(These are my notes and thoughts during Bible study. My ADD has me all over the place so this is not a coherent thought but more of a collection of ideas that came to me as I was listening to the Bible study. As my priest mentions something I already know, I tend to write things I know to see how far I can take the lesson in a deeper way or understanding. Disclaimer: What is written may or may not be in line with the Orthodox teaching. Like I said, it’s me pondering things while my priest is talking, lol. However, what I wrote seemed interesting and worth looking into later.)
“A new heaven and a new Earth”
Sometimes Scripture speaks about a single heaven. The ancient astronomers called outer space “heaven” and then there is the heaven that is beyond the heavens where God dwells. The Christians would always adopt the science of the time to understand the Bible’s scientific understanding. The Church in Byzantium as in fact a very scientific society as well as religious.
The church would often use symbols, allegories, and analogies, like Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, to explain things that were not understandable.
This verse refers to a transformation of the physical world, but not the spiritual world since the spiritual world is beyond time and space. St. Peter says that it will be as if the world is cleansed by fire (all that we know will be gone). Paul says such a heavenly realm is beyond our current comprehension.
God’s glory is not visible with the physical eye, but only with the spiritual eye. This is basically a new phenomenological experience. Christ’s Transfiguration was an Ontological revelation of God’s glory for the Apostles to experience. Western tradition states that the Transfiguration was not a phenomenological experience, but a sort of physical manifestation of God’s glory… basically, He was just glowing. Thus we cannot behold God in an existential way, but in an analogous way only. (Palamas thus stated that we experience God via an existential revelation of God through our experience of Him through His energies. The Catholics say that God created Grace so that we can have a relationship to Him through a type of analogy as they do not separate his Essence (God’s very being) and His energies (God’s being in time and space through His acts)
This idea that the Earth will be new but recognizable sounds a lot like Dostoyevsky’s “Ridiculous Man” in that the man recognized the Earth and Mankind, yet he found them to be different and incomprehensible. Muck like the Apostle Paul, he was unable to utter what he saw in words, but tried his best to convey his experience. Wittinstien’s theory of language plays a role here as we cannot transmit experience through words, but only ideas through an analogous way.
In Genesis we see that Chaos, which is represented by water, is something subservient to God. It is a polemic against the ancient Pagan understanding that chaos is what rules all the universe and must be subdued by the gods, but they are even unable to fight back. Babylonians saw man as nothing more than servants of the gods. Ancient Babolyn would then make statues of the gods and “breathe” life into them. Genesis would deconstruct those ideas and show God as the controller over the “chaos” and that he would breathe life into man after making man from the dust of the earth. We are the images of God made by God while idols are the image of the gods made by man.
“The best of all possible worlds…” Lebinz’s philosophy as opposed to Voltaire who attacked this view in “Candide”. I suppose that Kierkegaard’s philosophy on angst would also oppose this idea. If man is a sinner, then the only reason we don’t have the best of all possible worlds is because of our own actions, not God’s.
In an analogous way, married couples become one, like we become one with God. Couples who are together begin to develop similar personalities but not confused as a single being.
Step 1: Relationship with God develops into an inclination of the spiritual life in a very carnal way ( a desire or Eros)
Step 2: Man, when he develops this relationship with God, develops a personality similar to God, which starts the process towards becoming like God. (Being here is an ontological, not an ontical or analogous understanding like in the West.) (Philio in that we are now God’s friends by virtue and Storge in that now we are children of God)
Step 3: Man’s growing ontological change to be like God (theosis) allows man to experience God in a way that is beyond the carnal. To understand God in an analogous or ontical way (belief) is very different from faith, which is an understanding in an ontological way. (Agape love develops in that our love for God is what it is supposed to be in that it is a focus outside of ourselves (the Ego) to God as we experience the subjective ontology where we perceive Him perceiving us for all eternity). Okay… that philosophy lesson really developed my understanding lol.
Corruption and death are the enemies caused by sin. Corruption in that our nature or essence is transformed into something more and more unable to perceive God as He is. Death is both spiritual and physical. Spiritual death is when a person is no longer aware that God is perceiving him and thus is falling headlong into the judgement when man, whose nature has not been cleansed, is forced to forever be aware of God in the Ego. “Man loves the darkness and hates the light lest it reveal his evil deeds.”
Man was not created until Christ. Prior to Christ we are simply subhuman since we have not reclaimed our essence from sin.
Image v. Likeness. Image is what we are by nature. Likeness is about becoming like God through theosis. This is what is meant by becoming a new creation.
Is even a single murder a type of genocide (or even a desire to exterminate all mankind)? When a man kills someone, it is because that person does not meet their standard of deserving life in some way, shape, or form. The idea that only those who deserve to live are those we deem worthy means that any person who does not wish for a person to live means they do not want anyone like that person to live either. In the end, a single murder is a desire to end all who are not us, but yet it is also a type of suicide in that we are all really like one another. Person caused me pain. No you cause yourself pain in reaction to that person. That person has what I want. No, you simply want what they have. That person is evil. So you are evil in wanting to kill them. I am justified in killing that person. No, you are justified in dying if you are justified in killing. Huh? The circular reasoning of sin lol.
We didn’t get into verse 6 yet, did we? -_-
Sin is a movement toward nothingness. What does it mean to not be? In this sense, it is to remove from our personhood away from our spiritual being, which is about desiring God (Eros) to attain Theosis (Agape). The ego by itself is not an ontological being. It is the ego that is perceived and knows it is perceived that is truly human. To objectify a person (fornication, murder, etc.) is to desubjectify them and thus you are not perceiving their perception of you (not loving man as yourself) nor is one’s relationship with God when we misuse His creation is able to realize one is always being perceived and thus being a human.
How does this relate to Berkley’s conception of the perceiver, the perceived, and the action of perception itself?
The act of perception is the act of intention and consciousness.
The perceiver is the one who exists and experiences that existence.
The perceived is either objective or subjective perception.
Objective perception is that which a person perceives based upon their relative perception (i.e. sight, sound, cognitive understanding etc.) or their objective perception which is things that do not need perception to exist in relation to the person perceiving them(being, time, space etc.). Oh wait, Locke spoke of this, I have to look it up later lol.
God is both an objective and subjective perception. Objective in the sense that His existence is a necessary cause of all things (Cosmological Reality of cause and effect). He is also a teleological in his subjective perception. Without man, there is no end of God for man, so this perception is only possible with man (goodness and beauty for example)
Nothing but truth can either be a good thing for man’s perception of God (Mercy is better than life) or terrible in that we can only perceive God with our ego and not by the perceiver being perceived.
Being in the perception of God is “beholding His Face”.
Ontically= knowing something as fact. (Apples are red or God is creator of heaven and Earth)
Analogy= knowing something by comparison (The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed)
Ontologically= knowing something through being (“I think, therefore I am” or We have beheld His glory)
Perfect is a teleological, not ontological category. Perfect means that the thing has reached its potential end while an ontological category means is that it is inherently without flaw (meaning that it has no need of change or is incapable of change to something greater). It is impossible for anything but God to be ontologically perfect. Man was teleologically imperfect, but moving towards perfection, which for man may be impossible as we are always to be perceived by the perfect God, in the Garden. To be perceived by God and to perceive that perception without ego. Perception with ego again is to objectify the thing that is being perceived, which for a subjective creature is to really ignore their perception of you and only focus on your perception.
I am giving myself a headache lol XD
When one is perceiving God, nothing in the world is objectifiable but must be perceived subjectively as one being perceived. Gluttony, for example, is to objectify God by overindulging in His creation. One’s love of God’s creation without the love of God will cause one to ignore God while one is indulging in creation. To always think about God’s creation without God is the lust of the eyes. The pride of life is the complete ignorance of God perceiving you and only focusing on the ego. Here “cogito ergo sum” is now replaced with “esse est percipi” < I am sure I spelt this wrong lol)
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