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11.08.2006

God's attributes and man's level of being

The chapter on God's Transcendence in J. I. Packer's Concise Theology is very interesting from a Work perspective. (You have to read it in full, page 28 of the book, but here are the several parts of it I refer to):

God is spirit... God does not live in and through a body as we do, and so is not anchored in a spatio-temporal frame.

The 3rd and 4th levels of consciousness take one out of a spatio-temporal frame.

[God] is self-existent and not marked as we are by the personal disintegration (lack of concentration and control) that sin has produced in us...

Identification is a state where you are not contained, and you are in promiscuous, mechanical conversation [being, acts, state] with the world and the flesh and the devil.

God is immutable. This means he is totally consistent: because he is necessarily perfect...

Permanent I. Not mechanically shifting from one 'I' or personality to another; the one not knowing the other.

God's feelings are not beyond his control, as ours often are.

Control of emotional center, and lower centers in general.

All God's thoughts and actions involve the whole of him. This is his integration, sometimes called his simplicity. It stands in stark contrast to the complexity and lack of integration of our own personal existence, in which, as a result of sin, we are scarcely ever, perhaps never, able to concentrate the whole of our being and all our powers on anything.

Speaks for itself. Centers. Acting from all centers simultaneously. Not having one center sabotage the aim of another center. Being able to achieve an aim.

The Work corresponds to these attributes of God because the Work describes development of level of being, and because we are made in the image of God level of being, as it develops, will naturally correspond to God's image.