FOREFESS like alabaster pillars of marble set on bases of chrysolite.
“But when this priest had offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, he sat down at the right hand of God, where he is now waiting until his enemies are made a footstool for his feet. Hebrews 10:12
Edwards, therefore—quite unlike Aquinas—holds that in some sense there will never be an “immediate” vision of God or of the Father, never a vision of the “essence” of God. For Edwards, such a vision of God would imply a natural, per- sonal union of the believer with God, an erasing of the distinction between creator and creature. Only Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, who is eternally in the bosom of the Father, has such a natural, personal union with God. For the believer, the visio dei always remains mediated vision—mediated, that is, through Christ. Human beings, inasmuch as they are creatures, are dependent for their knowledge of God on created signs, and the great sign (the “grand medium,” as Edwards calls him) is Christ himself.
Edwards does not indicate the provenance of the metaphor of a vessel continuously being filled with water from the divine fountain, but it has a long history, going back to Gregory of Nyssa, who in turn had drawn from Plato and Origen. Origen specu- lated about a supra-temporal fall of the soul because he believed that once the soul would reach the perfection of the vision of God, it would reach satiety (koros), and, unable to ascend higher, the satisfied soul would fall away from this satisfying sight of God. Gregory of Nyssa struggled with the same problematic, but rather than accept the notion of a supra-temporal fall, he argued that the vessel of the soul would expand eternally, so as to be able to take in ever more of the perfection of God. In other words, the finite vessel of the human soul would expand infinitely through its ever- transforming vision of God, by which he would amplify the soul’s ability to see him. Paul’s “straining forward” (epekteinomenos) served for Gregory as the main biblical support informing his theory of eternal progress. Edwards does not appear to have taken his understanding of eternal progress directly from Gregory of Nyssa. Nonetheless, the Northampton pastor’s idea that the saints can never “exhaust” the fountain, that beholding the face of God will never grow “dull” since God’s fountain will always be equal to their desires and capacities, picks up on the theme of infinite progress in a way remarkably similar to Nyssen’s articulation of it. “And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has in us. God is love, and the one who resides in love resides in God, and God resides in him. By this love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as Jesus is, so also are we in this world.” 1 John 4:16-17 NET
PROBATE
The English noun "probate" derives directly from the Latin verb probare, to try, test, prove, examine, more specifically from the verb's past participle nominative neuter probatum, "having been proved". Historically during many centuries a paragraph in Latin of standard format was written by scribes of the particular probate court below the transcription of the will, commencing with the words (for example): Probatum Londini fuit huiusmodi testamentum coram venerabili viro (name of approver) legum doctore curiae prerogativae Cantuariensis...
Glorification | The Final Frontier
Going Boldly Where The Last Man has Gone Before!
Decrease time over target:
PayPal or Venmo @clastronaut
Cash App $clastronaut
