Community, Communion, Creation

20-something gay male. I see myself as travelling a trajectory from isolation to community to radical hospitality. Theologically Orthodox, but wide understanding of the Gospel, with an emphasis on Kingdom Theology. One practice in my life, of living this out, is living...

[communioncommunitycreation]

The being of God is a relational being: without the concept of communion it would not be possible to speak of the being of God. The tautology "God is God" says nothing about ontology, just as the logical affirmation A = A is a dead logic and consequently a denial of being which is life. It would be unthinkable to speak of the "one God" before speaking of the God who is "communion," that is to say, of the Holy Trinity. The Holy Trinity is a primordial ontological concept and not a notion which is added to the divine substance or rather which follows it [...]. The substance of God, "God," has no ontological content, no true being, apart from communion. Communion is not a relationship understood for its own sake, an existential structure which supplants "nature" or "substance" in its primordial ontological role—something reminiscent of the structure of existence met in the thought of Martin Buber. Just like "substance," "communion" does not exist by itself: it is the Father who is the "cause" of it. This thesis of the Cappadocians that introduced the concept of "cause" into the being of God assumed an incalculable importance. For it meant that the ultimate ontological category which makes something really be, is neither an impersonal and incommunicable "substance," nor a structure of communion existing by itself or imposed by necessity, but rather the person. The fact that God owes His existence to the Father, that is to a person, means (a) that His "substance," His being, does not constrain Him (God does not exist because He cannot but exist), and (b) that communion is not a constraining structure for His existence (God is not in communion, does not love, because He cannot but be in communion and love). The fact that God exists because of the Father shows that His existence, his being is the consequence of a free person; which means, in the last analysis, that not only communion but also freedom, the free person, constitutes true being. True being comes only from the free person, from the person who loves freely—that is, who freely affirms his being, his identity, by means of an event of communion with other persons.

John Zizioulas, Being and Communion.

[communioncommunitycreation]

To answer the question about the being of God, during the patristic period, was not easy. The greatest difficulty stemmed from ancient Greek ontology which was fundamentally monistic: the being of the world and the being of God formed, for the ancient Greeks, an unbreakable unity. That linked together the being of God and the being of the world, while biblical faith proclaimed God to be absolutely free with regard to the world. The Platonic conception of the creator God did not satisfy the Fathers of the Church, and this, precisely because the doctrine of creation from pre-existing matter limited divine freedom. So it was necessary to find an ontology that avoided the monistic Greek philosophy as much as the "gulf" between God adn the world taught by the gnostic systems—the other great danger of this period. The creation of this ontology was perhaps the greatest achievement of patristic thought.

John Zizioulas, Being and Communion.

[communioncommunitycreation]

The whole point of the doctrine [of creation] is that the action of God as creator constitutes things as beings in their own right. Here, the crucial relation is a transcendent one: God creates things to be other than himself. There is, therefore, an absolute distinction to be made between trinitarian theism and pantheism. Divine action as creation is saved from pantheism and necessitarianism by the way in which that action is conceived. Not only is creation through the Son, who is the mediator of God's self-relatedness to that which is not himself, but it is in the Spirit, which means by God's relation to it in otherness. The best illustration of this we have already met. The Holy Spirit represents God's otherness to Jesus: his allowing and enabling him to be himself, free and truly human. He is personally alongside Jesus, present to him as another. He it is who raises from the tomb the body of the crucified Lord and makes him to be eternal mediator between eternity and time. So it is with God's relation to the world. The Spirit sets the creation free to be itself, and so directs it as God's other to yet find its perfection in the fulfilment of its relation to God. God's power, and that is a concept frequently used of the action of the Spirit, consists in enabling, in directing the creation to perfectness in freedom. The stress on otherness is important because it reminds us that the immanence of God can conceived in such a way as to deprive the creation of its independence and freedom. The more that God is conceived to be identified with the creation, or with parts of it, the more danger there is that it will be deprived of its own most proper being. Pantheism is the extreme form of that denial of otherness. Even the immanence of the Son can be a threat, if it appears to endanger the otherness and freedom of the redeemed. If Christ is, without qualification, humankind or even the church, dangerous consequences for human autonomy threaten.

Colin Gunton, Christ and Creation. Long quote I know, but this is just so amazing.

[communioncommunitycreation]

That God creates the world through Christ, through the one who became flesh, implies that God is able to come into relation with the world while remaining distinct from it. It therefore bespeaks freedom in the relations of God to the world, something impossible in the Greek cosmology in the face of which the doctrine of the Trinity was first developed, for that tended to understand creation in a necessitarian way. And that takes me to the second point, which is that the doctrine of the Trinity enables us to conceive the relation of God to the world as a personal one. Because God is a being who is what he is in terms of free personal relatedness, he is not bound to come into relation with the world. But he can, freely, and therefore such relations as there are must be understood as unnecessitated relations of love. The incarnation is the climax and model of the free relatedness of the triune God to the world he has made and holds in being.

Colin Gunton, Christ and Creation. 

[communioncommunitycreation]

i’m just a little nervous

i’ve signed up to take my first course for credit at a seminary. last summer, I audited a course at a Baptist Seminary. it was taught by a man who used to go to our church, on the topic of Intentional Christian Communities. for the sake of grounding the course in community it was held at our church, so it felt less formal. this time, i’ll be at an evangelical seminary with a class of a bunch of people I don’t know. We’re going to be considered worship in the context of liturgy. It seems to be a lot about considering liturgy and how the church shapes its worship outside the legalism of debates surrounding the specific church traditions (Catholic/Baptist/Reformed/Lutheran understandings of sacraments, for instance). i’m definitely excited. the professor is a bit of a renown scholar on Calvin, but seems pretty well grounded and not just all about doctrine.  all in all, I’ just impressed that I was able to finish reading the two books we were asked to read before the class begins. 

[communioncommunitycreation]

Though unjust kings and queens, we are royalty still; though we have failed our priesthood, we remain priests forever.

Robert Farrar-Capon, making me cry.

[communioncommunitycreation]

i started writing a song last night.

John 1, 1 Cor 15, 2 Cor 12

Lord, in the soil you stand on scatter us as seeds we’ll bend towards the light

Lord, the soil is dark and the shade of death is near our throat’s are dry as lichen

in our weakness, we feel your power in the dark night of the soil

Lord, when we need shade drape us in your sacred canopy deep and wide and long and high

Lord, when darkness is near warm us with the sun pointing us to your love

in our weakness, we feel your power sow in our hearts seeds of the kingdom

Lord, water our roots fold us into the fabric of the world

resurrect us as flowers for the kingdom

in our weakness, we feel your power sow in our hearts seeds of the kingdom resurrect us as flowers for the kingdom

[sluttydrunk]

I messaged a beekeeper on Grindr to keep up the great work and he said that’s the first time someone complimented him on beekeeping :(

[theparanoidandroid]

Support your local gay beekeeper

[communioncommunitycreation]

woah there.

[alegbra-deactivated20150724]

*kills a bug*

[communioncommunitycreation]

alegbra:

*staring at the ceiling in bed that night* i didnt need to do that… why is my heart so dark and full of violence? where in my soul does this cruelty come from? what am i truly?

my attitude is that this is not very good creation care. bring it to confession and don’t get too legalistic or hugn up over it.

[starship-goldfish]

live from twitter

[tworocks]

Tom Waits pretending to be eight dogs

[ortolana-deactivated20160716]

Oh my goodness

[communioncommunitycreation]

this is the face of “why do i have to make the index for your book?”

[lowbidinal-deactivated20160705]

<<from age to age, as its shape slowly unravelled>> (2015)

Laserjet prints, silent video 

Raymond Boisjoly

Vox Centre de l’Image Contemporain 

[communioncommunitycreation]

this looks gorgeous. one of my colleagues suggest i apply for research money to go see this.

[communioncommunitycreation]

Listening not to me, but to the logos, it is wise to agree that all things are one.

Heraclitus, Fragment 50.

[communioncommunitycreation]

Place, time, posture are important, for we are incarnational people, and all is sacramental of the Presence of Creative Love.

Basil Pennington, discussing how we sit for Centering Prayer in his book of the same name.

[communioncommunitycreation]

so i’ve been really hoping and praying for an internship with an arts organization this summer. they responded to my resume/cover letter in 24 hours, and have now told me in another email my CV is incredible (!!) and the interivew we’ve schedule is only a formality (!)

[communioncommunitycreation]

that interesting moment where you wonder if your new potential spiritual director -- evangelical but with “deep roots in Catholic spirituality” -- will yell NO HOMO at you