Further notice what he said: God the Son "sets aside" all divine "prerogatives" and only keeps the character of God, meaning being "perfectly loving."  So, the one divine mind of God the Son effectively "sets aside" his uncreated, transcendent nature and keeps ONLY a perfectly loving character, localizing himself solely in the human reality of Jesus.

Greg pretty much admitted to everything we talked in the other thread...namely, Apollinarianism (Monophysitism), Monothelitism, and undercover Tri-theism.

Wow.  It's amazing he said it so boldly.  The cat's all the way out the bag, now.

Just wow.

The timing for this is crazy! 

Post Edited (One Love) : 9/28/2011 2:22:56 AM (GMT-5)

From "Across the Spectrum".  The Kenotic View.

4. Who ran the universe during the incarnation? The Bible tells us that Christ holds all things today (Col. 1:17; Heb. 1:3). However, if Christ relinquished the exercise of his omnipresence and omniscience while on earth, there is no way he could have continued to perform this role.

In reply, the passages that celebrate Christ's role as Creator and Sustainer of the universe describe Christ's customary role. They do not rule out the possibility that Christ, for a season, set aside this function. The doctrine of the Trinity allows us to assert that God exists in three distinct ways at the same time. According to kenotic theorists, the second way God is God--The Second Person of the Trinity--emptied himself and became a full human. But (thankfully) the universe was not thereby vacated. The Father and Spirit continued to exercise their omnipotent and omniscient capacities.

Ok now.  Given what we know about the distinction between trinitarianism and tritheism...if you had to vote either "Trinity" or "Tritheism" to the statement JUST ABOVE...what would you vote?

Count it out.

I'll start: Tritheism.

Next?

Post Edited (One Love) : 9/28/2011 3:02:57 PM (GMT-5)

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Soo...is our money gonna be put on the Fathers and the Councils...or on 19th century Protestants trying to figure something out?   I guess Greg already placed his bet...

Hmmmm....

In 1891 Gore was chosen to deliver the Bampton lectures, and he took for his subject the Incarnation of Christ. In these lectures he developed the teaching enunciated in Lux Mundi. This is an attempt to explain how it came about that Christ, though incarnate God, could err - e.g. in his citations from the Old Testament. The orthodox explanation was based on the principle of accommodation. This, however, had not solved the difficulty that if Christ on earth was not subject to human limitations, especially of knowledge, he was not as other men, not subject to their trials and temptations. This difficulty Gore sought to meet through revisiting the Kenotic Theory of the Incarnation. Theologians had attempted to explain what St. Paul meant when he wrote of Christ (Philippians 2:7) that he emptied himself (kenosis) and took upon him the form of a servant. According to Gore this means that Christ on his incarnation, although sinless, became subject to all human limitations and stripped himself of all attributes of Godhead, including omniscience, the Divine nature being hidden under the human.

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Across the Spectrum: Chapter 7 - The Christology Debate

Chapter 7: The Christology Debate
Position 1: The unavoidable paradox of the God-man
Position 2: Christ relinquished his divine prerogatives

This is an interesting one, and again I am not completely convinced by either side in the debate. If you hold the God-man position firmly, it leads on to a number of other beliefs that are apparently contrary to scripture - such as the ability of Jesus's disciples to do 'greater things' than he did. If his power was his divine power, then nobody who followed after could do things like he did, let alone transcend them. This leads to a cessasionist stance, which we will come to in a future post. It also makes it impossible for us to follow his example. WWJD? Use his divine power to resolve a situation... Not very useful as a guide to living.

Also, this leads to a very complicated 'two minds' belief in which Jesus had two distinct minds (personalities?) in his make-up, and the divine one wouldn't let the other know certain things. Eh? This just leads to inconsistencies.

But, the other position ('Kenotic') leads to the problem of what happened after the ascension (as I blogged about a few months back) - if Christ had to 'empty himself' of his divinity to become human, then either he still is a limited human (which nobody seems to believe) or he ceased to be human after the ascension (which nobody seems to believe either). So some serious 'explaining away' has to be done.

For what its worth, I find the Kenotic view more compelling, even if it raises as many issues as it solves. Once again, I find an agnostic position ('I don't know') is the best stance to take.

The more I work through these issues, the more compelled I am to talk in terms of 'hope' rather than certainty and the happier I am to say 'I don't know' on the big issues. We don't always need to hold on tightly to certainty in the face of limited (and sometimes conflicting) information.

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Hello Ricky,

My name is Drew Smith. I stumbled upon your site just recently and noticed you were going through the book Across the Spectrum. (Great introductory book on these issues btw). I read this book about 5 or so years ago for a theology class I took.

I noticed you stated that Christ emptied his divinity in the kenotic view. It's been a while since I have read that Chapter in particular (we just moved and all of my books are in storage), but there are important variations of the kenotic view that can be addressed. I don't believed Christ emptied his divinity, but emptied himself of the RIGHT to certain characteristics. He never ceased to have them, he laid down his right to use them. I think that is an important distinction and might be able to speak to your issue of what happened after the ascension.

Like you, I am a doubting Thomas as well and my faith journey has taken some abrupt twists and turns. If you would like to chat sometime, I'd be open. It's good to know one is not alone.

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ARRRRRRRRGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!  It's a friggin' epidemic of institutionally-TAUGHT heresy!

Post Edited (One Love) : 9/30/2011 9:45:41 AM (GMT-5)

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"The most frequent objection raised against kenotic Christology is that it undermines Jesus' divine nature."

"Across the Spectrum"
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