Ross...
Indeed Narkissos could not hear the nymph Echo and that lost both of them...
The superiority of seeing over hearing is part of our Greek cultural inheritance (which shows in Philo and John for instance). And know thyself... the mirror image is central to our conception of reflection and speculation.
You remind me of what a very dear friend of mine wrote to me when I was drifting away from the WT: "There were no mirrors in Paradise. That way one would need another's eyes to see oneself."
jgnat
Is it:
And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.
Or:
everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,
"Sleeper, awake!
Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you."
?
Sort of redemptive dissymetry here.
Cygnus:
As I already said in another thread: No problem in referring to the Word as a "it" in an English translation: French translations often use the feminine "elle -> la Parole"; it's just as natural as using the masculine in Greek.
However, like it or not, Bible personifications and hypostatisations follow the (at first fortuitous) genders of the original languages: Wisdom becomes a female character; Logos becomes a male character; Spirit will tend to be personified as feminine in Semitic works and not to be personified in Greek works (for it is neuter in Greek).
M*A*S*H:
Hand down for me. I don't really believe in "God" in the common theistic sense. But I feel "all scripture is inspired" in the sense that all writing (including but not limited to those writings who eventually came to constitute what we call the Bible) somehow reflect our basic structure of thought and being and so deserves to be studied -- or rambled about. Don't leave the Bible to Bible believers.
Midget:
That was a great idea: I'm quite fond of Origen too!
Antagonism is used to create and maintain a separateness of the Logos from the Godhead (of which it was initially a part) A necessary step for that emanation of the godhead, on its way to incarnation and then fully experiencing the antagonism of the human will to the will of the divine (e.g. natural sexual desires and other trappings of this material existence)
That's quite the idea I was trying to express. That's why I mentioned Hegel too (referring to the antithetical moment in the Phenomenology of Mind/Spirit). And it is also what Theobald was insisting on, especially on the human/divine line.
Classical trinitarian theology distinguishes between ontological Trinity (Father, Son & Holy Spirit) and economical Trinty (Father, the God-Man Jesus and Holy Spirit in believers). Central to this distinction is the Chalcedonian doctrine of the dual nature of Christ. Interestingly in modern orthodox theology (e.g. Karl Barth) this distinction has been radically challenged, and this has contributed to renew the interest of the old formulae: practically we cannot discuss Trinity without thinking of humanity in God or God in humanity.
Leolaia
Thanks a lot. I find Philo and Euripides especially interesting: the dimension of speech is not lost in the Philonian logos; and, although this hardly proves anything, I notice that antagonism is expressed with eimi + pros + acc.
Nice thoughts everybody. I'm still dreaming of rambling threads where nobody would try to directly reply to another or prove anything but just push ideas further and see where they happen to go. I didn't stick to this pattern here. Maybe next time.
