Keromaru5 posted:

St. Maximus the Confessor lost his tongue and hand for saying basically that.

(Well, more that Jesus wasn't a flesh mech puppeted by the Logos, but same difference.)

But the traditional formula is: the Trinity is one God in three coeternal persons (or in Greek, hypostases); Jesus is one of those persons; and he has two natures, human and divine, with no mixture or absorption between the two. The basic point of Jesus' mission, for Orthodox, was to unite the two natures as a way to grant humanity access to his divinity.

I do think it's meant to be at least a little counterintuitive, to avoid forcing omnipotence into too linear and mechanical a framework. We don't call it a Mystery--in the sense of "an experience outside our comprehension"--for nothing.

Orbs posted:

I love Ursula K LeGuin most https://bookshop.org/p/books/lao-tzu-tao-te-ching-a-book-about-the-way-and-the-power-of-the-way-ursula-k-le-guin/9765206?ean=9781611807240

Nessus posted:

Thich Nhat Hanh

Prurient Squid posted:

Well it turns out that Porphyry writing about Plotinus is quite interesting which is a relief!

"Plotinus could not bear to go back on his work even for one re-reading; and indeed the condition of his sight would scarcely allow it: his handwriting was slovenly; he misjoined his words; he cared nothing about spelling; his one concern was for the idea: in these habits, to our general surprise. he remained unchanged to the very end.

He used to work out his design mentally from first to last: when he came to set down his ideas, he wrote out at one jet all he had stored in mind as though he were copying from a book."

edit:

So really Plotinus didn't write a book. Plotinus wrote out the contents of his brains on paper and Porphyry assembled a book out of the mass that accrued.

Nessus posted:

Right that’s just where my gut is so even if I appreciate a lot of Christian stuff it hits wrong

Ironically enough the best understanding I think I’ve gotten of the idea of a sinner was from a Hazbin Hotel song

NomChompsky posted:

which one

Keromaru5 posted:

Anybody got a couple million pounds to spare?

Keromaru5 posted:

Anybody got a couple million pounds to spare?

Prurient Squid posted:

The phrase "Kitab Al Azif" came up twice today.

Prurient Squid posted:

I've made it through to the text of the Enneads! Woo! Only took seven hours.

Prurient Squid posted:

Plotinus seems to be saying that there is just one soul which radiates out "like a face reflected in many mirrors" and that the soul is inwardly at peace. The problem is to be found in "the couplement" where there soul meets the body.

quote:

Be thou utterly spat upon, O ʿAp🔪ep, get thee back, thou foe of Re; fall, creep away, take thee off! I have turned thee back, I have cut thee up, and Re is triumphant over thee, O Ap🔪ep. Be thou spat upon, O Ap🔪ep. Get thee back, thou rebel; be thou annihilated! Verily I have burned thee, verily I have destroyed thee, I have condemned thee to all ill, that thou mayest be annihilated, that thou mayest be utterly spat upon, that thou mayest be utterly non-existent. Mayest thou be annihilated, be thou annihilated, mayest thou be utterly spat upon. I have destroyed Ap🔪ep the foe of Re; Re is triumphant over thee, O Ap🔪ep and Pharaoh is triumphant over his foes. Re is triumphant over thee, O Ap🔪ep, Re triumphs over thee, O Ap🔪ep, in very truth; be thou destroyed, O Ap🔪ep.

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

Mad Hamish posted:

Having just experienced a total solar eclipse and seen the sky literally go dark at 3:18 in the afternoon: good Lord, I can absolutely understand why the ancient Egyptians thought that was Ap🔪ep swallowing Re and the Boat of Millions of Years. If you didn't know what was going on that would be absolutely terrifying.

They had an actual book of spells and charms to be worked during this sort of thing, the Book of Overthrowing Ap🔪ep, which had ritual activities such as treading a drawing of it (in green ink! Very specific) under the left foot, spitting on it, and setting it on fire, with accompanying conjurations:

(knives added for reasons, if you know, you know)

I went out with a drawing of a snake (drawn on a post-it) and did some of these during totality, because I am a very weird vaguely dual-observant sort of person, and I got an odd look from someone passing by the parking lot. But hey, the lovely worm spat Re out, so it worked. Grinding a bad drawing of a snake underfoot: surprisingly effective.

NomChompsky posted:

So the first Sunday service after easter and my baptism was also a town hall meeting in which the vestry basically looked at the congregation and said "We've got enough money to keep operating this building and services until late fall."

I'm pretty torn up about it, and the fact that of the only people young enough to actually get out there and do anything one of them is like 'I don't care if we have a building, we can worship in a field!" and the other is "I don't like talking to other people about belief because so many people have been traumatized."

Like, it is obvious here that the reason the church is falling apart is because the congregation is geriatric and unable to do anything, they offer nothing at all that would be suitable for children (which is 50% of the reason people even go to church things). Half of the things the ministry offered before Covid never ever even came back.

The vestry is very clearly seeming like they're all throwing in the towel. There's no ideas. The poll among the congregation said they'd like to try and do the work to save it, but the vestry keeps basically saying 'Okay, even if we get the 50,000 dollars we need this year to keep running until January, what then?"

Apparently "Getting Mission status in TEC is bad, because you lose authority in the Diocese" which...tracks? That makes sense? Why wouldn't you?

I am sure there are going to be many conversations and many ideas floated but man it's a bummer. I'm also 95% certain the IT guy at the church is straight up taking them for a loving ride. He has been working for 3 years getting a different camera set up for streaming and...it's no closer to being done even in the six months since I've been attending? I could have gotten that poo poo done in a weekend.

I'm frustrated, and irritated at the lack of motivation.

Elaine Pagels, "The Gnostic Gospels" posted:

While the Valentinians publicly confessed faith in one God,17 in their own private meetings they insisted on discriminating between the popular image of God—as master, king, lord, creator, and judge—and what that image represented—God understood as the ultimate source of all being.18 Valentinus calls that source “the depth”;19 his followers describe it as an invisible, incomprehensible primal principle.20 But most Christians, they say, mistake mere images of God for that reality.21 They point out that the Scriptures sometimes depict God as a mere craftsman, or as an avenging judge, as a king who rules in heaven, or even as a jealous master. But these images, they say, cannot compare with Jesus’ teaching that “God is spirit” or the “Father of Truth.”22 Another Valentinian, the author of the Gospel of Philip, points out that names can be

quote:

very deceptive, for they divert our thoughts from what is accurate to what is inaccurate. Thus one who hears the word “God” does not perceive what is accurate, but perceives what is inaccurate. So also with “the Father,” and “the Son,” and “the Holy Spirit,” and “life,” and “light,” and “resurrection,” and “the Church,” and all the rest—people do not perceive what is accurate, but they perceive what is inaccurate …23

The Protestant theologian Paul Tillich recently drew a similar distinction between the God we imagine when we hear the term, and the “God beyond God,” that is, the “ground of being” that underlies all our concepts and images.

Nessus posted:

Regarding the belief trauma - yup - but I guess some taxes got lowered and some libs owned, far more precious than salvation

As for the camera. Can you contact the IT guy or is he an outside contractor.

NomChompsky posted:

So the first Sunday service after easter and my baptism was also a town hall meeting in which the vestry basically looked at the congregation and said "We've got enough money to keep operating this building and services until late fall."

I'm pretty torn up about it, and the fact that of the only people young enough to actually get out there and do anything one of them is like 'I don't care if we have a building, we can worship in a field!" and the other is "I don't like talking to other people about belief because so many people have been traumatized."

Like, it is obvious here that the reason the church is falling apart is because the congregation is geriatric and unable to do anything, they offer nothing at all that would be suitable for children (which is 50% of the reason people even go to church things). Half of the things the ministry offered before Covid never ever even came back.

The vestry is very clearly seeming like they're all throwing in the towel. There's no ideas. The poll among the congregation said they'd like to try and do the work to save it, but the vestry keeps basically saying 'Okay, even if we get the 50,000 dollars we need this year to keep running until January, what then?"

Apparently "Getting Mission status in TEC is bad, because you lose authority in the Diocese" which...tracks? That makes sense? Why wouldn't you?

I am sure there are going to be many conversations and many ideas floated but man it's a bummer. I'm also 95% certain the IT guy at the church is straight up taking them for a loving ride. He has been working for 3 years getting a different camera set up for streaming and...it's no closer to being done even in the six months since I've been attending? I could have gotten that poo poo done in a weekend.

I'm frustrated, and irritated at the lack of motivation.

sinnesloeschen posted:

oh good now youre really in the episcopal church. ngl, its this bad and worse everywhere that isnt the coasts, and even they're starting to smell something weird. since you got a lot of white hairs youre gonna start running into the boomer/abno mindset where its like ''if we cant have church they way ive had it for the last 40 years just fuckin burn the place down'' which you will hear way more the closer it gets to the line, and its going to suck and hurt and im sorry.

getting mission status in TEC is basically the diocese saying ''ok u cant be hosed to work and keep poo poo alive so we're taking our poo poo back and running you until you either a) die completely, b) become financially solvent or c) god themself comes down and fixes your poo poo. given the hilarious bon temps roulez attitude ive seen from our older congregants, youre probably gonna die because of the hilarious mismanagement of the parish because ''it will be like this forever'' except lol no it wont because you chased all the gay and DINK and trans and black and poor people money away, and now we're spending it on remasters of MGS 3 because gently caress yeah

pls feel free to PM or shitpost in my E/N thread if you would like to commiserate and/or complain (and/or get ideas for the poo poo that's working right now to get asses in seats) if u feel so called. im prayin for you and y'all for what its worth; this is an ugly situation

ps tell your rector/vicar/PIC/whoever about the IT guy, if the parish wont listen, the diocese sure as gently caress will

Prurient Squid posted:

You might think that for a guy who doesn't really believe in Evil, Plotinus would be pretty lax on moral scruples. But no, quite the opposite, he's quite rigid about combatting the Evil that doesn't exist through purification and imitation of the Gods (rather than good men). I wonder how you make sense of this? I guess in The Matrix the heroes only learn to fight the system after they realise that it's an illusion to begin with.

Prurient Squid posted:

You might think that for a guy who doesn't really believe in Evil, Plotinus would be pretty lax on moral scruples. But no, quite the opposite, he's quite rigid about combatting the Evil that doesn't exist through purification and imitation of the Gods (rather than good men). I wonder how you make sense of this? I guess in The Matrix the heroes only learn to fight the system after they realise that it's an illusion to begin with.

Prurient Squid posted:

You might think that for a guy who doesn't really believe in Evil, Plotinus would be pretty lax on moral scruples. But no, quite the opposite, he's quite rigid about combatting the Evil that doesn't exist through purification and imitation of the Gods (rather than good men). I wonder how you make sense of this? I guess in The Matrix the heroes only learn to fight the system after they realise that it's an illusion to begin with.

Prurient Squid posted:

You might think that for a guy who doesn't really believe in Evil, Plotinus would be pretty lax on moral scruples. But no, quite the opposite, he's quite rigid about combatting the Evil that doesn't exist through purification and imitation of the Gods (rather than good men). I wonder how you make sense of this?

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plotinus/ on Evil posted:

Matter is only evil in other than a purely metaphysical sense when it becomes an impediment to return to the One. It is evil when considered as a goal or end that is a polar opposite to the Good. To deny the necessity of evil is to deny the necessity of the Good (I 8. 15). Matter is only evil for entities that can consider it as a goal of desire. These are, finally, only entities that can be self-conscious of their goals. Specifically, human beings, by opting for attachments to the bodily, orient themselves in the direction of evil. This is not because body itself is evil. The evil in bodies is the element in them that is not dominated by form. One may be desirous of that form, but in that case what one truly desires is that form’s ultimate intelligible source in Intellect. More typically, attachment to the body represents a desire not for form but a corrupt desire for the non-intelligible or limitless.

[...]

A person in a body can choose to take on the role of a non-cognitive agent by acting solely on appetite or emotion. In doing so, that person manifests a corrupted desire, a desire for what is evil, the material aspect of the bodily. Alternatively, a person can distance himself from these desires and identify himself with his rational self. The very fact that this is possible supplies Plotinus with another argument for the supersensible identity of the person.

Owing to the conflicted states of embodied persons, they are subject to self-contempt and yet, paradoxically, ‘want to belong to themselves’. Persons have contempt for themselves because one has contempt for what is inferior to oneself. Insofar as persons desire things other than what Intellect desires, they desire things that are external to themselves. But the subject of such desires is inferior to what is desired, even if this be a state of fulfilled desire. In other words, if someone wants to be in state B when he is in state A, he must regard being in state A as worse than being in state B. But all states of embodied desire are like this. Hence, the self-contempt.

Persons want to belong to themselves insofar as they identify themselves as subjects of their idiosyncratic desires. They do this because they have forgotten or are unaware of their true identity as disembodied intellects. If persons recognize their true identity, they would not be oriented to the objects of their embodied desire but to the objects of intellect.

nice obelisk idiot posted:

Sorry, that's a little bleak. Mostly what people do as a therapeutic measure is to be around nice people and try to do good things. As opposed to say adopting an austere lifestyle inspired by neoplatonism. Social things can be profoundly healing, as the stuff we have going on good and bad is in others. And it's hard to love deeply while doing isolating things. But what works works imo.