Paulus Wyns (Christadelphian) on the "sons of God" in Job 1-2 being members of the divine court

In his commentary on the book of Daniel, Paulus Wyns argues that the "sons of God" in Daniel and Job 1-2 are members of the heavenly court; that may be mundane, but  author is a Christadelphian, and that is a minority interpretation in the community (due to their rejection of a supernatural Satan, they often tend to interpret "sons of God" in Job 1-2 as members of the believing community or some other 'mortal' interpretation):

 

Four in the Fire

 

The three companions were cast into the furnace when to Nebuchadnezzar’s astonishment they were joined by a fourth figure “like the Son of God”:

 

“Look!” he answered, “I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; and they are not hurt, and the from of the fourth is like the Son of God.” (Dan. 3:25)

 

The “Son of God” (NKJ) is translated more precisely as “a son of the gods” (RSV/NIB/JPS/YLT), this figure is equated with an Angel in the doxology of Dan 3:28 (God . . . sent His Angel) and is a member of the divine council (cf. Job 1:6; 2:1), perhaps this is the Angel of the presence known as the Holy one of Israel; . . . (Paulus Wyns, God is Judge: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel [Biblaridion Media, 2011], 84)

 

Paulus Wyns on possible typological links between the building of the Wall in Nehemiah 6 and the Crucifixion

 . . . the Gospel writers, particularly Matthew, understood the building of the “wall” by Nehemiah as typifying the crucifixion, as demonstrated in the following table:

 

Nehemiah	Christ
“At that time I had not set up the doors of the gates” (6:1)	Possess the gates of his enemies, hell and death (Rev. 1:18; Gen. 22:17)
Asked four times to come down off the wall . . . “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down” (6:3).	Asked four times to come down off the cross (Mtt. 27:41-43).
Accused of wanting to be king of the Jews (6:6).	Crucified as king of the Jews (Mtt. 27:37).
“Their hands shall be weakened from the work, that it be not done. Now, therefore, O God, strengthen my hands” (6:9).	His hands strengthened for the cross. “And there appeared an angel from heaven strengthening him” (Lk. 22:43—Gethsemane).
“And I said, should such a man as I flee? And who is there, that being as I am, would go into the Temple to save his life? I will not go in” (6:11).	“Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” (Mtt. 26:53, 54).
“For they perceived that this work was wrought of our God” (6:16).	“Truly this was the Son of God” (Mtt. 27:54).

 

Source: Paulus Wyns, God is Judge: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel (Biblaridion Media, 2011), 280

The descensus ad inferos in the Council of Toledo (AD 625) and the Council of Rome (AD 745)

In Robert Sungenis’s book, Not By Faith Alone, we read the following in a footnote:

 

The Church also holds as dogma that the souls of most Old Testament saints were released from “Sheol” (Hebrew: שׁאול) or “Hades” (Greek: αδης) when Christ visited this realm immediately after his death, in accord with the statement in the Apostles Creed “he descended into hell.” The descent into Sheol or Hades corresponds to other Scriptures which refer to the conscious abode of the dead, both righteous and unrighteous, before the resurrection of Christ, e.g., “he went and preached to the spirits in prison” (1Pt 3:19); “the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead” (1Pt 4:6); “the heart of the earth” (Mt 12:40); “Abraham’s bosom” (Lk 16:22-26); “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God...and live” (Jn 5:25); “the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life” (Mt 27:52-53); “he also descended to the lower, earthly regions” (Ep 4:9); “you and your sons will be with me” (1Sm 28:19); “consign to the earth below...with those who go down to the pit” (Ez 32:18ff); “he leads down to Hades” (Tb 13:2); “the dominion of Hades” (Ws 1:14; 2:1; 16:13). These interpretations were upheld at the Council of Rome (745 AD; Denz. 587); the Council of Toledo (625 AD; Denz. 485). See Catholic Catechism, ¶¶631-635. (Robert A. Sungenis, Not By Faith Alone: The Biblical Evidence for the Catholic Doctrine of Justification [2d ed.; State Line, Pa.: Catholic Apologetics International Publishing Inc., 2009], 64 n. 90)

 

For those curious as to the Councils of Toledo and Rome, here are the relevant entries from Denzinger (I know Latter-day Saints are always interested in discussions of the descent of Christ into hades):

 

HONORIUS I: October 27, 625-October 12, 638

 

485-486: Synod of TOLEDO, begun December 5, 633

 

. . .

 

Trinitarian and Christological Creed

 

(Chap. 1) In conformity with the Sacred Scriptures and the teaching that we have received from the holy Fathers, we confess that the father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit <are> of one unique divinity and substance; believing the Trinity in a diversity of Persons and proclaiming unity in the divinity, we neither confuse the Persons nor separate the substance. We say that the Father <was> neither made nor generated by anyone; we affirm that the Son <was> not made by the Father but generated; we truly profess that the Holy Spirit <was> neither created nor generated but proceeds form the Father and the Son. However, our Lord Jesus Christ himself, Son of God and creator of all things, was generated before all ages from the substance of the father, and in the latter times, for the redemption of the world, he descended from the Father, he who never creased being with the Father; he truly became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, the glorious holy Mother of God, and he alone was born from her. The same Lord Jesus Christ, one of the Holy Trinity, receiving the complete soul and flesh of man but without sin, remains what he was and assumes what he was not: equal to the father in regard to divinity, less than the father in regard to humanity, having in one Person the properties of the two natures; for in him <are> two natures, God and man, not, however, two sons and two gods, but the same Person in both natures; he underwent his Passion and death for our salvation, not in the power of divinity, but in the weakness of humanity; he descended into hell to free the holy ones being held there, and, after having conquered the rule and domination of death, he rose again, ascended then into heaven, and, in the future, he will come to judge the living and the dead. Cleansed by his death and blood, we have attained remission of sins in order to be resurrected by him in the last days in that flesh in which we now live and likewise in the form in which the Lord was resurrected: some receiving eternal life from him for merits of justice; others, the sentence of eternal punishment because of their sins.

 

This is the faith of the Catholic Church. This is the profession of faith we conserve and hold; and whoever will guard it with great firmness will have eternal salvation. (Heinrich Denzinger, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, ed. Peter Hünermann, Robert Fastiggi, and Anne Englund Nash [43rd ed; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012], 166-67)

 

587: Synod of ROME, Session 3, October 25, 745

 

. . .

 

Descent of Christ into Hell

 

587 . . . Clement, who by his stupidity rejects the decisions of the holy Fathers and all the synodal acts and who introduces Judaism even for Christians when he preaches that it is licit to assume the wife of a dead brother and who, moreover, preached that the Lord Jesus Christ, in descending into hell, delivered from there all the pious and the impious, is stripped of all priestly function and bound by the chain of anathema. (Ibid., 204)

 

 

Use of Temple Language in Adolf Haag (1865-1892) to Louis Abegg on August 14, 1892

This practical school of this mission gives me enough opportunity to enrich my experiences. And it is, as with all other things or with life itself, “Our Life is what we make it.” One who lives in indifference and fulfills his duties only halfway can never harvest the priceless blessing of a faithfully fulfilled mission, can never enjoy the true happiness of serving God nor in the complete sense cleanse his garments of the blood of this generation. (Adolf Haag, Letter to Louis Abegg, August 14, 1892, in A missionary’s Story: The Letters and Journals of Adolf Haag Mormon Missionary to Switzerland and Palestine, 1892, ed. Larry W. Draper and Kent P. Jackson [Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2015], 215)

 

William R. Schoedel on the use of θυσιαστήριον ("altar") in the Authentic Epistles to Ignatius

 On the use of "altar" in To the Ephesians 5:2:

 

In any event, it is unlikely that Ignatius has a physical altar in mind (5.2). A few early Christian writers explicitly deny that there were such altars in the church (Minucius Felix Oct. 32.1; Origen Gels. 8.17); and the earliest term used in connection with the eucharist seems to have been τραπεζα (a "table.") Moreover, the Ephesians could scarcely be said to be "within" a physical altar in any intelligible sense; and the term is used symbolically by Polycarp (Phil. 4.3) and elsewhere in Ignatius (Mag. 7.2; Tr. 7.2; probably also Phd. 4).8 From the latter passages it appears that the altar is the church, but it is also closely linked with Christ, the ministry, and unified worship. The appropriateness of the term was probably suggested by the idea that prayer is true sacrifice. The eucharist and the eucharistic prayer were naturally also linked with sacrifice in this way (cf. Did. 14.1), and Ignatius must reflect that connection here. It is likely, then, that the "bread of God-a eucharistic expression from a Johannine milieu (cf. John 6:33)-is seen by Ignatius as the point of intersection between the prayers of the faithful and the presence of God or Christ. Against this background it is probable that here he is working primarily with the symbolic aspects of his eucharistic theology (see lntroduction, 5.3). Note that the expression "bread of God" occurs once again in Ignatius (Rom. 7 .3) and that there sacramental realism is scarcely in evidence.

 

In any event, the emphasis in Eph. 5.2 is on the power of corporate prayer. Such prayers are themselves expressions of unity in Christian communities (Mag. 7.1; Tr. 12.2; Sm. 7 .1; cf. Pol. 1.3), but Ignatius sees them more often as serving a still larger purpose in assuring the success of his martyrdom and the peace of his church in Antioch (some thirteen passages), the conversion of pagans (Eph. 10.1-2) or of false teachers (Sm. 4.1 ), and the writing of a theological tract (Eph. 20.1). A great cosmic conflict is presupposed in which Satan's powers are destroyed by the prayers of the worshippers (Eph. 13; cf. Origen, Gels. 8.73). Thus the theme of prayer in Ignatius again illustrates the high significance he attributes to his own martyrdom in bringing to expression the underlying unity of all the churches. (William R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch [Hermeneia—A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985], 155)

 

On the use of "altar" in To the Philadelphians 4:

 

The only other passage in which there is a close connection between altar and eucharist is Eph. 5.2, where a symbolic sense of the term is also likely. The expression used there ("within the altar") is scarcely capable of being understood in terms of a physical altar, and we find it again in Tr. 7.2 in what is evidently a non-eucharistic setting. Thus Ignatius can mention altar and eucharist together without necessarily having in mind a cultic object. Moreover, the closest parallel to the language of Phd. 4 as a whole is provided by Mag. 7 with its comparable list of items prefaced by the word "one"; and there the expression "one altar" is clearly used in a symbolic sense of the oneness of the Christian community. It is likely, then, that the same is true of the passage before us. It is probably significant that whereas the references to the flesh and cup are joined by the connective "and," the expression "one the altar" stands apart and is at least as closely linked with the words that follow ("just as one the bishop") as with those that precede. (Ibid., 199)

 

New From the B. H. Roberts Foundation: "The Book of Mormon and View of the Hebrews"

The Book of Mormon and View of the Hebrews (cf. the [as of writing] x378 Primary sources)

This should be the final nail in the coffin that View of the Hebrews influenced the Book of Mormon, let alone the claim Joseph plagiarized directly from it, a la David Persuitte et al.

αιων aion being used for the "eternity" of created beings in Maximus the Confessor, The Ambigua

  

[9] Or they learned that when God truly appears within vision (to the extent that this is possible), everything that comes after God has been created by Him, that is, the nature of beings and time, is seen together with Him, for He is their cause and their maker. Of these, Moses would be the figure of time, not only [1164B] because he is the teacher of time and its reckoning (for he was the first to count time form the creation of the world), but also as the leader of temporal worship, and because he did not enter bodily into the divinely promised place of rest together with those who were under his leadership. For such is the nature of time: by its movement it neither goes before nor marches in step with those whom it sends into the divine life of the age to come. For it has Jesus, who is the successor of all time and every age [GK: τον παντος οντα και χρονου και αιωνος], even if the principles of time should abide differently in God, as is indicated by the entrance of the law (which had been given in the wilderness through Moses) together with those who entered the land promised to them. For when its notion is stilled, time is the age [GK: Αιων γαρ εστιν ο χρονος], and the age is time [GK: και χρονος εστιν ο αιων], as carried along and [1164C] measured by motion, so that the age—in order to give its definition—is time deprived of motion, whereas time is the age measured by motion [GK: τον δε χρονον αιωνα κινησει μετρουμενον].  (Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua to John: Ambiguum 10, in On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, 2 vols. [trans. Nicholas Constas; Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014], 1:263)

 

The age (aion) is the “eternity” of created beings, a transcendent dimension that is distinguished form the eternity that is proper to God alone. It is an intermediate state between divine eternity and ordinary time, being a kind of synthesis of the two, enabling the divinized creature to exist in divine infinity without obliterating the limits proper to created being; see CT 1.5-7, 68-70 (PG 90:1085AC, 1108C-1109A); and Gregory the Theologian, Or. 38.8 (SC 358:118, II. 1-11). As Maximos suggests, the logoi of time persist differently in God, indicated by the entry of Moses’s law into the promised land: time itself cannot enter the final rest, but its principles do enter in a new mode. In contrast to the Origenists (see above, Amb. 7.2), Maximos argues that temporal movement is not the result of a fall from God, but the very means of creaturely return to God; see Plass, “Moving Rest.” (Ibid., 488, 52)

 

Gerritt Dirkmaat's Tribute to the Prophet Joseph Smith

Today is the 180th anniversary of the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum. Latter-day Saint historian Gerritt Dirkmaat has a great tribute to the prophet that one can listen to here.

Further Reading:

Joseph Smith Worship? Responding to Criticisms of the Role and Status of the Prophet Joseph Smith in Latter-day Saint Theology

B. H. Roberts Foundation, Joseph & Hyrum Smith's Martyrdom (cf. the Primary Sources page)

Jaroslav Klokočník on the Use of a Magnetic Compass Among the Olmec and Maya

My friend Jerry Grover made me aware of the following article:

Jaroslav Klokočník, "Pyramids and Ceremonial Centers in Mesoamerica and China: Were They Oriented Using a Magnetic Compass?," Procedia Environmental Sciences 10 part a (2011): 255-61

The abstract reads:

 

The arguments based on our own measurements in situ or based on analysis of satellite images and on worldwide paleomagnetic data available to date for relevant time intervals are gathered and presented to claim that many pyramids and other important buildings in Mesoamerica (Olmécs, Maya...) and in China (Xi’an...) were oriented by means of a magnetic compass.

 

Irving Finkel on ‎אוֹב (‘ôb) and ‎יִדְּעֹנִי (yiddě’onî)

  

Hebrew Ghost Words ‘ôb

 

Hebrew has this second word for ghost, ‘ôb, the etymology of which is also unknown, and about which there has also been an utter flurry of inconclusive discussion. The difficulty is conveyed by consulting the trusty Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament of Messrs Brown, Driver and Briggs, published in Oxford in 1953, where four meanings are attributed to one and the same word:

 

1. Skin bottle
2. Necromancer
3. Ghost
4. Necromancy

 

Ignoring the bottle, it seems improbable to me that one extraordinarily loose noun in any language could mean ghost, ghost-raiser, and the art of ghost-raising all at once. That the Hebrew ‘ôb means ‘ghost’, parallel to Babylonian eṭemmu, is incontrovertible in, for example, Isaiah 29:4, and that is all we need here:

 

And being below you will speak from the Netherworld,
and form the dust of your speech will be low;
and your voice will be as a ghost (‘ôb) from the Netherworld,
and form the dust your speech shall twitter.

 

The substance of this Hebrew passage would, of course, be completely lucid to any passing Babylonian, with the dead squeaking and gibbering, birth-like in the dust, the eternal eṭemmu.

 

Hebrew yiddě’onî

 

In many biblical passages the Hebrew ‘ôb is paired with the word yiddě’onî. The trouble here is that no one is at all sure what this word means either. It is sometimes translated ‘familiar spirit’, supposedly deriving from the common verb to know, although this etymology is very doubtful. Other common Bible translations of ‘ôb and yiddě’onî are:

 

·       familiar spirit and wizard (RV), i.e. one ethereal; one human

·       medium and wizard (NRSV), i.e. both human

·       divining spirit an enchanter (Greek Septuagint), i.e., one ethereal; one human

 

Familiar spirit is an absurd translation, dragging in the old European witches’ animal familiar at the bidding of any self-respecting, dark-arts practitioner. Nor can we for a moment argue, á la Babylon, that a ‘familiar spirit’ is the ghost of an extended-family member as opposed to some unknown ghost. Wizard, with all its later accretions and associations for us, can equally be neither defended nor sustained for a moment. The important point here is that neither term refers to a human practitioner; they refer rather to the forces with which they deal.

 

It seems to me obvious that ‘ôb refers to a ghost of human origin and yiddě’onî to a spirit of non-human origin, or, to put it more plainly,

 

‘ôb means ghost and yiddě’onî means demons.

 

Any practitioner who operated in such spheres would be dealing with evil spirits or demons, just as much as ghosts. (Irving Finkel, The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies [London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 2021], 252-54)

 

Discussions of Various Eucharistic Miracles on "Faith Unaltered"

 

Eucharistic Miracles Discussion- Special Guest Kevin Nontradicath

Nicolò Scillacio (c. 1494): Columbus Instructing Natives to Give Religious Adoration to an Image of Mary

For work, I have been reading the multi-volume Repertorium Columbianum series. The following comes from Nicolò Scillacio (c. 1494) speaking of Columbus gifting an image of the Virgin Mary, instructing them to give the image (not Mary [the heavenly prototype] herself) religious adoration:

 

6.2.19. Once this had been done, the admiral set out to go to see the king, who lived about ten miles from the sea. Accompanied by one hundred of the more distinguished Spaniards, he set out on the third day in the direction where many roofs and the smoke of a village should be see. . . . The admiral, weighed down with so many gifts from Guacanagarí, adorned him with an under-tunic sewn in the African style, reversible and brightly colored. He also presented him with a larger hand-basin made of yellow copper, and several tin rings; finally he reverently unwrapped an image of the blessed Virgin Mother, and taught the king that it must be piously worshipped [postremo beatae Virginis Matris reverenter explicat imaginem, quam religiosius adorandam esse docet]. (Nicolò Scillacio, c. 1494, repr. Italian Reports on America, 1493-1522: Accounts by Contemporary Observers, ed. Geoffrey Symcox, trans. Luciano Formisano [Repertorium Columbianum 12; Turnhout: Brepols, 2002], 43)

 

Further Reading:

 

Answering Fundamentalist Protestants and Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox on Images/Icons

 

 

Scriptural Mormonism Podcast Episode 57: Interview with Steven C. Harper on the First Vision

 

Episode 57: Interview with Steven C. Harper on the First Vision

Maximus the Confessor (d. 662) on John the Baptist being compared to "Elijah" and there being many "forerunners" (προδομος)

  

I believe, therefore, that if the meaning of the whole of divine Scripture is properly and piously smoothed out, the disagreements perceived on the literal level of the text will be seen to contain nothing contradictory or inconsistent. For in accordance with true teaching, all the saints from the beginning [1253A] were “forerunners” [GK: προδομος] of the mystery, which they proclaimed in advance and prefigured through their sufferings, deeds, and words. Therefore, the saints can justifiably stand in the place of each other: all can stand in place of all, and each in place of each. Moreover, the saints can be named in place of the books written by them, just as the books can be named in place of the saints, which is why the books are called by their names, as is the habit of Scripture. And the Lord Himself clearly demonstrates this when he calls John the Baptist by the name of “Elijah,” either because the two were equal in the habit of virtue (as the teachers say), in the purity of their intellect in all things, and in the austerity of their way of life; or because of their identical power of grace; or because of some other, hidden reason, which is know to God (who identified the two figures) and [1253B] to those whom He enlightens about these mysteries. (Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua to John: Ambiggum 21, in On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, 2 vols. [trans. Nicholas Constas; Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014], 1:441)

 

Further Reading:

"Elias" as a "forerunner" in LDS Scripture

The Meaning of “one sole energy” of God in Maximus the Confessor’s Theology

I think the following is a good example of being careful of not engaging in the word-concept fallacy (a naïve reading of the following would lead one to think that Maximus agreed with the teachings of Honorius in his letter to Sergius, for e.g.):

 

Let not these words disturb you, for I am not implying the destruction of our power of self-determination, but rather affirming our fixed and unchangeable natural disposition, that is, a voluntary surrender of the will, so that from the same source whence we received our being, we should also long to receive being moved, like an image that has ascended to its [1076C] archetype, corresponding to it completely, in the way that an impression corresponds to its stamp, so that henceforth it has neither the inclination nor the ability to be carried elsewhere, or to put it more clearly and accurately, it is no longer able to desire such a thing, for it will have received the divine energy—or rather it will have become God by divinization [GK: μαλλον δε Θεος τη θεωσει γεγενημενης]—experiencing far greater pleasure in transcending the things that exist and are perceived to be naturally its own. This occurs through the grace of the Spirit which has conquered it, showing that it has God alone acting within it, so that through all there is only one sole energy, that of God [GK: μονον εχουσαν ενεργουντα τον Θεον], and those worthy of God, or rather of God alone, who in a manner befitting His goodness wholly interpenetrates all who are worthy. (Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua to John: Ambiguum 7, in On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, 2 vols. [trans. Nicholas Constas; Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014], 1:89, 91, Greek added in square brackets, emphasis in bold added)

 

In speaking of “one sole energy” of God and the saints, Maximos is not referring to a mixture or fusion of divine and human energy, but to the divine energy alone acting I the saints, who have voluntarily set aside their natural energies, in order to allow God to act within them. The phrase itself, however, could be misconstrued as supporting the heresy of Monoenergism, and Maximos was later to return to it in his first Opusculum, but not, as is often said, to “retract” it: “Concerning the phrase ‘one energy’ found in the seventh chapter of the Ambigua of the great Gregory, the argument is clear. In describing the future state of the saints, I spoke of ‘one energy of God and the saints.’ This energy, which has the power to divinize all the saints . . . belongs to God by nature, but to the saints by grace. I added that this energy is of ‘God alone,’ for the divinization of the saints is exclusively the result of divine energy, and not a power found without our own nature” (PG 91:33AB). Maximos therefore makes a real distinction between essence and energy, which alone enables divinized human beings to act by means of an energy that is not theirs by nature or essence, and God to act in them without imparting to them His essence (PG 91:33BC). (Ibid., 480 n. 16)

 

Listing of Hebrew and Greek Lexicons I often use

For those curious, these are the main Hebrew and Greek lexicons I have recourse to in my studies and research. Some of these are multi-volume: 

Hebrew Lexicons:

 

Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament

 

Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament

 

The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew

 

Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament

 

New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis

 

Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament

 

The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon

 

Greek Lexicons:

 

A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other early Christian Literature

 

Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains

 

Vocabulary of the Greek Testament

 

A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint

 

Theological Dictionary of the New Testament

 

A Patristic Greek Lexicon

 

Theological Lexicon of the New Testament

 

The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek

 

The Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament

New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology

Example of Theosis in Volume 1 of the Ambigua by Maximus the Confessor

  

Again, a name indicative of grace is when man, who has been obedient to God in all things, is named “God” in the Scriptures, as in the phrase, I said, you are Gods, for it is not by nature or condition that he has become and is called “God,” but he has become God and is so named by placement and grace. For the grace of divinization is completely unconditioned [GK: η γαρ χαρις της θεωσεως ασχετος εσται πανταπασιν], [1237B] because it finds no faculty or capacity of any sort within nature that could receive it, for if it did, it would no longer be grace but the manifestation of a natural activity latent within the potentiality of nature. And thus, again, what takes place would no longer be marvelous if divinization occurred simply in accordance with the receptive capacity of nature. Indeed it would rightly be a work of nature, and not a gift of God, and a person so divinized would be God by nature and would have to be called so in the proper sense. For natural potential in each and every being is nothing other than the unalterable movement of nature toward complete actuality. How, then, divinization would make the divinized person go out of himself, I fail to see, if it was something that lay within the bounds of his nature [GK: Πως δε και εξιστησιν εαυτου τον θεουμενον η θεωσις, ει τοις οροις της φυσεως αυτη περιειληπτο, συνιδειν ουκ εχω]. In the same manner, but in the case of what is contrary, [1237C] the sages give the names of “perdition,” “hades,” “sons of perdition,” and the like, to those who by their disposition have set themselves on a course to nonexistence, and who by their mode of life have reduced themselves to virtual nothingness. (Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua to John: Ambiguum 20, in On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, 2 vols. [trans. Nicholas Constas; Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014], 1:409, 411)

 

Here Maximos states that the grace of divinization is an uncreated energy of God (Ibid., 500 n. 6)

 

Lowell L. Bennion on the Difference between a "doctrine" and a "practice"

 

You purportedly called our refusal to give the negro the priesthood a doctrine. It occurs to me that we should call it a practise.

 

To me a doctrine is a fundamental idea, a basic tenant of theology, whereas a practise is simply a rule of action which must be justified by theology and morality as principles in any other field pertaining to the discussion at hand.

 

Source: Lowell L. Bennion, Letter to Sterling M. McMurrin, March 14, 1960, p. 1, Box 220, Folder 2 Memo and Correspondence: "The Mormon Doctrine and the Negro" 1960, Sterling M. McMurrin Papers, 1830-2006, Special Collections, University of Utah

Maximus the Confessor on the "Third Heaven"

  

From Saint Gregory’s same Theological Oration:

 

Had Paul been able to express the experiences gained from the third heaven, and his progress, or ascent, or assumption.

 

. . .

 

I think that our great and holy teacher, in elaborating on the rapture of the holy apostle Paul, had the aforementioned principles in mind, and thus appropriately assigned to each aspect of the apostles’ experience the most fitting name or word. Thus I am of the opinion that he uses the word “progress” to name the habitual state of virtuous dispassion, which established the holy apostle above the level of natural necessity, for in his dispassion he entered into no voluntary relation with nature; indeed he went beyond even the natural activity of sense perception itself, or rather he transformed even this into a permanent spiritual state. By “ascent” the teacher designates both the abandonment of all sensory objects—which no longer affected or [1237D] were affected by the apostle’s senses—and the transcendence of natural cognitive contemplation in the spirit, which reflects on those objects. “Assumption” is the name given to Saint Paul’s subsequent remaining and abode in God, which the teacher appropriately called an “assumption,” indicating that this was not something that the apostle accomplished, but rather experienced.

 

. . .

 

The “third heaven”—to hazard a conjecture—most probably signifies the boundaries that circumscribe practical philosophy and natural contemplation, as well as the highest principles of theological mystagogy, in other words, their limits, since there is a certain measure to the comprehension of virtue and of nature, and of the theology pertaining to both, and this is determined for all beings by God in a manner appropriate to the nature of each. . . . Again, when Scripture speaks of the “third heaven,” it may perhaps be referring to the three successive orders of holy angels that are immediately above us, which Saint Paul may have reached, being initiated into their positive affirmations through the negation of his own cognitions and imitating their permanent habits of mind through the transcendent negations of those proper to himself. For every nature of rational beings, in accordance with its order and potential, is initiated into and imitates the cognitive states, propositions, and affirmations of the order and essence above it, and it does this by way of privation [1240D] that is, through the apophatic negations of what is proper to itself. (Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua to John: Ambiguum 20, in On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, 2 vols. [trans. Nicholas Constas; Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014], 1:409, 411, 413, 415, 417)

 

Maximus the Confessor on Jesus and Melchizedek being without father, mother, or genealogy

  

20b. Application to the Lord of what was said regarding Melchizedek

 

For alone, and in a way without any parallel whatsoever, our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, is by nature and in truth without father, mother, or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life. He is without mother according to His immaterial, bodiless, and utterly unknowable birth on high from the Fathers before the ages. He is without father according to His temporal and bodily birth on earth from His mother, in whose conception the seed of man did not take precedence. He is without genealogy because [1144A] the manner of both of His births is wholly inaccessible and incomprehensible to all. And He has neither beginning of days nor end of life, insofar as He is without beginning or end, being absolutely infinite, for He is God by nature. He remains a priest forever, for His being is immune to death by vice or nature, for He is God and the source of all natural and virtuous life. And you must think that no one else can have a share in this grace simply because Scripture speaks of it solely with respect to the great Melchizedek, for in all human beings God has placed the same power that leads naturally to salvation, so that anyone who wishes is able to lay claim to divine grace, and it not prevented, if he so desires, form becoming a Melchizedek, an Abraham, or a Moses, and from simply transferring all the saints to himself, [1144B] not by exchanging names or places, but by imitating their manner and ay of life. (Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua to John: Ambiguum 10, in On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, 2 vols. [trans. Nicholas Constas; Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014], 1:221, 223)