Just ask your random Evangelical: "Is Jesus' choice to accept the fully responsibility of being God's Messiah in Gethsemane a morally "praiseworthy" aspect of his being our human "high priest" before God?  Is so, why?"

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/13/2010 2:02:48 PM (GMT-5)

We're definitely gonna have to talk to Greg about that.  He can't have the most solid grounds possible for LFW...and be a monothelite at the same time.  Miaphysite, yeah.  But not monothelite (which is what I THINK [not KNOW] Greg APPEARS to lean towards).

Any open theism/EO discussion about LFW will SHUT DOWN at that point.  Hear me?

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/13/2010 3:04:44 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Tom) : 5/13/2010 3:55:17 PM (GMT-5)

That's pretty much text, right?

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Tom: Churches are full of people who are convinced they're guilty sinners but who will not take responsibility for their actions.
 
Jeff: But isn't that because they think forgiveness RENDERS them unaccountable?

Jesus marries forgiveness and accountability.  In two different instances, he offers forgiveness and healing, but not apart from the responsibility of the healed/forgiven to make some changes...

“See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”

“Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more."

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/14/2010 10:20:28 AM (GMT-5)

Jeff: I don’t know what it means to take ownership of guilt except to receive just recompense for it.

Tom: By “taking ownership or responsibility” I mean agreeing that the consequences one is experiencing from God are just and loving, and so right relating oneself TO one’s pain. But just “receiving just recompense” may mean only to “experience” the pain and discomfort of prison without further embracing it as just and loving.

Tom: Churches are full of people who are convinced they're guilty sinners but who will not take responsibility for their actions.

Jeff: But isn't that because they think forgiveness RENDERS them unaccountable?

Tom: No, I’m talking about people who KNOW they haven’t embraced God’s forgiveness, i.e., the unrepentant, precisely because they haven’t taking responsibility (as I mean it) for their actions. These may know they committed, say, some crime, but they’re not willing to “own up to it” in the presence of anyone else. I think these are different things—experienced punishment for one’s crime, on the one hand, and rightly relating to that punishment on the other.

-----------------------

Tom: I can't just suppose that God will dispose of LFW at some point and 'determine' creaturely choice. In my view that wouldn't result in "right RELATING" at all or to "TAKING responsibility" for one's actions. It would annihilate created distinction precisely where God's purposes for creatures require it.

Jeff: I thought we were agreed that we would eventually "partake of the divine nature" and never, thereafter, have the ability to wrongly-relate, however otherwise free we might be. That's correct, right?

Tom: LFW, as I see it, is required for the choice between rightly and wrongly relating so far as we’re in a process of (sanctification) solidification leading up to glorification. Once glorified, LFW with respect to rightly and wrongly relating will no longer be needed, though it will remain as an intrinsic feature of each person’s unique loving expression within a wide range of equally loving options. So what the creature will have irrevocably ‘become’ (an unfailing ‘right-relater’) will be a work of true synergy. But there’s no synergy if the necessary choice to dispose toward God unto glorification is made by God on behalf of the creature (or otherwise determined by God), which is what you have if God leaves us NO room to reject him prior to our being glorified. In other words, we have to freely choose our way into a state of unfailing right-relation. THEN our being unfailingly loving will be a work of synergy and thus preserve each creature’s unique distinction from God and from one another. But if God determines creaturely choice for God unto salvation, the resulting glorified saint is not a work of synergy and the distinction is annihilated. Like Hartshorne said, to the extent that X determines Y, Y just is X.

Tom

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/14/2010 11:54:11 AM (GMT-5)

How does "reigning with Christ" look to you, Jeff?

Posted By : One Love - 4/14/2010 5:56 PM

Starkman: The final call THEOLOGICALLY, then, from Revelation 22 is what I wrote: We see in full swing the Bride, the Groom and the Offspring: Jehovah, the Bride (the New Jerusalem, made up of apostles, prophets and redeemed believers), giving the call to the nations (the offspring). All is complete now. To finish up here... First, it's neither here nor there whether you are pre-, mid- or post-mel! I believe John's chronology is not given to us that we might be dogmatically literal, but dogmatically theological, the chronology serving only as the vehicle to get us there. Thus, when I say that John is "more chronological" than Isaiah, I should be clear to say that I believe there is literalism to John's chronology, BUT EVEN IF THERE ISN'T the theology stands regardless. Interestingly enough, I AGREE with the theological motif that you present. It's seems pretty clear in Isaiah 24 and 60 in my view. My only thing is that one can keep that theological motif while NOT asserting that the "kings of the earth" and "nations" are the literally resurrected peoples of the earth who didn't get thrown into the lake of fire. In other words, the "kings of the earth" and nations" DO benefit from the Bethothal of God to His Bride, but as kindly God-like rulers over their defeated opposition...who are images of God just like THEY are. JUST LIKE some subjected rulers and peoples that fell to Israel would be treated as "strangers" and "aliens" in their land, even in their servitude. (See OT Scriptures*)   JUST LIKE the "kings of the earth" in Isaiah 24 and 60 are said to be "led in procession" as servants of Zion.   See the similiar themes? *Exodus 22:21“You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Exodus 23:9 "You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leviticus 19:33 'When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leviticus 19:34 'The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leviticus 25:35 'Now in case a countryman of yours becomes poor and his means with regard to you falter, then you are to sustain him, like a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with you. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Deuteronomy 1:16 "Then I charged your judges at that time, saying, 'Hear the cases between your fellow countrymen, and judge righteously between a man and his fellow countryman, or the alien who is with him. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Deuteronomy 10:19 "So show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Deuteronomy 27:19 'Cursed is he who distorts the justice due an alien, orphan, and widow.' And all the people shall say, 'Amen.'

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/17/2010 8:52:18 PM (GMT-5)

The texts we have just quoted are often appealed to as Paul's confession of daily sinning. One has only to read them carefully in their connection, to see how little this is the case. They have a far deeper meaning, they refer to that which lasts throughout eternity, and which will give its deep undertone of amazement and adoration to the humility with which the ransomed bow before the throne, as those who have been washed from their sins in the blood of the Lamb.  Never, never, even in, glory, can they be other than ransomed sinners; never for a moment in this life can God's child live in the full light of His love, but as he feels that the sin, out of which he has been saved, is his one only right and title to all that grace has promised to do. The humility with which first he came as a sinner, acquires a new meaning when he learns how it becomes him as a creature. And then ever again, the humility, in which he was born as a creature, has its deepest, richest tones of adoration, in the memory of what it is to be a monument of God's wondrous redeeming love.,

At some point, all human beings will be only "ransomed sinners" before God, ransomed by the Blood of the Lamb of God (the Father)...human beings for whom God's Grace (inseparable from the Holy Spirit) is all important.

At THAT point, God, through his Redeemer, will be shown to be all-in-all.

In other words, Jeff, I'm not disagreeing with the essence of what you are saying (Believers co-reigning with Christ).  What I'm wondering is this: Is it possible that the Christ-like justice, right-relatedness (righteousness), and humility of God's human viceroys would, in intent and effect, be grounded in Christ the Redeemer...who redeems by the Will of God the Father and whose Holy Spirit is in the viceroy actively working said justice, right-relatedness, and humility, such that the "Reign of the Redeemed" will BE God the Father's ultimate exaltation via the Son in it's own event.

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/17/2010 9:26:37 PM (GMT-5)

D: In other words, Jeff, I'm not disagreeing with the essence of what you are saying (Believers co-reigning with Christ).  What I'm wondering is this: Is it possible that the Christ-like justice, right-relatedness (righteousness), and humility of God's human viceroys would, in intent and effect, be grounded in Christ the Redeemer...who redeems by the Will of God the Father and whose Holy Spirit is in the viceroy actively working said justice, right-relatedness, and humility, such that the "Reign of the Redeemed" will BE God the Father's ultimate exaltation via the Son in it's own event.

J: Jesus does that, for sure. But unless there is something inherently wrong-relating about government, there is nothing inherently wrong-relating about Jesus (or the Father) DOING the governing until ALL have partaken of the divine nature.