 |
| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > General Chat > Evangelicalism Today | Forum Quick Jump
|
| 
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/30/2011 9:53 AM (GMT -6) |   | | Now, for CONTRAST, let's take the evangelical kenotic, Avatarian viewpoint. The MIND of God the Son/Word/Logos exhaustively locates itself to the human nature of Jesus from conception onward and "running things" in that human nature, with respect to Jesus' relationship with God the Son and God the Spirit. God the Son/Word/Logos wearing a human "costume"...supposedly relating to the Father and Spirit interpersonally even as a completely unconscious, non-sentient/sapient, multicellular zygote.
Yeah...that's a WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better view. 
“Omniscience gives up all knowledge but that of the child, the infant, the embryo, the infinitesimal germ of humanity. Omnipotence gives up all power but that of the impregnated ovum in the womb of the Virgin. The Godhead narrows itself down to a point that is next to absolute extinction.” -Augustus Strong
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 10/30/2011 9:57:19 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
 |
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/30/2011 9:54 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/30/2011 10:01 AM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
I owe it to your persistence that I finally conceived of how UR is consistent with scripture.
Praise God. All praise to God.
**************************
Jeff:
From that perspective, though, I truly think that not believing in UR is more of a hinderance to the formation of a robust Christian perspective than is the right position on the point of contention at hand. Seriously.
I hear what you're saying. I do believe that belief in EUR frees one into a more "robust" Christian perspective that one that has a belief in eternal conscious torment or annihilationism. At the same time, with the evangelical kenotic view (over and against the Chalcedonian view)...we have no real way of knowing HOW human beings can be fully be "partakers of the divine nature." Think about it, bro. With the evangelical kenotic view, you basically have God in a human "costume", Avatar-style. What good is that doing ANYONE? How does THAT guarantee that humanity can genuinely PARTAKE in divine (uncreated!) nature? It does't do that at all. At most, it guarantees that Jesus won't sin, because the "brute fact" of the Logos within Jesus assures that. How does THAT transfigure human nature?
Now, when you look at the Chalcedonian view...it clarifies how humanity partakes in the divine nature because the one "nature" of divine humanity irreducible relational "pattern" has been established in how the two ontologically distinct realities (created and uncreated) have perichoretic bi-polar assymetrical relational unity between the Divine Presence and the human "heart". It's what I've posted time and time again...
The Template for Fully Actualized Human Existence:
Personal Subject
Holy Spirit
Human Spirit
Divine Will/Mind
Human Will/Mind
BPARU Function or Bi-polar Assymetrical Relational Unity between Uncreated and Created realities
Next, the Template Setter...
Christ:
One divine person
Holy Spirit ("rests" in the Son naturally)
Human spirit (taken on with human "flesh" )
Divine Will/Mind (One Will of the Trinity)
Human Will/Mind (the "faith OF Jesus", evidenced in Gethsemane)
Incarnation, Condescension
Finally, us...
Christian:
One non-divine person
Holy Spirit ("rests" in the "son-in-the-Son" by Grace)
Human spirit (natural aspect of human existence)
Divine Will (Paraclete, Christ's Spirtual Presence)
Human Will (the "faith IN Jesus", evidenced by Paul)
Theosis, Ascension
Humans were INITIALLY DESIGNED (via God's intention for incarnation) to become created "gods" ("sons" of God) who always have God's Spirit as our "determining element." Fully realized human nature is really a theandrism...a "divine humanity" like Nesteruk talks about. And the Incarnate Word confirms all this in his coming.
Evangelical kenotic christology kills all of this. All of it.
THIS, my brother, is what is at stake here. Nothing LESS than this is at stake!
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 10/30/2011 10:05:48 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/30/2011 10:17 AM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
I don't get boundlessness because I'm not sure what you're saying is boundless. Power? Intelligence? I can't get to ommipresence if there was no space sans creation. Apart from a spatial reference frame, I don't know what omnipresence means.
You are WAY overthinking this, bro. The point is that the divine personal presence of God the Son/Word/Logos is ALWAYS "right here" and "right now", remember? WHEREVER there is a "right here", right now? Creation occurs "within" Divine Presence's boundlessness, as it were.
There is NO WHERE or WHEN one can "escape" from God who is SPIRIT...that is, IMMATERIAL.
Surely, you grasp what I'm saying, dude...
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 10/30/2011 10:20:57 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/30/2011 10:25 AM (GMT -6) | | Similtude:
I don't synthesize beyond what is necessary to explain.
It is necessary to explain how the Uncreated, TRANSCENDENT (Boundless), Necessary, Immaterial "John 1:1" Son/Word of God the Father could actually and fully be Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary. How DID this God the Father's Son/Word" genuine become fully human?
Don't you feel that needs explaining?
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 10/30/2011 10:28:35 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 10/30/2011 11:11 AM (GMT -6) | | Don't have any more time today. Gotta do some over-time for work that I'm behind on. But real quick:
1) The unity of the godhead is it's harmony. I see no reason why they have to be one substance since God the Father can be what Christ called the "one, true God" of Hebrew monotheism. The trio, per my view, is collectively deity in the sense that each of the three is necessary to explaining the existence and teleology of creation.
2) We can not "escape" God--true. But this means that He has the capacity to act as necessary teleologically. The minute we try to be precise as to how that can be, we are left with apparent contradictions. This divine capacity, then, is known as a brute fact, not something we can analyze further. The psalmist may mean as much himself by admitting it is beyond his understanding.
3) As for partaking of the divine nature, I don't see how divine incarnation is required for that at all. I would think a godhead of one person in a necessary god-world relationship could cause His creatures to become non-libertarianly benevolent so long as doing so didn't frustrate some necessary end of His creation. IOW, how come the sheer power to do that doesn't account for it? Granted, doing it in particular ways and under particular conditions may serve some teleological interest, but the deity either has the power to do so or not, I would think.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/31/2011 8:09 AM (GMT -6) | | Teleology.
Tom and I believe the following...
1) Creation and Incarnation is primarily "gift" from the Eternal Son to God the Father, providing God a new way to percieve and enjoy Godself, and secondarily a gift from God to Creation itself.
2) The Incarnation is fundamentally motivated by the loving, self-giving, sharing nature of God, not merely freeing Creation from sin.
3) Creation itself is an "side-effect" or "context" of God's desire to incarnate into createdness.
4) Human nature is created with the Incarnation "at heart" such that the relational "nature" of divine humanity (theandrism) is a possibility open to human experience. In other words, human ontology--including it's theandric potential--is grounded from God's pre-Creation intention to incarnate.
5) In the Incarnation, the archetype of the "imago dei" and the theandric capacity in human nature (ie irreducibly relational "nature" of divine humanity) is completely fulfilled.
In other words, we believe that Creation is the context by divine "gift-giving" between God the Son/Word/Logos and God the Father occurs in and through the Holy Spirit. For the sake of the Father's Will, God the Son/Word gives a loving, self-giving "gift" of novel, contingent expressions of uncreated being: God as CREATOR and God as INCARNATED into creaturely "otherness"; God as "Immanuel" (God WITH US). This gift to God the Father in the Power of the Spirit (Creation, Incarnation) is SIMULTANEOUSLY a "gift" to Creation itself as God Himself is the Summum Bonum of Creation (Immanuel)...and a "gift" from God the Father to the Son as the Father EXALTS the obedient, loving Son/Word (Resurrection and Ascension, all power is in His hands, given to Him by the Father, etc)...and a "gift" from God the Son/Word to the Father in the Consumation (The Son turns over renewed Creation filled with "children of God" to the Father) when God is "all in all."
Jeff, you don't get deeper "teleology" than this.
Creation and Incarnation are LOVING GIFTS given between the Father and the Son in the Spirit...to the ultimate benefit of Creation, who "partakes" in this divine exchange.
How's THAT sound to ya, Jeff?
But here's the problem.
This only works if God the Son/Word/Logos remains being UNCREATED CREATOR while being INCARNATE, and redeeming us. (Basically, what Hebrews 1:3-4 says!)
If God the Son/Word "passes off" being the Creative, Spirit-borne "Word" of God the Father that sustains all Creation...to the Father Himself while he incarnated, that screws up the whole giving flow. Not too mention posits theological nonsense.
Tell me you see it, bro.
-------------------------------------------------------
God the Son/Word/Logos takes on a particularized creaturely existence within his "focus of will" on Creation's overall existence...such that, as Tom said..."God commits to relating to THIS fetus, in every stage of its history, in such a way that the Son’s subjectivity assumes this space as his own hypostatically." In doing this, the Necessary, Unchangably Boundless, Immaterial, Uncreated Eternal God the Word NEVER CEASES being Necessary, Unchangably Boundless, Uncreated, Immaterial, or CO-Eternal with God the Father or the Holy Spirit.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 10/31/2011 8:36:37 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/31/2011 8:46 AM (GMT -6) | | |
WHO…
BEING
(pres. ptc)
the brightness of his glory
and the express image of his substance/essence
and
CARRYING/UPHOLDING
(pres. ptc) all things by the word of his power
SAT DOWN
(Aor Ind) on the right hand of the majesty on high
HAVING MADE
(Aor Ptc) cleansing of our sins
HAVING BECOME
(Aor Ptc) so much better than angels…
-------------------------------------------------
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."
-------------------------------
"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together."
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. | | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/31/2011 9:21 AM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
I see no reason why they have to be one substance since God the Father can be what Christ called the "one, true God" of Hebrew monotheism.
The One, True God "sent" His Only-Begotten, Co-Eternal, Uncreated Son/Word by the Holy Spirit who ANTEDATED Creation INTO Creation...right? This is what Jesus meant when he said he was going back to His Father who sent him into Creation (the "world" ), with whom he'd shared a love relationship before Creation ever came to be. The only way to affirm the truth of Jesus' statement is to affirm His pre-existent, uncreated personhood as the One, True God's Co-Eternal, Only-Begotten Son and their uncreated interpersonal love relationship.
In short, God the Father's Only-Begotten, Co-Eternal Son/Word by the Holy Spirit is as UNCREATED (and therefore TRANSCENDENT) as God the Father himself. They are co-substantial in their "uncreated creator-ness." Jesus is the Son/Word of God INCARNATE by the power of the Holy Spirit. But the Incarnation did not cause the Son/Word/Logos to cease having/exercising his "uncreated creator-ness"; the Incarnation "added" the fully human experience to the personal experience of the uncreated, co-eternal Son/Word/Logos.
THIS is what trinitarian monotheism says.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 10/31/2011 9:37:15 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 10/31/2011 10:35 AM (GMT -6) | | Jeff: I see no reason why they have to be one substance since God the Father can be what Christ called the "one, true God" of Hebrew monotheism.
Tom: Then as far as I can tell, Jeff, you're not a trinitarian monotheist in anything like the orthdox Christian sense of the term. That probably doesn't bother you either. Protestants/Evangelicals are pretty much disconnected and cut off from the Fathers and the Creeds. I understand. But I hope you can appreciate why SOME are unable to fit your view into what they know and experience as historical, orthodox (even with a small "o") Christianity and so would see it as heterodox.
You may be a modalist, or a modalist-subordinantionist (in the ontological sense) mix. But if you think the one true God of Hebrew monotheism can be the one God he is apart from eternally begetting the Son sans any determination to create, then you're missing the point of Logos Christology grounded in the NT docs and the faith of the early Church. The Logos of the Father is not generated with respect to creation, though creation's possibilities are inherent in the Logos. Yes, the Father is Judaism's One God, as you say, and Christ can express himself in these terms as well, but it's ALSO the case that the Father is who he is AS he relates to his Word (Jn 1). That's the point of John's openning prologue--i.e., there is no one Hebrew God of Judaism, the Father, apart from his Word who was/is both "with" the Father and "is" the Father. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God (the Father, Judaism's ONE God) and the Word was this God. To posit the one Father, this ONE Hebrew God, IS to posit the Father-Word relation constitutive of BOTH Father and Logos.
How can Christ identify the one Hebrew God/Father both as "his" God and also "be" that God? Well, to begin with he can do so by the same means by which the Logos is both "with" God (pros ton theon) and "is" God (theos ein ho logos). But probably more importantly he can do so AS incarnate, that is, IN his human nature he fulfills humanity's God-given purpose when he recognizes God "as God" (of the created order and especially of human being). Christ can surrender the entire human race to the Father AS THEIR (and HIS) GOD as the Second Adam, in as much as he his truly human, but this doesn't mean his being the Logos or the begetting of the Son by the Father is done with respect to creation alone. Tom
"The aesthetic value the world has for God is in expressing, not constituting, the aesthetic value God eternally finds within Godself." Greg Boyd Post Edited (Tom) : 10/31/2011 1:05:38 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 11/1/2011 8:36 PM (GMT -6) | | Per http://carm.org/modalism, "Modalism is probably the most common theological error concerning the nature of God. It is a denial of the Trinity. Modalism states that God is a single person who, throughout biblical history, has revealed Himself in three modes, or forms..."
Since I'm not even dogmatic that the 3 (not one) are even co-substantial, that definition can't possibly apply to me. Are you meaning it differently?
I'll try to catch up with the rest later -- still snowed!
| | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 11/1/2011 9:01 PM (GMT -6) | | | I think that Jeff is more tri-theistic. He said...
The trio, per my view, is collectively deity in the sense that each of the three is necessary to explaining the existence and teleology of creation.
Wiki...
Tritheism is the belief that there are three distinct, powerful gods, who form a triad. Generally three gods are envisaged as having separate powers and separate supreme beings or spheres of influence but working together.
As I'm hearing Jeff, he believes in a "trio" of distinct, powerful personal beings, all of whom have separate powers / spheres of influence and continually work in perfect unity/harmony with one another; this "trio" of personal beings acts as ONE Creator/Redeemer reality. All three divine persons are necessary for Creation, Incarnation and New Creation to be explained. Right, Jeff? And Jeff believes that the personal reality of the Son is SEPARABLE from the hypostatic activity of the Father, such that the Son has his own omni-ness that he can simply cease to exercise by choice, effectively exhaustively localizing Himself into Creation into human nature. And as long was the Father and/or the Spirit still kept things going...and the Son were completely inanimate in vitro, things are ok. Why? Because there are 3 personal beings in the Godhead, and (so the thinking goes) there only needs to be 1 person who has the omnis, keeping Creation going. So, (thankfully), Creation wouldn't be "vacated" by the Son giving up being the Creator Word in order to be a baby in Mary's womb...because the Father and Spirit would still be omni-nessing it up.
All of this is tritheistic.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 11/1/2011 9:09:21 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 11/2/2011 7:53 AM (GMT -6) | | More thought. After reading this...
Wanna use some social trinitarian language for a sec...
According to the modified evangelical kenotic christological view, immediately post-Immaculate Conception, the uncreated "center of consciousness" that is God the Son, by his own freely-made, self-limiting choice, is exhaustively localized into Creation, never transcending the human nature, as the human pre-embryonic biological lifeform within the womb of Mary. The question is: is the Incarnate God the Son SELF-CONSCIOUS of being God the Son--effectively continuing his interpersonal relationships with God the Father and God the Spirit--while being exhaustively located within the human embyro within Mary, Post-Incarnation?
If NOT, the human embryo must "grow up enough" to be God's Son...meaning that God the Son as PERICHORETICALLY ACTIVE uncreated "center of consciousness" ceases to exist. There is a time with God the Son is "not." (Arianism...right, Tom?)
If YES, then God the Son/Word is wearing a human embryonic "costume" and playing like a human. (Apollinarianism)
Now, I know that they've went ahead (NAE, Evans, etc) and said YES to this, so as to avoid making the Trinity into a binaty...
but upon doing more thinking...I've decided that they CAN'T do that.
Social trinitarians who are evangelical kenoticists say that post-Incarnation, the uncreated "center of consciousness" that is God the Son WILLINGLY, FREELY CHOSE to refrain from exercising his continually-possessed divine nature in any type of way at all from Incarnation forward. So this means that whenever the Incarnate Son was a zygote...he would LITERALLY have ONLY the communicative powers of his human nature (that of a human zygote) to work with...by his own previously chosen self-limitation! (He can't go back on that, now can he?)
This means that God the Son CAN'T communicate interpersonally with God the Father or God the Spirit by any other means BUT those grounded in the human nature.
And NO ONE will grant that a human zygote has fully active interpersonal capacity and fully active noetic capabilities to relate worshipfully and interpersonally to God the Father. No way. So the "center of consciousness" that is God the Son is a "brute fact" that is functionally non-sentient and unconscious in the pre-embryonic lifeform...until it gains enough growth to BECOME more interpersonally (and noetically) able.
It's NECESSARILY leading to Arianism and Adoptionism...by their OWN CLAIMS. They CAN'T be the Apollinarians they WANT to be!
2) "Human Embryo growing up to be God's Son":
This view holds that the human being, Jesus, was adopted as God's Son some time AFTER the Immaculate Conception event. In other words, the divine identity of God the Son, immediately post-Immaculate Conception, effectively ceases to exist...and thus is NOT CONTINUING the interpersonal, uncreated communication/interaction with God the Father and God the Spirit that has eternally being going on before then. This means the zygote BECOMES the Divine Son of God sometime AFTER Immaculate Conception when it later develops more interpersonal abilities to reengage the trinitarian interpersonal relationships. In trying to hold to the zygotic Jesus being "fully human", it is made something OTHER THAN "fully God."
So, they have to be INCONSISTENT...to get UP to being Apollinarians!!
Oh, my...this is rich!
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 11/2/2011 8:04:44 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 11/2/2011 2:20 PM (GMT -6) | | Page 107...
In his The Word Became Flesh, Erickson argues similiarly, declaring that the restrictions imposed upon Christ's divinity by his human nature meant that he as God could be in only one physical place at a time. Christ made a voluntary decision, he argues, to limit the exercise of his omnipresence for a certain period of time. The voluntary character of his decision did not mean that he could have overridden his decision at any time. He had will that from approximately 4 BC to AD 29 he would not have the free use of his omnipresence. It was not that he was pretending that he could not use it; he really could not use it. In like manner, when Jesus asked how long a child had suffered from a disease, or when he professed that he did not know that time of his second coming, he was not pretending ignorance. He as God really did not know. He had chosen to subject his omniscience to the veiling or cloaking effect of humanity. For that period of time, God the Son gave up his intuitive knowledge of many of the thing that God knows. Erickson acknowledges that his view is a 'species of kenotic theology."
If all this is true, then Millard Erickson himself says that God the Son exhaustively limits himself to the human nature in the Incarnation. This perspective would have to say that immediately post-Immaculate Conception, Christ AS GOD was unconscious and non-sentient/non-sapient as a pre-embryonic multicellular organism within the womb of Mary. Thus, Erickson, if being consistent, would HAVE to say that the uncreated, eternal, perichoretic, interpersonal relationships amid the 3 uncreated persons of the Trinity are utterly disrupted by the Incarnation; at Incarnation, the Son is no longer in the Divine Conversation, as it were, such that there are only 2 fully hypostatic "divine conversation holders."
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 11/2/2011 2:33:34 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 11/2/2011 6:01 PM (GMT -6) | | | Tom: I thought he meant to say the Son was generated/begotten with respect to creation, which would be Arian at least.
Jeff: Colossians says he's the firstborn OF creation BECAUSE all things were created through him, or something to that effect. So I'm thinking that being begotten in that sense is just like being begotten in resurrection or conceived in Mary--i.e., they are changes of state of existence because additional attributes are inhering in the "begotten" one. There is nothing in scripture that indicates, to me, that the second person of the godhead originated existentially at any time.
As for my current conception of the trio, I think the Father and Son are two persons and two beings. I think the Spirit was the Father's spirit ultimately. Now, because the second person has become Christus Victor, he too has received the Spirit and "became" a "quickening spirit." But those very verses seem to imply that the second person is gaining something like the "fulness of the godhead bodily" because of what he did. That is to say, he was heir of creation in the first place. But because of the kind of suffering he ended up having to endure, because of how badly awry it has gone, he has taken on, seemingly, additional relationships to creation.
Indeed, we are even told that he will deliver the kingdom to the Father so that HE (i.e., the Father) will be all in all. Changes are occurring with respect to the godhead. This is undeniable. Only a diversity in the godhead can account for this. I'm not positing any "omni"-ness to the second person of the godhead. I'm just saying, as the Pharisee's said he implied, that he is in some sense equal with the Father at all times. But the particular senses in which he is equal to the Father can change. I think that's what Phillipians is saying. The Pharisees even thought his ability to forgive sins implied he was equal to God, even though Christ's disciples seemed to have had a similar authority. So these things are relative.
What is important philosophically is that the godhead (i.e., he/they who account[s] for the existence and teleology of creation) has collectively all the attributes necessary to render it a godhead. It doesn't matter, philosophically, how they're distributed so long as the relevant attributes exist in the godhead at all times so that creation, and the benevolence and competence of Design that it implies, is accounted for at all times.
Scripturally, we need only posit what is required exegetically.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 11/3/2011 8:10 AM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
Colossians says he's the firstborn OF creation BECAUSE all things were created through him, or something to that effect. So I'm thinking that being begotten in that sense is just like being begotten in resurrection or conceived in Mary--i.e., they are changes of state of existence because additional attributes are inhering in the "begotten" one. There is nothing in scripture that indicates, to me, that the second person of the godhead originated existentially at any time.
Pre-Creation, did God the Son personally exist in the SOFA sans the divine intention to incarnate? I'm getting from your response that God the Son's eternal "begotteness" is simultaneous with the divine pre-Creation intention to incarnate. Basically, you'd be saying that the trinitarian "begetting" of the Son and "procession" of the Spirit are both integrally linked to (and inseparable from) Creation's existence. Is that what you are saying?
***************************************************************
Jeff:
As for my current conception of the trio, I think the Father and Son are two persons and two beings. I think the Spirit was the Father's spirit ultimately. Now, because the second person has become Christus Victor, he too has received the Spirit and "became" a "quickening spirit." But those very verses seem to imply that the second person is gaining something like the "fulness of the godhead bodily" because of what he did. That is to say, he was heir of creation in the first place. But because of the kind of suffering he ended up having to endure, because of how badly awry it has gone, he has taken on, seemingly, additional relationships to creation.
Another question. Sans Creation, does the Son have the Father's Spirit "resting" in Him? In other words, is it ONLY in Creation where the Son "receives" and possesses the Spirit of God...OR does God the Son "receive" and possess the Spirit WITHOUT Creation?
*****************************************************************
Jeff:
What is important philosophically is that the godhead (i.e., he/they who account for the existence and teleology of creation) has collectively all the attributes necessary to render it a godhead. It doesn't matter, philosophically, how they're distributed so long as the relevant attributes exist in the godhead at all times so that creation, and the benevolence and competence of Design that it implies, is accounted for at all times.
Scripturally, we need only posit what is required exegetically.
I still haven't seen what you've done adequately to Tom's stuff on Hebrews 1:3-4. Please show how YOUR view is more probable that Tom's (and everyone elses!).
WHO…
BEING
(pres. ptc)
the brightness of his glory
and the express image of his substance/essence
and
CARRYING/UPHOLDING
(pres. ptc) all things by the word of his power
SAT DOWN
(Aor Ind) on the right hand of the majesty on high
HAVING MADE
(Aor Ptc) cleansing of our sins
HAVING BECOME
(Aor Ptc) so much better than angels…
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 11/3/2011 11:32:53 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
| 97 posts in this thread.
Viewing Page : 1 2 3 4 |
| Forum Information | Currently it is Monday, November 09, 2026 8:38 PM (GMT -6)
There are a total of 97,718 posts in 6,040 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 0 new threads and 0 reply posts. View Active Threads
|
Forum powered by dotNetBB v2.42EC SP3
dotNetBB © 2000-2026 |
|
|