Without adequately taking into consideration how God is agape (love) and phos (light), conceptions of who God is and what is the Glory of God will inevitably be misunderstood. Such misconceptions leads to a hazardous conception of what it means to glorify God according to a conception of God where His to-be is not defined as self-emptying Agape. This further leads to a misleading way of understanding what it means when our guide tells us that the “Lord [our] God is a consuming fire; He is a jealous God” (Deut. 4:24). Our observations along this journey have clearly shown that all such conceptual idols that although may have emphasized phos and noumenos, they have wholly neglected agape, which itself is a caricature of God that ceases to be God. This is not to say that love is God, but that a conception of God that fails to recognize that God is love in the sense that His very infinite to-be is essentially self-giving. A God who is not an essentially self-giving Loving One is not the God revealed throughout the pages of our Guide, who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Our God is the one who tells us the following immutable disposition of God’s part of the covenant between Himself and mankind even in spite of the unfaithfulness of man: “Do I actually delight in the death of the wicked, declares the sovereign Lord? Do I not prefer that he turn from his wicked conduct and live? For I take no delight in the death of anyone, declares the sovereign Lord. Repent and live!” (Ez. 18:23, 32).
Our God is unconditionally the Loving One, for even in spite of the persistent unfaithfulness of the beloved, Israel, God remained ever faithful, such that when reflecting on this covenant while condemning the beloved for finding no place for repentance to her unfaithfulness, He grieves with the following lament: “I spread my cloak over you and covered your nakedness. I swore a solemn oath to you and entered into a marriage covenant with you, declares the sovereign Lord, and you became mine… I will deal with you according to what you have done when you despised your oath by breaking your covenant. Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish a lasting covenant with you” (Ez. 16:8, 59-60). Thus, even when giving the beloved over to consequences of stubborn unfaithfulness in spite of His persistent patience and longsuffering, He cries out one last time: “Repent and turn from all your wickedness; then it will not be an obstacle leading to iniquity. Throw away all your sins you have committed and fashion yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why should you die, O house of Israel?” (Ez. 18:30-31). This is the manifestation of the heart of the Loving One who is unconditionally self-giving, for to be anything less would be to-be untrue to who He is. Though what is also necessarily entailed in being self-giving is that the Loving One does not force the beloved to repent, instead endeavors to discipline her and woo her back, but ultimately is willing to let the beloved go, if the beloved so desires (Hosea 1:2, 2:6-7, 2:14-17, 2:19-20; 3:1-5, 6:1-3, 7:13, 11:8-9, 14:1-2, 14:4).
This is why we read the following in this same passage: “When a wicked person turns from the wickedness he has committed and does what is just and right, he will preserve his life. Because he considered and turned from all the sins he had done, he will surely live; he will not die” (Ez. 18:27-28). However, even “if a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and practices wrongdoing according to all the abominable practices the wicked carry out, will he live? All his righteous acts will not be remembered; because of the unfaithful acts he has done and the sin he has committed, he will die” (Ez. 18:24). Though with such apostasy resulting from stubborn and hard-hearted faithlessness, this results in the Loving One grieving as He respects the beloved’s free decision and gives the ‘beloved’ over to suffer the consequences for forsaking the covenant of love between God and His most beloved creation ( Gen. 6:6; Is. 63:10; Hos. 6:4,6; Mk. 3:5; Luke 13:34). This consequence of eternal death results from being cast out into the outer darkness of untruth that one has choose in forfeit the eternal covenant for the sake of a temporal covenant fashioned by the Evil One, who is the seducer who seeks to not just steal but to ruin the Loving One’s beloved for all eternity. In so doing, the beloved has forfeited the Loving One’s eternal rest, for a fabricated or a transient rest found elsewhere.
God’s simple to-be is a threefold self-emptying actuality that essentially manifests Truth via a state of self-knowing and self-revealing illumination that innately bears witness to the infinite realities of the very fabric of God’s existence, and this ontological illumination also emanates the very vision of God’s dialectical consciousness that defines the realities of holiness, perfection, shalom, and order in accordance with who He is, what He wills, and all that He envisions as being what truly is or truly ought be. This means that our God as being Light implies that His self-giving is essentially an illuminating movement that immutably seeks to bring all that exists into a reflection of who He is, such that this self-giving is essentially a self-giving of His very self that is intended to result in the manifestation of His holiness, perfection, and shalom by all that comes into contact with His existence.
Just as the sun innately shines and is disposed to illuminate all that is within its sphere of influence, in the same way God by the very nature of His existence intends to illuminate all that exists, for that is just who He is. He is One who essentially illuminates reality with His very existence and the movements of His dialectical consciousness as the shape the thoughts and ways of His mind and heart in accordance with His essentially self-giving disposition. The nature of a source of light is to seek out that which can be illumined and to illuminate it in an impartial fashion, such that whatever can be illuminated will be illuminated, and since God is essentially self-empting, it is immutably His intention for all reality to be illuminated that the reality of who He is and movement of His dialectical consciousness are made manifest via reflection by even that which is not Him and therefore cannot manifest all of who He is. This is why God created us to be holy as He is holy, because in so doing we participate in the truth that is ontologically defined by His very existence. By residing in Him we come to the light and bear fruit that manifest who He is and what His will is, which is essentially for the promotion of illuminosity to the greatest extent to which realities are transparent before Him. When they are transparent before Him, this results in a reciprocation of His love and bringing to completion the dialectical circle of love manifests that our existing is resting transparently before Him who is Love, whose works of love are thereby made complete.
This completion occurs when we, by abiding in Him via resting transparently before His self-emptying to-be, become welcoming receivers and reflectors of the illuminosity that innately emanates from He who is essentially a self-revealer and a self-manifester. Consequently, His to-be is essentially a self-propelled diffusing movement of pouring-out via Himself the realities revolving around His self-actuality as the Infinite I AM. It is from infinity to infinity the desire of God’s heart for His self-manifestation in by means of all that exists, for only thereby, is all that exists be holy, perfect, and in a state of shalom, which is the highest quality of existing, which as the Loving One is what He unconditionally wills for the beloved, whoever the beloved might be. This is because, this is the highest gift, for it is a product of His very Infinite I AM that is completely and autonomously holy, perfect, and in a state of Shalom. Therefore, God is essentially a self-giving shalom-bringer, whose disposition is unconditionally set on instilling whatever He comes into contact with this illuminating condition of shalom. This is why those who are called to be the Children of God are called to be the Children of Light, who in turn bear witness by abiding in and promoting the truth, holiness, and shalom defined by the tri-iterational movements of the dialectical consciousness of the Infinite I AM. All these tri-iterational ontological movements of the self-actuality of God is inherently stamped by these exemplary qualities of godliness. Thus, as these movements of the life of God correspond to that which is other than God, i.e. in the infinite-finite dialogue, these qualities of godliness essentially defines the will of God. This essentially illuminating activity of Agape-Phosnoumenos illuminates all that exists when it is in its originally intended position of transparency before His self-emptying to-be that is an out-power luminosity jealousy seeking out the highest good of the Beloved, unconditionally, and this highest good is to be illuminated and to become a reflector of the Divine Vision of Agape-Phosnoumenos that is the Sun of truth, holiness, and shalom.
God immutably wills the highest good for all, just as the Sun metaphorically wills all within its sphere of influence to be illuminated. This is why we read in our guide that regarding the infinite-finite dialogue, this essentially nature of God’s existence is unconditionally manifested by His immutable will for all to rest transparent before His self-empting movement of salvation. For we read the following verse in the New Testament portion of our guide that reinforces this immutable disposition of God in relation to His covenant with mankind that was displayed in the Ezekiel passage cited above: “God is being patient toward you, because he does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (I Pt. 3:9). Elsewhere, we read the following additional affirmation of this immutable disposition: “such prayer for all is good and welcomed before God our Savior, since He wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (I Tim. 2:4).
To come to the knowledge of the truth inevitably results from coming to repentance, and this knowledge of the truth results from resting transparently before the self-emptying movements of God in the infinite-finite dialogue that are unconditionally extended to all to receive just as the rays of the sun. Knowledge of the truth comes by the “Light of the glorious knowledge of God in the face of Christ,” who is the contextualized revelation of this self-emptying to-be of God that radiates like the sun (II Cor. 4:6). This is why the very immutability of the gift-giving nature of God’s role as a figurative sun in the infinite-finite dialogue is also depicted in our guide in relation to the notion of light: “All generous giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or the slightest hint of change” (Jm. 1:17).
This self-sacrificial love is what we abide in when abiding in God, for to abide in God is to necessarily bear the eternal fruit of Agape that distinguishes us as those who have been fathered by God, who is Love (I Jn. 4:7-10). Therefore, to fully manifest the image of God by necessity implies that one self-gives as God self-gives, which is to participate in the very to-give that defines who God is.
To say that the main driving force behind this yearning is passion for His glory is true in one sense, but this conviction often betrays the true intention of God’s heart due to it being shaped by a reasoning fashioned according to man’s limited understanding of the love of God that “surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:19). This passion for His glory would be better articulated as God’s passion for the manifestation of His glory. This means that God passionately yearns that creation would come to mirror Agape-Phosnoumenos, thereby being a resounding testament of who God is.
It is to misunderstand the Love of God to presume that God’s passion for His glory necessarily leads to Him bringing into existence a dominion wherein there is no potentiality for departure away from the intentions of His vision for this created existence. Those who hold to this suggest that if all did not unfold in this realm exactly as He desired, then His honor and consequently His glory would possibly be tainted as not everything that happens, happens in the way that He so desired. This would be will the wounded honor of a king who loses a conflict abroad. In contrast, to posit that there exists the absolute potentiality for departure from God’s Vision for what ought to happen, is a necessity for creation to truly achieve a state of manifesting the glory of God. This is because the manifestation of Godness is rooted in authentically free, self-emptying movements, yet this necessarily implies risk.
This possibility for a departure away from the God’s vision to be in a God-relationship with unconditionally all who are created with the godlike faculties to achieve such a relationship with Him, risks that such a self-giving desire that authors this vision becomes quenched to the point of bringing One who had never before grieved to a state of grief. Such a grief as this that is produced from a loving self-giving disposition of being can only result as a reaction to an unintended outcome that to an extent is a departure from the vision established by the desires of His heart. Only a wounded heart can produce such grief that cannot result from an originally desired outcome that is wholly unaccidental.
Such grief in a sense is a desired outcome as the choice that led to this unintended outcome is itself a free choice that God wills to remain wholly free, which implies the necessity for the potential departure from His vision. Yet such grief concerning a directly unintended outcome, which is indirectly intentional, still serves to bring glory to God by manifesting who He is. Such grief is a melody manifesting Agape-Phosnoumenos, as it manifests that He unconditionally remains the Loving One, throughout continual rejections to engage or grow in the God-Relationship, even to the point of a final departure away from the eternal covenant of the God-Relationship. A grieving God is a loving God, for He does not force Himself upon the beloved and gives the beloved the freedom to commit to or reject the God-relationship that necessarily entails a reciprocation of self-emptying.
So it is by the true “wealth of God’s glory” that we can “by being rooted and grounded in love” gaze upon “the love that surpasses knowledge,” and this necessarily results in being “filled up to all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:16-19). And this surrendering gaze results from risking one’s eternal happiness on a persevering outstretching towards believing in that essentially a letting go of self and an outstretching movement towards entrusting oneself to the absurdity that God desires to unconditionally give Himself freely to us. This cry of the soul that aspires to believe in such an absolute paradox is exemplified in the following way in our guide: “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mk. 9:24). The Creator did not need to created us but chose to create us due to a yearning to pour His very life into a finite existence made in His image via the God-relationship and the eternal covenant underlying it.
No comments:
Post a Comment