Thank you Dear Fr Addison for the suggested readings. I have been reading and reading David’s books and look forward to this new book. Also Ancient Faith Radio introduced to the Fr Pat Reardon and have the book on Psalms. I had not heard of Nigg’s book—but the description you offered makes it inviting. Thank you as always for your guidance! I always look forward to your substack posts. The last post on Emerson’s romanticized view of nature was an interesting read. As a high school student reading Emerson and Thoreau gave words to some of my own interior longings connected to nature. It took a little while but fifty years later I’m living in a log home in a remote part of the NW and can more easily, from this vantage point, see the shortcomings of the transcendentalists ideas of God and Nature. Surrounded by mountains and pine trees, wildlife and my dog Cannie, I find peace—but there is a difference in my mind between those manifestations of the glory of God and the icons on my wall.
Thank you again for your kindness and generosity in sharing your thoughts with us.
All Christians (well, I suppose the vast, vast majority) are 'polytheists' in the sense that they believe in powerful spirits, usually referred to as angels and demons. But it does not make very much sense to refer to God Himself as a powerful spirit or being; if we admitted that, then Nicene Christianity would be insensible.
God is not a pyschological subject (He has no ψύχη, pysche, except by condescension in the Incarnation) and certainly not three — He's far too grand for that. In fact, if Sergius Bulgakov's views are right, God is perfectly Personal because of His simplicity; He is simultaneously subject, object, and copula, a tri-hypostatic Personality. I think that when we imagine God to be "not a psychological subject," we end up thinking He lacks a personality, when in fact we are the ones who maintain a shadowy and imperfect reflection of true Personality.
I would have to, reluctantly, disagree with the good late Metropolitan (and may God rest his soul!) on the point that "each of them is from all eternity a person, a distinct center of conscious selfhoold," as I don't see how that differs from tritheism. The modern conception of the 'person' as a pyschological subject is, well, irreducibly modern, and not the meaning of the Greek πρόσοπων (prosopon, 'face, mask') or ὑποστάσις (hypostasis, "subsistence, substance"). If God were to be like that, He simply wouldn't be God; the Trinity would just be a powerful coalition of beings who, in themselves, cannot account for even their own existence.
I wouldn't say that those two are opposed to one another! After all, if Christianity can't play nice with reason, then it is either insensible or only true in a limited and incomplete sense. I am not particularly interested in subscribing to a creed amounting to that!
Of course, we aren't going to be able to pin God in a box, comphrending Him completely, but at the same time, what we say about Him has to make sense. Saying God 'transcends logic' is no different than saying He 'transcends good and evil.' To transcend good and evil is just to not be the Good (or even just good); to transcend logic is just not to be the Truth (or even just rational). If this is so, then all of our theological talk is just vacuous sophistry.
All that being said, I am already a Trinitarian Christian! And may our God bless you and keep you.
Thank you Dear Fr Addison for the suggested readings. I have been reading and reading David’s books and look forward to this new book. Also Ancient Faith Radio introduced to the Fr Pat Reardon and have the book on Psalms. I had not heard of Nigg’s book—but the description you offered makes it inviting. Thank you as always for your guidance! I always look forward to your substack posts. The last post on Emerson’s romanticized view of nature was an interesting read. As a high school student reading Emerson and Thoreau gave words to some of my own interior longings connected to nature. It took a little while but fifty years later I’m living in a log home in a remote part of the NW and can more easily, from this vantage point, see the shortcomings of the transcendentalists ideas of God and Nature. Surrounded by mountains and pine trees, wildlife and my dog Cannie, I find peace—but there is a difference in my mind between those manifestations of the glory of God and the icons on my wall.
Thank you again for your kindness and generosity in sharing your thoughts with us.
James
And thank you for your very gracious comment.
I will pray.
continue to pray or take it up again actually, as your dear brother is so beloved to my heart since we first 'met' (online, alas), some years ago.
I really just adore him for his humanity.
God ease and save him.
_mb
All Christians (well, I suppose the vast, vast majority) are 'polytheists' in the sense that they believe in powerful spirits, usually referred to as angels and demons. But it does not make very much sense to refer to God Himself as a powerful spirit or being; if we admitted that, then Nicene Christianity would be insensible.
God is not a pyschological subject (He has no ψύχη, pysche, except by condescension in the Incarnation) and certainly not three — He's far too grand for that. In fact, if Sergius Bulgakov's views are right, God is perfectly Personal because of His simplicity; He is simultaneously subject, object, and copula, a tri-hypostatic Personality. I think that when we imagine God to be "not a psychological subject," we end up thinking He lacks a personality, when in fact we are the ones who maintain a shadowy and imperfect reflection of true Personality.
I would have to, reluctantly, disagree with the good late Metropolitan (and may God rest his soul!) on the point that "each of them is from all eternity a person, a distinct center of conscious selfhoold," as I don't see how that differs from tritheism. The modern conception of the 'person' as a pyschological subject is, well, irreducibly modern, and not the meaning of the Greek πρόσοπων (prosopon, 'face, mask') or ὑποστάσις (hypostasis, "subsistence, substance"). If God were to be like that, He simply wouldn't be God; the Trinity would just be a powerful coalition of beings who, in themselves, cannot account for even their own existence.
I wouldn't say that those two are opposed to one another! After all, if Christianity can't play nice with reason, then it is either insensible or only true in a limited and incomplete sense. I am not particularly interested in subscribing to a creed amounting to that!
Of course, we aren't going to be able to pin God in a box, comphrending Him completely, but at the same time, what we say about Him has to make sense. Saying God 'transcends logic' is no different than saying He 'transcends good and evil.' To transcend good and evil is just to not be the Good (or even just good); to transcend logic is just not to be the Truth (or even just rational). If this is so, then all of our theological talk is just vacuous sophistry.
All that being said, I am already a Trinitarian Christian! And may our God bless you and keep you.