Wow! This lecture really moves the needle, not only in constructively responding to Wood, but much more importantly in pointing us with astonishing clarity to the more-to "after Chalcedon" right in front of our face. Razor's edge guidance, indeed, particularly in dismissing any opposition of the concrete and the logical and in inverting the inverted relation between hypostasis and nature. So much important said here that I pushed my ridiculously expensive hearing aids to their maximum capability and transcribed for my notes some excerpts of the audio (timeline points indicated). Here are a few of my favorites.
28:29 [vs Wood] No particular event . . . is predicted or determined by an ontological description . . . every event always surpasses any metaphysical determinations, but no event . . . can fail to exhibit and even exemplify the ontology and logic of the reality in which, or at the foundation of which, it occurs. Again, a metaphysics is simply a rule of coherent predication, not a causal course, and it is not a demotion to causal subordination to say of any real event that it must be susceptible of such predication. Whatever we say about Christ is credible only if our claims are congruent with the real structure of being, even if Christ himself should be the singular fact that creates that structure. Nothing we say about Christ is concretely true particularly if it cannot also logically be true in general.
36:52 When Wood asserts that hypostatic positivity and indifference are the properties that permit a union of incommensurable natures, he’s saying something that, I believe, cannot be made to be logically continuous, coherent. Neither such positivity nor such indifference could conceivably be a property of any kind. At least I take it that a positivity is whatever else it may in actuality; and actuality is by definition also a potentiality; and the only potentiality that it can make actual is already natural to it. Any personal hypostatic realization of the nature is the realization of a nature that’s always already intrinsically personal and hypostatic, which is to say capable of actuality only in and as personhood, whatever that may be, and this capacity, which is clearly proper to both the human and divine natures…is already an essential natural identity, which finds its perfect expression in the one indivisible person of Christ…only the same intrinsic orientation toward personhood in the divine and human natures at once makes it meaningful to speak of them as fully actual in and as the same person.
41:10 [vs Wood’s] inversion of logic. Hypostatic identity is possible only because of an always prior ground of identity in the natures.
42:33 hypostasis…its whole purpose is to signify the real subsistence of a nature as for the actual, distinguished only according to a certain mode of subsistence, tropos huparxeos, and in what way can the hypostatic actualize a nature unless the hypostatic is in itself nothing other than actualization of that nature
43:04 personhood…understood as essentially the instantiation and subsistence of the nature it makes actual and so as rooted in that nature as its own innermost potential
44:22 the natural oneness of the human and divine in Christ follows from the principle that hypostasis is entirely the subsistence of the nature it expresses and is exhaustively dependent on that
Let me voice my thanks among the others making affirming acknowledgements that you are making good sense, and doing so with amazing continuity with what you have been getting to us in published form. I enjoy this oral aural realization and draw attention to the thought of your enjoyment of this as well. I don't have a critical point, question, highlight, underlining, or statement of my thought, or other thoughts at this time. I am trying to get into focus what you are focusing for us, as well as trying to be alert to the clues ( and implications of them) you are bringing to focus, along with the tradition you are working from, and bringing forward as it were. (This just now occurs to me, to quote a beloved author giving due criticism to another - "More like this, please!")
I enjoyed the lecture alot, I appraicfte your note about the commonality of wonder workers at the start , Gutima makes reference to having known people who had invisibility charms in the suttras as well as preforming great works himself, Your note about incarnation vs embodiment in Maximus peaked my interest, Bulgakov makes use of ''re incarnation in a spiritual body'' in On the Eucharist and holy grail a work where he quotes Nyssa quite a bit , in it he also speaks of Christs pain and sorrow and suffering being all mans, As well as all creations nature and human nature being him and his ascension giving the world a kind of eternity, and that the communion makes the ever present spiritual body known, in a cosmic sense. While the process of Theosis is an eternal one and the Jiva must realize it is already Atman(the jar breaking and joining the air in Shankara Upadsis sahasri), Your note about divine desert in Proclus interested me, given thire are already gods and beings in heavenly realms, and heroes who are not native may enter this kozmoz , or Bodhisattvas to teach, The Tevigga Suttra around verse 40 speaks of the taghta as a teacher entering who sees ''face to face '' so that they might show the way to Brahma which in verse 76 is the Trumpeter of Loving all things. I know you have said we can imagine just one for now in the past, but as little Christs and with the possibility of sinless beings other than christ is it fair to suggest that there may have been other Incarnation(s)? In the sense that of other beings who have been born as the clearest Jiva or achieved that state while living, I'm reminded of Armstrongs post on Divine Anminity and Incarnation multiplicity, Plotinus suggesting a soul can enter an animal or Shankara reading the avatars as in all. Plotinus too speaking of 'He will, therefore, be present to all things, and will be in this world, whatever the mode may be of his subsistence in it.'' For you also love the children of the father whom you love. '' ''He(the good) as Love is evidence of the Good in Her(the soul)" "life here is a pale comparison to that in eternity" "it gives sight to the seer... there will be no distinction between the seer and see'' Remincient of Ibn Arabi, Which I was also reminded of when you said you felt woods work made God and the world 2 principles that would be orginating from another, That was also Arabi's argument aginst viewing the world as separate as it would violate tawid. The eye as the "I" is an image(fire and fragrance and a few others as well) often used by Eckhart and Buddha but also others I was reminded of. I don't know what sense Univocal was being used , from what Ive read of Scotus there didn't seem to be much of a difference between that and the analogus sense, but I was wonder if his view would be close to yours? I also wanted to ask if Christ allowing himself to be killed as triumph and conquest of death and pain implies that his death was necessary in some sense?
''I say the way Person is used in christian theology is akin to the collapse of the wave function in modern QM"
that comparison statement requires a person to have a very specific and yet, lets just say holistic set of interests and field of knowledge something which I've always enjoyed about your work
The term "univocal" has no necessary connection with Scotus; it's simply a logical designation: univocal as opposed to equivocal, and both as opposed to a properly analogical mean.
On a tangential note, I watched Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp, which i thought was appropriate for Memorial Day. I look forward to listening to this later.
Wow! This lecture really moves the needle, not only in constructively responding to Wood, but much more importantly in pointing us with astonishing clarity to the more-to "after Chalcedon" right in front of our face. Razor's edge guidance, indeed, particularly in dismissing any opposition of the concrete and the logical and in inverting the inverted relation between hypostasis and nature. So much important said here that I pushed my ridiculously expensive hearing aids to their maximum capability and transcribed for my notes some excerpts of the audio (timeline points indicated). Here are a few of my favorites.
28:29 [vs Wood] No particular event . . . is predicted or determined by an ontological description . . . every event always surpasses any metaphysical determinations, but no event . . . can fail to exhibit and even exemplify the ontology and logic of the reality in which, or at the foundation of which, it occurs. Again, a metaphysics is simply a rule of coherent predication, not a causal course, and it is not a demotion to causal subordination to say of any real event that it must be susceptible of such predication. Whatever we say about Christ is credible only if our claims are congruent with the real structure of being, even if Christ himself should be the singular fact that creates that structure. Nothing we say about Christ is concretely true particularly if it cannot also logically be true in general.
36:52 When Wood asserts that hypostatic positivity and indifference are the properties that permit a union of incommensurable natures, he’s saying something that, I believe, cannot be made to be logically continuous, coherent. Neither such positivity nor such indifference could conceivably be a property of any kind. At least I take it that a positivity is whatever else it may in actuality; and actuality is by definition also a potentiality; and the only potentiality that it can make actual is already natural to it. Any personal hypostatic realization of the nature is the realization of a nature that’s always already intrinsically personal and hypostatic, which is to say capable of actuality only in and as personhood, whatever that may be, and this capacity, which is clearly proper to both the human and divine natures…is already an essential natural identity, which finds its perfect expression in the one indivisible person of Christ…only the same intrinsic orientation toward personhood in the divine and human natures at once makes it meaningful to speak of them as fully actual in and as the same person.
41:10 [vs Wood’s] inversion of logic. Hypostatic identity is possible only because of an always prior ground of identity in the natures.
42:33 hypostasis…its whole purpose is to signify the real subsistence of a nature as for the actual, distinguished only according to a certain mode of subsistence, tropos huparxeos, and in what way can the hypostatic actualize a nature unless the hypostatic is in itself nothing other than actualization of that nature
43:04 personhood…understood as essentially the instantiation and subsistence of the nature it makes actual and so as rooted in that nature as its own innermost potential
44:22 the natural oneness of the human and divine in Christ follows from the principle that hypostasis is entirely the subsistence of the nature it expresses and is exhaustively dependent on that
Nice notes :) Excited for this lecture and the rest 💙
The lecture was fine, but I have fond imaginings of someone shooting down that owl once the lectures concluded.
Let me voice my thanks among the others making affirming acknowledgements that you are making good sense, and doing so with amazing continuity with what you have been getting to us in published form. I enjoy this oral aural realization and draw attention to the thought of your enjoyment of this as well. I don't have a critical point, question, highlight, underlining, or statement of my thought, or other thoughts at this time. I am trying to get into focus what you are focusing for us, as well as trying to be alert to the clues ( and implications of them) you are bringing to focus, along with the tradition you are working from, and bringing forward as it were. (This just now occurs to me, to quote a beloved author giving due criticism to another - "More like this, please!")
I enjoyed the lecture alot, I appraicfte your note about the commonality of wonder workers at the start , Gutima makes reference to having known people who had invisibility charms in the suttras as well as preforming great works himself, Your note about incarnation vs embodiment in Maximus peaked my interest, Bulgakov makes use of ''re incarnation in a spiritual body'' in On the Eucharist and holy grail a work where he quotes Nyssa quite a bit , in it he also speaks of Christs pain and sorrow and suffering being all mans, As well as all creations nature and human nature being him and his ascension giving the world a kind of eternity, and that the communion makes the ever present spiritual body known, in a cosmic sense. While the process of Theosis is an eternal one and the Jiva must realize it is already Atman(the jar breaking and joining the air in Shankara Upadsis sahasri), Your note about divine desert in Proclus interested me, given thire are already gods and beings in heavenly realms, and heroes who are not native may enter this kozmoz , or Bodhisattvas to teach, The Tevigga Suttra around verse 40 speaks of the taghta as a teacher entering who sees ''face to face '' so that they might show the way to Brahma which in verse 76 is the Trumpeter of Loving all things. I know you have said we can imagine just one for now in the past, but as little Christs and with the possibility of sinless beings other than christ is it fair to suggest that there may have been other Incarnation(s)? In the sense that of other beings who have been born as the clearest Jiva or achieved that state while living, I'm reminded of Armstrongs post on Divine Anminity and Incarnation multiplicity, Plotinus suggesting a soul can enter an animal or Shankara reading the avatars as in all. Plotinus too speaking of 'He will, therefore, be present to all things, and will be in this world, whatever the mode may be of his subsistence in it.'' For you also love the children of the father whom you love. '' ''He(the good) as Love is evidence of the Good in Her(the soul)" "life here is a pale comparison to that in eternity" "it gives sight to the seer... there will be no distinction between the seer and see'' Remincient of Ibn Arabi, Which I was also reminded of when you said you felt woods work made God and the world 2 principles that would be orginating from another, That was also Arabi's argument aginst viewing the world as separate as it would violate tawid. The eye as the "I" is an image(fire and fragrance and a few others as well) often used by Eckhart and Buddha but also others I was reminded of. I don't know what sense Univocal was being used , from what Ive read of Scotus there didn't seem to be much of a difference between that and the analogus sense, but I was wonder if his view would be close to yours? I also wanted to ask if Christ allowing himself to be killed as triumph and conquest of death and pain implies that his death was necessary in some sense?
''I say the way Person is used in christian theology is akin to the collapse of the wave function in modern QM"
that comparison statement requires a person to have a very specific and yet, lets just say holistic set of interests and field of knowledge something which I've always enjoyed about your work
The term "univocal" has no necessary connection with Scotus; it's simply a logical designation: univocal as opposed to equivocal, and both as opposed to a properly analogical mean.
Thank you for these very insightful lectures Dr. Hart. I can't wait to hear your thoughts on Bulgakov's Christology in the next lecture.
On a tangential note, I watched Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp, which i thought was appropriate for Memorial Day. I look forward to listening to this later.