God is Nondual

[The Liturgist]

Mystics across religious traditions speak of a Unitive experience. It seem to be our own true nature which we have been alienated from. Can wr call it unity with the Father. in fact, Jesus and the Trinity give us a good model. Three in one: a sacred mystery.

The Orthodox explain this belief as Theosis, and John Wesley I think nicely translated Theosis as “Entire Sanctification.”

I think the Process theologians might have something to add including Teilhard De Chardin. "To Be is to be United." (Esse est uniri)

The problem with Process theologians is that by denying divine immutability, they deny the perfection of God, and thus create a situation where the moral basis of the Christian faith becomes untenable and unstable. This also creates problems with regards to eternity - the idea of God simply existing in unending linear time as opposed to having created time, which is what Scripture says God did, is nightmarish, since it means the most we could hope for would be the same existence rather than eternal life, which is something else, an escape from this specific experience of time. But worse than that, it also makes God cease to be God, since if God exists in time, rather than having created time (and if He created space, we know from modern science that He created time, since spacetime is contiguous and this is foundational to our understanding of such important scientific issues as gravitation, momentum and electromagnetism), that would cause time (somehow separate from space) to be the actual deity, and God would be reduced to a demiurge, existing according to the rules of time.

Now some Process Theologians have tried to deal with this, but I have yet to see a Process Theologian express things in a manner that was consistent with the Nicene Creed.

 

[The Liturgist]

Then "distinct" and "separate" must have different meanings if one is the case but not the other. Perhaps one ontological use and the other spatial? But God transcends space.

The common Christological language shared by Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and the Assyrian Church of the East in rejection of Nestorianism (which the Assyrians deny is Nestorian due to their unfortunate veneration of him) and actual Eutychian Monophysitism of the kind which leads inexorably to Tritheism, which the Oriental Orthodox are entirely innocent of, is that our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son and Word of God, became incarnate of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and in so doing united our humanity to His Divinity without change, confusion, separation, or division.

Therefore, distinction between the humanity and divinity of Christ our True God is possible, and required, in order to avoid change or confusion, but conversely, separation or division must be avoided as an imperative to avoid Nestorianism, which these days is the more common error, indeed, Nestorianism has enjoyed a renaissance due to anti-Catholicism and people objecting to the veneration of the our glorious lady Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary. Thus crypto-Nestorianism has become extremely widespread, and has even infilitrated into the traditional Protestant churches that explicitly rejected it, such as the Lutheran churches (Luther embraced communicatio idiomatum to an extent that rivals the great Oriental Orthodox theologians like St. Severus of Antioch or St. Jacob of Sarugh).

 

[Mark Quayle]

Then "distinct" and "separate" must have different meanings if one is the case but not the other. Perhaps one ontological use and the other spatial? But God transcends space.

I think the Process theologians might have something to add including Teilhard De Chardin. "To Be is to be United." (Esse est uniri)

The guy who comes to mind for me is Bede Griffiths. It is not an either/or situation (Either dualism or non-dualism).
But a both/and situation (unity in diversity).

God's ontology, not just his existence but his being —his "self"— if that can be used to steer our minds, is incomprehensible to us. We must substitute mere words in its place. He is not just in degree, but in kind, infinitely beyond us.

All these, as far as I know, even to include God's own statements in scripture concerning himself, (which are absolutely true —but that's another pursuit of explanation), are anthropomorphic in use. We only know what we know, and maybe what we can logically deduce, but our temporal words —even our comprehension of the words, 'infinite', and, 'eternal'— are not well accessible to reason, for a mere creature. OUR words turn on themselves.

Mystics across religious traditions speak of a Unitive experience. It seem to be our own true nature which we have been alienated from. Can wr call it unity with the Father. in fact, Jesus and the Trinity give us a good model. Three in one: a sacred mystery.

I love that about our true nature. Not that there aren't a lot of caveats both you and I could throw in there, but to my thinking, being created in the image of God has everything to do with that. But John 17 scares me. "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain." "I know it is true, but it is too painful, and too loosely understood. It will drive me mad if I let it!"

 

[Mark Quayle]

The Orthodox explain this belief as Theosis, and John Wesley I think nicely translated Theosis as “Entire Sanctification.”



The problem with Process theologians is that by denying divine immutability, they deny the perfection of God, and thus create a situation where the moral basis of the Christian faith becomes untenable and unstable. This also creates problems with regards to eternity - the idea of God simply existing in unending linear time as opposed to having created time, which is what Scripture says God did, is nightmarish, since it means the most we could hope for would be the same existence rather than eternal life, which is something else, an escape from this specific experience of time. But worse than that, it also makes God cease to be God, since if God exists in time, rather than having created time (and if He created space, we know from modern science that He created time, since spacetime is contiguous and this is foundational to our understanding of such important scientific issues as gravitation, momentum and electromagnetism), that would cause time (somehow separate from space) to be the actual deity, and God would be reduced to a demiurge, existing according to the rules of time.

Now some Process Theologians have tried to deal with this, but I have yet to see a Process Theologian express things in a manner that was consistent with the Nicene Creed.

Exactly so! To deny divine immutability and God's perfection is to me blasphemy, not to mention being logically self-contradictory —such a being is simply not God. It is one thing to not understand what is meant by divine immutability, and so to raise objections, but it is another to deny it, knowing what it means. (Sorry for being obvious).

You also say, "Now some Process Theologians have tried to deal with this, but I have yet to see a Process Theologian express things in a manner that was consistent with the Nicene Creed." To which I add —Nor, even, in a manner consistent with Scripture.

 

[The Liturgist]

Exactly so! To deny divine immutability and God's perfection is to me blasphemy, not to mention being logically self-contradictory —such a being is simply not God. It is one thing to not understand what is meant by divine immutability, and so to raise objections, but it is another to deny it, knowing what it means. (Sorry for being obvious).

You also say, "Now some Process Theologians have tried to deal with this, but I have yet to see a Process Theologian express things in a manner that was consistent with the Nicene Creed." To which I add —Nor, even, in a manner consistent with Scripture.

Indeed. I regard anything inconsistent with the Nicene Creed as inconsistent with Scripture properly understood - to quote St. Vincent of Lerins, a Latin father from the early 5th century venerated in the Orthodox church, or was it St. Isidore of Seville, a Latin anti-Arian bishop who we also venerate who was involved in the early Mozarabic liturgy, that scripture is not in the reading but the interpretation. St. Vincent said that what has always been believed everywhere by everyone (meaning by the church whole) is properly called Catholic, which makes sense since the word Catholic in Greek literally means “According to the Whole” and not “Universal” as is commonly said.

Thus in Orthodoxy we regard ourselves as Catholic, and the Eastern Orthodox because of the historic connection with the Byzantine Empire, the surviving portion of the Roman Empire, identify as Romans - the persecuted Antiochian and other Arabic Orthodox Christians (and their Greek Catholic counterparts) in the Middle East and the Alexandrian Greeks who are not Copts, Maronites or Assyrians and Syriacs (Suroye) identify as Rum in Arabic from the Greek Romiioi meaning Roman, and are known as Melkites to the Oriental Orthodox, meaning “King’s Men” or “Emperor’s Men”, regardless of whether or not they are Antiochian Orthodox or Melkite Greek Catholic.