different writers"(Owen and Mosser, FARMS Review of Books, Vol 11. No.2. (FARMS: 1999), 37-42)

== First I've ever heard of this...

No offense, but why am I not surprised? Aren't you a self professing Greek Orthodox? I'd expect this sort of ignorance from an Evangelical, but the Greek concept of salvation involves the idea of becoming gods. Maybe not in the LDS sense which denies the C&C dichotomy, but the same terminology is certainly applied and it begs to reason that ALL church fathers accepted thsi premise from start to finish. Only the later fathers make a big deal of highlighting thsi distinction. The mind of Athanasius and Augustine are not the same as Origen or Tertullian.


== No quotes from the early fathers for this one either?

I provided it in the previous post. Feel free to explore its context. Irenaeus says that, “from the beginning we are first made men and then gods.”Clement of Alexandria stated quite bluntly “The Logos of God was made man in that you might learn from man how to become a God.”Saint Athanasius declared, “The Word was made flesh in order that we might be enabled to be made gods.... Just as the Lord, putting on the body, became a man, so also we men are both deified through his flesh, and henceforth inherit everlasting life.”As Church Historian Robert Wilken states, salvation according to the early church fathers meant that “we are not only freed from something, we become something. ‘You have put off the old nature…and have put on the new nature which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.’(Col 3:10)” The idea was clearly to become something entirely new, and the new creature was to be whatever God was. Given this premise, the notion that we are ontologically different from God presently, has absolutely no bearing on the fact that we will become something new through salvation in Christ, and that that something is God.

Arthur C. McGiffert seems to have understood this as follows: "Participation in God was carried so far by Irenaeus as to amount to deification. ‘We were not made gods in the beginning,' he says, ‘but at first men, then at length gods.' This is not to be understood as mere rhetorical exaggeration on Irenaeus' part. He meant the statement to be taken literally"

Alan Richardson, speaking of the theologians who produced the famous Definition of Faith of the Council of Chalcedon in a.d. 451, said "They were inclined to set too great a gulf between God and man. They tended to conceive of God and man as two separate substances differing from each other in kind and having no properties in common. Of course we can now see that this tendency of their thought was principally due to the accommodation of their thinking to the current philosophy of their day...If a real incarnation has taken place at all, this means that God and man cannot be absolutely dissimilar in essence, since they have been brought together in the one Person of Jesus Christ…God and man are fundamentally akin, as is surely implied by the belief that man was made in the image of God."

== The vanity of fallen human reasoning has no impact on the humility of the Fathers...

That is not a response to my statement. Can you make sense of it or not?

== I am out of time, and really not all that interested in pursuing this thread... Thank-you for your response...


You should be interested since it is your own Church History that is being thrown out on the table here.

[phantaz sunlyk]

**8** g'day mate.

Likewise, it is question begging to assume "God" meant something entirely different to the Church fathers as it did to the later Church fathers.

**7** only a patristic toper of the highest order would fail to realize that theological vocabulary underwent development throughout the course of Church history, or imagine that since it did, it therefore necessarily follows that the faith essentially changed.

But then again, this is beside the point since how God is meant NOW isn't really an issue.

**8** which reminds me, can you tell me how y'all understand deification? i see that you denied that you'll one day have your own planet, etc. (and this was told to me as well by a Mormon), so what does it consist of?

Essentially what you are doing is proposing to speak for all church fathers in this instance.

**8** i gave a definition of salvation that is broad enough to include the majority of sustained patristic statements on the subject, and that is excluded by none of the patristic statements on the subject.
are you going to interact with it or not?

Not blaming, just stating a fact. Many theologians admit this but argue that Plato was inspired.

**7** your understanding of it seems insufficiently nuanced given the import you try to extrapolate from it when asserting it ("not Scripture, but Plato", etc.)
if i'm taking you the wrong way, i apologize, but it seems to me that your beating the logical fallacy of guilt by association to death.
you say that "many" claim that Plato is inspired? i'll settle for two specific citations.

No, it must be shown that Plato was right. You're shifting the burden of proof are you not?

**8** on what issue? mind-body dualism? the "forms"? the pre-existence of souls?
and as far as "burden of proof" goes, it lies solely on your shoulders, as you're the one making claims that are at odds with about 90% of the people on this board, as well as 90% of Christians in the world...and can you name 1 Mormon in each century from 500 ad to 1800 ad?

Merely asserting creature/creator dichotomies don't justify their existence.

**7** again, i'm certain what you mean by "dichotomy". that the creature isn't identical with its creator? that the creature is ontologically distinct from its creator? or what? i need to know this before we can pursue this particular issue further. as i said before, i'm not up to date on Mormonism.

Why must it be shown? You are the one who made the claim that ALL the Church Fathers believes XYZ.

**7** what do you mean by X, and what by Y, and what by Z?

That there was a clear trend which emphasized the dichotomy after Nicea is well testified by scholarship.

**8** of course the issue would become more clear during the Nicene era. likewise, Paul's doctrine of eating meats sacrificed to idols became more clear in proportion to the circumstances in Corinth making it necessary; from this it does not follow that the thought of the Church changed.
now you make an interesting move, and i think it goes a long way in supporting me when i say that you are guilty of proof-texting--

"If we limit our view of the teaching of the Fathers by what they expressly state, St. Ignatius may be considered as a Patripassian, St. Justin arianizes, and St. Hippolytus is a Photinian. . . . Tertullian is heterodox on the doctrine of our Lord's divinity. . . . Origen is, at the very least, suspected, and must be defended and explained rather than cited as a witness of orthodoxy; and Eusebius was a Semi-Arian"(John Henry Cardinal Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845; reprint, Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1960), 43. )

**8** i've already asked you whether or not you've read Newman's _Development of Doctrine_, and you replied that you hadn't. yet you quote him still! where did you find this quote? my guess is that you found it from an anti-orthodox (Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestants being the "orthodox") apologetic, and from a section in that apologetic specifically "proving" either 'how far Christianity went off the rails', or 'how the early Church didn't agree with the later Church'. am i wrong?
this type of sourcework bothers me terribly. i have all of the works i cite--i buy them with my own money. when i quote them, i like to know that i am accurately dealing with them, so i read a book before i quote from it.
and in this case, you use Newman in a sense which is opposite to what he intended.

Perhaps, but this does not change the fact that Origen was perfectly aware of 2 Pet 1:4. To "participate" in the divine nature should therefore be understood as, according to Origen, "of one essence and nature."

**7** 2 Pet. 1:4 is irrelevant here. i have just given you a citation from a world authority on Origen which absolutely refutes what you tried to prove, providing a reference to a passage in Origen himself. the quote you refered to (without citing the source) says no more than that man is a being endowed with a rational spirit.

That rocks and man are the same essence is due to our created nature. But if we partake of the essence of the creator, then we become what he is.

**8** and cease to be creatures? in what sense are we divine, according to you?

Ok, but my point was that this is all irrelevant to those who do not adopt such jargon.

**8** it is not irrelevant for the very simple reason that you are failing to engage the issue through your lack of familiarity with the complexities of the subject.

It is unbiblical, and to cite the Catechism instead of the Bible only underscores this fact.

**7** the "its unbiblical" complaint has no force at all with me.

Citation please?

**8** against heresies 5:1f. for Irenaeus. for Clement, _Paidagogos_ 1:6:26:1 makes clear that deification is a work of grace; 2:20:1 that it is participation; _Stromateis_ 5:12:81:6f. on the "otherness" of God (listing properties, the conjunction of which are never, by any padre, predicated of deified man).

This sort of detail is more apparent in later fathers, but not the earliest fathers.

**7** again, so what? the notion of a crucified messiah became apparent "in later" biblical authors; the fact that circumcission wasn't necessary came after Christ, and not with him; the notion of a NT canon of 27 books came in the fourth century, and on and on.
a doctrine is defined in proportion to its being violated.

I see Irenaeus saying we were to be made gods at length, and "overcome the substance of created nature."

**8** "created nature" here referring to sinfulness. or are you suggesting that Irenaeus teaches a doctrine of backwards causation whereby that which is created becomes uncreated?
if not, then, since Irenaeus clearly teaches that ingenerateness is an essential property of ho theos (see book 2), then it necessarily follows that men cannot become "god" in the same sense as 'the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ'.

He does say we will participate in God's glory, but how does this negate the fact that he still taught we would BECOME GODS?

**7** see above.

He said we would become God like Jesus became Human.

**8** no he didn't, he said that God became man that man might become God.

So now we must ask, how did Christ ebcome Human? In nature right? He didn't become human "morally" speaking did He?

**7** i fail to see the relevance of the "merely in a moral sense" charge--we don't teach that. that said, the moral aspect is crucial to theosis.
yes, Christ assumed human nature from Mary. and yes, it thereby follows that the divine nature is communicated to man. but what does this entail, according to you?

Not at all, I am simply responding to the common charge that LDS adopt Christian language and redefine terms.

**8** which is basically what you are doing, for the simple reason that you are filling 2nd century terms with your 21st century understanding of their meaning.

It is a case in point that this is precisely what is taking place here. Uncomfortable with the language of Christian history, modern Christians have neglected this doctrine.

**8** this is nonsense--you're assuming that all "modern Christians" are the Protestant sola-scripturians that you're used to dealing with, ignoring the denominations that assert historical continuity with the whole of Christian history.
the Orthodox wouldn't be scandalized by reading that men will become God--they wouldn't budge at it. neither would i.

I have scholars that agree with me in that they did NOT all agree.

**7** well, feel free to cite them if you think it will do you any good--i ask that you first be familiar with the works you are citing, however. your attempt with Newman ought to emabarass you.
and speaking of scholars, i find it interesting that neither Newman, Kelly, Pelikan, Meyendorff, Ware, Zizioulas, Widdicombe, Frend, Quasten, Crouzel, Kasper, La Cugna, Lossky, Congar, or von Balthasar say anything even near what you seem to assert regarding deification in the ante-Nicene Church. the issue doesn't even come up in the terms with which you approach the subject. the closest i've seen is Meyendorff's treatment of Origen in _Christ in Eastern Christian Thought_, and even this is extremely far from what you seem to be saying.

What I am saying is that modern Christians have attacked the LDS for believing we can become gods while at the same time ignoring the fact that their own fathers taught the same thing.

**8** again, it all depends on what you mean by "we can become gods". if you mean, "we can become like Yahweh in absolutely all respects", then they are right to reject you. and since most seem to understand your claims in this sense, then they cannot be blamed.

Because their concept of GOD evolved? This would admit a change in theology since their own fathers laid down the groundwork. And whose fault is that exactly?

**7** i think you should read (the whole of) the Newman work you cited above for an answer.

That this would include only moral attributes and exclude any ontological identity is the huge assumption you guys adopt, and it is not biblically based.

**8** "you guys"? wouldn't John Ruusbroec and Gregory Palamas be surprised to learn that he thought we could become divine only in the moral sense! and so too Kasper and Lossky!

It is rather based in Greek philosophy.

**7** this is the exact opposite of the truth. see John Meyendorff's _Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality_.

Energies, substance, "essence" whatever.

**7** oh, that's nice :thumb: its like a person in a debate on "evil and the existence of God" claiming that the fact of free will is "beside the point".

It is all Greek to me. It is all unbiblical and relies on the premise that Greek philosophy was an inspired gift from God to help us further understand the mystery of His nature.

**8** this is one of the strangest claims i've ever heard in my life. whoever claimed that Greek philosophy was "inspired by God" (other than Clement, who you cite for support above)?
i can't bare anymore...
peace.

[Kevin W. Graham]

== only a patristic toper of the highest order would fail to realize that theological vocabulary underwent development throughout the course of Church history, or imagine that since it did, it therefore necessarily follows that the faith essentially changed.

Doesn't this seem to be inconsistent? All teh while the claim is made that modern Christainity reflects its history properly, we are to now understand that it underwent a development that would totally alter the meaning of basic terms like "God?" Tell me, what was the definition of God for Irenaues and then the definition of God according to Augustine. This should be educational.

== which reminds me, can you tell me how y'all understand deification? i see that you denied that you'll one day have your own planet, etc. (and this was told to me as well by a Mormon), so what does it consist of?

No, I denied it is the "LDS position" in any real sense. Whether this be the case in the hereafter, is an open question as far as I'm concerned. One thing I do know is that this speculation does not conflict with the Bible. A book which described deified humans as those ruling in power, sitting on God's throne, and even being worshipped. My point was that I have never sat through a sunday school lesson that stated this as a recognized fact. It is simply speculation that naturally comes from a faith without a systematic theology. It is closer to folklore than anything else. The LDS see man and God as the same species. We do not see an eternal gap between creature and creator. Therefore we believe we become Gods literally without any barriers precluding the ultimate transformation into deity.

== i gave a definition of salvation that is broad enough to include the majority of sustained patristic statements on the subject, and that is excluded by none of the patristic statements on the subject. are you going to interact with it or not?

I'm trying, but I can't buy the idea that all the fathers bought into this ontological distinction without proof. So far this has been the assertion. For starters, can you show me where Justin Martry, Tertullian, Tatian and Origen state unequivocally that man cannot be what God is?

== your understanding of it seems insufficiently nuanced given the import you try to extrapolate from it when asserting it ("not Scripture, but Plato", etc.) if i'm taking you the wrong way, i apologize, but it seems to me that your beating the logical fallacy of guilt by association to death.

Howso? Plato was cited all throughout the fathers was he not? Am I to believe his philosophy played no major role during this time of development?

== you say that "many" claim that Plato is inspired? i'll settle for two specific citations.

Will do. Although I believe they state that it was Greek philosophy in particular that was God-given. This is a respectable position to take I believe since it admits the obvious. Could the Trinity, ex nihilo, creature-creator etc, ever be expressed properly without the aid of Greek philosophy?

== on what issue? mind-body dualism? the "forms"? the pre-existence of souls? and as far as "burden of proof" goes, it lies solely on your shoulders, as you're the one making claims that are at odds with about 90% of the people on this board, as well as 90% of Christians in the world...and can you name 1 Mormon in each century from 500 ad to 1800 ad?

No, the issue is clearly the creature/creator division. You made the claim that "all" the fathers agreed with it, therefore they "all" disagree with the LDS doctrine. It is time to back this up with substance.

==again, i'm certain what you mean by "dichotomy". that the creature isn't identical with its creator? that the creature is ontologically distinct from its creator? or what? i need to know this before we can pursue this particular issue further. as i said before, i'm not up to date on Mormonism.

That the creature is eternally ontologically distinct from its creator. This is the underlying assumption that precludes deification in the LDS sense. Can you prove this to be existent in "all" the fathers? I'm not being cocky about this because I don't know nearly as much about patristics as I'd like, but I'm not at all convinced that anyone can make a sweeping generalization that "all" of any group believed anything...especially a group of church fathers over a thousand year span, when their personal philosophies diverged in several areas.

== what do you mean by X, and what by Y, and what by Z?

XYZ = Creature/creator being eternally ontologically distinct.

== of course the issue would become more clear during the Nicene era.

And even more clearer after the Nicean era. This is my point. Almost every reference to deification after Athanasius added the qualifying creature/creator distinction. This is not found in the ante-Nicean fathers. Instead the language seems perfectly clear that Irenaeus believed men could be gods in the same way god became man. The interpretive template is there, but you guys don't accept it because of the obvious theological repercussions. Instead you keep reaching for later qualifications - as so often appear in the post Nicean fathers - as if they are supposed to be implied from the beginning. This is where I have problems, and where you need to start demonstrating this to be the case instead of asserting it.

== now you make an interesting move, and i think it goes a long way in supporting me when i say that you are guilty of proof-texting--

Howso?

== i've already asked you whether or not you've read Newman's _Development of Doctrine_, and you replied that you hadn't. yet you quote him still!

Mainly because I knew you liked him so much.

== where did you find this quote? my guess is that you found it from an anti-orthodox (Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestants being the "orthodox") apologetic, and from a section in that apologetic specifically "proving" either 'how far Christianity went off the rails', or 'how the early Church didn't agree with the later Church'. am i wrong?

Very. In fact you should be pleased to know that I got this citation from a buddy Catholic of mine, David Waltz. Who is a true expert in patristics if there ever was one. Thsi was found in his review of Barry Bickmore: http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?a=review/12_2_2000_13.inc&x=2

== this type of sourcework bothers me terribly. i have all of the works i cite--i buy them with my own money. when i quote them, i like to know that i am accurately dealing with them, so i read a book before i quote from it. and in this case, you use Newman in a sense which is opposite to what he intended.

Can you deal with what he said or not? To say he would be upset that a Mormon used his words against an idea that the fathers were united in harmonious theology is probably a forgone conclusion, but this really doesn't deal with what he said. If I took him out of context, then please demonstrate how I did. I'll be sure to let David know about how it. I never said or implied that I own the book, but I tend to let people speak for themselves, even if some don't like what they say.


== 2 Pet. 1:4 is irrelevant here.

No it isn't. The language is the same. Participating in the divine nature can hardly go unnoticed. He cannot seriously expect to say man BECOMES that which it participates, without expecting some serious backlash from exegetes familiar with 2 Peter.

== i have just given you a citation from a world authority on Origen which absolutely refutes what you tried to prove, providing a reference to a passage in Origen himself. the quote you refered to (without citing the source) says no more than that man is a being endowed with a rational spirit.

Sorry, but your committing a fallacy by appealing to authority. Is it supposed to be a shock that an orthodox scholar interpretes Origen's comments to mean something more acceptable to orthodoxy? Sorry, but I have eyes and a brain to guide them just as well as the next guy, and I spent 10 minutes looking over the context of Origen's comments to make sure there was nothing I was missing. http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-04/anf04-48.htm#P7325_1669491 Care to point out what exactly I'm missing? I'm all ears.

As far as I'm concerned Origen is the world's authority on what Origen said and meant. Why would I defer to a secondary authority when I can read Origen for myself?

== and cease to be creatures? in what sense are we divine, according to you?

Again with the creature issue. Obviously one cannot be an uncreated creature, but you've failed to prove this to be of any real force since it is an orthodox presupposition that I reject because it is not biblical. Is God incapable of creating REAL gods?


== it is not irrelevant for the very simple reason that you are failing to engage the issue through your lack of familiarity with the complexities of the subject.

I've already acknowledged my limited knowledge in regards to the detailed systamatic theology of orthodoxy, but highlighting this deficiency isn't helping me here. Can you or can you not show me where the creature/creator premise is explicit in the earliest fathers? Its a simple request that should be easy. The complexity of yrou own created vocabulary is entirely irrelevant to me. I don't know why you think I should think it relevant unless I am bound by the straightjacket of orthodoxy. I'm not. I find no authority in Orthodoxy to dictate proper exegesis, redefine terminology, and redevelop doctrines. So whatever terms you've mastered - which forms the construct of this developed orthodoxy - matters very little to anyone who is not orthodox. Mainly because I am not arguing whether or not this is proper and true in the eyes of orthodoxy.

== the "its unbiblical" complaint has no force at all with me.

I'm beginning to realize this, but for biblicists like Holding, it probably should. Your last comment is probably proof positive that our exchange is meaningless. But I still want to learn all I can in regards to the creature/creator and what fathers believed mankind is damned eternally from being like the creator.

== "created nature" here referring to sinfulness. or are you suggesting that Irenaeus teaches a doctrine of backwards causation whereby that which is created becomes uncreated? if not, then, since Irenaeus clearly teaches that ingenerateness is an essential property of ho theos (see book 2), then it necessarily follows that men cannot become "god" in the same sense as 'the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ'.

This is the sort of stuff I'm looking for.

== no he didn't, he said that God became man that man might become God.

You're right, it was Gregory of Nazianzus who said that. “I too might be made God so far as He [Jesus] is made Man.”(Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 29:19)

== i fail to see the relevance of the "merely in a moral sense" charge--we don't teach that.

Read Holding's book. He says we are deified in a moral sense. Deification scriptures like Matt 5:48 and 2 Pet are references to "moral" perfection alone as the argument goes.

== yes, Christ assumed human nature from Mary. and yes, it thereby follows that the divine nature is communicated to man. but what does this entail, according to you?

That this is essentially the merging of two different natures. Something Orthodoxy believes to be impossible when applied to other humans. Did Jesus become uncreated? If not, then He didn't really become a creature. If not, then being a creature is not really that essential to Human nature (Hint: we believe in preexistence).

== which is basically what you are doing, for the simple reason that you are filling 2nd century terms with your 21st century understanding of their meaning.

I've asked you to show me the definitions for "God" according to Irenaeus and the gang, and how they differed from other definitions. So far I just keep getting accused of misrepresentation.

== well, feel free to cite them if you think it will do you any good--i ask that you first be familiar with the works you are citing, however. your attempt with Newman ought to emabarass you. and speaking of scholars, i find it interesting that neither Newman, Kelly, Pelikan, Meyendorff, Ware, Zizioulas, Widdicombe, Frend, Quasten, Crouzel, Kasper, La Cugna, Lossky, Congar, or von Balthasar say anything even near what you seem to assert regarding deification in the ante-Nicene Church.

And just what exactly have I asserted? I'm trying to get firm evidence that Origen and those before him supported the later creature/creature arguments by Augustine. I'm pointing out what I believe to be ambiguity on the matter.

== "you guys"? wouldn't John Ruusbroec and Gregory Palamas be surprised to learn that he thought we could become divine only in the moral sense! and so too Kasper and Lossky!


Toss in "incoruptibility" and that should do it. How on earth this could be justification for being called a GOD in any sense is beyond me.

== this is the exact opposite of the truth. see John Meyendorff's _Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality_.

I never said being based in Greek philosophy means it is not true. in fact I've stated that this does not prove falsehood. It only proves that it is based in Greek philosophy. If you are ok with that then fine. I'm not.


== oh, that's nice its like a person in a debate on "evil and the existence of God" claiming that the fact of free will is "beside the point".

I'm not debating you on proper orthodox terminology here. You guys can use pig latin for all I care. Really. my point is and has been the same as ever. "Substance, uncreatedness, essences, energies, generated, eternally begotteness" etc ..all of this stuff is philosophy encapsulated in terms used to define Christainity. None of it is found in the Bible, but that is ok for you. It isn't for me. I have no use for this vocabulary anymore than you have use for LDS terminology such as "intelligences." Trying to get you to understand such terminology would prove fruitless. No need to take this as an insult.

== this is one of the strangest claims i've ever heard in my life. whoever claimed that Greek philosophy was "inspired by God" (other than Clement, who you cite for support above)?

I'll dig up a few, but I believe Owen and Mosser made this claim too.

Anyway, finals next week, so i'll be on hiatus for awhile.

Thanks

[George Blaisdell]

[Taz queries:
> > == which reminds me, can you tell me how y'all understand deification? i see that you denied that you'll one day have your own planet, etc. (and this was told to me as well by a Mormon), so what does it consist of?

Kevin replies:
> No, I denied it is the "LDS position" in any real sense. Whether this be the case in the hereafter, is an open question as far as I'm concerned. One thing I do know is that this speculation does not conflict with the Bible. A book which described deified humans as those ruling in power, sitting on God's throne, and even being worshipped.

geo responds:

The defence rests!

That's All, Folks!

geo

[Kevin W. Graham]

== The defence rests!

I agree.

Apparently you're just as unfamiliar with the Bible as you are your own religion. Paul tells us that we will judge the world and angels.(1 Cor 6:2-3.) We will receive the same image and glory as Christ. (2 Cor. 3:18, Ph 3:2) We are further informed through scripture that we will be joint-heirs with Christ,(Rom 8:17) that we will “inherit all things,” (Rev 21:7) and even more exasperating for Evangelicals, we will sit upon, not merely a throne, but God’s throne! (Rev 3:21; 1 Cor 3:21) And even be worshipped because He loved us.(Rev 3:9)

In reference to the lower level polemics as outlined by the “Godmakers,” Father Vajada concludes that, “what was meant to be a term of ridicule has turned out to be a term of approbation, for the witness of the Greek Fathers of the Church is that they also believed that salvation meant ‘becoming a god.’”

(Father Jordan Vajda "'Partakers of the Divine Nature': A Comparative Analysis of Patristic and Mormon Doctrines of Divinization" FARMS 2002, p 56. Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California)

[George Blaisdell]

Kevin W. Graham:[/i]

geo: == The defence rests!

> I agree.

Noyoudon't...

> Apparently you're just as unfamiliar with the Bible as you are your own religion.

SeewhatImean??

> Paul tells us that we will judge the world and angels.(1 Cor 6:2-3.)

Yes, the world and its rulers, the [fallen] angels...

> We will receive the same image and glory as Christ. (2 Cor. 3:18, Ph 3:2) We are further informed through scripture that we will be joint-heirs with Christ,(Rom 8:17) that we will “inherit all things,” (Rev 21:7) and even more exasperating for Evangelicals, we will sit upon, not merely a throne, but God’s throne! (Rev 3:21; 1 Cor 3:21) And even be worshipped because He loved us.(Rev 3:9)

Like I said - VANITY... Ya wanna be worshipped, Kev???? Got a humility pill for special occassions??

>In reference to the lower level polemics as outlined by the “Godmakers,” Father Vajada

You need to read Orthodox fathers, not Roman ones... Zizioulas would be a good place to begin...Whoever hear of Father Vajada of the DOMINICAN SCHOOL of PHILOSOPHY???

> concludes that, “what was meant to be a term of ridicule has turned out to be a term of approbation, for the witness of the Greek Fathers of the Church is that they also believed that salvation meant ‘becoming a god.’”

Who cares what some Dominican Philosopher says about the "Greek Church." If I want to know something about math, I do not go to the philosophy dep't - Or Geography...

(Father Jordan Vajda "'Partakers of the Divine Nature': A Comparative Analysis of Patristic and Mormon Doctrines of Divinization" FARMS 2002, p 56. Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California)

The defence is still resting...

geo

[phantaz sunlyk]

**7** yo--

Doesn't this seem to be inconsistent? All teh while the claim is made that modern Christainity reflects its history properly, we are to now understand that it underwent a development that would totally alter the meaning of basic terms like "God?"

**8** as Gregory Nazianzen states, "we won't argue over syllables so long as the meaning is the same." in other words (as i pointed out in your article on the Nicene era), you are wrong to conclude that if in 350 Athanasius thinks the words "ousia" and "hypostasis" to be synonyms, that it therefore follows that his theology underwent a change if in 365 he allows a distinction between them. and so on. to say that the words used to define a thing "change" in no way indicates an essential departure in understanding. Mormonism, if it has not already found this out, will find it out soon enough as it engages different cultural and intellectual climates.

Tell me, what was the definition of God for Irenaues and then the definition of God according to Augustine. This should be educational.

**7** it depends on the context. "ho theos" for Irenaeus always means "God the Father"--the eternal One who exists a se, and therefore essentially distinct from all contingent creation (1:10:1; 1:22:1; 2:1:1; 2:10:4; 2:13:3; 2:30:9--"God is perfect because not made--; 4:11:2). "theos" can be applied to the Son (1:10:1; 3:19:1), and the Son is understood as being intrinsic to the person of the Father (2:30:9; 4:20:1). applied to man, it refers to a glorified state (2:11:1; 3:17:1; 5: pref.; ) that is undefined in its particulars, yet the reason we know it to be distinct from the category of the Trinity is because it is contingent. (all references are to _Against Heresies_)
for Augustine, the word "Deus" refers to the divine substance as subsisting in a personal mode in the Father, Son, and Spirit (1:2:7; 1:2:8; 1:2:9, etc.) in such a way that it is taken for granted that the Father is the source of the Son and the Spirit (2:1:4; 2:1:5).
hence in Irenaeus the term primarily denotes the person of the Father, in Augustine it denotes that which is a personal metaphysically necessary existence.
for more on "God" in the patristic era i refer you to G. C. Stead's _Divine Substance_, pg. 180ff.
you drag in a proof text or two from a few fathers, divorce it from its context and place it within your own theological context, and act as though we're either blind or failing to face the storm when we don't agree with you.
don't ask me to do anymore of your homework for you. these things would be obvious enough had you actually read the people you quote, rather than snag a proof-text here and there.

No, I denied it is the "LDS position" in any real sense. Whether this be the case in the hereafter, is an open question as far as I'm concerned.

**7** so where do we turn for an official definition?

One thing I do know is that this speculation does not conflict with the Bible. A book which described deified humans as those ruling in power, sitting on God's throne, and even being worshipped.

**8** Rev. 3:9 doesn't refer to deified humans, and we have no reason to think that it means anything other than "fall down before", or do you mean to argue that proskuneo is univocal in connotation?
the scope of man's "rule" is clearly distinguished from God's in Rev. 4, 5.

My point was that I have never sat through a sunday school lesson that stated this as a recognized fact.

**8** o i c--you turn to Sunday school classes for doctrinal definitions?

It is simply speculation that naturally comes from a faith without a systematic theology.

**7** this is why we have systematic theology; so that when an intelligent question arises, we aren't forced either to be silent or produce fairy tails.

The LDS see man and God as the same species.

**8** "species"??? horrors! as thou wouldst say, "apostasy! apostasy! the word species isn't biblical isn't biblical isn't biblical! away with pagan Aristotelian philosophy!"
after all, in this very post you said, regarding such terms,
all of this stuff is philosophy encapsulated in terms used to define Christainity. None of it is found in the Bible, but that is ok for you. It isn't for me.
now, let's see you try again. define Mormon deification in such a way that it clearly distinguishes itself from Orthodox theosis alongside making clear its content to inquirers such as myself, using only biblical terminology.
...tick, tock; tick, tock...

Therefore we believe we become Gods literally without any barriers precluding the ultimate transformation into deity.

**8** well, if we're already the "same species", how is it that we are not ALREADY "Gods" and "deity"? does "God" refer to a 'mode of being'?

I'm trying, but I can't buy the idea that all the fathers bought into this ontological distinction without proof.

**7** its common sense to nearly everyone, and therefore a sustained explicit distinction should be no more expected than Paul or Peter "proving that they didn't understand the Messiah to be distinct from the Holy Spirit".
hence no proof need be given--do you own homework. i'm not going to haul in forty passages from Scripture for someone who has cracked it open only once and cites Jn. 10:30 ad infinitum in order to 'prove' that "the Father isthe Son", acting as though to distinguish the two from the Bible is a burden of proof that i, rather than he, bares.
as shown with Irenaeus, man cannot become God in the absolute sense because man is not God.

Howso? Plato was cited all throughout the fathers was he not?

**8** in what sense do you mean?

Am I to believe his philosophy played no major role during this time of development?

**7** are you, by chance, a hardcore fan of Harnack or something?
for the interaction of Chrisianity and Greek thought i refer you to Jaroslav Pelikan's _Christianity and Classical Culture_.

Will do.

**8** when?

Although I believe they state that it was Greek philosophy in particular that was God-given.

**7** who?

Could the Trinity, ex nihilo, creature-creator etc, ever be expressed properly without the aid of Greek philosophy?

**8** "properly"? define that word in this context, and this only after you have taken the gauntlet regarding my challenge to you above to "express properly" your doctrine of deification.

== on what issue? mind-body dualism? the "forms"? the pre-existence of souls? and as far as "burden of proof" goes, it lies solely on your shoulders, as you're the one making claims that are at odds with about 90% of the people on this board, as well as 90% of Christians in the world...and can you name 1 Mormon in each century from 500 ad to 1800 ad?

No, the issue is clearly the creature/creator division.

**7** ...so, where is the list of Mormons between 500 and 1800 ad?

You made the claim that "all" the fathers agreed with it, therefore they "all" disagree with the LDS doctrine. It is time to back this up with substance.

**8** show me where i stated that.
anyways, you can begin with Irenaeus above. prove that he either rejects the orthodox understanding of the absolute chasm between creator and creature.

That the creature is eternally ontologically distinct from its creator. This is the underlying assumption that precludes deification in the LDS sense. Can you prove this to be existent in "all" the fathers?

**8** can you prove it to be non-existent in one?

XYZ = Creature/creator being eternally ontologically distinct.

**7** or in other words, "X".

Almost every reference to deification after Athanasius added the qualifying creature/creator distinction.

**8** "almost every"? i'll settle for four. ... from Athanasius himself.

This is not found in the ante-Nicean fathers.

**7** because it is common sense and doesn't need to be argued against. do you honestly believe that there were groups of people running about imagining that they would one day sit on thrones and govern yon' galaxies, populating them via a procreative activity analogous to sex, or anything of that sort? it should no more surprise us that Hippolytus fails to make clear that man can't become God in the absolute sense than that Irenaeus doesn't "make clear" that the real presence doesn't entail the eucharistic host's being capable of repeating the Sermon on the Mount.

== where did you find this quote? my guess is that you found it from an anti-orthodox (Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestants being the "orthodox") apologetic, and from a section in that apologetic specifically "proving" either 'how far Christianity went off the rails', or 'how the early Church didn't agree with the later Church'. am i wrong?

Very. In fact you should be pleased to know that I got this citation from a buddy Catholic of mine, David Waltz.

**8** well, it seems to me that farms is using it as an anti-orthodox apologetic, viz. option 2 above.

Who is a true expert in patristics if there ever was one.

**7** well, his review of Bickmore didn't seem to scream the fact. does he teach anywhere? any works you can rec that i should know about?

Can you deal with what he said or not?

**8** Newman? i don't need to because Newman himself does in the very book you quote from. in the paragraph before the one you quote, he states "Let it not be for a moment supposed that I impugn the orthodoxy of the early divines, or the congency of their testimony among fair inquirers; but I am trying them by that unfair interpretation of Vincentius, which is necessary in order to make him available against the Church of Rome. (_Development_, intro: 13)
hence your (ab)use of Newman utterly takes him out of context. and if you actually did your own research rather than copy/pasting from Mormon apologetics websites, you'd be in a position to know the difference and avoid the error.

I'll be sure to let David know about how it.

**8** please do.

I never said or implied that I own the book, but I tend to let people speak for themselves,

**7** no, you let David speak for Newman, and you are too unfamiliar with Newman to be able to tell the difference between the two.

No it isn't. The language is the same. Participating in the divine nature can hardly go unnoticed. He cannot seriously expect to say man BECOMES that which it participates, without expecting some serious backlash from exegetes familiar with 2 Peter.

**7** you're talking to the air. i have no problem with such language.

Sorry, but your committing a fallacy by appealing to authority.

**8** no, i'm familiar with Origen and scholarship on him, and was giving an instance of the common ground recongized by experts in the field by citing one such expert.

Is it supposed to be a shock that an orthodox scholar interpretes Origen's comments to mean something more acceptable to orthodoxy?

**7** maybe you're not aware that the task of the historian has nothing to do with "defending orthodoxy", or anything of the sort. the above comment is cheap and, if anything, unjustly implies a lack of integrity on the part of historians who happen to be orthodox in faith.

Care to point out what exactly I'm missing? I'm all ears.

**8** that our deification is participation in the Son, and not becoming divine as distinct from him. (On Prayer 15:4, 22f.; On First Principles 3:6ff; 4:4:8f.)

As far as I'm concerned Origen is the world's authority on what Origen said and meant. Why would I defer to a secondary authority when I can read Origen for myself?

**7** indeed, why turn to a lexicon when we have our trusty kjv? who needs James Dunn when we have our own eyes, and can see for ourselves that God is a winged bird with feathers, as sayeth the Psalm? why do we need our intuitions to be corrected by the likes of Henri Crouzel or J W Trigg when it is obvious that Origen taught that the resurrected body will be spherical?

Again with the creature issue. Obviously one cannot be an uncreated creature,

**8** then a creature cannot be God, who is by definition uncreated.

Is God incapable of creating REAL gods?

**8** only if that which is created is capable of entering a time machine and arriving at every temporal moment prior to its creation.

I'm beginning to realize this, but for biblicists like Holding, it probably should.

**7** you're underestimating Holding. see his article on sola scriptura extremis.

But I still want to learn all I can in regards to the creature/creator and what fathers believed

**8** then try reading them with the assistance of expert commentaries.

mankind is damned eternally from being like the creator.

**7** "eternally damned" from being like the creator?

You're right, it was Gregory of Nazianzus who said that. “I too might be made God so far as He [Jesus] is made Man.”(Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 29:19)

**8** statements like that are all over the patristic scene. what do you think Gregory intended in the above?

Read Holding's book. He says we are deified in a moral sense.

**8** and never "merely in a moral sense". are you unaware of how intertwined the "moral sense" was in the fathers?

Deification scriptures like Matt 5:48 and 2 Pet are references to "moral" perfection alone as the argument goes.

**7** well, if this is what JP claims (and i seriously doubt that he would invite having himself slavecaged in such a definition), then i disagree with him.

That this is essentially the merging of two different natures.

**8** not the "merging", the "union". the natures remain distinct.

Something Orthodoxy believes to be impossible when applied to other humans.

**7** no they don't.

Did Jesus become uncreated? If not, then He didn't really become a creature. If not, then being a creature is not really that essential to Human nature

**8** the eternal Word, being essentially divine, assumed a human nature contingently and subsists through it, yet the natures remain distinct the whole time.

Toss in "incoruptibility" and that should do it. How on earth this could be justification for being called a GOD in any sense is beyond me.

**7** because you equate their explanations with "blah blah blah", returning immediately to your own presuppositions before they have the opportunity to be corrected via an interaction with other views.

== this is the exact opposite of the truth. see John Meyendorff's _Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality_.

I never said being based in Greek philosophy means it is not true. in fact I've stated that this does not prove falsehood. It only proves that it is based in Greek philosophy.

**7** and this is where you're wrong. again, see the above mentioned work by Meyendorff.

I'm not debating you on proper orthodox terminology here. You guys can use pig latin for all I care.

**8** i believe you.

I have no use for this vocabulary anymore than you have use for LDS terminology such as "intelligences." Trying to get you to understand such terminology would prove fruitless. No need to take this as an insult.

**7** i don't, and here is the difference between you and i. i invite whatever words you think will help to make your beliefs clear, and i don't automatically assume that a word such as "intellegences" is to be either condemned or placed in the "blah blah blah" category simply because it is not biblical.
its not a question of whether or not you will philosophize, it is a question of whether or not you will do it well.
peace.

[Kevin W. Graham]

== as Gregory Nazianzen states, "we won't argue over syllables so long as the meaning is the same."

But you said the word meant something differently to them. The word being "God" as it pertains to this discussion of deification. Now you imply that the words mean the same. That the "theological vocabulary underwent development throughout the course of Church history" and you said the word "God didn't then have the same theological force that it does now." So to put it bluntly, you're not really answering my question.

And by the way, Irenaues actually did say that, in hsi preface to Book V. "...our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself."

So again, this implies that we become what He is in the same exact manner that he became one of us. When ambiuguity prevails, logical deduction when possible, should take precedence. So how did he become human? Did he only "participate" in our "energies"? Did he only become "like" a man, or did he become a full fledged human being?

== in other words (as i pointed out in your article on the Nicene era), you are wrong to conclude that if in 350 Athanasius thinks the words "ousia" and "hypostasis" to be synonyms, that it therefore follows that his theology underwent a change if in 365 he allows a distinction between them.

We are not talking about the various uses and interpretations of ousia or hypostasis, now are we? We are discussing the meaning of God as it pertains to this topic. Try to stay on topic here.

== to say that the words used to define a thing "change" in no way indicates an essential departure in understanding.

Then why did you bring it up in the first place? Because you wanted to suggest that their language of "becoming gods" meant something entirely different from modern day language, right? Because as you pointed out, to them, "God" meant something different. I'm still waiting for you to prove it. Not saying you can't, but only that you haven't. Now it appears you want to back-peddle and claim the meanings mean the same.

== it depends on the context. "ho theos" for Irenaeus always means "God the Father"--the eternal One who exists a se, and therefore essentially distinct from all contingent creation (1:10:1; 1:22:1; 2:1:1; 2:10:4; 2:13:3; 2:30:9--"God is perfect because not made--; 4:11:2).

I'm not asking you who was referred to as God. I'm asking you how Irenaues defined "God" in a manner that would contradict the LDS understanding.You just said that God meant "not made," yet Irenaues refers to humans as Gods, so obviously there is more to it than that since we are "made." The simple fact is, the word God or Gods simply meant immortal to the Greek mind. Similarily, the Jews viewed God or Gods (elohim) as beings who could not die.

== applied to man, it refers to a glorified state (2:11:1; 3:17:1; 5: pref.; ) that is undefined in its particulars, yet the reason we know it to be distinct from the category of the Trinity is because it is contingent.

Well we believe we are contingent also. So what? I stated this earlier that the qualifications for theosis became more and more apparent with the later fathers and then you questioned this. Yet, you seem to be indicating the same thing I suggest. Irenaeus refers to deification without defining the particulars, which leaves much of his commentary ambiguous. That was my point. You didn't like it. But you don't have to like it. If you can show Irenaues unambiguously referring to an eternal gap betyween man and the divine, then please do so.

== you drag in a proof text or two from a few fathers, divorce it from its context and place it within your own theological context, and act as though we're either blind or failing to face the storm when we don't agree with you.

You should dispense with the hyperbole. It doesn't suit you. You still haven't shown how I've divorced anything from its context. I've asked you politely to show me otherwise but you seem to be more interested in gloating over your expertise in this field.

== don't ask me to do anymore of your homework for you.

Lovely. Just when I was beginning to take this forum seriously. You know, I can deal with the sporadic rantings from the villiage idiots who pop in to cheer you on. I can filter them out rather easily. But in your case I was sincerely trying to learn something. But as I've noticed before, dissent doesn't go over too well in here.

== these things would be obvious enough had you actually read the people you quote, rather than snag a proof-text here and there.

You have no idea what I've read. I cited Newman because I knew you were Catholic and you mentioned him before. If you want to take some sort of sick pleasure in the fact that I don't own the book, by using it as a reason to ad hominem me further, well... be my guest. Knock yourself out. You don't know me, so I'm fine with that. And these "things" are not so obvious to scholarship. I'll release my review of chapter 7 within the next couple of weeks and you can see what I've done then. Or don't.


== so where do we turn for an official definition?

The LDS canon for starters. We don't have a systematic theology. Our Church is only 170 years old for Pete's sake. Where was Orthodoxy standing around 200a.d.? You were still a full two centuries away from figuring out the Godhead was a schizophrenic Trinity. "One what, but three whos" as Beckwith states. But one thing is for sure, you're not going to get official doctrine from hearsay experiences from ex-mormons or those who heard someone say something once about what a missionary told them once upon a time. I've lived the LDS life to know better.

== Rev. 3:9 doesn't refer to deified humans, and we have no reason to think that it means anything other than "fall down before", or do you mean to argue that proskuneo is univocal in connotation? the scope of man's "rule" is clearly distinguished from God's in Rev. 4, 5.

First of all, this is special pleading. You can pick and choose which rendition you want to accept, but this amounts to nothing but preferred interpretation over another. This argument can be turned around by saying Jesus wasn't really worshipped by the NT Christians since they were just kneeling before him. The same word in Rev 3:9 is found all throughout the NT is reference to the worship of deity. Spiltting hairs here to salvage the strict concept of monotheism isn't going to impress me, or anyone else who knows anything about this issue. Rev says we will be worshipped. You can deal with it, or not. Secondly, I never said man's rule over his own planet was found in Rev. I said the concept certainly isn't against the Bible, and the Bible does contradict the usual claim that God would always forbid anything to be worshipped other than himself. Try to stay focus3ed on what I do say and not what I don't say. The straw men are everywhere.


== o i c--you turn to Sunday school classes for doctrinal definitions?

No, but it begs to reason why I never would have heard it taught if it were so official and so common in LDS thought. It also remains a mystery to me why I haven't run across any of these renegade missionaries who allegedly teach this. I served a mission in two different missions, had 30 different companions and got to know many more. Yet, this "teaching" or "belief" seems to have escaped us completely. I've met some fluke missionaries who have their own speculations on certain doctrinal matters, but that doesn't make it doctrine. These are 19 year old kids for crying out loud. I remember when I was an 18 year old Baptist kid.

== this is why we have systematic theology; so that when an intelligent question arises, we aren't forced either to be silent or produce fairy tails.

Fairy "tails"? Are those good on crackers of something?

Do you really want to go there? How long has your systematic theology been instituted and just how many times has it changed? It seems to me that the Church did just fine without a systematic theology for decades. In fact, instituting such a system seems to be what got everything screwed up in the first place. God got confined to paper and ink. New revelation is only allowed so long as it doesn't contradict what these "philosophers" decided to be orthodoxy - I'll see your fairy tale and raise you a true horror story - under the reign of Constantine the Great, just shortly after he murdered his own son and boiled his wife alive when she complained about it. Sure, he had "no role" in the theology did he. Does this make the situation any better? He was praised as an angel of God among the very bishops who served under Him. I'm sure you have plenty of Catholic scholars to spin it otherwise. And any Historian I have to say the contrary would be labeled anti-Orthodox or anti-Catholic, so it wouldn't matter anyway.

== "species"??? horrors! as thou wouldst say, "apostasy! apostasy! the word species isn't biblical isn't biblical isn't biblical! away with pagan Aristotelian philosophy!"
after all, in this very post you said, regarding such terms, all of this stuff is philosophy encapsulated in terms used to define Christainity. None of it is found in the Bible, but that is ok for you. It isn't for me. now, let's see you try again.

Apparently your arrogance has clouded your comprehension. My LDS paradigm doesn't require that everything be biblical, but the modern-day Evangelical position does require it. Since your orthodox tradition has no authority to me whatsoever, the only thing we have left in common is the Bible. Having said that, Paul does tell us we are the same genos of God. The same race, species. It is pretty clear.

== define Mormon deification in such a way that it clearly distinguishes itself from Orthodox theosis alongside making clear its content to inquirers such as myself, using only biblical terminology....tick, tock; tick, tock...

I'm afraid you've bailed out on any opportunity to communicate respecftully here. Good thing your bark is worse than your bite.


== well, if we're already the "same species", how is it that we are not ALREADY "Gods" and "deity"? does "God" refer to a 'mode of being'?

We are "gods in embryo" who have had our incorruptability stripped from us because of the Fall. This did create a gap between man and God, but not an irreversable gap. That is why we rely on Christ. To save us from both physical and spiritual death. Teh gap Christ bridges is not really bridged in or6thodoxy because you believe the gap between creature and creator is "eternal." Thank you Greek Philosophy.

== in what sense do you mean?

Creature/creator again. Do you have the fathers on disc? Do a search for Plato in Justin through Augustine and see how many hits you get. Even Paul Owen doesn't deny the early Church was influenced by Greek philosophy. But he tries to blame it for the predominant subordinationst view.

I would not deny that Philo’s Middle Platonic views – which presumed God could have no direct contact with the material world – posed certain problems for his monotheistic outlook. Philo described the Logos as if it existed on a level in between Creator and creation…. Nevertheless, because the Logos never attained an independent identity in Philo’s thought (remaining an emanation from God’s own being), his commitment to Jewish principles kept him within the bounds of monotheism. Middle Platonic assumptions caused similar problems from early Christian apologists such as Justin Martyr and Origen, whose understanding of the Son’s identity was similar to Philo’s Logos. The tensions remained unresolved until the Nicene fathers clearly identified the Son as a distinguishable relation within God’s own substance rather than an emanation from God (so Justin, Origen), or worse, a creature (so Arius). Hence, Nicene theology marked a decisive break with all Platonic and subordinationist views that presumed that the true God could have no direct contact with the physical world. (Paul Owen, TNMC, p. 481, n. 169)

This receives thorough refutation in Bickmore's review to be released this month, and he shows that the LDS are certainly not alone in this view.

"It is easy to see what influence this school of thought [Neoplatonism] must have had upon Christian leaders. It was from it that they learnt what was involved in a metaphysical sense by calling God a Spirit. They were also helped to free themselves from their primitive eschatology and to get rid of that crude anthropomorphism which made even Tertullian believe that God had a material body." J.W.C. Wand (formerly Anglican Bishop of London), _A History of the Early Church to A.D. 500_ (New York: Routledge, 1994,) p. 140. Originally published in the fourth edition by Methuen & Co., 1963

== when?

This isn't something I took notes on. It was an observation I made while reading last week at the library and you are the first person to question whether or not scholars believed Greek philosophy was a gift from God. However, Dr. Bickmore, who is obviously your favorite neighborhood Mormon, stated that two people alluded to the notion that the hellenization of Christainity was "God-Ordained." One being - "gasp"- Cardinal Newman. For Newman's view on hellenistic influences, see Michael M. Winter, Saint Peter and the Popes (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1960), 115–16. For Daniélou's perspective, see Jean Daniélou, The Lord of History: Reflections on the Inner Meaning of History, trans. Nigel Abercrombie (London: Longmans, 1958), 36.

== "properly"? define that word in this context, and this only after you have taken the gauntlet regarding my challenge to you above to "express properly" your doctrine of deification.

I have expressed it. And by "properly" I mean as orthodox Christians would assume "correctly." The scriptures were "correctly" understood thanks to Greek philosophy. I didn't realize how crucial the ex nihilo argument was for orthodoxy until the TNMC. this is good news for us since ex nihilo is basically non-biblical, non-Jewish, and more than likely originated with Basilides. Without ex nihilo you can't really have an eternal ontological creature/creator gap.

And as far as your "gauntlet," I've made it clear time and time againt that debating the tenets of Orthodoxy is not my goal. No where near it. You're an orthodox Christian and can speak for it far better than I. This is your forte' and I doubt we'd disagree as much as you think. I've asked you for unambiguous references to the earliest fathers who teach that the gap bridged by Christ did not include ontological. It is a simple request, but you seem adamant about having some sort of "throw-down" with me - to provide more fodder for the pep-rally attendees.

== so, where is the list of Mormons between 500 and 1800 ad?

Red herring. Who said there were Mormons during that time?

== show me where i stated that.

Actually Owen said this, but you implied that the minute you "challenged" me to prove that there were any who didn't accept it. Asking me to prove a negative of course, so I turned it around and made the problem easier to fix. Show me where the earliest fathers did explicitly teach this

[Kevin W. Graham]

== indeed, why turn to a lexicon when we have our trusty kjv? who needs James Dunn when we have our own eyes, and can see for ourselves that God is a winged bird with feathers, as sayeth the Psalm? why do we need our intuitions to be corrected by the likes of Henri Crouzel or J W Trigg when it is obvious that Origen taught that the resurrected body will be spherical?

And who needs to read anything when we have scholars to do our homework for us? Not to mention, form our conclusions too. Of course, i have nothing against scholarship, but the best form of primary research is to go straight to the horses mouth first. If it really does involve a science to determine what oprigen meant, then I'll be happy to leave it to teh experts. But right now I'm willing to throw everything Origen said out on the table for examination.

== then a creature cannot be God, who is by definition uncreated.

Ahh, but that is your definition for God. While the fathers believed God is uncreated, this is not the "definition" for God or else everyone they called gods would be uncreated too. This is why i asked you to first demonstrate the different definitions for "God." Just before you said they had the same meanings.

== only if that which is created is capable of entering a time machine and arriving at every temporal moment prior to its creation.

This is your paradigm which is doomed to fail because it can't discard these very presuppositions that come from Greek philosophy. And I'm not convinced that the earliest fathers used the "uncreate" as a definition for God. But that doesn't mean I can't change my mind. Hence, the very reason I'm discussing this with you.

== "eternally damned" from being like the creator?

Yes. Ontologically speaking. God obviously isn't powerful enough to create beings like Himself according to Orthodoxy. In fact, one might wonder if God is powerful enough to KILL someone who has already been granted eternal life? If He does, then that would mean they obviously didn't have "eternal life" to begin with. Likewise, if he creates beings like unto Himself, then this means the creator/creature issue, as understood to the extreme by Orthodoxy, was bogus. Christ bridged that gap in Mormonism while He is incapable of doing so in Orthodoxy. Why? Because Orthodoxy came up with a philosophical scenario that strongarmed God to the point that His choice to do so would make such an action a paradox.

Good going orthodoxy!


== statements like that are all over the patristic scene. what do you think Gregory intended in the above?

Well, obviously nothing literal. To say we become gods so far as he bacame man, probably means something figurative. Literal understandings would conflict with orthodoxy today, so obviously it meant something else.


== and never "merely in a moral sense". are you unaware of how intertwined the "moral sense" was in the fathers?

Moral and incorruptible. But the verses in question, he says refer strictly to MORAL perfection. Feel free to duke it out with him now. And am I to believe that JP has written only one book and you don't own a copy?

== because you equate their explanations with "blah blah blah", returning immediately to your own presuppositions before they have the opportunity to be corrected via an interaction with other views.

Yeah. I'm the guy in here with the presuppositions right? Please. Goof around if you want, but don't insult my intelligence.

== don't, and here is the difference between you and i. i invite whatever words you think will help to make your beliefs clear, and i don't automatically assume that a word such as "intellegences" is to be either condemned or placed in the "blah blah blah" category simply because it is not biblical. its not a question of whether or not you will philosophize, it is a question of whether or not you will do it well. peace.

The main difference I see is that you insist on being rude while I'm simply asking for your help to better understanding something. I'm in the process of writing on this very subject and if you can provide indisputable evidence that I ask, then I would probably slash and burn a good portion of what I've written - you should take that as a compliment. You're so itchy for a "Debate," demanding a urinating contest to see who has the largest collection of books, apparently so your fans can apply the usual ego massage. Try to bring yourself back down to earth here and talk to me like I'm not in third-grade.

I sat here an hour responding to this post. I just realized that much of what I wrote got deleted somehow. I used the codes within the codes, highlighting bold quotes within the quotes from origen. None of them posted, and I am furious because I didn't save any of it!

ARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Kevin W. Graham]

From Origen Book IV de Principiis.

These are some excerpts that i think pertain to this issue. Was Origen making a theological point that had anything to do with 2 Peter, or deification at all?

Isaiah also, knowing that the beginnings of things could not be discovered by a mortal nature, and not even by those natures which, although more divine than human, were nevertheless themselves created or formed; knowing then, that by none of these could either the beginning or the end be discovered, says, "Tell the former things which have been, and we know that ye are gods; or announce what are the last things, and then we shall see that ye are gods."(4.26)

For on this account is Christ proposed as an example to all believers, because as He always, even before he knew evil at all, selected the good, and loved righteousness, and hated iniquity, and therefore God anointed Him with the oil of gladness; so also ought each one, after a lapse or sin, to cleanse himself from his stains, making Him his example, and, taking Him as the guide of his journey, enter upon the steep way of virtue, that so perchance by this means, as far as possible we may, by imitating Him, be made partakers of the divine nature . according to the words of Scripture: "He that saith that he believeth in Christ, ought so to walk, as He also walked.(4.31)
As now by participation in the Son of God one is adopted as a son, and by participating in that wisdom which is in God is rendered wise, so also by participation in the Holy Spirit is a man rendered holy and spiritual. For it is one and the same thing to have a share in the Holy Spirit, which is (the Spirit) of the Father and the Son, since the nature of the Trinity is one and incorporeal. And what we have said regarding the participation of the soul is to be understood of angels and heavenly powers in a similar way as of souls, because every rational creature needs a participation in the Trinity.(4.32)

All created things, therefore, i.e., either the number of rational beings or the measure of bodily matter, are distinguished by Him as being within a certain number or measurement ; since, as it was necessary for an intellectual nature to employ bodies, and this nature is shown to be changeable and convertible by the very condition of its being created (for what did not exist, but began to exist, is said by this very circumstance to be of mutable nature), it can have neither goodness nor wickedness as an essential, but only as an accidental attribute of its being. (4.35)

It will not, I consider, be opposed to the nature of our undertaking, if we restate with all possible brevity our opinions on the immortality of rational natures. Every one who participates in anything, is unquestionably of one essence and nature with him who is partaker of the same thing . For example, as all eyes participate in the light, so accordingly all eyes which partake of the light are of one nature; but although every eye partakes of the light, yet, inasmuch as one sees more dearly, and another more obscurely, every eye does not equally share in the light. And again, all hearing receives voice or sound, and therefore all hearing is of one nature; but each one hears more rapidly or more slowly, according as the quality of his hearing is clear and sound. Let us pass now from these sensuous illustrations to the consideration of intellectual things. Every mind which partakes of intellectual light ought undoubtedly to be of one nature with every mind which partakes in a similar manner of intellectual light. If the heavenly virtues, then, partake of intellectual light, i.e., of divine nature, because they participate in wisdom and holiness, and if human souls, have partaken of the same light and wisdom, and thus are mutually of one nature and of one essence -then, since the heavenly virtues are incorruptible and immortal, the essence of the human soul will also be immortal and incorruptible . And not only so, but because the nature of Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, whose intellectual light alone all created things have a share, is incorruptible and eternal, it is altogether consistent and necessary that every substance which partakes of that eternal nature should last for ever, and be incorruptible and eternal, so that the eternity of divine goodness may be understood also in this respect, that they who obtain its benefits are also eternal . (4.36)

Be ye perfect , even as your Father also is perfect."From which it is clearly shown that all these virtues are perpetually in God, and that they can never approach to or depart from Him, whereas by men they are acquired only slowly, and one by one. And hence also by these means they seem to have a kind of relationship with God; and since God knows all things, and none of things intellectual in themselves can elude His notice (for God the Father alone, and His only-begotten Son, and the Holy Spirit, not only possess a knowledge of those things which they have created, but also of themselves), a rational understanding also, advancing from small things to great, and from things visible to things invisible, may attain to a more perfect knowledge.(4.37)

[phantaz sunlyk]

**7** say hey--

But you said the word meant something differently to them. The word being "God" as it pertains to this discussion of deification. Now you imply that the words mean the same.

**8** no i didn't; i showed a clear difference between the connotations of "God/theos/deus" in Irenaeus and Augustine. my argument wasn't that the word didn't carry different connotations, but rather, that though it did carry distinct connotations, it didn't effect the essentials of their theologies or posit a dichotomy between the two.

When ambiuguity prevails, logical deduction when possible, should take precedence. So how did he become human? Did he only "participate" in our "energies"? Did he only become "like" a man, or did he become a full fledged human being?

**7** he assumed a human nature and therefore is "a full fledged human being." but this does not entail that "deity becomes humanity", or anything of the sort, "For none is perfect but the uncreated who is God. As far as man is concerned, he must be created and when created he must receive growth". (4:38:3)
man cannot become that, there is an essential ontological dichotomy between the two.
the constitutive properties of ho theos are his oneness (1:22:1), un-createdness (2:34:2; 3:8:3; 4:38:1), eternality and immutability (2:34:2; 4:11:2; 4:38:1), omnipresence and unboundness (2:1:2; 2:30:9; 4:3:1; 4:6:2; 4:19:3), essentially the creator and lord as distinct from all that he has created and rules (1:22:1; 3:8:3; 4:20:6; 4:36:6; 4:38:3; 4:39--"For creation is an attribute of the goodness of God but to be created is that of human nature"; 4:41:1), and so on.
i've just listed 19 passages--you've offered one. and the point is this--a discussion on this topic requires a decent grasp of the whole of Irenaeus' work, which i seriously doubt that you have. it wouldn't be a problem were it not for the fact that you carry in a single proof-text (being, atleast it seems, entirely ignorant of the whole of Irenaeus work), and act as though it is utterly obvious that (of course) your sense (which is utterly counter-intuitive, alongside having no support in the history of Christianity) should be given pride of place--as though we are the ones who need to "prove" something rather than yourself (with your one sentence divorced from context as your support).
at any rate, "theos" when predicated of man therefore cannot mean the same as when predicated of "ho theos" (="the God"). when Christ assumes a human nature, the whole human is the recipient of divinity (what we call "the divine energies"). but the human does not "become" divine in the same sense as God--the passages above prove that he cannot, by definition. and the reason why Christ doesn't provide a counter-example to this claim is simply due to the fact that the person of Christ is essentially divine in the absolute sense (being intrinsic to the Father, he is a metaphysically necessary being), yet his humanity is not intrinsic to him essentially.
hence the human receives of God and becomes God insofar as possible. to use an analogy, the sun is essentially light, and the moon is not. yet the moon, when receiving the light of the sun, itself shines and becomes light. the difference is that for one it is essential to be light, for the other it is contingent; for one to shine is a function proper to itself, for the other it is a result of reception and participation.
and i could stack text atop text from Irenaeus to prove this, but until i see something approaching the several texts i've offered contra your argument, i see no point.

We are not talking about the various uses and interpretations of ousia or hypostasis, now are we? We are discussing the meaning of God as it pertains to this topic. Try to stay on topic here.

**8** try to stay in the discussion. i was illustrating the point that you trip over semantics and miss substance.

The simple fact is, the word God or Gods simply meant immortal to the Greek mind. Similarily, the Jews viewed God or Gods (elohim) as beings who could not die.

**7** in that case, i don't disagree at all with LDS theology or antrhopology (provided you mean no more). that stated, the absolute ontological disjunct remains--the only way to pretend as though it doesn't is to collapse the referents (God, angels, men) and confine them to being "essentially the same" since "god" can be predicated of each, ignoring the fact that context modifies predication--in this case, substantially.

Well we believe we are contingent also. So what?

**8** so you cannot belong to the same ontological category as "ho theos", who by definition exists a se according to Irenaeus.
if you insist on saying that you will "become God", you should make clear that you don't simply mean the word in its ancient sense ("an immortal being endowed with extraordinary power"). otherwise, you are using the word in a completely different sense than it carries in the modern context (wherein "God", according to most, means "the almighty, all present, all knowing, all good, eternal One"). its misleading, just as translating "hypostasis" as "person" in Heb. 1 is misleading (since the word did not have that connotation at that time).

If you want to take some sort of sick pleasure in the fact that I don't own the book, by using it as a reason to ad hominem me further, well... be my guest.

**7** shimmyin' all over the place--get down wit' ya badself!
the point is that you seem to be in the habit of uncritically quoting anything that will help your case, and that you're unfamiliar with the context of that which you quote from. this was entirely proven in your (ab)use of Newman, who stated the exact opposite of what you implied.
it makes you look awful, and you should own up to it.

You know, I can deal with the sporadic rantings from the villiage idiots who pop in to cheer you on

**8** so far no one has "popped in" to cheer me on--seek your martyr and underdog bonus points elsewhere.
and who, specifically, is a "village idiot", o thou who doth rebuke me for rudeness?

Fairy "tails"? Are those good on crackers of something?

**7** doh! you got me. good one (for reals).

Do you really want to go there?

**8** jump if you're feeling froggy ...

How long has your systematic theology been instituted and just how many times has it changed?

**7** here we go with the "change" diatribe again. at any rate, you've entirely missed the point. my point isn't simply that you lack a systematic theology; it is that you condemn it outright.

It seems to me that the Church did just fine without a systematic theology for decades.

**8** for "decades"? quite a stretch of time! isn't common sense enough to tell you that as years go on and the faith has been viewed from many and various angles and defended against straying claimants thereto, that the articles of faith will become more definite in the abstract? tell me what you would put in the place of systematic theology? and show me that it would surivive being introduced into various cultures, intellectual climates, and challenges.

New revelation is only allowed so long as it doesn't contradict what these "philosophers" decided to be orthodoxy

**8** you act as though "philosopher" were a bad word. let us ignore logic, for Aristotle the heathen "invented" it.

I'll see your fairy tale and raise you a true horror story - under the reign of Constantine the Great, just shortly after he murdered his own son and boiled his wife alive when she complained about it. Sure, he had "no role" in the theology did he. Does this make the situation any better? He was praised as an angel of God among the very bishops who served under Him. I'm sure you have plenty of Catholic scholars to spin it otherwise. And any Historian I have to say the contrary would be labeled anti-Orthodox or anti-Catholic, so it wouldn't matter anyway.

**8** and then more irrelevant nonsense. keep your eye on the ball, dude; nobody here cares what manner of man Constantine was, for the simple reasons that, first of all, he wasn't a theologian, and second, even were he one, the fact that he was a bad person wouldn't automatically disqualify his ideas (likewise, Solomon didn't fail to be wise simply because he was a womanizer).
as far as Eusebius referring to him as an "angel"--you would to if 15 years prior to that time Christians were hunted down and killed, and now they were given liberty. political intrigue was not a concern, but the well being of the Church was.

I'm sure you have plenty of Catholic scholars to spin it otherwise. And any Historian I have to say the contrary would be labeled anti-Orthodox or anti-Catholic, so it wouldn't matter anyway.

**8** "if not antagonistic towards Constantine, then Catholic or Orthodox; if antagonistic towards Constantine, then honest; therefore, if Orthodox or Catholic, not honest."
i'm the one with the presuppositions?

Apparently your arrogance has clouded your comprehension. My LDS paradigm doesn't require that everything be biblical, but the modern-day Evangelical position does require it.

**7** speaking of operating in a noetic cloud of unknowing, how many times do i have to tell you that i'm not a modern-day Evangelical???? or is it simply that once you're taken out of your (well-beloved) argumentative context, your mind goes into a frenzy, and not knowing what to do, settles for the "auto repeat" mode?

the only thing we have left in common is the Bible. Having said that, Paul does tell us we are the same genos of God. The same race, species. It is pretty clear.

**7** and of course, Paul was speaking literally there. do you honestly think that the Athenian audience would have understood him in a literal sense, whose prior notions of the Fatherhood of God carried no such connotations?
and while we're at it, let us include the "drops of dew" in the species of the divine, since the Scripture sayeth that God has "begotten" them (Job 38:28).
oh...what, dew isn't God? well, don't blame me for following Scripture. it is you who bring in your anti-dew pagan presuppositions in order to overthrow the clear testimony of the Bible.
also, you did say that it is a problem for you that theology should be described in non-biblical terms.

== define Mormon deification in such a way that it clearly distinguishes itself from Orthodox theosis alongside making clear its content to inquirers such as myself, using only biblical terminology....tick, tock; tick, tock...

I'm afraid you've bailed out on any opportunity to communicate respecftully here. Good thing your bark is worse than your bite.

**8** nice dodge. if i'm such a miserly communicator, why go on to post another page and a half to me?
as far as my "bite" goes, get close enough to the challenge given, and find out.
...tick, tock; tick, tock...

Where was Orthodoxy standing around 200a.d.? You were still a full two centuries away from figuring out the Godhead was a schizophrenic Trinity.

**7** bogus; the essence of the understanding of the Trinity was identical throughout. disagree? go to my article at Tekton and try to show me wrong.
your calling the Trinity "schizophrenic" shows only that you know not what you argue against--much like the low-grade anti-Mormon apologists you can't seem to imagine every person who talks to you not being.

First of all, this is special pleading. You can pick and choose which rendition you want to accept, but this amounts to nothing but preferred interpretation over another. This argument can be turned around by saying Jesus wasn't really worshipped by the NT Christians since they were just kneeling before him.

**8** no, its not special pleading--it is recognizing the semantic range of the work "proskuneo" and determining its meaning according to context.
and yes, in many cases the context does suggest that Jesus isn't being worshiped in the absolute sense (Mt. 14:33; Mk. 5:6; Jn. 9:38).
or do you take 1 Kings 1:23 as an account of Nathaneal "worshipping", in the absolute sense, the as of yet undeified King David?

Spiltting hairs here to salvage the strict concept of monotheism isn't going to impress me, or anyone else who knows anything about this issue

**8** i'm not splitting anything, but on the other hand, unless you learn how to very quickly, you'll have some explaining to do regarding the passage from 1 Kings mentioned above. as mentioned above, Rev. 3:9 does not refer to deified man, it refers to people who were ordinary Christians. the word can refer to less than absolute worship--it is no stretch to recognize this fact, and i'm willing to bet that you won't be able to find one lexicon that fails to recognize this fact.

We are "gods in embryo" who have had our incorruptability stripped from us because of the Fall.

**8** so, in other words, "God" for you refers to a "mode of being", and has nothing essentially to do with "species"?
if that is the case, then we have no argument.

Teh gap Christ bridges is not really bridged in or6thodoxy because you believe the gap between creature and creator is "eternal." Thank you Greek Philosophy.

**7** and thank you Kevin, for making an absolute fool of yourself, so that i won't have to.
the above is so ridiculous i'm not going to touch it.

Even Paul Owen doesn't deny the early Church was influenced by Greek philosophy. But he tries to blame it for the predominant subordinationst view.

**8** re my Tekton article above. the Nicenes were also subordinationists, as is the Church today, and the ante-Nicenes didn't need Plato to tell them that the Father is the source of the Son and the cause of his activities ad extra--the Bible was clear enough.
i never denied that Plato influenced the Father's--i denied that his influence was a corruptive element.

you are the first person to question whether or not scholars believed Greek philosophy was a gift from God.

**7** you said "inspired", which i took to mean "inspired" in the same sense as Scripture is "inspired". it is in that sense that i challenged you. sorry if i misunderstood.

For Newman's view on hellenistic influences

**8** ...etc. i'm well aware of Newman's view--read his section on "the power of assimilation" in his essay on Development. i haven't read Danielou, but i'm very familiar with one of his close friends, Hans urs von Balthasar (and somewhat familiar with De Lubac).
Newman's section, mentioned above, suffices for all of them, and i have no objections whatever to Newman's take.

Red herring. Who said there were Mormons during that time?

**7** again, try to stay on track.
the fact that there were no Mormons then simply proves that you are the one who ought to shoulder the burden of proof, and not me.

And who needs to read anything when we have scholars to do our homework for us?

**7** like your use of Newman?

Not to mention, form our conclusions too.

**8** better to have a scholar form your conclusion for you than to carry your conclusion in front of the question and then sift a scholar to back you up.
and i don't have scholars form my conclusions for me. i read the originals, and use the works of scholars to ensure that i have a fair shot at grasping the meaning of the originals.

While the fathers believed God is uncreated, this is not the "definition" for God or else everyone they called gods would be uncreated too.

**7** or, we can admit that the connotations of a word aren't univocal, and interpret according to context.
and, as mentioned above, if the only thing you understand "God" to imply is "immortality", then i see no need to argue with you when you claim that "man will be God in the strict sense of the word"--and this for the simple reason that "the strict sense" in this case entails nothing worth disputing.
that said, the ontological gap between the Father, Son, and Spirit remains--identify this gap with the word "God", or whatever you like--and it is for you to prove otherwise.

Yes. Ontologically speaking. God obviously isn't powerful enough to create beings like Himself according to Orthodoxy.

**7** we also deny that God can build a rock so heavy he can't lift it, and that he can't bring into being a square circle.
you'll have to forgive our adherence to pagan Aristotelian logic.

Because Orthodoxy came up with a philosophical scenario that strongarmed God to the point that His choice to do so would make such an action a paradox.
Good going orthodoxy!

**8** orthodoxy has done nothing other than recognize something as clear as the sun in the sky at high noon on a cloudless day.

Well, obviously nothing literal. To say we become gods so far as he bacame man, probably means something figurative. Literal understandings would conflict with orthodoxy today, so obviously it meant something else.

**7** its very literal, yet expressed in a context wherein the distinction between "the God" and "god" is taken for granted; and it is up to you to prove that Irenaeus or Clement of Alexandria or Origen or anyone else--whose language for deification never surpassed this in clarity--meant anything other than this.

But the verses in question, he says refer strictly to MORAL perfection. Feel free to duke it out with him now.

**8** two things. first of all, you are wrong to assume that there is anything "mere" about being deified in "the moral sense". this point was absolutely central to the doctrine of theosis in Irenaeus and Origen, hence that J. P. affirms this implies that there is nothing that would necessarily impede his acceptance of the possible implications of deification in the moral sense.
second, i have talked with J. P. regarding this issue, and have written something of it on his site in my review of Brian Holt's book, and i'm certain that there is no dichotomy between his understanding and mine. we might not see eye to eye on this issue, true, but the point is that there is nothing that would essentially prevent us from doing so, were we to take the time to hammer out the issue.

but don't insult my intelligence.

**7** with what little you have you seem to be quite competent in that regard.
okay, enough of this. i challenge you to a debate in the boxing ring. choose either Irenaeus or Origen. my claim is that, according to both, there is a clear and unbridgable ontological chasm separating man from God, such that man cannot become God ("God" understood in the common sense). ya wanna pick one of them and strap on the gloves? or stick to your arsenal of three proof-texts bound inexorably to dogmatic certitude based on presupposition?
peace.

[AugustineH354]

Phantaz wrote:

>>**8** i've already asked you whether or not you've read Newman's _Development of Doctrine_, and you replied that you hadn't. yet you quote him still! where did you find this quote? my guess is that you found it from an anti-orthodox (Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestants being the "orthodox") apologetic, and from a section in that apologetic specifically "proving" either 'how far Christianity went off the rails', or 'how the early Church didn't agree with the later Church'. am i wrong?
this type of sourcework bothers me terribly. i have all of the works i cite--i buy them with my own money. when i quote them, i like to know that i am accurately dealing with them, so i read a book before i quote from it. and in this case, you use Newman in a sense which is opposite to what he intended.>>

Me: IMO, Kevin's "use" of Newman was in the spirit of the original intent. Newman was addressing Bishop Bull’s claim that the pre-Nicene fathers were in full agreement on the doctrine of the Trinity (“a consensus of doctors”), as found in Bull’s 1685 work Defensio Fidei Nicaenae. Newman is affirming the fact, and necessity, of the develop of doctrine. It is a telling argument against a classic Anglican position, and ultimately all Protestantism.

Aug

[phantaz sunlyk]

**7** say hey Augustine, are you the fellow who Kevin quoted from, by chance? at any rate, welcome aboard.

Kevin's "use" of Newman was in the spirit of the original intent. Newman was addressing Bishop Bull’s claim that the pre-Nicene fathers were in full agreement on the doctrine of the Trinity (“a consensus of doctors”), as found in Bull’s 1685 work Defensio Fidei Nicaenae.

**8**i disagree that Kevin kept within the spirit of Newman's original intent. first of all, Newman was writing about the Trinity--Kevin was writing about the ambiguity of the divine/creature ("creature" meaning, in this case, us humans) dichotomy in the ante-Nicene period. that is his first error; he introduces a text that does not directly deal with the subject which is a matter of controversy, citing it as evidence that he is correct.
second, Newman's qualifying remarks (excluded by Kevin, no doubt because he was unaware that they even existed) make it clear that, atleast in his eyes, the ante-Nicenes can only be doubted, in this regard (the doctrine of the divinity of the Son), if an insufficient hermeneutic is applied to them.
hence he's not arguing against the fact that their orthodoxy was definite, but against 1)reading the fathers the way a kjv-onlyist reads the bible, and 2)the certainty with which their orthodoxy can be advocated when and if such an inadequate hermeneutic is applied.

Newman is affirming the fact, and necessity, of the develop of doctrine.

**8** this is of course true. two things on this.
first, it follows that, for Newman, the principle of development should be included in the hermeneutic applied to patristic writings, in which case (according to the success of his argument for the seven notes) the Nicene belief would follow just as much as would explicit ante-Nicene statements.
second, that Newman, on this topic, thought the ante-Nicene testimony to be ambiguous to the point of allowing the Arian interpretation, is shown false by Newman's work on the Nicene era (2:3-4, if i remember correctly). that this is evident even in spite of his disagreement with Bull is further proven by his (i think) second note at the conclusion of the volume.
...not to mention, once more, the portion immediately preceded the citation in question that Kevin excluded.

It is a telling argument against a classic Anglican position, and ultimately all Protestantism.

**8** i pretty much agree, but let me ask you this.
do you think that it is possible that Protestantism could show their position to be an authentic development in some sense?
in sum, i think you and i basically agree. the difference, i think, would be that, first of all, i think the ante-Nicene testimony to be less ambiguous than you (especially as regards the divinity of the Son and his relation to God the Father--if you're the author of the work Kevin quoted from).
second, that i keep the idea of development in mind whenever i approach any text, and consider it a necessary element of the hermeneutic applied to any text or intellectual development throughout history (and not merely something that should be adopted for the sake of "vindicating orthodoxy" and then abandoned when other texts are read--i'm not saying you do this, but from your paper it would seem that development isn't quite as intrinsic to interpretation for you as it is for me).
in any event, i think Kevin must be faulted for what he has done. he has recklessly cited a source in support of his opinion, and even if he had kept within the "spirit of the intent of Newman" (which i deny), it must be kept in mind that were he to have departed from it, he would be in no position to recognize that he had.
peace, Augustine.

[AugustineH354]

Hi Phantaz,

You wrote:

>>second, that Newman, on this topic, thought the ante-Nicene testimony to be ambiguous to the point of allowing the Arian interpretation, is shown false by Newman's work on the Nicene era (2:3-4, if i remember correctly). that this is evident even in spite of his disagreement with Bull is further proven by his (i think) second note at the conclusion of the volume.>>

Me: The work you are referring to is The Arians of the Fourth Century. This book was published in 1933, and researched from 1828 to 1833. It is so important to keep in mind that Newman was still fully Anglican during this period, and supported Bishop’s Bull conclusions. It was not until the summer of 1839 “that for the first time a doubt came upon me of the tenableness of Anglicanism”. (See Apologia Pro Vita Sua.) The more time Newman spent in the CF’s the more he came to realize that the so-called consensus, and purity, of Antiquity, which Anglicanism relied upon to support its schism from Rome, was an illusion.

And: >>in sum, i think you and i basically agree. the difference, i think, would be that, first of all, i think the ante-Nicene testimony to be less ambiguous than you (especially as regards the divinity of the Son and his relation to God the Father>>

Me: It is not ambiguous when one is guided by an infallible teaching magisterium. However, scripture and the early CF’s without this teaching magisterium become ambiguous. IMO, the fruit of the Reformation (20,000+ denominations) objectifies my view.

I have much more to say; but due to current time constraints, it will probably have to wait until Monday.

Grace and peace,

Aug

[phantaz sunlyk]

**8** say hey Augustine--

The work you are referring to is The Arians of the Fourth Century. This book was published in 1933, and researched from 1828 to 1833. It is so important to keep in mind that Newman was still fully Anglican during this period, and supported Bishop’s Bull conclusions.

**7** ..., etc.
first of all, note 2, which i referred to above, explicitly disagrees with Bull.
second, Newman felt obliged, in 1890, to append the following to the note:
"The above addition is in consequence of a misunderstanding, which leads me to repeat,now, 1890, as ever, that what I have here written is subject to the judgement of Holy Church."
so, granting that Newman was an Anglican when he wrote his work on the Nicene era, i still don't see any grounds for denying what i affirmed above. that Newman didn't yet doubt the coherence of the via media he sought to find in Anglicanism has no immediate bearing on his understanding of the orthodoxy of the Fathers from the first 3 centuries.

It was not until the summer of 1839 “that for the first time a doubt came upon me of the tenableness of Anglicanism”. (See Apologia Pro Vita Sua

**7** aye, i have read it. still, i fail to see the force that this fact brings to your argument that Kevin accurately represents the spirit and intent of Newman.

It is not ambiguous when one is guided by an infallible teaching magisterium. However, scripture and the early CF’s without this teaching magisterium become ambiguous.

**8** granted--in a portion of an article i'm working on i basically state the same thing.
that said, there are two things that should be pointed out.
first, that a return to the historio-theological context of the authors in question goes some way in clearing up the ambiguity--and such an endeavor, it seems to me, is quite foreign to many who use the padres.
second, that there is no substantial ambiguity on these issues (the deity of the Son and the chasm between the creator and creatures in patristic theology) in the ante-Nicene Church, especially the latter, which Kevin denies (or atleast challenges).
so, are you the author Kevin quoted?
peace.

[Kevin W. Graham]

== he assumed a human nature and therefore is "a full fledged human being." but this does not entail that "deity becomes humanity", or anything of the sort, "For none is perfect but the uncreated who is God. As far as man is concerned, he must be created and when created he must receive growth". (4:38:3).

Good grief, eternal growth is essential LDS doctrine. The fact that we are created is indisputable, but we argue that we become what the uncreated is. We differ only in degree, but we will receive the "inherit authority of the uncreated God." Or did you not catch this from Irenaeus, who said in the very same breathe:

"For from the very fact of these things having been created, that they are not uncreated; but by their continuing in being throughout a long course of ages, they shall receive a faculty of the Uncreated , through the gratuitous bestowal of eternal existence upon them by God. And thus in all things God has the pre-eminence, who alone is uncreated, the first of all things, and the primary cause of the existence of all, while all other things remain under God's subjection. But being in subjection to God is continuance in immortality, and immortality is the glory of the uncreated One. By this arrangement, therefore, and these harmonies, and a sequence of this nature, man, a created and organized being, is rendered after the image and likeness of the uncreated God " (4:38:3).

Of course, according to Irenaeus Christ was the image of God too, who was also lower in rank.

"For if any one should inquire the reason why the Father, who has fellowship with the Son in all things, has been declared by the Lord alone to know the hour and the day [of judgment], he will find at present no more suitable, or becoming, or safe reason than this, that we may learn through Him that the Father is above all things. For "the Father," says He, "is greater than I." (2.27.8)

I'm not arguing that man was not created by God. I'm looking for an unambiguous reference that states point blank, that mankind is incapable of becoming what God is. Pointing out comments on the "uncreated God" seems to be an argument from logic as opposed to explicit teaching. Meaning, the illogical nature of a created being becoming "uncreated" should therefore force the assumption that the references to theosis are merely figurative. Theosis means to be transformed into God. For Origen there appears to be nothing limited about theosis [i] in identity , only in rank . And since when do the fathers rely on logic to dictate their philosophy? These are the same fellows who came up with "eternally begotten" as a way of explaining how Christ is "begotten" and while at the same time, always existed as the Son. So does it seem improbable that these guys could come up with a God who could create uncreated beings?

== man cannot become that, there is an essential ontological dichotomy between the two.

This was the clearest unambiguous statement you've provided thus far. The problem, however, is that it came from you, not Origen. In Origen, this is the teaching I await. I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I'm saying I haven't seen it, and the more you try and fail to provide what I'm requesting, the more I'm inclined to believe I never will see it. Statements saying we will never become uncreated is a point of logic, not ontological distinction.


== the constitutive properties of ho theos are his oneness (1:22:1), un-createdness (2:34:2; 3:8:3; 4:38:1), eternality and immutability (2:34:2; 4:11:2; 4:38:1), omnipresence and unboundness (2:1:2; 2:30:9; 4:3:1; 4:6:2; 4:19:3),

No argument there.

== essentially the creator and lord as distinct from all that he has created and rules (1:22:1; 3:8:3; 4:20:6; 4:36:6; 4:38:3; 4:39--

According to Irenaeus it is in the sense that He always existed whereas we were created ex nihilo. Again, this doesn't mean God cannot change us into eternal beings who will never die. This is the meaning of theosis.

== "For creation is an attribute of the goodness of God but to be created is that of human nature"; 4:41:1), and so on.

This actually comes from 4.39.2, and it is in direct reference to those who would be ungrateful to God by not appreciating his nature as the Creator. With this LDS theosis is in full agreement. But the whole purpose of theosis is to rid us of our human nature and replace it through tranformation: theosis. After all, death is an attribute of human nature too, but that is something we won't have to worry about in the hereafter because?.... we are no longer human in nature. We are made divine. Immortal. Eternal. We will not be different from God in kind, only in rank or degree.

== i've just listed 19 passages--you've offered one.

And all 19 references failed to state what you set out to prove.

== and the point is this--a discussion on this topic requires a decent grasp of the whole of Irenaeus' work, which i seriously doubt that you have.

Well, in your case doubt is no longer a question. You're extremely liberal in the way you read Irenaues because you impose ontological distinctions where none are explicit. Again, if relying on the argument that "God is uncreated" is the best you have to offer, then I suppose I'll have to conclude that you don't have the evidence I was looking for. For this says nothing about ontological distinction . And it says nothing of an irreversable ontological gap between man and the Divine. But it says plenty about the diminished omnipotence of God if we assume He is incapable of creating beings like unto Himself.

== It wouldn't be a problem were it not for the fact that you carry in a single proof-text (being, atleast it seems, entirely ignorant of the whole of Irenaeus work), and act as though it is utterly obvious that (of course) your sense (which is utterly counter-intuitive, alongside having no support in the history of Christianity) should be given pride of place--as though we are the ones who need to "prove" something rather than yourself (with your one sentence divorced from context as your support).

The fact that you need to fall back on this sort of childish rhetoric speaks more about the weakness of your position than it does mine. I came in here looking to learn. Obviously you came in here looking to preach. I expected more from this forum, but as I've pointed out several times, dissent is not tolerated here.

== at any rate, "theos" when predicated of man therefore cannot mean the same as when predicated of "ho theos" (="the God").

Well, I don't get your point since we do not believe we will become "The God" either. I never suggested we could become The God the Father. The "One True God" now did I?

== when Christ assumes a human nature, the whole human is the recipient of divinity (what we call "the divine energies").

I'm curious. What Church fathers used this terminology? When did it first pop onto the scene?

== but the human does not "become" divine in the same sense as God--the passages above prove that he cannot, by definition.

"Uncreated" is not the definition of God, anymore than "created" is the definition of mankind.

== in that case, i don't disagree at all with LDS theology or antrhopology (provided you mean no more). that stated, the absolute ontological disjunct remains--the only way to pretend as though it doesn't is to collapse the referents (God, angels, men) and confine them to being "essentially the same" since "god" can be predicated of each, ignoring the fact that context modifies predication--in this case, substantially.

No, we are contingent on God now because he offers us eternal life, but this has nothing to do with ontological distinctions once we become what He is. If you believe our existence as gods is dependent on God in the most strict sense, meaning He can change it all if He wants, then this is another paradox. The reason I say this is because to be able to strip eternal life from someone means they never had it to begin with. It makes about as much sense as an uncreated created being.

== shimmyin' all over the place--get down wit' ya badself! the point is that you seem to be in the habit of uncritically quoting anything that will help your case, and that you're unfamiliar with the context of that which you quote from.

This is something you've failed to prove.

== this was entirely proven in your (ab)use of Newman, who stated the exact opposite of what you implied.

No he didn't. My point was teh same point i've made since the beginning. That all the Fathers didn't agree on everything. I said it did not seem clear to me that the creature creator dichotomy was present in all the fathers. You freaked out and insisted that I prove a negative. I asserted that early Church theology came about through development, and that is essentially what Newman said. You're trying to rely on the writings alone in order to prove your theology, but as Newman states, the writings alone won't do it because the theology came about through development and he pointed out the variety of theology found in the writings of a select few.

== it makes you look awful, and you should own up to it.

I have good reason to trust David Waltz in his use of sources, and from the looks of it, you're in for a world of hurt if you plan to take him to the mat on early Christainity. While you're gloating about the number of books you bought with your "own money", I wonder if you can compete with this gentleman, who has a personal library of over 14,000 books. (since you made it such an issue before anyway)

== and who, specifically, is a "village idiot", o thou who doth rebuke me for rudeness?

They know who they are. And so do you.

== jump if you're feeling froggy ...

Not really.

== for "decades"? quite a stretch of time!

I was being charitable. Truth is, doctrines such as the "Trinity" were nowhere to be found for the first few centuries of Christianity. And my point was related to your fairy tale comment. If a systematic theology is so essential, then was the first century Church answering questions with fairy tales?

== you act as though "philosopher" were a bad word. let us ignore logic, for Aristotle the heathen "invented" it.

Logic has always existed, and so have logical fallacies. Aristotle simply identified them.

== speaking of operating in a noetic cloud of unknowing, how many times do i have to tell you that i'm not a modern-day Evangelical???? or is it simply that once you're taken out of your (well-beloved) argumentative context, your mind goes into a frenzy, and not knowing what to do, settles for the "auto repeat" mode?

Sigh.. if this is how badly you comprehend and take out of context what I SAY, then why am I supposed to have any level of confidence in your ability to read the fathers properly? If you woudl have cited teh rest of what I said you woudl find the following. I said,

"Since your orthodox tradition has no authority to me whatsoever, the only thing we have left in common is the Bible."

I'm perfectly aware that you are Catholic. But the only things we have in common by way of authority are the scriptures.

== and of course, Paul was speaking literally there.

No of course not. Because to be taken literal would throw your entire orthodoxy in a tail-spin, therefore we must reread it to mean something ambiguous or figurative.

== do you honestly think that the Athenian audience would have understood him in a literal sense, whose prior notions of the Fatherhood of God carried no such connotations?

Yes. He stated it as fact. He didn't say, "I know you're not going to understand this, but listen to me ramble anyway."

== and while we're at it, let us include the "drops of dew" in the species of the divine, since the Scripture sayeth that God has "begotten" them (Job 38:28).

Trying to create contradiction won't help you since neither of us are biblical inerrantists, and we have our own source of authority for interpreting scripture. I'm dealing with the species argument as you raised it. You're trying to change the subject ...again. But the scripture does not "sayeth" that God has "begotten them." It asked the question, just after asking "has rain a Father?" I'm sorry if you can't apply proper exegesis to figure out what is allegory and what isn't.

== nice dodge. if i'm such a miserly communicator, why go on to post another page and a half to me?

For two reasons: 1) Because the first post was cut off at 24000 characters, and 2) because you are a miserly communicator.

== as far as my "bite" goes, get close enough to the challenge given, and find out....tick, tock; tick, tock...

Again, your comprehension skills are wanting. I've stated time and time again that I am not here to "debate" anything, but you keep pretending that I've made no such indication. I came in here with the concession that I am a student, even in "Kindergarten" when it comes to the topic of Patristics, and I have further conceded that you're the smartest person on this forum when it comes to the subject - until David walked in anyway.

However, my purpose here was to find out if there were any clear statements from ALL the Church Fathers, in regards to the ontological creature creator dichotomy. I stated that I did not see it in the earliest fathers, but left teh question oipen to further examination. I asked you to show me otherwise. After beginning your response by attacking my integrity and methodology as a sideshow, you've reacted in true knee-jerk fashion. This is not charactersitic of someone confident in their position, and for these reasons you leave me wondering if my initial assumption was grounded deeper in truth than I had previously realized. Instead of supplying the clear statements that I requested, you repeatedly demand that I prove a negative, as if this fallacy of logic is supposed to go unnoticed.

== no, its not special pleading--it is recognizing the semantic range of the work "proskuneo" and determining its meaning according to context. and yes, in many cases the context does suggest that Jesus isn't being worshiped in the absolute sense (Mt. 14:33; Mk. 5:6; Jn. 9:38). or do you take 1 Kings 1:23 as an account of Nathaneal "worshipping", in the absolute sense, the as of yet undeified King David?

This is silly. It sounds like the argument presented by ex nihilo proponents that bara means created from nothing. Why does it mean that? Well because it is useed when referring to God's creation, so therefore it means ex nihilo since that is how God creates. Likewise, worship means something in an "absolute sense" when in reference to God, but in a non-absolute sense when directed towards others. The argument is entirely circular. To worship means to knee before something. Fine. But what do you think we'll be doing in heaven? We will be kneeling before God just as humans kneel before kings. The same word is used. Sure, it is directed towards two different beings, but it is a far fetch assertion to say God doesn't allow others to be worshipped when the Bible states very clearly that those whom He loved (humans) are to be worshipped in heaven. Context doesn't dictate a "level" of worship because there are no "levels" to beging with. There is kneeling down, paying reverence, loyalty, respect, honor etc, and then there is the act of doing none of the above. You're either worshipped or your not. The only way God is worshipped in a manner unlike the human Kings, is that He is prayed to. But this is the only way to communicate with Him. Are we going to be "praying" to God when in His presence?


== and thank you Kevin, for making an absolute fool of yourself, so that i won't have to. the above is so ridiculous i'm not going to touch it.

Because you can't. If I am a fool then I am in good company. The list of scholars who point out the Greek influence in early Christian dogma is practically endless. Even your own mentors are forced to deal with it and declare the Hellenization of Christainity "God-Ordained." Show me where the gap between man and God is "eternal" in the Bible. And then show me the earliest instance in the church fathers. If you so choose, you can ignore the instances where church fathers relied on Platonism and Middle-Platonism as a philosophical construct for developing theology.

== re my Tekton article above. the Nicenes were also subordinationists, as is the Church today, and the ante-Nicenes didn't need Plato to tell them that the Father is the source of the Son and the cause of his activities ad extra--the Bible was clear enough.

More red herrings? This is why communication is futile. You can't stay on topic.

== i never denied that Plato influenced the Father's--i denied that his influence was a corruptive element.

I never said it was a "corruptive element" did I? I said it was the basis for the creature/creator dichotomy. This dichotomy was obvious in Plato and his successors, and it isn't just a coincidence the fathers were being Hellenized. To prove me wrong would be so simple as citing a scripture or Jewish tradition that demanded such a paradigm, but like every other apologist I've encountered, nothing is produced.

== again, try to stay on track. the fact that there were no Mormons then simply proves that you are the one who ought to shoulder the burden of proof, and not me.

Are you truly this inept, comprehensively speaking? When did I ever say or suggest that there were Mormons during this time? Good grief.


== like your use of Newman?

My use of Newman had everything to do with your need for scholarly approval, not mine.


== we also deny that God can build a rock so heavy he can't lift it, and that he can't bring into being a square circle. you'll have to forgive our adherence to pagan Aristotelian logic.

I was wondering when this would come up. It is a lame cop-out to excuse illogical dogma. This rests on the asumption that human and divine are like black and white. Fire and Ice. Up and down. Polar opposites. Comething you have yet to demonstrate in teh earliest fathers. References to God's "uncreated" state of being doesn't carry with them all this theological/ontological freight you're relying upon. Again, what makes human and God different is primarily life itself. Meaning one dies and teh other lives forever. THAT is the "essential" definition for both. Corruptible and incorruptible. Created and uncreated is a definition of circumstance, and even this needs qualification since Origen believed in the preexistence of the human soul. The corruptible element of human nature is the physical body, not the spirit.

== orthodoxy has done nothing other than recognize something as clear as the sun in the sky at high noon on a cloudless day.

Ah, yes. So clear that it took them more than three centuries to figure it out. Good grief, you can't be serious. Stick to the scholars who agree it was a mystery that had to be unfolded through the "God-Ordained" process of Hellenization. Statements such as the one above results in question begging.


== its very literal, yet expressed in a context wherein the distinction between "the God" and "god" is taken for granted; and it is up to you to prove that Irenaeus or Clement of Alexandria or Origen or anyone else--whose language for deification never surpassed this in clarity--meant anything other than this.

Prove a negative again. I can't prove what they didn't believe anymore than I can prove you don't worship peanutbutter. But it is a curiosity that, since you are the expert, you sure are taking your sweet time in supplying the endless references to the CLEAR and UNAMBIGUOUS statements that they meant something entirely ontologically distinct from God the Father.

== with what little you have you seem to be quite competent in that regard. okay, enough of this. i challenge you to a debate in the boxing ring. choose either Irenaeus or Origen. my claim is that, according to both, there is a clear and unbridgable ontological chasm separating man from God, such that man cannot become God ("God" understood in the common sense).

Good grief! This is what I asked for several posts ago and you are just now willing to provide, only if I do this in fancy "Debate" with the "gloves off" fashion? How many times do I have to tell you that I am not DEBATING anything. It might seem like it since we have gone off on various tangents that have little to do with the main issue at hand. But as far as THE subject goes, I'm waiting for your references to prove my theory wrong. I've already stated time agian that I could be wrong. But I don't believe I am... yet.

You seem more interested in a blood-sporting than anything else. Take time out from inhaling orthodoxy and try studying the rules of logic. Also, try to learn how to communicate in a scholarly manner. You can take some serious lessons from David.

And you never responded to my Origen excerpt in CONTEXT. I even provided a citation that seems to support yrou claim about created vs. uncreated, but this was just before he speaks of deification which involves the transformation involved in theosis. You tried to say it had nothing to do with deified persons when the context clearly stated otherwise. This is why I said you should stick with the primary source instead of taking the word of Historians. I picked up a book by Ronald Nash the other day and I checked out a section on Origen. He demonstrated the various ways historians interpret Origen, yet you imply they have no bias.

Here are a couple more from Origen.

All beyond the Very God is made God by participation in His divinity, and is not to be called simply God (with the article), but rather God (without article). And thus the first-born of all creation, who is the first to be with God, and to attract to Himself divinity, is a being of more exalted rank than the other gods beside Him, of whom God is the God, as it is written,"The God of gods, the Lord, hath spoken and called the earth." It was by the offices of the first-born that they became gods, for He drew from God in generous measure that they should be made gods, and He communicated it to them according to His own bounty. The true God, then, is "The God," and those who are formed after Him are gods, images, as it were, of Him the prototype. But the archetypal image, again, of all these images is the Word of God, who was in the beginning, and who by being with God is at all times God, not possessing that of Himself, but by His being with the Father, and not continuing to be God, if we should think of this, except by remaining always in uninterrupted contemplation of the depths of the Father. (Origen Commentary on John 2.2)

I am of opinion that the expression, by which God is said to be "all in all," means that He is "all" in each individual person. Now He will be "all" in each individual in this way: when all which any rational understanding, cleansed from the dregs of every sort of vice, and with every cloud of wickedness completely swept away, can either feel, or understand, or think, will be wholly God; and when it will no longer behold or retain anything else than God, but when God will be the measure and standard of all its movements; and thus God will be "all," for there will no longer be any distinction of good and evil, seeing evil nowhere exists; for God is all things, and to Him no evil is near: nor will there be any longer a desire to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, on the part of him who is always in the possession of good, and to whom God is all. (Origen De Principiis 3.6.3)

[phantaz sunlyk]

**7** i just had the most dreadful experience of typing, for over an hour, a response, and then hitting the "tab" button, which for some reason erased the entire thing.
its 11:30, so i'm going to be brief. though my arguments/citations will be nowhere near as lengthy as what i had on this screen 1 minute ago, :rant: , i think they will be clear enough.
also, i confess that (once again), the post [that was 7/8 complete :rant: ] was full of biting sarcasm. its disappearance caused me to realize that my manner of expression has been less than Christian, and for that i apologize to Kevin.
finally, i'm working on a project that i started some time back, and finally, it appears as though i'm close to being done with it. for that reason, i'm telling Kevin in advance that my responses to posts in the immediate future might be somewhat delayed.

== the constitutive properties of ho theos are his oneness (1:22:1), un-createdness (2:34:2; 3:8:3; 4:38:1), eternality and immutability (2:34:2; 4:11:2; 4:38:1), omnipresence and unboundness (2:1:2; 2:30:9; 4:3:1; 4:6:2; 4:19:3),

No argument there.

**8** then that is all that i need to prove that an ontological chasm is clearly implied by Irenaeus, for he never comes anywhere near affirming that man's deified state will entail any of the above (eternality, if not a-temporal in connotation, atleast implies backwardly everlasting existence; "God alone, who is Lord of all, is without beginning and without end, being truly and forever the same, and always remaining the same unchangeable being"--2:34:2; and not merely perpetual duration, which all sides agree deified/saved man will have).
no more needs to be said regarding Irenaeus' recognition of an ontological gap that separates man from God.

This was the clearest unambiguous statement you've provided thus far. The problem, however, is that it came from you, not Origen.

**7** ...and so on. to this it is sufficient to point out De Principis 4:4:8--
Every created thing, therefore, is distinguished in God's sight by its being confined within a certain number and measure, that is, either number in the case of rational beings or measure in the case of bodily matter. Since, then, it was necessary for intellectual nature to make use of bodies, and this nature is proved to be changeable and convertible by the very condition of its being created--for what was not and began to be is by this very fact shown to be of a changeable nature and so to possess goodness or badness as an accident, and not as part of its essence.
conjoined to De Principis 4:4:1--
This phrase that we use, however, that there never was a time when he did not exist, must be accepted with a reservation. For the very words "when" or "never" have a temporal significance, whereas the statements we make about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit must be understood as transcending all time and all ages and all eternity. For it is this Trinity alone which exceeds all comprehension, not only of temporal but even of eternal intelligence.
these passages suffice to demonstrate a clear ontological dichotomy, according to the theology of Origen, between the creator and creation.

This actually comes from 4.39.2, and it is in direct reference to those who would be ungrateful to God by not appreciating his nature as the Creator.

**8** you are correct in that i made a typo, and i thank you for correcting me. that said, i fail to see how your observation in regards thereto overturns either the point i originally made or the point made by the passage(s) cited above.

No he didn't. My point was teh same point i've made since the beginning. That all the Fathers didn't agree on everything.

**7** i never said that the fathers did agree on "everything", and your point, in citing Newman, wasn't against my affirmation of that either--your statement was made in regards to the creator/creature dichotomy, and, if anything at all, Newman's quote could be used as evidence that the ante-Nicene's Trinitarian Christology was suspect. as regards the former, it is sufficient to point out that Newman wasn't even talking about it; as regards the latter, it is sufficient to point out that, in the paragraph preceding it, Newman makes clear that such a conclusion is reached only when, according to Newman, an "unfair" hermeneutic is applied to the Fathers in question.

While you're gloating about the number of books you bought with your "own money", I wonder if you can compete with this gentleman, who has a personal library of over 14,000 books. (since you made it such an issue before anyway)

**7** i never "gloated" over the number of books that i own. my point was that i make a point of trying to keep things in context, and that your modus operandi is such that you're in no position to even know if you've taken an author out of context.
no, i can't even approach competing with your friend's library. that said, if you think he can help you or refute what i've asserted, bring him on. while i can't match him in book quantity, the sources i do have are recognized authorities, and what i lack in quantity i trust i can make up for with the mental capability that God has given me.
also, i never denied that doctrine develops. proof of this is evident from a several page essay i wrote affirming precisely this fact, which was posted several months ago here on TWeb.

== and while we're at it, let us include the "drops of dew" in the species of the divine, since the Scripture sayeth that God has "begotten" them (Job 38:28).

Trying to create contradiction won't help you since neither of us are biblical inerrantists, and we have our own source of authority for interpreting scripture. I'm dealing with the species argument as you raised it. You're trying to change the subject ...again. But the scripture does not "sayeth" that God has "begotten them." It asked the question, just after asking "has rain a Father?" I'm sorry if you can't apply proper exegesis to figure out what is allegory and what isn't.

**8** and if i acted towards you the same way you acted towards me, i could demand that you provide an "explicit" biblical or patristic passage which states that "dew, being begotten of God, is not ontologically equal to God", acting as though common sense were not enough to refute this notion, and thinking myself vindicated by your failure to produce a passage to the contrary.
the absurdity itself is enough to disqualify the possibility of taking the passage from Job in the literal sense, and this is what 99% of Christians think in regards to the assumptions you advance. as such, the point is that we aren't required to produce "explicit" texts against such notions.

until David walked in anyway.

**7** so that is Dave!

However, my purpose here was to find out if there were any clear statements from ALL the Church Fathers, in regards to the ontological creature creator dichotomy.

**8** whenever did i state anything regarding "ALL" the fathers? that's like asking for "every" book in the Bible to "clearly" state one specific doctrine.

I asked you to show me otherwise. After beginning your response by attacking my integrity and methodology as a sideshow, you've reacted in true knee-jerk fashion. This is not charactersitic of someone confident in their position, and for these reasons you leave me wondering if my initial assumption was grounded deeper in truth than I had previously realized.

**7** in response to this, i think it will suffice to simply ask a few questions. i ask you to answer honestly.
have you ever read the whole of Irenaeus Against Heresies or Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching? if so, when? if not, how much, exactly, have you read?
have you ever read the whole of Origen's On First Principles? if so, when? if not, how much, exactly, have you read?
have you ever read the whole of a book (or the whole of a part of a book dealing with the author in question, as books on Irenaeus are, for some reason, exceedingly rare) by a recognized scholar on either of the above two authors?
if you answered "no" to the above, then i ask you where you read the passages you cited on this board prior to my challenging you. your citing Irenaeus to "prove" that he "may" have thought that God had a God (refering immediately to Bickmore) left a first impression in my mind that i may never get over--that your knowledge of the Fathers comes almost exclusively from LDS apologists rather than the Fathers themselves or patristic authorities, please forgive me if i'm wrong.

it is a far fetch assertion to say God doesn't allow others to be worshipped when the Bible states very clearly that those whom He loved (humans) are to be worshipped in heaven.

**8** for the third time, Rev. 3:9 does not refer to men in heaven or to deified man. the 1 Kings passage unambiguously proves that "proskuneo" doesn't necessarily entail worship in the absolute sense (what reason have you for thinking that Nathaneal wasn't "worshipping" the undeified king in the absolute sense? how is the reasoning you used to arrive at that conclusion not, according to your logic, circular?).

Context doesn't dictate a "level" of worship because there are no "levels" to beging with. There is kneeling down, paying reverence, loyalty, respect, honor etc, and then there is the act of doing none of the above. You're either worshipped or your not. The only way God is worshipped in a manner unlike the human Kings, is that He is prayed to. But this is the only way to communicate with Him. Are we going to be "praying" to God when in His presence?

**8** wow, the above truly amazes me.
so if i bow in front of the President of the USA, i thereby "worship" him in the same sense that i worship God, aside from praying to him?

Take time out from inhaling orthodoxy and try studying the rules of logic

**7** actually, i have studied precisely this, intensely--i'm a philosophy major in college, and spent my time prior to enrolling by reading analytic works by the likes of Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, J L Mackie, etc.. it is for this reason that i spend most of my time interacting with the anti-orthodox who utilize "reason" and "logic" with my jaw on the floor. they aren't even in a position to realize when they are breaking the rules of logic, yet they advance like a steel-sphere that weighs a ton rolling down a 30 degree slope.
out of curiosity, could you enlighten me regarding your qualifications when it comes to logic?

You can take some serious lessons from David.

**7** as i've said before, bring him on. if he agrees with you, i have no doubt that i can deal with him. if he's Catholic and as well read as you imply, then i seriously doubt that he'll have any serious disagreement with me. that authorities such as Henri Crouzel, Hans urs von Balthasar, Peter Widdicombe, and Eric Osborn agree with my take on Origen and Irenaeus, and that both of these conform with what i've seen in the primary sources themselves, leaves me with nothing other than confidence that i'm correct. the fact that i had, on my own, arrived at the basic substance of these conclusions prior to being assisted by the above mentioned scholars only furthers my confidence.
your first passage from Origen is sufficiently modified by the second citation from De Princ. above, wherein it is clearly asserted that the Son belongs on the divine side of the divine/creature chasm.
i fail to see the import of the second passage you offer within the context of this discussion.
that said, De Princ. 4:4:8 states that the bodily nature of man will "always exist", and the same is affirmed earlier in 2:2:1, wherein it says only "the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can live apart from a body" and that "life without a body is found in the Trinity alone".
also, regarding 4:4:9, wherein it states that "everyone who shares in anything is undoubtedly of one substance and one nature with him who shares in the same thing", the only reason i didn't respond was because i failed to see the signifigance of it, and for this reason.
Origen is saying that the things that participate in something other than themselves are of the same substance as each other, not the same substance as the thing they participate in--"For example, all eyes share in the light, and therefore all eyes which share in the light are of one nature.. that this portion of Origen in no way warrants the belief that man will become God in the same sense that the Trinity is God is further evident by his saying that the deified state varies "in proportion to the earnestness of the soul and the capacity of the mind", and, just prior to that, that "we must acknowledge a diversity of participation in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" (in context, he seems to be asking whether or not men can participate in God to the same extent which the angels can).
peace.

[Kevin W. Graham]

== then that is all that i need to prove that an ontological chasm is clearly implied by Irenaeus,

But you're reading ontology into "uncreated, eternal" etc., when this is not explicit. The only thing that I think can be definitively shown is that Irenaeus believes we will become God like Christ became Human. His comments in reference to God compared to humans is a comparison that exists NOW. Not a comparison to God and deified humans who have yet to become what He is.

== for he never comes anywhere near affirming that man's deified state will entail any of the above (eternality, if not a-temporal in connotation, atleast implies backwardly everlasting existence; "God alone, who is Lord of all, is without beginning and without end, being truly and forever the same, and always remaining the same unchangeable being"--2:34:2; and not merely perpetual duration, which all sides agree deified/saved man will have).

And why do you read ontology in this? The issue is whether or not God is capable of creating beings like Himself. We believe He is. Orthodoxy rejects the possibility. The argument above is just another way of saying the creature creator dichotomy, but nothing indicates this is an eternal condition. Christ came into the world to bridge that gap. Its effect didn't stop short of ontology.

== no more needs to be said regarding Irenaeus' recognition of an ontological gap that separates man from God.

However, there is plenty that needs to be said about an eternal ontological gap.

== Every created thing, therefore, is distinguished in God's sight by its being confined within a certain number and measure, that is, either number in the case of rational beings or measure in the case of bodily matter. Since, then, it was necessary for intellectual nature to make use of bodies, and this nature is proved to be changeable and convertible by the very condition of its being created--for what was not and began to be is by this very fact shown to be of a changeable nature and so to possess goodness or badness as an accident, and not as part of its essence.

Right. And the key point is that human nature is changeable. It can be changed into what God is. This is why Origen said we can become "wholly God." Once we become what god is, we are no longer changeable. This is the sense behind having eternal life.

== This phrase that we use, however, that there never was a time when he did not exist, must be accepted with a reservation. For the very words "when" or "never" have a temporal significance, whereas the statements we make about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit must be understood as transcending all time and all ages and all eternity. For it is this Trinity alone which exceeds all comprehension, not only of temporal but even of eternal intelligence.

Again, he also said that concerning Christ's mortal body, "and the human soul which it contained, we assert that not by their communion merely with Him, but by their unity and intermixture, they received the highest powers, and after participating in His divinity, were changed into God." (Origen, Against Celsus, 3.41) Therefore Origen recognized that humans could become Gods in exactly the same sense as did Jesus. An image of the prototype:

"And thus the first-born of all creation, who is the first to be with God, and to attract to Himself divinity, is a being of more exalted rank than the other gods beside Him, of whom God is the God, as it is written, "The God of gods, the Lord, hath spoken and called the earth." It was by the offices of the first-born that they became gods, for He drew from God in generous measure that they should be made gods, and He communicated it to them according to His own bounty. The true God, then, is "The God," and those who are formed after Him are gods, images, as it were, of Him the prototype. But the archetypal image, again, of all these images is the Word of God, who was in the beginning, and who by being with God is at all times God, not possessing that of Himself, but by His being with the Father, and not continuing to be God, if we should think of this, except by remaining always in uninterrupted contemplation of the depths of the Father."(On John 2.2)

As David pointed out, it si not ambiguous to you because of yoru background. It is ambiguous to anyone who reads Origen at face value without relying on an Orthodoxy to interpret him. Newman said he could hardly be cited as a representative of orthodoxy by himself. Wasn't origen declared a heretic after his death?

== i never said that the fathers did agree on "everything",

Well this is what you imply when you contest my comments that there was a "development" of sorts on the eternal ontological gap issue. You refuse to give any credit to Hellenization.

== and your point, in citing Newman, wasn't against my affirmation of that either--your statement was made in regards to the creator/creature dichotomy, and, if anything at all, Newman's quote could be used as evidence that the ante-Nicene's Trinitarian Christology was suspect. as regards the former, it is sufficient to point out that Newman wasn't even talking about it; as regards the latter, it is sufficient to point out that, in the paragraph preceding it, Newman makes clear that such a conclusion is reached only when, according to Newman, an "unfair" hermeneutic is applied to the Fathers in question.

The Newman quote came to my attention after I had written the post so I inserted it somewhere in the middle before sending it through. I didn't provide any commentary regarding the citation because I thought my use of him was obvious - to demonstrate that the "writings alone" cannot be used to determine what was orthodoxy since orthodoxy was a "development" that involves a particular "interpretation" by an authority which post dates the writings. Apparently I was wrong in this assumption and should have clarified what I intended to convey. But you would do well to ask clarifying questions about my use of him before jumping to conclusions that I was practicing in some sort of reckless methodology.

== i never "gloated" over the number of books that i own. my point was that i make a point of trying to keep things in context, and that your modus operandi is such that you're in no position to even know if you've taken an author out of context. no, i can't even approach competing with your friend's library. that said, if you think he can help you or refute what i've asserted, bring him on.

If David chooses to engage you in debate then so be it. I simply related to him your comments and he chose to post here on his own. But you guys probably agree on everything except the idea that the earliest fathers were ambiguous in their deification teachings.

== also, i never denied that doctrine develops. proof of this is evident from a several page essay i wrote affirming precisely this fact, which was posted several months ago here on TWeb.

Which is what I thought to begin with. Which left me wondering at times, "why is this guy even arguing with me?"


== and if i acted towards you the same way you acted towards me, i could demand

I don't recall making any demands. I came in here with one intention alone as I remember asking questions in what I thought was a polite manner. Maybe I need to work on my social skills.

== that you provide an "explicit" biblical or patristic passage which states that "dew, being begotten of God, is not ontologically equal to God", acting as though common sense were not enough to refute this notion, and thinking myself vindicated by your failure to produce a passage to the contrary.

I don't understand this. I thought I already indicated that the reason behind the "explicit biblical reference" request was that it was the only source of authority we had in common. Neither of us are inerrantists.

== the absurdity itself is enough to disqualify the possibility of taking the passage from Job in the literal sense, and this is what 99% of Christians think in regards to the assumptions you advance.

Whereas the former is supported by common sense and the later is supported by Greek Philosophy. This is my point. One is an issue of exegesis and the other philosophy.

== as such, the point is that we aren't required to produce "explicit" texts against such notions.

Of course not. But in order to convince me that the earliest fathers believed X, you're going to have to show explicit statements that say X. Cardinal Newman seemed clear that taking their statements by themselves prove very little by way of orthodoxy since orthodoxy in itself is pure "development." This works perfectly well for Catholics and Orthodox Christians alike, because they already accept the authority of teh later fathers to interpret and develop these things. But from someone outside that paradigm, you're going to have to do more. David seems to have recognized this, where you seem to think it is an obvious premise that everyone must adhere to, that orthodoxy has such authority.

== whenever did i state anything regarding "ALL" the fathers? that's like asking for "every" book in the Bible to "clearly" state one specific doctrine.

I said all of them didn't necessarily believe X (X = eternal ontological gap between man and God), and you have been going to great lengths ever since to prove my theory wrong. Is it really a stretch for me to assume you believe ALL fathers believe X since it is the only reasonable counter-argument to my initial statement?

== in response to this, i think it will suffice to simply ask a few questions. i ask you to answer honestly. have you ever read the whole of Irenaeus Against Heresies or Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching? if so, when? if not, how much, exactly, have you read?

YesI have. Though admittedly, it was about seven years ago. But the first link in my bookmark is http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ , and this has been true ever since.

== have you ever read the whole of Origen's On First Principles? if so, when? if not, how much, exactly, have you read?

Ditto above.

== have you ever read the whole of a book (or the whole of a part of a book dealing with the author in question, as books on Irenaeus are, for some reason, exceedingly rare) by a recognized scholar on either of the above two authors?

Yes. Dr. Norman's Doctoral Dissertation from Duke University is probably the best work from an LDS scholar. Keith E. Norman, Deification: The Content of Athanasian Soteriology Occasional Papers, Vol 1. (FARMS 2000)

Hamilton Hess comments on his work: “Norman makes a fine contribution to the subject by tracing the historical lineage of the idea of deification, but in the opinion of the present writer, he simply over-rates its importance for Athanasius.” (Hamilton Hess, “The Place of Divinization in Athanasian Soteriology,” Studia Patristica 26 (1993): 369-374, at 369, note 1)

== if you answered "no" to the above, then i ask you where you read the passages you cited on this board prior to my challenging you. your citing Irenaeus to "prove" that he "may" have thought that God had a God (refering immediately to Bickmore) left a first impression in my mind that i may never get over--that your knowledge of the Fathers comes almost exclusively from LDS apologists rather than the Fathers themselves or patristic authorities, please forgive me if i'm wrong.

I made reference to Bickmore because he is well known as the LDS who first pointed this out. I had read it before, but never caught onto it. I cut and pasted the citation from the website above however.

== for the third time, Rev. 3:9 does not refer to men in heaven or to deified man. the 1 Kings passage unambiguously proves that "proskuneo" doesn't necessarily entail worship in the absolute sense (what reason have you for thinking that Nathaneal wasn't "worshipping" the undeified king in the absolute sense? how is the reasoning you used to arrive at that conclusion not, according to your logic, circular?).

You're missing my point. I'm saying that you have yet to establish the point that worship has an "absolute" sense as opposed to a restricted sense. It doesn't matter if it is directed to kings, gods, your wife or Bill Gates. Sure, today it is commonly understood as bowing down and giving reverence and honor to a deity of some sort, but this doesn't require that the ancients made such divisions in the word "proskuneo." And who exactly is receiving worship in Rev 3:9?

== so if i bow in front of the President of the USA, i thereby "worship" him in the same sense that i worship God, aside from praying to him?

Technically, yes. How would it be any different? What you are worshipping doesn't change the fact that you are still commiting the act of worship. It might mean something spiritual on one hand and something devotional on the other, but the act itself is the same. You're problem is that you're reading a modern day understanding of "worship" into the ancient language, and by that perspective, assume there must be two different types.

== actually, i have studied precisely this, intensely--i'm a philosophy major in college, and spent my time prior to enrolling by reading analytic works by the likes of Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, J L Mackie, etc.. it is for this reason that i spend most of my time interacting with the anti-orthodox who utilize "reason" and "logic" with my jaw on the floor. they aren't even in a position to realize when they are breaking the rules of logic, yet they advance like a steel-sphere that weighs a ton rolling down a 30 degree slope. out of curiosity, could you enlighten me regarding your qualifications when it comes to logic?

Academically speaking? Absolutely none. Logic is something I studied in my spare time out of curiosity. But given you background I am surprised that you would fall victim to so many fallacies. Then again, I think most of them were inadvertent and result from misunderstandings of my position.

== that said, De Princ. 4:4:8 states that the bodily nature of man will "always exist",

Yes but isn't this body spirit? The same essence of God? And where the heck is De Princ. 4:4:8? I can't find it.

== and the same is affirmed earlier in 2:2:1, wherein it says only "the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can live apart from a body" and that "life without a body is found in the Trinity alone".

Yes, Origen did not accept the anthropomorphic nature of God according to early Christainity and ancient Judaism, but does a failure to acquire omnipresence mean one is not the same substance of God? What is the "divine stuff" that makes God? His energies or his essence/substance? And are substance and essence synonyms?

It seems like these arguments are points of philosophy. Meaning, certain powers are limited to God Most High only, which in a very real sense we would agree since we are never going to reach his level. He will always be over us in power. The question is, does Origen equate the powers unique to the One True God with his ontology? His divine makeup.

You cite a sentence from 2.2.1, but the context is interesting. Beginning with 2.1

"And that the question may be determined with greater precision, we have, in the first place, to inquire if it is possible for rational natures to remain altogether incorporeal after they have reached the summit of holiness and happiness which seems to me a most difficult and almost impossible attainment ...

Kevin asks: Well, is it impossible or is it only difficult or almost impossible?

"...or whether they must always of necessity be united to bodies. If, then, any one could show a reason why it was possible for them to dispense wholly with bodies, it will appear to follow, that as a bodily nature, created out of nothing after intervals of time, was produced when it did not exist, so also it must cease to be when the purposes which it served had no longer an existence. If, however, it is impossible for this point to be at all maintained, viz., that any other nature than the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can live without a body, the necessity of logical reasoning compels us to understand that rational natures were indeed created at the beginning, but that material substance was separated from them only in thought and understanding, and appears to have been formed for them, or after them, and that they never have lived nor do live without it; for an incorporeal life will rightly be considered a prerogative of the Trinity alone. As we have remarked above, therefore, that material substance of this world, possessing a nature admitting of all possible transformations, is, when dragged down to beings of a lower order, moulded into the crasser and more solid condition of a body, so as to distinguish those visible and varying forms of the world; but when it becomes the servant of more perfect and more blessed beings, it shines in the splendour of celestial bodies, and adorns either the angels of God or the sons of the resurrection with the clothing of a spiritual body, out of all which will be filled up the diverse and varying state of the one world. But if any one should desire to discuss these matters more fully, it will be necessary, with all reverence and fear of God, to examine the sacred Scriptures with greater attention and diligence, to ascertain whether the secret and hidden sense within them may perhaps reveal anything regarding these matters; and something may be discovered in their abstruse and mysterious language, through the demonstration of the Holy Spirit to those who are worthy, after many testimonies have been collected on this very point."

Origen seems to be tossing out two different scenarios and kicking them around asking himself "If" we assume X, then logic dictates Y, but "if" we assume W then logic dictates Z. Whatever his certainty may be, he does indicate that the bodies we would have are spiritual bodied, not "rational nature." When he says, "an incorporeal life will rightly be considered a prerogative of the Trinity alone." This is right after saying it is "difficult" or almost impossible for mankind to reach incorporeality. It seems to indicate that Origen believed we could participate in the substance of the Trinity to some extent, which is what I found in his previous statements regarding the sharing of essence becoming that which is involved.

== its disappearance caused me to realize that my manner of expression has been less than Christian, and for that i apologize to Kevin.

Apology accepted. And likewise, I apologize if I have said anything to offend you or give you reason to think I wasn't worthy of the best you have to offer.

Now I have REALLY got to get back to studying for finals.

Out for at least a week.

Cheers,

Kevin

[phantaz sunlyk]

**7** yo, dude. by the by, what are you studying in college for?

But you're reading ontology into "uncreated, eternal" etc., when this is not explicit.

**8** it seems, rather, to me that you simply give the definition of the word "ontology" (= "category of being as defined by monadic properties") a nudge whenever there is an explicit distinction noted between God and man. the only thing needed in refutation of this dubious practice is a recommendation to Against Heresies 2:1:1-2, listing the explictly affirmed divine properties alongside the explicit affirmed properties of deified man. "there is nothing either before him or after him", "nor that influenced by any one, but of his own free will", "he created all things", "himself commanding all things into existence", "if there is anything beyond him, he is not then the pleroma of all, nor does he contain all", "In such a case ... he should ... be held in, bounded, and enclosed by those existences that are outside him", and so on.
where does he imply--still less explicitly state--that man will be capable of existing in a state even analogous to the state of having nothing "either before or after him"? or that man will be completely autonomous, "influenced by none, but of his own free will"? that man will command anything "into existence"? that man, whose eternal state is within a body, will also exist essentially outside that body "unbounded" and not "enclosed by those existences that are outside him"? does Irenaeus not rather explicitly object to those who "imagine that he sits after the fashion of a man, and is contained within bounds"? (4:3:1)
fast forward to 2:30:9. wherever is it asserted by Irenaeus that man, simply by having the word "theos" predicated of him, will be anything like "the One only God who created all things, who alone is omnipotent ... while he contains all things, but he himself can be contained by no one."
how, pray tell, can God and man both contain "all things" while being "contained by no one" unless Irenaeus' argument against the necessity of God being one-only (2:2ff) is contradicted?
or whenever is it asserted by Irenaeus that, of deified man it can stated that his will "ought to govern and rule all things, while all other things give way to him, are in subjection, and devoted to his service"? (2:34:4)
how, do tell, can man be God in the absolute sense if of God it can be said that "created things must be inferior to him who created them, from the very fact of their later origin, for it was not possible for things recently created to have been uncreated" (4:38:1) and "he who makes is always the same"; while "that which is made must receive both beginning, and middle, and addition, and increase" (4:11:2) is true of man?
you complain again and again of me "asking" you to "prove a negative", yet this is precisely what you ask of me (that Irenaeus didn't believe in X), when the absolute polarity evident as assumed throughout makes it about as likely that we should even have imagined the need to respond to such a notion, as that we should expect Origen to feel the need to explicitly state that the "dew" that is "begotten" of God is not on that account a child of God.
the burden of proof is solely on your shoulders. according to Irenaeus, the Father is the only God in the absolute sense, and the only one who ever can be. the Word (Son) and Wisdom (Spirit) of God are intrinsic to the being of God the Father, and all creation is on these grounds--lacking necessary existence--absolutely and unbridgeably distinct from God. (Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, 4-5)
unless it can be shown that necessary existence (which is explicitly stated by Irenaeus as belonging necessarily to "the One God" who is God in the absolute sense), omnipresence, sovereignty over all that which is not itself, immutability, and omniscience can be asserted of deified man, it cannot be claimed that Irenaeus even came close to thinking that there wasn't an ontological gulf between God and man. of the above properties, only immutability can be claimed to have been asserted of Irenaeus of deified man, and as i've said several times before, if that is what you mean in stating that man can become God, then nobody wants to argue with you. to act as though the other divine properties are either "unimportant and not intrinsic to Irenaeus notion of God", or that man will infact, according to Irenaeus, attain them, is a ridiculous assertion with no warrant whatsoever in Irenaeus' works. hence unless you can prove either of these two, the discussion is, as far as i'm concern, closed. any response which ignores a direct engagement of these points will not recieve a respone in turn, other than my copying and pasting what has already been asserted.

And why do you read ontology in this? The issue is whether or not God is capable of creating beings like Himself.

**7** like unto himself in certain respects certainly. man can know, man can love, man has free will, man is personal. furthermore, man is a being essentially oriented upwards (Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, 90), made to participate in the Triune divine life (Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, 7), the realization of which (from "image" to "image and likeness") constitutes the glory of man.
but that there is not a "to the extent possible" assumed and implicit throughout Irenaeus' theology is up to you to prove.

Christ came into the world to bridge that gap. Its effect didn't stop short of ontology.

**7** Christ came to fulfill the potential of man who is created, not to work the logically impossible miracle of turning the created into the uncreated, or the circumscribed into the unbounded, or the ruled-over into the unruled, or the receiver of life and glory into the source thereof.
that the fulfillment of this potential entails a real glorification with nothing less than the glory of God himself (Jn. 17) cannot be denied. on the other hand, to assume that man's capacity for glory is such that it entails his being equal in glory to God, or equal to God in any sense, is absolutely counter-intuitive and lacking justification in the fathers and Scripture. that a tea cup can be filled with salt water does not turn it into the ocean.

However, there is plenty that needs to be said about an eternal ontological gap.

**7** indeed, it needs to be proven, by you, that Irenaeus "said" that it will be closed.

Right. And the key point is that human nature is changeable. It can be changed into what God is.

**8** no, the key point is that human nature is created, and therefore in itself intrinsically mutable and in all respects circumscribed, which is absolutely the opposite of God. participation in God, though real, cannot change this fact.

Once we become what god is, we are no longer changeable. This is the sense behind having eternal life.

**7** as pertains to immutability, i agree with the above. that, however, according to Origen this is the sole characteristic property of God is untrue.

Again, he also said that concerning Christ's mortal body, "and the human soul which it contained, we assert that not by their communion merely with Him, but by their unity and intermixture, they received the highest powers, and after participating in His divinity, were changed into God." (Origen, Against Celsus, 3.41) Therefore Origen recognized that humans could become Gods in exactly the same sense as did Jesus.

**8** untrue. the key phrase here is "by their unity and intermixture...received." in other words, man is glorified by participation in the Logos--the distinction, however, between logos and psyche remains, even though interchangeable terms can be used in reference to either because of the single subject in which they are united (De Principis 2:4:3). and it must also be remembered that, as the above mentioned passage will show, Origen distinguished between the two in the person of Christ nearly to the point of embracing Nesorianism.
hence Origen, in distinguishing between the human soul of Christ and the divine Logos to which that soul is united, affirmed that the same unity can obtain in our soul--the two remain distinct however (soul, Logos). to imagine, however, that this of itself entails what you argue for, you would first need to prove that Origen was a monophysite.
the passage you refer to in the Commentary on John is in reference to angels, and not men, and elsewhere in Origen it is clear that there remains a distinction between the capacity for deity of angels is not equal to the intrinsic deity of the Son.

As David pointed out, it si not ambiguous to you because of yoru background. It is ambiguous to anyone who reads Origen at face value without relying on an Orthodoxy to interpret him.

**7** "at face value" means "out of context", and since everyone does write in a context governed by presuppositions within which their writings must be read, it thereby follows that the "at face value" method of exegesis is to be rejected outright. anyone who reads the Bible "at face value" cannot but find apparent contradictions, and to read the Bible without finding these is not simply ensured by being a "fundamentalist inerrantist", but can also come from being associated with the original context of the writings in question (if, that is, the context so clarifies or possibly clarifies the seeming anomalies to the point that the contradiction can be shown to be no contradiction at all).
and this hermeneutic i apply to every issue i engage, and not simply to the fathers so as to "save" them from heresy.

Wasn't origen declared a heretic after his death?

**8** the debate on this continues, but i side with Henri Crouzel in believing that the identity between the "origenism" which was condemned and Origen himself is about as accurate as is the identity between Marcion and Paul.
hence i say no, and personally regard him as one of the greatest Christians--both regarding the quality of his person and the content of his theology--in history.

== i never said that the fathers did agree on "everything",

Well this is what you imply when you contest my comments that there was a "development" of sorts on the eternal ontological gap issue.

**8** and thus it appears as though you're the one who is actually guilty of misreading things, in the sense that you read into my words a meaning which was never implied, and advance forth with dogmatic certitude that of course you "get it". if you can't even understand me properly, what reason have i to think that you can understand people 1800+ years dead, who aren't here to blow the gaff every time you drop the ball?
"the eternal ontological gap issue" is not, nor is it close to being "everything".

You refuse to give any credit to Hellenization.

**7** once again, you read into me things that aren't there. my official stance regarding Christianity and Hellenism has never been that the two didn't interact, or that the former wasn't influenced by the latter, but rather that that influence wasn't an influence that corrupted the Church in an essential way, and lest the fact that even though i've made this distinction clear several times on this thread--not to mention coming nowhere near making the absolute distinct claim that you read into me--it is sufficient to point out an article i wrote for Tekton which was posted about a year ago, wherein i stated that:
I have my own thoughts in regard to the Church's encounter with Greek thought, and this is not the place to expound them. In passing, however, I'll simply say that I believe the Christian encounter with Philosophy was and continues to be one of the most providential and fruitful encounters in the history of the living Church, and that furthermore, the end result of this is not the Hellenization of Christianity, but the Christianization of Hellenism. http://www.tektonics.org/PS_NC.html

I didn't provide any commentary regarding the citation because I thought my use of him was obvious

**8** the original mistake probably lies in your error of somehow equating my "a doctrine--the distinction between the Creator and creation" with your "therefore, according to you, all doctrines"--which is no less a mistake on your part.
also, as far as the doctrine Newman was talking about there--being the orthodoxy of the ante-Nicenes re Trinitarian Christology, i'm more than willing to defend it.

- to demonstrate that the "writings alone" cannot be used to determine what was orthodoxy since orthodoxy was a "development" that involves a particular "interpretation" by an authority which post dates the writings.

**8** this is a muddled understanding of Newman's doctrine of development which carries with it the illicit assumption that "orthodoxy" is completely ad hoc when viewed in relation to that which preceded it. Newman actually argues that that which precedes official definitions contains within it orthodoxy itself atleast implicitly, and this to the exclusion of heresy, which is a "corruption" rather than "development" of doctrine.
in other words, Arianism wasn't rejected because in the late fourth century the Church "decided" that, all of the sudden, she didn't agree with it, but rather it was rejected because within itself it carried the denial of the intrinsic doctrine of Christ and salvation which preceded it.
i have an article coming up pretty soon, i think, on Tekton regarding the Filioque, and it gives a summary of Newman's seven principles of doctrinal development.

But you would do well to ask clarifying questions about my use of him before jumping to conclusions that I was practicing in some sort of reckless methodology.

**7** ...which you, infact, were; both as regards Newman himself, and regards your exegesis of me.

Which is what I thought to begin with. Which left me wondering at times, "why is this guy even arguing with me?"

**8** because it seems to me as though you think that "accepting development" entails "accepting the fact that historical enquiry, without the ad hoc aid of the theory of development, will reveal just how far apart or utterly ambiguous to predecessors of so-called 'orthodoxy' were in relation to those who today claim them for support".

I don't understand this. I thought I already indicated that the reason behind the "explicit biblical reference" request was that it was the only source of authority we had in common. Neither of us are inerrantists.

**7** from the fact that neither of us are inerrantists, it thereby follows that the Bible will be, in this context, as worthless a source of "proof" as anything else, since the abandoment of the literal sense ensures the impossiblity of a univocal interpretation.
and i'm still waiting for explicit proof that, according to the Bible, dew is not a literal child of God that will on that account become deified in the absolute sense.
do you have any argument against this, aside from the un-biblical philosophical presupposition "of course not!"?

But in order to convince me that the earliest fathers believed X, you're going to have to show explicit statements that say X.

**8** and in order to convince you that Ss. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James, Peter, and Jude didn't believe "dew is not God's real child", you need...? after all, hath Paul not said that God will be "all in all"??????????????? it is up to you to prove that dew is not included in this "all", especially since we already know that it is "begotten" of God.

YesI have. Though admittedly, it was about seven years ago.

**7** ouch!--don't i feel like a flippin' idiot!--my apologies.
that stated, i'm bewildered that you arrived at the conclusions that you did, re Irenaeus above.

You're missing my point. I'm saying that you have yet to establish the point that worship has an "absolute" sense as opposed to a restricted sense.

**8** compare chapters 4 and 5 of revelation to the 1 Kings passage i mentioned earlier. if that doesn't get the point across, i don't know what will. its about as ridiculous as conflating the meaning of the word "love" in the two statements "i love the philadelphia 76ers" and "i love my wife", or "fear" in the statements "i fear you've misunderstood me" and "i fear this python who is six inches away from my face with an open mouth".
that the same word can be used in these distinct statements means that they have something in common, but the fact that the statements are obviously distinct in force proves that they have something different, which modifies the sense of the verb.

But given you background I am surprised that you would fall victim to so many fallacies. Then again, I think most of them were inadvertent and result from misunderstandings of my position.

**7** (yawn). show one logical fallacy that i've commited here. if anything, they would result from your misapprehension of my point.

Yes but isn't this body spirit? The same essence of God?

**8** yes, the body is "spiritual", which in this case refers to a highly reified and subtle corporeal subsitence (which is shown in the lengthy quote you offer which distinguishes between "crass" and "celestial" bodies--see also Commentary on Matthew 17:29 and De Principis 2:10:3), and thus is distinguished from God, who alone is incorporeal.

What is the "divine stuff" that makes God?

**7** your imagining that God has to composed of "stuff", while not surprising me, shows that your thought regarding God is diametrically opposed to Origen or the possibility of understanding him. an incorporeal subsistence is not composed of "stuff". check out Pseudo-Dionysius' _On the Divine Names_ and _The Mystical Theology_ for an exploration of the theme of God's subsistence.

And where the heck is De Princ. 4:4:8? I can't find it.

**7** right after 4:4:7 :thumb: i'm going off of G.W. Butterworth's translation, with an introduction by Henri De Lubac. its on pgs. 323-325.

And likewise, I apologize if I have said anything to offend you or give you reason to think I wasn't worthy of the best you have to offer.

**8** no need to worry about offending me.
peace.

[phantaz sunlyk]

say hey, something came up and i won't be able to post here for i'm not sure how long.
all good things,
peace.

[George Blaisdell]

phantaz sunlyk: writes:

say hey, something came up and i won't be able to post here for i'm not sure how
long.
all good things,
peace.

Taz - You take good care, ma man!
I miss ya already.

geo