Can the Eastern Orthodox be Presuppositionalists? #easternorthodoxy #presuppositionalapologetics
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- 00:00
- we're asking, but why don't you, in brief, because I know you answered this, why can't an Eastern Orthodox person be a consistent presuppositionalist?
- 00:07
- Maybe just a quick summary again. The Eastern Orthodox, and I'm thinking particularly if you read the work of someone like Lasky on the beatific vision, or Zizoulas on the being as communion.
- 00:23
- I've read a book by on the essence -energies distinction. Here's the best way to put it.
- 00:29
- The essence -energies distinction posits that God in his essence is modally distinct from God in his energies.
- 00:39
- That there are qualities that you find in and express through the energies that are distinguished from the essence of God, and the essence therefore is
- 00:51
- God not relating to creation. Energies are the means by which
- 00:57
- God relates to creation. I'm not giving an exhaustive answer because you asked me to keep it short, so I'm not doing my typical layered thing.
- 01:02
- I'm trying to keep it short. The point is that Eastern Orthodox theology, as I've seen it, posits the energies as a tertium quid, a place where God and the creature meet and participate.
- 01:17
- The energies facilitate the meeting between God and the creature in a manner similar to the way
- 01:25
- Barth's third time is the place where God and man come together and participate in a common event.
- 01:34
- I would say that the reason why people get kind of stuck on this is that you can see some similarities between Barth's tertium, which is
- 01:43
- God's time for us, Oliphant's tertium, which is covenantal properties, Frame's tertium, which is
- 01:49
- God's second mode of existence, or the Eastern Orthodox tertium, which is energies in which the creature participates.
- 01:56
- Creatures participate in energies and not essence, so the essence is the coming together of the creator and the creature in a tertium that violates the logic of this creator -creature distinction and relation that Van Til maintains.
- 02:11
- There is no tertium, no third thing in which God and man participate in order to relate.
- 02:18
- The Eastern Orthodox tradition therefore shares a family resemblance to these forms of mutualism and this positing of a tertium that I've cited in various expressions of the