Gods nature

[Noxot]

Christianity does not teach that humans become one with God's Nature; that would be anti-Christian theology.

Christianity, or at least historic, orthodox Christianity, teaches that we will become one with God's Energies, thus remaining distinctly human yet have a perfect, good, and free will.

but what is Gods nature? and also what is the human nature? what is a human being?

 

[Noxot]

If you are looking for information on the nature of God, I would recommend checking out the Summa Theologica written by Saint Thomas Aquinas. What you may be looking for will be found in the first part. Below is a link if you are interested:

SUMMA THEOLOGICA: Prima Pars

ty. I will look into that shortly. btw... does he also define what a human being is?

Just because the Holy Spirit is in us doesn't mean we become one with his essential divinity. Rather, we are conformed by him into the pattern of God's own activity, as the person of the Holy Spirit shapes us into persons who are like him.

If human nature became divine nature, then we'd be adding more members to the Trinity.

but what is Gods essential divinity? and what is human nature?

With me, guiding me, teaching me, growing me. I'm the clay, he is the potter. I'm the sheep, he is the shepherd. The pottery doesn't become the potter; the sheep doesn't become the shepherd.

yes but then why are some humans called "shepherds"? if God had only called me clay I would believe that all I am is clay but he has called many beings many different things. or do you not have a soul and a spirit? are you just flesh and blood?

Of course we can. But that doesn't mean our human nature becomes the divine nature. We aren't something other than human for being the recipients of imputed righteousness. We aren't something other than human because our human being is upheld by God's divine being.

so what is a human being and what does "Gods divine being" mean?

Answer 1: Identification with the very Nature/Substance of God is defined as Pantheism, which is a Pagan belief.
Answer 2: GratiaCorpusChristi has already answered your question with actual real Christian theology.

what is the "very Nature/Substance of God"? also, what does Pantheism have to do with christian thought? if you truly wanted to separate paganism from Christianity then you would probably not believe in the idea of hell as most believe it to be, since it's roots are pagan in origin. some of the first Christians were pagan converts and so christian thought might have some similarity with pagan thought since Christianity tends to mix with the various cultures and whatnot, as opposed to only jewish culture ( all kingdoms bring gifts to mount zion, which is the Church and also I will note how the riches God gave to the jewish people on their way out of egypt, [ which means "the world" ] was used for both divine purposes and for sinful ones and obviously God only rejected the evil purposes ). it is not possible to reject something just because it appears to be pagan in origin, especially if the 2 things only appears to be similar and are not in reality the same thing.

~serious business mode~so anyways... if you want to address the OP, I asked "what is Gods nature and what do the saints say about it". I did not ask you to read so much into something that you draw certain conclusions and start an entire other topic.~serious business mode~ funny though because you have just shown yourself to read into things and draw conclusions and so there is a possibility that you read into other ideas as well and thus color them with your own colors and so you would not be able to understand the very ideas as they are because you are busy defining what you see and so what you see is your own creation or distortion of the idea rather than what the person expressing the idea said. or I could say that when 2 different things mix, they create something new and so when your mind mixes with information that someone spoke, it makes something different than the original depending on if you mix it with something different than what it already was.

Our claim is that human nature cannot become divine nature, not that human nature cannot be united to divine nature through hypostatic union. But what happens in the case of Jesus is that the one single person Jesus is both fully God and fully man and that the union happens through the singularity of personhood, not that Jesus' humanity became divine or that his divinity became human. The divine person, the Second of Person of the Trinity, assumed a human nature.

In our case, we don't even do that. We don't become new members of the Trinity. Rather, we are united with God through union with his activity ("energies" in the classic eastern language). Our way of being is united to God's way of being, but our being does not become god's being.

what is being? and what is "the activity of his energies"? how does one separate in God 2 things that he is? how can we make a distinction in God if there are no distinctions in God? but humans say there is, they say there are 3 persons in the Trinity. is that a distinction? if that is not a distinction then why do humans argue that we make God into many if we say we are united to his nature? now i'm not really saying anything, i'm simply asking questions and thinking out loud, because if there is no thinking then there is no true ability to truly believe what you believe. I will not be like a sheep conforming to whatever he receives from another. sheep do not have the divine reasoning ability that shepherds do, i.e. those who partake of the soul of Christ, such as paul the apostle or john the apostle.

why is it that no one wants to copy and paste for me the various information that the saints said but they constantly say the saints say this or that? where is your proofs, since so many human beings use proofs to obtain knowledge of the divine, I will play by your game. so let me see the quotes from the saints that made you believe what you believe and then I will read them and tell you all if I came to the same conclusion as did this or that person. ~sarcasm~ we all know that everyone believes the same exact things in the bible when they read it and so when someone reads this or that saint they will only be able to come to the same exact conclusions since human beings are not at all confused by anything that God says.~sarcasm~ OR maybe since I understand the saints in a different way than some people that i will come to different conclusions than billy or sally does, since we are thinking humans (all humans to various degrees partake of the nature of the Logos/Reasoning of God, who is also known as the Son of God ). we humans are not some kind of static law with no ability to process information. we are not blindly recording information like a computer hard drive does because we are each distinct personalities and we can not separate ourselves from what we believe because humans tend towards the good, or truth, or reason, ectect. and so what you all believe, you only believe because you believe it to be true or because it makes you in good standing or it makes you not offended God, or some other reason that tend towards something that is according to your own understanding, good for you.... thus you can not separate what you believe from what you love or from what is the master over you or whatever is the persons favorite color, that the child shall often draw with.



or can you separate yourselves from what you believe in? if you do then how do you believe it?

 

[Noxot]

dark night of the soul:
5. The tenth and last step of this secret ladder of love causes the soul to become wholly assimilated to God, by reason of the clear and immediate vision of God which it then possesses; when, having ascended in this life to the ninth step, it goes forth from the flesh. These souls, who are few, enter not into purgatory, since they have already been wholly purged by love. Of these Saint Matthew says: Beati mundo corde: quoniam ipsi Deum videbunt. And, as we say, this vision is the cause of the perfect likeness of the soul to God, for, as Saint John says, we know that we shall be like Him. Not because the soul will come to have the capacity of God, for that is impossible; but because all that it is will become like to God, for which cause it will be called, and will be, God by participation.

if we lost our nature then God would not have a wife. so it is only in a superficial sense that one would say that mans nature does not become as Gods. anyone who knows about mystical theology, and that humans have no capacity whatsoever to understand it, but only God alone.... would not be able to know something of it unless God was knowing it through them. "the natural man receives not the things of God" and thus you can only define "nature" and "capacity" if in reality it is God doing it through you. otherwise you are just using human rationalization and human understanding, of which all partake of to various degrees, since that is the nature of the animal brain. to transcend our own nature and be in Gods requires that we have something which to transcend. since the human nature can not transcend of it's own but only by God then the chief nature of man is death and Gods is life. death being swallowed by God, we become part of him but not of our own selfhood, only of him and we desiring him. thus of all our capacity God fills for all eternity but the soul will never know an end to uniting with God because she is a drop in the abyss of God. but forever she will be with him and i don't know what real difference the nature of man is from Gods if we are both water. one is small and worthless of its own and the other is powerful and infinite. so the nature of man is capacity and the nature of God is beyond capacity. it is not good for a drop of water to be alone, much better to be with what she came out of - her husband. since God loves us as himself he said "it is not good for man to be alone" obviously it is also not good for woman to be alone, and that is chiefly what we as humans are, a soul and it is what kills us just as much as it is what God makes alive. one could say that the fallen state of the soul is a frozen drop of water.

mystical theology has nothing to do with doctrines or ideas or human understanding or anything else other than being with God. God loving us and us loving God. the female aspect is mystic and the male aspect is prophet. another chief aspect of union with God is that we desire to throw everything away that we might be fully empty so that God will give unto us what we need. so we seek whatsoever that holds us back from God and we give it to God and he sets us free from our enemies who dare say that they will keep us away from our beloved. the ugly sinful forms comes in all manners of cancers be they seeming to be angels of light as well as demons.

mystical theology is spoken in parables in darkness and in truth in light. but the warmth is always there. it is spoken in every single language and it fails to define what it is but love comes the closest to it. and this loving desire for God makes words and everything else obsolete. his unspeakable joy is what mystical theology is, it is his Holy Spirit.

 

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

I'm not going to copy and paste whole treatises onto a forum.

Go read Athanasius' On the Incarnation, or Basil's On the Holy Spirit, or Augustine's On the Trinity or Confessions.

 

[Noxot]

I'm not going to copy and paste whole treatises onto a forum.

Go read Athanasius' On the Incarnation, or Basil's On the Holy Spirit, or Augustine's On the Trinity or Confessions.

thank you. you could throw in a few quotes if you want to too because if God gave someone something then it is good.

 

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

thank you. you could throw in a few quotes if you want to too because if God gave someone something then it is good.

My favorite quote from Athanasius' On the Incarnation is right there in my signature: "God became man that man might become God."

 

[twob4me]

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