Horatio Parker

Are you using "substance" in the sense of matter?

To my mind all of this is in the intelligible realm. The human body of Jesus is an irrelevant issue. Even if Jesus existed just like the stories, he is not physically available to anyone. He, or His significance, is intelligible, not material. Anyone who sees God through Jesus does so with their mind, not their eyes.

Horatio Parker

I'm not saying anything different.

When I speak of tools toward enlightenment, I don't mean them as separate things. They are the intelligibility of God. That is the portion or the extent that we can discuss God. And that is the Son. But they are all one. Again, the apparent distinction is within ourselves. We are not ordinarily in direct communication with the divine.

It's like saying the sun on the wall is red, and it's warming me. But the sun is yellow and would vaporize a human in an instant. How can they be same thing? Yet they are. It's us that's different. We're either 93M miles away, or we're next door(not for long).

It's very easy to see how the Arian controversy could've happened.

And I reject the term "person" BTW. It's presumptuous.

stephan huller

Here's how the rabbinic sources identified the ousia (= yesh) as a separate hidden unseen hypostasis:

And he dreamed and behold a ladder stood on the ground whose top reached the heavens ... and behold YHVH stood above him and Jacob awakened from his sleep saying, “It is true that YeSh YHVH is in this place” (Genesis 28:12)

Gikatilla's reading must go back to the Jewish Platonists of the Common Era. We are trying to decode the Jewish Platonism of not only Philo but Justus of Tiberias, Marqe and Marcus Agrippa (assuming the last two are separate individuals

Jesus was a previously hidden power (cf Hab 3:4) made manifest at the end times through the Cross. Justin identifies the chresimon/chrismon with the World Soul. I don't know if that helps. But Jesus is manifest in the divine sacraments because he is going to perfect our (imperfect) nature

The kabbalists have a similar conception regarding yesh

stephan huller

We are not trying to decode “Platonism,” or “neo-Platonism” but the Platonic exegesis of th OT and the Pentatech in particular. It doesn't matter if it is redundant with respect to the writings of Plato. This Jewish Platonism certainly pre-dated the gospel. It is the ground out of which Christianity developed. The closest surviving remnant is Jewish mysticism (= kabbalah)

On Christianity and the gospel being a bastardized Platonism cf Celsus

sotto voce

Good.

stephan huller

The Marcionites (who were the original Christian Platonists) develop from this Platonic exegesis of the OT. They must have agreed with Philo that Moses never saw the ousia. The Marcionites point was they had, so why bother with the old? The (early) Catholic response was that Jesus was the Word who was the ousia of the Father. The Marcionites emphatically said no, the ousia was distinct from the Logos. The Logos participated in the ousia but the yesh or ousia was a hidden power even from the Creator. The Creator thought he was the almighty God but - as even Tatian seems to intimate - he petitioned for power which came from somewhere else (= the ousia who was Jesus)

My assumptions are the third century Alexandrian Church developed from this Marcionite understanding and that Nicaea needed to find some compromise. So instead of saying that the Word was the ousia, the new position avoided speaking of the ousia as a hypostasis altogether and argued that Father and Son essentially shared in one ousia.

The issue of whether Jesus “was” the ousia is left to the side

stephan huller

The reason the early Christian Platonism was called “gnostic” was because its doctrines developed from the idea that the Jews hadn't been acquainted with the essence (ousia) of the godhead. How could that be? Moses and the elders saw an enthroned being made of sapphire? The answer is that there was a hidden power, a hidden presence not in heaven (= the Father, ayin) but a hidden power or presence who was periodically manifest on the earth - who was not the Logos but the ousia of the Father, his “yesh” who “empowered” the Creator in his act of creation and who was “sensed” by the Patriarchs but never properly apprehended (= yesh, Jesus)

Horatio Parker

Why didn't the Jews know ousia? For the same reason that the Jews were the Chosen People. A claim to authority, not dialectic.

Horatio Parker

This is a loose bandying about of terms. Not that they didn't do that, mind.

Are you suggesting that the pro-OT faction wanted to use the Jewish ideas similar to ousia and logos as precedent justifying the inclusion of the OT? I can see that.

stephan huller

The Christians (and probably Philo and the Platonizing Jews) argued that Plato copied Moses